Robert Jones - Blood Tide

Culdee heard the engine light off. Turner was babying it with the throttle, letting it purge itself of fumes and smoke. Culdee knew he couldn’t kill him with the punt gun, not this close. He looked around, saw a coil of Manila near his left hand. He grabbed it, his maimed hands working automatically now, and threw a hangman’s noose in the line, fed the loop up, and shaped it. He peeled off some slack. Turner was ready to run. Another grenade lobbed over from the Moro Armado . Turner ducked. The grenade popped against the bow, wire frags whirring like cicadas. . . . Then he engaged the engine and pushed the throttle ahead. Culdee threw his loop . . .

Out of there! Turner exulted. Free at last. . . . Then the noose settled over his shoulders, slid down his arms, and locked where his throttle arm bent. He felt it tighten and looked back. He could see Culdee belly-down on the deck, the line paying out from his hands. Turner fumbled with the tightening noose. The Thunder went squirrelly, skewing sideways, until he kicked the wheel. He almost tumbled out of the boat. Turner screamed, fighting the noose . . .

A bitt! Where was the bitt? Culdee felt the Manila burning his palms, saw a bitt off to his right, rolled toward it. He could feel a bone scraping on the deck planks—his shinbone. The bone in his opposite thigh cut circles across his muscles. The blood pumped stiff into the frayed flesh. He threw two quick half hitches onto the bitt, then rolled back to the punt gun.

The line payed out to its hitch on the bitt. When it reached its stop, it tightened hard and fast, yanking Turner out of the boat. The coaming smashed him hard in the ribs, and he felt them snap. He was in the water, tied, kicking, the fires blazing all around him. Cold water, hot flames . . .

Culdee took the cap in his left hand. He still had all his fingers there, port side present and accounted for, sir. He thumbed back the stiff hammer until it clicked and locked. He stuck the cap on the punt gun’s nipple. He raised the heavy wooden butt to his shoulder. The trigger, thick and cold, felt slippery—blood from his right hand. He put his remaining fingers on it and sighted down the barrel. Turner was thrashing in the glare of the burning ships. Culdee held on him. Something exploded up in the schooner’s bow, and from the corner of his eye he saw the ship rat go over the side, swimming toward a smoldering spar. Sinking ship . . .

Turner was drowning. His lungs ached, his eyes stung from fire and salt. He couldn’t loosen the grip of Culdee’s noose. He kicked frantically, trying to keep his head above water. Then he heard Culdee yelling to him, and he felt his ears pop clear for an instant. He saw Culdee looking down the barrel of an immense gun, Culdee’s eyes locked hard on him, the flicker of light on a cocked hammer.

“Turner!” Culdee’s voice was louder than the explosions that racked both ships. “This is for the Dune!”

The hammer fell. The cap popped. The half pound of black powder exploded . . .

Turner screamed . . .

Through the smoke Culdee saw the charge slash the water all around Turner’s head and shoulders, saw Turner lift from the weight of fast-moving shot as it tore through his body. He saw the red and white lace of the shot against the black flickering sea, the sea red and yellow with the dance of flames, and the deeper red boil of water around Turner’s shredded body. Ammunition was exploding all around Culdee now, skittering off at odd angles, red, white, yellow, hissing and roaring. He saw something dark flash fast through the boil of red water where Turner was. A hunk of wreckage? Too fast. It turned, returned. A triangular dorsal fin.

At that moment the flames reached the satchel charge. As it exploded, Culdee felt himself go off through the air, torn apart by its blast, a man in many pieces.

Billy Torres knelt in the gunboat’s scuppers. He couldn’t stand now, his legs limp from loss of blood. And around him were dead men, fire, broken weapons. His eyes wept from the heat of the flames.

The commodore was dead. Billy had seen him blown apart by gunfire from the sinking schooner. He felt guilty—he should have gone over there. The commodore wasn’t a bad man. Just a fool.

The fires crackled louder, grumbling deep in the gunboat’s innards, a ship of death, sinking.

Something growled, more ominous than the fires, growled in the dark behind him. Billy turned and stared. It was the horror of his life.

The dog came fast into the firelight, too fast for Billy to fire his pistol. It knocked him flat on the deck, ripped at his throat and face. Billy pressed the pistol against its hot belly and fired. The dog bit harder. Something ripped. He threw the dog from him, screaming.

Kasim stepped out of the dark and swung his bolo. The head rolled free, down the canted deck. It had no face. The dog had taken it.

THIRTY-TWO

Miranda heard the Moro Armada roll over. The groans and snaps and creaking of her final moments as she broke up came loud and clear over the water. She saw her fires disappear in the quenching wash of the sea. A great gulping belching sound followed, and one last fire on the gunboat’s bow flared briefly, then died. But fires still raged on the Venganza as she lay mortally wounded in the dark. No one could live in that inferno. Miranda heard small-arms ammunition cooking off on deck and down below, then saw a great yellow-red flash as something powerful exploded. The roar hammered her ringing ears. Maybe Culdee’s black powder cans? Whatever it was finished the schooner. The level line of the fires whose smoke and glare obscured her sight of the ship itself began to assume a stern-high angle. She was sinking at the bow, and as the fires died one by one at the touch of the sea, Miranda could just make out the huge ragged shot holes in her sides, the 4.7-inch deck gun lying smashed and barrel-bent on the forward hatchcover. Her whole stern section seemed to have been shot away, or was clinging to the remainder of the hull only by a few splintered deck planks. As her angle steepened, wrecked gear and bodies skidded forward, some toppling limply over the side. Something heavy broke loose below decks and grated forward, roaring. The engine. As the glare lessened, Miranda could see triangular dorsal fins circling at the wavery edge of the light. She had to look away.

When she looked back, the ship was gone. Only shattered flotsam bobbed in the dark, some wood, some flesh.

Her eyes stung suddenly, then blurred with the tears. She wanted to cry out aloud, but she wouldn’t. If she let go now, she did’t know what might happen. She had to hold on. She had to get out of there.

Then she saw Curt lying smashed and limp on the cockpit deck. His head was propped against the gunwale and lay at an odd angle to his shoulders. At first she thought he was dead, but when she drew closer, she could see a pulse beating weakly at the root of his throat. She eased him out flat on the deck and propped his head on a life preserver. The sky was lightening now to the east, and she was able to examine his wounds. The most obvious was a long, deep gash across the side of his head that was still seeping blood through its dark clots. His hair was stiff and sticky with blood, and she could see the gleam of white bone at the bottom of the gash. A shell splinter? Who could tell? Who cared? She tore off the sleeve of his shirt and bound it tight around the gash.

Then she pulled off the rest of his shirt and cutoffs. He was studded with splinters all down his right side, and there were flash burns, puffed and watery, across his chest and stomach. Small dark-blue holes dotted his left thigh, but when she probed it, the bone didn’t feel broken. Shrapnel. She’d have to dig it out with the forceps in her medical kit. She ducked down the companionway and found the kit after a brief search. Topside again, she opened it. Good. He hadn’t marketed the morphine. There were half a dozen Syrettes nested in cotton wool. He’d need them once she turned to with the forceps. She found burn ointment and plastered his blisters with it, then squeezed some onto bandages and taped them down over the burns. With the forceps she began pulling splinters. She was careful, as gentle as she could be, but he began to moan, then twist away from her. His eyes popped open—wide, wild, out of focus. He tried to talk, but his mouth was like glue. He could only mutter a bit, still out of it. One particularly stubborn splinter brought a yelp from him, and he passed out again.