Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Engage the diesels, lover,” he told her. “Do it faster than anything.”

She ran around to the engine space and had opened the metal hatch when she heard her husband laugh.

“He just lit up,” Callahan called to them. “He’s a dragger.”

Negus looked out the windshield at the fresh lights.

“He must have been making thirty. You sure he’s a dragger?”

“He’s the Rastafarian Navy,” Callahan said, watching through the glasses. “He’s going right into Alvarado.”

Deedee came forward wiping sweat from her forehead.

“Is there an explanation for him?” she asked. “Or is he just stoned like us?”

“Probably be his lights don’t work very well,” Negus said. “He wants to get in before United Fruit runs him over. And he’s souped up for running ganja.”

“Don’t want no more,” Deedee Callahan sang, “midnight rambles no more. Que vida. ”

“Where’s that fucking Pablo?” Negus asked.

“Sacked out. Leave him.” He bent over the Raytheon and marked his Loran chart. “O.K.,” he told them, “Freddy’s going to find me a hole in the wall.”

As they looked on, Negus turned the Cloud ’s head toward the reef and cut speed. Everyone watched the Fathometer.

“Gotta be it,” Negus said after a minute. “Ninety and ninety and sloping up.”

“Engine stop,” Callahan said. “And drop the hook so we don’t drift on the marbles.”

Deedee was on deck peering into the darkness.

“You don’t get more than a flash glow from Alvarado light,” she said. “It’s around that point.”

Callahan was at his chart table with a piece of chart paper before him.

“Let me get a quick line of sight here,” he said.

“There’s an aviation beacon on that mountain,” she said, shielding her eyes from the glow of the deck lights. “It’s on your Loran chart.”

“I got it,” he said. He marked the coordinates from the Raytheon on his line-of-sight chart and x’d in the aviation beacon. They were waiting for the boat to swing full around on its chain.

“Two dock lights at sixty degrees off the beacon. Over them there’s a building with a cross on it.”

“That’s fine if those dock lights are on all night,” Negus said. “But whoever they are must be using a generator because there’s no electricity out here.”

“They’ll be on,” Callahan said. “We were told they’d be on.”

He marked the dock lights on his handmade chart and put it under the Bowditch.

“Now,” he said, “Deedee, go turn that bozo to and get the marker buoy over. It’s time to talk to the customer.”

The CB was silent as Negus dialed in.

“José,” Negus said into the night, “you get those pumps for me?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Fry.” It was a different voice, but relaxed, easy with English.

“That’s just fine,” Negus said, and hung up the receiver. “Think he sees us?” he asked Callahan.

“No question about it,” Callahan said.

Deedee and Pablo came in slightly breathless. At Deedee Callahan’s call, Pablo had been huddled in the lazaret hatch close to Naftali’s pistol, looking at the Puerto Alvarado lights with longing and dread.

“Hi, kids,” Callahan said to his wife and to Pablo. “Now we’re going to open up the arms locker.”

Pablo watched Callahan unlock the gear locker in which his automatic was stowed. There were half a dozen other pistols beside it. Seeing his weapon, Pablo took a step toward it.

“Leave it where it is,” Negus snapped at him.

“No, Pablo,” Callahan said patiently. “We’re unlocking them, we’re not going to wave them at passing shipping.” He stepped through the galley and down into the paneled compartment and there, with another key from his key ring, opened what looked like a teak book chest between two lounge chairs. The chest had a small automatic rifle of foreign make and a number of shotguns. When he had unlocked the chest, he closed it again.

“It’s very frustrating,” Mr. Callahan explained, “to look for keys when you’re in a hurry. In the meantime, let’s everyone remember that we’re a few miles offshore with all our lights blazing like Christmas. So let’s preserve our workaday respectability and demeanor and leave this stuff where it is. Until we need it. Which of course we all hope we will not.”

“You’re so right,” Deedee said.

Callahan picked up the glass of rum he had been drinking. “Now,” Callahan said to Pablo, “you and Deedee are going shrimping.”

“I don’t follow you there,” Pablo said.

“Mrs. Callahan will explain.” He put his hand beside his wife’s ear; it was a caress of sorts. “And while you’re out on deck, Dee, put a watch cap over your hair, O.K.? So you’ll look like a gringo shrimper and not a Rhine maiden?”

She went into her quarters and came out with a black watch cap and a green down vest. She tucked her hair under the cap and winked at Pablo.

“Let’s go, Tex,” she said to Pablo. “Let’s go get the hatches clear.”

When they were on deck, Callahan sat down in the cockpit chair and drained his drink. He picked up the rough line-of-sight chart he had make and smiled at Negus.

“We’ll take her out on the Bonaire radio beacon. Right out on one-eighty. At eleven hundred we’ll have her back here along zero-zero-zero.”

“Aye, aye,” Negus said, and swung the bow toward the open sea.

“We’ll have the net over,” Callahan went on, looking at the Raytheon scope, “so you better keep the speed way down. Eight or nine knots, no more.”

“Hey, Jack, lay off the sauce, will you? We got a lot of time to kill and you’re like to get me started.”

Callahan made a placatory gesture with his slim small hand. They heard the stabilizer engine cough up and chain line being dragged across the deck.

“Damn Tino,” Negus said.

Deedee Callahan appeared in the galley in work gloves and white shrimper’s boots, the watch cap tucked down to her eyebrows. She took the rum bottle and a handful of joints down from the shelf.

“Hey, man,” she said, eyeing the level of the bottle, “I thought it was you staying sober tonight. I thought it was me could get snackered.”

“You may get as snackered as you see the need of,” Callahan told her.

Negus looked over his shouder.

“What are you gonna do, missus, have a party back there?”

“Why not?” she said. “We gotta head all those little nasty things. You know,” she told them, “I was once quite fond of shrimp.”

“Don’t bother heading them,” her husband said. “Just get it in there and make sure it’s all shrimp.”

Negus reached out from his chair and took the bottle from her.

“That’s my limit,” he announced when he had drunk. “First we work, then we can get fucked up. That’s the way you’re supposed to do it.”

“Are we using the tri-net?” Deedee asked.

“The hell with it.” Callahan stood up and went to the hatchway and looked out at the black ocean. With the net and stabilizer down, the Cloud had begun to roll at an angle not at all commensurate with the mild weather.

“What’s the Pablo situation?”

“He’s quiet,” she said. “He wants to know what he’s gonna do when we get back to the marker.”

“Well,” Callahan said thoughtfully, “tell him a little about it and make him feel important. But don’t let him get drunk and lose his splendid air of authority. Keep him otherwise occupied.”

“I’ll massage his cock while he heads shrimp, how’s that?”

They passed the bottle around again.

“Hey,” Deedee asked, “you sure you want me to tell him about the operation?”

Callahan looked aft to the stern, where Pablo was straightening out the folds in the dragnet.