Aground — 44
She looked down at her glass. “I suppose so.”
“Was he a doctor?” he asked.
“No,” she said, without looking up. “He was a
phony. He liked to pass himself off as a doctor when
he was cashing rubber checks.”
He nodded. “That sounds like him. I’ve got one of
his checks.”
“Well, it’s no collector’s item.”
“You don’t have any idea at all why he would steal
the boat?”
“None whatever, as I told you once before. Would
you like me to have that statement notarized,
Captain?”
Well, Ingram reflected, he could tell her to take
her schooner and go to hell—there was always the
easy way out, if you wanted to quit. But it would be
an admission of defeat in just as real a sense as any
other failure to finish the job. And there was no use
getting hacked at a drunk; that was stupid. If she is
drunk, he thought. He’d given up trying to guess
that one.
He went back to his room and lay staring up at the
dark for a long time before he went to sleep. The
whole thing was murkier than ever. Assuming she
was correct, and Hollister’s real name was Patrick
Ives, you still didn’t know anything. Why was she so
concerned with catching up with him, and whether
he was dead or not? And why in God’s name would a
con man and rubber-check artist want to steal a
schooner which was of utterly no value to him and
which he probably couldn’t even sail in the first
place? That was about as sensible as trying to carry
off a paved street.
He awoke drenched with sweat and tangled in the
sheet, with the feeling that he had cried out in his
sleep. When he turned on the light and looked at his
watch, it was a little after two. Well, he wasn’t
dreaming about it as often now, and eventually the
picture would fade; it wasn’t as if there were any
feeling of guilt, as though he’d panicked and left
Aground — 45
Barney there to flame like a demented and
screaming torch. He’d got him out and over the side
of the shattered boat with his own clothes aflame
and Barney’s flesh coming off on his gloves. It was
too late, and Barney was already dead, but nobody
could have saved him. It wasn’t that. It was horror.
It was the fear afterward, and wondering if he would
ever be able to smell gasoline in a boat again
without being sick with it.
It wasn’t a very big boat that had killed Barney
and burned the yard down back to the office and the
gate. Her name was Nickels ‘n Dimes, and she was a
beat-up old thirty-foot auxiliary sloop in for a
number of minor jobs, including some engine
overhaul and the installation of a new
radiotelephone and a better ground plate on the
outside of her hull. They had put on the copper strip
when she was on the ways, and the bolt through the
hull for the radio connection. She went back in the
water Friday afternoon. The separate ingredients for
disaster were a long week end, a slow leak
somewhere in her fuel system, poor ventilation, and
the fact that Barney—who had a poor nose anyway—
had a cold on Monday morning. The catalyst was a
torch. Barney had the radio ground cable connected
to the through-bolt and was preparing to silversolder
it when Ingram came down the hatch and
smelled the gas. He yelled, and at the same instant
Barney struck the torch.
* * *
He’d left a call for four a.m. When the telephone
rang, he was instantly awake. Opening the french
windows, he stepped out onto the balcony facing the
harbor channel and Hog Island. They were in luck; it
was dead calm. The fronds of the coconut palms
along Bay Street were motionless in the pre-dawn
darkness that was beginning to show a faint wash of
rose in the east. He called Mrs. Osborne, found she
was already awake, and hurriedly dressed in khaki
trousers, T-shirt, and sneakers. When he came out
into the corridor, she was just emerging from her
Aground — 46
room. She was wearing white calypso pants and
sandals and a blue pullover thing with short sleeves.
Her legs were bare. She looked very cool and fresh
and attractive, and if she had a hangover there was
no visible trace of it. Must have a constitution like a
horse, he thought. He took her suitcase and went
out to signal one of the taxis across the street while
she settled the bill. She was silent on the ride to the
airport. There was no apology, or even any reference
to her behavior of last night. Maybe she didn’t even
remember it, he thought—not that it mattered. The
airport restaurant was closed, but Avery had some
coffee in the McAllister office. They drank a cup.
“We’ll just leave your bag here,” Ingram said. “I’ll
take mine, since I’ll probably stay aboard. Even if we
find we’re going to have to charter a tug to get her
off, we can’t leave her abandoned out there.”
They went out and boarded the plane. The deflated
life raft was bundled up in back of the seats in the
after compartment. Ingram motioned for her to take
the co-pilot’s seat, and strapped himself into one of
those in back. Faint light was just breaking when
they roared down the runway and took off. He
lighted a cigar and settled back to wait. It would
take over an hour.
Andros was a brooding dark mass below them, and
then they were out over the vast distances of the
Bank where the water lay hushed and flat in the
pearly luminescence of dawn. The sun, peering over
the curvature of the earth behind them, sprayed the
underside of the wing with crimson and gold in
momentary brilliance until Avery nosed down again
and it was lost. After what seemed like hours,
Ingram looked at his watch again. They should sight
her in a few more minutes. He stepped through the
narrow doorway and stood in back of Mrs. Osborne.
She was staring out ahead. Two or three minutes
later he tapped her lightly on the shoulder and
pointed. “There she is.” She nodded, but made no
reply.
The distant speck grew and divided into its
separate components of sand bar and boat. Avery
Aground — 47
began his descent. Ingram spoke alongside his ear.
“Let’s take another look at her before we go in. Get
an idea of the tide.”
Avery nodded. The schooner was off to starboard
and a thousand feet below as they went past. Ingram
stared down at her. The empty deck still listed
slightly to port in the early morning light, and there
was about her something of the tragic helplessness
of a beached and dying whale as she lay exactly as
she had yesterday afternoon, on the same northerly
heading. Avery swung in a wide circle and they came
down past her only a few hundred feet above the
water. Apparently nothing had changed at all except
that the list might be slightly less, indicating the tide
was higher. He studied the water moving ever so
slowly past the imprisoned hull.
“Still flooding a little,” he said above the roar of
the engines. “But probably pretty close to slack high
water right now. You won’t drift much.”
Avery nodded. “You want to go by again?” “No.
Let’s put her down.” “Righto. Cinch up your belts.”
Ingram went back and strapped himself in. He
watched out the window as Avery swung west,
toward the edge of the bank, made a preliminary run
to study the water for possible obstructions, turned,
and came in for the landing. Water, smooth as oil,
came up toward them, and then they touched and
the plane was drowned in a seething white curtain of
spray. They slowed, and began to settle in the water.
He unfastened his belt and went forward. They were
about two miles west of the sand spit and the
schooner. Avery turned. They began to taxi up
toward her.
“We’d best not try to get too close,” he said. “I
don’t trust those shoals around there.”
“Within a half mile will do,” Ingram replied. “And
as long as the tide keeps flooding, you’d better go
back to westward to wait for us.”
“How long do you think you’ll be aboard?”
“I can probably bring Mrs. Osborne back in a half
hour or less. But suppose I call you on the
Aground — 48
radiotelephone, if it’s still working? Have you got
either of the intership channels?”
Avery nodded. “Call on 2638.”
“Right,” Ingram said. He stepped into the after
compartment, attached the inflating bottle to the
valve of the raft, and put enough air into it to keep it
afloat. Avery came aft. He opened the door and they
pushed the raft out. Ingram knelt in the opening and
completed the inflation. Mrs. Osborne was standing
behind them now. The plane rocked gently with little
gurgling sounds under its hull as they swung around
on the tide. Avery held the raft while Ingram helped
her in. She settled herself aft. Ingram put his
suitcase in, along with the air bottle and the light
aluminum oars, and stepped down himself and
pushed away from the plane.
He slid the handles of the oars through the tabs
that served as oarlocks and began rowing. As soon
as they were out from behind the plane, he looked
over his shoulder and saw that Avery had
approached nearer than he had expected; the
Dragoon was not more than four hundred yards
away. The sun was just coming up out of the sea
beyond her, throwing her into silhouette. Beautiful,
he thought—if she weren’t so obviously aground.
Boats in trouble always left you with an
uncomfortable feeling.
It was still dead calm, and the water lay as flat as
steel except for an occasional and almost
imperceptible lift and fall from some vestigial
remnant of surge running in from the Santaren
Channel, attenuated by five miles of shoal water
between here and the edge of the Bank. He dug in
the oars. As soon as they were clear of the plane,
Avery started the starboard engine, swung, and
taxied toward the deeper water to the west. Ingram
studied the water around and under them as he
rowed. Judging from the color and from what he
could see of the bottom straight down, it was sand
and at least two fathoms deep all the way up to
where the Dragoon was lying, and the channel was a
good hundred yards wide. The schooner drew seven
Aground — 49
feet; if they could get her off into it, she could
probably make it back to deep water without
trouble, provided they made the attempt in good
light.
But—he shot another glance over his shoulder—
getting her off didn’t look too promising as they
came nearer. The blue water of the channel was half
a ship’s length away from her stern. The deepest
part of her keel would be still another thirty feet
forward of that, so she might have to move back
some sixty or seventy feet before she found enough
water to float her unless the tide came a lot higher
than it was now, and he was afraid it was very near
to slack high at the moment.
The sound of the plane’s engine died abruptly as
Avery cut it off and let the plane come to rest about
a mile away. They were now less than fifty yards
from the port side of the schooner. He changed
course to come around under her stern.
“Can’t we go aboard on this side?” Mrs. Osborne
asked.
“There’s something I want to see first,” he replied.
“Oh,” she said. “The name.”
Not exactly, he thought, but made no reply. She
was leaning to the right, trying to get a glimpse of it.
“Lorna,” she called out suddenly. “And look—you
can still see a little of the old lettering under that
blue paint.”
He glanced around as they came in under the
counter. She was right. The new name had been
lettered in black over the light blue with which
they’d painted the topsides, but at either end the D
and the n of Dragoon still showed. It was a sloppy
job of painting. He shipped the oars and caught hold
of the rudder post; they stopped, and hung,
suspended in utter silence. The tide was almost at a
standstill. He waited for the ripples to die away, and
then leaned over, peering straight down through
water as transparent as gin. His eyes narrowed.
“What is it?” she asked.
Aground — 50
“Look,” he replied. “See that long gouge the keel
made, leading backward toward the channel?”
“Yes. What does that mean?”
“She didn’t drift in here. She was under way when
she hit.”
She looked up. “Then they were still aboard.”
“Somebody was.”
He noted that unconsciously they had lowered
their voices. Well, there was something ghostly
about it. Maybe it was the silence.
Why hadn’t they at least tried to kedge her off?
From the looks of the bottom they’d backed the
engine down, throwing sand forward, but there was
no sign of an anchor cable, even a broken one. It
was possible, of course, that the dinghy was already
gone, but they could have floated the anchor astern,
using one of the booms for a raft, or carried it across
the bottom a few steps at a time by diving. He’d
better keep Mrs. Osborne on deck until he’d had a
look below; there could be a body, or bodies.
He shoved away from the rudder post and took up
the oars again. They went slowly up the starboard
side. She was low in the water, all right. Several
inches. This was the high side, the way she was
listing, and the line of the old boot-topping was
almost in the water. If you had her up to her proper
water line, she’d be within a foot of floating right
now. She must be holed. He peered down but
couldn’t see past the turn of the bilge. They
continued forward, passed under the bowsprit, and
came aft along the port side.
When they came abreast of the main he shipped
the oars again and reached up to catch the shrouds
just above the chainplates. With the port list, the
deck was not too high above them. Gathering up the
painter, he climbed on deck. He made the painter
fast and reached down a hand for her. She
scrambled up, ducked under the lifeline, and stood
beside him.
Aground — 51
The deckhouses were long and low, rising not over
two feet above the deck, with small portholes along
their sides. Two or three of the portholes were open,
but he could see nothing beyond them because of
the dimness inside the cabins. The sun was above
the horizon now and warm on the side of his face as
it gilded the masts and rigging. Everything was wet
with dew. He stood for a moment looking along the
sloping, deserted deck. There was an air of
desolation about it as though the schooner had been
abandoned for weeks, but he realized it was
probably nothing more than a general untidiness
that offended his seaman’s sense of order. The sails
were gathered in sloppy and dribbling bundles along
the booms rather than properly furled, and at the
bases of the fore- and mainmasts the falls of
halyards and topping lifts lay helter-skelter in a
confused jumble of rope. Neither of them had said a
word. It was almost as though they were reluctant to
break the hush.
They walked back to the break of the after
deckhouse, and stepped down into the cockpit. It
was a long one, and fairly wide, and at the after end
of it were the binnacle, wheel, and the controls for
the auxiliary engine. Ingram turned and looked back
at the tracks they had left in the dew collected in
millions of tiny droplets over the decks. There were
no others.
“I’ll have a look below,” he said. “You wait here a
minute.”
“All right,” she replied.
The companion hatch was open. He went down the
ladder. After the sunlight on deck, the interior of the
large after cabin was somewhat dim, but as his eyes
came below the level of the hatch he saw several
things almost at once. What appeared to be scores of
long wooden cases were piled high on both sides of
the cabin and in two of the four bunks, held in place
by a criss-cross network of rope lashings. But it was
one of the other bunks, the one on the port side
forward, that riveted his attention and caused him to
mutter a startled oath as he hurried down the last
Aground — 52
two steps. In it was the body of a slender, darkhaired
man in khaki trousers, lying face down with
one arm dangling over the side. He crossed to the
bunk with three long strides and reached down to
touch his arm, expecting to find it rigid. It was
warm, and yielded to his hand, and in the brief
fraction of a second in which this registered in his
mind and the man began to turn on his side he heard
Mrs. Osborne scream, “Look out!” and he turned
himself. In back of him, leaning against the
companion ladder behind which he’d apparently
been hiding, was a hairy and half-naked giant
cradling a Browning Automatic Rifle in the crook of
his arm. He looked like a wartime atrocity poster.
“Welcome aboard, Herman,” he said. “We’re glad to
see you.
Aground — 53
5
The immobility of shock was gone then. “Get off!”
Ingram shouted. He could see nothing of Mrs.
Osborne except one slender hand grasping the top of
the ladder railing, but knew she was looking down
right on top of the man. The latter swung the muzzle
of the BAR up through the hatch, and said, “Come on
down, baby. That plane’s a mile away. He can’t hear
you.”
Ingram was already pushing off the bunk to lunge
at him when he realized what he was doing and
caught himself. Crashing into him with that BAR
pointed up at her could cut her in two. At the same
moment something pressed into his back just below
his shoulder blades, and the man behind him said,
“Relax.”
Rae Osborne came down the ladder. The big man
jerked his head toward the other bunk, opposite
Ingram. “Sit down,” he ordered. “You too, Herman.”
Ingram stepped across and sat down beside her,
silently cursing himself for an idiot. But how could
he have known? There’d been no footprints in the
dew up there. Apparently the big man guessed his
thoughts, for he grinned. “We had a hunch you
might be back early if you came by plane, so we
stayed off the deck.”
Aground — 54
“All right, all right! What do you want?”
“Just a little help.” He turned to Rae Osborne.
“You’d be the owner, right?”
“I was under that impression,” she said.
“And you brought Herman out here to see about
getting this scow off the mud?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Just checking, baby. I think we can use him.”
She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Experts. We’re fresh out.” He cradled the BAR in
one mammoth arm, and reached over to the shelf on
the port bulkhead where the radiotelephone was
installed. He switched on the receiver. He picked up
a pack of cigarettes and shook one out, popped a
large kitchen match with his thumbnail, and inhaled.
He was one of the biggest men Ingram had ever
seen, and he seemed to radiate an almost tangible
aura of violence. Not evil, particularly—just violence.
He had, in fact, an almost likable face, rugged and
not unpleasantly ugly, spattered with the brown
freckles and peeling sunburn of the heliophobe, and
stamped with the casual recklessness of the utterly
self-confident. His pale red hair was largely gone on
top, showing a freckled expanse of scalp, though he
was obviously not much over thirty. He wore nothing
except unlaced shoes and a pair of khaki trousers
hacked off at the knees.
The other man had rolled off the bunk and was
standing near the foot of it with his back against the
wall of boxes. He appeared to be in his early forties,
and had a slender Latin face and grave brown eyes.
He had shoved the Colt .45 automatic into the
waistband of his trousers as if he were only a
spectator. It was the big one who completely
dominated the scene.
Rae Osborne looked around. “Where is the other
man?”
“What other man?”
“Patrick Ives.”
Aground — 55
“Never heard of him,” the big man said. He
grinned at the Latin. “Carlos, you got the passenger
list?”
“He was on here,” Rae Osborne snapped. “Why lie
about it? The dinghy was picked up, with his clothes
and watch—”
“Oh, you mean Hollister.”
“His name wasn’t Hollister.”
He gestured impatiently. “So who cares what his
name was? He’s dead. That’s why we need Herman.”
Ingram was thinking he’d been betrayed by his
own narrow professional outlook as much as
anything. Nobody had made an effort to get her off,
hence there was nobody aboard. This possibility
hadn’t even occurred to him. He looked at the boxes,
aware that at least they knew now why the Dragoon
had been stolen. He should have guessed it before.
“Where were you bound?” he asked. “Cuba?”
The big man shook his head. “Central America.”
“You’d never make it, even if you got her off.”
“We’ll make it, don’t worry.”
“What does he mean?” Rae Osborne broke in.
“And what’s in all those boxes?”
“Guns,” Ingram said.
“Knock it off,” the big man ordered. “We can’t
stand here all day flapping our gums. We’ve got that
plane to take care of. Take a squint, Carlos, and see
where it is now.”
The Latin turned and looked out one of the small
portholes. “The same. About a mile.”
“Facing this way?”
“More or less.”
“All right, here’s the schedule, as the Limeys say
—”
“Listen,” Ingram interrupted. “Whatever your
name is—”
Aground — 56
The big man laughed. “Did we forget to introduce
ourselves? Wait’ll the yacht club hears about that.
I’m Al Morrison. And this is Carlos Ruiz.”
“All right,” Ingram said, “just what do you think
you’re going to do?”
Morrison shook his head. “That’s exactly what I’m
trying to tell you, if you’d shut up and listen. You’re
going up on top, you and the cupcake. That pilot’ll
be able to see you, but he couldn’t hear you if you
yelled your lungs out. You look everything over, give
it the old expert routine, and then you come back
down and get on the horn and tell the pilot to go
home. You’ve decided you can get her loose from the
mud, and you’re going to stay aboard and sail her
back to Key West.”
“And then what?” Ingram asked.
“As soon as he gets out of sight, we go to work.
You’ve just been elected vice president in charge of
transportation.”
He couldn’t mean it, Ingram thought. He couldn’t
be that crazy. “Look, Morrison—use your head, will
you? Running guns is one thing—”
Morrison cut him off. “Save it. I need legal advice,
I’ll send for a lawyer.”
“We can’t call the plane with this phone. They use
different frequencies.”
“Snow me not, Herman. I may not know my foot
from a bale of hay about boats, but I do know
something about radios and planes. Most of these
crates in the Islands carry the intership frequencies.
Carlos, you hold ‘em till I get set.”
“Okay,” Ruiz said. He removed the automatic from
the waistband of his khakis. Morrison went by them
and disappeared into the passageway going forward.
Even in the sloppy, unlaced shoes, he moved as
though he were on pads.
“How about it, Ruiz?” Ingram demanded. “You
want to spend the rest of your life in prison for a few
lousy guns?”
Ruiz shrugged. “No spik Inglish.”
Aground — 57
Morrison called out forward. Ruiz motioned with
the automatic. They went up the companion ladder
and stood in the cockpit in brilliant sunlight. Ruiz
was covering them from the ladder, his head still
below the cockpit coaming. The forward hatch, just
beyond the foremast, was slightly open, and he could
see the muzzle of the BAR watching them like an
unwinking eye. Smart, he thought. If they’d stayed
below, Avery might conceivably have suspected
something, but now it would appear from the plane
they’d found nothing in the cabin and had returned
to the deck to complete the inspection before
calling.
“Stay over to the right,” Morrison ordered. “Don’t
get behind those masts. Try to jump over the side,
and I’ll cut Dreamboat off at the knees.”
“Well,” Rae Osborne demanded, “does he think
we’re going to stand still for this?”
“He seems to,” Ingram said.
“Aren’t you going to do anything at all?”
He turned and looked at her. “Can you suggest
something?”
Morrison called orders. They walked up the
starboard side. He looked out at the plane, lying
placidly on the water a mile away like a child’s toy
on a mirror. It could just as well be in another
universe. They crossed to the port side abaft the
foremast and stared down in the water. “What
happened to Hollister?” he asked.
“He drowned,” Morrison replied from the hatch.
“How?”
“Trying to swim back to the boat.”
From the dinghy, he thought. “What was he doing?
And where did it happen?”
“Right here. We ran aground during the night, and
the next morning Hollister said we’d have to unload
the guns to get her off. He took the skiff and went
over to that little island to see if it was dry enough to
stack ‘em on. On the way back the motor quit on
him. The tide was running pretty fast, and he started
Aground — 58
to drift away. He took off his clothes and jumped in
and tried to kick it along with his feet. He kept
losing ground, though, and finally left it and started
to swim. He didn’t make it.”
“What day was this?”
“Sunday, I think. What difference does it make?
Now go back and start the engine.”
They went aft. Ingram stepped down into the
cockpit.
The engine controls were beside the helmsman’s
station. He switched on the ignition, set the choke,
and pressed the starter switch. On the third attempt,
the engine fired with a puff of exhaust smoke under
the stern and settled down to a steady rumble that
could easily be heard by Avery aboard the plane.
Morrison might be crazy, but he wasn’t missing a
bet.
“Turn it off. Go back down.”
They went down the ladder. Ruiz backed up to the
forward end of the cabin. Morrison emerged from
the passageway between the two staterooms with
the BAR slung in his arm. He nodded toward the
radiotelephone. “Get on the blower. Tell him just
what I said.”
Ingram shook his head. “No.”
“Don’t try to play tough, Herman. It could get real
hairy.”
“You won’t shoot.”
“No. But I’ll break Dreamboat’s arm. We don’t
need her.”
Silence fell, and tightened its grip on the scene.
Ingram stared from one to the other. “I don’t think
you would.”
Morrison regarded him with bitter humor. “That’d
be kind of a tough one to second-guess, wouldn’t it,
Herman? This far from a doctor?”
He held it for another second. Once that plane was
gone, it wouldn’t be back. Morrison jerked his head
at Rae Osborne. “Come here, baby.”
Aground — 59
Ruiz spoke then, in Spanish. “This I don’t like,
Alberto.”
“Shut your mouth, you fool,” Morrison snapped,
also in perfect colloquial Spanish. “He may
understand.”
The suddenness of it caught Ingram by surprise.
He fought to keep his face expressionless, hoping
he’d recovered in time.
“He doesn’t understand,” Ruiz said. “And this
thing is very bad.”
He would break the arm, Morrison replied.
Likewise the other arm. And he would commit other
acts, which he detailed at some length. Spanish is a
language of great beauty, but it also has
potentialities for brutal and graphic obscenity
probably surpassing even the Anglo-Saxon. Faint
revulsion showed in Ruiz’ eyes. Ingram believed he
was being given an examination in the language, and
managed to keep his face blank. He hoped Mrs.
Osborne didn’t speak it, or if she did, that she had
learned it in school.
“See,” Ruiz said. “It is as I have said. He does not
understand. Must we do this?”
“We have no choice,” Morrison snapped. “Would
you like to go back?”
“It is unfortunate.” Ruiz spread his hands. “Well, if
we must—”
“What are you jabbering about?” Ingram
demanded.
“Which one to break first, Herman,” Morrison
replied in English. “It’s not a very pretty sound when
it goes, but maybe she’ll yell loud enough to cover it.
Let’s get on with it, Dreamboat.” He stepped across,
caught her wrist, and began to bring it up behind
her back.
“All right,” Ingram said bleakly. “I’ll call him.”
Morrison smiled, and let go the wrist. “Now you’re
with it. Just pick up the mike.”
He lifted the handset from its cradle on the front
of the instrument. This actuated the switch starting
Aground — 60
the transmitter; the converter whirred. Morrison had
already set the band switch to 2638 Kc. He pressed
the button. “This is the Dragoon, calling McAllister
plane.” He didn’t know the plane’s call letters.
“Dragoon to Avery, come in, please.”
There was a moment’s tense silence. Then Avery’s
voice boomed in the loudspeaker. “Avery back to
Captain Ingram. How does it look on there?
Everything all right? Over.”
Morrison nodded. Ingram spoke into the handset.
“Everything seems to be in good shape. I think we’ll
be able to kedge her off. We’ve decided to stay
aboard and see if we can get her back to Key West.
Over.”
“You mean both of you?”
“Yes. Over.”
Avery’s voice came in. “I see. Well, if you run into
any trouble and want us to come back or send a
boat, call us through the Miami Marine Operator.
Can you get her with your set?”
“Yes. We’ve got that channel.”
“Good. Any sign of what happened to the thieves?”
Morrison shook his head, and made a rowing
motion with his left arm. Ingram looked bitterly
around the cabin. “No. Apparently they just
abandoned her.”
“Right. Well, if that’s all, I’ll take off. Good luck to
you.”
“Thanks. This is the Dragoon, off and clear.”
He replaced the handset; the sound of the
converter stopped. What now? Apparently Avery had
accepted Mrs. Osborne’s sudden change of mind
without question. There’d been no mention of the
money she still owed McAllister for the charter, but
they would merely take it for granted she intended
to pay as soon as they reached Key West. It could be
as long as a week before anybody even began to
wonder about it.
“What are you going to do with us?” he asked.
Aground — 61
“Nothing,” Morrison replied. “You’ll get your boat
back when we’re through with it.”
“And when will that be?”
“As soon as we deliver the cargo.”
“This is kidnap. You can get life for it. I don’t think
you’re that dumb—”
“Shut up,” Morrison ordered. “Go on top. I want
you up there when he takes off.”
They went up the ladder and stood on the after
deck beside the cockpit with just the muzzle of the
gun showing in the hatch behind them. “Don’t look
around this way,” Morrison warned. They stared out
at the plane. One of the propellers turned,
shattering the sunlight, and then the cough and roar
of the engine came to them across the mile of water.
The other engine caught. The plane began to taxi
toward the south. Ruiz is afraid of it, he thought. But
that was no help; Morrison was in command, and he
was the dangerous one. Well, he still had one small
edge; they didn’t know he spoke Spanish.
The plane had stopped now; it swung about, facing
north. The engines roared and it began to gather
speed. It went past them over a mile to the
westward, lifted from the water, and began to
dwindle away in the void. He felt sick. Morrison
came up the ladder behind them, followed by Ruiz.
Morrison sat down on the corner of the deckhouse
with the BAR across his legs, and said, “All right,
let’s get this scow off the mud. What do we do first?”
“Jettison those guns,” Ingram said coldly.
“Come again with the jettison?”
“Throw ‘em over the side.”
“Don’t bug me, Herman. The guns go on that
island—”
Ruiz broke in suddenly, in Spanish. “Look! The
plane returns.”
Ingram caught himself, but too late. He’d already
turned to look. He saw Morrison’s jocose grin, and
was filled with a dark and futile rage. That swept the
Aground — 62
series; he’d been made a fool of by all three of them
—Hollister, Morrison, and now Ruiz.
But it hadn’t been a deliberate trick; the plane was
turning and coming back. “Hit the dirt!” Morrison
barked. He grabbed the gun and ducked down the
hatch after Ruiz. Ingram watched it silently. Maybe
Avery did suspect something. But it was turning
again now, in a steep bank only a few hundred feet
above the water some miles to the north of them. It
was as though Avery was trying to see something
below him. At that moment the radio blared in the
cabin. Morrison spoke from the hatchway. “Get on
the horn. He’s calling you.”
He ran down the ladder. Morrison had already
started the transmitter. He passed over the handset
and stood to one side, holding the gun. “Careful
what you say, and watch me.”
He pressed the transmit button. “This is the
Dragoon back. What is it? Over.”
Avery’s voice filled the cabin. “There’s something
in the water down here. Hold it a minute. I’m coming
over it again.”
They waited in tense, hot silence unbroken except
for the scratching of static in the loudspeaker. Rae
Osborne watched from the hatchway. Then Avery’s
voice came on again. “It’s a body, all right. Probably
one of your thieves. Seems to be naked except for a
pair of shorts. If you bring the raft, I can land and
get him aboard.”
He glanced at Morrison. “Tell him you’ll pick him
up,” the latter ordered, “and take him into Key
West.”
He repeated this.
“Very well,” Avery agreed. “Might save a bit of
international red tape, at that. I make the position
about three miles north-northeast of you. If you get
here while the water’s still flat, you won’t have any
trouble finding him. There are some birds sitting on
him.”
Aground — 63
He saw Mrs. Osborne shudder at the image.
Morrison gave a curt gesture that said: Get rid of
him. He signed off, and replaced the handset. When
they went on deck again, the plane was fading away
in the northeast.
Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse
once more. “Now, how many of those guns do we
have to unload?”
Rae Osborne stared at him. “But what about the
man?”
Morrison shrugged. “So what about him?”
“Aren’t we going to do anything at all?”
“Like giving him artificial respiration, maybe? He’s
only been dead for three days.”
She took a step toward him, the green eyes
blazing. “I’ve got to see him.”
“A waterlogged stiff? Honey, you need help.”
“Listen,” Ingram said, “it won’t take more than
thirty minutes to row out there and see if she can
identify him. She may know who Hollister was.”
Morrison shook his head. “Fall back, Herman. I
couldn’t care less who Hollister was, and we’ve got
more to do than stooge around the ocean looking for
him.”
“I’m going out there,” Rae Osborne said. She
started past him toward the raft, and violence
erupted in the sunlit morning like the release of
coiled steel springs.
Morrison caught the front of her pullover, yanked
her toward him, and slapped her back-handed across
the face. She gasped and tried to hit him. Ingram
lunged at him just as he drew back his arm and
shoved, sending her sprawling along the deck. Ruiz’
arm flashed down, swinging the slablike automatic.
Pain exploded inside his head and he fell forward
against Morrison, who stood up, pushed him off with
the BAR, and chopped a short and brutal right to the
side of his jaw. His knees buckled and he fell beside
Mrs. Osborne. When he tried to get up, the deck
tilted and spun, and there was no strength in his
Aground — 64
arms. He dropped back. Blood trickled down across
his forehead and fell to the deck in little spatting
droplets just under his eyes.
“Don’t ever try that again, Herman,” Morrison
said. “You’re a big boy, but we’re in the business.”
Aground — 65
6
In a moment he was able to sit up, wincing with the
pain in his head. Rae Osborne had pushed to a
sitting position with her feet on the cockpit cushions.
She had an inflamed red spot on the side of her face,
and there were tears of frustration and rage in her
eyes. “You’re not much help,” she said.
He mopped at the blood on his face with a
handkerchief, but succeeded only in smearing it. He
threw the handkerchief overboard. A vagrant breath
of air riffled the water astern and a gull wheeled and
cried out above them in the brassy sunlight. This
was about as helpless as you could get, he thought;
he’d lasted less than three seconds.
Morrison spoke to Ruiz. “As soon as the Champ’s
able to row that raft, we get started. Go down and
begin taking the lashings off those cases.”
Ruiz went down the ladder. “How much will we
have to unload?” Morrison asked.
Ingram stared coldly. “How would I know?”
“You’re the expert.”
“I don’t even know what you’ve got aboard. Or
where the tide was when you piled up here.”
Aground — 66
“I don’t know about the tide, but I can tell you
what’s aboard. Six hundred rifles, thirty machine
guns, fifty BAR’s, a half dozen mortars—”
“I don’t need an inventory. I mean tonnage. Have
you got any idea what it weighs?”
Morrison thought for a moment. “The ammo’d be
the heaviest. We’ve got over a hundred thousand
rounds of thirty-caliber stuff in those two
staterooms. I’d guess it all at six to eight tons.”
Ingram made a rough calculation based on a
water-line length of fifty-five feet and a beam
amidships of sixteen. Call it thirty-five cubic feet
displacement per inch of draft at normal water line.
Each ton would put her down nearly another full
inch. No wonder she’d looked low in the water.
“You’ve got her overloaded at least six inches. If
you’d hit any weather she could have foundered or
broken her back.”
“Never mind that jazz. How much do we take off?”
“Probably all of it. How long have you been on
here?”
“Since Saturday night.”
“And this is Wednesday. She’s never moved at
all?”
“No,” Morrison said.
“Has the tide ever come any higher than it is
now?”
“How would I know?” Morrison asked. “You think
we got anything to measure it with?”
“Use your head. Has the deck ever been any
nearer level than it is right now?”
“No. This is about it.”
“Then congratulations. Apparently you plowed on
here at full speed on the highest tide of the month.”
“So what do we do, sit here and cry? Let’s get
going.”
“If you were bound for the Caribbean, why were
you on a northerly heading when you hit?”
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