Charles Williams - Aground

“This is more like it,” she said to Morrison. “What about these guns? Where are you going with them?”

“A place called Bahia San Felipe, just north of the Canal.”

“You going to start a revolution, or what?”

Morrison shook his head. “We’re just supplying the stuff this time.”

“How did Patrick Ives get mixed up in it? It’s a little out of his line.”

Morrison chuckled. “Money. That’s in his line, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think you could say that. And then say it again. But just how did you meet?”

“I ran into him in a bar in Miami two or three weeks ago. We got to talking about gun-running, among other things. It was a big business around there for a while during the Cuban fracas, you remember, and the Feds were still uncovering a batch now and then. Anyway, I happened to mention I knew where there was a whole shipment hid out in an old house down near Homestead—”

“How did you know about it?” Rae Osborne asked.

“From one of the boys that’d been flying it in for this particular outfit. I was in the racket myself, and knew quite a few of ‘em. Anyway, this Hollister—or Ives as you call him—got interested in it and wanted to know what I thought the shipment was worth. I told him probably a hundred grand—that is, delivered to somebody that needed it bad enough. So he wanted to know if it would be possible to lift the stuff and maybe peddle it somewhere. I told him getting away with it would be a cinch, but that there wasn’t much market for it at present. Then I remembered Carlos. We’d been in a couple of Central American revolutions together, besides the Cuban one, and he knew most of the politicos-in-exile that Miami’s always full of, and could probably come up with a customer if we could figure out a way to deliver. That’s when Ives got the idea of liberating the Dragoon . He said he could sail it, and knew how to navigate. The only trouble was, it’d been some time since he’d been aboard the boat, and he didn’t know what kind of condition it was in—naturally, we couldn’t steal it and then go in a shipyard somewhere—so we’d have to look it over first. He couldn’t go himself because the watchman might recognize him and blow the whistle on him afterward, and Carlos and I didn’t know anything about boats, so we had to send somebody else.”

Rae Osborne took another sip of her drink. “Do the people who owned the guns know who got away with them?”

Morrison shook his head. “Not a chance. We took ‘em out of the house at night with a truck we rented under a phony name.”

“How did you get them aboard the Dragoon?”

“We brought her into a place down in the Keys after dark and put ‘em aboard with a couple of skiffs, along with the supplies and gasoline we’d picked up at different places. We spent the rest of the night slapping a coat of paint on her, and got out just before daylight. That was still before anybody even realized she was stolen.”

“And you’re still determined to deliver the guns?”

“Of course.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Less than two weeks. After we get loose here, I mean. What do you think, Herman?”

“It would depend on the weather,” Ingram said. “And to a great extent on whether you ever got there at all.”

“You’ve got a negative attitude, pal. Learn to look on the bright side.”

Rae Osborne shrugged, and drained her glass. “Well, I’d have given odds I’d never be in the gun-running business, but I guess you never know. I think we ought to have another one.”

“Sure.” Morrison grinned. “I’ll go with you. I could use one too.”

They went down the ladder. In a moment the sound of laughter issued from below. Ingram puffed his cigar and tried to read Ruiz’ expression, but it was inscrutable. He knows it, though, he thought; we’re headed for more trouble, if we didn’t have enough already. The two of them came back shortly with fresh drinks.

“You’re sure I get the Dragoon back?” she asked.

“Natch. What do I want with it? As soon as the guns are off and we get paid, Carlos and I take it on the Arthur Duffy, and you and Herman can sail it back to Key West. We’ll see you get enough supplies and fresh water for the trip. What’s to complain about—a Caribbean cruise, with me along as social director? Hell, if we’d advertised, we’d have had to fight the girls off with clubs.”

She laughed. “You know what I like about you? It’s your modesty.”

Ingram looked at her with disgust, thinking that boredom must be a terrible thing. She was already telling people about it at cocktail parties. All the way across the Caribbean, darling, with this whole load of guns and bullets and stuff that might blow up any minute or something, and this absolute brute of a man that looked like Genghis Khan except he was kind of cute in a hairy sort of way if you know what I mean, and always carrying this awful machine gun in his arm ... It was just a lark, like trying to get an extra carton of cigarettes past the Customs inspector.

He wondered if it would do any good to tell her the chances were excellent she’d never even get across the Caribbean in a boat loaded as the Dragoon was, and that if she did and was lucky enough not to be killed outright by the Guarda Costas she’d probably have her boat confiscated and spend several years in a verminous prison where the United States State Department couldn’t do anything for her at all. Then he shrugged. It didn’t seem worth the effort.

7

By 12:30 p.m. the outgoing tide had slowed enough to permit resumption of the unloading operation. The work went on through the blistering heat of afternoon. The tide was at slack low shortly after two, with the Dragoon’s list at its most pronounced. Ingram’s shoulders ached, and he lost count of the number of trips he had made. On the sand spit, the pile of boxes grew larger hour by hour. The tide began to flood. By five p.m. the current was again becoming a problem, and at a little before six Morrison called a halt and rode the raft back to the Dragoon.

“That’s all the rifles,” he said, as they sat in the cockpit in their dripping clothes. “Let’s see—sixty times a hundred. . .”

Three tons off, Ingram thought. The schooner’s list was decreasing now by slow degrees as the tide rose, and it should be about two hours more until slack high. It would be interesting to see how far she might be from floating then, but he was almost too tired to care. Ruiz brought up a plate of sandwiches and they ate on deck while sunset died beyond the Santaren Channel in a thundering orchestration of color. Ingram watched it, remembering other tropical sunsets down the long roll of the years and wondering how many were left now in his own personal account. Probably not many, from the looks of things at the moment. He couldn’t see any way out, and all he could do was go on waiting for something to break.

But what? he wondered. Even if Morrison took off that prosthetic BAR when he went to sleep, which appeared unlikely, he was still no match for the man in a fight. Not now, at forty-three—and the chances were he never had been. And there was always Ruiz and his Colt. There was something a little mad, he thought, in this harping on those two guns when the Dragoon’s whole cargo consisted of a hundred-thousand-dollar assortment of deadly weapons, but they were all crated and out of reach, and the ammunition for them was crated separately.

He was roused from the quiet futility of his thoughts by a shrill laugh from Rae Osborne. She and Morrison were dipping into the rum again, and apparently Morrison had just said something very funny. He let his gaze slide past their oasis of alcoholic gaiety to where Ruiz sat cross-legged atop the deckhouse, and this time the grave imperturbability of the mask had slipped a little and he could see, in addition to the Spanish contempt for drunkenness, the growing shadow of concern. Ruiz knew him, so that probably meant he was inclined to get pretty goaty and unbuttoned among the grapes. You had to admit they had all the ingredients for a memorable cruise—a boisterous giant, an arsenal of weapons, plenty of rum, and a bored and stupid woman apparently bent on agitating the mixture to see what would happen.