Chapter 127 - The Crossing of the Black Water
The airboat skittered across the surface of the Saint Lawrence like a skipped stone. Slabs of blue ice slammed against the reinforced aluminum hull with bone-jarring concussions, sending sprays of freezing slush into the open cockpit.
Behind them, the two tactical zodiacs were closing the distance. They were lighter, faster, and manned by Consortium contractors equipped with thermal optics and submachine guns.
"They're flanking us on the port side!" Sterling yelled, propping his rifle on the cockpit coaming. "Jean, weave between the ice floes! Don't give them a straight firing line!"
The pilot yanked the steering lever. The airboat drifted sideways across a vast sheet of pack ice, its flat bottom screeching against the frozen crust before plunging back into open water with a violent splash.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the darkness from the lead zodiac. Bullets zipped through the air, punching neat round holes through the airboat’s rudder assembly.
"Emma, hold Maya down!" Claire gasped, her left arm limp, but her right hand steady as she rested her sidearm on the gunwale and fired twice.
One of the rounds struck the pilot of the lead zodiac. The craft veered sharply, hit an upturned ice ridge at forty miles per hour, flipped end over end in a shower of spray and twisted metal, and vanished beneath the freezing dark water.
"One down!" Sterling shouted. "Second one is coming around the stern!"
The second zodiac pulled alongside, fifty feet away. In the bow stood Christian Vogel himself, his cashmere coat replaced by a tactical immersion suit, a high-caliber assault rifle raised to his shoulder.
Through the roar of the engines and the wind, Vogel shouted into a loudhailer: "Emma! You cannot cross the border! The US Coast Guard has already been notified of an international parental abduction! If you reach the New York shore, federal marshals will take Maya into protective custody and hand her directly to Eleanor’s attorneys! You have nowhere to run!"
Emma looked down at Maya. The child was looking up at her, not with fear, but with absolute trust.
"Mommy," Maya whispered, her lips blue with cold. "The key has numbers on the back. Look."
Emma looked down at the brass key Maya was holding out. On the flat reverse of the antique bow, three faint numbers were engraved in microscopic watchmaker’s font:
*77-04-NY*
Emma’s mind raced. Julian’s confession letter. The farmhouse in Clinton County. The old boathouse on the southern shore of Lake Champlain.
"Jean!" Emma yelled to the pilot over the screaming propeller. "Don't head for the international checkpoint! Take us to the abandoned railway pier at Point Au Roche!"
"Point Au Roche is in New York, madame! It’s heavy pack ice! The boat will break!" Jean shouted back.
"Ram the ice!" Emma commanded, her eyes blazing. "We don't need the boat to survive. We just need to reach the American shore!"
Sterling looked at Emma, understanding dawning in his eyes. "The Vance family’s private maritime easement from the 1920s. It’s sovereign land under the original colonial charter. US federal marshals can’t enter without a state supreme court warrant!"
"And Eleanor doesn't have one," Claire added with a bloodied grin. "Because she thought she’d catch us before we crossed."
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"Hang on!" Jean screamed, slamming the throttle to the firewall.
The airboat accelerated toward a towering shelf of shore ice at the mouth of the bay. Behind them, Vogel opened fire, his bullets shredding the propeller blades. The engine shrieked in mechanical death as the boat hit the ice shelf at full speed, launching airborne for three terrifying seconds before crashing onto the frozen rocks of the New York shoreline.
