Black wind

one hand clasped on the speedboat’s prow, careful not to disturb the quietly lapping water. He watched patiently as the red ember of the cigarette rhythmically flared like a crimson beacon as the guard inhaled on the tobacco. Dirk found himself holding his breath, not for himself but for Summer, whom he hoped would avoid detection at the stern of the boat. The guard fully enjoyed his smoke, pulling at it for ten minutes before flinging the butt over the railing. The burning stub landed in the water just three feet from Dirk’s head, extinguishing with a hiss.
    Waiting until he heard the padded sound of footsteps move away from the railing, Dirk ducked underwater and swam toward the rear
    of the speedboat. Surfacing just astern of the boat’s propeller, he found Summer waiting with an impatient look on her face. Dirk shook his head at her, then quietly pulled himself up the rear transom of the speedboat and peered toward the pilot seat. In the darkness, he could just barely make out the dashboard ignition, which winked back at him void of a key. He slunk back into the water and looked at Summer, then reached for the loose mooring line in her hands. She was surprised when he ducked underwater for a minute, then surfaced empty-handed, expecting that he was going to retie the line to the dock, instead him pointing offshore. Summer followed his finger and began swimming silently away from the boat. When they were safely out of earshot, they stopped and rested.
    “What was that all about?” Summer asked with a tinge of annoyance.
    Dirk described the guard positioned on the stern of Kang’s yacht. “There wasn’t much chance without the starter key. As close as the boats are together, he’d have seen or heard me trying to rummage around hotwiring the ignition. Chances are, there’s a guard or two on the catamaran as well. I think we’re going to have to settle for the skiff.”
    The small skiff that Kang’s thugs had used to ferry Dirk and Summer into the cavern was pulled up onto the shore, adjacent to the dock.
    “That’s awfully close to the guardhouse,” Summer noted.
    Dirk looked ashore, spotting the guard still sitting in the guardhouse, about twenty meters from the skiff. “Stealth it will be,” he said confidently.
    Kicking back toward shore, they swam widely around the docked boats and approached the rocky beach from the east side. When their feet touched bottom, Dirk had Summer wait in the water while he crept slowly to the shoreline.
    Inching his way out of the water, he crawled snakelike on his belly toward the boat, which was wedged between two rocks about twenty feet from the water. Using the boat as a shield between him and the guardhouse, he burrowed alongside the wooden skiff until he could peer over the side. A spool of line, coiled on the front bench and tied to a small bow cleat, caught his eye. Reaching over the gunwale, he unfastened the line and pulled the coil to his chest, then burrowed backward over the loose pebble beach to the boat’s stern, which faced the water. Running his hand along the top of the transom, he felt a bolt-hole for attaching an outboard motor and ran one end of the line through, tying it securely.
    Scurrying on his belly back into the water, he played out the line until he reached the end of its fifty-foot length. Summer swam over and they huddled together, hunched over in four feet of water with just their heads poking above the surface.
    “We’ll reel it in like a marlin,” Dirk whispered. “If anybody gets wise, we can duck back behind those rocks by the cavern,” he said, tilting his head toward the protruding boulders nearby. Placing Summer’s hands on the line, he leaned back in the water and gradually began applying tension to the line. Summer tightened her grip and then threw her weight onto the line as it drew taut.
    The small boat jumped easily from its perch, emitting a jarring grind as its hull scraped across its rocky berth. They quickly eased off the line and stared toward the guardhouse. Inside, the guard still had his nose stuck in the magazine, impervious to the noise made by the boat. They quietly took up the slack and continued to reel the boat toward them a foot at a time, stopping periodically to ensure they had not attracted any attention. Summer held her breath as the boat approached the water’s edge, letting out a long sigh when they tugged it fully into the water, the scraping sound at last ceasing.
    “Let’s tow her out a