“At least stop the ship before you leave,” the captain told Bahmad. “I don’t want to run into anything.”
“As you wish,” Bahmad said. “You’ll be a little cramped, I’m afraid, but it shouldn’t be too bad for a few hours.”
“Who the fuck are you trying to bullshit?” one of the crewmen demanded angrily. “You’re going to kill us all.”
“Why would we do such a thing?”
“You don’t want any witnesses.”
Bahmad smiled faintly. “If that were the case we would have killed those of you who were sleeping in your beds and taken the bridge and engine room first. It certainly would be a lot less messy than calling you all down here and shooting you dead.”
The crewman had no answer for that and he said no more, but he was suspicious.
“On your feet, please,” Bahmad instructed. They did as they were told with a lot of hesitation. But there was no leader among them and they didn’t know where to turn or what to do. “I would like you to follow Mr. Schumatz, in single file please, to the dry storage locker. If anyone decides to try something, I will shoot the captain first and then turn my gun on you.”
No one said a thing.
“Very well,” Bahmad said. He nodded to Schumatz who walked into the kitchen and through to the pantry where he opened the heavy door into the large walk-in locker, men stepped aside, his pistol at the ready.
“What’s this all about, Mr. Schumatz?” one of the younger crewmen asked. “Is it drugs?”
“You’ll read all about it in the newspapers in a few days, Rudi,” Schumatz said. “Now inside with you so nobody has to get their ass shot off.”
“Well, I hope you rot in hell, you dirty prick,” Rudi Gunn said, and he walked into the storage locker. The captain was the last in and he turned to face Bahmad. “Eight hours?”
“Or less,” Bahmad assured him. He motioned to Schumatz who swung the door shut, the lock dropping into place with a loud snap.
Bahmad turned around. “Joseph,” he called.
Green, Fernandez and Mendoza came around the corner from the other side of the kitchen. Green’s face was animated with excitement. “That was god dammed smooth,” he said. He held his pistol in both hands, and he kept looking at the locker door. “Are we going to kill them now?”
“First things first. I want you to go up to the bridge and stay there for the time being. I’m going to have Lazlo stop the ship, but I want you to make sure that the autopilot is set and that we’re on course, and make sure that no one has been trying to reach us by radio. From this point on we have to be on the watch for the U.S. Coast Guard.”
“But I want—”
“I know, Joseph, but for now I need you on the bridge,” Bahmad said soothingly. “Your time will come.”
Green backed up and looked at the others, but then his head bobbed. “Okay, but when the time comes I want Panagiotopolous.” He turned and left.
“I’ll tend to the engines,” Schumatz said.
“Give us an hour and then come up to the bridge, please.”
Schumatz glanced at the locker door then left.
“Why are you stopping the ship?” Fernandez asked suspiciously. He was jumpy.
“We’re going to set some explosives and sink her here.”
Fernandez’s eyes strayed to the locker door. “You’re going to let them drown, huh?”
Bahmad shook his head. “Either finish the job, or walk away right now and we’ll call it even.”
Fernandez and Mendoza exchanged a look and Mendoza nodded. “I say kill them now.” “Si,” Fernandez said with some hesitation. He pulled the MAC 10’s top-mounted bolt and he and Mendoza stepped apart directly in front of the locker door. When they were ready he nodded.
Bahmad unlatched the door, pulled it open and quickly got out of the way. Someone inside shouted something in desperation, but Fernandez and Mendoza opened fire, unloading their thirty-round magazines in a couple of seconds, immediately reloading and firing again.
The noise hammered off the steel bulkheads. Spent shells skittered hollowly like metal popcorn across the deck. And finally the screams and cries of the Margo’s crew subsided until Fernandez stopped shooting and stepped back.
“Madre de Dios” he said softly, and he crossed himself.
Everyone in the storage locker was down. Blood was splashed everywhere; on the overhead, the walls and boxes on the shelves, and lay in thick pools on the floor.
“Make sure that they’re all dead,” Bahmad said.
“You do it,” Fernandez answered in disgust.
“Finish the job, Captain. It’s what you were hired for.”
Mendoza was excited. He reloaded and went to the locker door. He fired a couple of shots into the bodies, then a couple more. Fernandez joined him, reloading his gun, and he too fired into the bodies.
Bahmad raised his MAC 10 and fired a short burst, at least a halfdozen rounds catching the two drug runners in the backs of their heads. They were driven forward into the locker on top of the pile of bodies, none of which was moving any longer.
Bahmad stood for a long time listening to the relative silence, and waiting. The storage locker doorway had a raised lip so very little blood had gotten out into the pantry, only a few splashes here and there on the deck.
Finally the distant vibration of the engines died and he could feel the change in motion as the ship began to slow down.
He laid the MAC 10 aside for a moment to push Fernandez’s and Mendoza’s legs all the way inside the locker and close the door, then went back through the galley to the main athwart ship corridor. A radio played music from somewhere, barely audible. It sounded Latin. A woman was singing. Other than that, the ship was very quiet.
Outside, he looked over the rail. The Aphrodite’s bridge was deserted, and the boat wallowed at the end of her tether, her engines idling with pops and throaty rumbles in neutral. Everything had gone smoothly to this point, but he smelled trouble now.
He scrambled down the ladder to the speedboat and hopped nimbly aboard the foredeck. He nearly lost his footing on the slowly pitching deck, but then regained his balance and sprinted aft to the open bridge. When the Margo’s engines had been shut down, Morales had dropped the Aphrodite’s engines into neutral and since he was no longer needed to tend the helm he’d gone below. But why? To do what? Get a beer?
Bahmad dropped down on the deck between the curving windscreen and the sleek radar bridge just as Morales, a pistol in his hand, came from below.
“What the fuck—” he said, rearing back,
Bahmad calmly raised his MAC 10 and fired a burst into the man’s chest, driving him backward down into the main saloon with enough force that he broke his spine on the edge of a cabinet before landing dead in a bloody heap.
One step at a time. It was all coming together. He could see with perfect clarity each step he had taken from the mountains in Afghanistan months ago when he had first devised his operation, here and now to this point. There wasn’t much left to do except deliver the package at the correct time and place, and history would be his.
Careful not to step in the gore, Bahmad went below and let his eyes sweep the cabin. There were several empty beer cans on the table, an empty speed-draw holster on the cushioned se tee and a bullet-resistant vest lying next to it. It was curious that the man hadn’t taken the time to put it on if he thought there was going to be trouble, unless he’d been interrupted. The SSB radio was on and still tuned to the frequency that he’d used to contact the Margo. Nothing was different, and yet he sensed something; something just outside of his awareness, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was missing something that was possibly important and it irritated him.
He glanced at Morales’s body, then went forward to the head where he shot out the sea cocks for the toilet and sink.
Water immediately began gushing into the boat in two-inch streams.
He did the same for the se acock serving the galley sink, and the sea cocks for the aft stateroom toilet, sink
