BILLY WAS IN THE cockpit on the phone talking to Buck Bethards, telling him what they were up to.
Dara in the bow said to Helene, “Why doesn’t he go shoot the fucking ship and quit talking about it?” She was having a glass of champagne, promising herself just one.
“He doesn’t think it’s dark enough yet.” Helene lowered her voice to say, “Listen, I hate to tell you but he isn’t a deadeye when he’s ripped. I worked up my nerve and told him he can’t hit shit and he knows it. Billy goes, ‘If I can’t hit a tanker a thousand feet long with my eyes closed…’ He had to stop to think of something. I said, ‘Well, if you can’t, you gonna quit drinking or shooting?’”
Billy’s voice came from the cockpit to tell them, “He hasn’t located the guy yet, but he’s onto a lead looks good.”
“He’s got Buck trying to find Jama,” Helene said. “Billy thinks it’s funny, his ace gets popped by the guy he’s looking for.”
Dara said, “If Billy’s not sober enough to shoot, I mean at the gas ship—”
“I don’t know if he wants to now,” Helene said. “He’ll change his mind, but doesn’t want to look like a wimp and it’s too late to get out of it. Billy and his big mouth. He’s even told me, like during tender moments while we’re doing it? He says sometimes he talks too much. I want to tell him, ‘Jesus, will you shut up?’”
“Let’s see what happens,” Dara said.
XAVIER FOLLOWED THE BEACH hiking over coral north but mostly west to the cove they’d seen earlier in the Donzi. He crossed the cove’s entrance, water to his waist, worked his way in and there was Buster in the mangrove, knowing it was his and Dara’s Buster once he got close enough to see marks he recognized on the gunnel, the wheelhouse glass discolored, turning yellow. He could tell Dara believed it was the Buster the way her hand had gripped his shoulder. It was all right, she had no reason to visit the boat. But he did.
Xavier wanting to look for something he forgot, might still be aboard in a drawer.
He stepped up on the deck, ducked into the wheelhouse and stood looking down the ladder. He raised his voice to ask, “Anybody home?” Waited and said, “Permission to come aboard? This Buster is an old friend of mine.”
No sound came from below.
Xavier took his time on the few steps of the ladder, ducking his head, then raising it to see all the way to the mattress in the bow, no one aboard. Buster didn’t look like she’d been cleaned. Xavier said, “Well, let’s see if it’s here.” Something he thought he’d packed but wasn’t in his bag at the hotel: literature about Dara and her movies he’d kept right here in a drawer. Opened the drawer and saw pages of Dara’s notes, changes she wished she’d made in pictures released years go. Dara looking back when she made those notes. Looking ahead now to make something of these bad boys she’d met.
The literature, a publicity folder with her pictures, wasn’t in the drawer. He knew he’d put it there and if the boat hadn’t been cleaned, who took it? Djibouti Marine people?
He turned to leave thinking of good times aboard, a month of leading up to their getting to it. He’d experience a feeling for when it was time to become intimate again. Wait for Dara, movie scenes on her mind, to show signs of turning horny. He saw the life jacket on a seat and a box of some groceries on the table. He pulled the seat out and saw two holes in the jacket and bloodstains. Blood all over the inside of the jacket.
Where was the one brought the groceries?
Where was the rubber dinghy?
FROM ACROSS THE COVE in cover, Jama watched Xavier board the trawler and come out after a while and stand on the deck looking around, holding the life jacket Ubu had been wearing.
Man, you plan your moves and somebody comes along to fuck you up. He hadn’t seen the life jacket as a problem. Or Ubu. They’d fish him out of the water one of these days…Yeah? What did Ubu or the life jacket have to do with him?
He watched the high-ass nigga thirty yards from him going out to the beach, stopping now to look at something, footprints? Showing the Reebok’s tread? He could shoot him. Run up calling for him to wait and take him out with one shot. They hear it and say what was that? Come looking for Xavier and he’d have to shoot all three, pick them off or walk up firing at them. Even Dara, without talking to her first. Maybe have to come back and go through this whole fucking drill again. What if the tanker wasn’t here? Got moved someplace and he couldn’t find it?
Let the high-ass nigga go. Catch up with him later on. More clouds were blowing in, making the look of the island dismal. Be dark early. Another hour, that’s all. Make the phone call and watch the ship blow up. Go to all this trouble—he had to see it happen and thought, They’d see it too, wouldn’t they?
For the first time he wondered about something should’ve been on his mind. What were these people doing out here popping champagne corks a few miles from the gas tanker?
XAVIER WAS BACK, EVERYBODY ashore now sitting under one of the thatched umbrellas. They had dessert left, no more oysters, and the last bottle of champagne not yet opened. Xavier showed them the vest with bullet holes and the blood. Said he didn’t see anybody but he might’ve been seen.
He said to Dara, “I know what you thinkin.”
Dara said, “He’s al Qaeda, he blows up ships.”
“So does Billy,” Xavier said. “He must be with the Republicans’ al Qaeda.”
Billy said, “You gonna tell me what that means, the whites’ al Qaeda?”
“I doubt it means anythin but sounds like it does. The one on the Buster saw us or he wouldn’t be hidin out now. Has his dinghy…I think he forgot his groceries and jug of water.”
Billy said, “Or he doesn’t want to be seen by anyone on the island. He could be an escaped convict, if they have any around here. Your Buster doesn’t have a thing to do with our venture. I say let’s get the show on the road. Muff, my weapon, please, and my vest with the hot new loads. I mean the new hot loads. It could be construed as hot because they’re new, and I don’t mean that.”
Xavier listened and was patient, seeing he’d have to take the man’s gun, but at the right time. He still wanted to see the show.
JAMA FOUND HIGH GROUND where it rose on the other side of the bay, inland, the coral getting piled up over thousands of years of tides, maybe thirty feet above the gulf. It should be high enough to make his call. Coming here he saw who had to be army people on the island. Girls with tats coming out of their bikinis, one with a fish jumping up her arm. Girls from pokey towns come over to where everything’s the opposite and got their bodies fucked up with drawings. It took him ten minutes to get up to the high ground and he saw Aphrodite way out there. A spotlight from the ship’s bridge shining down on the five LNG tanks.
Qasim hadn’t known what the shape charges would do to frozen gas. Rip it open, thaw it out quick with the heat from the blast? Qasim said if you were closer than three miles it could burn your skin. He said oxygen in the air kept the fire burning. Could blow this way or that. Have to be careful it doesn’t come at you.
Any of the GI chicks happen to stroll by, he’d say, “Want to see what the end of the world’s gonna be like?” They weren’t too bad-looking for girls you run into on an island ten miles from the end of the line. Tattooed white girls drinking Cosmos, checking him out. He’d tell them to look at that ship out there all lit up. “See what happens I point my finger at it, the kind of power I have?” His other hand in his pants touching the cell number committed to his memory. He points at the ship saying, “Be gone,” and the motherfucker explodes. The GI chicks freak.
If he tried to pull out tonight he’d be in open water two hours, searchlights swiping at him to pin him down. The best thing was to stay on the island. Wipe Buster clean and hang with the GI chicks. Tell them he worked on the base doing translations. Wear his Brown University T-shirt and recall some of Hunter’s bullshit about college days. Get the GI chicks on his side, he’d be home.
Jama told himself to pay attention now, looki
ng out at the lit-up ship. You ready to make the call? He believed he was.
“LET HER DRIFT NOW,” Billy said, “correcting enough to give me clear shots from the port side of the bow. I say go, you cut to starboard in a half circle and we’ll be tying up at the Kempinski dock ten minutes later, assuming we get sixty out of these Mercs. The only trouble, ships’ll be coming out of Djib and put their spots on us. I’ll slow down and wave and ask the officer hanging over the rail what that big explosion was. Muff’ll be looking up at the ship and her captain. This officer asks too many questions, I say, ‘Lemme talk to your skipper.’ Loved destroyers, we called him Tin Can Courtney. Or whatever his name is.”
Xavier said, “What if it’s Jackabowski?”
“He’d be down in the engine room,” Billy said. “We get stopped again, don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”
Xavier said, “You want to steer for a while?”
“No, I’m ready to shoot. The gun’s loaded. I fire both barrels, open the breech and the Muffer slips in two more high-explosive rounds. I fire, hit two more pods and that might be plenty.” Billy was holding the Holland & Holland in his firing position.
Muff said, “Can we practice doing it, Skipper?”
Billy lowered the rifle and opened the breech. Dara, eye to her camera, tripped and fell against Billy as Muff grabbed the rifle, jacked it closed, put it against her shoulder and fired the six-hundred-caliber Nitro Express rifle at the gas tanker.
IN THIS MOMENT, JAMA holding the cell in front of him, pressed the final digit of the twelve numbers he knew by heart…
And the gas ship exploded five times.
Jama, looking right at it, said, “Jesus,” awed by the sight and the air-splitting sounds, rocking booms like none he’d ever heard, waves of heat coming at him from the inferno he’d set off.
THE ELEPHANT GUN KICKED Helene hard, slammed her into Billy’s arms to see the sky on fire, Helene saying in a murmur, “I hit the ship?”
Billy said, “Who else?”
Her shoulder killing her, she groaned, saying, “Really, I hit it?”
Billy told her, “Look at what you did, Muff.”
The fire rising in a fury to sweep over the tanks to the stack of decks in the stern, fire climbing to cover the bridge. Now gas was oozing out of the hull’s broken plates to form vapor pools that ignited and burst into fireballs, exploding in the clouds hanging low over the Aphrodite, the ship consumed by its cargo, burning to death.
Billy saw the vapor cloud coming toward them on the water and yelled at Xavier, “Go, for Christ sake. Now.”
Xavier powered up and kicked the Donzi into the arc of a circle, Dara turning to keep her camera on the fire, and he got the Donzi around to do what Billy wanted: planing out of there at sixty miles an hour to be home in ten minutes.
Being good citizens it took them almost a half hour, slowing down when navy patrol boats came out of the dark to put spotlights on them. They were looked over till Billy got on his bullhorn.
“We have an injured young woman aboard who needs medical attention. In severe pain with a separated shoulder. Hurts like hell.”
They took off again and Billy said, “Muff, lemme have a look.” He got her in kind of a headlock, Muff screaming, Dara shooting the procedure, and Billy yanked her shoulder back in the socket. “We’ll get an X-ray, have you taped up. You’ll be left-handed for a while, but I don’t think it’ll interfere with anything. I’ll help you put your clothes on, help you take them off…”
Helene was quiet now, smoking a cigarette. She said, “I can’t believe I did it.”
“You only blew up a thousand-foot tanker with one shot,” Billy said, hugging and kissing Helene trying to hold him off. “Only you can’t tell anybody you did it, Muff, or we could get thrown in jail.”
“Nuts,” Helene said.
Dara got close to Xavier in the cockpit, wind whipping past them. She said, “Muff didn’t come close to hitting that ship.”
“Aimin at the sky when she fired,” Xavier said. “Now you gonna say, I told you. They somebody else settin off explosions.”
Dara looked like she was thinking about it. “If I use the scene in a feature, does it seem too much of a coincidence? He blows it up as Muff fires?”
“You want to change what happened?”
“No, but I have to make it believable.”
“You still aren’t sure it was him.”
“I know it was,” Dara said.
“We don’t see him do it.”
“But we know he’s on the island.”
JAMA WOULD STAND HERE watching the fire till it went out, man, the weird shapes it was taking, but an idea hit him and it was a honey. A way to get shuck of the boat. Try to keep it hidden, the navy’d come ashore and find it soon enough. People coming to investigate what happened. He’d push it free of the mangrove to the open sea. Start the engine, aim it at the ship on fire, set the pilot and jump off. Watch Buster head out there to get burned up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
FROM THE COVE JAMA climbed over the island again to the beach facing east. Five young white folks, three girls and a couple of dudes, were watching the ship out in the dark still burning away. Jama walked up in his Brown University shirt, bag over his shoulder, asking, “Was that the most intense fire you ever saw in your life?” He said, “Hi, I’m Hunter,” like a movie star doing an ad on TV. “Man, that fire was burnin crazy, shootin up to the sky…What you suppose set it off?”
All these GI people, keyed up but feeling no pain, were still in their swimsuits drinking beer. One of the dudes being cool said, “It was a combustible gas tanker and it combusted. They can do that.”
Jama said, “Yeah, but something set it off.”
The other dude said, “Sparks, man. Prob’ly some asshole smoking.”
A chick with Jackie tattooed blue and red on her shoulder said, “I got ten bucks says it was al Qaeda.”
Jama liked this Jackie, blond hair and a cute nose. He’d bet she had pure-white titties in there, the rest of her tanned up good. He said, “I come here this afternoon on the water taxi. Took a six-mile hike around Moucha while y’all are havin fun at the beach. If I was to tell you I’m on a undercover assignment for the CIA, would you believe me?”
“And we’re missionaries,” Jackie said, “out here converting towelheads.”
“They become Jesus-loving Christians,” the dude thinking he was cool said, “or we shoot them. I don’t know why we don’t anyway.”
“You don’t believe I’m CIA?” Jama said. “All right, how about this? I was on a tanker full of gooks I couldn’t speak a word to or get what they were saying, so I jumped ship.”
“That’s more like it,” Jackie said. “They looking for you?”
“I doubt they even miss me.”
Jackie said, “You poor guy, you want a Cosmo?”
THEY TOOK JAMA HIGHER up on the beach to a thatched-roof shelter, no walls, but beach chairs and all their stuff here: sleeping bags, ice chests half-full of beer, two bottles of vodka left and cranberry juice, Jackie making Cosmopolitans for the group. Jama said, “Y’all know how to live, don’t you? You think I could join up, do my basic and get sent to Djibouti?”
“Put in for it,” the dude thought he was cool said. “The assignment office goes, ‘Jesus Christ, this guy wants duty in the asshole of the world.’”
“Hey,” Jama said. “Don’t you know I’m putting it on?”
Jackie said, “But you were on a ship full of gooks?”
“Learn Tagalog,” Jama said, “or keep my mouth shut. I was on it and got off it. Tanker name Manila Bay.”
By the time they saw lights coming in from the sea, the shelter was quiet, two of the girls asleep in lounge chairs.
Jama said, “I see the U.S. Navy’s about to visit. Want to know did any of us happen to blow up that ship.” He peeled off his Brown University T-shirt, rolled it up and stuck it in the bag with his pistol.
MARINES WITH SIDEARMS AND
flashlights came in first, shining the beams over the group, stopping on bikinis, girls waking up with scowls, then pushing up once they saw the suits—not wearing suits, but that’s who they were—no question in Jama’s mind—behind the flashlights. One of them back there said, “You people are all air force?”
“Except Hunter,” Jackie said. “He’s with the CIA.”
The invisible suit said, “Is that so? Which one’s Hunter?”
Jama said, “I told her”—and got flashlights in his face—“I worked for the CIO, not the CIA, the labor people.”
“What’s it stand for?”
“Which?”
“CIO.”
“Congress of Industrial Opportunists, the higher-ups, living off the sweat of their fellow man, probably never worked a shift in their life.”
The suits in shirtsleeves talked among themselves. A voice said, “You’re all air force?”
Still in their beach chairs they nodded, said yeah, the 449th, watched the flashlights sweep away to follow the suits leaving.
For a few seconds Jama caught sight of a man wearing a baseball cap and Hawaiian shirt hanging out of his jeans. Saw him in a beam of light before he turned away. Jama got up and went to the edge of the thatch overhang. He didn’t see him now, the beach full of navy people. He hadn’t recognized the guy. It wasn’t he was familiar, but looked out of place among the gang of investigators.
He thought of Buster in the mangrove. He’d better move if he wanted to get rid of her.
JAMA FOLLOWED THE BEACH south ducking patrol boats sweeping their spotlights over the coral with no idea—Jama believed—what they were looking for. He cut across the bend in the island to the south shore of the beach, quiet here, no boats messing up the dark, and came to the cove where he’d left Buster. In the wheelhouse when he saw Dara go by in the speedboat. Heard the boat circle back and saw her again. He was in water to his chest by the time he reached Buster, threw his flight bag in the wheelhouse and got to work untangling her from the mangrove. Once she was in the channel Jama pulled himself aboard.