“I'm outta here,” said Abbey, poised to jump.

“No, wait.” I feverishly resumed hauling on the starter cord, one hard pull after another. Nothing makes you forget how tired you are like pure cold fear. I was working like a robot in high gear.

Then my sister cried, “Noah, duck!”

And ducking would have been a smart move, no doubt about it. Because I turned to see Luno with his meaty right arm extended, aiming a stubby-looking gun at the dinghy. Dusty stood off to the side, blowing lazy rings of blue smoke.

The scene was so unreal, I just froze. It was like watching someone else's nightmare. I felt blank and numb and far away.

“What's the matter with you? Get down!” Abbey yelled.

By now we'd drifted to within fifty feet of the dock, which made us an easy target. Finally an alarm bell went off in my brain and I threw up both arms, shouting, “Don't shoot! We give up!”

Dusty chuckled quietly. Luno was leering like a psycho. He did not lower the gun barrel even one millimeter.

“You kids make bad mistake,” he said. “Now must pay.”

If ever I was going to wet my pants in public, it would have been right then and there.

Yet all I could think about was protecting my sister, so I threw myself on top of her. The landing wasn't so graceful-I banged my chin on the gunwale and nearly capsized us. Wrapping my arms around Abbey, I waited for the explosion of a gunshot.

It never came. A fierce and breathless struggle had broken out on the dock. Peeking over the side of the dinghy, Abbey and I witnessed an amazing sight.

As if dropped from the stars, a third man had materialized under the dock lights-and he was pounding Luno into a sweaty lump of Jell-O. The only sign of Dusty Muleman was the slapping of his designer flip-flops against the ground as he scurried off in terror toward the Coral Queen.

The cheerful tinkle of steel drums now mixed with Luno's odd piggish grunts, the wiry stranger swinging a deck mop with painful accuracy.

In fact, he wasn't a total stranger to me and my sister. We were near enough to see the M-shaped scar on his weathered tan face, and the bright gold coin swinging from the chain around his neck.

“The pirate guy!” Abbey whispered gleefully. “Outrageous!”

“Don't you move,” I told her, and clambered to the stern. I seized the handle of the starter rope and, from a squatting position, yanked with every ounce of muscle I had left.

By some small miracle, the rickety old engine purred to life.

I whipped the dinghy around, aimed it toward the channel, and twisted the throttle wide open. I glanced back just as the mysterious pirate was hurling Luno's stubby gun into the basin. For an old geezer, he had a pretty good arm.

After reaching the open water, I slowed to half speed. Running a boat at night is tricky because you can't see very far or very clearly, and a cheapo flashlight doesn't help much. All kinds of hazardous clutter could be floating in your path-boards, driftwood, coconuts, ropes-and it wouldn't have taken much to wreck the propeller blades on the old Evinrude.

Abbey perched on the bow, watching out for obstacles, while I tried to navigate by the lights of the shoreline: motels, mansions, RV parks, tiki bars. The darkest stretch was Thunder Beach, peaceful and deserted under a yellow moon. An ideal night for a momma turtle to crawl up and lay her eggs, I thought.

The salt air felt good on our faces as we ran against a light chop. Above us hung a glittering spray of stars that stretched all the way to Cuba. I was happier than I'd ever been, and so was Abbey.

“We did it!” she cheered. “We are so hot!”

“Adios, Captain Muleman!” I shouted with a phony salute.

The hardest part of Operation Royal Flush was over. We'd laid the trap and escaped, though barely. Being chased by Luno wasn't part of the plan, but it didn't spoil anything. For now, Dusty Muleman and his gorillas wouldn't be able to figure out what I'd been doing aboard the Coral Queen, since the only clue had gone down the toilets.

Way, way down the toilets, into the holding tank-the last place they'd ever stick their heads.

Only later would Dusty realize what I'd done, and by then he'd have worse problems-namely the U.S. Coast Guard, which I intended to call first thing in the morning.

But as jazzed as I was, I couldn't forget how close Abbey and I had come to being shot. Shot. It was unbelievable.

Why, I wondered, would Dusty stand there and let Luno take aim at a couple of pint-sized trespassers? We must have really annoyed him, I thought, with all our snooping around.

And what were the odds of being rescued for a second time by the same stranger? Either the old pirate was following us around like some sort of weird guardian angel, or Abbey and I were the luckiest two kids in Florida.

“Hard right!” she called from the bow.

I pushed the tiller, and we skittered past a glistening spear of two-by-four, only inches away. It would have punched a hole in the hull for sure.

“Good eyes,” I called to my sister.

“Thanks. What's that noise?”

“Don't know.”

“Noah, why are you slowing us down?” she shouted.

“I'm not,” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

But the little boat was definitely losing speed. The loud noise that Abbey and I had heard was the outboard engine throwing a piston rod, though we didn't know that at the time.

The motor conked out with a sickly rattle.

I knew we were in major trouble, but I went through the motions of removing the cowling and fiddling with the spark-plug connections. It didn't fool Abbey for a second.

“I don't suppose you brought Dad's toolbox,” she said.

“Very funny.”

I tried to pull the starter cord, but it wouldn't budge. The old Evinrude was stone dead.

A heavy, tired silence fell over us. Once again the little boat was at the mercy of the breeze, which was taking us out to sea, toward the Straits of Florida. Obviously our good luck had run out.

“We're history,” my sister said. “Mom and Dad'll go postal when they get home and we're not there.”

The wind was clocking around to the northwest. In summer that usually means bad weather is on the way.

I said, “Better toss the anchor-no, wait a second…”

Too late. My stomach clenched when I heard the splash.

“Let me guess,” Abbey said. “The rope wasn't tied on, was it?”

“My fault. I should've checked.”

“So I just threw our anchor away. How nice.” She sighed in discouragement. “Now what?”

We saw a distant flash of electric blue, which was followed by a slow deep rumble.

“Seven miles. Not good,” Abbey said.

Dad had taught us how to count the seconds between the lightning bolt and thunder-one thousand, two thousand, three thousand-to figure out how many miles away a storm was. Like Abbey, I'd counted seven.

“Maybe it'll miss us,” she said.

“Yeah.” And maybe someday monkeys will fly helicopters, I thought.

In a few short minutes our mood had plunged from the highest high to the lowest low. The moon slipped behind a rolling gray carpet of clouds, and the freshening gusts smelled wet. Abbey scrunched low in the bow while I hunkered between the seats.

The lightning got brighter and the thunder got louder, but all we could do was brace for it. Rado's dinghy had no oars, and we were already too far from shore to swim-not that either of us was eager to jump in. I remembered Dad saying that you always stay with a boat as long as it's still floating, because a boat is easier than a body for searchers to find.

Soon the wind began to hum, slapping us with sheets of cool rain.

“You all right?” I asked my sister.

“Snug as a bug,” she said.

The little boat slopped across the crests of the waves, moving farther and farther from shore. Stabs of lightning turned the dark into daylight, and I'd catch brief glimpses of Abbey, covering her face with the backpack. I felt horrible for getting us into such a mess, and I was furious at myself for letting her come along. It was one of the all-time dumbest things I'd ever done.