“You have any grease with you?” he asked Beth.
“No.” Beth pushed a finger into the flesh atop Maynard’s shoulder. The skin paled in a circle, then flushed pink, again. “Jack-Bat,” she said, “pass the grog.”
Jack the Bat grumbled and pulled a stoneware jug from the bilges. Before he passed it to Beth, he uncorked it and took a long pull on it and said, “When you gonna ripen up, Beth? Damn waste of grog.”
“Soon, Jack-Bat, soon.” She poured the liquor over Maynard’s shoulders and rubbed it into his skin.
“Give him to drink, Goody,” said Hizzoner. “The fire within will keep the fire without.”
Maynard sipped from the jug. His back still stung, the skin was still hot and tight, but now he had something else on which to focus his attention: the embers glowing in his stomach.
The jug was passed around the pinnace and returned to the bilges.
Nau whistled and pointed, and heads turned to the southwest.
“By the gentle Jesus,” Hizzoner said. “That is a noble vessel.”
At first, Maynard could see nothing but the horizon. Then a pinpoint seemed to break the gray line, and gradually, as slowly as the hand of a clock moving from one minute to the next, the pinpoint stabilized and became a speck, a blemish, on the surface.
“A schooner,” Nau called. “A fine, robust bitch.”
Maynard squinted, but still the boat was an indistinct speck.
“You’ll sup tonight, lads,” Nau said. “What’ll you have?”
“Beef!” answered someone.
“Rum!” said another.
“Peaches for me!”
“Solomon Grundy!”
“Aye, that’s it,” Nau said, laughing. “A plate of Solomon Grundy would sit sweet. Hotten up, lads, and stow your jugs and say your honors and check your arms. There’s them that will sup with us and them that will sup with the devil, and nothing in between.”
The jug was passed again, and stowed. In the bow, the marksman loaded his Kentucky and laid it across his lap. In the stern, Hizzoner threaded pitch-soaked pieces of twine through his braided pigtail. Seeing Maynard eying him quizzically, Hizzoner said, “Does this bring memories, scribe?”
“Memories of what?”
“This was Teach’s trick. It abashed all but your forebear.”
“What did?”
“You’ll see.”
The sails were raised, and the little boats were sailed in circles, waiting the arrival of the schooner. It was a mile or so away, but its lines were clear: two masts, a full suit of sails, a sleek black hull. The schooner moved along smartly, using every breath of wind, its bow slicing the sea. It was at least a hundred feet long. Maynard could not imagine that the pinnaces would be able to intercept, let alone overtake, this juggernaut.
Hizzoner called to Nau, “Who will be the fox?”
“Yourself. I will be the poor fisherman, too ignorant to see the approach of doom. You will be wiser, for you will save yourself. He will think highly of you, until you are up his bum.”
Hizzoner pushed the tiller to the right, bearing away from the other pinnaces, which continued to wander in lazy disarray directly in the path of the oncoming schooner.
The schooner was so close now that Maynard could hear the rush of water along its hull, could see the name Brigadier painted in gold letters on the bow. Men stood at the rail, and two, forward, were shouting at the pinnaces and waving them away from the schooner’s path. Aft, the helmsman was visible at the wheel. A claxon sounded, but the pinnaces did not disperse: They kept a close circle as the schooner bore down on them.
Hizzoner’s pinnace was off to the side. The bow of the schooner passed twenty yards away, a massive black wall that swept by and shouldered off a mountain of water.
“Now!” Hizzoner shouted.
The oars shot out on either side of the pinnace. The sail fell in a heap, and Jack the Bat swiftly lashed it to the boom. The oarsmen pulled, and the pinnace surged forward. The marksman stood in the bow.
The schooner was already beyond them; there was no way they could catch it.
And then Maynard saw the rudder turn, and the schooner fell off the wind. To avoid the three other pinnaces, the helmsman had, at the last possible instant, turned hard to starboard. The sailing rhythm of the big boat was broken, and for a moment it wallowed.
The man behind the marksman jammed his head between the marksman’s legs and steadied him with his shoulders. The marksman raised his Kentucky, pulled back the hammer, and sighted along the barrel. The pinnace was bobbing in the schooner’s wake, the bow rising and falling and yawing in the troughs. As the bow rose, the marksman held his breath, and at the apex of the rise—when, for an unmeasurable fraction of a second, the bow hung motionless—he pulled the trigger. There was a click as flint struck steel, a hiss as the spark-ignited powder in the pan burned through the touch hole, and a boom and a flash of flame and a puff of smoke as the gun went off. The marksman staggered, caught his balance, and craned to see if his shot had been true.
On the schooner, the helmsman’s hands flew away from the wheel and seemed to claw at the chips of bone that exploded from his skull. He fell out of sight, and the wheel spun crazily to the right. The schooner pitched and rolled and slid farther off the wind. Ripples of luff fluttered in the sails.
“Pull, lads!” Hizzoner called, and the oarsmen swept their blades deep into the rolling seas.
Hizzoner shouted, “Regard, scribe!” and Maynard turned. Hizzoner was touching the flaming wick of a rusty Zippo lighter to the pitch-soaked twine in his pigtail. Each piece burned with a greasy, smoky flame, surrounding his head with a mantle of fire. Hizzoner grinned. “Truly a creature of hell, eh?”
Maynard looked to Nau’s pinnace, which was creeping along the leeward bows of the schooner, its oarsmen heaving frantically to avoid being crushed by the advancing black hulk. As Maynard watched, a small red pennant was run up Nau’s mast.
Hizzoner saw the pennant, too, and he shouted, “The jolie rouge is up, lads! Pull, and ye shall have gizzard to feast upon!”
“What’s the flag?” Maynard asked Beth.
“The jolie rouge? No quarter.”
“I thought he never gave quarter.”
“It gives the lads heart.”
The pinnace was within a few feet of the schooner’s stern when, on unspoken signal the lead oarsman shipped his oar and passed it forward to the marksman. The marksman raised the oar like a harpoon and drove it between the schooner’s rudder and sternpost. The rudder froze, and, immediately, the schooner settled into a slow, easy roll.
The men were screaming now, shrieking savage, incoherent imprecations against the enemy, the deity, the sea, and each other. They flung themselves onto the schooner’s rudder and, like spiders, scampered up the stern and over the railing.
His hair afire, his eyes alight, a dagger between his teeth and an ax in his hand, Hizzoner stepped on Maynard, leaped out of the pinnance, and yelled, “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are in accord.”
There were screams from the schooner, and cries of fear and sounds of running feet and a few shots.
“Come along,” Beth said. She tossed the free end of the chain to Maynard, hiked up her skirts, and jumped onto the rudder.
“Me?”
“Come, or they’ll kill you where you sit.” She pointed off the stern of the pinnace. Another pinnace was blocked from access to the rudder. From the crowd of yelling, cursing faces a knife appeared, spinning end over end. Maynard ducked, and the knife stuck and quivered in the rudder.
Maynard wrapped the rest of the chain around his neck, jumped onto the schooner’s rudder, and climbed. His hands slipped, his feet skidded, his fingernails clutched at bolts and ridges and cracks in the hull. Inch by inch, he climbed.
The afterdeck of the schooner was a melee of running, shouting men. The helmsman lay at Maynard’s feet, the back of his head a puddle of gray and red.
Two others
of the schooner’s crew lay on the deck, one nearly decapitated, the other leaning against a gunwale and staring, with vacant wonder, at a mess of exposed viscera.
Crouching to avoid stray bullets, Beth pulled Maynard forward.
Nau came aboard amidships, paused at the railing, and helped the two boys aboard. As soon as Manuel’s feet hit the deck, he scampered away, dodging, stopping, looking, ducking—a weasel, Maynard thought, searching for prey.
Justin was stiff with fear. Nau bent and spoke to him. Justin took the Walther from the holster, chambered a round, and stepped gingerly forward.
Maynard saw Manuel flatten himself against the deckhouse. Slowly, with infinite care and patience, his fingertips pulled from his pocket a garotte: two wooden handles connected by eighteen inches of thin wire. He was stalking something—Maynard couldn’t see what—and his senses had obliterated all extraneous sounds and movements. His body moved fluidly, silently, his feet seeming not to touch the deck as he advanced.
A woman rounded the far corner of the deckhouse. Looking backward, fleeing, panicked, she did not see Manuel until he sprang upon her and wrapped his legs around her waist. And, even then, she probably didn’t see him, for before she could turn her head he had whipped the garotte around her neck and snapped it tight.
Maynard saw her eyes bulge and her tongue pop out of her mouth, and then she fell, with Manuel on top of her, leeching the life from her.
Nau’s second shouted and pointed upward. A long-haired young man in tattered denim shorts was climbing the rigging—a mad, hopeless flight. The second drew his pistol and pointed at the climber, but Nau slapped his hand away. He knelt beside Justin.
“No!” Maynard yelled. Beth yanked on the chain, to silence him.
Nau smiled and said, “Surgery, scribe.”
Maynard watched, helpless, as, with two hands, Justin followed Nau’s guide and pointed the Walther at the climbing man.
“Squeeze,” Nau said. “Slowly squeeze.”
Justin nodded and closed one eye and pulled the trigger. The Walther jumped in his hand. The bullet whined through the schooner’s rigging, and the climber ducked.
Nau murmured to Justin and cupped his hand under Justin’s. Maynard heard him say, “When you are ready.”
This time there was no whine, only a thuck as the bullet struck flesh. The climber touched his chest, and blood seeped between his fingers. He fell forward, his body upright and graceful. His chin caught on a stay; his feet swung beneath him—a high-wire artist about to execute a difficult somersault—until his chin cleared the stay, and then his body fell horizontally, laid out as if for burial, and thudded on the roof of the deckhouse.
“Tue-Barbe!” cried Nau.
“Tue-Barbe!” echoed his second.
They slapped Justin on the back and praised him and called his name. The boy’s face rouged, and then he smiled and then was gleeful. He hopped from one foot to the other; his arms flapped. He was seized by a fit of hyperkinetic delight.
Maynard watched and felt sick, remembering the last time he had seen his son so seized: when Santa Claus had left a kitten for him under the Christmas tree.
There was still an uproar forward, below-decks, and Nau and his second and the other men left Justin and raced to the hatches in the bow.
Justin walked to the deckhouse and climbed on the roof and stared down at the man he had killed.
“Come.” Beth pulled the chain, eager to go forward and begin picking through the spoils.
“In a minute,” Maynard said. “Please.”
She hesitated, then gave Maynard the chain and went forward alone.
Maynard approached the deckhouse. “Justin . . .”
The boy did not turn.
Maynard heard footsteps, running, beneath him. They stopped, and started again, but he paid no attention. “Justin . . .”
The deckhouse door flew open in Maynard’s face, and a man—panting, slashed, and bloody—backed onto the deck. He held an M-16 rifle. He looked up and saw Justin and raised the M-16 to his chest.
Maynard threw his shoulder into the door. It caught the man in the back and knocked him off balance. The M-16 fired once.
Justin spun and crouched, the Walther raised. The man stumbled, regained his footing, and swung the M-16 upward.
Maynard jumped on him. He coiled the end of his chain around the man’s neck, jammed the last links to the deck with his foot, and pulled as hard as he could on the rest.
The man dropped the rifle. He scratched at the steel links that were already cracking his windpipe and bluing his skin. Maynard pulled until his arms ached and his temples throbbed and he saw the man’s pupils dilate and his eyeballs flutter and roll backward.
Then he untangled the chain from the man’s neck and leaned, exhausted, against the deckhouse.
Justin smiled.
Still gasping and looking at the dead man, Maynard said curtly, “What are you smiling at?”
Justin just stared.
“Give me the gun, buddy. Enough is enough.” Without looking up, Maynard raised his hand, expecting the pistol to be placed in it.
“Justin . . .” he began angrily, “I said . . .” He raised his eyes, and all he could see was a little black circle surrounded by a plug of black metal.
Justin was holding the Walther not four inches from his father’s head, pointing it half an inch above the bridge of his nose and directly between his eyes.
Behind the pistol, out of focus, Maynard could see Justin’s face, twisted into a crooked smile.
Maynard fought to keep his voice from cracking. “Justin . . .”
“I am Tue-Barbe!”
Maynard’s eyes focused on Justin’s—glistening, unwavering, feral, their pupils as big as raisins. The boy was drunk.
“All right. Tue- . . .”
“They tell me you’re dead.”
“Not yet, but . . .”
The flash of the explosion blinded Maynard, and the sound hammered at his eardrums. When he could see again, the barrel of the Walther had moved a few inches to the right, over his shoulder.
Justin laughed, a soprano cackle, and slid off the deckhouse roof and sprinted forward. His laughter hung in the air behind him, a toxic melody.
Maynard was alone on the stern. The noises forward had subsided; now there were just the voices of Nau’s men and the sounds of cargo being shifted and crates opened and a strange, faint buzz that, for several moments, Maynard could not identify.
His mind separated the sounds, discarding the familiar and isolating the strange: It was the drone of a motor, very far away, barely audible, erased by any closer interruption. He shielded his eyes and searched the horizon, but there were no boats. The buzz seemed to be growing slightly louder, but he couldn’t be sure.
He squinted into the sky and looked everywhere but straight at the sun, where his eyes could not tolerate the brilliance. The sky was empty. Then something flashed, like a spark or a star. He looked again, cupping his hands around his eyes and forming tiny peepholes with the joints of his fingers, blotting out the blinding aura and allowing him to scan the sky near the sun.
Again the flash, and this time Maynard’s eyes locked on it, a silver gnat against the yellow-blue carpet: an airplane.
He looked for something to signal with, a reflector, a mirror, a shard of polished steel. His feet struck the body of the man he had strangled. His chain. He held the links up to the sun, but they were rust-spotted and dull, and they did not glitter. A wrist watch. He dropped to his knees and turned the body over and fumbled with the shirt cuffs. The man wore a watch, but the band was plastic and the watch itself was covered with a waterproof rubber case. He searched the pockets for a coin, a jack-knife blade, a lighter. He tore open the man’s shirt, hoping to find a medallion or dog tags, and there, dangling from a slender chain, was a gold-plated razor blade, one of the ritual tools of the cocaine fraternity. He unfastened the chain and held the razor blade to the sun.
Devon had been sitti
ng in the copilot’s seat for nearly five hours. Her rear end hurt, and with every bounce of the plane she worried that her bladder might burst. They had descended the entire length of the Bahamas chain, flying low over every sparsely populated island, making two or three passes over the out-islands of the Turks and Caicos group, and had seen nothing remotely encouraging. They had one more island to scout, Great Inagua, and then they would head back for Miami.
She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for, what would be worth landing beside and exploring: an isolated encampment, perhaps, or a solitary boat anchored in a hidden cove. She had no idea what Blair had in mind when he absconded with Justin from New York. They might be in Tahiti by now. But her search had to start somewhere, and when the Today people had offered to let her ride along in their chartered plane, she had accepted without question.
She was convinced that the Today stringer in the seat behind her had no more confidence in the success of his mission—to find Trask—than she had in hers. She didn’t know much about boats, but she knew enough to conclude that it was a waste of time to look for Brendan Trask this far south: There was no possible way Trask could have sailed so great a distance in so few days. Suppose that somehow—miraculously—they did find Trask: What then? Granted, he was supposed to be an amiable fellow, and certainly he appreciated journalistic enterprise, but why should he be expected to put up with being dive-bombed by some nobody from Miami? This stunt wasn’t worthy of Today: It was National Enquirer-type shenanigans, and she wouldn’t blame Trask for telling the reporter to get stuffed.
The pilot dipped the starboard wing, beginning a right turn, and amid the vast expanse of blue, Devon suddenly saw something flash.
“Down there,” she said to the pilot.
“What’s down there?”
“I don’t know. It looks like somebody’s signaling.”
The pilot righted the plane, then dipped the left wing so he could see from his side. “Looks like a party boat. Some dame’s checking her makeup in a mirror.”
“Take us down there,” Devon said. “I want a closer look.”