by Jack Barnao
"It does. But I've been off work for a couple of weeks, had a cold that wouldn't clear up, so my principal told me to take another week and get some sunshine, and here we are."
Amadeo drained his glass and stood up. “Yeah, this'll clear it up. Listen, whyn't you three have another drink, I'm gonna have a swim."
"Good idea. I'll join you. If you'll excuse us, ladies."
"Of course.” Beth's smile was only a millimeter less wide, but I could see her mind working. Two inseparable men, what chance did a couple of women stand?
We walked down to the sand and Amadeo said, “Fer Crissakes, you don’ have to live in my goddamn pocket."
"No choice, this is business,” I said.
We passed a little area of palm trees and a couple of tables under the familiar banana-leaf awnings and moved out onto the hot brightness of the sand. “You swim if you want, I'll stay and watch your gear."
"Have it your own way, but you're missin’ a chance to get lucky with that momma back there."
"There's all night untouched ahead of us."
He didn't answer but shucked his shirt and jeans and ran out into the surf. It was gentle, perhaps four feet high, and once he was through the first wave, he swam out, bouncing over the crests of the incoming waves, swimming strongly in a good, disciplined crawl.
I watched him, and then looked around, checking for movement among the boats. Only one was active, the para-sailing boat, pulling its parachute with one of the handlers showing off in the harness, dangling from his knees, a hundred feet up. The boat driver was good. He was leaning just hard enough offshore that the onshore breeze kept his man high over the length of the beach, craning the necks of most of the sunworshipers. Because it was Sunday, many of the people were Mexican. There are no private beaches, and the locals mingle on Sunday, the only day off work most of them get. Some of the boys were looking up wistfully, but the men my age were all married, they didn't have ten American dollars for frivolities like para-sailing and didn't even consider it.
Amadeo swam straight out, past the line of moored fishing boats and out toward the open water, a hundred yards from shore. Then he stopped and lay back in the water. He waved and I nodded at him, and then I saw another boat, one that had appeared to be deserted. It jumped away from its mooring and headed for him. My hand went down to the gun in my pocket, but when the boat neared him, it slowed, and then a man in the back reached over and hauled Amadeo in. He wriggled over the stern and then stood up and waved at me again, straight-armed, with his middle finger sticking up.
The boat speeded up again, out toward the deeper water where the sailboats were moored. I turned and ran along the beach, glancing over my shoulder at the boat with Amadeo in it. Fifty yards from me the para-sailor had come to rest and was standing by the harness while the boat idled out in the surf, fifty yards offshore. I could see Amadeo's boat stopping beside a sailboat, saw him transfer aboard, and then saw the anchor line tighten on the sailboat as the skipper weighed anchor to leave.
"Pronto,” I said to the para-sailor, “Quiero coger el velero, por favor.” Quick, I want to catch the sailboat.
He looked out at the boat, which was motoring away toward the mouth of the bay, entering the heavier chop of the open sea.
"No es posible.” He shrugged. Impossible.
"Sí, es posible, por cincuenta dolares.” Fifty bucks should make his mind up. But it didn't.
"Es más grande,” he held his hands up, one above the other, the big boat was too high for his small boat to mate up with. I figured he was stalling, but he had a point, if the people on the sailboat didn't want us aboard we'd never make it. I had to leave them no option.
"Sí, es posible, con parachuta.” He opened his mouth to speak but I didn't let him, I was putting the harness on. “Por cien dolares, digale a su amigo lo que quiero.” I was probably butchering the language, but he got my drift. For a hundred bucks, he would tell his friend what the plan was. He still hesitated and started to explain that it was peligroso, dangerous, but I waved him down. “Yo soy para.” I'm a parachutist.
He shrugged, and then I flipped out a hundred-dollar bill. He grabbed it and started yelling and pointing. The driver yelled back, then shrugged and took up the slack. Within ten feet I was airborne, climbing rapidly to the peak of the line. He started to slow then, but I know about parachutes. He was afraid that if he went too fast, I would climb too high, but I furled the lines on the leading edge, cutting the angle of the chute against the wind and losing a little altitude, which I regained as he picked up speed. I could see the original motor-boat racing back toward the town dock, and it suddenly turned and swooped back toward my boat, but my driver was on his toes now, enjoying the challenge, jamming the throttle wide open as I rode the silk carefully out toward the sailboat and then over the top of it.
The driver was very good. He judged his speed perfectly, cutting back, so that I sank toward the sailboat, arcing down toward the stern. Then Amadeo turned from the wheel and picked up a rifle beside him. He raised it, but before he could fire, I drew my clumsy little pistol and put two shots into the stern, luckily missing him but slamming the seats each side of him. It was too much for him, and he dropped the gun and bolted down the companionway into the cabin. I stuck the gun back in my pocket and unsnapped the harness, letting myself fall to the length of my arms below the chute as I sank closer to the boat. It was pitching four feet up and down on the chop, and I had to judge it carefully. If I got it wrong, I would break my legs. Then the boat started to yaw, rudderless now, falling across the wind like a log tossed by the surf. It gave me more space to land, clear of the boom, and I dropped neatly beside it, landing on the seat at the peak of the boat's rise, jumping down to the deck proper as the boat dropped away under me. The rifle was on the seat. I hoped it meant Amadeo was unarmed. I had to stop him, right now, the hard way if necessary.
Six
Amadeo had closed the cabin door behind him, maybe expecting me to try to pull it open, giving him a clear swing at me. Fat chance. I was trained better than that. The door had to go. I clenched my pistol in my right fist, then braced myself astride the companionway and swung both feet against the door. It crashed off its rails, and I vaulted over the wreckage and inside. He was at the far end of the short cabin, scrambling to get into the forward compartment. I stuck my pistol straight out, two feet from his face and told him, “Hands on your head."
He did what I said, opening his mouth to explain, but I didn't listen. I took a pace forward on the right side of the table and swung a solid left at his gut. He wasn't braced for it, and the punch collapsed him like a broken paper bag. I stepped over him and tore the forward compartment open. A woman was standing at the far end, her back to the bow of the boat. She was Mexican, pretty, and young, wearing a light summer dress and holding a butcher knife out in front of her as if she knew how to use it.
It was not a time for the Locke charm, not even for the do-it-yourself Locke Spanish. I snapped, “Drop it,” and she did, faced down by the snub nose of my pistol. “Get back to the wheel and turn us into the wind,” I told her. I backed out of the berth and she followed, but dropped to her knees beside Amadeo.
She looked up and screamed at me in Spanish, but I told her, “He's fine. Get up to the wheel,” and shook the gun at her.
She came behind me as I backed up and climbed the companionway to the tiny rear deck, covering her all the way. Then she took the wheel and brought us around into the wind again. I glanced around. The para-sailing boat was on our starboard beam, wallowing in the chop as the driver pulled in the chute. He waved at me, shouting “Bueno.” I waved back, not letting him see the gun, and grinned. The other boat was cutting toward us, a hundred yards off, pushing a big white bow wave that let me know it was speeding. I picked up the rifle Amadeo had dropped. It was a pathetic thing, a .22 bolt-action with a three-shot magazine, the kind of gun farm kids back home use for plinking at groundhogs. The best his wife had been able to buy, I guessed, shoppin
g in the local hardware store. If this was the best the Mexican mob could do, civilization was safe.
The driver of the boat was standing up, both hands on the wheel, but that didn't mean he was unarmed. I watched and waited as he pulled around us, on the blind side from the para-sail boat. When he got to within twenty yards he let go of the wheel with his left hand and pulled a gun, but before he could raise it, I leveled the rifle at him, and he dropped low and sheered away, just as fast, around our stern and back to the dock. I didn't know how much of a friend he was to Amadeo, but not enough to start exchanging fire for him, not against a rifle. He probably preferred to wait until we came ashore, where he could sneak up on me.
When he was a hundred yards off and maintaining his course back to the dock, I told the woman, “Cut the motor and drop the anchor.” Her English must have been good, because she did what I asked without question, and soon we were moored, bobbing gently on the swell.
"Back inside, and don't try anything,” I said. She glared at me, a lioness with her tail twisted, but went down the companionway and into the cabin.
Amadeo was recovering. His breath had come back, and he was sitting on the deck with his back to the bulkhead, his knees drawn up. His face was deathly pale and he looked at me fearfully, covering his bruised stomach with both hands. I knew how he felt. Being winded like that makes you humble. For almost a minute you're sure you're dead, struggling for air and unable to breathe. But he would recover. On top of that, he was still in his swimsuit and what had looked macho on the beach looked ridiculous here.
I stood over him and spoke softly. “That was a warning, Greggie. Next time you jerk my chain I'll hurt you. You got that?"
He was whipped enough to nod dumbly, and I said, “Good. We understand one another. Now, I'm going to search this thing for weapons. If I find another gun, I'll shoot you in the foot with it. So tell me now, do you have anything else on board?"
The woman answered, spitting out the words. “If we had another gun, you would be dead."
That sounded plausible, so I nodded at her. “Don't expect to get a Christmas card from me this year."
Amadeo looked up at me. “Honestagod, there's nothin’ else,” he said, then dropped his head back on his chest.
I worked the action on the rifle, flipping out the rounds and catching them, then took out the bolt and put it in my left jacket pocket and laid the useless rifle down. “Okay, next question. Do you have supplies on board?"
"Supplies?” He looked up again, painfully. “Like, you mean food?"
"And drink, good water, or beer."
He spoke to the woman in Spanish, too fast for me to follow, but she shook her head as she answered, so I guessed we were empty.
"Is this bonita señora your wife?” I asked next, and he nodded.
"Yes. Maria, may I present John Locke."
I nodded to her. “Delighted. I'm your husband's nursemaid. I'm here to see he doesn't get lost this trip."
She listened to me, then turned to rattle at Amadeo in angry Spanish. He was cowed enough to lift both hands from his gut and hold them up. Before he could answer, I told him, “I want everything in English from here on."
"Yeah. Okay.” Right that moment he would have learned Urdu if I'd asked him to. He said to Maria, “It's business. I have to go up to Canada for a while. I'll be back in a month, to stay. But first I've got some money hidden, I want to get that out and give you some of it because you'll have to split."
"From my house?"
"Yeah. Some people are mad at me. I don't want them coming after you instead.” He was looking straight at her, and I was surprised at the tenderness in his eyes. I wondered if his Canadian wife got the same kind of affection.
Maria said something in Spanish, turning on her heel and then back again, a gesture that would have looked stagy on a WASP, but from her was as natural as breathing. She was nicely built, and her dress floated around her as she moved. It was a lot more attractive to my eyes than the skin-tight blue jeans she might have worn in North America. The women's libbers have made a lot of mistakes, if you ask me, which most of them would fry in hell before doing.
I turned away from them and checked out the cabin. It served as the galley and dining space of the boat. There was a small refrigerator in one corner and a two-burner gas stove mounted on a gimbal so it would stay level at sea. I opened the fridge and found it empty except for a couple of bottles of Coke and a beer. I helped myself to the beer. Now the excitement was over, I was thirsty.
"Where are the rest of the shells for the rifle?” I asked.
Maria lifted the cushion on one of the seats, exposing a flat surface with a finger hole in it. She lifted it and pointed into the locker. There was a flare pistol and a box of flares and a box of .22 bullets. There were three missing, which jibed with the total in the gun. I lifted the flare pistol, too, thankful that Maria hadn't considered it a weapon. Marine flares can burn a hole in you, like a phosphorous grenade. She could have turned me into a Roman candle if she'd been quicker.
I stood for a moment longer, looking at the pair of them, wondering what to do next. For the moment, I was happy to be aboard the boat. It meant I could sleep, out on the deck, while they played Mom and Pop in the forward compartment. In the hotel I would have to handicap Amadeo some way, or sleep with one eye open all night. But we couldn't stay here. Hell, if he didn't go ashore, he couldn't get his cash, and that meant I'd be out ten grand. Besides, we needed food. It would take thought. In the meantime I was feeling magnanimous. Parachute work does that to you, there's an exhilaration about dropping from the sky that doesn't wear off, even if you have to fight on landing. I decided to give them some space.
I went ahead and searched the cabin, quickly but thoroughly, going on through to the forward compartment, flipping the mattress back and opening all the closets. There was nothing on board but some clothes for Maria and a shirt and pants for Amadeo. I tossed them to him and he put them on gratefully.
I considered the evidence, the fact they were running empty probably meant he had a rendezvous arranged close by. There isn't another harbor within a day's sail, but there are a few beach villages. They could have arranged for a boat to come out to meet them and take them ashore, into a car and away. A close call. I'd nearly lost the sonofabitch in the first hour.
I came back into the wardroom and looked at them. He was sitting up on the couch now, still hunched forward as if he was in pain. He wouldn't have been, but I guessed he was embarrassed in front of Maria and was hamming up his reaction so she would feel sympathetic instead of angry at him. His ploy was working; she was sitting with her arm over his shoulder, leaning close to his ear, whispering, probably the Spanish equivalent of “There, there, poor thing."
I picked up the rifle and the .22 shells, and spoke to them. “We can't stay here all night, we'll have to get some food. But for now, it's restful. I'm going out on deck for a while, I'll call out before I come in again. But when I do, we're heading into the harbor, okay?” Amadeo didn't look up, but the back of his neck flushed red. He was humiliated by his failure, and embarrassed by the finger wave he'd given me. Now the laugh was on him, and he wasn't used to that kind of action. He needn't have worried, I've been insulted by experts in my time, sometimes viciously, like when one of my men was shot by a sniper in Belfast, and the street kids gathered around to laugh as they watched him dying. That had hurt, Amadeo's childish little gesture hadn't.
I checked my watch. “It's quarter to two. I'll call you at four and tell you what we're going to do. Play quietly, kiddies, Daddy's going to rest.” I smiled at them and went out into the beautiful afternoon sunshine, carrying their entire armament with me.
We were all alone on the water. I checked around for landmarks, and from what I could see, we hadn't drifted since Maria had dropped the anchor. It was holding. We were safe here. I was almost jealous of Amadeo. To be out here with a woman like that was the stuff that dreams are made of. Except that he was down below trying
to explain why his life-style had come unstuck and she would have to move out of the casa he'd bought her and hole up in Mexico City for a while.
Ah, well, as the old army saying puts it, if she couldn't take a joke, she shouldn't have joined. I thought about her as I sat and did my best to clean my Colt, using my handkerchief to wipe away the smoke residue from the barrel and to polish the chamber again. Probably the grime wouldn't affect it, not if I was only going to use it for a week, but it had proved its worth once, I owed it a clean. Then I reloaded and put it back in my pocket and slipped off my jacket and lay back on the seat beside the wheel, knees up, staring up into the infinite blue. What a country! They wouldn't get any rain here until May, possibly.
After a while I slept, lightly, as I've been trained to do, waking with a start when the angle of the deck shifted slightly outside the regular rise and fall of the water. I sat up, keeping low in case someone was coming alongside but nobody was, and then Amadeo's head poked out from the cabin.
"Can I talk to you?"
"Sure. Put your hands outside before you step out."
He did, stretching his arms in front of him like a sleepwalker; his hands were empty. “Okay, come on up.” I pulled my jacket back on, covering the new glow of the minor sunburn on my forearms.
He came up and sat down opposite to me. “I'm sorry I tried that dumb trick. It was kind of a test, you know."
"And now you're trying snake oil. Come on, Greggie, you can do better than that. I want the truth this time."
The “Greggie” hurt him. It was intended to. I wanted him feeling small. If he hadn't been promised for a court appearance in Toronto when we returned, I would have punched him in the face instead of the gut. That way he would have been sore longer, and every time he looked in a mirror, he would have known he'd been defeated. It's not malice, just behavioral training. I needed him ready to run mazes for me if I asked it.