Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin

Rakkim turned to Sarah. “You’re right. I have thought of a way to keep Humpty-Dumpty from taking a great fall.” He smiled at Leo. “This is going to be fun.”

How long are you going to stay mad at me, Rikki?

I don’t like being blindsided.

I didn’t have a choice, said Sarah. And neither do you.

Rakkim turned at the sound of Leo vomiting over the side of the small fishing boat, hanging on to the railing with his chubby fingers as he upended his gullet for the tenth time in the last two hours. There hadn’t been anything left for the last forty-five minutes but he kept trying. Rakkim half expected the kid to hurl his intestines into the Gulf.

Leo looked over at Rakkim, the kid still bent over, clothes soaked from the salt spray. Snot ran from his nose, glistened along his chin like an iri-descent beard. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? I can feel your brain stem twitching with glee.”

“I told you to take Dramamine.”

“I’m allergic to it.”

“Anything you’re not allergic to?”

Leo started to respond, grimaced, and lurched over the rail.

“That pendejo never been on a boat before?” said Vasquez, captain of the Esmeralda, bare-chested, his stringy hair billowing around his grease-stained cap.

“Kid must have had a bad tamale back in Rio Concho,” said Rakkim.

“You should choose your companions more carefully, amigo. A strong man tied to a weak man…when there is trouble, the strong man’s strength counts for nothing.”

Rakkim turned his face into the wind. “I don’t see any trouble.”

Vasquez spit, perfectly timing the wind to carry his burst of tobacco juice away.

Rakkim walked past the wheelhouse. Took a position forward. Bumpier near the bow but he liked watching their progress and catching the full force of the wind. Still no sight of land. He felt the Esmeralda’s engine underfoot. Heard the two mates, Hector and Luis, banging around belowdecks. The Esmeralda was in even worse shape than ten years ago, when Vasquez had delivered him to Santabel Island in a squall, lightning crackling all around them. Best way to avoid the Belt patrol boats. Vasquez thought he was a smuggler then, thought he was a smuggler now. He told Vasquez that Leo was a diamond cutter, a freelancer on his way to an unnamed client in Atlanta. A lot of the fishermen supplemented their meager income ferrying human contraband in and out of the Belt.

You would have thought the warming of the Gulf of Mexico would have made life easier for independent fishermen like Vasquez, that the waters would be teeming with even more fish than ever. Not so. Global warming had turned the Gulf into a cauldron of sudden storms and a hurricane season lasting six months and rising. Small boats like the Esmeralda were forced to remain idle half the year, and the central government of Aztlán, which now claimed most of the Gulf, awarded contracts to massive commercial trawlers who could better handle the storms, and whose miles-long nets swept the waters bare.

Rakkim glanced at the salt-pitted glass of the wheelhouse, then back to the sea. The boat groaned, engine sputtering briefly before kicking in. The best piece of equipment on the Esmeralda was a sophisticated new radio/sonar unit. Vasquez said he had spent three months’ wages on it, hoping the sonar would allow him to compete with the factory ships in the search for fish. Rakkim checked the stern, saw the kid slumped on the deck, holding his head in his hands. Pathetic. Thanks, Sarah. He tried to remember the last argument with her that he had won.

Did the other teams have a Brainiac along for the ride? Rakkim asked. Did Spider already lose one of his kids?

No, Sarah said. This is the first time he’s risked one of his children.

We’re at that point, are we?

We’re that desperate, yes, said Sarah.

Desperate enough that you think I need help? Rakkim shook his head. I don’t need Leo to evaluate this weapons system. I could just blow the fucker up. Problem solved. But you don’t really want me to hotshot it, do you? You want me to bring the weapon back. That’s why the kid’s tagging along. So he can tell me if it’s worth the effort.

No…bringing it back wouldn’t be practical, Sarah said softly. She reached for him but he didn’t respond. You’re not supposed to know about this, Rikki. No one is.

Rakkim waited.

It’s not the system per se that’s important, Sarah said finally. It’s the science behind it. The schematics. The theoretical leaps the former regime did so well. Leo can evaluate the data, but there’s more. Much more. She moistened her lips. Leo…he’s been modified.

Leo inched his way toward Rakkim from the stern, bent forward slightly, hanging on to the railing for support. The rain gear that Vasquez had loaned him was ridiculously small. He flopped beside Rakkim, tucked in his chin as the storm broke, sheets of warm rain slanting across them. The full force wasn’t supposed to hit until tomorrow morning. So much for satellite imaging.

“Is there some rational reason why you’re standing here and not inside the cabin?” shouted Leo, voice cracking. “Are you even capable of forming a rational judgment?”

“Just working on my tan.” Rakkim spread his arms, knees bent, swaying with the rolling of the boat, eyes half closed in the warm rain. “Why don’t you go inside? Vasquez makes good coffee.”

Leo shook his head. Looked even younger somehow. “They don’t like me.”

Rakkim noticed a slight change in the engine vibration, started toward the wheelhouse as Leo called after him.

Vasquez turned away from the wheel as Rakkim reached the top of the ladder. Hector, the first mate, slouched in the corner, rain dripping off him as he sucked on a bottle of beer.

“You’re turning northeast,” said Rakkim. “We at the cutoff point already?”

Vasquez grinned silvery teeth as he cut the running lights. “You have radar too, amigo?”

Rakkim’s itinerary called for Vasquez to take them due east from his village of Laguna Madre, then cut toward the Texas coast and drop them off outside Nuevo Galveston in a small inflatable raft.

“Change of plans,” said Rakkim. “Drop us off just south of Corpus Christi.”

Vasquez peered through the windscreen as the boat shuddered and groaned. “Corpus?” He narrowed his eyes. “Bad idea. Very dangerous currents. Rocks and sandbars-”

“Bery, bery dangerous,” echoed Hector.

“I’ll take the chance,” said Rakkim.

“Hey!” Leo called up from the deck. “I don’t like being left alone out here.”

“We clear, Alejandro?” said Rakkim.

“Gone cost you another five hundred,” said Vasquez.

“Fine.” Rakkim slid down the railing of the ladder, landed with a splash on the deck. He silenced Leo with a raised finger, scrambled silently back up the ladder. Stopped just below the wheelhouse, listening as the wind howled around him.

“Cambio de planes,” Vasquez muttered, giving news of the change of plans to his people onshore, bounty hunters or worse. “Cerdo americano-”

Rakkim launched himself up the last couple of rungs, slammed Vasquez’s head against the wheel. The radiophone fell to the floor as the captain slumped against the com. Rakkim heard the sound of a shotgun being racked, and grabbed the dazed Vasquez.

“Please, señor,” said Hector, pointing the barrel of a sawed-off pump at Rakkim. “Be so kind as to move aside.”

Rakkim held Vasquez closer. A friendly embrace.

“Señor.” Hector’s eyes were the color of mop water. “Por favor.”

Vasquez struggled but Rakkim held him tight. With no one at the wheel, the Esmeralda lurched through the waves, rolling from one side to the other.