Chapter 10 - THE HARBOR OF BONES
The rain turned into a blinding wall of mist as the two patrol boats idled into the mouth of the cut.
They were thirty-foot aluminum work skiffs, fitted with dual five-hundred-horsepower outboards and twin searchlights mounted on the center consoles.
Six men in each boat.
All carrying tactical shotguns and night-vision goggles.
Standing in the bow of the lead vessel, his face wrapped in a bloody gauze bandage, was Julian Vance.
He held a megaphone to his mouth:
“CALLOWAY!”
“WE FOUND YOUR BLOOD ON THE MUD SHELF!”
“THERE IS NO WAY OUT OF THIS SWAMP!”
“SURRENDER THE GIRL AND I WILL LET YOU DIE WITH A BULLET INSTEAD OF THE WATER!”
I sat in the stern of our skiff beneath the live oak branches, holding a brass marine flare in my left hand.
Beside me, Graham sat propped against the aluminum bench.
His left arm was bound tightly to his chest with the strips of my navy dress, stopping the bleeding.
In his right hand, he held the heavy iron push-pole.
Tied to the end of the pole were four sticks of commercial dynamite, their fuses braided together and coated in engine grease to keep out the drizzle.
“Range is eighty yards, Eleanor,” Graham whispered, his eyes locked on the lead patrol boat.
“Wait until they pass the narrow channel between the two cypress knees.”
“If you throw early, the water absorbs the blast.”
“I’m not throwing it, Graham,” I said calmly.
He looked at me, his brow furrowing in alarm.
“What are you doing?”
I reached down and grabbed the starter rope of our mud motor.
“You can’t steer with one arm, Graham.”
“And I’m not letting them shoot through this hull while we wait for an explosion.”
Before he could grab my wrist, I hauled the cord backward with everything I had.
RRRR-CLACK!
The seventy-horsepower engine roared to life with a deafening, metallic bellow that echoed off the cypress trunks like thunder.
I slammed the throttle wide open.
The aluminum skiff shot out from beneath the mossy branches like a cannonball, heading straight down the center of the narrow channel directly toward the lead patrol boat.
“THERE THEY ARE!” Vance screamed through the megaphone.
“OPEN FIRE!”
Twelve shotguns opened up simultaneously.
Buckshot shredded the water ten feet in front of our bow, throwing up white plumes of freezing spray.
PING-PING-PING!
Lead pellets ricocheted off our aluminum hull, punching jagged holes through the side rails.
I kept my head down, my body pressed flat against the tiller handle, steering by the blinding glare of their searchlights.
Forty yards.
Thirty yards.
Twenty yards.
“NOW, ELEANOR!” Graham roared.
I struck the friction cap of the marine flare against the gunwale.
A blinding pillar of crimson magnesium fire hissed into the night, illuminating the entire river in a blood-red glare.
I touched the burning flare directly to the braided dynamite fuses on the end of the push-pole.
The black powder caught with a fierce, sputtering hiss of white sparks.
Graham rose to his knees in the bow.
With a terrifying, primal roar that tore through the gunfire, he hurled the heavy iron push-pole across the water with his uninjured right arm.
The iron pole flew through the rain like an ancient javelin.
The dynamite bundle struck the center console of the lead patrol boat, lodging firmly between the dual steering cables and the spare fuel reservoir.
Julian Vance’s eyes went wide behind his bloodstained bandages.
“JUMP!” Vance shrieked, throwing himself over the side into the black water.
He never cleared the gunwale.
BOOM!
The explosion tore the thirty-foot patrol boat completely in half.
A shockwave of white-hot pressure and burning diesel fuel flattened the marsh reeds for two hundred yards.
The twin five-hundred-horsepower engines detonated a millisecond later, sending a fireball eighty feet into the storm clouds.
The secondary shockwave hit the trailing patrol boat, flipping it end-over-end across the channel like a child’s toy.
Debris, burning aluminum, and shattered gear rained down into the swamp.
I cut the throttle hard to port.
Our skiff carved a tight, fifty-mile-per-hour turn through the marsh grass, sliding beneath the falling debris, and surged out into the open, deep water of Charleston Harbor.
Behind us, the mouth of the cut burned like the gates of the underworld.
The storm clouds were beginning to shred in the west.
A pale, lavender light was bleeding across the eastern horizon, illuminating the grand historic spires of the city and the long, sweeping span of the Ravenel Bridge.
I steered the boat toward the private deep-water slip beneath our estate on the Battery.
The engine puttered, running on the last fumes of its fuel tank, finally dying as our bow bumped gently against the heavy rubber bumpers of our private dock.
Silence returned.
The water lapped against the pilings with a soft, rhythmic hush.
I dropped the tiller.
My hands began to shake violently—a delayed, bone-deep reaction to six hours of blood, adrenaline, and fire.
I couldn't stand up.
My knees felt like water.
Strong, heavy arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind.
Graham pulled me back against his chest, tucking my head under his chin.
His heart was beating slow, steady, and unbroken against my back.
“We’re home, Eleanor,” he whispered into my hair.
May you like
His tears, warm and salt-sweet, fell onto my bare shoulder.
“We’re home.”
