Kurt wheeled around to port and came back. The plane was accelerating now. Kurt charged toward it, riding in its wake.
“Come on,” Kurt said, coaxing every last bit of speed out of the boat.
Skipping across the waves, he pulled out to the left, passed the plane, and then cut in front of it again.
Joe ducked and shouted a warning. The plane leapt off the water, its metal prop roaring past and the pontoon rudders clipping part of the boat as it leapfrogged them and came back down.
Kurt looked up. “Glad to see no one lost their head.”
“Let’s not try that again,” Joe said. “I have no desire to find out what a margarita feels like inside the blender.”
Kurt had actually expected the plane to turn, not leap over them. But the effort had done them some good. The plane had landed awkwardly, and the pilot had slowed it down to stabilize it. When the plane began accelerating away again, it was headed in a bad direction.
“They’re headed downwind,” Joe said. “It’ll be a lot harder for them to take off with a tailwind than heading into this breeze.”
“Harder but not impossible,” Kurt replied. He guided the speedboat with an expert touch, sweeping back in behind the plane, dropping into the trough of the wake and ramming one of the pontoons. The plane lurched and twisted as the pilot fought for control, but it was quickly back on track.
“Look out!” Joe shouted.
A spread of bullets punched a line of holes in the prow of their boat as one of the fugitives unloaded the contents of a submachine gun in their general direction. Kurt and Joe were forced to turn away, and the plane slowed and turned, pointing itself into the wind once again.
In the maintenance room, Leilani stared at the army of machines, watching in horror as they stood up and began moving forward. Three of the things attacking down below had been enough to scare her, but fifty of them was an absolute nightmare. Anger flashed through her mind, along with the distinct impression that she’d gotten more than she had bargained for.
“Do something!” she shouted to Marchetti.
“I’m trying,” Marchetti said. “Tricky little man, that Otero. If I’d have known he was this smart, I’d have paid him more.”
Leilani looked around for help. All she saw were the machines and a bank of lockers.
“What’s in the lockers?”
“Work uniforms.”
“With IDs?”
“Yes,” Marchetti said excitedly. “Exactly. Yes, go!”
Leilani raced across the floor, slid under the swinging arm of one of the robots and slammed into the lockers like a baseball player stealing home. She popped up, threw one locker door open and yanked out a work uniform. A white ID badge came with it, and she held it tight.
The approaching machines stopped and turned away from her, and then all of them zeroed in on Marchetti, who was pounding the keyboard to no avail.
“I can’t break the code!” he shouted. The machines were on him now, one of them knocked him to the ground. Another brought a powered screwdriver down toward him, the Phillips head bit spinning furiously.
Leilani ran forward, pushed through the machines, and dove on top of Marchetti. Hugging him tight, she hoped the robots would see their combined heat source as one person and read the ID tag at the same time.
The drill bit spun and whined. She gripped Marchetti and closed her eyes.
Suddenly, the noise ceased. The screwdriver wound down and retracted. The other robot released Marchetti, and the small army of machines began to move away, looking for some other victim.
She watched them go, still holding Marchetti down.
As the machines filed out of the maintenance building, she looked down at him, her eyes hard and cold. She needed him to understand something.
“You owe me,” she said.
He nodded, and she eased off him. Neither of them took their eyes off the door.
A HALF MILE from the floating island, Kurt and Joe were taking direct fire from the seaplane. It was angling around, heading back downwind and accelerating. When it surged forward, Kurt dropped in behind it once again.