Tommy looked at Dwight, and with faked sincerity continued, “Please understand, if we are able to come to an agreement, there needs to be no bloodshed. You see—”
“Hey, Tommy, I see everything is under control,” said Ronnie as she stepped onto the deck with Bill directly behind her.
“Yeah.”
Dwight turned to George, “This is your sick lady, Newt. She’s not sick at all — just a decoy.” He turned to Ronnie. “Why isn’t Freddy with you?”
Ronnie looked at Dwight with a steady gaze, “We won’t be needing his miserable services.” She laughed shrilly as if she had made a hilarious joke. “Besides, he made a pass at me, and I had to defend my honor.” She shrilly laughed again, brandishing her Glock proudly. Then, changing the subject with as little emotion as changing the channel on a TV, Ronnie continued, “Tommy, it’s cold; let’s go in where it’s warm.”
“You cold-blooded bitch! You killed Freddy!” Dwight started toward her without a serious plan, just wanting to rip her head off.
George grabbed Dwight around the neck and pulled him back. “Hold on, Dwight. Back off.”
Ronnie didn’t flinch. Tommy and Bill both had weapons pointed at Dwight.
“These sons-a-bitches just killed Freddy! You assholes are dead meat!”
Ronnie calmly pointed the Glock at Dwight’s head. “I said he made a pass at me; we struggled, and my gun went off.”
“That’s a bunch of crap — Freddy’s gay!”
“Oh, my! Well, then I guess I lied. Tommy, let’s get out of this wind and go inside!”
Tommy waved his pistol toward the control room. “OK, you heard her. Control room. Now!”
Dwight and George turned around and started to walk toward the control room. The three from the Dorothy followed about three yards behind.
George signaled to Dwight as if to say, “Walk a little slower and follow my lead.”
Dwight nodded.
George stopped and turned around, as did Dwight.
“Keep moving. Stay alive a little longer guys; you might get lucky,” as Tommy raised his weapon and pointed it at Dwight’s head.
Dwight, seeing everything clearly now, said through clenched teeth, “What do you filthy assholes want on your tombstones?”
Tommy, slightly amused, smiled. “Maybe that’s the question I should ask you? Right, Bill?… Bill?” He turned his head to the right where Bill had been standing, and Corporal Williams was silently laying Bill’s body on the deck, blood streaming from a huge gash across his neck. Tommy started to turn back to shoot Dwight, when he felt a sharp searing pain in his wrist, and the gun fell to the deck with a muffled thud. He grabbed his wrist while turning to the left to get help from Ronnie, only to find Sergeant Ramirez crouching over her now lifeless body.
Tommy started to lunge for his gun, but began screaming as he saw a stump where his hand used to be. He looked at the deck and saw his gun, still gripped in his now-severed hand. Sergeant Ramirez began wiping the blood off his knife blade with the sleeve of Tommy’s jacket. He stopped as Tommy fell to his knees.
Dwight stepped in front of Tommy and glared down at him. “Oooh,” he said in mock sympathy. “I bet that’s gonna leave a mark!”
Sergeant Ramirez turned to George. “Captain Adams, sir! I apologize for the late arrival. These two—” indicating the recently deceased Bill and Ronnie—“took too long coming up the stairs, and we wanted to cover our backside. So we hit the boat first. We found Freddy. She shot him in the back of the head. Must have had a silencer on that Glock. We took out the other hostile.”
“YOU ASSHOLE! WHY DID YOU KILL FREDDY?” Dwight grabbed Tommy by the throat.
As Dwight started shaking him, Tommy moaned, “Ronnie did it. She did it. Help me, I’m bleeding to death!”
“Yeah, she did it, but it was your idea.” Dwight released Tommy’s neck, letting him fall back to the deck.
George stepped in. “Dwight, we’re going to have company soon when these guys’ drug ship arrives. Take the marines down to the boat and get Freddy’s body.”
George then spoke evenly to Tommy, “If you want to save your life, tell me about the ship that’s coming.”
Tommy, grasping at anything, babbled out the whole plan about the trawler arriving in about an hour and the five pleasure boats, which would be arriving in three hours. He knew he was dying, in pain, and bleeding badly.
George leaned over Tommy and gently stood him up. He took a wiping rag and tied it in a tourniquet around Tommy’s arm above the wrist. “Now Tommy,” George said close to Tommy’s ear, “I want you to go down to your boat, start her up, and leave this rig. It’s only twenty miles north to the next rig. Hey, you might make it.”
Tommy looked at George, “You mean it? You’re letting me go?”
“Yes.”
Tommy started backing toward the ladder as Dwight, Sergeant Ramirez, and Corporal Williams arrived on the deck with Freddy’s body.
Dwight stood over the body with his fists clenched. “George, you’re not lettin’ this son of a bitch go!”
George blocked Dwight from going after Tommy, as he watched Tommy, cradling his right arm, start down the ladder, grasping the rail with his good hand. When he was about halfway down, George stepped back and pulled a walkie-talkie from his pocket. He keyed the mike, “XO.”
“Yes, sir! Is everything all right?”
“It is now. We had a little run-in with some drug runners. Prepare to launch SF-2 for an attack mission. Give her a full load of rockets, armed and ready. We’ll recover you with the net.”
“Aye-aye, sir. What are we going after?”
“Your first target is this pleasure boat about to pull away from the northeast corner of the rig. He’ll probably head south-southeast to rendezvous with another bad guy — a fake fishing trawler that’s about ten miles out, headed this direction. Take them both out.”
“It’ll be our pleasure, sir.”
George chuckled. This was valuable training for the XO and his sonar man. They were going to need some combat experience down the line, and this would give them confidence in the sub-fighter’s capabilities. “There will be three additional targets, pleasure boats, converging on the platform in approximately three hours. They’ll probably be coming from the north. They’re all bad guys — druggies — and they have to be taken out. Got it?”
“Yes, sir! We aim to please!”
“One more thing… make sure you take them out as far from Platform Alpha as possible. We don’t want any survivors swimming up or paddling up in rubber dinghies.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
George looked out as the Dorothy was moving at a high speed across the chop, headed south-southeast from the rig.
He turned to Dwight. “Tommy will be lucky to stay conscious long enough to rendezvous with that trawler. SF-2 should take him out long before that, though, and a one-armed man isn’t going to swim very far.”
“Yeah, but he could warn ‘em by radio.”
“No, Sergeant Ramirez disabled his communications, so he won’t be able to warn them until he gets on board… if he gets on board. I expect that about the time he would be getting there, SF-2 will be making its presence known once again. The folks on that trawler will never know what hit them. Hell, Dwight, even though we’re about to challenge the whole world, we can’t let that evil white powder get into the U.S. now can we? That’s just plain wrong! You know? Plus after SF-2 finishes with them, there will be five fewer boats and crews bringing that stuff in.”
Dwight was fighting back tears.
“Hey, Cousin, I didn’t know you were so emotional about the drug trade.”