by Dave Barry
“Just a few more . . . Oh my God,” said Mara, reaching the top, seeing Kaz, the gun.
“What?” said Arnie, right behind her, then, “Oh.”
“What?” said Phil. “Is it more stairs? Because if it’s more stairs, I’m . . . oh.”
The three of them were stopped on the stairs, looking up at Kaz.
“Get over there with them,” Kaz said.
“You’re the guy from the back,” said Arnie. “With the shooting.”
“Shut up, Pop,” said Kaz.
“I ain’t your pop,” said Arnie.
“Pop,” said Kaz, “I will blow your fucking head off if you don’t shut the fuck up and get the fuck over there right now.”
Arnie started to say something, but Mara put her hand on his arm and pulled him over with her to the helm, Phil following.
The unexpected-asshole count had now climbed to seven. Kaz glanced at his watch; Tark was expecting him back soon. Where was Holman?
Kaz decided, Holman or not, he’d stick to the plan.
“Over there,” he said, gesturing with his gun at the eight captives, waving them toward the wall next to the stairwell. As they crowded over, Kaz, keeping an eye on them, moved to the helm. He glanced down at it, locating the communications console, then up at his captives again. The only one he figured could give him any trouble was the captain, who was watching him impassively. The three younger guys looked pretty scared. Kaz wasn’t worried about the two old guys, or the two women. Maybe this would work out OK. After all, the point of the plan was to make it look like Bobby Kemp’s operation; this way, Kaz figured, there’d be more witnesses to spread the word.
“Anybody moves,” he said, looking right at Eddie, “I blow everybody’s fucking head off. You understand, Captain?”
Eddie nodded.
“That’s good,” said Kaz. “Bobby Kemp told me you’d be a good boy, wouldn’t give me no trouble.”
Eddie frowned.
“Yeah,” said Kaz. “Pretty fucking funny, huh? A guy sets up his own ship?”
Satisfied that he’d handled that cleverly, Kaz looked down again at the communications console, a little longer this time, locating the main and backup radios. He looked up again at his captives, then quickly turned and fired a shot—pop—into the main radio.
“Oh my God,” said Mara.
Kaz looked up again. None of the hostages had moved. Kaz turned away again, located the backup radio, and fired another shot. Then he turned back toward his captives.
Before he got his body around, he realized that he was looking directly into the barrel of a pistol, not three feet from his face.
“Put down the gun,” said Fay.
AT T HE STERN, TARK AND REBAR WERE HALFWAY done, having lugged ten of the heavy cash-filled duffel bags to the Zodiac and stowed them, which took time because Tark wanted to make sure each one was securely tied in. Tark was looking at his watch every thirty seconds now, expecting at any moment to feel the Extravaganza start moving. It was taking a little longer than he’d expected, but he wasn’t worried. He had a great plan, a perfect plan, and everybody who could possibly have screwed it up was dead.
THE INSTANT THE LINES WERE CAST OFF, STU Carbonecca’s comically overpowered Cigarette boat roared away from the dock next to the Chum Bucket, carrying Stu, Lou Tarant, and six wet, unhappy professional thugs packing enough firepower to successfully invade a Third World nation (or France). Stu was at the helm, with Lou standing right next to him, screaming in his ear to go faster, even though Stu could barely control the boat as it was, what with the bay so rough. Stu had never seen Lou this angry. When Stu had started to suggest that maybe they should unload the boat before they went out, Lou had nearly punched him. So now he was doing whatever Lou wanted. If Lou wanted him to make the boat go faster, OK, he’d make it go faster. Because Stu knew you did not mess with Lou when he was angry. He almost felt sorry for the poor bastards out on the ship.
“OHMYGOD,” SAID CONNIE THE GRIEVING DIVORCÉE. “Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes yesyesyesyes YESSSS. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. OH . . . MY . . . GOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOD.”
“AAAAUNHHHHHHHHHHH,” responded Jock, and he meant it. He could hardly believe this was happening to him for the third time in less than an hour. A personal best.
They were on the floor behind the Extravaganza galley’s stainless-steel counter. They’d considered using the counter—which was spotlessly clean, as was the rest of the galley, since Emeril never cooked there—but they’d have been too visible if somebody came in. So they’d chosen the floor, which Jock had gallantly covered with some white buffet-table cloths. It was romantically dark, as they’d turned off the lights, with the only illumination coming from the crack under the door.
Jock lay on his back, Connie’s head resting on his chest, the two of them happy and drained and naked as jaybirds. For a minute, neither moved, except to breathe, Connie sounding like she was purring. Then Jock began to stir. He was not good with time, but it seemed to him that it now had been a long time since the band’s break had started. He was just about to tell Connie that he needed to get dressed, when the galley door banged open, hard. Jock and Connie, startled, gripped each other, listening. They first assumed that it was Emeril, but whoever it was, by the sound of it, didn’t know where the light was. They heard some fumbling around, the clattering of kitchen implements and bowls falling to the floor. And then footsteps, coming around the counter.
And then a smell. It was a smell that Jock recognized immediately, and it struck fear into his heart.
Tina.
Fifteen
FOR AN INSTANT, LOOKING INTO THE PISTOL barrel, Kaz thought about it.
Fay saw him thinking about it.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I will pull this trigger, and the bullet will go through your left eyeball. Put the gun on the floor.”
Kaz put the gun on the floor.
“Now go to the wall, spread your legs, and lean over,” said Fay. “You know how.”
Kaz leaned against the wall. Fay, keeping her gun on him, slid his gun away from him with her foot.
“Everybody OK back there?” Fay asked, glancing back at the rest of her group, their faces showing various degrees of incomprehension. Wally was the first to find words for expressing it.
“You have a gun,” he said.
“Yes,” said Fay. “Captain, we . . .”
“Oh my God, you have a gun,” said Mara.
“Yes. Now we need . . .”
“How come you have a gun?” said Wally.
“I’m a cop,” said Fay.
“What?” said Wally.
“Oh my God, you’re a cop?” said Mara.
“She’s a cop,” said Johnny.
“I heard her,” said Ted.
“A nice, quiet evening, you said,” said Phil.
“Shut up,” said Arnie.
“It smells like puke in here,” said Johnny.
“What kind of cop?” said Eddie.
“CGIS,” said Fay. “You familiar with that?”
“More than I’d like,” said Eddie.
“What is it?” said Wally.
“Coast Guard,” said Eddie.
“You’re the Coast Guard?” said Wally. “But you’re, I mean, you’re, you’re . . .”
“You’re wearing a miniskirt,” said Johnny.
“It’s long enough to hide a holster,” said Fay. “Listen, I would love to chat more with you boys about my career in law enforcement, but right now we have some guys back there with machine guns to worry about, OK? Captain, we need to contact Miami right now.”
“OK,” said Eddie, “but it has to be by cell phone. He shot up both my radios.”
“My cell phone’s not working,” said Fay. “Anybody else got one?”
Everybody had one but Arnie and Phil. Everyone checked. Everyone reported: NO SERVICE.
“Damn,” said Fay. “Captain, are there any other radios on the ship?”
Eddie thought for a se
cond.
“Not on the ship, no,” he said. “But . . .” he stopped.
“But what?” said Fay.
Eddie thought about it, decided he had no choice.
“At the stern, there’s a fishing boat,” he said. “It’s got a radio.”
“That’s right,” said Fay, looking at Eddie hard now, thinking about it, how he’d have to know there was a fishing boat back there, because he was the one who’d stopped the ship out here.
“That’s right,” she repeated. “OK, I need to get on that boat.”
“The guys with guns’re back there,” said Ted.
“And the shell,” said Johnny.
“You saw that, too?” said Phil.
Fay was thinking about it, about the radio on the boat, about the guys with the guns.
“OK listen,” she said. “Here’s what we do.”
“What you do, lady,” said Holman, from the stairwell, “is you put down the gun.”
“About fucking time you got here,” said Kaz.
NOW TARK WAS STARTING TO WORRY. HE AND Rebar had secured most of the cash on the Zodiac—only two more bags to go—and the Extravaganza hadn’t started moving yet. What the hell were Kaz and Holman doing up there? They were supposed to be done and back down by now. That was the plan. They were supposed to be here, so Tark could kill them, as well as Rebar, and then get out of here, leaving nobody alive who knew anything. What was keeping them?
This is why it’s better to work alone, Tark thought. It’s hard to find people you can trust.
“TINA, PLEASE,” JOCK SAID. “PUT DOWN THE knife.”
It was a major knife. Tina had found it when she was looking for the galley lights. She was waving it now in the general direction of Jock’s genitals. She was an imposing sight: a very tall, very blonde, very angry, very farty woman waving a very big and sharp-looking blade. Jock was scuttling backward on his butt, with Connie, the grieving divorcée scuttling backward behind him, both of them still buck naked.
“HELP!” Connie shrieked. “SHE HAS A KNIFE SOMEBODY OUT THERE HELP US PLEASE!”
Nobody heard her but Emeril, who was not inclined to get involved. It had been Emeril who, in what was for him a rare moment of human interaction, had pointed to the galley door when Tina, on her break, had come looking for Jock. Emeril was reclusive, but he was also, like so many men, a big fan of tits.
“Tina, just put the knife down,” Jock said. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand?” Tina said. “You’re naked, she’s naked, you’re both on the floor, and I DON’T UNDERSTAND?”
The knife flashed groinward then, and Jock, displaying the reflexes that made him such an excellent drummer, was on his feet, over the counter, and out the door, leaving behind Tina, and Connie, and his clothes.
STU CARBONECCA’S BOAT ROCKETED OUT THE end of Government Cut, into open ocean, now getting airborne off some of the waves, the engines over-revving wildly when the props came out of the water. Each time the boat slammed back down, there was a chorus of FUCKs shouted simultaneously into the howling wind and rain by the extremely uncomfortable, and now somewhat terrified, cadre of professional thugs huddled in the cockpit.
And still Lou Tarant was not satisfied.
“FASTER,” he shouted into Stu’s ear.
“BUT LOU WE’RE ALREADY . . .”
“I SAID FASTER GODDAMMIT.”
So Stu, a man between a very big rock and a very hard place, shoved the throttles forward yet another notch.
Sixteen
“WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU SO LONG?” SAID Kaz, picking up his TEC-9 and Fay’s pistol, putting the pistol in his pocket.
“The door shut on me,” said Holman. “It was locked from the inside, so I hadda go way the hell to the other end of the ship to get back inside. What’re all these people doing here?”
“I don’t know,” said Kaz. “This one says she’s Coast Guard.”
Holman looked at Fay. “I like the new uniforms,” he said.
“Never mind that,” said Kaz. “We gotta get going. I did the radios. You do the other thing.”
“What about them?”
“I got a plan for them,” said Kaz, who’d been doing some quick thinking. “Hurry up.”
Holman went to the helm and started working on the autopilot. Kaz made a little speech to Eddie, Fay, Wally, Johnny, Ted, Mara, Arnie, and Phil.
“OK,” he began. “I should shoot alla you.”
“Oh my God,” said Mara.
“But I won’t,” continued Kaz, “because this is Bobby Kemp’s operation, and he don’t want a lot of dead people. And we work for Bobby Kemp, so we do what Bobby Kemp says.”
Kaz wondered if he was laying the Bobby Kemp thing on a little thick, but he figured better safe than sorry. There was a chance the captain would be dead soon, and he wanted to make sure the rest of these assholes remembered Kemp’s name.
“Now,” he said, “we’re gonna leave you here. You want to not get shot, you stay here, understand? We’re gonna have a guy with a gun right outside the door downstairs, and if anybody comes out that door, he blows your fucking head off, everybody got that?”
“Done,” said Holman. Everybody felt it. The ship was starting to move.
“OK,” said Kaz. “Captain, I need you to step over there.”
Eddie stepped away from the group.
“Good,” said Kaz, and he shot Eddie in the stomach.
Mara screamed. Phil grabbed his chest. Johnny grabbed Ted and said, “Oh man.”
“Anybody else wants to get shot,” said Kaz, backing to the stairway, “just stick your head out the door.” To Holman he said, “Let’s go.”
They clumped to the bottom of the stairs, where Kaz pulled a pocketknife from the pocket of his shorts and began sawing through the late Hank Wilde’s rope. As he worked, Holman hissed, “Why the fuck did you shoot him, man?”
“So he can’t run the boat,” said Kaz. “If we tie him up, they just untie him.”
“Oh,” said Holman. “Yeah.”
Kaz kept sawing.
“Hurry up, man,” said Holman. “I’m thinking that fucker is gonna leave us out here.”
“No, he won’t,” said Kaz. “He don’t dare leave us here,’cause we know he ran this whole operation. Plus which, even if he did try to leave, Rebar’d shoot him.”
Kaz had no way of knowing that, at that exact moment, a bullet was passing through Rebar’s brain, Rebar having served his purpose as far as Tark was concerned.
“Well, hurry up anyway,” said Holman.
“OK,” said Kaz, as the rope fell to the floor. “Let’s go.”
At the top of the stairs, the three musicians, the two old men, the barmaid, and the undercover agent heard the heavy steel door slam shut. The captain heard only the roar of his own pain.
TARK FELT THE EXTRAVAGANZA START TO MOVE as he hoisted Rebar’s body over the transom into his boat. Tark was pleased. All that remained for him to do now was kill Kaz and Holman when the big dumb morons got back with their guns safely tucked away in their gym bags, as Tark had instructed them. Depending on where they went down, he could either put them into his boat with the others, or, if that was too much work, he’d shove them into the sea. Then he’d shoot some holes in the hull of his boat, enough to swamp it. And then he’d be out of there.
A few feet away, the Zodiac, which was now the most valuable inflatable boat in the history of the world, began to bounce and judder in the big ship’s growing wake, almost as though it was eager to get going. Tark picked up his TEC-9, stepped back on the platform, where he’d be less visible, and waited for his partners.
FOR MANY PASSENGERS AND STAFF ON THE EXTRAVAGANZA, the first indication that something might be amiss was when a stark-naked man came racing down the stairs into the second-deck casino, pursued by a tall blonde woman holding a large knife. Both of them were shouting. It was hard to make out the exact words, but he appeared to be making a plea for understanding, to which she
did not appear receptive.
Everybody in the casino, except for the really intent slot-machine players, paused to watch as the man sprinted the length of the casino floor and into the stairwell leading to the first deck, with the woman maybe three steps behind, leaving, in her wake, a distinct odor.
The pause continued a few moments after they disappeared, with no sound in the casino except the relentless bingbingbing of the slots, as people pondered the meaning of what they had just witnessed. The gamblers decided that whatever the problem was, the casino staff would deal with it. The casino staff decided that, whatever the problem was, Manny Arquero, who always dealt with everything, would deal with it.
So everybody went back to gambling.
BREATHE. SWALLOW. BREATHE. SWALLOW. DON’T puke. Please don’t puke. Please.
Frank had his tightly bound wrists way down behind himself now, under his ass, but he was beginning to accept that he couldn’t get them any farther. He was too sick now, too weak. He wasn’t gonna make it. He felt it coming now, another wave of nausea, and he could tell he wasn’t going to be able to fight this one off.
I’m not gonna make it.
STU CARBONECCA’S BOAT HAD TURNED INTO A hellishly rhythmic torture machine. ROAR it would blast up the face of a big wave; then VROOM the engine would rev wildly as the boat became airborne and the props broke free of the water; then WHAM it would crash back onto the ocean, causing the thugs to shout “FUCK!”; then Lou would scream “FASTER!” at Stu; then the boat would roar up the next wave, and the cycle would repeat, ROAR VROOM WHAM “FUCK!” “FASTER!” ROAR VROOM WHAM “FUCK!” “FASTER!” ROAR VROOM WHAM “FUCK!” “FASTER!” ROAR VROOM WHAM “FUCK!” “FASTER!” and on and on and on in the unending dark and hostile sea.
At the helm, Stu, soaking wet and freezing cold, thighs screaming with pain from constant bracing, eyes half blinded from the spray, was thinking about when he was 17, and he told his mom that he was going to work with his uncle Leon in the trucking business, and his mother cried and begged him to go to St. John’s instead like his brother and become an accountant, and he told her no way he was gonna spend the rest of his life sitting behind a desk. Stu was thinking, I wish to God I was sitting behind a desk right now.