Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

But turning shoreward was no comfort. Behind the lights that had shone to save him was Tecan. It was all the game and there was no end to it.

He hastened to arm himself — reloaded the Remington and put another clip in his own automatic. He retrieved his shoulder holster from the lazaret and slipped it on under his dirty work shirt. There were no more slugs for the Nambu, so he pitched it overboard. Then he seated himself outside the cockpit and waited.

It was not long before he heard engines approaching in the darkness. They were strong outboards, the kind that pushed the heaviest Boston whalers, and there was more than one.

“Mr. Fry!”

It might have been the voice he had heard over the CB. The other boats had cut their engines; only one advanced toward the Cloud on low throttle. He raised his head over the rail. What he saw in the darkness might have been a boat with men in it. Or might not.

“Mr. Fry?” asked the voice from the ocean.

Pablo thought about it for a minute.

“That’s right,” Pablo called back. “That’s me. Who are you, cuz?”

He was answered with silence. Then all the outboards started up together; there were three or four. There were no more hails from the water, they were waiting for codes.

“ No sé las codas ,” Pablo shouted. He did not know the Spanish word for codes, whether it was codas or not. “I’m just a peon on this boat.”

“Show yourself,” a frightened voice called. When he came to the rail, he was holding the shotgun. He could see their boat now; it was in fact a whaler and there were four men in it, all of them pointing what looked like M-16’s at him. The other boats hung on their throttles in the darkness some distance off. There would be other guns covering him there.

“The gun!” a second and even more frightened voice called.

Pablo realized that he was holding the Remington and threw it over the side. If they’d landed as many pieces as had gone over the side this trip, he thought, they could have themselves a couple of revolutions. And it was a damn fine shotgun.

Lights went on in his face and from the startled reaction he heard from the men in the boat, he imagined he must be a strange sight.

The friend of Mr. Fry had regained his composure.

“Everyone aboard together,” he demanded. “Everyone to show themselves.”

Pablo felt very tired in spite of the speed.

“The hell of it is,” Pablo shouted back, “there ain’t no one but me.”

Silence again, while the unseen boats circled off somewhere and the four men in the nearest boat watched him. Finally they pulled alongside. As the others tried simultaneously to hold their rifles on Pablo and steady themselves in the swell, the main man began to clamber aboard. The artificial hull deceived him; stepping from his own boat, he found himself short of the rail and was forced to come in hand over hand.

The men in the boat flashed their light on Pablo and on their leader and then turned it off again. They were plainly as chary of lights as he was.

Pablo shrugged to show his good will. His diver’s knife and the automatic were still concealed on his person.

The man from the whaler was trying to watch Pablo and look around at the same time. In a moment, he called his friends aboard, and Pablo heard the other whalers draw closer.

The four men who had come aboard tied their whaler’s painter around a bit. The leader, the one who spoke, had Pablo spread-eagled on the deck beside the wheelhouse. The two others made their way cautiously through the compartments. They carried lights but showed them only in closed spaces.

“ Sangre ,” Pablo heard one of the men say. Perhaps for that reason the leader ripped open Pablo’s shirt and found the automatic there. When there was a second man to back him, he took the whole harness, holster and all, and put it over his own shoulder.

The leader spoke to one of his men in words that Pablo could not make out and the man spoken to made a noise over the side like a soft cattle call. The other boats came in now and people began climbing over the rail. Pablo had the feeling there was another boat off somewhere, perhaps keeping watch.

They could kill him now, Pablo thought. A number of them crouched around him, keeping below the rail, shining their lights on him as though he were some strange sea creature they had brought up.

Men were shoveling aside the ice covering in the hatches. When they found the weapons crates, he could tell from their cries that not all of them in fact were men. They were hauling the crates out of the hatches now; their boots crunched against the overturned plastic baskets and the shrimps’ useless shells.

He turned his head to one side and between the legs of the men who guarded him saw the boat people working on the crates with their crowbars, checking their contents. A woman in a bandana knelt with them, holding a checklist, reading off contents.

“Galil. Seventy-five. Fifty-round clips. Three boxes.” She read on, hesitating, as though the words must be unfamiliar to her. “TRW. Seventy-five. Five point fifty-six. Thirty-round clips. Three boxes.”

They had the crates out on deck and were working on the second hold.

“You’re shot,” the man who was the leader said to Pablo.

“Did you figure I didn’t know that?”

“I have to know what happened.”

Pablo laughed. “I wish I knew,” he said.

“Tell it as best you can,” the man said. “We are at war here. Were you attacked?”

“Naw,” Pablo said. “It was just paranoia.”

The man who was questioning him laughed. None of the others did.

“In other words, you fought. And the others?”

“You figure it out.”

“They were killed by you. That’s how I figure it out. And their bodies thrown to the sharks. How’s that, Yanqui?” the man asked him. “How’s that for figuring it out?”

“I don’t care what you do to me,” Pablo said. “None of this was my idea.”

From the forward hatchway came indiscreet cries of joy. It seemed, to Pablo’s understanding, that they had discovered rockets there. The leader, the man who had been questioning Pablo, got to his feet and quieted his troops. They formed passing lines and commenced to offload the cases onto their whalers.

When he returned to question Pablo, the leader directed all but one of his men to a loading station.

“Can you walk?” the head man asked Pablo.

As they were helping him to his feet they discovered the diver’s knife against his calf. Shaking their heads, they helped him into the cockpit. The boat leader and Pablo sat down in Negus and Callahan’s cockpit chairs. The leader’s number two stood in the hatchway, his weapon leveled at Pablo’s chest.

“If our business is betrayed,” the head man said, “if anyone ratted here … you die first.”

“If I didn’t think the meet was O.K., I wouldn’t be here,” Pablo said. Although he had no idea where it was that he might be, regardless of what he thought.

“The fight was about the money, no? Or about the guns? Maybe someone tried to stop our operation?”

Pablo was at a loss to make them understand.

“It was part personal. It was part about the money.” He looked at the leader and at the man with the rifle. “Things happen that way.”

“Yes, truly,” the leader said. “Often in this world. And you are the winner. You must be very strong.”

“What’s that get me, chief? You’re the boss now.”

The leader wore a yellow oilskin and underneath it he carried a hand briefcase of cheap plastic. So full was it that the cloth beside its zipper bulged. Holding it under his arm, the leader went toward the Cloud ’s CB receiver.