Sea Creature (3 page)

Before Patrick could respond they heard something nearby. He turned and saw a boat heading toward them. Rodrigo picked up a pair of binoculars out of a tackle box and watched the boat for a long time.

He finally put the binoculars down and jumped up to the controls and started the engines. “We need to leave now.”

“What is it?”

“Bandidos.”

“Out here?”

“They come for the boat. They are as dangerous as the sharks.”

The boat dipped slightly as the engine came to life and propelled it forward. It began cutting through the waves and Rodrigo turned the ship in a wide arch back to shore.

Patrick looked behind him and watched the other boat. They were getting closer; their ship newer than Rodrigo’s by at least twenty years.

Rodrigo pushed the throttle forward, black smoke coughing up from the pipe next to the controls. Patrick took the binoculars and looked behind them. There were at least five men, two of them armed with what looked like semi-automatic rifles. They wore plain clothing but one of them was in fatigues; possibly military issue.

“They don’t look like they’re coming to borrow some tools, Rodrigo.”

“They’re coming to throw us in the water and take the boat. If we had women, they would take them too.”

Patrick sat down, his foot incessantly tapping against the deck. He didn’t like the waiting, the anticipation. He enjoyed either the fight or rest but not that odd area in between.

Bandidos had always been a problem in Chile, but it was predominantly the more rural parts of Chile. To come on the water near a tourist resort and rob the local fishermen was brazen to the point that Patrick thought perhaps they were either a part of the military or police, or protected by them. In poorer nations, there’s little that distinguishes the crooks from the government.

The shore was visible now but the other boat was close, maybe a hundred feet. It was closing quickly and the men were shouting something through a megaphone.

“What are they saying?”

“They are telling us to surrender the boat and we will live. It is not true.”

“Do you have any guns?”

“Yes, near the bed.”

Patrick went inside the cabin and found a Kimber 84m bolt action rifle. An older rifle made entirely of steel and walnut; no aluminum or rubber parts. He found the ammunition next to it and stepped outside.

“You sure this thing still fires?”

“Maybe.”

“Great.”

Patrick loaded the rifle and bent down behind the edge of the transom. The other boat was gaining quickly now and wasn’t more than forty feet away. Patrick could see the faces of the men. They were cold and detached from a life of hardship and robbery and murder. They wouldn’t have any sympathy for an old fisherman and his American friend.

Patrick took up the rifle and peered down the scope. Every time he did so, a small shiver went up his back and his stomach fluttered. He was right back in Falluja or Baghdad or Basra, hiding in tenements and firing down at unsuspecting enemy combatants as they made their way through what they thought was a safe area of town.

After the kill was the most dangerous time. That was the moment he would have to decide whether there was enough time to take down another target, or to pack up and disappear. Occasionally, the Iraqis wouldn’t even notice when one of their own went down. They were disorganized and undisciplined but with a suicidal ferocity that made them difficult opponents.

Patrick felt the smoothness of the steel trigger and aimed the scope just under the wheel at the controls. He fired a single shot and a small hole appeared under the wheel and out the back of the control console.

The other boat began to sputter and eventually just came to a stop, the men scrambling to get it going again, looking at Rodrigo and Patrick as if trying to burn their faces in their minds for next time.

“Good shooting.”

He pulled the bolt back, an empty cartridge clinking onto the deck, and went to the cabin to put the rifle back. They pulled up to the harbor and Rodrigo carefully put the boat back into the slip before they looked to each other.

“You have never told me you could shoot like that.”

“You never asked.”

Patrick jumped up in the night, sweat rolling down his chest and back, soaking the sheets. He looked out the windows of the hotel. A breeze was blowing into the room and in the distance he could hear the wail of a ship. His shirt clung to him with sweat and he took it off and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the nightstand.

A slender Chilean woman with emerald eyes sat up next to him, her nude body sleek in the moonlight. She rubbed his arms and kissed his neck and then put her cheek to his back.

“Another nightmare?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Do you only dream of war?”

“I try not to.”

“Do you dream of me?”

He smirked and turned to her, planting a kiss on her neck and tasting the salt of her skin. “Yes.”

“You have seen me for four years. But you do not ask me to move with you to Miami.”

“You wouldn’t like it there. Hell, maybe you would. But I don’t like it there.”

“Why?”

“You have to pretend you’re somebody else all the time. People expect things from you. No one expects anything from you here. Other than always looking out for yourself.”

“Then move here.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

She hesitated a moment and then said, “You miss your brother?”

“Yes.”

“I had a brother once. He got a fever when he was a boy and he died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What was his name?”

“Tomas. He was eight when he died. My mother said that God wanted him more than we did because he was so special. What was your brother like?”

Patrick stood and found a fresh shirt and shorts. He put them on and slipped his sandals onto his feet. “Stay here if you like. I’m going out for a while.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

Patrick walked outside and the air was muggy and hot. Viña had almost a Mediterranean climate and was warm year round. You could find whatever you wanted here. They had a municipal casino, modern shopping malls, a natural history museum, even a track for horse racing. It was a beautiful spot that many celebrities spent time at every year but never mentioned in any interviews. No one wanted this place to become a Cancun or Bahamas. It was meant for a select few and no more.

Patrick had stumbled upon it by chance. He had been trekking through the jungle when two members of his party caught malaria. He set up camp and said he would be back to help them. He trekked thirty miles through the jungle and found Santiago and sent a team back to pick up the rest of his party. He stayed for over two weeks in Santiago, well after his party had left, and some of the locals suggested he go to Viña which was just over seventy miles to the north.

With little more than a backpack, he made his way there by hitchhiking and taking the local buses. He spent the rest of the summer in Viña and then returned the next year and the year after that. This year, Andrew had told him his plans to propose and he had urged him to come down and do it here.

He sat on a curb in front of a restaurant and watched the people coming and going. A sports star, some basketball player from LA, was there tonight and a group of local photographers were gathered outside; snapping photos of him sipping wine or laughing or shoving a bite of crab into his mouth.

Patrick rose and walked down to the beach and sat in the sand. He watched the waves roll into shore and the moon lit the sky a soft blue. But the water appeared black and unwelcoming. He had always enjoyed the ocean and had been taught sailing by his father since he was a youth, but the sight of it right now sickened him and he stood up and started back to the hotel.

Andrew had left a void in him. He was the only person Patrick ever cared for. His father was cold and distant and after their mother’s death they had no other relatives. On top of that, their father discouraged friends. He had told them that friends had the potential to make them weak and would yell at them whenever other boys came over to play. The only people they really had in their lives were their parents and each other.

There was a small café on the walk home and Patrick stopped and ordered warm milk with sugar. He sat on the veranda and drank down the glass one slow sip at a time as he listened to the conversations around him.

A man next to him asked him for a smoke and he told him he didn’t have any. The waitress struck up a conversation with him and he knew she was interested but he didn’t pursue it. He finished his milk and left some money on the table before walking back to the hotel.

The bar near the lobby was a good one; they didn’t water down their booze like most of the places in the city. Patrick swallowed two shots of rum and then bought the bottle and took it up to his room.

Sitting on the balcony, overlooking the city and the small bands of tourists that were out enjoying the nightlife, he saw a couple who were snapping photos and laughing and staring at the old buildings. It wasn’t difficult to tell it was their first time here and Patrick thought of the first time he had brought his wife here three years ago.

It was before the bad times began; when they were still in the honeymoon phase after his return from Iraq. They had made love in a hotel and drank good red wine all night. They lay in the dark nude and she kissed his neck and ran her fingers along his chest.

“Tell me about the war,” she had whispered for the first time.

He began to speak and he wasn’t there in the warm bed next to the woman he loved any longer. He was under the burning desert sun with a scarf wrapped around his face to try and keep the sand out of his mouth for a few hours.

“There’s telephone poles everywhere. It’s actually a pretty modern city and there’s parts that you are in and you can forget where you are. We were guarding this truck, I think there were three of us. I figured it was fuel or something but one of the others told me it was KBR—Halliburton—trucks and they were transporting paper plates and salads. Fucking salads.

“We were standing around smoking and guarding these salads and I wondered how many poor bastards lost their lives over salad and why a sniper was on guard duty. We were griping and talking shit and then we heard gunfire across the street. We ran over there and two of our boys were pinned down behind a truck and there was at least ten Iraqis firing at them.

“We dove in and I stood my ground. The bullets were flying by my face but I didn’t care. I was sick of this fucking war and if I was going to die it mind as well have been today. The ten dropped to five almost instantly and then I fired a few rounds and there was two or three of them. I saw a guy with a rocket launcher up on the roof of the building next to us and I got off two rounds. One hit him in the eye and the other hit the guy behind him loading the launcher through the throat. Everybody else ran after that.

“When it was over, we heard crying. We walked down the street a little, right over where the firefight had taken place, and saw a man crying over his young son who’d been killed. I sat down with him and we cried together.”

After that, she didn’t ask about the war again. She didn’t know what to say or do or how to react and he stopped talking about it with her. He withdrew into himself and soon there was no marriage left to save. They divorced only five months after their trip here.

But he still had Chile and he still had that night in the warm bed with the moon’s cooling light over him. He thought of her now and hoped she was happy.

Patrick picked up the bottle of rum and guzzled it until there was only a little left on the bottom. Then he went and lay in bed, staring at the ceiling until the rum did its job and he passed out.

Christopher Woodruff stepped out of the hotel at nearly midnight. The air was warm and he was wearing shorts and his bed slippers. He walked half a block north and turned past a restaurant before pulling out his cell phone and dialing a long distance number.

“Hello?” a male voice said on the other end, groggy from sleep.

“Mr. Russell?”

“Christopher? What the hell do you want?”

“Sorry to wake you, sir.” He hesitated, waiting for a pedestrian on the sidewalk to pass him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. What do you want?”

“I’m calling about Patrick.”

“What about him?”

“He’s taking this thing with Andrew hard. I think we need to stay down here until he works through it.”

“This
thing
with Andrew? My son is dead you little fuck.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. But I still think we should stay down here.”

“Fine. Why are you bothering me with it?”

“Um, our credit card was recently declined. I’m sure it was just an error, right?”

“Oh that. No that wasn’t an error.”

“So, what exactly do you expect us to do, sir?”

“I expect you to be men and make it on your own. You already have the tickets to fly back here. You want to stay down there stay down there. But don’t expect me to pay for it you little shit.”

Christopher felt anger bubbling inside him. Of all the people in Damien Russell’s life, Christopher was the last one that should be treated this way. He was the one that knew all the bank accounts, all the offshore investments to avoid taxes, all the shell companies to swindle the government. He was the one that lined up the prostitutes in Washington D.C. and New York and Milan and Paris and London; and he was the one that would drive them to the hospital afterward and pay them to keep quiet. He was the one that had all the secrets.

“To be perfectly frank with you, sir,” he said, “you’ve already lost one son. Do you want to lose the second too because you’re too stubborn to send him a few bucks?”

“You bas—”

“Mr. Russell, I’m being honest with you. Patrick needs this. Reactivate our credit card so we can stay down here a few more weeks. He should have it out of his system by then.”

“Go fuck yourself, Christopher! And you’re fired.”

There was a click and then the cell phone ended the call. Christopher took a deep breath and pretended that he was pushing all the negative energy out of himself with the breath. He walked back to the hotel and went to Patrick’s room.