“Paddle back!” Boats’ bullhorn voice reached them.
Jimbo found the oars and handed one to Dwayne.
They knelt and began stroking powerfully for the hull of the container ship and the big bearded bastard hollering at them from the aft hatch. It didn’t feel like they were making progress. The Raj got no closer. The bow of the raft kept slewing to the right, and Dwayne paddled harder to compensate only to make the point of the bow go too far left.
“Dumb pogue shits! You look like two turds in a toilet!” Boats’ voice reached them. They could see him gesturing from the opening in the hull. The silhouetted shapes of crewmen lined the stern rails, watching the Rangers splashing around.
“This looked so easy,” Jimbo said, stroking furiously.
“Thought you Indians were good at paddling,” Dwayne said.
“We don’t have too many canoes in the desert.” Dwayne spared a look at the Raj. No closer. But Boats was no longer reaming them out. In fact, he was nowhere in sight. Maybe he gave up on them.
They tried coordinating their efforts but only managed to turn the prow of the raft completely away from the Raj. Dwayne’s shoulders were burning from the effort. This was a workout, no lie.
Both Rangers were startled by a hand coming over the side to grip a cleat. Boats exploded from the water and tumbled over the side into the raft between them. He was in tighty-whities and nothing else.
“Dumbass pogues. You’re paddling around like two homos at a waterpark!” He wrenched the paddle from Dwayne’s hands. “What the fuck would you do in a real fucking sea instead of this bathtub we’re in right now?”
Dwayne began to protest, and Boats shoved him back into the stern.
“Man the tiller!” Boats called and threw the oar to the deck. “Turn the rudder port to go starboard and starboard to go port.”
Dwayne found the jointed aluminum tiller with a rubber grip on the end. It worked a pair of rudders at the stern. He turned it hard to port as Jimbo paddled. The prow moved around to point back at the hull of the container ship, now a hundred yards away. Boats sat on the deck, lounging against the hull, and offered obscenity-laced criticism and encouragement.
“Cut the water, you pogue! You’re splashing like a fucking duck! Cut and scoop! Not with your arms! Put your shoulders into it, goddamn it! Don’t turn into the oar! Keep your eyes on the boat, you prick! You’ll bring us up on a fucking beach somewhere! Focus, you lazy fucker! Pretend it’s pussy, and pretend you’re not queer!”
The Raj grew steadily closer until they were bumping against the hull. The crew lowered a ladder and Boats grabbed hold of it.
“I’m going aboard for a beer,” he announced as he put a bare foot in a rung. “You two girls are going to make your way three-sixty around this tub, and you will not come aboard until you can make fast below the dive board.”
“For how long?” Dwayne called to him.
“That’s up to you, pogue!” Boats hollered back and disappeared over the gunwale.
The Rangers switched off on the oar and tiller as each became more and more exhausted. They thought they were in shape. Hell, they were in shape. But this was a task they were unaccustomed to and working muscles they didn’t know they had. The crew followed them around, leaning over and watching from the railings without speaking. At least they’re not laughing, Dwayne thought. There was probably wagering involved.
It was three full revolutions around the three-hundred-meter ship before they came alongside below the bulwark hatch again. The ladder was lowered, and Dwayne wasn’t sure he could even raise his arms to use it. Both he and Jimbo hugged the ladder and pushed with their legs to finally reach the dive board, where they were helped through the bulwark door by the crew.
Boats wore cutoffs and a “Sailors Do It Wetter” t-shirt. He held a pump shotgun in his fists. A fleeting thought crossed Dwayne’s mind that Boats was going to summarily execute them for being fuck-ups. Boats shouldered past them with a sad shake of the head and pumped three rounds of buck down into the free-floating Zodiac to sink it. Practice over.
“Put her out of her misery.” Boats turned away, handing the pump off to a crew member and made his way to the bridge.
Caroline was there grinning wide.
“You see all that?” Dwayne said.
“I saw enough,” she said and raised her eyebrows. “You still want to go to sea?”
“Not with you as skipper.”
23
Electric Avenue
It was time for a test.
The reactor was running cool. It supplied the initial charge to the Tube down in its concealed chamber in the hold. The temperature in the container was already dropping as the first layer of ice formed on the titanium rings of the Tube array.
They went for a nighttime test. Boats assured them there were no craft anywhere near on his radar. The shipping and cruise lanes were far away over the horizon. Whatever happened on the Raj stayed on the Raj.
All electronic devices were collected from the crew and locked in a Faraday Box on the bridge until the test was over. It was to shield the cell phones and game devices from the coming EMP flash that would render them useless. Dwayne also wanted anything that might take video of what was to come next out of the hands of witnesses. No YouTube, thank you.
Any of the crew who were not on duty took up seats along the weather deck to watch
