Albury kicked toward his boat. Winded, his arm aching and sticky, he swam doggedly against the roiling tide. He felt weak and tired.
Suddenly he realized that he was no longer alone in the water. If it was a shark, Breeze Albury knew, he was as dead as the luckless Colombian. He spun in the water to face it, thrashing with both fists, aiming for the blunt snout of a killer he could not see.
It took a long, shivery moment for Albury to recognize Augie, bringing him the rope so that he, too, could hoist himself aboard and complete the
Diamond Cutter
’s alien complement.
“
NOT TOO TIGHT
.”
“It’s got to be tight enough to stop the blood. It needs stitches, man.”
Jimmy stretched the tape across the gauze. Augie held out four Tylenols and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
The deck was warm and wet, and Albury sat there puffing, like an old man. He gradually became aware of the circle of dusky feet around him, and a muttering. He looked up into gaunt, frightened faces: Colombians.
His ears rang, but it was not in his head. It was out there, much louder than before. “That’s a big boat coming,” Albury croaked. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Jimmy helped him to his feet. Albury breathed deeply and waited for the world to right itself.
“What are
they
doing up here?” he demanded.
“They came up when their guy lost the rope. I couldn’t stop ’em, Breeze.”
Augie said, “We’ve got to move.”
“Jimmy, get the anchor.” Stiffly, Albury walked to the wheelhouse and punched the ignition buttons. “Augie, get those people down below.”
“I tried, but they won’t go. They say they won’t leave without the guy in the water.”
“Tell them he’s dead, Augie. And tell ’em we’re all going to a very nasty jail if they don’t get below. Now!”
The patter of half-understood Spanish washed over Albury; the Colombians were insistent.
“It’s not the guy they care about,” Augie explained. “It’s what he was carrying. They say it is their luck.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Before they left Colombia, they got a local priest to bless a small religious statue to take along. A Virgin or something. For luck. The guy who was carrying it—they called him
El Cura
—he’s the one who drowned.”
“Some luck.”
“It must have been made of stone, way he went down,” Jimmy said.
“These people are fucking crazy,” said Albury. Now he could see it, a speck where the sky met the ocean. Then twin pinpricks of light, one red, one green. Bow and stern.
“Tell them that anybody who wants to stay can be my guest. Tell them there’s a boat coming and that I’m not waiting,” Albury said. “Tell them to go below and say their crazy prayers.”
He slipped the diesel into gear. Jimmy was at the bow, coiling another rope. Augie spoke Spanish, urgently, persuasively. Glowering, the Colombians shambled into the hold.
Twice Albury reached for a cigarette, and to hell with night vision. Twice he stopped short of the inviting pack. He felt the three ounces of Wild Turkey rampage into his gut and begin to resew the frayed nerves. A night of imaginary sharks, a stone virgin, and a dead man’s hair waving in the water like seaweed. Jesus.
From the beach,
Diamond Cutter
fled into the night at twenty-five knots. Ahead, the reef waited. In a few minutes it would be bared by the tide, but now the water curled over it and broke in mocking whispers. Behind, the boat had closed to within a mile of the
Diamond Cutter
’s starboard flank. Its speed and single-mindedness left Albury no illusion: it was a gunboat.
Albury quickly backed off the throttle. The froth at the
Diamond Cutter
’s bow died, and then they were gliding like a barge in sudden silence.
“Breeze!” Jimmy cried. “Don’t stop. Hit it!”
Albury shook his head. “Not yet,” he said evenly. Augie stood next to him in the wheelhouse. The young Cuban eyed the reef, only fifty yards off the bow. The roar of the advancing cutter suddenly dropped two octaves as the Bahamian captain eased up.
“Augie, tell me when he hits the blue light,” Albury said.
It was a patrol boat, and close enough that Augie could make out one or two numbers on the side. It was a sixty-footer. Two sailors with long guns stood forward. Another held a megaphone. In the wheelhouse, the Bahamian captain flicked a switch and the blue police light pierced the night, hitting the
Diamond Cutter
exactly once every second.
“OK,” Augie said. “Blue light.”
Albury threw his weight against the throttle, and the rebuilt 892 groaned. The bow rose and kept rising; below his feet Albury could feel the Colombians scrabble for balance. The
Diamond Cutter
heaved itself forward and, rebelling against the weight of its cargo, planed off.
“Beautiful,” Albury murmured. “Just beautiful.” He turned to steer a course parallel to the coral reef, expertly following its scimitar curve, clinging to the deeper water.
The gunboat gave chase. As Albury had expected, its captain chose an intersecting course. It covered the distance in great thirsty leaps, approaching at full speed, now from the port side. To starboard was the reef; a fractional error of navigation and the
Diamond Cutter
’s hull would be lanced by a coral head. The contest would be over.
For the second time, the patrol boat, gray and menacing, drew alongside the big crawfish boat. Albury could see the black faces behind the windshield and the gunners in position on the bow. The officer with the megaphone shouted something that was swallowed by the howl of boat engines.
“Get down on the deck,” Albury yelled to his mates. A quick look over his shoulder told him what he needed: that the combined wake of the two boats had obliterated the telltale curl over the reef. The jagged coral was masked in the backwash. To the naked eye, the way was clear.
Then Albury played the only card he had. Without warning, he swung hard to port, threatening collision. Instinctively, the Bahamian captain turned to starboard, crossing a few feet behind the
Diamond Cutter.
He should have paid less attention to the frantic Yankee fishing boat and more to the deadly nuances of the sea. The gunboat struck the veiled reef at thirty-three knots. It was the sound of a thousand fingernails on a blackboard.
As the
Diamond Cutter
cut a triumphant arc away from the reef toward open sea, Albury saw the gunboat scrape across the reef and settle in agony. He knew it would sink.
Some of the Colombians who had crawled up to watch from the stern began to cheer. They were still cheering when a death-thrash volley of machine-gun fire raked the
Diamond Cutter.
THE CRUCIAL THING
was to get away, to flee into the arms of friendly night. Albury did not expect another gunboat from the Bahamian Royal Defence Force, but he sped south for two hours off the easterly heading he needed, just in case. Aboard the
Diamond Cutter
, chaos was igniting.
Jimmy burst into the wheelhouse, his voice strained, almost falsetto. His features seemed unnaturally pale in the binnacle light.
“Breeze, these people are animals!”
“What happened?”
“I was bein’ a nice guy, right? I figured they were hungry, so I go down below to make some sandwiches and stuff. Shit, as soon as those assholes smell food they mob me, like I was giving out money or something. I bet there’s not a cracker or a can of beer left on the boat. They grabbed everything they saw and ran off like fuckin’ rats, lookin’ for a hole. And that’s not the worst of it.”
“What else?”
“It took ’em all of five minutes to break the head, but what do they care? Probably no fuckin’ toilets where they come from, anyway. So what difference is a boat? They just squat down and go wherever they happen to be. Breeze, I swear to Christ I never seen nuthin’ like it.”
Albury grunted. He had expected smugglers; smugglers he understood. What he had gotten instead was a boatload of scum—coarse, ignorant gutter criminals of the most vicious sort. Albury knew the type. He had once lived in a cellblock full of them.
“Can you keep ’em below?”
“Shit, Breeze, they’re everywhere. And the stink down there would choke a buzzard.”
“Where’s Augie?”
“He’s been working on the wounded ones. Their pals don’t seem to give a shit. They’re too busy trying to dick it to the women.”
“Jesus,” Albury hissed. “How bad off are the ones who were shot?” The Bahamian machine gun had holed the
Diamond Cutter
in five or six places, all above the waterline. Two Colombians standing in the stern had gone down without a cry.
“One of them is just grazed on the head. The other is bleeding bad. Augie says he can’t stop it.”
“Neither can we.”
By dawn, Albury knew, many vessels would be out hunting for a renegade lobsterboat. Not only the impulsive Bahamians, but also the more methodical Americans, with their spotter planes, their cutters, and their computers. But by dawn, with any luck, the Colombians would be ashore and the
Diamond Cutter
would be anonymously licking its wounds in some clump of mangroves. Maybe six more hours at twenty-four knots, Albury reckoned hopefully. They should make it, even allowing for the buffeting they would take from the heavy squall line that the radio predicted off the coast of the Upper Keys.
“Tell Augie to come up here,” Albury said to Jimmy. “Have him bring the
jefe.
What’s his name? Oscar?”
“His name is asshole. Like the rest of them, “Jimmy snorted.
When Augie appeared a few minutes later, a young Colombian frog-marched before him, arm twisted cruelly behind his back. Augie was panting, and he said nothing. He branded the passenger with a bitter glare.
“This Oscar?” Albury said.
Augie shook his head. “Oscar is busy, Breeze, getting a hum job from one of his lady friends. This one here”—Augie gave the Colombian a rough shove—“he’s had his turn. Haven’t you, Lover Boy? And a few feet away, one of his buddies is bleeding to death from bullet holes. A real touching scene, Breeze.”
“Easy, Augie.”
“And afterwards this one here sneaks down to your cabin for a little scavenger hunt and helps himself to this.” Augie tossed Albury the pair of socks in which he had hidden his money. “Only took you about two minutes to find the loot, eh,
amigo?”
The Colombian stared at his own feet. Albury felt his control going. In a moment of self-pity, he saw himself at the helm, middle-aged, potbellied, once the master of a proud fishing boat, now only the whoremaster of a garbage scow. He reminded himself that the money that awaited was purely a one-way ticket off the Rock. Albury allowed himself a calming breath; his hands loosened their vise grip on the hickory wheel.
“Let him go, Augie.”
“Shit, Breeze.”
“Let him go now. Ask him if he speaks any English.”
The Colombian flexed his throbbing arm. He ran his hands through oily black hair and, with an almost feminine gesture, curled two fingers along his droopy mustache.
“He doesn’t speak English.”
“Then talk to him for me,” Albury said. “Tell him that he is
escorio
and that he annoys me. Tell him that if he annoys me again, I will personally cut him up and feed him to the sharks one piece at a time, starting with his prick. Talk to him, Augie.”
Augie talked. When he finished, the Colombian sneered.
“Tu madre,” he
said.
It was a mistake. Albury’s hand flashed off the wheel and caught the Colombian on the left side of the face, savagely lifting him off his feet. The man capsized backwards into the wheelhouse bulkhead, his head hitting with a grating clunk. Then the Colombian slid to the deck and lay still.
“Que pasa aqui?”
The man named Oscar stepped through the wheelhouse door into a frozen tableau: Albury, right arm outstretched, a man who had just squashed a spider; Augie, rigid with fury, face contorted; Jimmy, wide-eyed, his voice raw.
“Here’s the head spic, Breeze,” he said.
He was a big man, balding, Indian-brown, with long and elegant sideburns that crawled toward his mouth. Albury guessed that Oscar was in his mid-thirties. A fashionably tight shirt, blood-red and open to the waist, revealed a powerful chest studded with a thick gold cross. In the eyes lay a feral street intelligence. Albury counted four rings on the right hand and a gold watch on each wrist. The man stank of sweat and sea and cheap rum. Albury could tell that he was a bit quicker, a bit smarter, and more than a bit tougher than the rest—the prototype of a coarse Latin ranch foreman or factory boss.
“Are you supposed to be in charge of them?” Albury demanded, his eyes motioning toward the man prone on the deck. “This is a fishing boat, not a zoo. You keep these people under control, or I will do it. You understand? If I have to do it, you won’t like it.
Comprende?”
The Colombian watched impassively from behind hooded eyes. Whether he understood the words or not, the tone was unmistakable.
“Many people are hunting for us,” Albury went on. “The weather is getting bad, and there will be a storm soon. Go below and tell your people.”
The Colombian did not allow for translation.
“I am hungry,” he said in a rumbling baritone. “Where is food?”
“You assholes ate all the food,” Jimmy spluttered.
“There is no more food,” Albury said,
“Mañana food.”
“Then whiskey?”
“There’s no whiskey for you. Jesus, Augie, talk to him.”
“Captains always have whiskey, no?” Oscar insisted.
“No. No whiskey.
Mañana
whiskey. America whiskey.”
Then Augie intervened, speaking harshly. Oscar cut him off in mid-sentence.
“The boat is bad. Is very small, and no
rápido.”
“If you don’t like it, swim, shithead,” Jimmy snarled.
The
Diamond Cutter
began to pitch as it closed with the summer squall. Ahead, the clouds gathered in great purple bruises over the dull sea. Oscar rocked uncertainly in the crowded wheelhouse, blinking mechanically. He looked at Albury, at Augie, at Jimmy, a long measuring stare for each. The thin Colombian on the deck began to roll and moan.