Ghosting by the main entrance to the harbor, Dave pointed out his sailboat. We could see the men's cigarette tied to the stern. There were only four other boats anchored in American Harbor, and all were dark and quiet. Dave cut the engine and we drifted silently up next to the hull. Easing into the cockpit, careful not to make noise or cause motion, we could see the two men through the open hatch. They would never be accused of being overly smart. Having found the cocaine, they were helping themselves to big snorts of the white crystal powder, forgetting all else. Their weapons lay on the cabin sole out of reach even if they had wanted to make a play.
The expression on their face made me feel sad. Maybe they were the two who sat on the overturned dinghy and drank rum on Family Beach. The men were frightened of Dave, had seen him kill before, or so they thought. The white powder caked around their nose and mouth appeared comical.
Dave went forward, rummaged around in the Vee-birth, and returned with two pair of handcuffs. It struck me as funny that he could produce handcuffs out of nowhere at three o'clock in the morning on board a sailboat anchored in a small harbor two hundred miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. He looked at me with dark, deadly eyes. Not given to frivolity, the humor escaped him. He could see further into the night than I. The present was hard for me to comprehend, much less the future.
We cuffed the two men together around the mainmast, where it runs through the cabin and down into the keel. It was the most secure place and there was no way they could get loose. We would leave them until the business was finished back at the Sun Dog. If for some reason we didn't make it back, then someone would find them, eventually.
It was now after three a.m., and we had to hurry to beat daylight. We retraced our route back to Sanchez. The plan was risky, but it was the only way.
As we approached the Sun Dog, two men stood in the cockpit. Since they were expecting a cigarette boat to return, they weren't alarmed when we idled up beside the sportfisherman.
We brought the two automatic weapons confiscated from the men on the sailboat along with the guns Dave furnished. We were ready.
Easing the cigarette around so that my side would pass close to the stern of the Sun Dog, Dave maneuvered to within a few feet of the two men. When one knows death is close it heightens awareness and the usual facts do not make sense.
There was a look of surprise and fear on the face of the man closest to me when he realized who we were. He snarled like an angry wolf as he raised his rifle to fire. Spraying both men with a full clip from the AR-15, I saw one fall overboard, and the other slump into the cockpit. Dave opened the throttle and we started a circle around the Sun Dog. The two women bolted from the salon door, one running around the portside, the other the starboard. Both were heading for the bow and carrying automatic weapons as if they were trained to use them. They were kittens at play, but tigers in battle.
Dave abruptly closed the throttle causing the cigarette to slow suddenly, settling bow first. We both fired at the two women. One of them got off a burst, hitting inches in front of the windscreen where I stood. If Dave had not shut the throttle off when he did…
The two women were dead before they hit the deck. Dave throttled up again, and we started another circle, expecting Barrel-chest and Sanchez to come out firing. Instead, to our amazement, someone waved a white cloth out the salon door. Emerging slowly, with arms raised, Barrel-chest threw his weapon into the water. I had expected more from the man.
'Careful, Dave.'
'Damn cowards.'
Most of the people behind these kinds of operations hire someone to do the dangerous and messy work. Sanchez was proving not to be the exception. We were still wary, though. My ears were ringing, my heart was pounding, and I could feel the adrenaline flowing into my bloodstream. Any movement, a blink of an eye, and I would cut Barrel-chest in half.
Dave yelled, 'Get Sanchez out here. Do it now, or you're a dead man.'
Barrel-chest turned, said something to someone inside the salon. Sanchez appeared in the door and threw his rifle overboard. I boarded the boat while Dave kept me covered. There was no one else on board. Dave tied the cigarette off and climbed into the cockpit.
'So it was you,' Sanchez snarled. 'I should never have trusted you. Very clever, pretending to kill your friend, here. Smart, extremely smart.'
He appeared to be in his early sixties. The structure of his bones and the looseness of his clothes suggested that he had once been muscular. The lifeless indifference of his eyes hid the fact that some degree of intelligence resided somewhere in his brain. The overall appearance was one of a wasted man who'd been sampling his own product.
'What is it we can do? You want part of my action? Together we could make plenty of money. I'll cut you in for fifty percent. What you think? We work together, yeah?'
Dave looked hard at him. He was edgy, angry, and I had no idea what he might do. 'We want no part of your filthy operation.'
Sanchez shrugged, the movement running through his body like a shudder. 'Then what? I can get you anything. I have millions. What you want, Mon? Money, women, dope? What?'
Dave's finger tightened on the trigger, so I eased up and looked Sanchez in the eyes. 'You want to save your life, tell me what the Renoir girl was doing aboard this boat? Who pumped her full of dope? And why?'
A strange, crazed look crossed his face, but he didn't say anything.
'I know she was brought to Bimini. Someone drugged her, beat her, put her aboard Chalk Airline, then called the Miami police and told them she was coming. You got ten seconds.'
He shot an ugly look at Barrel-chest, then bellowed with a wild-eyed hatred. 'You didn't kill her? You sent her to Miami still alive?'
Sanchez, standing beside the salon door, suddenly lunged inside for a gun lying on the deck. Dave shot him with a burst from his rifle, but not before he got off a shot at Barrel-chest. The bullet hit the big man in the lower right side and, from the angle fired, traveled upward, and exited beside the collarbone. The destruction to vital organs was evident as bright red arterial blood pumped in arcing spurts from the wound. He was a dead man, only he didn't know it.
Sanchez lay on the salon floor. His eyes were lifeless, as if they had seen nothing. They held no spark of excitement, no personal sensation, neither in defiance or of regret, neither of shame or suffering. They were empty ovals that held no response to life, ovals that held nothing but a dull, still, mindless death.
Barrel-chest slumped into the fighting chair holding onto the armrests with a death grip. There was a rigid stillness to his body, a body that sat too straight. It seemed broken, held with a slight, unnatural angel at his waistline and shoulders, the arms stiff but slanted back.
The effort not to move was turning the force of the violence against him, as if the motion he resisted were running through his muscles as a tearing, searing pain. His fingers convulsed, struggling to keep their grip on the armrests. I wondered which would break first, the fighting chair or the man's bones.
Taking the white cloth waved in surrender, I tried to stem the flow of blood. 'Look, you tried to save Rene's life. It was you who alerted the Miami Police. You are not going to survive this. If you cared anything about the girl, tell me about it, now.'
'Did she make it?' Blood foamed from his mouth.
'No, she did not. Do this one last thing before you die. Tell me about Rene Renoir.'
Five minutes later he was dead. I never knew his name, but what he told us was an astounding story, one that would take some time to absorb.
Dave and I sat for a long time in silence, listening to the water lap against the hull of the sportfisherman. The night feeders made splashing sounds as they slashed through the dark sea after prey. To kill is difficult; the extinguishing of so much life is a troublesome thing.
'It'll be light in an hour,' Dave said in a tired voice. 'Let's get the bodies below. We'll take the Sun Dog across the bar, out into deep water.'
My emotions had clogged into a still, solid, opaque ball within me, which the thought of those who'd been killed this night could not pierce. They were simply the enemy to be destroyed. Taking the boat hook, I reached for the body of the man who had fallen overboard. He'd floated around to the starboard side. The night feeders were already working on him. We dragged him through the transom door into the cockpit like a two hundred-pound
