The Perfidious Parrot (13 page)

“Dangerous?” de Gier asked.

“This side maybe.” The captain pointed at hardly noticeable differences in color in the bluish-green sea. Subtly changing shades indicated reefs and sand banks. A thin line of foam warned of a strong counter current. Gull-like birds, “skimmers,” stood on an invisible boat, a smuggler sunk by a Coast Guard cutter, that went down in shallow water.

“You get some illegal traffic?” de Gier asked.

Lately yes, the captain said. It had been quiet for a while but
the government was tightening budgets and the various agencies, Coast Guard, Customs, Marine Patrol, DEA, and what have you, couldn’t do as much as they liked. “Punishment is up though,” Captain Noah said. “Does hold us down a tad, you know.”

De Gier looked up. “Us?”

“Who else?” the captain asked. “Cocaine and pot are profitable products.” He scratched his unkempt beard. “If an opportunity happens to flit by and one happens to feel courageous …”

“That happens?” de Gier asked.

It happens, Noah said. Supply routes were mostly in the Colombians’s hands now, but Colombians couldn’t do everything He himself had driven a five-ton truck from Key West to Dallas. The truck’s loading door was locked and he wasn’t given a key. The Colombian client was a vague acquaintance, a xylophone player in a Key West combo. The man had since been murdered but was then in charge of a motor launch and a warehouse between Duval and Simonton Streets. This was some years ago. Captain Noah had just gotten his truck driver’s license. The xylophone player offered him three thousand dollars for the trip. A few days’s work, and what could possibly happen? Just outside Miami the truck was stopped by a State Police cruiser, checking license and registration. The cruiser escorted the truck to a weighing station. Weight was fine, no overloading. “Have a nice day,” the cop in the Boy Scout uniform said. “Bye bye, sir.”

“So?” Grijpstra, who wasn’t feeling well but couldn’t help being interested, asked.

Noah, back in the truck’s cabin after his confrontation with
the law, suffered a sudden bowel movement. “Total,” the captain said. “I had shit filling up my boots. I had to clean up in the sea for no motel would have let me in.” He pulled his beard desperately, reliving bad moments. “Fear. Pure and simple. I felt nothing else. Nothing untoward was going on but there was shit between my toes.”

De Gier tried to visualize the situation. “What kind of punishment would you have been in for if the state cop had checked your cargo?”

The captain shivered. Much pain, for he had no big bills to pass to the lawyer to share with the judge. He would have been in for endless abuse by sadistic guards and gangs of perverted prisoners. “I would have been marked for life. No personality can stand that.”

“Did you deliver your cargo?”

“Not complete a Colombian job?” The captain pointed at his crotch. “Risk a load of buckshot hitting my boys here?”

It’s all relative, de Gier thought. Get your testicles mashed for a mere three thousand dollars between Key West and Texas, find a few million while rummaging in a deserted basement in Blood Alley in Amsterdam.

“There’s really too much risk involved now,” Captain Noah said. “Prices are kept high by Washington but if we try to beat Those In Charge there isn’t much in it.” He spat, missing his passengers’ feet neatly. “Get it? What I delivered in Dallas was just a bit of pot, the puny effort of a few small-fry Colombians and I got to hold up my hand too but the real bucks …”

The wind was increasing.

De Gier enjoyed the fresh sea-air, the grinding of ropes through wooden blocks, the cracking of taut sails. He thought
about past glory, when the Dutch were still tough sailors, yohoho and a jar of jenever. Playing pirate with a wooden leg and a blunderbuss loaded with broken and bent nails. A cursing parrot on one’s shoulder. Commander Rinus Rowdy Roughneck. “Yes, Milady, take off your blouse, you about-to-be-ravished Duchess de Portobello y Veracruz, never mind the ransom money, we’ll worry about that later.”

“What do you fellows do when you’re not, eh—what we shall we call it—enjoying your holidays here?” Captain Noah asked.

De Gier said he was on perpetual holiday.

“For some time?”

“For some time.”

“And before that?”

De Gier used to be employed by the city of Amsterdam, Holland.

“Yes,” the captain said. “Big business goes to the big guys. City officials for instance. You got out rich, did you?” De Gier remembered the banknotes he had been peeling off his roll just now. “Bit of good luck, I used to be a policeman.”

“Bad cops,” Captain Noah said excusingly, “bad customs officers, bad drug enforcement agents, and whatever else is chasing us free men. Meanwhile the real business flies it in.” The captain pointed at a large cargo airplane, losing height, aiming to land at Boca Chica naval airport.

De Gier looked at the gray plane, marked with the American white star. “The military, right?”

“Ferry to Mexico,” Captain Noah said. “Maybe not that particular plane, the military do have other jobs of course.

“Those in charge,” the captain said.

De Gier watched the transport plane disappear behind palm trees and shaggy pine trees. A flying whale stuffed with Mexican heroin?

“But the sea stays beautiful.” The captain laughed. “I used to lose my cool, in the old days, before I learned that things don’t get better, before I quit complaining.” He swung a victorious arm. “Ride the currents, don’t fight the natural course of events.”

The
Berrydore
reached open sea. White breakers crashed against its hull. Captain Noah ordered the sails to be reefed further. Grijpstra and de Gier were attached to the railing with ropes ending in hooks. The ship kept changing direction to avoid shallow areas and onshore currents. Every time the
Berrydore
changed tack the passengers had to free themselves from the railing, struggle to the other side and attach themselves again. De Gier was good at it, Grijpstra needed help.

Grijpstra looked pale. De Gier indicated points of interest: Key West hotels fading away in fog, the chimneys of the island’s huge generator, green lines that were small islands showing up on all sides. There were dorsal fins cutting through the schooner’s wake. Dolphins. Later there were other dorsal fins, triangular, sharp. “Sharks, Henk. Remember the movie
Jaws
? That was filmed around here. The shark that ate small boats? That was a white one. Very aggressive. There must be lots of them here. Look. See that?”

There were brightly colored floats, marking crab and lobster traps. “It’s not good when their lines entangle our propellers or rudders,” Captain Noah said. “It could pull us down, or rip planks out of her bottom. Old boat. Wood gets weak.”

The fog got thicker.

Grijpstra used his handkerchief to cover his mouth.

“Or we could break up on those sandbanks,” de Gier said. “Right, Captain? Waves would wreck her in no time at all. The power of water.”

The fog got even thicker. “We only see this once or twice a year,” the captain said. “Good thing we have electronics.” An apprentice-sailor, who studied science at the University of Miami and was making good use of vacation time, explained the instruments on the console. A black plastic box was attached to a battery outlet. Its minute screen came to life.

“It may take some time before we have a position reading,” the student said. Captain Noah didn’t think there was all that much time because the fog had swallowed all the red nuns and green cans marking danger to shipping, and what now? The student abandoned his box and measured longitude and latitude using compasses and a set of parallel rulers. The chart kept slipping because of the schooner’s movement. The compasses were bent somewhat and the plastic rulers had been in the sun, causing to them to lose their straightness. No matter, the trick was to persevere. Not easy though for the compasses fell off the chart board and pricked the student when he picked them up. Ah, the little computer was working now. Very nice. So, if this was the schooner’s position and the next red buoy was there, just a moment now, type in the buoy’s position via the little computer’s tiny keyboard, there we go, see, this figure here was the compass course, oh dear, the computer was losing power—oops, touched the wrong button, reprogram the computer real quick, according to the code, anyone know the code? It was indicated in the little handbook. Anyone see the little handbook? There we are, start over, input the code, there, she lights
up again, input the two positions, the ship’s and the channel-nun’s, there you go, that’s our compass course. “Steer 310 degrees, Captain Noah. Hard ahead. One eighth of a mile and the red nun will be in sight. This computer is accurate up to thirty feet. Can’t be wrong. Connects to six satellites. Satellites aren’t bothered by fog. Let’s go, Captain Noah.”

The course had to be wrong, Captain Noah said. 310 degrees would take them to the Northwest and the red nun they were looking for would be south of the schooner, he remembered that. Was the little computer malfunctioning perhaps? See, it was losing its screen lighting again. Maybe its batteries were weak and would have to be replaced. Triple A batteries. Were there any around?

A quarter of an hour later the schooner ran aground on a sandbank, after having been advised by the Global Position System Finder to follow varying and conflicting courses. The GPS, a device that is also used on aircraft, indicated that the schooner was flying at a forty-five thousand feet elevation. Clearly something was wrong with someone. Grijpstra, who had been vomiting and sliding about, and falling even, rather painfully so, was leaning against the side railing to which he was still locked. De Gier freed him. Grijpstra, using gravity, made his way down the steep cabin ladder. He dropped down on a bunk. He told de Gier that further effort was useless. It was over now. He would stay there.

The wind stopped gusting and the fog was burned off by a cheerful sun. The schooner was facing small islands topped by palm trees surrounded by mangroves that were new to the captain. He checked, using his binoculars, for possibly known points. A cargo ship, a mile away, closer to the islands, might be
able to pull the
Berrydore
free of the sand bank. Or was the cargo ship in trouble too? She definitely listed. He dropped the binoculars, frightened by the roar and whistle of jet fighters coming in low over the schooner’s masts. Crew and passengers—Grijpstra, pacified by the lack of movement, had come up—cowered, covering their ears. Helicopters hovered close to the helpless
Berrydore
, keeping the sun behind their threatening shapes—a bevy of insect-faced dark shadows that turned this way and that, observing a target through bulbous glass eyes and via waving antennas, carrying warriors clustered behind open sliding doors. The soldiers pointed machine guns and assault rifles until Captain Noah, gesturing widely, dancing on his long legs, bowing deeply, pointing at the
Berrydore
’s American flag behind him, drooping sadly across the schooner’s railing. The helicopters seemed to accept the captain’s surrender, temporarily anyway. The lead chopper, after dropping a few feet, then gaining altitude again, while staring through its gigantic bug eyes, banked sharply. It was followed smartly by the other machines: a flock of man-eating birds of prey, now headed for a more interesting target.

Ahead in the lagoon the cargo ship, stuck on a coral reef, was being strafed and bombed by the fighters. Once the sleek airplanes roared off the helicopters made low slow passes, peppering the dying hulk with small-arms fire. The student sailor whimpered while tenderly embracing a mast. Other crew members were still kneeling, hands on ears. Grijpstra, in between final retching, looked miserably placid as if the overwhelming attack was only to be expected. De Gier was on the schooner’s foredeck, leaning out above the bowsprit, trying to miss nothing of the impressive spectacle of wanton destruction.
The downside of adventure (what harm had the cargo ship’s crew done to be torn up by mechanized pitiless demons?) seemed irrelevant in the rush of elation. Why pity losing parties? Victorious violent thoughts flashed through de Gier’s mind. He reminded himself to choose a martial planet for his next incarnation. Constant warfare. Be part of devastating forces during a brief but splendid existence. Blow up his next home altogether. What would a temporary habitat’s loss matter in an endless universe that provides endless bodies for the same soul? De Gier shouted encouragement at the helicopters swooping down at a sandbank that had just been strafed by screaming jets.

Captain Noah was about to give up grovelling to appease superior powers when an enormous airplane thundered low over the
Berrydore
, close enough, it seemed, to shear off the boat’s dainty topsails. The machine, dwarfing large passenger planes, had opened the flaps in its smoothly curved olive green belly. Dark objects of miscellaneous sizes fell out. De Gier, expecting the falling things to be bombs, dived headlong off the schooner, hoping to be able to use the water as a shield. The larger objects turned out to be rubber rafts, the smaller, weapon-containers and soldiers. De Gier, swimming between the rafts, dived when he saw masked heads popping up from the ocean. The heads bobbed while the men treaded water, searching for their rafts’s locations. The soldiers, swimming now, wore black wetsuits and protective goggles. Their feet were extended by flippers. They held on to assorted types of guns, ready to spread more devastation. They climbed into their rubber boats which were equipped with powerful outboard engines. The boats reared up and rushed at the remains of
the cargo vessel. Guns fired again. Steel cables flashed from mortar-like tubes, hooks attached themselves to the cargo ship’s railings and gunwales. The warriors pulled their bodies, hand over hand, along the steel cables and leaped aboard.

As soon as the sea around the
Berrydore
was free of boats and warriors, Captain Noah dropped a line to the lonely swimmer and pulled de Gier aboard. Far away the Stars and Stripes were raised on the cargo vessel. The jet fighters returned again, streaking ahead of their own sound that thundered over the schooner as the planes dove and strafed an island beyond the cargo ship. The schooner’s crew ducked despairingly when another giant bomber dropped more rafts, containers and men. The lagoon, once again, was speckled with the heads of attacking soldiers. “Frogmen,” Captain Noah, crouching next de Gier on the safe side of the schooner’s cabin, shouted over the clamor of rapid gun fire. “An Amphibious Special Forces exercise. These must be what they call the ‘Dead Men Keys.’ We’re well off course.”