Robert Jones - Blood Tide

As the light strengthened, Miranda went to work on the shrapnel holes. That yanked him ragingly awake, screaming and fighting with an impossible strength. She slapped him hard and pinned him down on the deck.

“Stopping yapping, you shit heel,” she said. “I ought to dump you over the side with the other stiffs. Don’t give me a hard time.”

He looked up at her, fully conscious for the first time. “Why’re you doing this, then?” he said in a raw, croaking voice.

“Just shut up. I’m going to shoot you full of morphine now so I can get this metal out of you. Then I’m going to stitch up your head. What comes later, I don’t know yet.”

She uncapped a Syrette, checked to make sure there was no air in the hypodermic and popped it into his arm. Then she went below to boil up some water for tea.

When she came topside with it, he was asleep. Good. She’d made only tea enough for herself.

She was tying off the last stitches in his head wound, having cleaned it thoroughly with cotton soaked in hydrogen peroxide, when she heard an outboard motor chugging at low revs in the distance. When she looked up, the horizon had closed in to no more than fifty yards. Sea smoke lay thick and gray on the waves. The motor was closing on her. She grabbed the AK and ducked down behind the gunwale. When the boat sounded close enough, she eased her head up and stared into the fog. It crept out slowly, bow on in her direction. A pump boat. Ours or theirs? She slipped the safety off and checked to see that there was a round in the chamber. There was.

The pump boat plugged its way toward her, cautiously. She raised the rifle and slid it over the gunwale, sighting down the stubby blue barrel. Then she heard a bark. Brillo! The man at the tiller stood up. It was Kasim. She rose and waved to him with the rifle. Brillo barked twice more, his tail swinging hard and fast.

“Ah, you live!” Kasim cried. “ Milagro de Dios! We both live is a miracle of Allah.” He tied up at the taffrail and swung aboard. His shirt was holed and bloodstained, and his arms were blistered. Two fingers were gone from his left hand—just black stumps where he’d stuck them in hot tar to stop the bleeding. Kasim embraced her powerfully with his good arm, a double abrazo , his eyes gleaming with tears and his smile threatening to split his burned face open. Brillo went over and sniffed Curt. Miranda could see singed patches of fur along his back and down three legs, and already clotted blood on his neck and haunches. She’d have to patch him up, too. And Kasim.

“No,” Kasim said when she reached for the burn ointment. “You must go now, not waste time here. Capitán Katana dead now. You father he dead, too. Millikan dead. Torres dead. Many my men dead. Many, many their men dead. But Padre Cotinho live still. Un hombre muy engaño, muy perfidio —very tricky. You sail east. Go home now.”

“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll bring you back to Jolo.”

“No, gracias . I must stay at this place, gather my few men, see to their hurts. I must make certain Padre Cotinho does no treacheries.” The sea smoke was thinning. They both looked south toward Mount Haplit and the slopes of San Lázaro. “This place my home for a while now already,” he said.

“I must search for my father,” Miranda said.

“ Inútil ,” Kasim said. “Useless. He is muerto , dead with his ship. I see, I know. Capitán Katana as well. You must go now, go east, away, fast. Padre may want you dead, too. Newspapers like that much better, you dead. Let him even believe so already. I tell him you ship, she sink, too. You dead, that man—El Brusco—he too is dead.” He gestured toward Curt. Miranda looked toward him.

“No, Brillo!” The dog was cocking his leg over Curt’s head. He stalked stiffly away and lay down on the cabin roof.

Kasim laughed.

Miranda burst into tears. It all came pouring out now, all the awfulness, the fear and the anger and the unforgettable memory, images burned forever into her mind—shells bursting, boats exploding, great sudden gouts of flame, torn bodies sprawling like bloody waste rags—the horror. . . . Kasim embraced her with both arms, held her hard and tight against his chest. He was weeping, too.

“It is always forever ugly,” he said at last. “But you must sail, hija . You are my daughter of battle now. My daughter, now. And you must live.” He kissed her gently on the eyes. Then he was gone. She looked up and saw the pump boat disappearing into the last wisps of sea smoke, toward San Lázaro.

His voice came through the fog one last time. “ Allah akhbar! ”

She went forward to make sail.

By late afternoon the islands had sunk below the western horizon. Not even Haplit’s blue volcanic banner could be seen on the wind. Seamark was making good speed across the Sulu. The hawk winds had abated, the baba del diablo blown itself out, and a freshening breeze from the southwest filled Seamark’s sails to a hard, muscular tautness. It was the southwest monsoon, Miranda knew, a bit early this year, but the sea and its weathers kept no firm schedules. The wind gods had blessed her, and she was grateful.

Then Curt awakened. She had dragged a spare mattress topside and rolled him onto it, rigged a tarp for a sunshade. He looked at her from his blankets, unsmiling, almost puzzled.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked at last. “You still don’t owe me.”

“Damned right I don’t,” she said. She eased the helm to a following wave. The seas were rising. “This yawl rig was a good idea,” she said, looking back at the small triangular kicker sail. “She damn near steers herself now, if I tie down the helm at the right degree.” She tied it down, then went below to make some tea. When she came back, she had two mugs. She handed one to Curt.

“Thanks.” He tried to sip from it, and tea slopped onto his chest. He winced when the hot liquid touched one of his burns. He switched the tea to the other hand. The cup still shook, but less wildly now. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You could have deep-sixed me back there, and you’d have been within your rights.”

She stared at him and took a swallow of her tea. Her eyes were hard, her mouth set firmly.

“I figured it out while you slept off the morphine,” she said finally. “Four options open to me. I could have killed you right then when we took you—I know how to do it now, learned a lot about killing these past few days. But frankly I’ve seen enough death to last me the rest of my life. Don’t think I wouldn’t, though, if I felt I had to.” She slapped the stock of the AK racked against the gunwale.

“Two, I could have taken you back to Lázaro, or had Kasim take you when he brought Brillo back. Let Padre Cotinho dispose of you as he saw fit. Or stayed on myself, and with Kasim’s help become the new Commodore Millikan. Kind of a Pasionária of the rebel pirates. But that’s not for me. I’m no revolutionary, whatever the cause. And it would tie me to the land. I’m for the sea, always have been. At any rate, Cotinho would have disposed of you for me in either case.”

She drank some more tea. Brillo came aft at the mention of his name. Miranda scratched him behind the ears, and he grumbled happily.

“Look at that,” she said. “Your dog loves me more than he ever loved you. I had to keep him from peeing on you this morning when you were out of it. That leads me to three. I could just drop you on Perniciosa, with your wounds, no money, no boat. Not even your dog for company. Very tempting. A nice unity to it. Turnabout is fair play, after all. It’s just what you did to me in Mexico back then. I liked that idea very much, but even then it wouldn’t undo all the hurt you’ve laid on me. And on my dad.”