Secret sea; (23 page)

"Well, Vve been thinking about it," Mike said.

Pete said quietly, "There's enough money there for people to kill each other about, Mike."

"For crying out loud! You aren't threatening a little, tiny boy like me, are you? Because if you're planning to bump me off—just forget it. I'll beat you to a pulp."

Pete smiled a little. "I was thinking about Weber. If he ever sees that stuff, our Hves won't be worth a dime."

"I know it. And ... I believe he's right around here, Pete."

"So do I."

"Pete," Mike said, "did you ever have one of

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those dreams about being in a great big empty room not bothering anybody and all of a sudden you notice the room looks smaller? Then you keep watching, but you don't see anything except that all the time the room's closing in on you, the walls coming closer and closer?"

Pete nodded. "I know what you mean." Pete hit the wheelbox with his fist. "I wish we knew something! Or there was something we could really fight."

"Yeah," Mike said.

Then they sat in silence, the sun setting behind them, the sea now soft and deep purple.

With a sudden movement Mike yanked the motor out of gear.

"What . . ."

"Hold it! Hold it!" Mike said. Then, almost whispering, he said, "Look in the lagoon, Pete."

Pete looked and saw the stubby mast, then the deckhouse, and finally the squat hull of a ship.

"What is it?"

As the Indra lost way, Pete got out the binoculars.

"It's a Diesel-engine job. I can see the stack. Looks like a commercial fish boat. She's the . . . B-O-N . . . Bonita out of Los Arroyos, Cuba. She's sighted us. I see a man on the stern shading his eyes."

"And," Mike said slowly, "he's tall and thin and's got a face like a razorback hog."

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"Nope. He's a short, fat Cuban."

"Well, what's he doing in there?"

"I hope he's just lying up for the night."

"One'U get you ten he's one of Weber's stooges," Mike said. "Weber's ditched that black sloop and is probably peeking out of a porthole at us."

Pete didn't answer as for a long time he examined the boat with the glasses. Then he said slowly, "No, Mike. I don't think so. There's no sign of a radar antenna on that boat, and I don't think Weber would sail around without radar."

"Well, what are we going to do? Just lie out here all night?"

"Haul off," Pete said. "No use letting those people, whoever they are, sight this cargo. Slip her back in gear."

"Won't it look suspicious for us to come right straight for the island and then, as soon as we see that boat, turn around and haul off?" Mike asked.

"You're right." Then Pete suddenly clapped Mike on the back. "Mike, that's the answer to a prayer. Let's get the tender in the water."

"Hold up, sailor. What're you going to do?"

"Go in and talk to the Cuban."

"What about?"

Pete grinned. "Wait and see, my friend."

Mike looked at him in ominous silence and then went forward to unlash the tender. Pete helped

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him, and they lowered the fourteen-foot boat down into the water.

"Just hold her here until I get back," Pete said as he yanked the pull rope of the inboard engine.

Mike was still silent as he nodded. The expression in his face was curious, but Pete did not look up at him as the little motor started and he headed in toward the lagoon.

The Cuban captain, who spoke good English, welcomed Pete aboard and told him that he was looking for turtles. He explained that they caught the female turtles when they came out on the sandy beaches to lay their eggs. He was careful to add that they waited until the turtle finished laying her eggs before they caught her.

Pete made up a tale about how he was fishing for marlin, and soon he and the Cuban went below. Pete looked curiously around in the ship and asked the Cuban to show him all of it. The man was very willing, and Pete made sure that, except for two colored men, no one else was aboard.

On deck again, Pete explained that his ship drew too much water to get into the lagoon. The Cuban complained that he had found no turtles.

Then Pete asked him if he would take Mike back to Los Arroyos that night. "We're about out of provisions," Pete explained.

In five minutes everything was ready. Pete promised to pay the Cuban fifteen dollars to take Mike to the mainland and bring him back.

MUTINY

Aboard the Indra Pete said jubilantly, "Mike, our troubles are over. He's going to take you to Cuba. Where's some paper and a pen?"

Pete was halfway down the companionway when Mike said quietly, his voice ominous, "Wait a minute."

"No time to waste," Pete said, going on down the ladder.

Mike walked across the cockpit. "I said, *Wait a minute.' "

The tone of his voice stopped Pete, and he looked back up the ladder. Mike's face looked pale, his eyes were glittery and hard, and his jaw set.

Pete came slowly up the ladder. "What's the trouble?" he asked quietly.

"Aren't you forgetting something, wise guy?" Mike asked, the words grinding out between his teeth.

"What?"

Mike swung his arm slowly, pointing to the dark shapes on the deck of the Indra. "That," he said.

"What about it, Mike?"

"Part of it's mine," Mike said in a low voice.

"Sure it is."

"So . . . I'm staying right where it is. You thought you were a pretty smart cooky, shipping me off to Cuba, didn't you? You thought

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you could just rush me into it, didn't you? *No time to waste,' you said."

Mike's fists were doubled at his sides, and his lower lip was quivering. His eyes looked hard as steel balls, Pete thought.

"A wise guy. Get rid of me and sail away," Mike said. ''Well, it won't work."

Pete went slowly over and sat down on the coaming of the cockpit. As he began to understand the meaning of what Mike had said, he was first angry and then, when that died, he was sad.

**Mike," Pete said, "you don't trust anybody, do you?"

"No, I don't," Mike said, his voice flat. "Why should I?"

Pete felt suddenly dog-tired, whipped. All the elation he had felt coming back from the Cuban's boat was gone. "Oh, I don't know," he said slowly. "People have to trust each other."

"Yeah? Where are the people who trusted Hitler?"

"A lot of 'em are dead," Pete said.

"Where are the people who trusted that yel-lowbelly—what's his name—To jo? Where're they?"

"A lot of them are dead, too."

"Okay. I don't ask anybody to trust me and I don't trust anybody. So I'm not going to Cuba. Understand?"

MUTINY

Pete nodded slowly. "Okay, Mike," he said quietly.

Pete went slowly to his cabin, changed his clothes, and came back topside. It was almost dark, and Mike was sitting, doing nothing, on the wheelbox.

"Take care of things," Pete said quietly. "As soon as she pulls out, you might as well slip into the lagoon and anchor."

"Where are you going?" Mike asked.

"Cuba," Pete said.

"What for?"

"I think it would help."

"You're leaving me here ... by myself?"

Pete nodded.

"You leaving the stuff?"

Pete nodded again.

There was just enough light left for Pete to see Mike's eyes. For a long, long time he and Mike looked at each other, neither of them blinking, neither shifting the point of his gaze. And then Mike's eyes went down for an instant, came back up again, and then slid on up far above Pete.

"Skipper," Mike said.

Pete waited.

Mike got down off the wheelbox and turned around so that his back was toward Pete. He cleared his throat a little and said, "Guess I ran off the beam, didn't I?"

"For a little while," Pete said.

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Mike turned around again but didn't look up. **What do you want me to do in Cuba, Cap'n?"

Pete let his breath out slowly. Inside he began to feel good again. "I'll write out a message. See if you can get it radioed, Mike. Then get some odds and ends of groceries because I told my Cuban friend I was sending you for provisions. And give him this fifteen bucks."

"Okay," Mike said.

Pete went below and wrote the message while Mike changed into clean dungarees.

"Tell the captain that if he can get you back here by day after tomorrow it'll mean another five dollars," Pete said.

"Okay," Mike said. He swung a leg over the life line and got down into the tender. As Pete threw the painter down to him, Mike said, "Pete?"

Pete looked down at him standing in the bow of the boat, which was now drifting slowly away from the Indra,

"Yep?"

"How's about just forgetting what I said a while ago?"

"Don't remember a thing, Mike."

"Okay, I'll be seeing you," Mike said, and started the little engine.

Within half an hour Pete saw the running lights of the Cuban boat move out of the lagoon.

MUTINY

He thought he saw a small, dark figure in the bow of the ship waving. But the moon wasn't up and there was only starlight in the sky.

Pete nosed the Indra through the channel and dropped anchor close alongside the anchored tender. Then, with the motor stopped, he stood alone in the cockpit.

The feeling of danger, like the room of Mike's dream, was coming closer and closer.

Sugar Option Sugar

At was hot and muggy in the "Telegrafico," and a fly kept trying to Hght on Mike's nose as he waited for the telegraph operator to read the message Pete wanted sent.

The operator, a sweat-soaked handkerchief around his throat, finally looked up at Mike. He said in slow English with a heavy accent, "No onderstan' dees, senor. Can it not be translate een Spanish?"

SUGAR OPTION SUGAR

"Translate een Spanish," Mike said. "Listen, amigo, I can't even translate it een Eenglis. Just send it the way it reads."

The captain of the boat, who had come along with Mike, talked with the operator for a long time, but at last the operator sighed and began working the bug on the table. Slowly he sent Pete's message to the cable center.

The address was: Wild Bill Williams, Barwick Hotel, Miami, Florida, and the message read:

MAYDAY REPEAT MAYDAY XRAY POINT OPTION EIGHT FIVE DASH FIVE SEVEN DASH ZERO SIX NEGATIVE TWO'ONE DASH FOUR EIGHT DASH ONE ZERO WILLIAM XRAY DOG DAY NINETEEN HOW HOUR SIXTEEN HUNDRED XRAY WATCH FOR WINDOW XRAY WAIT FOR BABY. PETE MARTIN

"Eet iss trahnsmit, senor." He sounded sad. "Muchas gracias" Mike paid him and went out, the captain at his heels.

Mike stood beside the Cuban captain and watched the little island coming up green and round as dawn began to glow in the eastern sky. As the potbellied ship came around the point, Mike saw that the lagoon was empty. And as far as he could see across the dark water of the Gulf, it was empty, too.

**Where is your a7nigo?*' the captain asked.

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"He's around," Mike said. '*Hove to somewhere."

'*It is the day he said," the captain remarked. "There was mention of five dollars."

Mike peeled off five one-dollar bills from the thin roll of money Pete had given him. "Thanks very much."

''Por nada" the Cuban said. "Do you wish to be left on the island?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "That's what I wish. Just maroon me, amigo"

The captain thought that was funny.

In the lagoon the two hands rowed Mike and his groceries ashore. They waved to him as he stood alone on the beach.

Mike watched the Cuban boat chug slowly out through the channel and turn east. The sun pulled its rim out of the clinging sea and seemed to bounce up a little way into the sky.

Mike looked down at the tin cans of food shining bright and clean in the new sunlight. "And I haven't even got a can opener," he said aloud. Then he looked again at the empty sea. Slowly he doubled up his fists. "Boy, am I a sucker," he said between his teeth. He turned his head slowly and looked at the small curving beach, the scattered trees green in the sunlight, the scraggly bushes. "Marooned is right," Mike said.

Then he heard the faint exhaust of a motor and at last saw the Indra nosing slowly around the

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western end of the island, Pete standing up at the wheel. It came in through the channel and Pete dropped the anchor with a white splash. He was towing the tender and soon came ashore.

"Boy, I thought you'd copped the gold and left me," Mike said.

"Fly right," Pete said. "Did you get the message oflF?"

"If that's what you call a message, yes."

"Good. Now let's get moving, Mike. I've got the masts all ready to step."

"Oh, my aching GI back. Have we got to haul those things up again?"

Pete nodded. "We'll get 'em in and then go back to the Santa YbeL I'll cut through into the rest of the ship and, if we don't find anything, we can get away that much faster. Don't you think so?"

"Sure. Okay, let's strike a blow for liberty," Mike said, peeling off his shirt.

They got into the tender and went out to the ship. Pete followed Mike aboard.

"How about we eat some " Suddenly Mike