The Raft (23 page)

“If they want to shoot me, Rachael, they'll
shoot me. They can find an excuse later.”

“They don't
want
to shoot you, Maggie.
I think the Kid might even have a passing respect for you, but they
will
shoot if they see that gun. Give it to me,” Rachael
demanded.

In frustration, Maggie dug into the back of
her belt. She came back with the small polymer revolver, tucked
away in a nylon holster. She handed it over to Rachael.

“There,” Maggie said with unhidden
disgust.

“Is it loaded?”

The patronizing look Maggie gave her was
answer enough.

Rachael pulled herself wearily up off the
cockpit bench that served as her perch. She opened its seat,
stowing the handgun away in the compartment next to the electric
outboard, then closed the lid again, dropping heavily back down
onto its cushion.

“Happy?” Maggie tried to grin.

“Yes,” Rachael said without irony.

Maggie returned her attention to the water.
The Raft craft were growing thicker. The closer to the blockade the
Raft came, the harder the party seemed to be raging. Alcohol and
guns, Rachael mused, and the Raft and the cops... it would only
take one spark...

Chapter 26

The
Kalakala
was at the very zenith of
the Raft's thrust forward, leading the charge towards the San Juans
and the Freaky Kon-Tiki Races that awaited there. Gandalf may have
opposed the idea of running the blockade, but he was far too shrewd
a politician not to be seen at the forefront of whatever was
happening aboard the Raft.

That meant the
Kalakala
was at the
front of the queue of craft that hurtled towards the awaiting
blockade and first to cut its engine – its giant, Busch-Sulzer
three-thousand horsepower diesel, converted to bio-fuels – as the
fog broke and the sight of the Coast Guard ships appeared before
them.

A line of craft spanned the Puget Sound,
stretching from Point No Point in the west to Cultus Bay in the
east. It was a thin chain of perhaps a dozen vessels spaced a few
hundred yards apart. There was room enough between the craft for
the whole Armada to pass should anyone be determined enough to do
so, but the glistening sight of machine gun barrels and automatic
grenade launchers dotting the decks of the blockading ship caused
the Raft pilots to heave to, faltering in their charge forward.
Before them was the Coast Guard's line of battle, a bright slash of
red and white spanning across the Sound.

The Coast Guard's fleet consisted mostly of
Motor Lifeboats and small Island Cutters, but dominating it was the
shadow of the four-hundred-foot long USCGC
Joshua James.
It
sat center stage in the blockade, oriented with its bow to the
west. Its Bofers 57mm gun was idly turned southerly, covering the
fast approaching Raft Armada as the tiny boats popped one by one
out of the fog.

As sails were quickly collected and electric
onboard motors killed, the Armada devolved into a muddled cluster
of milling ships, circling and adrift, its forward momentum
lost.

Only Maggie kept her sails full, closing
rapidly on the stern of the
Kalakala
. Only when she was
twenty yards out did she hand off the helm to Rachael and quickly
began to reef her sails, furling the cloth and robbing the
Soft
Cell
of its heady forward thrust.

Kicking in the electric motor, Maggie brought
her vessel in, touching up to the stern of the
Kalakala
with
the
Soft Cell's
starboard side. Quickly, she tossed over
lines and leapt to the car deck, securing the
Soft Cell
to
the ferry.

The
Kalakala
was listing, adrift. What
forward momentum it still maintained was slowly drifting it into
range of the Coast Guard's guns.

For their part, the Coast Guard vessels were
sitting motionless, waiting. As more Raft vessels came out of the
fog, they shunted into the becalmed craft already listing before
the blockade. There were many angry cries and muted thuds of wood
hitting fiberglass. Early partiers spilled open drinks as ships
came suddenly to a halt.

The sight of the Coast Guard's guns had
dampened everyone's mood.

Maggie helped Rachael across the gap, down
onto the old ferry's car deck. With bare feet firmly on the iron,
Rachael followed Maggie as she sprinted for the aft stairs that
lead up to the passenger deck.

#

For many years, Gandalf and Tiger Print had
miraculously undertaken the work of restoring the
MV
Kalakaka
. Originally put into service on the Puget Sound in
1935, it sported a unique, futuristic, Art Deco style that made it
an instant international sensation. Sleek and chromed, the Puget
Sound's “flying bird” ran the ferry route between downtown Seattle
and Bremerton until 1967 when the slim waist of its car deck and
its small loading doors made the
Kalakala
impractical for
use as a modern car carrier.

The vessel was eventually sold to an Alaskan
fishing company where it became a floating cannery. A role it
continued in for twenty more years, even after ceasing to function
as a boat at all. Run aground in Kodiak, Alaska, the
Kalakala
continued on in its role as a fish cannery until a
succession of operators filed for bankruptcy and left her to rust,
becalmed on the shore, a forgotten victim of the harsh Alaskan
winters.

Then, in the year 1984, the rusting hulk of
the
Kalakala
was again rediscovered by the world. A sculptor
visiting from Seattle stumbled across the icon while on a fish
trip. He resolved to rescue the old vessel and restore it, falling
in love with its abused but still sleek Art Deco lines.

But it would take almost fifteen years for
the sculptor to realize his dream and remove the
Kalakala
from the sands of its Alaskan beach. Re-floated, she was towed back
to the waters of the Puget Sound. There, the work of restoring the
old ferry proved elusive. For decades, well-meaning but poorly
funded non-profits attempted to restore her, but failed. With
various bureaucrat and financial hurdles thrown in her way, the
Kalakala
rusted to little more than a carcass. Bounced from
mooring to mooring, she lived out an itinerant life in various
ports up and down the Puget Sound. Always one philanthropist's
dream away from restoration, the ferry never found the resources
necessary to kick-start its rebirth. For forty years, again, the
craft was almost forgotten.

Until the birth of the Raft.

Richard Browne had been one of the Raft's
earliest advocates. A self-made billionaire, he'd begun the tax
resistance movement that eventually morphed into the Raft. He
wasn't one of the first to flee from shore, but he was certainly
the first to do so in style. Richard, after changing his name to
Gandalf, purchased the derelict
Kalakala
from a trust for
little more than the back moorage owed to the Port of Tacoma.

He began a meticulous, luxurious restoration,
pouring in millions, returning the ferry to its interwar grandeur,
and reconfiguring sections of its decks for use as a residence.

He spared no expense, for he knew any money
he didn't take with him to the Raft would be seized to pay his tax
debts. The
Kalakala
became the beneficiary of his billions,
the store of Gandalf's wealth aboard the Raft. What money he did
not spend of the ferry, rumor had it, he converted to gold and
stowed away in bowel of the craft – a secret treasure room aboard
the ship.

With this wealth he backed his Exchange, the
online community from which the Raft eventually drew its default
currency.

#

Befitting their great expense, the
Kalakala
decks were a masterpiece of Art Deco styling. The
restoration of the passenger deck up to which Maggie and Rachael
sprinted had returned it very much to its former glory. The red
velvet seats, the intricacy of the metalwork on the grand
staircase, the gold leaf all spoke of a bygone era of panache and
luxury.

Maggie and Rachael, however, had no time to
savor their surroundings. Sprinting for the grand staircase, they
took the steps two at a time.

The stairs brought them out onto the ferry's
rear open air deck. Through a pair of double doors, sporting a pair
of the ferry's signature modernist portholes, Maggie and Rachael
stumbled into the
Kalakala
's Horseshoe Café. The ferry's old
lunch counter was now converted for use as Gandalf and Tiger
Print's living quarters.

Tiger Print looked up surprised from a seat
at the room's titular-shaped counter. “Upstairs,” was all she
said.

Through another set of doors, taking a
narrow, steel-lined flight of steps, Maggie and Rachael emerged on
a flying bridge. The door to the wheelhouse was open and Maggie
jogged quickly up to it. At the wheel, looking out at the
commanding view of the Coast Guard blockade, Gandalf stood.

“They really mean it,” he said. “They really
mean to stop us.” Gandalf turned and saw Rachael standing at
Maggie's arm. “You found her. Good.”

“We've got a small window to negotiate a
peace,” Maggie said, breathing heavily from the jog up three decks.
“But I'll need your help. Orac's Armada seems to have lost steam,
but it won't be long before someone tries to run that
blockade.”

“I didn't think they'd really do it,” Gandalf
said, looking back out at the foggy outline of the large Coast
Guard cutter. “But it must have taken all of yesterday to gather
such a fleet. All that nonsense with the FBI agents, the warrants,
that was just to distract us. This had been their plan all along:
cut the Sound in half, keep the Raft from the Kon-Tikis. Do they
think this will find them their murderer?”

“No, they're not...” Maggie let it go.

“Perhaps Orac is right, perhaps non-violent
resistance...”

“It won't be non-violent for long, Gandalf,
you know that. If the Coast Guard opens fire on a blockade runner.
The Rafter's will shoot back.”

“And you think we can negotiate with them?”
Gandalf turned back to Maggie.

“I'm just hoping to confuse them,” Maggie
admitted. “Promise them something, anything. They think you speak
for the Raft, Gandalf, that you're our leader. They can only
understand the Raft in those terms. We can use that.”

“I can't negotiate on behalf of the Raft,”
Gandalf hedged.

“You don't have to. Lie, Gandalf. Lie.
Promise them anything. Tell them what they want to hear. If we can
get the Raft past this blockade, save the Freaky Kon-Tikis, then
later maybe we can negotiate something substantive. But this
gunboat diplomacy...”

Gandalf looked pale. He stepped away from the
helm and pulled himself up to his full height. “Okay, what do we
do?”

“We sail over there and tell them we've found
Meerkat's murderer,” Maggie answered.

“You have?”

“No, but it'll get us aboard. Then we try to
hammer out some way to get the Raft past that blockade. That's
where you come in. And Rachael will witness it all, make sure they
realize that everything that happens here today is on the
record.”

“That's it? That's all you want?” Gandalf
smirked. “The impossible?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No.”

“Then stop bellyaching,” Maggie commanded.
“Come on.”

Chapter 27

The
Soft Cell
bobbed, tied up against
the hull of the
Joshua James
. The great cutter dwarfed
Maggie's tiny, fragile vessel, looming over it in the drizzly
morning air. A rope ladder came spiraling down from the deck above,
clattering down onto the bow of Maggie's craft. A shadowy figure
moved above in the haze.

“No one has shot at us yet,” Maggie said as
she tested the strength of the lowered ladder. “I take that as a
very good omen.” It had been a hair-raising feat, sailing under
electric power the thousand yards between the
Kalakala
and
Coast Guard blockade. Out in the open water, there was nothing
protecting the tiny
Soft Cell
from the itchy trigger fingers
of a hundred young, inexperienced seamen.

They'd pulled in alongside the
four-hundred-foot cutter, however, without incident. The Coast
Guard must have seen that they constituted no serious threat,
Maggie mused. But she feared they'd used up a good measure of their
luck in the process. And they had so many more impossible feats
stretching out before them, feats that would require just as much,
if not more good luck.

Maggie crossed her fingers and crossed her
toes. Every little bit helped, she told herself.

Rachael was sick again at the grab
railing.

So much for a winning streak, Maggie
shrugged. It'd been a bumpy five minutes navigating in close to the
giant craft. The waters were choppy and the angle had to be just
right or the
Soft Cell
could have suddenly been thrown up
against the mass of the
James
and smashed to splinters. The
maneuvering had sent Rachael to the grab rail, doubled over,
coughing with the dry heaves.

“Why don't you wait here until Gandalf and I
call for you,” Maggie suggested, pulling herself up onto the rungs
of the rope ladder.

“No, no, I'll be okay,” Rachael burped.

“No, I don't want you to puke on anyone. Not
until we've gotten at least a little acquainted. It has to be some
law of international diplomacy: don't vomit on the other party.
Just stay here until you feel better. Okay?”

Rachael waved from the grab rail. She was too
sick to really care.

Maggie began to climb. When she was halfway
up, Gandalf took hold of the ladder. There he paused, reaching into
his shorts pocket.