Ark Angel

experience was very different with a kite. All his concentration was fixed on the soaring black and white Flexifoil wing. If he allowed it to stray outside the wind envelope, he knew it would fall into the sea. He would come to an immediate halt and it would be almost impossible to launch the kite again. He had to stay upright. He was exhausted from lack of sleep.
    Ignore it. Stay focused. Gritting his teeth, he willed himself on.
    The wind was coming at him sideways now, gusting at around thirty miles an hour. The spray was lashing into him. He wondered if he was going in the right direction and risked a glance behind him. Flamingo Bay was already small and distant. He figured that so long as he kept it over his left shoulder, he must be heading more or less straight.
    He looked back again, and felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. He had to fight to keep his balance. He must have travelled at least five miles, he was sure of it. But there was still no sign of Barbados and the worst had happened.
    He was being pursued.
    Paul must have come round and raised the alarm. Either that or someone had spotted the kite and guessed what had happened. The Princess V55 was knifing through the water, its sleek form powering towards him. It was incredibly fast, moving at almost thirty-nine knots. Forty-five miles an hour. It wouldn’t take very long to catch up with him. And there was more to come. There were two smaller boats with it. As Alex risked another glance behind him he saw them peel away from it, leaping ahead and rapidly closing the distance between the Princess and him.
    They were brand-new Bella 620 DC speedboats, Finnish-made and shipped out to the Caribbean.
    They were twenty feet long, squat and mean-looking with silver pulpit rails shaped like the nostrils of an angry bull. Each one was equipped with a single 150 horsepower Mercury Optimax Saltwater outboard and Alex knew that they had to be going almost twice as fast as him. They were less than a minute away.
    There was nothing he could do. His hands were clamped tight round the control bar and he lowered the kite as much as he dared, desperately trying to pick up speed. Now he could hear the motors above the wind. More walls of water rose up in front of him. His legs trembled with the strain as he fought his way over the waves. The boats flew along, carving through them.
    There were two men in each of them, one steering, the other holding a machine gun. They hadn’t come to capture him and take him back. They were here to kill him. Alex heard the first rattle of machine-gun fire, almost lost in the roar of the waves. He slammed the bar into his chest, steering the kite up. At the same time, he transferred his weight to the flat of the board, tensed himself and jumped. Now he was in the air, ten metres above the water. The bullets passed underneath him. The hang time seemed to stretch on for ever. He was flying, his whole body tilted backwards, the soles of his feet towards the sky. The men in the speedboats had been taken by surprise. Thrown around by the sea, they were off balance, half blinded by the spray, unable to aim at a target high above their heads. For a few seconds, Alex was safe.
    But he couldn’t defy gravity for ever. Alex braced himself for the splash down, trying to ignore the two boats, which were horribly close. He landed between them, bending his knees to absorb some of the impact, lowering the kite to maintain speed. If he toppled over, he would die. But while he remained standing, the men couldn’t fire. There was too much risk that they would hit each other in the crossfire.

    And then Alex saw Barbados. It was there, ahead of him, no bigger than a one-penny piece. If he could survive just a few more minutes, he would be all right.
    He was being pulled along between the two boats, all three of them doing the same speed. He was so close to the men that but for the scream of the engines and the booming of the waves he would have been able to call out to them. He could sense his strength beginning to fail him. His arms were aching. All his muscles were straining. He could barely feel the board beneath his feet.
    And then the boat on his left edged ahead, allowing the one on his right a clear line of fire. Alex saw the guard raise his machine gun, preparing to shoot. He was a sitting duck skimming across the water, totally unprotected, just a couple of metres away from the man who was about to mow him down.
    Alex did the only thing he