To make matters worse, one of the fishermen mistakenly thought Bolan was merely out joy-riding with Cho and cast his line the Executioner’s way. When the man’s fishing lure glanced off the front end of the Jet Ski and nearly snagged on Bolan’s shirt, he decided to give the men a wide berth. He steered toward the middle of the river and maneuvered his way around a tour boat on its way back from Lake Havasu, then finally slowed and brought the watercraft to a halt near one of the thick pylons supporting a footbridge spanning the river. He let the engine idle and reached out for the pylon, then pulled himself around so that the structure would protect him from gunfire. Positioned, he waited. The next move would be up to the Korean.
CHO WAS WAITING, too.
Lurking in the tall reeds, he’d shifted his personal watercraft into neutral but was ready at a moment’s notice to put the craft in gear. His plan was to wait until his adversary came into view, then speed forward and ram his pursuer, hopefully with enough force to knock him off the watercraft and buy enough time to head back out onto the river and make another run for it. But there was a problem with the idle on his own watercraft, and he had to continually rev the engine to keep it from dying. Each time he opened up the throttle, the engine seemed to whine even louder. Cho cursed under his breath. This was no way to hide.
Finally the engine sputtered and fell silent. He tried a few times to start it up again, without success. Furious, he was about to abandon the Jet Ski and take to the water when he heard the sound of another motor. It wasn’t the trilling sound of a Jet Ski, however, but rather the lower drone of an outboard motor. Cho realized the fishermen he’d disrupted earlier were making their way through the reeds toward him.
“We know you’re in here somewhere, you son of a bitch!” one of the men aboard the boat shouted.
The other fisherman was equally worked up and yelled, “It’s high time you punks learned better than to go hotdogging around our fishing holes all the friggin’ time!”
Cho stayed as still as he could, but he had to shift his weight back and forth to keep the Jet Ski upright in the water. Peering through the reeds, he finally spotted the prow of the boat headed his way. As it puttered into view, the Korean caught a glimpse of his new pursuers. The men were even older than he’d first thought—easily in their seventies—and each wore a bright orange foam life jacket and wide-brimmed hat. One sat at the rear of the boat, manning the outboard motor. The other man had moved to the front and set aside his fishing pole in favor of a fiberglass oar, which he now held aloft as if it were a baseball bat.
Cho didn’t know what had happened to the man who’d been pursuing him on the other Jet Ski, but for the moment it didn’t matter. For now, his most pressing concern was dealing with the pair of geriatric vigilantes. He sized them up quickly and figured he could take them both on without too much trouble. The trick was to do it without attracting any more attention than necessary.
Shifting his weight, the Korean leaned the Jet Ski into the patch of reeds to his immediate left. At the same time, he slowly swung his left leg around so that he was sitting sidesaddle on the Jet Ski. Then he twisted his upper torso and draped his arms over the handlebars and went limp, craning his head so that if he opened his eyes slightly he would still be able to see the approaching boat. Hopefully, to the old men it would look as if he’d rammed into the reeds and knocked himself out.
The ploy worked.
“Check it out, Virgil,” the man with the oar quipped as the boat came closer. “Looks like Mr. Hotshot bit off more than he can chew.”
“Serves him right,” the other man said, easing up on the throttle as the boat pulled up beside the Jet Ski. “And, hell, look at him, Johnny! Son of a bitch was out racing around in his damn skivvies.”
“What do we do now?” the first man said, lowering his oar. “Not like I’m gonna wallop him when he’s already out cold.”
“Let me see if I can raise the sheriff on the CB,” Virgil said. He leaned forward and reached for citizen’s band radio lying in the bottom of the boat next to the men’s tackle box. “Let him throw the guy in the hoosegow for a couple days and see if that’ll teach him.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Johnny set down his oar and was leaning over to grab Cho when the Korean sprang to life. He caught the old man off guard and drilled him squarely in the forehead with a head butt, knocking him unconscious. When the Jet Ski began to slide out from under him, Cho kicked off the footrest and leaped past Johnny into the boat. In the rear of the boat, Virgil, taken aback by the sudden turn of events, dropped the CB microphone and gaped at Cho. By the time he recovered his wits and reached into the tackle box for a scaling knife, the Korean had already caught up with him. The boat rocked beneath them as they struggled.