Duck Parade
Silent Witness
available at amazon.com
The Past Never Dies
Peter could hear shotgun blasts as they ran towards the boats, then the answering chatter of an automatic rifle.
There was a thick, choking smoke in the air now, and the house behind them was lit by an eerie glow as flames shot above the roof.
“Hurry, hurry!” Michelle urged.
He bent to the task of pushing her wheelchair, ignoring the pain shooting through every muscle and joint in his body. Nicole moved like a zombie beside him, her eyes blank and staring, and he wondered if she’d been pushed too far, if she’d ever bounce back from this.
When they reached the dock, he lifted Michelle out of her wheelchair and carried her down the steps to a big Fiberglas boat. It was awkward getting her inside, but he could hear shouts behind them now, and this spurred him to action. He slipped the knots at the ring bolts and held the boat while Nicole got on board; then he climbed in behind the wheel and jabbed the starter button.
The engine caught, then sputtered and died, and he swore furiously as they drifted slowly away from the dock. A sudden flash of light made him glance around, and he saw that Michelle had lit a torch made of a rag tied to a stick, and was tossing it into one of the other boats. The flames seemed to die when it landed, and Peter twisted around, hitting the starter button again.
The motor caught, and in the same instant, there was a blast of light. Peter glimpsed a river of fire shooting along the dock and up towards the boathouse. He thought with horror of the nearby fuel storage tank, and he jerked open the throttle, only to have the engine die yet again.
“Hurry!” shouted Michelle. “Willy’s coming after us!”
Peter risked a glance and saw Willy ducking and weaving as he ran towards the boathouse. Behind him, two men emerged from around the side of the burning house—Leon, and a bigger man Peter didn’t recognize.
Then the fuel tank in one of the outboards exploded, and Peter was momentarily blinded by the glare. He hit the starter button again, and there was a thin, whining noise, growing weaker as the battery ran down. “Come on! Come on!” he shouted, and then the motor caught again, and sputtered asthmatically.
There was a burst of fire and Peter ducked, but he could hear the bullets splintering the wooden planking of the boathouse, and he realized that Leon and his companion were shooting at Willy. He jerked the throttle wide open, but there was only a sluggish response from the motor, which seemed on the point of stalling.
He spun the wheel around, and the boat moved ever so slowly away from the dock, an easy target highlighted by the mass of flames along the shore. Willy’s cry of rage split the air like the crack of a whip, and Peter couldn’t help stealing another glance as they crawled, tortoiselike, into the current.
Willy was very close to the burning boathouse, hunched over, low to the ground, holding an assault rifle with both hands. The two men behind him fired again, and he wheeled around and cut them both down with a short burst as easily as if he were potting ducks in a pond. Then he turned back, and Peter saw that he was taking aim at the boat.
He hunched low over the wheel and shouted to Nicole to get down, making as small a target as he could, but they were still much too close to the dock.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Michelle leaning out over the gunwale, taking aim with a heavy Luger…
