Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin

“Rakkim?” called Leo.

Hector’s gaze didn’t waver at the interruption. He raised the sawed-off slightly, considering a head shot.

Rakkim pushed Vasquez aside, kicked the shotgun as Hector fired. Splinters from the roof of the wheelhouse drifted down. Ears ringing, Rakkim grabbed the sawed-off, clubbed Hector over the head with it.

“What blew up?” shouted Leo. “Are we on fire?”

“Go sit down, kid.” Rakkim watched Hector fall to the floor, then grabbed Vasquez, pushed him against the wheel. He jabbed the sawed-off against the back of the captain’s fat neck. Hector’s blood dripped off the barrel. “North by northwest, verdad?”

A knot the size of a robin’s egg had formed on Vasquez’s forehead. He blinked as he stood at the wheel, knees shaking.

“Verdad?” repeated Rakkim.

“Verdad.”

“Capitán!” Luis’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Qué pasa?”

“Nada,” said Vasquez. “Nada, vato.” He switched off the intercom.

“You’re a disappointment, Alejandro,” said Rakkim, quickly binding Hector’s wrists and ankles.

“Please, don’t kill me,” said Vasquez. “Business…this is what the business has become.” He breathed heavily, as though he had run a long race and was nearing the finish line. “The Texas Rangers pay hard money for illegals, and my boat needs work…so much work. What is a man to do?”

“A man’s supposed to abide by his word, motherfucker,” said Rakkim.

For the next hour Vasquez steered the boat as best he could, the storm gaining strength behind them while Luis kept busy coaxing the engine back to life. Once Leo poked his head up, saw the situation, and scuttled back below. The Esmeralda rode high on the peaks of the waves, then crashed down into the troughs, repeating the process over and over. Hector lay hog-tied in the corner, blood crusting his face. He rolled from side to side as the boat skidded over the waves, watching Rakkim with fiery eyes. The radiophone blinked constantly with incoming calls that Rakkim didn’t answer.

The boat listed hard to port, timbers groaning as the bottom scraped along a sandbar. Water poured over the gunwales before Vasquez righted it. The captain threw the Esmeralda into reverse, the engines smoking as he finally broke free. “Señor, we get stuck here, the storm will tear us to pieces!”

Rakkim could see the lights of Corpus Christi in the distance. Close enough. “Tell Luis to ready the inflatable.”

Vasquez did as he was told.

Rakkim pointed the sawed-off at the radio/sonar unit, stopped when he saw the agonized look on Vasquez’s face. Had the man begged, made excuses, Rakkim would have blasted it apart. As it was…his pained silence was more persuasive. Rakkim opened the unit up with his knife, cut through the wiring harness, and slit the motherboard. The system could be easily fixed when Vasquez returned to Laguna Madre, but he wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone until then.

“G-gracias,” whispered Vasquez.

Hector spit on Rakkim’s boots. “Puto!”

Rakkim tossed the sawed-off over the side and slid down onto the deck. Slung his small, waterproof sack across one shoulder. He saw Luis and Leo struggling to keep the inflatable from sailing into the wind, the two of them drenched and frightened. The wind made it impossible to talk, so Rakkim simply pushed Leo onto the raft and launched it over the side. They hit the water hard, skidding over the surface, the inflatable tumbling end over end. Twice Rakkim had to grab Leo to prevent him being pulled under, the kid gasping and screaming, swallowing water. It was no big deal. Just a matter of hanging on until the wind and waves drove them to shore. You just had to keep your mouth shut and remember to breathe. Which seemed to be more than Leo could manage. Rakkim hooked one arm around the kid, kept a grip on the inflatable with the other, and let Mother Nature take care of the rest.

Ten minutes later Rakkim felt sand underfoot and let the inflatable go, dragging Leo to shore. Leo was unable to walk, kept coughing up seawater, doubled over. Rakkim slung him over one shoulder and walked higher onto the dunes. Dropped him off behind a huge chunk of driftwood, the flotsam providing some shelter from the wind.

“I almost drowned,” sputtered Leo.

“You didn’t.” Rakkim walked back toward the water and stood there, catching the full force of the storm, smiling as he struggled to stay on his feet. Sand stung his face, burned his eyes, and his clothes flapped around him so hard it hurt, but he didn’t care. He was back in the Belt.

Leo crawled over on his hands and knees. “We got to get out of here!”

Rakkim pulled Leo to his feet. “Spread your arms out,” shouted Rakkim, leaning forward into the wind, searching for the balance point. “There…right there.” He leaned at a forty-five-degree angle, held in place by the wind.

Leo hesitated, tried it. Almost was blown backward…tried it again. And again. Until he succeeded.

The two of them stayed there, a couple of scarecrows on the shore, hair beating against their faces. Leo howled into the wind, still nervous, but laughing at his own distorted voice. Probably figuring vectors and parabolas at the same time, trying to decide what scientific journal was worthy of his research.

Rakkim reveled in the power of the storm. In the distance he could see the Esmeralda chugging toward the open sea. Vasquez had left his running lights off, but Rakkim’s night vision had been amped up, just like the rest of him. Vasquez pressed on, trying to avoid running directly into the storm, wisely choosing an oblique path back south into more familiar waters. Making good progress too, the boat a dim speck among the high waves. Rakkim waved, though no one on the boat could see him, even if they were looking. Vaya con Dios, Alejandro.

Vasquez’s plan worked fine until the boat ran aground. Like the captain had said, with all the hurricanes, the seabed changed from month to month, sandbars appearing and disappearing overnight. A fisherman needed sonar and a marine echo-location system to know where he was going, and Rakkim had taken care of that. He hadn’t meant to sink the boat. He just wanted to make sure that Vasquez didn’t alert his contacts on the mainland. Not that Rakkim’s intentions mattered now.

Leo kept laughing, arms outstretched, unaware of what was going on around him.

Rakkim saw the boat shudder as the waves boiled around it. He couldn’t hear the engine, but knew Vasquez was trying to rock it free-full-throttle forward, then reverse. It wasn’t working. The boat seesawed, seemed to be suspended for a moment, then a forty-foot wave crashed down, buried it under tons of water. Rakkim waited. Waited…When the waves rolled away, the Esmeralda was gone. Torn apart or sucked under and out to sea. Rakkim wondered if Hector had had time to curse him again before he died. Wondered if Luis had died in the engine compartment, down in the dark, trying to coax a little more power out of the ancient diesel. In a week or two Vasquez’s captain’s cap might wash ashore someplace. Maybe some little girl would pick it up, put it on her head, the oversize hat falling around her ears while she capered on the sand. Until her parents told her to take the filthy thing off. No telling what she might catch just by touching it.

“What is it?” said Leo, squinting. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“You look upset.” Leo sniffed, hitched up his jeans, posing. “This isn’t so bad, really.” He shivered, watching Rakkim out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his reaction. “It’s actually…kind of fun.”

The idiot actually believed he could pass in the Belt with a drawl and a lazy walk. He had no idea. Rakkim stared out to sea. “The fun’s just beginning, kid.”