Robert Jones - Blood Tide

Every now and then something roared up from the green jungle gloom, and the commodore killed it before Curt could even react. The light little double was at his shoulder before the bird was off the ground. Pow! Pow-pow—nailed two that time. Pow! Pow! Each time he killed one, he looked back at Curt, puzzled at first, then exasperated.

“Look” he said after he’d picked up two or three of them. “ You’re supposed to be the retriever. Next one, you fetch it.”

Aye-aye, sir. Or should it be woof-woof?

Pow! “Fetch it, Captain!” Curt fetched. It looked like a Technicolor chicken, only smaller, harder-bodied, kind of like a banty cock, with long, sharp spurs.

Pow-pow!

“Double! Fetch ’em up, Cappy! Fetch dead!”

The commodore shot one that fell and then took off running.

“After him, Cappy! He’s a runner! Go fetch him up, boy—go, he’s getting away!”

Curt finally grabbed the bird by its tail feathers, and when they pulled out, threw himself on top of it like a lineman on a fumble. It squirted out from under his chest and raked him down the cheek with one of its spurs. He grabbed it by the neck. It beat him and gouged his arms with its wings and legs.

“Bite its fucking head off!” the commodore advised.

Curt chomped—crunch. Blood and feathers . . .

“Good boy, Cap!”

On and on they pounded, with Curt beating the thick covers now at the commodore’s behest, arms, legs, neck, face ripped raw by thorns and stinging with acid sweat. He didn’t even bother with the leeches anymore. Maybe they’d kill him before the jungle did.

“What’s the bag limit on these birds?” he finally asked the commodore. The commodore looked at him quizzically. Whoever heard such a dumb question?

“Why, whatever I make it,” he said. “What’s the matter, game bag getting too heavy? You’re not wimping out on me, Captain, are you? Not turning into, what did you call them, a bug-fucking hippie on me?”

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

A while later—ten minutes? An hour? Who cared—something dark and heavy went crashing off through a bamboo thicket to their right. The commodore looked at the ground, wrinkled his nose, sniffed the mildewed dead air. He touched his toe to what looked like a cow flop. Curt saw the deep indentations of cloven hooves in the mud.

“Tamarau,” the commodore said. “Well, we’re almost back to the boat. They won’t bother us now.” And sure enough, a hundred leaden steps later Curt popped like a champagne cork out onto the beach. The brilliant light brought tears to his eyes. There was the Thunder, bobbing at her anchor line just ahead of them on the water. Curt could have sworn they were miles away from it.

“Just bring the boat in here, bow first, while I take down this gun,” the commodore ordered. “And put those birds in the cooler under the console till we get back. Rosa will clean and skin them.”

The saltwater stung. Small fish nibbled on Curt’s torn skin.

* * *

It was hotter than the proverbial hinges down in Sea Witch’s cabin. Billy Torres lay on Curt’s bunk, feeling the sweat roll down his ribs. He’d shot all his film, emptied a jug of warm water (nothing to drink in the reefer, which had no ice in it, anyway), tried to read one of the hundreds of books and diaries he found in the cedar chest at the foot of the bunk but found them all too arty (he was a Mack Bolan fan; even Louis L’Amour was too rarefied for his taste), and studied all the tapes and records without finding one C & W album. Then he heard Curt coming along the dock.

“Hey there, Brill. Coulda used you this afternoon, boy. Balbal’s a ball breaker—your kind of country, Brillo boy. Hey, what you got down there in the cabin, boy? Good eats, hey? Okay, let me get past you now.”

The hatch was bolted from the inside. Then it slid back and the door opened.

Billy Torres was glowering at him.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Torres,” Curt said, smiling. “Find what you wanted?”

“What did you tell him?”

“The only logical story,” Billy Torres said. He and the commodore were on the veranda, sipping their sundown stingahs. “I came aboard to check his mooring lines, and the dog chased me into the cabin.”

“He bought it?”

“What else could he do? Remember, he works for us. We could off him in a minute if we wanted, and he knows it. Anyway, it’s credible enough.”

“What did you get?”

“I shot the log page by page, the books—just the covers, titles, like that, but the books are legit. I don’t know about the records or tapes, he’s got no fresh batteries for the machine. A wad of old pictures of some broad, a hard-looking bitch with a crooked nose, and of what I guess is her as a kid, with her folks. And what looked like the broad’s diary, written in some old logbooks. I copied as much of that as I could before I ran out of film. Pretty boring stuff. Like the books.”

“Where’s the pictures of the pictures?”

“In the lab, drying still.”

“Let’s go.” They walked across the wet lawn to the casita that was the photo lab. The door was unlocked, and Torres turned to the commodore, eyebrows up. Rosalinda was in there, dusting and emptying the trash cans. It was okay—III had cleared her and given her the key along with the job.

“Could you come back later, Rosa?” the commodore said. “ Gracias. Muy bueno, chicita .”

“I’m sorry, Commodore Millikan,” she said, a bit miffed. “I wanted to clean up early so I can go to confession tonight at the cathedral. It’s Lent, you know, and we—”

“Yes, yes, Rosa. Good thing there’s still some Christians among us. I count on you to keep the faith for this household.”

“What would she have to confess?” Billy asked when Rosa had left. “Old lady like that.”

“Plenty, Billy,” the commodore said. He was studying the contact prints where they hung from clips on the drying wire. “Ever notice how she smiles some mornings when she’s serving breakfast? Hand me a loupe.”

He studied one strip of contacts closely with the magnifier, then unclipped it and took it over to a table with a strong overhead light. He looked closer still.

“Weird,” he said. “Have a look.”

Billy saw a girl—the crook-nosed one, but still a kid in this picture, her nose still short and unbent, like a proper human being, not a round-eye. There was a round-eye woman with her, kind of prim-faced. And a guy in a Donald Duck suit. Navy blues. The sailor wore crossed anchors above his three chevrons. Four hash marks on his sleeve. Mean-looking fucker, with a bent nose like the girl when she grew up. BM1—a deck ape. Torres had been an ET—an electronics technician—before they sent him to OCS. Operations sailors hated deck apes. Deck apes hated everything but other deck apes, and they didn’t even like many of them that much.

“What do you see, sir?”

“That white hat. I know that man. I knew him on another assignment, long ago. Thought about him just the other day, matter of fact. I figured he was long dead. Now here we get a new recruit—a dope runner you tell me, an outlaw from the word go—and he just happens to be sailing a boat that is carrying pictures of this old, well, shipmate of mine. I call that weird.”

“The file we got says this Curt guy stole the boat from some girl he was working with. Broad named Dundee, it said.”

“Not Culdee?”

“Dundee, sir, I just reread it this morning.”

“Some fuckup in the office. The white hat’s name was Culdee .”

“That’s an old photo, sir,” Billy said. “The white hat might very well be dead. The file said the broad is in her thirties. She’s only about five or six in that picture.”