Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(70)

“Maybe.” Candless looked thoughtful. “People were abandoning all sorts of real estate when these maps were being made. Rising waters and famine were taking a toll. If the city was abandoned, it might have been deleted from the overlays. It didn’t matter to these people. They didn’t know we’d be sailing over it in another hundred years.”

“They missed a lot,” Nailer said. “There’s a whole city down there. All kinds of buildings and iron poking up. The depth isn’t anything like that.”

“How deep?”

“At high tide?” Nailer shrugged. “Maybe a meter or two?” He shrugged. “You can see bits of the tall ones when the water’s low. They stick up.”

Reynolds still looked skeptical, but Candless said, “It’s not a major shipping area. It would be easy to make a mistake.” He jerked his head toward Nailer. “And none of his kind would complain. Even if they did, who would listen? Half that coast has been given up as drowned wilderness. Just malaria and convicts now.”

“Chavez has the same maps,” Reynolds observed.

“That’s right.” Candless smiled, suddenly feral. “Company issue.”

“You’d have to time it.” Reynolds was thoughtful. “Tricky bit of sailing.”

“I’ll take tricky sailing over an impossible fight any day.”

Candless motioned Nailer close. “Now, tell me, boy, just how does this city of yours lie? And where are all the sharp and pointy bits?”

23

After Nailer explained the layout of the Teeth, Reynolds turned against the idea.

“This is risky. You don’t know if the boy is right about the depths. And trying to come in with the tide at night?” She shook her head.

“You have a better idea?” Candless asked mildly.

She didn’t, but she wasn’t willing to say so. They were back in the con, under the peep and whine of radar systems after Captain Candless had ordered Dauntless onto a course for Bright Sands Beach. The captain had judged the winds acceptable to use the high sails and the boom of the Buckell cannon had shaken the ship.

The cannon’s missile, trailing its gossamer tow line, arced high into the sky and then its parasail unfurled, red and gold, bright in the sky with Patel Global’s colors. Dauntless shuddered and leaped onto her hydrofoils, rising above the waves. The ship’s main sails rippled and furled, and suddenly Nailer felt wind on his face. He hadn’t notice it before, but now, suddenly the wind was strong.

“The wind’s slower down here than up there,” the captain explained. “Before, we were going with the wind, so you didn’t feel the breeze so much. Now we’re with those winds up there.”

The ocean rushed beneath their hull. When Nailer looked down into the glitter refraction of the waves it seemed that all the light and shimmer of the water had merged, a blur of motion too fast to understand.

“Fifty-two knots,” the captain said with satisfaction.

Behind them, Pole Star fired its own high sails. The boom resounded across the water.

“If we’re lucky,” Candless said, as they watched the missile rise, “she’ll tangle and we’ll get the jump on them. Damn ticklish to catch a wind. Once you’re up, it’s fine, but damn ticklish to start.”

But Pole Star’s sails caught. Through the long glass of Dauntless’s nav system they watched as the ship heaved itself up onto its own hydrofoils, its feral bulk skimming above the water.

“Why don’t they just shoot down our sails?” Nailer asked.

“They may. Once they’re within a mile, they can torch the parasail with a chemical round.”

“But they won’t light us up the same way? Sink us?”

The captain exchanged glances with Reynolds. “Chavez is greedy. If she can take us as a prize, she’ll call us pirate. If she wrecks us, tangles us, and sinks us, she doesn’t get the money.”

The two ships sliced across the ocean. Sometimes it seemed as if Dauntless had gained a little ground, but when Nailer looked again, always the pale ship on the horizon had grown. He shivered at the sight of the other clipper, hunting them like a shark.

The captain pointed again at the map. “If Nailer’s right, we can slip these Teeth here, and it will even look as if we’re intending to hide.”

“If he’s right,” Reynolds emphasized.

“I am,” Nailer insisted. “I know that water.”

“Ever sailed it?”

Nailer hesitated. He wanted to tell them that he had. That he knew the waves. That he knew he was right.

“No,” he admitted. “But I know the Teeth. I’ve seen them at low tide.” He pointed at the numbers on the map. “If your charts are right about the old depths, at high tide, you can run straight across. Right here.” He pointed to the edge of the island. “Between the island and the Teeth, there’s a gap.”

“It’s an invitation for a sinking,” Reynolds said. “High tide won’t be until dark, so you won’t have much for landmarks, and GPS margin of error might not tell us we’re wrong until we’re dead on some old I-beam.”

“I know where it is,” Nailer said sullenly. “I know the gap.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “In the dark? With only moonlight? With one chance to get it right?”