Elmore Leonard - Djibouti

Billy said, "Let's see how the other boys do first. Then you can take another shot if you want," injecting another six-hundred-caliber Nitro Express round into the breech.

The next Somali hefted the rifle, aimed it, lowered it, aimed, then hefted it again feeling the weight of the gun, pressed his face against the smell of oiled wood, squeezed the trigger and was kicked back to land on the table and lay there laughing. Now the others were laughing, three of them with the boy on the table. Kwame wasn't laughing. The boy came off the table rubbing his shoulder and arm, telling the next boy how to hold this rifle. The next boy did as he was told, fired, twisted away from the kick and went over the side, the Indian Ocean swallowing him.

Billy said, "The boy know how to swim? He don't he better learn. Somebody fish him out if you will, please. Who's next?"

"You are," Kwame said. "You shoot, let me see you don't move. You show us with this gun."

Billy slipped in a load. He stood back of the wheelhouse, aimed, fired, shattered the bottle and held on to the kick, the barrels coming up, muscled it and barely moved. He slipped another round in the breech looking at Kwame. "Want to try it again?"

Xavier, his ears ringing, filmed the scene from the off side of the wheelhouse with the Sony as Dara was telling Billy there was still another shooter. Billy handed the boy the rifle saying he hoped it didn't tear his shoulder off, reaching to it and feeling bones.

The boy didn't hold the rifle in a tight grip or press his cheek against it. He fired and the kick sent him back six feet against the curved bench. It stunned him, he lay there until the other boys started laughing. Billy watched the lad getting to his feet, trying to make himself laugh. Everybody but Kwame.

Billy slipped another round into the throat of his double-barrel beast, asking Kwame, "You want to try again? Help yourself," and offered the rifle.

Dara watched Kwame reach to take it, but then let his hand drop.

"Who won this game?"

"I told you, the one hits the bottle," Billy said. "I'm the only one did, so I keep the rifle." He said, "Tough luck, my friend," put his hand on Kwame's shoulder and said, "I'm sorry," when Kwame winced.

"Amazing," Dara said.

Xavier heard her. He said, "Yeah, but they still on the boat." BILLY, HIS HAND ON Kwame, moved him to the rail where the skiff was tied. Billy said, "Al Mout Li Amrikas? You must be thinking of some other Americans. You got your new shoes on? I told Idris Mohammed-he's going to London-where to get 'em for you boys. They comfortable?"

Kwame looked down at the shoes, nodding his head.

"Try not to get 'em wet out here," Billy said, "that's an expensive pair of footwear."

Now he was telling Kwame to get his boys home and ice those shoulders before they stiffened up on them. Telling Kwame he had some personal business to take care of and asked him, "You know anything about that gas tanker?" Nodding to the thousand-foot Aphrodite with the five tanks coming out of the deck. "You know the one owns it?"

"You don't smoke on the ship," Kwame said. "Is very dangerous."

"I'll remember that," Billy said. Christ, able to read NO SMOKING from a mile away. "You know where she's going?"

"To America someplace."

"You get your shoulder iced," Billy said. "You hear? It was a pleasure seeing you, Kwame. Maybe we can do it again sometime."

THEY WATCHED THE SKIFF heading back to Eyl, a boatload of pirates holding their shoulders. Dara was out on deck now with Helene; Billy stood at the bow watching Xavier sweep broken glass into the sea, talking to him.

Dara saying Billy surprised her; he was so cool the way he pulled it off, putting the rifle in Kwame's hands.

"I never know who he's gonna be," Helene said. "Sometimes he's Sterling Hayden with his precious bodily fluids."

"Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove," Dara said. "I thought it was a terrific picture when I first saw it. It's still good, but you can see everybody playing their parts."

"Ones they don't usually play," Helene said. "They're having fun and don't care if you know it. It's easy to fake things."

"What does he know about Aphrodite?"

"Everything. Like there are only five ports in the United States that take that kind of ship. I looked it up for him. You have to sit out in the water a long time before they let you tie up. Then you have to hook up lines to take the gas off the ship to wherever they store it. Any leaks out and hits the ground you're fucked."

"He's waiting for the gas ship," Dara said, "to get its release, and then what, follow it? Kwame said it's going to the U.S."

"He keeps watching it through his glasses," Helene said, "telling the ship to move out, goddamn it. When Billy wants to do something and has to wait, he drives you crazy."

"Well, you're not going around the world," Dara said, "unless the gas ship does."

"I've been thinking," Helene said, "if we actually follow the ship, are we going home? But I don't want to put any hope in it."

Dara said, "Or think of it blowing up a city in the U.S."

"Right. But I don't know-Billy's always changing his mind."

Dara said, "Where are the ports in the U.S.?"

"Boston. Near there," Helene said. "Two more on the East Coast in Maryland and Georgia, and one in the Gulf, near Lake Charles."

"Louisiana," Dara said, "not far from New Orleans." THEY SAW BILLY TURN to look at them from the bow and Helene said, "He wants to know why you're interested in the gas ship."

"I guess the same reason he is," Dara said, and watched Billy pause to say something to Xavier.

"He wants to see the pictures of the two guys," Helene said, "you took at the party."

"I got them on the ship too," Dara said.

Billy came over to them now and Helene said, "She'll show you the pictures if you want."

Billy said, "The two wogs?"

"I think one's African American," Dara said. "I got him at the party blowing smoke at me."

"I bet anything it's Jama Raisuli," Billy said. "Don't move, I'll be right back," and left them, stepped over to Pegaso and went below.

"He'll get his Arab pictures," Helene said, "so you can pick out the two guys."

"How's it going otherwise?"

"I drink, I smoke."

"And listen," Dara said. "What's he want to do about the gas ship?"

"I told you, he wants to follow it."

"But what's his game? Find out where the ship's going, and then what?"

"I'm not sure," Helene said, "you'll have to ask him."

Billy came back with a stack of 8 x 10 photographs he began to lay out on the roof of the wheelhouse.

"From what I remember of them at the party I'd say it's…this guy," laying down a shot of Jama, white teeth showing in his beard, hair to his shoulders, "and this guy I call Mr. Bones, Qasim al Salah."

"You're right," Dara said, "Jama and Qasim."

"All those wogs look alike," Billy said, "but Qasim's got that bony look you tend to remember. And the scar across his chin, like somebody cut him one time. Always wears those gray kid gloves. This colored guy who turned wog, Jama Raisuli, has a familiar name but I can't seem to place him."

"Sean Connery," Dara said, "played an Arab chieftain named Raisuli in The Wind and the Lion. He rides off with Candy Bergen bitching at him. I have the DVD. Brian Keith plays Teddy Roosevelt."

"Billy has it too," Helene said.

"I do, don't I?" Billy said, looking at Dara now. "You keep on amazing me, a young lady who doesn't use her head just to grow lovely hair. Yeah, Connery playing an Arab with his Scotch accent, he still made us believe he was a Mohammedan. Now this colored guy we think turned Arab on us, saw the movie and borrowed the name Raisuli. Could've been in prison, took up with radical Islamists and their Wahhabi ways. Using violence for a cause turns him on, gives him an excuse to use guns and explosives." Billy paused. "Besides being a hard-ass, does this kid have a sense of humor? Using a name was Sean Connery's in the desert movie? Or did somebody give it to him? They let me board the gas ship I might've found out."