The whale's massive body came down on the front part of the thirty-five-pound kayak and smashed it to splinters. Austin went into the cold water. He sank for a second, then bobbed to the surface, buoyed by his personal flotation device. He spit out a mouthful of water and spun around. To his relief, the fin was moving away from him.
The pod of whales was between Austin and a nearby island. Rather than head in that direction, he began to swim farther out into the bay. After a few strokes, he stopped swimming and rolled onto his back. The chill that danced along his spine was not caused by the cold water alone.
A phalanx of fins was chasing after him. He kicked his water shoes off and slipped out of his cumbersome flotation vest. He knew that the gesture was a futile one. Even without his vest, he would have needed an outboard motor strapped to his back to outrun an orca. Killer whales can swim at speeds up to thirty miles per hour.
Austin had faced many human adversaries with an icy coolness, but this was different. He was driven by the primeval horror his Stone Age ancestors must have experienced: the fear of being eaten. As the whales neared, he could hear the soft watery sound they made as air was expelled through their blowholes.
Souf-souf.
Just as he expected sharp teeth to sink into his flesh, the chorus of steamy exhalations was drowned out by the roar of powerful engines. Through water-blurred eyes, he saw sun reflecting off a boat's hull. Hands reached down to grab his arms. His knees banged painfully against the hard, plastic side of the boat, and he flopped onto the deck like a landed fish.
A man was bending over him. "Are you okay?"
Austin gulped in a lungful of air and thanked the unknown Samaritan for his help.
"What's going on?" the man said.
"A whale attacked me."
"That's impossible," the man said. "They're like big, friendly dogs."
"Tell that to the whales."
Austin scrambled to his feet. He was on a well-appointed powerboat around thirty feet long. The man who had pulled him from the water had a shaved bald head with a spider tattoo on the scalp. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses with reflective blue lenses, and he wore black jeans and a black leather jacket.
Set into the deck behind the man was a strange, cone-shaped, metal framework about six feet high. Thick electrical cables sprouted from the framework like vines. Austin stared at the weird construction for a second, but he was more interested in what was happening out on the water.
The pod of orcas that had chased him like a pack of hungry sea wolves was swinging away from the boat and was now headed toward the other kayakers. A few people had seen Austin go over, but they had not been close enough to witness the attack. With Austin gone, the racers were in a state of confusion. Some continued to paddle slowly. Most had simply stopped dead in the water, where they sat like rubber ducks in a bathtub.
The orcas were closing in fast on the bewildered racers. Even more frightening, other pods of whales had appeared around the kayak flotilla and were gathering around for the kill. The racers were unaware of the sharp-toothed danger headed their way. Many of them had paddled the sound and knew that the orcas were harmless.
Austin grabbed the boat's steering wheel. "Hope you don't mind," he said as he punched up the throttle.
The man's reply was lost in the roar of twin outboard motors. The boat quickly got up on plane. Austin pointed the bow at the narrowing gap between the kayakers and the moving fins. He hoped that the noise of the engines and hull would disrupt the orcas. His heart sank when the whales split into two groups and went around him, still intent on their targets. He knew orcas communicated with each other to coordinate their attacks. Within seconds, the pod hit the kayak fleet like a spread of torpedoes. They rammed the light boats with their huge bodies. Several kayaks went over and their passengers were thrown into the water.
Austin slowed the boat's speed and steered between the bobbing heads of children and their parents and the knifelike orca fins. The White Lightning had moved closer to some capsized kayaks, but the situation was too chaotic for it to be of any help. Austin saw one of the tallest fins bearing down on a man who was floating in the water holding his young daughter in his arms. Austin would have to run over the other kayakers to get to them. He turned to the boat's owner.
"Do you have a rifle speargun on board?"
The bald man was fiddling frantically with an instrument box that was connected to the framework by a cable. He looked up from what he was doing and shook his head.
"It's okay," he said. "Look!" He pointed toward the mass of overturned kayaks.
The big fin had stopped moving. It remained stationary, playfully wobbling in place, only feet from the man and his daughter. Then it began to move away from the broken kayaks and their hapless paddlers.
The other fins followed. The surrounding pods that had been closing in broke off their attack and meandered back into the open waters. The big bull breached in a high, playful leap. Within minutes, none of the orcas was in sight.
A young boy had become separated from his parent. His flotation vest must have been donned improperly, because his head was slipping below the surface. Austin climbed up on the gunwale and launched his body into the air. He hit the water in a shallow racing dive and stroked his way to the boy. He reached him just before he went under.
Austin treaded water, holding the youngster's head above the surface. He only had to wait a few moments. The White Lightning had launched its inflatable life rafts, and racers were being plucked from the water. Austin handed the boy up to his rescuers and pivoted in the water. The bald man and his boat had disappeared.
Kurt Austin Senior was an older mirror image of his son. His broad shoulders had a slight sag, but they still looked fully capable of battering their way through a wall. His thick, platinum-silver hair was worn shorter than that of his son, who tended to be away from barbers for long periods of time.
Although he was in his mid-seventies, a strict regimen of exercise and diet had kept him trim and fit. He could still put in a workday that would have exhausted men half his age. His face was tanned from sun and sea, and his bronze skin was laced with a fine network of wrinkles. His coral, blue-green eyes could blaze with lionlike ferocity, but, like those of his son, they usually looked out at the world with gentle amusement.
The two Austins were seated in plush chairs in the White Lightnings luxurious main cabin, nursing oversize shots of Jack Daniel's. Kurt had borrowed a tailored sweat suit from his father. The waters of Puget Sound had been like a bathtub filled with ice cubes, and the liquor trickling down Kurt's throat was replacing the chill in his outer extremities with pleasing warmth.
The cabin was furnished in leather and brass and decorated with polo and horse racing prints. Kurt felt as if he were in one of those exclusive English men's clubs where a member could die in his overstuffed chair and not be discovered for days. His hard-driving father was not exactly the English gentleman type, and Kurt guessed that the atmosphere was designed to smooth the rough edges brought on by his hardscrabble fight to get to the top in a competitive business.
The old man replenished their glasses and offered Kurt a Cuban Cohiba Lanceros cigar, which he politely refused. Austin lit up, and puffed out a purple cloud that enveloped his head.
"What the hell went on out there today?"
Kurt's mind was still a blur. He reconsidered the cigar offer, and as he went through the manly ritual of lighting up he ordered his thoughts. He took another sip from his glass, and laid out the story.