Dwayne climbed down to the stern deck with the other hands. All took up arms again. Dwayne found his sword where he’d left it against a gunwale. He found Caroline making her way toward him. She had a spear with a long leaf-shaped blade held in her fists. Praxus was at her back with eyes huge in terror and clutching a pathetic little dagger in a white fist.
“A bootleg turn,” Dwayne said with a grin. “Praxus was right. Ahinadab knows his shit. He brought us about in a one-eighty.”
“What now? Those warships will be waiting. And why the hell are you smiling?” she said.
“I guess because, for the first time since we got on this boat, I understand what’s going on.” The Ranger looked to see every hand not at an oar rushing to the bow with arms and shields.
“What? Tell me what?” she said.
“This shit is about to get real and real fast. Whatever’s else going to happen, the wait time is over.”
The tide was reversing and drawing the Lion back toward the channel opening as the crater lake drained back to the sea. The oars were run out and both banks working to build speed for the sharp turn in the channel that lay ahead. Freed of the dragging weight at the stern, the ship gained momentum swiftly.
Dwayne gripped the spear shaft and tugged, but Caroline maintained her grip.
“Good girl,” he said. “Stay aft of the mast. I don’t know what these guys have planned, but the ram is the business end of this ride. The action will be up there. If we’re boarded, I’ll come back to you, and we’ll see what our options are then.”
“All bad,” she said, eyes locked on his.
“It’s a plan. In my experience, a bad plan is better than no plan.” He went to move past her, but Caroline gripped his arm. She opened her mouth to say something but had no words.
“I’m coming back,” he said and touched her hair. “I always come back no matter what.”
She nodded, and he was gone in the rush of men moving to the head of the ship.
The fighting men were crushed into a mob at the prow. The truss line was undone and rolled up to make for more open fighting room on the deck. The front ranks formed a shield wall along the freeboard rail either side of the bow. Spears were thrust through the gaps to create a bristling hedge of deadly points. Men with swords and clubs pressed their shoulders against the backs of the spearmen in the rear rank. This floating phalanx was the first line of defense against boarders. Arrayed behind them, the boys aboard the ship unraveled the lines of their slings and filled their free hands with round stones from bags slung at their waists. Xin climbed the breastwork to scan the dark before them. He tapped the lion’s head with his ax blade either in a nervous gesture or for luck.
He called out and pointed his ax forward. The company of the Lion moaned as one and Xin barked at them in rage.
Dwayne forced himself to the forefront of the fighting men. The tallest was shoulder height to him and less than half his weight. They parted for him, and he pressed forward to stand behind the front row of shields and peer over the top of them.
Before the Lion, a hundred yards distant, a warship entered the crater from the shadows of the gap with all oars working to fight the backing current and bring their quarry within reach. The snarling wolf at its head bobbed up and down as if in hungry pursuit. An obscenely phallic ram rose and fell from the foaming water with the crashing rhythm of the triple tier of oars.
A spearman turned with sad eyes to Dwayne and spoke bitterly.
“That’s right, brother. It’s asshole-puckering time,” Dwayne said in reply.
45
Miami
Alex Davidson couldn’t sleep for thoughts of gold.
Alexei Dresvyanin, as he had been called before he’d Americanized his name, lay back on the king-sized bed, channel-surfing between Japanese porno and a mixed martial arts fight from Java. The sound of the surf reached him through the windows of his Star Island condo. It was late, and the music and laughter of beach parties attended by South Beach hipsters and pharmacists from Quebec had finally died away. Still he wished for sleep but it would not come.
Vodka did not help. A massage earlier in the evening relaxed him but did not make him drowsy. He hated the way pills made him feel the next day. Even the whore Leonid brought for him provided him only a few moments of post-coital slumber. She was gone when he came back around, and he was left with a feeling of sadness at the youth of the young redhead. It was not what he did with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, it was that her smooth, lithe body and lineless face reminded him of his own age.
Now he could only lie here and run over and over in his mind the questions about the gold. These men, these American amateurs, had come from nowhere with a king’s fortune in crudely refined gold, taken his money and vanished from sight once again. None of his efforts to discover who they were and where they came across so much precious metal came to anything. The deal was struck, and it was a good one for Alexei. He would more than double his money once the gold was rendered to twenty-four-karat quality and placed on the market as bullion and
