Islands in the Stream (51 page)

“Our last prisoner didn’t last very long.”

“I’ll try and bring a good, strong, healthy one. Go on down and see everything is secured. I want to watch the flamingoes for a little while.”

He stood on the flying bridge and watched the flamingoes. It is not just their color, he thought. It’s not just the black on that rose pink. It is their size and that they are ugly in detail and yet perversely beautiful. They must be a very old bird from the earliest times.

He did not watch them through the glasses because he did not want details now. He wanted the roseate mass on the gray brown flat. Two other flocks had come in now and the banks were colored in a way that he would not have dared to paint. Or I would have dared to paint and would have painted, he thought. It is nice to see flamingoes before you make this trip. I better not give them time to worry or to think too much.

He climbed down from the bridge and said, “Gil, get up there and keep your glasses on the key. Henry, if you hear a lot of noise and then the turtle boat should come out from behind the key, shoot her fucking bow off. Everybody get up and glass where the survivors are and you can hunt them tomorrow. Plug the dinghy where she is shot up and use her. The turtle boat has a skiff and you can plug her up and use her too if we don’t damage her too badly.”

Antonio said, “Do you have any other orders?”

“Just keep your bowels open and try to lead clean lives. We’ll be back in a little while. Come on, you two gentlemen bastards. Let’s go.”

“Grandmother always claimed I wasn’t a bastard,” Peters said. “She said I was the nicest-looking, most legitimate little baby in the county.”

“Mother claimed I wasn’t a bastard, too,” Willie said. “Where do you want us, Tom?”

“She trims best with you in the bow. But I’ll take the bow if you like.”

“Get in and steer her,” Willie said. “You got a really good ship now.”

“I got my finger on my number,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’m working up. Come aboard, Mr. Peters.”

“Happy to be on board, admiral,” Peters said.

“Good hunting,” Henry said.

“Drop dead,” Willie called. The motor caught and they were off toward the silhouette of the key that was lower in the water now because of their lack of altitude.

“I’m going alongside and we’ll board her without hailing.”

The two men nodded, one amidships and one in the bow.

“Get your junk hung. I don’t give a shit if it shows,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I don’t know where I’d hide it,” Peters said. “I feel like one of grandma’s mules now.”

“Then be a mule. It’s a fucking good animal.”

“Tom, do I have to remember all that shit about the pilot?”

“Remember it but use your head.”

“Well,” said Peters. “We haven’t any fucking troubles anymore.”

“We better all pipe down,” Thomas Hudson said. “We’ll all three board at the same time and if they are below, you ask them in Kraut to come out with their hands up. We have to stop talking because they can hear voices a long way above the noise of an outboard.”

“What do we do if they don’t come out?”

“Willie throws in a grenade.”

“What do we do if they’re on deck?”

“Sweep the deck according to our sectors. Me the stern. Peters amidships. You the bow.”

“Then do I throw in a grenade?”

“Sure. We ought to get woundeds that we can save. That’s why I brought the kit.”

“I thought that was for us.”

“Us too. Now let’s pipe down. Do you have it clear?”

“Clearer than shit,” Willie said.

“Has there been an issue of asshole corks?” Peters asked.

“They dropped it from the plane this morning. Didn’t you get yours?”

“No. But grandma always said I had the slowest digestion of any baby in the whole of the South. They got one of my diapers in the Smithsonian Institute of the Confederacy.”

“Cut out the shit,” Willie said, leaning back in order not to talk loudly. “Are we doing all this in daylight, Tom?”

“Now.”

“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” said Willie. “I have fallen among thieves and bastards.”

“Shut up, Willie, and let’s see you fight.”

Willie nodded his head and looked ahead with his good eye toward the green mangrove key which lay tiptoed on its brown red roots.

He only said one more thing before they rounded the point, “They’ve got good oysters on those roots.”

Thomas Hudson nodded.

They saw the turtle boat
when they rounded the point of the key and passed through the channel which separated it from another small key. She was lying with her bow close in to shore and there were vines hanging from her mast and her deck was covered with new-cut mangrove branches.

Willie leaned back and with his voice almost against Peter’s ear, said in a low voice, “Her skirl’s missing. Pass the word.”

Peters leaned his blotched, freckled face back and said, “Her skiff’s missing, Tom. There must be some ashore.”

“We’ll board her and sink her,” Thomas Hudson said. “Same plan. Pass the word.”

Peters bent forward and spoke into Willie’s ear and Willie’s head started to shake. Then he held up his hand with the familiar zero. Zero as in asshole, Thomas Hudson thought. They came up on her as fast as the little coffee mill of an engine would take them and Thomas Hudson put her smartly alongside without bumping. Willie lifted the grapple over the gunwale of the turtle boat and pulled it fast and the three of them were on the deck almost at the same time. Underneath their feet there were mangrove branches with their dead fresh smell and Thomas Hudson saw the vine draped mast as though now it were a dream again. He saw the hatch open and a forward hatch open and covered with branches. There was no one on deck.

Thomas Hudson waved Willie forward past this hatch and covered the other one with his submachine gun. He checked that the safety lever was on full automatic. Under his bare feet he could feel the hard roundness of the branches, the slipperiness of the leaves, and the heat of the wooden deck.

“Tell them to come out with their hands up,” he said quietly to Peters.

Peters spoke in rough, throaty German. Nobody answered and nothing happened.

Thomas Hudson thought, grandma’s boy has a good delivery, and he said, “Tell them again we give them ten seconds to come out. We will treat them as prisoners of war. Then count ten.”

Peters spoke so it sounded like the voice of all German doom. His voice holds up magnificently, Thomas Hudson thought, and turned his head fast to see if the skiff were in sight. He could only see the brown roots and the green of the mangroves.

“Count ten and put one in,” he said. “Watch that fucking forward hatch, Willie.”

“It’s got those fucking branches covering it.”

“Push one in with your hands when Peters goes. Don’t throw it.”

Peters reached ten and standing there, tall, loose-jointed like a pitcher on the mound, holding his submachine gun under his left arm, he pulled the pin of the grenade with his teeth, held it spurting smoke a moment as though he were warming it, and tossed it with the underhand motion of a Carl Mays into the darkness of the hatch.

As Thomas Hudson watched him, he thought, he’s a great actor and he doesn’t think there is anything down there.

Thomas Hudson hit the deck, covering the mouth of the hatch with his Thompson. Peter’s grenade exploded with a flashing crack and a roar and Thomas Hudson saw Willie opening the brush to drop a grenade in the forward hatch. Then to the right of the mast, where the vines hung, he saw the muzzle of a gun come up from between the branches on the same hatch where Willie was working. He fired at it but it fired five quick flashes, clattering like a child’s rattle. Then Willie’s grenade went with a big flash and Thomas Hudson looked and saw Willie, in the scuppers, pull the pin on another grenade to throw in. Peters was on his side with his head on the gunwale. Blood was running from his head into the scuppers.

Willie threw and the grenade had a different sound because it rolled further into the boat before it burst.

“Do you think there are any more of the cocksuckers?” Willie called.

“I’ll put one more in from here,” Thomas Hudson said. He ducked and ran to get out of any fire from the big hatch and pulled the pin on another grenade, gray, heavy, solid, and notched in the grip of his hand, and crossing forward of the hatch he rolled it down into the stern. There was the crack, boom, and smoke where pieces of the deck came up.

Willie was looking at Peters and Tom came over and looked at him too. He did not look very different than usual.

“Well, we’ve lost our interpreter,” Willie said. His good eye was twitching but his voice was the same.

“She’s settling fast,” Thomas Hudson said.

“She was aground already. But she’s going over on her beam ends now.”

“We’ve got a lot of uncompleted business, Willie.”

“And we traded even. One for one. But we sunk the damned boat.”

“You better get the hell back to the ship and get back here with Ara and Henry. Tell Antonio to bring her abreast of the point as soon as he gets the tide.”

“I have to check below first.”

“I’ll check.”

“No,” Willie said. “That’s my trade.”

“How do you feel, kid?”

“Fine. Only sorry to hear of the loss of Mr. Peters. I’ll get a rag or something to put over his face. We ought to straighten him out with his head uphill now she’s careening like this.”

“How is the Kraut in the bow?”

“He’s a mess.”

Willie was gone now
to bring Ara and Henry. Thomas Hudson lay behind the parapet the high gunwale of the turtle boat made. His feet were against the hatch and he was watching for the skiff. Peters lay feet downward on the other side of the hatch and his face was covered by a German navy fatigue shirt. I never realized he was so tall, Thomas Hudson thought.

He and Willie had both searched the turtle boat and it was a mess. There had only been one German on board. He was the one who had shot Peters and he had evidently taken him for the officer. There was one other Schmeisser machine pistol aboard and close to two thousand rounds of ammunition in a metal case which had been opened with pliers or a can opener. Presumably, the men who had gone ashore had been armed because there were no weapons on board. The skiff was at least a sixteen-foot, heavy turtler from the chocks and the marks that she had left on the deck. They still had a quantity of food. It was mostly dried fish and hard roasted pork. It was the wounded man who had been left on board who had shot Peters. He had a bad thigh wound that was nearly healed and another nearly healed wound in the fleshy part of his left shoulder. They had good charts of the coast and of the West Indies and there was one carton of Camels without stamps and marked Ships Supplies. They had no coffee, nor tea, nor any liquors of any sort.

The problem now was what they would do. Where were they? They must have seen or heard the small fight on the turtle boat and they might return to pick up their stores. They would have seen one man leave by himself in the dinghy with the outboard and from the shots and the explosion of the frags there could easily be three men dead or incapacitated aboard. They would come back for stores or anything else that might be hidden and then break for the mainland in the dark. They could shove the skiff off anything that she might ground on.

The skiff must be a sturdy craft. Thomas Hudson had no radio operator and it was therefore impossible to give a description of the skiff and nobody would be looking for her. Then, if they wanted to, and had the will to try it they could try to assault the ship at night. That seemed extremely unlikely.

Thomas Hudson thought it out as carefully as he could. Finally, he decided, I believe that they will go inside the mangroves and haul the skiff in and hide it. If we go in after them, they can ambush us easily. Then they will run for the open inside bay and push on and try and pass Cayo Francés at night. That is easy. They may pick up supplies, or raid for them, and they will keep on pushing to the westward and try to make one of the German outfits around Havana where they will hide them and pick them up. They can easily get a better boat.

They can jump one. Or steal one. I have to report at Cayo Francés and deliver Peters and get my orders. The trouble won’t come until Havana. There’s a lieutenant commanding at Cayo Francés and we won’t have any trouble there and they can keep Peters.

I have enough ice to handle him to there and I gas there and get ice at Caibarién.

We are going to get these characters for better or for worse. But I am not going to put Willie and Ara and Henry into one of those burp-gun massacres in the mangroves for fuck-all nothing. There are eight of them, anyway, from the looks of everything on board. I had a chance to catch them today with their pants down and I blew it because they were too smart or too lucky and they are always efficient.

We’ve lost one man and he is our radio operator. But we have cut them down to a skiff now. If I see the skiff we will destroy it and blockade the island and hunt them down on it. But I’m not going to stick our necks into any of those eight against three traps. If it is my ass afterwards, it is my ass. It is going to be my ass, anyway. Now that I’ve lost Peters. If I lost any irregulars, nobody would give a damn. Except me and the ship.

I wish they would get back, he thought. I don’t want those bastards coming out to see what gives aboard this vessel and have the battle of no-name key by myself. I wonder what they are doing in there, anyway? Maybe they went for oysters. Willie mentioned the oysters. Maybe they just didn’t want to be on this turtle boat in daylight if a plane came over and spotted her. But they must know the hours those planes work on by now. Hell, I wish they would come out and get it over with. I’ve got good cover and they’d have to get in range before they try to come aboard. Why do you suppose that wounded man didn’t open up on us when we came over the side? He must have heard the outboard. Maybe he was asleep. The outboard makes very little noise anyway.

There are too many whys in this business, he thought, and I am not at all sure I have it figured properly. Maybe I should not have jumped the boat. But I think I had to do that. We sunk the boat and lost Peters and killed one man. That is not very brilliant but it still adds up.