"Can you give me a hand? Catch the line and tie her up, and I'll switch off."

"I don't think so. I'll be needing that engine to drop you into the Sound," the man in the hood said.

His hand came out of his right pocket holding a Beretta, and Blake, his senses sharpened by years of hard living, was already hurling himself over the rail, aware of the muffled sound of the silenced weapon fired twice and a burning sensation in his right shoulder, and then he was diving down into twenty feet of murky water.

He swam under the boat, his back scraping the keel, and surfaced on the other side, as she drifted, the engine still throbbing. He saw the man at the stern, leaning over the rail and emptying the Beretta into the water, then ejecting the magazine and taking another from his pocket.

Blake heaved himself over and scrambled into the wheelhouse. There was a flap under the instrument panel and it opened at his touch. Held by two clips inside was a short-barreled Smith amp; Wesson.38, and he was holding it as he turned.

The man in the hood was frantically shoving the magazine up the butt of the Beretta. Blake said, "Don't be stupid. It's over."

Not that it did any good. "Fug you!" the man said, and his hand came up, and Blake shot him between the eyes, knocking him back into the water.

It was very quiet, out of season, nobody around. Even the little cafe on the pier was closed, so he did the only thing he could, he switched off the engine, went along the deck, and managed to loop a line to one of the pier rings, then went below.

His shoulder was hurting now, hurting bad. He sat down in the kitchen area and scrambled out his special mobile and called in. The familiar voice answered, the President's favorite Secret Service man.

"Clancy Smith."

"It's Blake, Clancy. I just came in to the pier on the Lively Jane, and a guy was waiting with a Beretta."