Charles Williams - Aground

On the next trip, however, he caught a change in the pattern. Maybe she had solved it. She was below when he came alongside, and didn’t return to the deck until after he was loaded and pulling away. She moved listlessly, as though she were ill. He delivered the box to Morrison and rowed back. This time she sat quietly in the after end of the cockpit until the loading operation was completed and he was clear of the schooner’s side. Then she arose, slightly doubled over, and hurried toward the ladder.

“Again?” Ruiz asked.

“So you must have bad water on here,” she snapped.

Ruiz shrugged. “Water? How would you know?” But she was gone down the ladder.

All right, Ingram thought; I read you loud and clear. But it probably wouldn’t be the next trip; she’d build it up more subtly than that. The next did go by without incident. It was after one now, and the flood was quickening. When he came alongside on the return, butterflies moved softly inside his stomach; one mistake, or one tiny lag in reaction time, and he might be dead within the next few minutes. She was seated on the deck with her feet on the cockpit cushions, aft on the opposite side. He gave her only a passing glance and caught the lifeline stanchion. The box of ammunition was balanced on the edge of the deck just level with his shoulder, and Ruiz had hold of the line.

She leaned forward slightly. “Don’t stand between me and that ladder, Oliver.”

Ruiz gave her an indifferent glance as she stood up. Ingram reached for the box, walked it over the edge of the scupper, and let Ruiz take the strain on the line just as she started up the deck beyond him. He saw her turn and fall, and at the precise instant she landed on Ruiz’ shoulders he gave a savage yank on the line. The two of them fell forward onto the cushions on the low side of the cockpit, just in front of him. The box of ammunition struck the edge of the raft and almost capsized it as it plummeted into the water. He had hold of the lifeline and was lunging upward then, throwing a turn of the raft’s painter around the lifeline as he went over it onto the deck. Ruiz had pushed to his feet, but Rae Osborne was still fast to his back with her arms locked around his waist and over the flat slab of the automatic. The Latin clawed at her hands, broke her grip, and pulled the gun free just as Ingram crashed into them. Rae Osborne was whirled free of the tangle and slammed back against the cushions on the starboard side as the two men went down locked together in the bottom of the cockpit. Ingram could feel the hard weight of the gun between their bodies, and got a hand around the muzzle.

Not a word had been uttered, and there was no sound except the sibilant scrape of canvas shoes against the deck, and the meaty impacts of flesh against flesh and of furious bodies against wood, and the tortured gasps of breathing. Ruiz was incredibly strong for a man of his slender build, but not strong enough. Ingram got the other hand around his wrist, locked it in a paralyzing grip, and slowly forced the gun to his right until it was out from between their bodies. He twisted savagely at the muzzle, and tore it from Ruiz’ grasp. Pushing back, he sat up with his back against the binnacle, switched the gun end for end in his hand, and leveled it at Ruiz’ face as he fought for breath. He clicked off the safety, which Ruiz had never had a chance to do.

“Go below,” he said to Rae Osborne. “Bring up some of that line they used for lashings.”

She went down the ladder. Ruiz sat up and slid backward, his eyes never leaving the gun. It was intensely silent for a moment as they both came to rest, and Ingram was conscious for the first time that there had been no firing from Morrison. He must have seen it. Then it occurred to him that with the Dragoon’s port list and their sitting in the cockpit they were out of sight now, and even if the big man had had time to go back and pick up the BAR he was too much the pro to shoot when there was nothing to shoot at.

“When you come back,” he called to Rae Osborne, “don’t stand up. Crawl back to where I am.”

“Right, Skipper. I’ve got some rope now.”

Ruiz said softly, “You’re not going to tie me up.”

Ingram centered the gun on his chest. “But I am, amigo.”

“I won’t go back. Go ahead and shoot.”

“Who’d you kill?”

Ruiz made no reply.

“Was it Ives?”

Ruiz still said nothing.

“Where did you hide the tubes you took out of the radiophone?”

“We threw them over the side,” Ruiz said. Rae Osborne’s face appeared then in the companion hatch and she crawled out into the cockpit with the line in her hand. “Don’t move,” Ingram warned Ruiz as she slid past him. I’ll have to beat him up before I can tie him, he thought, and looked forward to it with distaste. But it was the only way; she couldn’t hold him still with the gun. He wouldn’t pay any attention to it.

Rae Osborne handed him the line and started to turn to face Ruiz. Then she gasped, and cried out, “The raft!”

Ingram’s eyes shifted to the left. The painter was gone from the wire lifeline. At the same instant, Ruiz leaped to his feet, got one foot up on deck, and dived over the starboard side, all in one continuous motion. Ingram cursed and sprang up. He could see him under the water, swimming straight out from the schooner. The raft was some thirty or forty yards away, being carried eastward on the flooding tide. It was easy to see what had happened. Either his own lunge when he’d come aboard or the impact of the falling case of ammunition had propelled it aft far enough for the tide to carry it under the stern, and the single turn he’d been able to take with the painter hadn’t held it. He tracked Ruiz with the gun. He was coming up now, less than fifteen yards away.

His head broke the surface. He shook water from his face and opened his eyes, and for a fraction of a second that seemed like an hour to Ingram they looked squarely at each other across the sights of the gun. Ingram tried to pull the trigger. Then he sighed gently and let his arm drop. Ruiz turned and began to swim, not even bothering to dive again. He knew I couldn’t do it, Ingram thought. Rae Osborne was beside him now, and she cried out, “We can’t let him get it!”

Bitterly, without speaking, Ingram held out the gun to her. She pushed it away, and said, “No, I mean shoot the raft.”

He raised the gun, and shot, but he was low. The bullet made a little splash six or eight feet short of the raft. He raised the muzzle slightly, but before he could fire again, two small geysers erupted in the water just under them and something slammed into the deckhouse off to their left with a shower of splinters. “Down!” Ingram snapped. They dropped back into the cockpit. The professional combat team was in action now; Morrison was covering Ruiz with the BAR.

Ingram raised his head to peer over the edge of the deck. The raft was at least seventy-five yards away now; the chances of his hitting anything at that distance with a handgun were too dim to justify wasting the ammunition. A couple of holes wouldn’t disable it, anyway; they’d find a way to plug them. He looked to the left, and could see Morrison. He was about two hundred yards away, wading out on the flat south and west of the sand spit to get as near the schooner as possible and to try to intercept the raft if Ruiz failed to catch it. Ingram estimated the line of its drift and saw he wasn’t going to make it unless he dropped the gun and swam; the water was nearly up to his chest now, and was growing deeper. Hope flared for a moment, and then died. It didn’t matter; Ruiz was overhauling it.

Morrison was ignoring them now that Ruiz no longer needed cover. They stood up and watched bitterly as the latter caught the raft and pulled himself aboard. Beyond him, Morrison brandished the BAR above his head in jubilation.