Aground (9 page)

“I think you had a nightmare,” she said. “I heard you cry out, and you were trembling as if you were cold, so I put the blanket over you. Then you began to beat at the ground with your hands.”

“It was just a bad dream,” he said.

“Oh-oh. Somebody’s coming from the boat.”

He turned his head and saw the raft approaching across the flat, dark mirror of the sea. “Remember the signal,” she said softly.

“Oliver. But be sure you’re behind him.”

“I will be. Good luck.” She turned away and went over to pick up her purse by the stack of crated rifles, and was combing her hair when Ruiz grounded the raft in the shallows and motioned to her. Ingram watched her wade out, a bedraggled but indomitable blonde girl with a black eye and torn calypso pants, and heard the brassy idiocy of her greeting. “Hi, Pancho. I feel like hell, I theeeenk. And if I ever catch the lousy parrot that slept in my mouth . . .” They moved off toward the
Dragoon.

Ingram stood up, pushing his leg straight against the stiffened tendons and aware of the soreness in every muscle of his body. You’re too old and beat-up for this kind of duty, he told himself. He wondered why she had put the blanket over him, but dismissed the speculation as futile; he’d never figure her out. Walking out into the water, he scooped up some and scrubbed his face, and noted professionally that the tide appeared to be at a standstill. It was slack high water. Ruiz came back with the raft. He got in and pulled out toward the
Dragoon,
and as they came alongside he studied her critically. She was still hard and fast aground, not even completely upright yet. Solid-looking wooden boxes with metal straps were lined up along the port rail and stacked in the cockpit. She was gray and ghostlike in the dim light of early morning, and everything was saturated with dew. Morrison stood on the crates in the cockpit, the inevitable BAR slung in his arm and an expression of driving impatience on his face. It was clear he was in an ugly mood. “How about it?” he asked, as Ingram stepped aboard.

“A long way to go yet,” Ingram said.

“All right, here’s the ammo. Twenty-five boxes of it, around two hundred pounds to a box. Ruiz and I carried it up while you were flaked out over there on your fat with Mama-san. Probably have to take ‘em over one at a time. Ruiz’ll put a rope on ‘em and help lower ‘em into the raft so you don’t drop any.”

“Do we get anything to eat?” Ingram asked.

“There’s a mug of coffee and some Spam. That’s all anybody’s going to get till this boat’s unloaded.”

Rae Osborne was seated aft by the binnacle smoking a cigarette. “How about breaking out the rum?” she asked sulkily. “I think I’ve got crabgrass on my teeth.”

Morrison whirled on her. “You lay off the sauce or we’ll tie you up. We got enough to do without dodging some drunk staggering around in the way. You can have some coffee.”

She sniffed. “Coffee! Big deal.”

“And you better remember to stay clear of Ruiz. He’s fussy about people coming up behind him, and he’ll bend your teeth.”

“Ruiz and what other wet-back? Don’t forget I own this boat, little man. And I could buy you in sets, for book-ends.”

Ruiz stared through and beyond her without any expression at all. Morrison grunted contemptuously, and turned away. She was doing fine, Ingram thought, as he sipped his coffee; then he remembered the night in Nassau and wondered just how much of it was acting. She baffled him. He got permission to visit the head, with Ruiz following him with the Colt, and then rowed Morrison over to the sand spit. The labor began. When he came alongside each time, Ruiz had one of the boxes balanced at the edge of the deck with a line around it and would stand back in the cockpit to lower away while Ingram settled it onto the bottom of the raft. They were brutally heavy for their size, and he wondered if they would move all of them before the fabric bottom gave way. At the other end, however, Morrison hoisted them to his shoulder seemingly without effort and strode across the flat toward dry ground. The sun rose, and grew hot. The tide began to ebb. And still Ruiz’ guard was impregnable.

Ingram could see Rae Osborne moving about the after deck apparently at will when he was away from the schooner, but the moment he came alongside Ruiz motioned her astern and away from him. She cajoled, whined, threatened, and grew abusive, trying to get a drink, and all of it availed her nothing. A light breeze sprang up from the southeast around nine a.m., but in half an hour it died away and the heat grew unbearable as the sun attacked them from all directions, reflected from a sea as smooth as polished steel. They stopped for an hour and a half during the peak of the ebb, but were back at it by eleven. By 12:30 the tide had passed low slack and was beginning to flood again. They had unloaded sixteen of the boxes of ammunition, a little over a ton and a half. And still she’d had no chance at Ruiz. They had the rum put away where she couldn’t find it, and feigning drunkenness was obviously out of the question.

On the next trip, however, he caught a change in the pattern. Maybe she had solved it. She was below when he came alongside, and didn’t return to the deck until after he was loaded and pulling away. She moved listlessly, as though she were ill. He delivered the box to Morrison and rowed back. This time she sat quietly in the after end of the cockpit until the loading operation was completed and he was clear of the schooner’s side. Then she arose, slightly doubled over, and hurried toward the ladder.

“Again?” Ruiz asked.

“So you must have bad water on here,” she snapped.

Ruiz shrugged. “Water? How would you know?” But she was gone down the ladder.

All right, Ingram thought; I read you loud and clear. But it probably wouldn’t be the next trip; she’d build it up more subtly than that. The next did go by without incident. It was after one now, and the flood was quickening. When he came alongside on the return, butterflies moved softly inside his stomach; one mistake, or one tiny lag in reaction time, and he might be dead within the next few minutes. She was seated on the deck with her feet on the cockpit cushions, aft on the opposite side. He gave her only a passing glance and caught the lifeline stanchion. The box of ammunition was balanced on the edge of the deck just level with his shoulder, and Ruiz had hold of the line.

She leaned forward slightly. “Don’t stand between me and that ladder, Oliver.”

Ruiz gave her an indifferent glance as she stood up. Ingram reached for the box, walked it over the edge of the scupper, and let Ruiz take the strain on the line just as she started up the deck beyond him. He saw her turn and fall, and at the precise instant she landed on Ruiz’ shoulders he gave a savage yank on the line. The two of them fell forward onto the cushions on the low side of the cockpit, just in front of him. The box of ammunition struck the edge of the raft and almost capsized it as it plummeted into the water. He had hold of the lifeline and was lunging upward then, throwing a turn of the raft’s painter around the lifeline as he went over it onto the deck. Ruiz had pushed to his feet, but Rae Osborne was still fast to his back with her arms locked around his waist and over the flat slab of the automatic. The Latin clawed at her hands, broke her grip, and pulled the gun free just as Ingram crashed into them. Rae Osborne was whirled free of the tangle and slammed back against the cushions on the starboard side as the two men went down locked together in the bottom of the cockpit. Ingram could feel the hard weight of the gun between their bodies, and got a hand around the muzzle.

Not a word had been uttered, and there was no sound except the sibilant scrape of canvas shoes against the deck, and the meaty impacts of flesh against flesh and of furious bodies against wood, and the tortured gasps of breathing. Ruiz was incredibly strong for a man of his slender build, but not strong enough. Ingram got the other hand around his wrist, locked it in a paralyzing grip, and slowly forced the gun to his right until it was out from between their bodies. He twisted savagely at the muzzle, and tore it from Ruiz’ grasp. Pushing back, he sat up with his back against the binnacle, switched the gun end for end in his hand, and leveled it at Ruiz’ face as he fought for breath. He clicked off the safety, which Ruiz had never had a chance to do.

“Go below,” he said to Rae Osborne. “Bring up some of that line they used for lashings.”

She went down the ladder. Ruiz sat up and slid backward, his eyes never leaving the gun. It was intensely silent for a moment as they both came to rest, and Ingram was conscious for the first time that there had been no firing from Morrison. He must have seen it. Then it occurred to him that with the
Dragoon’s
port list and their sitting in the cockpit they were out of sight now, and even if the big man had had time to go back and pick up the BAR he was too much the pro to shoot when there was nothing to shoot at.

“When you come back,” he called to Rae Osborne, “don’t stand up. Crawl back to where I am.”

“Right, Skipper. I’ve got some rope now.”

Ruiz said softly, “You’re not going to tie me up.”

Ingram centered the gun on his chest. “But I am,
amigo.”

“I won’t go back. Go ahead and shoot.”

“Who’d you kill?”

Ruiz made no reply.

“Was it Ives?”

Ruiz still said nothing.

“Where did you hide the tubes you took out of the radiophone?”

“We threw them over the side,” Ruiz said. Rae Osborne’s face appeared then in the companion hatch and she crawled out into the cockpit with the line in her hand. “Don’t move,” Ingram warned Ruiz as she slid past him. I’ll have to beat him up before I can tie him, he thought, and looked forward to it with distaste. But it was the only way; she couldn’t hold him still with the gun. He wouldn’t pay any attention to it.

Rae Osborne handed him the line and started to turn to face Ruiz. Then she gasped, and cried out, “The raft!”

Ingram’s eyes shifted to the left. The painter was gone from the wire lifeline. At the same instant, Ruiz leaped to his feet, got one foot up on deck, and dived over the starboard side, all in one continuous motion. Ingram cursed and sprang up. He could see him under the water, swimming straight out from the schooner. The raft was some thirty or forty yards away, being carried eastward on the flooding tide. It was easy to see what had happened. Either his own lunge when he’d come aboard or the impact of the falling case of ammunition had propelled it aft far enough for the tide to carry it under the stern, and the single turn he’d been able to take with the painter hadn’t held it. He tracked Ruiz with the gun. He was coming up now, less than fifteen yards away.

His head broke the surface. He shook water from his face and opened his eyes, and for a fraction of a second that seemed like an hour to Ingram they looked squarely at each other across the sights of the gun. Ingram tried to pull the trigger. Then he sighed gently and let his arm drop. Ruiz turned and began to swim, not even bothering to dive again. He knew I couldn’t do it, Ingram thought. Rae Osborne was beside him now, and she cried out, “We can’t let him get it!”

Bitterly, without speaking, Ingram held out the gun to her. She pushed it away, and said, “No, I mean shoot the raft.”

He raised the gun, and shot, but he was low. The bullet made a little splash six or eight feet short of the raft. He raised the muzzle slightly, but before he could fire again, two small geysers erupted in the water just under them and something slammed into the deckhouse off to their left with a shower of splinters. “Down!” Ingram snapped. They dropped back into the cockpit. The professional combat team was in action now; Morrison was covering Ruiz with the BAR.

Ingram raised his head to peer over the edge of the deck. The raft was at least seventy-five yards away now; the chances of his hitting anything at that distance with a handgun were too dim to justify wasting the ammunition. A couple of holes wouldn’t disable it, anyway; they’d find a way to plug them. He looked to the left, and could see Morrison. He was about two hundred yards away, wading out on the flat south and west of the sand spit to get as near the schooner as possible and to try to intercept the raft if Ruiz failed to catch it. Ingram estimated the line of its drift and saw he wasn’t going to make it unless he dropped the gun and swam; the water was nearly up to his chest now, and was growing deeper. Hope flared for a moment, and then died. It didn’t matter; Ruiz was overhauling it.

Morrison was ignoring them now that Ruiz no longer needed cover. They stood up and watched bitterly as the latter caught the raft and pulled himself aboard. Beyond him, Morrison brandished the BAR above his head in jubilation.

“Do you suppose they’ll try to come aboard right now?” Rae asked.

“I don’t know,” Ingram said. “They might wait till dark if they know for sure we can’t get the telephone working. . . .” His voice trailed off then as he stared out at the raft. Ruiz had picked up the oars, but he wasn’t pulling toward Morrison. He was headed due south, away from both the schooner and the sand spit.

“What is it?” Rae Osborne asked, puzzled. “Where’s he going?”

“Over the hill,” Ingram said softly. He shook his head. A hundred miles—with no compass, and no water.

Morrison was plunging ahead, beckoning violently with his arm. Then he stopped and leveled the BAR. Ruiz kept right on rowing. They saw the burst chew up the surface behind him and come upward across the raft, and then his body shook and jumped under the impact and he fell sideways and rolled over with his head and shoulders in the water. The collapsing raft spun slowly around in spreading pink and drifted away to the eastward on the tide. Rae Osborne made a retching sound and turned away.

9

Morrison had turned and was wading back to the sand spit.

Rae Osborne sank down unsteadily on the cockpit cushions. “Why do you suppose he did it? Ruiz, I mean.”

Ingram shook his head. “Whatever his reasons were, he took ‘em with him. I think he’d finally just had all of this thing he could stomach. He wasn’t Morrison’s type of goon.”

“I think Morrison’s a psychopath.”

“Ruiz was probably beginning to have the same idea.”

“At least Morrison didn’t get the raft. But how will losing it affect us?”

“Not a great deal,” Ingram replied. “I was going to use it to carry out the kedge anchor, but I can still swing it. We’d better get started, though. It’ll be high tide in around three hours.”

“Rut what about the radio?”

“We’ll try that first. But don’t bet on it.”

They went down the ladder. The air was stifling below decks, with a sodden and lifeless heat that seemed to press in on them with almost physical weight. There were still some thirty or forty wooden cases stacked along the sides of the large after cabin, and the deck was littered with discarded rope lashings. He turned to the radiotelephone on its shelf aft on the port side. He loosened the knurled thumbscrews and slid out the drawer containing the transmitter section. Four of the tubes were gone from the sockets. Rae Osborne looked at him questioningly.

“Ruiz told me they threw them overboard,” Ingram said. “He could have been lying, of course, but I’m not so sure. They wouldn’t have let you wander around on here so freely if there’d been any chance of getting this thing operating again.”

“That’s right, too. But at least we can try.”

He nodded. “And another thing. While you’re searching, keep an eye open for a diving mask. I could use one, and most boats have a few kicking around somewhere. You start up in the crew’s quarters and work back through the galley. I’ll start here and go forward. But first I’d better check Morrison.”

There was a pair of big 7-X-50 glasses in a bracket above the navigator’s table on the starboard side. He grabbed these and went on deck. Crouching in the cockpit, he focused them on the sand spit. At first he couldn’t see the man, and began to feel uneasy. Then he swept the area around the piled boxes again and caught a momentary glimpse of the broad back just behind them. He was bent over, working on something on the ground. Ingram nodded. Trying to chew his way into those boxes, he thought; he’s got six hundred rifles over there and enough ammunition for two or three small wars. He’ll try his best to keep us pinned down here till he can make it back aboard.

He returned below and began the search for the tubes. He went over every inch of the after cabin, moving the crated guns around to get at things. He searched the drawers under the bunks, and the spaces beneath the drawers, the chart stowage, medicine locker, inside the RDF and the all-wave radio, book racks, clothing lockers, and even in the bilge. He found a carton of radiotelephone spare parts which contained several tubes, but they were apparently all for the receiver; at any rate, none matched the type numbers stamped beside the empty sockets. He moved into the two double staterooms that faced each other across the narrow passageway connecting the main cabin and the galley, but found nothing except the suitcase which had apparently belonged to Ives.

By this time Rae Osborne had been through everything in the galley. “No tubes,” she said. “But here’s a diving mask I found in a locker up forward.” They went aft. Ingram looked at his watch; it was 2:20 p.m.

“Scratch the radiotelephone,” he said. “So we either refloat the schooner or stay here.”

“Can we do it?” she asked.

“I think so—” He broke off suddenly and listened. She had heard it too, and looked at him with some alarm. It was a rifle shot, coming to them faintly across the water. There was another. She waited tensely, and then shook her head with a rueful smile. “Makes me nervous, waiting for it to hit.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” he said. “If it’s going to hit anything, it already has before you hear the shot. The bullet travels about twice as fast as the sound. I think he’s sighting in one of those rifles. Keep listening.”

He had hardly finished speaking when something struck the hull just forward of them with a sharp
thaaack,
followed a fraction of a second later by the sound of the shot. She nodded.

There were four or five more shots, and then the firing ceased. “He’s warning us to stay off the deck, so we can’t do anything about getting her afloat,” Ingram explained.

She looked worried. “What do we have to do? And can we do it?”

“I think so. The first thing is to finish lightening ship. I’ll need the mattresses off all those bunks.”

She gave him a burlesque salute, and a lopsided smile that was inhibited on one side by the grandfather of all shiners. “One order of mattresses coming up. I wouldn’t know what for, but you seem to know what you’re doing.”

He grinned briefly. “Let’s just hope you still think so twenty-four hours from now.”

While she was bringing the mattresses, he picked out three of the long wooden boxes that apparently contained disassembled machine guns, and shoved them up the ladder. After going into the cockpit himself but staying down to keep out of sight, he laboriously worked them up onto the deck and lined them up end-to-end along the starboard side of the cockpit. When he was putting the second one in place, Morrison began shooting again. Two bullets struck the hull, one directly below him. She was pushing the mattresses up the ladder now. There were ten altogether. He propped six up along the outside of the machine-gun boxes and laid four in a pile atop the deckhouse just forward of the hatch. They should shield the cockpit against direct gunfire and the danger of flying splinters. They knelt for a moment behind them, resting in the shade of the awning. “Cozy,” she said appreciatively. Just then Morrison opened fire again with a string of three shots. All three of them struck the same spot, the outer mattress propped against the forward machine-gun box.

Ingram frowned. “With iron sights, at three hundred yards? He’s bragging.” Two more slapped against the same mattress; they could see the upper edge kick as they hit. He grabbed the glasses and peered cautiously over the ones atop the deckhouse. Morrison was firing from a prone position, using a rest made up of one of the cases and what appeared to be a rolled blanket, the one they’d left over there. But it was the rifle that caught his eye and caused him to whistle softly; it had a telescopic sight.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Scope-sighted deal,” he explained. “Apparently some of those were either sniper’s rifles or sporting guns.”

“That’s bad, I take it?”

“Not particularly, but I’d have been just as happy with something a little less specialized.” He was thinking of having to take that kedge anchor out; it was beginning to look considerably less simple. Morrison could shoot, and he had something to shoot with.

She looked at him curiously. “You sound like another gun expert. Were you one of those jungle commandos too?”

He shook his head. “I was in the Navy. I never shot a rifle during the whole war, except in boot camp. But I used to do a lot of hunting.”

“Where?”

“Texas, and Sonora, when I was a boy.”

“Where are you from?”

“Corpus Christi. My father was a bar pilot there.”

She looked around musingly. “You don’t suppose this might set a new record of some sort for the places Texans run into each other?”

“I doubt it. But I’d better get to work.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Nothing at the moment. Just stay back and keep down.” He went below and began shoving the heavy wooden cases up the ladder. When he had several in the cockpit, he came up, lifted them onto the deck on the port side, and shoved them overboard. There was something very satisfying in the splash they made; he was sick to death of Morrison and his damned guns. It was a long, hard job, and he was winded and drenched with sweat as he took a last look around the cabin where nothing remained now of its late cargo but the confused litter of rope. He went above and shoved the last ones overboard, and looked at his watch. It was 3:40. Glancing out across the water, he noted the incoming tide had slowed now; it should be slack high in a little over an hour. He wiped sweat from his face. “So much for that.”

Rae Osborne indicated the five cases of ammunition still lined up along the port rail near the break of the deckhouse. “How about those?”

Ingram shook his head. “We keep them for the time being. They’re our hole card, in case this other stuff doesn’t work.”

“I feel useless, letting you do everything.”

“I’ll have something for you in a minute. In the meantime, whenever Morrison gets quiet over there, check him with the glasses.”

“You think he might try to swim out?”

“I don’t think he will in daylight, but we can’t take any chances. Keep your head low.”

Ducking down the ladder again, he went forward to the locker beyond the crew’s quarters and dug out an anchor. It was a standard type, with a ten-foot section of heavy chain shackled to the ring; it would do nicely. He carried it aft and came back for a heavy coil of nylon anchor warp. While he was getting this out, he came across a pair of four-sheave blocks and a coil of smaller line he could use for a tackle. He grunted with satisfaction; it would be better than the main sheet to haul with. Trying to use the
Dragoon’s
anchor windlass up there on the exposed fore-deck would be sheer suicide. Morrison would have a clear shot at him with that scope-sighted rifle. He carried it all aft and dumped it in the cockpit. At the same time Morrison cut loose with a string of four shots as if he were practicing rapid fire. One of them struck the side of the mainmast and ricocheted with the whine of an angry and lethal insect.

Rae Osborne watched with rapt interest as he wedged the anchor’s stock and bent the nylon warp to the ring at the end of the chain. “Where does it go?” she asked.

He nodded astern. “Straight aft as far as I can get it.”

“But how do you take it out there?”

“Walk and carry it.”

She grinned. “So you ask a silly question—”

“No, that’s right. I’ll admit it’s not quite the standard procedure, but it’s about all we’ve got left. That’s what I wanted the diving mask for.”

“But how about breathing?”

“That’s easy. The water’s not over seven or eight feet deep until I hit the channel, and then it’s not over twelve.”

“What about Morrison and that rifle?”

“No problem,” he said, wishing he felt as confident about it as he was trying to sound. He lowered the anchor over the side and arranged the coil of line in the bottom of the cockpit. “You pay it out. And when you get within twenty or thirty feet of the end, hang on.”

She nodded. “Roger.”

He took the automatic out of his belt and put it on the seat beside her. “You know how to operate the safety on this?”

“No. I don’t know anything about guns at all.”

He showed her. “That’s all there is to it, besides pulling the trigger. If Morrison should make it out here and get aboard, kill him. None of this TV routine of pointing it at him and trying to impress him. Put it in the middle of his chest and empty the clip.”

She looked apprehensive. “I think I get the message. All this is just in case you don’t come back? Is this anchor really necessary?”

“Absolutely. But there’s no danger. I’m just covering all bases.”

“All right. Anything else?”

“That’s all, except looking the other way till I get in the water.”

She turned away while he stripped down to his shorts and dropped over the side with the mask. Adjusting the latter, he went under. Some of the boxes he had thrown overboard were piled up almost to the surface under the schooner’s side. He pulled them down so the schooner wouldn’t fall over against them on the next low tide in the event they didn’t get off this time. There was no hull damage, at least on this side. Her keel was stuck in the bottom—just how far, he couldn’t be sure. A lot would depend on what kind of tide they got this time. He surfaced for another breath, and Rae Osborne was leaning across the deck looking down at him. “Be careful,” she said. He nodded, went under, and picked up the anchor.

It was still heavy, even submerged, but the weight held his feet firmly against the bottom so he had no difficulty walking. He noted with satisfaction that the water was slightly deeper astern; once they got her back as far as twelve or fifteen feet, they’d have it made. He walked bent over and leaning forward to cut down the water’s resistance. He turned and looked back. The water was as transparent as air; he was going straight, and the line was paying out beautifully. He was about thirty feet past the stern now. Dropping the anchor, but holding a bight of the line in his hand, he let himself rise until his face broke the surface, took a quick breath, and pulled down against the weight of the anchor and its chain. He picked it up and went on.

The bottom so far was all sand, with patches of grass. There were numbers of conchs scattered about in the grass, and once he saw a leopard ray and a small barracuda. The current was beginning to bother him now as he got more line out. The schooner was fading out behind him, and it was harder to keep in a straight line. He surfaced again.

Nothing happened. Morrison still hadn’t seen him. The bottom sloped downward. He was going down into the channel, in water ten to twelve feet deep. Just before the schooner disappeared completely behind him, he picked out an isolated clump of grass ahead for a landmark. The going was harder now; it was backbreaking work pulling the line. He surfaced again, and just as he sucked in his breath and went under, something exploded against the water off to his left like the slap of a canoe paddle. He felt a little chill of apprehension. Morrison had located him at last.

The next time he surfaced, the explosion was nearer, and the third time he barely had his head under when the bullet struck and ricocheted off the surface so close to him he could feel the impact in the water. Nobody could sight and shoot that fast; Morrison was tracking him. He had his course figured out, and how far he was going each time, and was waiting. Well, he could solve that. He picked up the anchor, but this time, instead of plowing on until he was out of breath, he stopped after three steps and began pulling the line toward him and gathering it in coils. When he surfaced, he was twenty feet short of where Morrison was expecting him. When he went down again he was able to make a fast thirty feet with the coiled slack line he had. Both times, the shots were wide.