SMACK the Safe Boat bounces airborne comes down again SMACK on another swell in the bay bounces up again comes down SMACK on another swell and SMACK bounces airborne with emergency horns police Crazy Lights exploding SMACK in a demented sequence on the roof SMACK but Officer Nestor Camacho’s fellow SMACK cops here in the cockpit the two fat SMACK americanos they love this stuff love it love driving the boat SMACK throttle wide open forty-five miles an hour against the wind SMACK bouncing bouncing its shallow aluminum hull SMACK from swell SMACK to swell SMACK to swell SMACK toward the mouth of Biscayne Bay to “see about the man on top of the mast” SMACK “up near the Rickenbacker Causeway”—
—SMACK the two americanos sat at the helm on seats with built-in shock absorbers so they could take all the SMACK bouncing while Nestor, who was twenty-five, with four years as a cop but SMACK newly promoted to Marine Patrol, an elite SMACK unit, and still on probation, was SMACK relegated to the space behind them where he SMACK had to steady himself against something called a leaning pole and SMACK use his own legs as the shock absorbers—
A leaning pole! This boat, the Safe Boat, was the opposite of streamlined. It was uuuuuuug-lyyy… a twenty-five-foot-long rubbery foam-filled pancake for a deck with an old tugboat shack stuck on top of it as a cockpit. But its two engines had 1500 horsepower, and the thing went across the water like a shot. It was unsinkable unless you took a cannon and blew twelve-inch-diameter holes, a lot of them, through the foam filling. In tests, nobody had even been able to tip one over, no matter what insane maneuver he tried. It was built for rescues. And this shack of a cockpit he and the americanos were in? It was the Ugly Betty of boatbuilding—but soundproof. Outside, at forty-five miles an hour the Safe Boat was kicking up a regular hurricane of air, water, and internal combustion… while here inside the cockpit you didn’t even have to raise your voice… to wonder what sort of nutcase you were in for up on top of a mast near the Rickenbacker Causeway.
A sergeant named McCorkle with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes was at the wheel, and his second-in-command, Officer Kite, with blondish-brown hair and blue eyes, was in the seat next to him. Both of them were real sides of beef with fat on them—and school-of-blond hair!—and blue eyes! The blond ones!—with blue eyes!—they made you think americanos in spite of yourself.
Kite was SMACK on the police radio: “Q,S,M”—Miami Police code for “Repeat”—“Negative?” SMACK “Negative? You saying nobody knows what he’s doing up there? Guy’s up on top of a” SMACK “mast and he’s yelling, and nobody knows what” SMACK “he’s yelling? Q,K,T?”—for “Over.”
Staticky crackle staticky crackle Radiocom: “Q,L,Y”—for “Roger”—“That’s all we got. Four-three’s dispatching a” SMACK “unit to the causeway. Q,K,T.”
Long stupefied SMACK silence… “Q,L,Y… Q,R,U… Q,S,L”—for “Out.”
Kite just SMACK sat there for a moment, holding the microphone in front of his face and squinting at it as if SMACK he never saw one before. “They don’t know shit, Sarge.”
“Who’s on Radiocom?”
“I don’t know. Some” SMACK “Canadian.” He paused—
Canadian?
—“I just hope it ain’t another” SMACK “illegal, Sarge. Those dumb fucks are so crazy they’ll” SMACK “kill you without even meaning to. Forget about negotiating, even if you got somebody who can” SMACK “speak the fucking language. Forget about saving their fucking lives, as far as” SMACK “that goes! Just get ready for some Ultimate Fighting under water with some” SMACK “mook who’s a mile high on adrenaline. If you wanna know what I think, that’s the nastiest” SMACK “high there is, Sarge, adrenaline. Some biker on crank—he’s nothing compared to one a these scrawny little” SMACK “mooks jacked up on adrenaline.”
Mooks?
The two americanos didn’t look at each other when they spoke. They looked straight ahead, eyes pinned on the prospect of some dumb fuck on top of a mast up by the Rickenbacker Causeway.
Out the windshield—which slanted forward instead of back—the opposite of streamlined—you could see the wind was up and the bay was rough, but otherwise it was a typical Miami day in early September… still summer… not a cloud anywhere… and Jesus, it was hot. The sun turned the whole sky into a single gigantic high-blue-domed heat lamp, blindingly bright, exploding bursts of reflection off every shiny curved surface, even the crests of the