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A e pinned to the breast pocket had been peering through binoculars at the flat green expanse of the Pacific He rubbed his eyes and squinted into the lenses again In the distance thin white pluainst the blue sky where it met the water He lowered the binoculars, raised an aerosol canister with a plastic trumpet attached, and pressed the button three times
Hawnkhawnkhawnk
The klaxon’s blaring squawk echoed across the water like the nal A cacophony of bells, whistles, and horns filled the air and drowned out the cry of hungry gulls Hundreds of spectators excitedly reached for their binoculars and caers shifted to one side On the Nepenthe the guests wolfed down their food and poured frolasses of bubbly They shaded their eyes and looked off in the distance, where the feathery plu into bantary swarm of bees
In a circling helicopter a thousand feet above the Nepenthe, a sturdy Italian photographer named Carlo Pozzi tapped the pilot’s shoulder and pointed to the northwest The water wasas if plowed by a huge, invisible harrow Pozzi checked his safety harness, stepped out onto a runner with one foot, and hefted a fifty-pound television ca with a practiced stance into the wind that buffeted his body, he brought the extraordinary power of his lens to bear on the advancing lines He swept the ca viewers around the world an overview of the dozen race boats cutting furrows in the sea Then he zoo the pack by a quarter of a mile
The speeding craft ski with elevated bows as if trying to escape the restraints of gravity The lead boat was painted a bold firehouse red Trailing by less than a hundred yards, the second boat sparkled like a gold nugget The boats were ned for travel over water Their flat decks connected two knife-edged cataine compartments Twin F-16–type canopies were set side-by-side two-thirds of the way back from the sharp-pointed double prows
Squeezed into the red boat’s right-hand canopy, his sun-bronzed face fixed in a ht-ton craft slaain Unlike a land vehicle, the boat had no shock absorbers to cushion the jarring ih the one-piece Kevlar and carbon cos and rattled his teeth Despite his broad shoulders, his muscular biceps, and the five-point harness system that strapped his two-hundred-pound fra dribbled down the court by Michael Jordan Every ounce of strength in his muscular six-foot-one body was needed to keep a steady hand on the triine pedal controlling the pressure in theover the water
José “Joe” Zavala sat hunched over the steering wheel in the left canopy His gloved hands tightly gripped the small black wheel that see the boat pointed in the right direction He felt as if he were airie dark brown eyes had lost their usual soulful look as they strained intently through the tinted Plexiglas visor to read the sea conditions for changes in wind or wave height The up-and-down auged the boat’s behavior, quite literally, by the seat of his pants, Zavala felt the waves and troughs through his steering wheel
Austin barked into the intercom mike that connected the canopies “What’s our speed?”
Zavala glanced at the digital speed gauge “One twenty-two” His eyes went to the GPS position and coht on course”
Austin checked his watch and looked down at the chart fastened to his right thigh The one-hundred-sixty-o, made two sharp turns around Santa Catalina Island, and ca thousands of spectators along the beaches a view of the dra up any h the spray-splashed canopy and saw a vertical line off to the right, then another Sailboat masts! The spectator fleet flanked a wide swath of open water Once past the spectators, the racers would pick up the Coast Guard cutter near the turn buoy and head into the last lap He snapped a quick glance over his right shoulder and caught the reflection of the sun off gold
“Kicking it up to one-thirty,” Austin said
The hard shocks coht was growing Zavala had observed white flecks in the water and a distinctto the seas that told him the as up
“Don’t knoe should,” Zavala yelled over the shriek of the engines “Picking up a slight chop Where’s Ali Baba?”
“Practically in our back pocket!”
“He’s crazy if he makes his play now He should just lie back and let us take the luo for the home stretch Sea and wind are too unpredictable”