Devil's Harbor

by Alex Gilly

  Finn kept welding.

  Two of the cops started moving toward the exit.

  The third one, a guy with buck teeth who made spitting sounds when he spoke, kept speaking at Finn. He was getting impatient, like he was expecting an answer.

  Finn steeled himself.

  The cop motioned to Finn to take off his mask. Finn didn’t move. Then, when the cop started raising his gun, Finn rammed the welding torch into the cop’s face. The sickening smell of burned flesh filled his nostrils and the cop’s brutalized scream echoed around the boat shed. Finn dropped the torch, grabbed the barrel of the AR-15, and kicked the screaming cop away.

  He flipped the gun around so that the business end was pointed at the two remaining cops. The one with the wheelbarrow was frozen to the spot. The one with the other AR-15 already had its stock to his shoulder. Finn dropped to a knee.

  The cop fired first but fired high—a quick burst, rat-tat-tat, the weapon spitting shells, the shells clattering to the ground, rounds ricocheting off the wall above Finn.

  Finn pulled the trigger and the cop’s chest exploded red. He immediately swung the weapon onto the third cop, who had abandoned the wheelbarrow and was scrambling for his holstered weapon. Finn looked at him along his barrel and shook his head. It should’ve been obvious to the cop that he was never going to beat Finn. What he should’ve done was drop his handgun and put up his hands. Instead, he went for his weapon. He died with a surprised look on his face.

  All three cops lay still. Finn realized he was still wearing the welder’s mask. He took it off now and looked around. His heart was racing. The oxyacetylene cylinders gave him an idea. First, he turned off the valves on both cylinders and unscrewed the regulators. Then he hauled the two tanks up the rolling steps, dumped them on their sides in the trawler’s small cabin, and opened their valves to full. Then he closed the door, sealing the cabin, and hustled out of there.

  He quickly patted down the pockets of the dead gangsters for spare clips for the two AR-15s, flung both weapons on top of the extinguishers in the wheelbarrow, took the third cop’s handgun, then pushed the wheelbarrow hard to the exit, stopping only to pull the sliding door shut behind him.

  “Fuck you, Caballeros,” he said to no one in particular. He pushed the wheelbarrow as fast as he could down the beach, past the cop car, past the shrimpers on the pier, back to the Pacific Belle. All the fishermen, he noticed, had disappeared.

  At the far end of the dock, he saw Linda walking up the gangplank, leading the little girl from the orphanage by the hand. The two of them turned and gave him astonished looks.

  That’s when he felt the heat and the force of the boatyard exploding behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Finn pushed west, away from Escondido, at top speed—fourteen knots. The Belle wasn’t comfortable with it. Her engine thumped angrily and her hull pitched and rolled at every opportunity, but Finn didn’t care. He wanted to get as far away as he could from Escondido as quickly as possible. From his position at the wheel, he glanced through the rear window every now and then at the column of black smoke rising from where the boatyard had been, keeping a watch for any craft putting to sea from the beach or the dock.

  He knew that he’d stirred up a hornet’s nest behind them, and he didn’t like what he was seeing ahead, either. The wind had picked up and veered to the southwest, blowing strong onshore and sending white horses scudding across the outer bay. It wasn’t a good sign: the wind hardly ever blew from that direction at this time of year or any other. He tried to get a weather update on the radio, but of course he was too far south to receive the NOAA’s weather bulletins, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand the Mexican equivalent even if he had known where to find it on the dial.

  One of the AR-15s was hanging by its strap from his shoulder. Linda had put the extinguishers in their appropriate cradles: two in the engine room, one in the cabin, one in the wheelhouse. Let’s hope we don’t have an actual fire aboard, thought Finn.

  He looked at Linda and the child she had brought with her, the two of them sitting on the bench by the chart table, the kid staring at Finn and Linda staring at the kid like she was the second coming. The girl was swamped in a raggedy, adult-size green sweatshirt that Linda had pulled out of somewhere. She’d also found the time to spread peanut butter and jelly on two white slices and put them on a plate in front of the kid, along with some cookies and a glass of long-life milk.

  Finn watched the kid eat. She had long black hair parted right down the middle. She was small and slender. Her large, dark eyes looked out from her copper face at Finn with such placid incuriosity that he felt abashed by his own post-firefight, adrenaline-charged twitchiness. She ate everything slowly and deliberately. He figured she was no more than nine or ten years old. He had the feeling he’d seen her somewhere before. Linda stroked her hair.

  “You know her name?” he said.

  “Navidad,” said Linda.

  “What happened to her parents?”

  “The Caballeros set up the orphanage for their enemies’ children.”

  Finn suppressed a laugh. The Knights of Christ, princes of charity.

  “Is that why you went down there this morning? To find her?”

  “The way the Aztecs sacrifice children to their gods … it’s so barbaric,” said Linda. “You can imagine what the Caballeros do with girls like her. I wanted to help her. As a kind of restitution, you know? For all the harm I’ve done trying to save Lucy.”

  No, thought Finn, I don’t know. He looked at Navidad again, thinking how familiar she seemed. Then it clicked. “That was her last night in the play,” he said.

  Linda nodded. He tried an awkward smile on the child. She stared at him impassively, chewing on her sandwich.

  “She speak English?” he said.

  Linda shook her head.

  “I gotta be straight with you, Linda. You bring some poor kid into the middle of all this … on a whim? I just don’t get it,” he said.

  “You’re not a parent. I don’t think you can get it.”

  “You’re probably right, but try me anyway.”

  Linda lit a cigarette. “Last night, when I was watching the children on the stage, I kept thinking of Lucy. Lucy might be sick, but she has me. She has a mother, a parent, and that makes her lucky, you know? Doesn’t matter if she’s sick, I’m there to look after her, me and her aunt. Both of us, we would do anything for Lucy. Rhonda doesn’t have any children of her own, so she adores her. But these children in the orphanage, they’ve got no one. Navidad’s got no one. That play last night? It may’ve been make-believe, but it broke my heart. I thought, The Caballeros will sacrifice her eventually. Not on an altar to the gods, but in some brothel on the border. I wanted to save her from that. I thought, if I can do something, I should. And then this morning, sitting on the balcony watching the kids, I saw her sitting quietly in the yard all on her own, and it hit me: I can do something. So I went down there and I bought her.”

  “You bought her?”

  “On paper, I adopted her. But that’s the lie. Money changed hands.”

  Finn took a deep breath. Then he said, “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  Linda tapped ash into her ashtray and looked at him defiantly. “Like I said, you can’t understand. You’re not a parent.”

  He ground his teeth. “I don’t need to have kids to know you’re out of your mind. We’ve got a boat full of cocaine. Gangsters are trying to kill us. The cops are after me. Your own daughter has been kidnapped, for Christ’s sake. You figure now’s a good time to adopt a kid?”

  “Lucy would understand. I mean, she will. This is what she’d want me to do. Anyway, it’s too late now. We can’t go back—you made sure of that.”

  “You should’ve told me about this. After last night.”

  “Why? You think last night meant something?”

  Finn thought it had.

  “It was make-believe, Finn. A smokescreen. I fucked yo
u to block out everything else in my life for a few hours. To forget that Cutts has threatened to kill my sick daughter. To forget the crimes I’ve committed trying to save her life.”

  She put out her cigarette and quickly lit another.

  “And if you had any balls, you’d admit you did, too. You fucked me the way you did for the same reason you drink the way you do: to blank out that shadow you carry around with you everywhere, to take a break from yourself even for just a few hours. You wore the mask. The minute we get back, we both know you’re going straight back to your wife.”

  Finn didn’t say anything to that.

  “So, what, Lucy’s got a sister now?” he said.

  “She’s always wanted one.”

  Finn tapped a cigarette out of Linda’s pack for himself. He was done talking. Woman’s fucking insane, he thought. She was right about one thing, however: there was no going back.

  * * *

  By nightfall, the weather had worsened to the point where it was no longer possible to travel at fourteen knots without risking the boat. Finn slowed down reluctantly. They lost speed but at least the ship’s motion wasn’t unbearable.

  Navidad became seasick and Linda was upset about it. What did she expect? thought Finn. It was almost certainly the first time the kid had been to sea. Linda took her below to put her to bed in one of the crew bunks.

  Finn said to Linda, “Get some sleep, too. I’ll take both shifts tonight.”

  Linda didn’t object.

  Finn sat alone, listening to the wind strengthening almost to a whistle outside. He wedged himself between the stool and the bottom of the steering column—riding a nervous sea was like driving on shot springs down a corrugated dirt track, and it was easy to get thrown.

  The worsening weather worried him. He figured that news of his blowing the boatyard narcotics operation sky-high would’ve reached the cartel bosses by now, and that worried him, too. If the Caballeros were as crazy as their reputation indicated, they’d be out looking for the Pacific Belle in go-fasts, storm or no storm. Finn leaned forward and set the Belle’s radar to sound an alarm if it picked up anything coming toward them. Then he lit one of Linda’s cigarettes and scrutinized the horizon. From the look of it, last night’s storm had been just the undercard; the main event was coming, and it was packing more punch than the Belle could take.

  He considered finding a haven and waiting out the storm. Of course, that would increase the chances of the Caballeros tracking them down (they owned this coast, and he had no doubt they had spotters all along it). Even worse, they would lose precious time and miss their rendezvous with Cutts, and then Lucy would die and it all would’ve been for nothing.

  On the other hand, if they all drowned trying to make the rendezvous, Lucy would die anyway.

  He went over to the chart table and scrutinized the Baja coast, looking for safe havens. They were about 150 miles east of Cabo. Once they got around the headland, the next bay that afforded any sort of protection was San Carlos, 190 miles north and almost a day’s sail away, by which time the storm would be well and truly upon them.

  Finn rubbed his chin and considered. Cabo was a big town—someone from the cartel was bound to spot them there. Either they put into Cabo and waited out the storm but risked another battle with the Caballeros, or they kept putting distance between the Belle and the cartel but risked being run down by the storm.

  Finn was too experienced a mariner to underestimate the storm. He remembered his father’s words about the world not caring, and he knew a storm could break the Belle to bits and send them all to the bottom of the sea. But of the two, Finn preferred the weather. At least it was indifferent to them, whereas the Caballeros wanted them dead.

  Finn set a course for San Carlos, leaned back into the chair, and listened to the distant rumble of thunder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Finn stayed at the helm throughout the night. The sea got steadily worse. At Cabo he rounded the headland and bore northwest.

  At first light on the morning of November 3, he turned on the electric kettle wedged into a corner next to the chart table, then went out onto the stern deck for some air.

  A gust ripped the door out of his hand. The moment he fixed his eyes on the colossal black clouds bearing down on them out of the southwest, he realized he’d made a big mistake. Finn had spent most of his life at sea, and this was the biggest thunderhead he’d ever seen. The cross sea had built to the point where he could no longer distinguish the usual, south-moving swell from the wind-driven, north-moving surface water.

  Navidad emerged from the cabin below. She was wearing Linda’s green sweater with the sleeves rolled up, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She looked like a gust would carry her away.

  Finn went over to her and clasped her hand to the railing. “Always hold on, you hear?” he shouted.

  Right then, lightning flashed below the cloud bank and a moment later a great crack of thunder rumbled over them. Finn pointed at the roiling sea. Then he pointed at the orange life preserver by the door to the cabin.

  “If you go into the water, I throw this to you. Understand? You hold on to it and it will save your life. Comprende?” He mimicked throwing the life preserver over the rail.

  Navidad nodded. Finn smiled. That he’d made himself understood was gratifying.

  Linda appeared from below deck. She was wearing jeans and her green slicker. She looked anxiously at the storm clouds.

  “She shouldn’t be up here,” said Finn, shouting over the howl of the wind.

  Linda nodded and grabbed Navidad by the hand. The two of them disappeared into the cabin.

  Finn made his way back into the wheelhouse, fighting the wind all the way. Inside, he heard a constant high-pitched sound, like a whistle. Thinking it was the kettle, he went over to deal with it, only to discover that it had switched itself off after reaching a boil. He looked around the wheelhouse and realized that the sound was coming from the navigation system.

  He scrambled over to the screen and saw two green dots no more than three miles away, traveling fast from the direction of Cabo, directly at the Belle. He switched off the radar alarm he’d set and thought, You have to hand it to the Caballeros: they’ve got balls.

  He took the AR-15 from the locker where he’d stowed it and stuffed the spare clips into his pockets. Then he picked up the binoculars and peered out the window on the side he expected to see the boats. For the time being, all he could see was the wind-whipped, foaming sea. The boats were low and still under the horizon, but the radar was telling him that they were traveling fast. The storm, meanwhile, was also moving up fast. Here were his choices, starkly narrowed: the Knights of Christ or the wrath of God.

  Finn pulled back on the throttle, slowing the boat. The door opened and wind punched through the cabin. Linda scrambled in and pulled the door shut behind her.

  “Why we slowing down?” she said, holding fast to the edge of the table and wiping the hair out of her eyes.

  He pointed at the radar screen. “We got company. Two of them. I want the storm to catch us first.”

  He peered through the binoculars through the salt-streaked starboard window again. He could make out the boats now—two red hulls speeding off the crests of waves, spending more time in the air than on the surface. They were no more than a mile away.

  Again he looked out the back windows—the dark, rain-filled cloud mass was maybe two miles behind them.

  “Crazy fuckers,” he said.

  * * *

  Two minutes later, the boats were within range, careening at them out of the east. He heard a faint popping sound, like corn popping in another room, and realized that they’d opened fire. The boats came flying off the crest of a wave and suddenly they were right alongside the Belle’s starboard bow, two long, sleek, fiberglass hulls. It was ludicrous to come out in a sea like this in boats as flimsy as that, thought Finn. He was sitting in forty feet of rugged steel and didn’t feel safe; what chance did they have
in hulls built to be as light as possible?

  One of the go-fasts went around the Belle’s stern, the whine of her inboards just discernible over the cry of the wind, while the other shot ahead, then looped back into the sea and bore down on her. Finn peered through the binoculars and saw a man leaning a weapon atop the go-fast’s windshield. He heard the metallic hammering of bullets ricocheting off of the Belle’s thick steel hull.

  “Get your head down,” he shouted. Linda dropped below the level of the windows. Finn stayed upright. He needed to be able to see.

  The storm was much closer, but still not close enough. He looked to his right and saw the second boat running alongside them, a few feet off their starboard side, the gunman not shooting. He was fumbling with something with both hands. Finn’s stomach lurched into his throat.

  “Grenade!” he shouted.

  He turned the wheel full-tilt to starboard, and the Belle leaned heavily into the turn. The lean gave the gunman on the first boat a line of sight onto the Belle’s deck, and bullets started hammering off the superstructure, throwing sparks. Finn ignored them and looked back at the second boat in time to see the grenade come over the rail and land on the foredeck, no more than ten feet from the wheelhouse.

  His heart in his throat, he watched it roll down the deck’s steep lean and miraculously disappear through a scupper. He didn’t see or hear an explosion, which meant it was underwater by the time it detonated, and the density of the water would’ve slowed the velocity of its shrapnel. The guy hadn’t cooked it off long enough before flinging it at them. Finn released his breath. He knew it was a lucky break.

  He kept the Belle in her tight turn. The sea was on her beam now—the worst place it could be—and the boat rolled so severely that he had to grip the wheel to stop himself from falling. Still he kept the wheel on full lock, straightening only when she had turned 180 degrees and was heading the way she had come. In other words, straight into the eye of the storm.

  The two gunboats circled the Belle, firing round after round, concentrating their fire on the wheelhouse. They got lucky with one volley and shattered one of the starboard windows, flinging glass all over the floor, the bullets ricocheting off the ceiling. Wind and rain came raging through the cabin, stinging Finn’s face. He was literally wedged into the high chair now, his legs braced against the footrest, his hands clasped to the wheel. He looked over at Linda—she was holding on to the edge of the chart table for dear life.