Aground (6 page)

“Jettison those guns,” Ingram said coldly.

“Come again with the jettison?”

“Throw ‘em over the side.”

“Don’t bug me, Herman. The guns go on that island—”

Ruiz broke in suddenly, in Spanish. “Look! The plane returns.”

Ingram caught himself, but too late. He’d already turned to look. He saw Morrison’s jocose grin, and was filled with a dark and futile rage. That swept the series; he’d been made a fool of by all three of them—Hollister, Morrison, and now Ruiz.

But it hadn’t been a deliberate trick; the plane
was
turning and coming back. “Hit the dirt!” Morrison barked. He grabbed the gun and ducked down the hatch after Ruiz. Ingram watched it silently. Maybe Avery did suspect something. But it was turning again now, in a steep bank only a few hundred feet above the water some miles to the north of them. It was as though Avery was trying to see something below him. At that moment the radio blared in the cabin. Morrison spoke from the hatchway. “Get on the horn. He’s calling you.”

He ran down the ladder. Morrison had already started the transmitter. He passed over the handset and stood to one side, holding the gun. “Careful what you say, and watch me.”

He pressed the transmit button. “This is the
Dragoon
back. What is it? Over.”

Avery’s voice filled the cabin. “There’s something in the water down here. Hold it a minute. I’m coming over it again.”

They waited in tense, hot silence unbroken except for the scratching of static in the loudspeaker. Rae Osborne watched from the hatchway. Then Avery’s voice came on again. “It’s a body, all right. Probably one of your thieves. Seems to be naked except for a pair of shorts. If you bring the raft, I can land and get him aboard.”

He glanced at Morrison. “Tell him you’ll pick him up,” the latter ordered, “and take him into Key West.”

He repeated this.

“Very well,” Avery agreed. “Might save a bit of international red tape, at that. I make the position about three miles north-northeast of you. If you get here while the water’s still flat, you won’t have any trouble finding him. There are some birds sitting on him.”

He saw Mrs. Osborne shudder at the image. Morrison gave a curt gesture that said: Get rid of him. He signed off, and replaced the handset. When they went on deck again, the plane was fading away in the northeast.

Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse once more. “Now, how many of those guns do we have to unload?”

Rae Osborne stared at him. “But what about the man?”

Morrison shrugged. “So what about him?”

“Aren’t we going to do anything at all?”

“Like giving him artificial respiration, maybe? He’s only been dead for three days.”

She took a step toward him, the green eyes blazing. “I’ve got to see him.”

“A waterlogged stiff? Honey, you need help.”

“Listen,” Ingram said, “it won’t take more than thirty minutes to row out there and see if she can identify him. She may know who Hollister was.”

Morrison shook his head. “Fall back, Herman. I couldn’t care less who Hollister was, and we’ve got more to do than stooge around the ocean looking for him.”

“I’m going out there,” Rae Osborne said. She started past him toward the raft, and violence erupted in the sunlit morning like the release of coiled steel springs.

Morrison caught the front of her pullover, yanked her toward him, and slapped her back-handed across the face. She gasped and tried to hit him. Ingram lunged at him just as he drew back his arm and shoved, sending her sprawling along the deck. Ruiz’ arm flashed down, swinging the slablike automatic. Pain exploded inside his head and he fell forward against Morrison, who stood up, pushed him off with the BAR, and chopped a short and brutal right to the side of his jaw. His knees buckled and he fell beside Mrs. Osborne. When he tried to get up, the deck tilted and spun, and there was no strength in his arms. He dropped back. Blood trickled down across his forehead and fell to the deck in little spatting droplets just under his eyes.

“Don’t ever try that again, Herman,” Morrison said. “You’re a big boy, but we’re in the business.”

6

In a moment he was able to sit up, wincing with the pain in his head. Rae Osborne had pushed to a sitting position with her feet on the cockpit cushions. She had an inflamed red spot on the side of her face, and there were tears of frustration and rage in her eyes. “You’re not much help,” she said.

He mopped at the blood on his face with a handkerchief, but succeeded only in smearing it. He threw the handkerchief overboard. A vagrant breath of air riffled the water astern and a gull wheeled and cried out above them in the brassy sunlight. This was about as helpless as you could get, he thought; he’d lasted less than three seconds.

Morrison spoke to Ruiz. “As soon as the Champ’s able to row that raft, we get started. Go down and begin taking the lashings off those cases.”

Ruiz went down the ladder. “How much will we have to unload?” Morrison asked.

Ingram stared coldly. “How would I know?”

“You’re the expert.”

“I don’t even know what you’ve got aboard. Or where the tide was when you piled up here.”

“I don’t know about the tide, but I can tell you what’s aboard. Six hundred rifles, thirty machine guns, fifty BAR’s, a half dozen mortars—”

“I don’t need an inventory. I mean tonnage. Have you got any idea what it weighs?”

Morrison thought for a moment. “The ammo’d be the heaviest. We’ve got over a hundred thousand rounds of thirty-caliber stuff in those two staterooms. I’d guess it all at six to eight tons.”

Ingram made a rough calculation based on a water-line length of fifty-five feet and a beam amidships of sixteen. Call it thirty-five cubic feet displacement per inch of draft at normal water line. Each ton would put her down nearly another full inch. No wonder she’d looked low in the water.

“You’ve got her overloaded at least six inches. If you’d hit any weather she could have foundered or broken her back.”

“Never mind that jazz. How much do we take off?”

“Probably all of it. How long have you been on here?”

“Since Saturday night.”

“And this is Wednesday. She’s never moved at all?”

“No,” Morrison said.

“Has the tide ever come any higher than it is now?”

“How would I know?” Morrison asked. “You think we got anything to measure it with?”

“Use your head. Has the deck ever been any nearer level than it is right now?”

“No. This is about it.”

“Then congratulations. Apparently you plowed on here at full speed on the highest tide of the month.”

“So what do we do, sit here and cry? Let’s get going.”

“If you were bound for the Caribbean, why were you on a northerly heading when you hit?”

Morrison gestured impatiently. “We were trying to turn to get out of here. It was night, like I said, and we couldn’t see anything. And all of a sudden we heard something that sounded like a beach.”

“You turned the wrong way. But I don’t get what you were doing in here over the Bank in the first place. You should have been at least ten miles to the westward.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no navigator. It looks like we could have used one. I tried to get Hollister to proposition you—”

“Wait a minute. You mean you know me?”

“Sure. I thought I recognized you when you came aboard, and when the pilot called you Ingram I had you made.”

“Where did you see me before?”

“In the lobby of the Eden Roc when you went to see Hollister the first time.”

Rae Osborne broke in. “Why did this man Hollister want somebody else to inspect the
Dragoon
instead of going himself?”

Morrison shrugged. “He said the watchman might remember him. He was an old boy friend of the owner, and he’d been aboard before.”

She said nothing, and turned to stare out across the water to the northward. Well, at least her question was answered, Ingram thought. “Whose idea was it, stealing the boat?” he asked.

“Hollister’s. Or whatever you said his name was.”

“Patrick Ives,” she said.

“Anyway, he was supposed to furnish the transportation and the know-how to get us down there. Said he’d been around boats a lot, and used to be a navigator in the Eighth Air Force during the war. From the looks of it, he wasn’t so hot. We could have used you.”

“You did,” Ingram said. “That’s why I’m here. Where did you get the guns?”

“We stole ‘em.”

“All right, I’ll make you a proposition,” Ingram said. “I think I can get this schooner afloat when those guns are off. So we throw them over the side and take the schooner back to Key West. They’re contraband. Nobody can claim them legally, so there’ll be no charge against you except for stealing the boat. I think Mrs. Osborne’ll agree not to press that, if she gets the boat back undamaged, so probably the worst you’d get would be a suspended sentence.”

“Nothing doing. We’re going to deliver the guns.”

The throbbing in his head was agony, and he had to close his eyes against the glare of the sun. What was the matter with the stupid muscle-head; wasn’t there any way you could make him understand? He fought down an impulse to shout. “Listen, Morrison,” he said wearily, “try to use your head, will you? You’re not in a serious jam yet, but if you go through with this you haven’t got a chance. You’ll be facing a federal charge of kidnapping. They’ll run you down and put you away for life.”

“Not me. I’ll be long gone.”

“You think you’re going to hide out in Latin America? Did you ever take a look at yourself?”

“It’s easy when you speak the language and you’ve got money and connections.”

“Not when they want you for something big back here. The U.S. State Department’s got connections too.”

Morrison’s eyes began to grow ugly. “I’m not asking you about this, pal. I’m telling you. We’re going to put those guns on that island. When we get the boat loose, we bring ‘em back.”

Ingram looked out toward the narrow strip of sand. “The raft won’t carry over a couple of hundred pounds at a time. It’ll take the rest of the week.”

“No, I’ve already got it figured out. We won’t have to ferry ‘em all the way. The water looks shallow over there. You haul ‘em to where I can wade out and meet you, and I take ‘em from there while you come back for another load. Like a bucket brigade. Now let’s get going.” He stood up and called down the hatchway. “You all set, Carlos?”

“The ropes are off the left side,” Ruiz replied from below. “I’m starting on the right.”

Ingram looked out at the surface of the water and could see the faint beginnings of movement. The tide had passed high slack and was starting to ebb slowly past the imprisoned hull. Well, let him go ahead and kill himself, he thought; it’d be one less to contend with. Then he shrugged uncomfortably, and knew he couldn’t do it; this wasn’t Ruiz’ fault.

“You’d better tell your boy not to take the lashings off the starboard side,” he said to Morrison. “Not till he’s got room to unpile those cases.”

“Why?” Morrison asked.

“The tide’s started to drop. About two more degrees of port list and you’ll have to bring him out of there in a basket.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right at that. Youse is a good boy, Herman. Maybe we’ll put you on permanent.”

“Go to hell,” he said. “If it’d been you, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

He walked aft to the helmsman’s station while Morrison was talking to Ruiz. Something still didn’t quite ring true; they shouldn’t have been in here over the Bank. He stood frowning at the binnacle. He stepped down into the cockpit, removed the hood, and checked the heading on the compass. The lubber line lay at 008 degrees. There was no compass-deviation card posted anywhere that he could see.

Rae Osborne came aft and stood beside him. “What are we going to do?”

“Just what he says, from the looks of it.”

“Maybe there’ll be a search for us.”

Probably not until it was too late to do any good, Ingram thought, but he said nothing. There was no point in scaring her. She probably didn’t realize how sad this situation was, anyway. Even if they managed to refloat the schooner, their troubles were only beginning. The
Dragoon
was dangerously overloaded, her trim and buoyancy destroyed; in anything except perfect weather, she could founder and go down like a dropped brick. And as for landing a cargo of guns on a hostile coast—His thoughts broke off. She was staring out at the empty horizon to the northward. Well, the chances were a million to one nobody would ever see Ives again, now that the tide had turned and the body was floating seaward.

“All right, Herman, let’s go,” Morrison called out. They went forward to the break of the deckhouse. Ruiz was pushing one of the wooden crates up the companion ladder into the cockpit. Morrison had put on a shirt and a soft straw hat and carried a gallon jug of water in his other hand. “You take me across first,” he said, “and then start bringing the rifles. They’re packed ten to a crate, so each crate’ll go a little over a hundred pounds. The raft ought to carry two at a trip. Dreamboat, you stay here in the cockpit and guide ‘em up the ladder for Ruiz. And don’t bother trying to get to that radio when he’s not looking. We took some of the tubes out of it.”

He gestured with the gun. Any further argument was useless. Ingram stepped down into the raft and passed up his suitcase and Rae Osborne’s purse. Morrison got in and seated himself aft with the BAR across his legs while Ingram cast off the painter. They rowed up the side of the schooner and around the bow. The narrow sand spit ran north and south, its nearest point some three hundred yards off the starboard bow. The channel of slightly deeper water which ran astern of the schooner and westward toward the edge of the Bank continued on around and up the starboard side approximately a hundred yards away, passing between the schooner and the western edge of the spit. Beyond the channel the water appeared to shoal abruptly, judging from its color, extending in a wide and barely submerged flat on all sides of the dry ridge.

There was still no wind. The water lay flat as oil, reflecting the metallic glare of the sun. The day was going to be like the inside of a furnace, Ingram thought; and in a little over an hour the tide would be running out across here at two or three knots. He wondered if Morrison had even thought of that. Probably not; he seemed to be in the grip of obsession and incapable of seeing obstacles at all. They crossed the channel, and the sandy bottom began to come up toward them. Morrison was peering down into the water. “Hold it,” he ordered. He slid his legs over and stood up; the water was only waist deep. They were still a little over a hundred yards from dry ground, and it was approximately twice that far back to the schooner. “All right,” he said. “Start bringing ‘em over.” Ingram turned and rowed back toward the
Dragoon
. The big man waded on ashore through progressively shallower water, put the BAR and his bottle of water on the sand, and stood watching. The pain in Ingram’s head had subsided to a dull throbbing, but the dried blood made his face feel stiff and caked. He dipped up water and washed it while he coldly sized up their chances of escape. You couldn’t give them much. How about trying for it in the raft? The BAR was a short-range weapon and not very accurate at this distance, so if they could give Ruiz the slip—No. The nearest land was the west coast of Andros, seventy-five miles away, and even if they made it before they choked to death on their tongues, they were still nowhere. There were no settlements on that side, nothing but swamp and mosquitoes and a maze of stagnant and forbidding waterways; they’d never get across the island. Forget the raft. They had to take the schooner. Play for Ruiz, he thought; they’d be working together loading the crates onto the raft. Watch for a chance to yank him overboard and make him lose the gun.

He came alongside. Ruiz had four cases out of the cabin now, stacked on deck beside the forward end of the cockpit with their ends projecting outward. The Latin himself was standing in the cockpit behind them with the .45 stuck in his trousers.

Ingram caught one of the lifeline stanchions. “Give me a hand.”

Ruiz shook his head. “You don’t need any help.”

“So. A general.”

“Go ahead. Slide them down.”

“El Libertador
himself. It’s too bad we haven’t got a horse so you could pose for an equestrian statue.”

Ruiz looked bored. “Put away the needle, Ingram. You’re wasting your time.”

Apparently he’d guarded prisoners before. It didn’t look very promising.

“Cómo está la cabeza?”
Ruiz asked.

So he couldn’t resist the temptation to do a little needling of his own, Ingram thought. “The head is nothing, my General,” he replied in Spanish. “In the great cause of freedom, I spit on all discomfort. Rut let us consider the General’s neck. How does it stretch?”

“Shut up and start moving those crates,” Ruiz said in English, “before you get another lump on your head.”

Ingram shrugged, and began easing one of the boxes down into the raft. It was an awkward maneuver, but he managed it without capsizing. He slid another down beside it. They lay between his outstretched feet and projected out over the stern.

“Will it carry another?” Ruiz asked. “See for yourself,
cabrón.”
The raft was down by the stern, and cranky. One more would make it unmanageable or capsize it. “Okay. Get going.”

He rowed up around the bow of the schooner and across the channel. Morrison had waded out again, without the gun, and was standing in waist-deep water waiting for him. The shirt stretched across his massive chest and shoulders was wet with sweat. “Shake it up, Herman. You’re taking too long.”

“This is not my idea,” Ingram replied coldly.

“Never mind your idea. Try dragging your feet, and you’ll get worked over with a gun barrel.” He heaved one of the crates over his left shoulder, took the other under his arm, and went plowing across the flat toward dry ground. As if they were empty, Ingram thought. He looked at his watch; it was seven minutes past eight. At the end of the next round trip he checked the time again and saw it had taken eleven minutes. Call it five trips an hour. Two hundred pounds each time—that would mean at least fourteen hours to move seven tons. And just one way. They’d still have to wait for the next tide, try to get her off, and bring it all back. And he was clocking it at slack water; wait’ll that tide started to run.