Steve Martini - The Arraignment

I’m concentrating on the plane when my feet hit the steps of the pool and I fall backward, end up sitting on the next step with Harry in my lap. I hang onto him and try to get up.

I see the waiter in his white linen jacket, facedown, hugging the tiled floor just inside the sliding door to the restaurant on the pool deck. But he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the plane as it approaches.

I yell and wave for him to help.

Instead he gets on his feet and runs toward the kitchen.

I look down and see Harry’s blood on my shirt. The back of his head, his hair is matted. A head wound. Not good.

When I look back, the ultralight is bearing down, making speed with its tail now into the onshore wind. With nothing but adrenaline, I heave Harry and myself up onto the pool deck and drag him, heels across the concrete until I reach the canvas cabana, and lay him in the shade. I turn and look toward the stairs up to the hotel, but there is no one there.

The plane is approaching the beach. I grab the table and flip it on its side in front of Harry’s prostrate body. I reach for a towel to wrap his head, anything to stop the bleeding, but there is no time. The pitch of the engine changes as the plane noses down, gaining speed.

I step out from under the cabana and see the plane coming straight at me, maybe two hundred yards away. I run along the pool deck toward the other end, closing the distance between us, shortening his target time.

Like radar, the gunman’s attention is drawn to the moving object. Bullets shatter the glass in the windows and the French door to the thatched-roof bar overlooking the beach. Then I hear the sound of the shots.

The gunman fires in controlled bursts. Half a second, twenty rounds. I see light puffs from the muzzle and the trail of brass as it glitters in the sunlight, the plane dropping cartridges like rain.

I sprawl onto the concrete, knees and elbows sliding, as bullets rip into the stucco wall just above me, walking a pattern into the low hedge at my feet. The sound of the burst follows an instant later. It is almost lost in the whine of the engine as the plane races by, over the pool, followed by its winged shadow.

The gunman swings around to fire another burst, but the pilot is forced to pull up, in order to clear the roof of the hotel. The rounds go high, ripping into the thatched palm-frond roof of the bar as the ultralight disappears behind the Casa Turquesa.

Where the hell is Julio and his security? I glance at my watch. The second hand is still moving. I figure ninety seconds, maybe two minutes, depending on how wide they take the turn, if they come back.

I run back to the cabana where Harry is lying on the concrete, grabbing a towel on the way.

Down on one knee, I place my ear to his nose and mouth and feel for a pulse. Shallow, but he is breathing. I reach around the back of his head, searching with my fingers for the wound, feeling for a depression in the bone through the hair. Nothing, just blood. I fold the towel into a long strip and wrap it as tightly as I can around his head, tucking it under like a turban on his forehead. I grab cushions from two of the chaise longues nearby, as well as a stack of towels. I put the towels under his feet to elevate them. Maybe not a good idea with a head wound, but I think Harry is in shock. I cover him with the cushions. It’s all I can do for the moment.

Then I step away from the cabana, this time to the other side of the pool, putting distance between myself and Harry so they won’t be tempted to spray bullets through the blue canvas top.

On this side there is a small mushroom-shaped kiosk bar with a thatched roof, right up next to the pool.

My eyes race over the area, looking for cover. In the corner of the patio forty feet away, near the low wall looking over the beach, sits a white metal bench, a bronze statue taking up a third of it. Larger than life, a solid hunk of metal, feet planted firmly on the ground, the figure’s head is turned toward the north, staring pensively up the white strip of sand. It has one arm raised to shoulder height, holding out a hand with a cigar clenched between two fingers.

In the water beyond the beach, the tow boat, its bow slapping in the chop, is pulling its cargo in the parachute again, oblivious to what is happening a quarter mile away. The driver is doing a large circle, a horseshoe of white water at his stern.

As I am looking, the whine of an engine cuts the silence in the distance, just for an instant. Then it’s gone, dampened by the high structures around me. I scan the roofline of the hotel, then the tops of buildings on either side. My eyes continually return to the southwest corner of the plaza, the gap between the hotel and the building under construction next door, where the ultralight came from the last time.

Then suddenly it’s behind me, coming north up the beach. I drop down, my body flexing, flinching, waiting for the bullets to hit as I pivot on one knee. It takes an instant to connect sight and sound when I see it, a half mile to the south moving this way, an ultralight lumbering up the beach, towing a long sign behind it.

My head is pounding when I hear sirens somewhere in the distance. Another couple of seconds and I hear them again, out on the highway, moving this way.

There is no sign of the plane. I take a deep breath. Then my attention turns to Harry.

Some of the hotel staff have gathered near the rear of the lobby, up the stairs from the pool. I can see their heads peeking from around the edges of the large plateglass door.

I wave with one arm, motioning for them to come down and help. As the door opens and the manager and another man start down the stairs, half of the liquor bottles in the kiosk behind me explode. Splinters of wood from the shelf under them fly up like toothpicks before I hear the sound and look up.

Flying into the quickening current of air off the ocean, the ultralight is suspended nearly motionless in the sky just above the top of the hotel roof.

Its wings wobbling, the pilot struggles to hold the platform still as another series of puffs rise from the muzzle of the gun, his companion firing over his shoulder.

My body heads toward concrete with the force of gravity as something hisses and cracks past my ear.

When I look up, the pilot is tapping all his skills, beginning to inch forward as the breeze slackens.

I retreat across the concrete on my hands and feet and huddle on my knees behind the kiosk.

On the next burst, a few of the bullets hit metal inside the kiosk with a dead thud. The rest blow right through the little building, flashing like electricity, one of them fragmenting as it hits the cement a few inches from my hand.

This drives me out into the open. A quick glance.

The gunman has the muzzle pointed up, slamming another magazine in. He pulls the bolt and lets it slide closed before he sees me. He slaps the pilot on the shoulder.

It’s a footrace for cover.

The plane noses down to pick up speed. I can hear the engine as it closes on me from behind, sliding in like a roller coaster, riding the currents of air over the palm trees.

The winged shadow overtakes me in less than a second as bullets slam into the concrete, a procession of them chasing me across the concrete deck.

I throw my body into a headlong dive. I hit the low wall overlooking the beach with my shoulder. I carom off it like a billiard ball and roll under the bench, curling into a fetal position beneath the sitting bronze figure.

Bullets spark as they hit the bench with a ping. A few of them, finding openings in the filigree, slam into the concrete, taking divots. Chips of cement, bits of copper jacket pepper my face.

The plane flies right over the top, the gunman pouring fire down on me as he passes. Bullets hitting bronze, turning into mushroomed metal until the last few hit the low wall on the outside.