Jason Frost - The cutthroat

"Bravo!" the captain said, applauding. Others on board joined in the applause, whistling and jeering. "A virtuoso performance, wouldn't you agree? You might even say he handles a bow better than Isaac Stern, eh?" The captain cackled with laughter.

Eric lifted the crossbow to his lap, waited.

"Apparently you two lack a sense of humor." The captain's voice hardened, shouting across the water now as if enraged. "You will remain motionless while my men approach you."

Out of the dark shadows skirting the ship, a small dinghy emerged. One man rowed, the other sat on the rear transom with a 9-mm Uzi submachine gun aimed at Eric and Tracy.

Somewhere in the dark Eric thought he heard a rubber band snapping.

"We'd prefer not to waste any precious bullets on you, so your cooperation will be appreciated." The captain's voice was calmer now, but measured, as if he was still struggling to control his temper. "By the way, you do have the Alabaster map, don't you?"

"The what?" Eric asked.

There was a pause. Eric heard the buzzing of whispered conversation. A woman's shrill voice mingled with the man's.

"No matter," the captain said cheerfully. He flicked the cigarette overboard in a bright arc of red light. "Perhaps you will feel more like talking on board. If not, well, we shall make do."

The dark figure behind the spotlight walked across the ship's deck, his thick body outlined in the rim of white from the searchlight. Then he was gone. Another figure, shorter, thinner, took his place behind the light.

The rowboat glided closer. The only sound was the oars pounding water with a quick cadence.

Tracy lifted the Colt.38 from her lap.

"Wait," Eric whispered.

"For what?"

"Wait."

She hesitated, then rested the gun back on her lap. She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, bit lightly.

The rowboat sliced through the black water until it too was basking in the bright beam from the ship's searchlight. The oarsman's back was to the canoe, but he kept looking over his shoulder at Tracy.

"Eric, look," she pointed.

Eric stared at the approaching men. Both looked like refugees from the midnight screening he'd attended last June of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Annie had dressed in an outrageous costume, sneaking past the babysitter and children. Stripping out of her trenchcoat in the car, she'd swiveled the rearview mirror over so she could shovel on her makeup while he drove. They'd laughed all the way to the theater.

But these men were serious. Their faces were caked white with some kind of makeup. Thick black mascara rimmed their eyes, scarlet lipstick was smeared on their lips. The oarsman's greasy hair was knotted into a heavy braid that hung down the middle of his muscular back like black rope. The skinny gunman on the transom wore an expensive black tuxedo with no shirt underneath, just his pale bumpy chest. Around his bony neck he wore a white flea collar.

"Jesus," Tracy said.

"Get ready."

"For what?"

"All the gear tied down?"

"Yeah."

"I mean everything. Backpacks, weapons."

She looked at him, realizing. "Oh no, Eric."

He lashed the paddles to the thwarts, secured the extra bolts for his bow in one of the backpacks.

"There's got to be another way."

"You think of one?"

The rowboat splashed closer. The gunman with the flea collar stood up in the boat and waved his Uzi. "Shut the fuck up, assholes."

The oarsman glanced over his huge shoulder and leered at Tracy. Three of his front teeth were missing. The others looked like rotten prunes.

Tracy sighed at Eric and shrugged resignation.

"Keep your head down," Eric winked.

"I said to shut up!" the gunman screamed. The rowboat was only ten feet away now, directly between the canoe and the ship. "You want to suck on the end of this, jerkoff?" He waved the Uzi at Eric.

Tracy snapped up her Colt in a double-fisted grip and fired. The.38 slug blasted a hole through the gunman's wrist, splashing a pattern of blood on the tuxedo jacket and bare skin of his chest. Undaunted, the bullet continued on through the wrist and into the center of the bloody pattern, burrowing another hole through his bony chest. The impact flipped him over the side of the small boat. His heavy boots dragged his dying body to the sunken sidewalks of Huntington Beach below.

The oarsman grabbed at his partner's Uzi, which had clattered to the floor of the rowboat. He had it in an instant and was swinging toward the canoe.

Eric hefted his Barnett Commando crossbow to waist level and pulled the trigger. The bolt jumped out of the bow, plunging through the oarsman's red Linda Ronstadt T-shirt. The Uzi dropped from his hand into the boat, but he didn't seem to care. He sat back down with a heavy thud, staring blandly at the feathered plume lodged in his chest. Blood even redder than his lipstick oozed out of the corner of his mouth.

"Kill them!" a woman's voice commanded. It was high-pitched, unmistakably Oriental. For a second, Eric thought he recognized it.

A submachine gun flared on the ship and a dozen bullets chewed through the rowboat and across the legs of the oarsman before one finally rammed through the canoe. The oarsman didn't scream, just looked confused, his heavy-lidded stare still fixed on the protruding arrow.

"Move!" Eric hollered at Tracy, and both threw themselves backward over the side of the canoe. Eric held on to the gunwale, purposely tipping the canoe over with him.

Under the black saltwater he couldn't see anything but the rim of light above that outlined the overturned canoe. He reached his arms out, flailing to find Tracy. His fingers grazed her head and he fought to get a grip on her short hair, yanking her up next to him. He knew she was a fine swimmer, but he also knew the terror even good swimmers feel when thrown into a dark ocean at night. He'd seen experienced soldiers become unhinged as they thought about all the primitive life teeming around them searching for food.

They bobbed up directly under the overturned canoe. Two rods of light slanted through the dark where the searchlight lit the bullet holes.

"Just tread here for a while," he said. "There's plenty of air and they'll probably think we swam away."

Tracy sputtered water, nodded weakly.

"No bullets!" the woman's clipped oriental voice screeched from the ship. "Save bullets."

"What the hell's going on?" the captain's voice challenged; apparently he was returning from below deck.

Their voices became quiet for a minute.

"How long should we stay?" Tracy whispered.

"We'll let the current carry us away. They must have a pretty big ship, not all that easy to maneuver in the dark, even with their searchlights. Besides it would take them a while to haul all the sails up."

"They could use the motor."

"Providing they have any fuel and are willing to waste it on us." He shook his head as he secured his crossbow to the thwarts. "Nope, my guess is they'll just write us off and sit it out for the rest of the night."

Three arrows slammed through the side of the canoe. One of them plowed a couple inches of skin from Eric's neck. He felt the sting of saltwater splashing his bleeding wound.

"Down!" he barked, pushing Tracy's head underwater as he dove under after her. They came up on the outside of the canoe, their heads still hidden from the ship. Another volley of arrows whistled through the air, some piercing the canoe, others splashing in the water around them like crazy fish.

"We swim?" Tracy asked, her teeth chattering from the cold water.

"Yeah. We swim."

"Which way?"

He pointed.

"Eric, that's toward their ship!"

"Right. They've got their light searching all over the water. They're bound to find us when we come up for air. Unless were where they aren't looking."