Operation Fireball

Calypso must gripe his neat ex-Navy soul. “Actually, it’s Slater’s physical condition that makes me want to keep him off the shellac,” he continued. “We’re facing some hard, hard going down in the interior, and after years of disuse, I don’t know if his musculature will stand up to it.”

The Calypso slowed in its forward drive. Erikson stood up and looked forward. When I followed suit, I saw that we were approaching the Key West waterfront. I sat down again as Erikson rejoined Wilson at the wheel. I had felt chilled during our high-speed run on open water, but now the land heat rolled over the boat in a muggy tide. I could feel the perspiration starting again.

Hazel joined me, sat down, and slipped her hand into mine. “D’you think your boy Chico got your message?” I asked her.

“If he didn’t, the next one’ll cost him bridgework,” she promised. Her expression was concerned as she studied my face. “Let me handle him, okay?”

I said nothing as Wilson expertly conned the Calypso back into its slip.

* * *

Slater was waiting for us at The Castaways.

The Mexican boy Hazel had left on duty behind the bar leaned across it and said something to Slater as we entered. The burly man left his half-finished glass of beer and approached us. I was savoring the feel of the air conditioning. “The boy says you’re the one to see about gettin’ a room,” Slater said to Hazel.

She waited for a negative reaction from me. “No women above the first floor,” she said when I gave no sign. “That’s ironclad.”

“Suits me,” Slater shrugged. Money was changing hands between them when Erikson came through the front door. He walked directly to the stairway and went upstairs. He didn’t look at Slater, nor Slater at him. I stayed downstairs while Hazel took Slater up to get him settled. I’d have plenty of time to talk to him later. I wondered where Wilson was. Probably out picking up Erikson’s supplies.

Hazel came back downstairs and told the bartender that he could go. “It’s quite a crew you’ve put together,” she said to me quietly when she was sure no one could overhear.

I didn’t feel that I’d put it together, but I let it go. “Did you give friend Chico the same pitch about no women above the first floor when you roomed him?”

“I certainly did.”

“What did he say?”

“You won’t get mad?”

“No madder than I am already.”

She smiled reminiscently. “He said ‘Do you stay above the first floor?’ and when I said yes he said ‘Then I won’t need no other women up there.’ ”

“It sounds like him.”

“He’s funny, if you could only see it that way.” I said nothing, and she put her hand on my arm. “Let me handle him,” she said for the second time.

Erikson came downstairs and sat at the other end of the bar. When Hazel served him, he downed a beer in two gulps, said something to her, and went out the front door. I waited while she swished a bar rag along the mahogany bar top until she was opposite me. “He wants you to go down to the basement and give Wilson a hand unloading supplies from Wilson’s truck,” she murmured.

Rather than use the basement door inside the room in back of the bar, I went outside and walked down the alley. Some of the fishermen-faces in The Castaways were beginning to look familiar to me, and if the reverse were true, I didn’t want to call attention to myself by letting anyone see me make too familiar use of the lower floor.

It was twilight outside. Margaret Street looked deserted as I turned into the alley. Slanting outside doors led down a short flight of steps at the rear of the building into The Castaways’ basement. A mud-covered, rust-spotted pickup was parked there. It didn’t need Wilson’s name on it to proclaim its ownership. It was sister-under-the-skin to the Calypso.

Wilson emerged from the basement. “I was beginnin’ to think you was afraid to get your hands dirty,” he started in on me. “Stack this stuff inside.” He climbed into the body of the pickup.

We had a lot of chiefs and damn few Indians on this project, I reflected. I kept my mouth shut, though. I went back and forth to the basement with armloads of blue naval uniforms, khaki uniforms, rubber ponchos, and duffle bags crammed with weighty items. Inside the basement the air was musty and smelled of beer, but it was cooler than outside.

Next came several open boxes of what looked like radio equipment. When there was nothing left in the pickup except two small wooden crates, Wilson jumped down and carried one into the basement. I carried the other. For their size, they were deceptively heavy. Stenciled boldly on all sides of the crates was the single word CLASSIFIED. “What’s in these?” I asked Wilson as he closed the outer basement doors.

“You can read, can’t you?” he grunted.

I started to heat up until I realized that he didn’t know, either. He got into the pickup and drove off down the alley. I walked around to the front and went inside. I wanted a shower.

Hazel was busy at the tables. I climbed the stairs to our room. “Hey, Drake!” Slater called to me as I passed his open door. I went into his room. He seemed more tense than he had in San Diego. “Who’s the redhead at the bar?” he wanted to know.

“My girl.”

“Your girl! How’d you round up that bit of catnip?”

I decided that the truth couldn’t hurt anything. “She’s the moneyman.” I unbuttoned my sweat-soaked shirt and slipped out of it.

Slater cocked a heavy eyebrow. “All that and money, too,” he said admiringly. “What did Captain Bligh have to say?”

I knew he meant Erikson. “Nothing. Yet.” And now that I thought of it, it was strange that he hadn’t.

Slater’s gaze was on my chest where some of the scars from the plastic surgery transplants partly showed above my undershirt. “Somebody didn’t like you a whole lot one time, hmm?” he remarked.

I didn’t correct him. If he didn’t make the connection between the multicolored scars and my new face, it was all right with me. “Erikson said there was a load of stuff in the basement we’d move upstairs tonight after closin’ time,” Slater continued. “What d’you think of our boat captain?”

“I’ll let you meet him first.”

“You don’t like him?”

“I don’t have to like him if he gets the job done. On the water he seems capable enough.”

“He’s not gonna be on the water when we jump the fence at Gitmo,” Slater objected.

“Maybe he has hidden talent,” I said, and went into my room for my shower.

* * *

The following night I knocked on Erikson’s door. I could hear the tap-tap-tapping of a typewriter inside. Down the corridor I could hear Slater’s full-throated snores. I had no idea where Wilson was.

Erikson’s door opened silently with the blond man shielded behind it until he saw who it was. He closed the door behind me when I entered. Piled in corners were the articles Wilson and I had unloaded from Wilson’s pickup the previous night.

Erikson went back to the typewriter. A bulldog pipe was in an ashtray on the desk and blue tobacco smoke eddied in the air conditioning. “We have work to do,” Erikson said as he sat down.

“Tonight?”

“Tonight. Are you handy with tools?”

“I’m no master mechanic, but I get by.”

“Good. You can help.” There was a five-second pause. “The deputy from White Pine County mentioned that you were handy with a gun.”

“What brought that up on your radar?”

He swiveled on his chair to look me in the eye. “You and Wilson,” he said bluntly.

“Forget it,” I said. “Hazel will hand him his head.”

“I believe that,” he answered. “I just hope that you do, too. By the way, can she sew?”

“Sew?” Erikson made a series of stitching motions. “Oh. Damned if I know. I’ll ask her. Why?”

He glanced at the piles of clothing and equipment. “There’s sleeve insignia to be sewed onto these