Djibouti (22 page)

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.

 

J
AMA 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, looking out at the lit-up ship. You ready to make the call? He believed he was.

 

“L
ET 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.

 

I
N THIS MOMENT
, J
AMA
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
boom
s like none he'd ever heard, waves of heat coming at him from the inferno he'd set off.

 

T
HE 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.”

 

J
AMA 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.

F
ROM THE COVE
J
AMA
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?”

 

T
HEY TOOK
J
AMA 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.

 

M
ARINES 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.

 

J
AMA 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.

The man in the baseball cap was waiting at the mouth of the cove, up on the bank holding a nickel-plate revolver on him. Some kind of tropical white flowers decorating the hem of his Hawaiian shirt, black flowers on the top part, black on black you could hardly make out.

Jama said, “That's a good-looking shirt you got on. How much it set you back?”

Buck Bethards said, “You don't remember me? I'm the guy you shot the other day at Marshal Foch Square.”

Jama grinning at him now, slipped his hand inside the flight bag sitting on the wheelhouse table.

“That was you?”

“Gonna take you in this time,” Buck said. “The hell you doing out here?”

“I blew up that tanker.”

“You did, huh.”

“Dialed a phone number and set it off.”

“You're a real terror, aren't you?”

“I'm giving it up,” Jama said, his hand on the Walther's grip. “You a cop or what?”

“I was military, now I'm on my own.”

“You gonna shoot me?”

“I'm taking you to Djib on those homicides. Or I can check, see if there're warrants for a James Russell in the States.”

“Rus
sell,
” Jama said. “How much you want?”

“What I want is to see your hand come out of that bag.”

“I'm getting a cigarette.”

“Shame on you.”

“Want one?”

“I quit. Listen, I want you to take your hand out of the bag before I count to five. Give you time to make up your mind. You don't, I tell my client you passed away on Gilligan's Island. Last seen taking a stroll.”

Jama said, “Lemme tell you again. I blew up that ship with a phone call. I'm the same as you, man. They pay me to do a job, I do it.” Jama said, “You mind if I bring out my cigarettes? Man, I have to see can I talk you out of this.”

“I'll count to five,” Buck said. “One…”

Jama let him get to three. He took the bag in his left hand and half-turned to sidearm it at Buck, Jama's right hand coming out with the Walther and shot Buck in the gut to relax him, cause him to sag, and shot him in the chest to kill him, from less than twenty feet. There was life in him for a few moments, his eyes open, looking at something he couldn't believe.

Shit, then had to go in the water again to get under Buck and
dump him on the deck, the nickel-plate gone. Once Jama was aboard he started the engine and steered
Buster
deep into the cove and shut her down. Be for the next hour or so. He heard patrol boats out there and saw lights playing through the mangrove; the boats had too much beam to come in the channel. While he was waiting Jama dug Buck's passport and wallet out of his back pocket and dropped them in his bag. Look at them when he had some light. For now he kept the boat pitch-dark and sat there waving at mosquitoes. Finally asked himself, You going or not? Started the engine and putt-putted out of the cove.

It was too late to send
Buster
out to catch fire,
Aphrodite
looking almost burned out. What he did was start his own fire below-decks, sloshed a can of gasoline around and dropped a match down the ladder, heard it go
wooosh
and
Buster
was on fire, her bow aimed at the hulk burning a few miles off. Jama put on his life jacket and hung his bag of personals against his chest to hold on to it. About a hundred yards out he set
Buster
on autopilot and slipped over the side.