Operation Fireball

all.”

“Eliminate what?” Hazel asked.

“Those Morse code signals. The transmitters at the naval station here have so damned much power they blanket the whole frequency spectrum when we’re this close to them. If you had the right-sized fillings in your teeth, you’d be pouring drinks to a Morse code rhythm. Maybe the pretuned crystals will stop it.”

His blunt fingertip depressed one of a row of clear plastic buttons running vertically on the panel. The button he pushed remained locked in place, lit from behind to show that it was engaged. The fast-paced code signals faded measurably. I had to strain to hear them. Erikson nodded in satisfaction and pushed another button. A Spanish- speaking voice blotted out the background noise entirely.

“Right on it,” Erikson said with the broadest smile I’d ever seen from him. He worked the buttons from top to bottom, bringing in other Spanish-speaking voices on all but two of the eight frequencies. Those two hummed steadily, indicating that the channels were open.

He returned to one of these, turning up the speaker volume until the power hum was almost painful. He backed off the volume control then and listened to the silence for a good three minutes. “Is anything wrong?” I asked finally.

“We’d be in trouble if that frequency were in use,” he answered. “It’s the one I’ve set up for the rendezvous signal, and we need to have it clear. We’ll monitor it for a few days to make sure it stays open, especially during the hours we’ll want to use it ourselves. We’ll probably transmit the recall signal around two in the morning to give the Calypso time to make the run and be laying offshore at the pickup point before dawn.”

He looked at Hazel. “It’s going to be boring for you, listening to silent airwaves each night starting at midnight.”

“I’ll bring a crossword puzzle,” she said.

“This is all you have to do,” he said. Hazel moved up beside him. Erikson demonstrated how to turn on and tune the transceiver. “Try it,” he said.

For ten minutes they went through the routine. I thought Erikson was a little rough with his brusque instructions. Knowing Hazel’s quick temper, I was a little surprised she didn’t sound off at him. “Fine,” he said at last. “One more thing. There’s no point in inviting possible attention to what you’re doing here.”

He pulled a box from under a bench, ripped it open, and took out a headset with large, foam-rubber- cushioned cups covering the earphones. He plugged the jack into a receptacle on the receiver panel and moved a two-way switch next to it from speaker to phone position. The room became quiet.

Hazel put on the headset, adjusted the earphones for comfort, and depressed a channel button. She tilted her head slightly, then reached forward and turned a control knob. She took off the headset and handed it to me. When I held it to one ear, liquid-sounding Spanish syllables crackled clearly.

“Fine,” Erikson repeated after he had also listened for a moment. “That’s all for tonight,” he added to Hazel. “We’ll be upstairs in a little bit.”

In the instant Erikson leaned forward to turn off the radio, Hazel made a face to me to indicate her opinion of her abrupt dismissal, but she left the storeroom. “We’ll all go out on the Calypso in the morning, except Hazel. Wilson will take us to a quiet area where we can practice boarding from rubber life rafts. Now let’s go up to. my room. I want to give you all copies of a Navy Training Pamphlet called “The Bluejacket’s Manual.” And I want you all to study it. You’ll have to act like white hats aboard the destroyer that takes us to Guantanamo. I also want to show you a detailed map of Cuba and mark a point where I feel—”

There was a loud thump above our heads, followed by scuffling noises. Another thump sounded. Erikson and I jammed together in the storeroom doorway trying to get through it at the same time. We wriggled free, ran for the stairs, and sprinted up them. Erikson beat me to the door of Hazel’s and my room. He stopped inside it, his bulk blocking my vision partly, but I could see the essentials.

Chico Wilson had returned from the Calypso. He was struggling to get to his feet, a look of incredulous disbelief on his handsome features. Hazel stood to one side. The print of her knuckles stood out starkly on Wilson’s tanned jawline. “You bitch!” he rasped as he bounded to his feet. He started toward her. Erikson moved forward like a big cat, but Hazel was quicker. She took two steps and then planted the toe of her cowboy boot squarely in Wilson’s shin like Jan Stenerud kicking a fifty-yard field goal. Wilson’s head flew back until he was staring at the ceiling, his face screwed up in pain. He collapsed slowly upon himself until he ended up sitting on the floor with both hands clasping the wounded shin.

“Wassamatter?” a husky voice said from behind me. I turned. Slater was standing there in his underwear, glassy-eyed. In his right hand he held the biggest pistol I’d ever seen. Both hand and pistol were shaking. “Cops?” he demanded.

Inside the room, Erikson leaned down and took hold of Wilson by one arm. He jerked him to his feet and thrust him at the door. Slater and I barely cleared the entrance in time for Wilson to be propelled through it. He didn’t even look around. He kept right on going to his own room.

“Oh, it’s jus’ lover boy,” Slater said. He attempted to put the pistol into his belt, realized he had no belt, stared at the pistol for a moment, and then clamped it under his armpit. His hand continued to shake. “ ‘Night,” he said with an attempt at jauntiness, and went down the corridor.

I was looking at Wilson’s door when Erikson came out into the hall. “Stay away from him,” Erikson ordered.

Some of my inarticulate rage transferred itself to the big blond man. Who the hell did he think he was? “Don’t try to tell—”

“Simmer down,” his hard voice overrode mine. “There’s too much at stake.”

When I could think, I couldn’t argue with the statement.

Neither Hazel nor I referred to the incident while we undressed and went to bed. While I waited for her to fall asleep, I remade a resolution I had made previously and done nothing about. When everything was quiet, I eased out of bed and went over to the bureau. I laid out my loosest-fitting sport shirt for the morning, and under it I placed my shoulder holster and.38.

The next time Chico Wilson got that far out of line around me, I intended to be in a position to do something about it.

* * *

It was a silent crew that boarded the Calypso in the morning. As usual, we went aboard at intervals. Wilson took the Calypso to a deserted spit of land and anchored. For two hours in the broiling sun we practiced boarding the cruiser from collapsible rubber life rafts. It was hot, tedious, exhausting work. Everyone had the disposition of a snapping turtle by the time we began the run back to Key West.

Erikson took the wheel. Wilson slumped down upon a coil of rope. Slater brushed against me as he attempted to move past. He turned his head, and I knew he had felt the outline of the holster and.38 under my sport shirt. He went to an iced-down chest, opened it, and took out a can of beer.

He drained the can in one long swallow, held out the empty can in my direction, and looked at me quizzically. “Come on, Wild Bill,” he said. “Show us how you used to do it when the buffalo was a-stampedin’ across the plains.” He lobbed the empty beer can over the side in a long, lazy arc. “What’s the matter?” he said when I made no move. “Savin’ ammunition?”

He took out another can of beer. It took him two swallows for that one. He held it out toward me wordlessly, then feinted throwing it. The ocean was flat calm and there wasn’t another boat in sight. I moved up to the rail, unbuttoned the top two buttons on my shirt, and drew the.38.

Slater grinned. He threw the can in the same rainbow trajectory. The third slug from the.38 bounced the can skyward. Slater threw a full can. That one almost reached the water before my last bullet drove it downward into the top of a wave. I reloaded while Slater picked up another can. When he threw it, the first bullet jerked the can sideways while it was still on its way up.

I reholstered the Smith & Wesson and stepped back from the rail. Chico Wilson was staring at the stretch of ocean where the beer cans had disappeared. At the wheel Erikson displayed no emotion on his rugged features. Slater chuckled aloud as he opened another can of beer. “Ol’ Wild Bill has still got it,” he pronounced, and held the beer can aloft in a salute.

The Calypso knifed steadily through the blue-green water.