by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo didn’t ask what ouzo was. He’d ordered it at a Greek joint back in the States one time. One time had been enough. If retsina tasted like wine laced with turpentine, ouzo was the real thing, pure turpentine, one hundred percent proof. Or maybe paint remover. He’d never swallowed enough to make sure.
They were expecting a salvage crew working for a British arms firm to be British, of course, so they were surprised to discover that none of the other passengers they were introduced to in the ship’s mess were. Hakim had recruited six other men and two women for the soldiers of fortune to guard as they searched for the mysterious Spanish submarine. The head of the team was a German-American naval architect called Keller. One of the dames, the big blond one, was his wife, Herta, a for-real German he’d married while working in Hamburg at one of Hakim’s shipyards he probably didn’t discuss much with his card playing buddy, the Prince of Wales. Keller said he’d worked on American Holland boats, too. So he probably knew his submarines. Second in command was a Hungarian named Horgany. So he’d gotten to bring his wife along, too, and she was the little Oriental-looking brunette called Eva, damn Horgany’s hide.
None of the others had their own sex lives aboard, assuming they preferred to screw women. Fitzke was a Swiss machinist. Olsen was a Swedish gunnery expert as blond as old Herta but a lot uglier. DuVal was a snooty-looking Frenchman who winced at Gaston’s French and said he was up on internal-combustion engines. The last male member of the team, Forsythe, had a British name but was a black Jamaican who knew his way around the Caribbean, he said.
As they sorted everyone out, the scared-looking little Greek from the galley served rum or coffee, depending, to all concerned. Gaston took coffee laced with rum or, to be more accurate, rum with a little coffee in it. Captain Gringo shot him a warning look, but Gaston kept swilling it anyway. Captain Gringo didn’t care if anyone else got smashed, but he noticed that while blond Herta stuck to coffee, the Hungarian girl, Eva, took her rum neat. It didn’t seem to be affecting her. She looked sort of wild anyway, with those animated slanty eyes rolling around as she tried to follow the conversation in English. Her own English seemed a little fuzzy, judging from her weird accent.
Once they’d all been introduced, the conversation rapidly went downhill. Captain Gringo had hoped someone there could explain more about the wreck they were searching for. But nobody seemed to know much more about it than the soldiers of fortune did. So he asked Keller, “Is this trip really necessary, if nobody knows where the effing wreck is?”
Keller shot a look at the Jamaican, Forsythe, who said, “We’ll find it, Mon. We already got it narrowed down to one of the uninhabited islands. For I got friends and relations on Roatan an’ Bonacca and they’d know was they a shipwreck thereabouts. They sort of in the wreckin’ business, when the fish ain’t biting, you see.”
“All too well. But isn’t there another main island, Forsythe?”
“Sure, Utila, closer to the Honduran coast. Ain’t got no contacts there. Old Honduran government too picky about black folks lighting beacons on a stormy night. But that Spanish sailor boy wasn’t picked up near Utila. They fished him out of the water amongst the bitty uninhabited keys further out. Before he passed away he say he didn’t make it far from the place his ship run aground, see?”
Gaston stared owlishly over the rim of his cup and said, “Mais non, there are no uninhabited islands among the Bahías, mon ami.”
So the big Jamaican shrugged and said, “Shoot, Mon, I hope you don’t consider no-good Nigger-Caribs People! You gotta have people on a key for it to be inhabited, right?”
Captain Gringo said, “Whatever Black Caribs are, they’re there. Do you savvy their dialect, Forsythe?”
“Hey, Mon, I’m civilized, even if I do have a healthy tan! Nobody savvies Carib, Black or otherwise, Mon. Do you meet a Carib, the first thing you has to do is shoot him in the head to gain his undivided attention! Nobody can talk to Caribs. It’s been tried. Those crazy Caribs ain’t ones for conversation. They shoot strangers on sight.”
Keller cut in to say, “We’ve gone over all of this before, Walker. The plan is for you to man the machine guns, trained on the shore, as we cruise just out of arrow range, searching each key in turn for some sign of the wreck.”
“What if it’s under water?”
“We have diving gear, if it comes to that. I don’t see how a vessel that size could be completely under, since the coral flats between the islands are shallow. If it did find a hole to settle into, there should be plenty of black oil staining the white coral sands of the nearest key, see?”
“If you say so. The salvage end ain’t my job. Did you say machine guns, plural?”
Keller nodded and said, “Hakim had us load two Maxims aboard with the other gear, along with plenty of ammo. You don’t have to worry about that now. They’re stored safely in the hold until we need them.”
Captain Gringo put down his coffee cup and said, “I need ’em now. Can you show me the way, Kantos?”
The young Greek looked surprised but nodded and replied, “If you wish. But we’re nowhere near the Bahías yet.”
He rose and said, “Yeah, and I want to check ’em out and mount ’em well before we get there. Coming, Gaston? You’ll have to man the stem gun, you know.”
Gaston looked up, bleary-eyed, and asked, “Is someone calling my name in vain?”
So Captain Gringo said, “Never mind. Let’s go, Kantos.”
They left the mess and moved forward along the companionway. Kantos had just pointed out a ladderway leading down to the hold when a door on the other side of the companionway slid open and the burly Papadakis popped out. Kantos sighed and muttered, “Skata,” as the skipper grinned owlishly, grabbed the young Greek, and dragged Kantos back into his cabin, straggling and protesting in Greek.
Captain Gringo followed the uneven match into the skipper’s evil-smelling stateroom, and as Papadakis wrestled Kanto to a bunk stained with vomited booze and worse, he asked mildly, “Are you in trouble, Kid, or just acting coy?”
Kantos gasped. “The animal is trying to rape me, dammit!”
So Captain Gringo shrugged, moved in, and rabbit punched the big Greek across the nape of the neck.
It didn’t work. Papadakis let go of his first victim and stood up to turn with a bearlike roar as his bloodshot eyes focused on Captain Gringo. Then he growled deep in his throat and grabbed for the American who’d love to have tapped him for some mysterious reason. Papadakis didn’t just growl like a bear. He was strong as a grizzly and not nearly as nice as he proceeded to slam Captain Gringo against the door jamb over and over again, obviously most annoyed but oblivious to the punches the big Yank was throwing, even as they tore hell out of his blind-drunk face!
There had to be a better way. Captain Gringo kicked Papadakis in the crotch as hard as he could. The monstrous Greek grimaced in pain, but hung on and slammed the now dazed American against the wood again. So Captain Gringo growled, “Oh, shit,” drew his .38, and shoved the muzzle deep in the big Greek’s paunch as he pulled the trigger.
That worked better. Papadakis stared sadly at him from his ruined face, tried to say something, and let go to fall backward like a redwood cut off at the roots. He hit the floor with more noise than the muffled shot had made. Captain Gringo slid the door all the way shut behind him before he shook his head to clear it and asked Kantos, “What happens now?”
Kantos sat up on the bunk, stared soberly down at the big corpse between them, and murmured, “Now we both die. You don’t understand my people. He was our captain!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, the drunken brute just tried to sodomize you, Kid. Don’t you have any rules at all in the Greek merchant marine?”
“Yes. One rule is that the master’s word is law, at sea. The others hated him as much as me. But we Greeks are an inflexible race, and there is only one way to deal with mutiny at sea, so… “
Captain Gringo put his head to the closed door a moment befo
re he said, “I get the picture. But, so far, this is still our little secret. Nobody seems to have heard that muffled shot.”
Kantos shrugged and said, “What of it? It’s only a question of time before he’s found, and everyone knew how he’s been after my body, so—”
“So shut up and listen, Kid. The rest of the crew knows he had a serious drinking problem, too. Guys who stagger around drunk aboard a ship at sea sure fall overboard a lot, don’t they?”
Kantos gasped and asked, “My God, do you think we can get away with it?”
Captain Gringo said, “We’ll have to, unless we want to do some swimming ourselves before morning. You go first and see if the coast is clear. Trim the companionway lamps as you lead us to the nearest way up on deck. What are you waiting for, Kid? Move!”
Kantos did. They got away with it. As the dead skipper went over the lee rail and hit with a soft splash amidships in the shadows of the moonlit sails, someone aft called out in Greek, albeit casually, and Captain Gringo hissed, “Don’t answer! If the helmsman doesn’t put about, and puts it together later, he’ll feel too guilty to speak up. Let’s get down to the hold fast. That’s where we’re supposed to be right now, remember?”
Kantos nodded and led the way down to the hold ahead of the engine-room bulkhead. It was dark, of course, until the young Greek struck a match and lit a hanging lamp that helped a little bit. Captain Gringo had to find the arms and ammo himself amid the other stored gear. But he managed. The two machine guns were packed in petroleum jelly, bless Hakim’s heart, and aside from being spanking new as well as rust free, the headspace had been set right, for a change. He grinned and said, “One thing you gotta hand the old gunrunner. He knows his guns. Now what’s the matter?”
Kantos was leaning against a nearby packing case, crying like a frightened girl. Captain Gringo put a comforting hand on the shoulder of the rough pea jacket and said gently, “Hey, look, it’s over, see?”
Kantos sobbed, threw both arms around Captain Gringo, and kissed him passionately on the lips. Even worse, it felt good!
The big American shoved the little Greek away, gasping. “For God’s sake, Kid, I thought you didn’t go in for that sort of thing! I know I don’t!”
Then he saw what had happened when the force of his shove had knocked off the other’s big knit cap. As he stared in wonder down at the heart-shaped face staring up at his adoringly from between raven’s wings of long black silky hair, he blinked and gasped. “For God’s sake, Kid, are you one hell of a convincing fairy or a real girl?”
Kantos looked just as surprised as she asked, “Didn’t you know I was a woman, Dick? I didn’t try to hide it from you. I just thought you considered me plain, until you saved me from Papadakis!”
He laughed like hell and said, “I’d have hit him harder had I known what he was really after! But that male costume had me sort of confused, Kantos. Is that a Greek girl’s name, by the way?”
“Kantos is my family name. My first name is Antigone. Don’t you want to kiss me … Dick?”
He did. It felt a lot nicer, knowing their first thrilling kiss hadn’t meant he was starting to get strange, and as he held her closer, leaning against the packing case, it seemed impossible that he’d ever thought the body under the pea jacket was that of a sort of soft-looking boy. The thick wool still left a lot to be desired, though, so he started to unbutton it for her as they tongued each other and made nice nice. But she stiffened and said, “Not down here, Dick. What if someone should come?”
Coming was just, what he’d had in mind. But he said, “Yeah, we’d better get these guns topside and mounted under tarps before we take our pants off. Do the other crew members know you’re really a girl, Antigone?”
“Of course, although it would be cruel of me to wear skirts at sea where the wind blows so much. But even Papadakis respected me, when he was sober. Back on Kríti—you call it Crete—my male relatives have a certain reputation for dealing harshly with anyone who insults their kinswomen. So now that you have saved me from Papadakis, my virtue is safe once more.”
“Oh, hell, there went a great notion!”
She laughed and said, “You don’t have to worry about my virtue, Dick. You are not a Greek from Kríti, see?”
He wasn’t sure he did. But the next hour or so kept him too busy to worry about the social customs of Greek villagers, as they mounted machine guns fore and aft. Nobody argued about the nails they drove into the deck up by the bows. But as Captain Gringo got to work on the stem gun, the sleepy-looking helmsman back there asked Antigone in Greek if they’d cleared all that hammering with the skipper. She assured him they had and rather cleverly added that Papadakis was up in the bows at the moment, if the helmsman wanted to clear it with him. The Greek at the helm repressed a shudder and said no thanks. So they lashed a tarp over the securely mounted Maxim and went to Antigone’s cubby near the galley to see her etchings or whatever.
She didn’t have etchings to show her newfound friend, but as she undressed in the little one-bunk chamber by soft lamplight she reminded him not a little of the marble nymph her much uglier schooner was named after. But as he enveloped her white flesh in his arms there was nothing cool as marble about her, and when she pulled him down on the bunk and spread her creamy thighs in welcome, there was something a lot yummier than a fig leaf between them.
As he entered her she gasped in delight, then sighed. “Oh, God, I’m really in trouble now!”
That was enough to cool a guy some, even amid such lovely warm surroundings. He said cautiously, “Don’t you know how to, ah, take care of yourself, Antigone?”
She wrapped her soft white limbs around his waist to hug him deeper as she smiled up at him adoringly and said, “I didn’t mean that sort of trouble, darling. Heavens, I’m a sea cook, not a blushing virgin. It’s just that I was hoping one time would be enough to, ah, thank you properly.”
“You didn’t have to thank me this way, Kid. I’d have hit him even if you really had been a boy.”
She giggled and moved her hips teasingly as she replied, “I’m so glad I’m not. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed this sort of thing, discreetly, and I can feel you haven’t had a woman for some time either, true?”
He started moving in her faster as he said, growling, “Let’s save the pillow talk for later, huh?”
So they did, and it was wonderful. Despite Gaston’s jokes about Greek loving, Antigone needed nothing odd or acrobatic to enjoy sex in a healthy peasant fashion, and, with her moving under him so nicely, Captain Gringo found all the inspiration he needed to keep going as they made old-fashioned earthy love, climaxing together over and over until by wordless mutual consent they stopped to get their second winds.
She sighed and said, “That was lovely, dammit. You make love the way I always imagined the elder gods atop Mount Ida must have done, back in the Golden Age.”
“You’d make a pretty good fertility goddess, too, Antigone. So what’s to damn about it?”
“I’m going to want more, of course. But now I know there’s no way I’ll be able to get all I want of you.”
He kissed her and smoothed her black hair across the pillow as he chuckled and said, “No problem. Both the other women on board are married, so I’m all yours, Kitten.”
She sighed and said, “It’s not that simple. We’ll have to be very discreet. I told you some of the crew are from my village back on Kriti, and if my people ever found out—”
“Okay, we won’t tell anybody we’re lovers. Who’s to know if we don’t do this on deck a lot?”
She sighed and said, “We’re not completely safe even here. Oh, Dick, if only we could be alone together on some desert island, instead of risking our reputations like this aboard a crowded little schooner!”
He sighed and said, “I usually get to have this conversation by the cold gray light of dawn, around Monday, with luck. Are you saying this has to be a one-night stand, Antigone?”
“If only I had that mu
ch strength.” She sobbed, kissing him in sudden passion and groping for his semi-erection to guide it back where she wanted it.
But after they’d come again she said, “You know I can’t resist you. So you’ll have to be strong for both of us.”
“I wish you’d make up your mind, Kid, I can be strong as hell, once I know what a lady wants!”
She sobbed. “I want you inside me every waking minute, day and night, but we have to be discreet about it. We don’t dare risk this every night. What if we agreed to only try to get away with it every other night? That way, one of us could make a point of being with someone else when the crew knows the other is in his or her quarters alone, see?”
He laughed and said, “Okay. Who do you suggest I sleep with when I’m not sleeping with you, the blond German dame or the little spooky Hungarian?”
She didn’t have his sense of humor. She sank her nails in his buttocks as she pulled him deeper in and said, “If I catch you looking at another woman, now that you’re mine, I’ll feed your liver to the sharks, darling!”
She sounded like she meant it.
*
It took the crew almost until noon the next day to notice their skipper was missing, and not miss him all that much. After some debate it was decided he must have fallen overboard in one of his drunken fits and that the first mate, Venezis, was automatically their new skipper.
Passengers as well as crew found Ilias Venezis a vast improvement over the late Papadakis. Venezis was a calmer, smaller, older man who’d been running the Peirene most of the time in the first place, and now that he was in full command, he seemed able to do so without hitting anyone. Better yet, Venezis spoke a little English as well as a smattering of Spanish. So the Jamaican, Forsythe, could get through to him when they were approaching a reef.
There were a lot of those along the east coast of Central America, but the big Jamaican was fantastic at spotting them well before the lookout up on the main mast could. The jovial Jamaican explained that in his day he’d met most of the reefs of the Caribbean personally, with a keel, and so he knew all too well what it meant when the whitecaps ahead seemed to be running against the prevailing trade winds from the northeast. Venezis told his helmsmen not to argue with the big black when and if he yelled at them to give the schooner hard right rudder. So the next few days passed serenely enough, save for a few close calls when the Jamaican was eating or taking a crap.