Xavier wanting to look for something he forgot, might still be aboard in a drawer.
He stepped up on the deck, ducked into the wheelhouse and stood looking down the ladder. He raised his voice to ask, "Anybody home?" Waited and said, "Permission to come aboard? This Buster is an old friend of mine."
No sound came from below.
Xavier took his time on the few steps of the ladder, ducking his head, then raising it to see all the way to the mattress in the bow, no one aboard. Buster didn't look like she'd been cleaned. Xavier said, "Well, let's see if it's here." Something he thought he'd packed but wasn't in his bag at the hoteclass="underline" literature about Dara and her movies he'd kept right here in a drawer. Opened the drawer and saw pages of Dara's notes, changes she wished she'd made in pictures released years go. Dara looking back when she made those notes. Looking ahead now to make something of these bad boys she'd met.
The literature, a publicity folder with her pictures, wasn't in the drawer. He knew he'd put it there and if the boat hadn't been cleaned, who took it? Djibouti Marine people?
He turned to leave thinking of good times aboard, a month of leading up to their getting to it. He'd experience a feeling for when it was time to become intimate again. Wait for Dara, movie scenes on her mind, to show signs of turning horny. He saw the life jacket on a seat and a box of some groceries on the table. He pulled the seat out and saw two holes in the jacket and bloodstains. Blood all over the inside of the jacket.
Where was the one brought the groceries?
Where was the rubber dinghy? FROM ACROSS THE COVE in cover, Jama watched Xavier board the trawler and come out after a while and stand on the deck looking around, holding the life jacket Ubu had been wearing.
Man, you plan your moves and somebody comes along to fuck you up. He hadn't seen the life jacket as a problem. Or Ubu. They'd fish him out of the water one of these days…Yeah? What did Ubu or the life jacket have to do with him?
He watched the high-ass nigga thirty yards from him going out to the beach, stopping now to look at something, footprints? Showing the Reebok's tread? He could shoot him. Run up calling for him to wait and take him out with one shot. They hear it and say what was that? Come looking for Xavier and he'd have to shoot all three, pick them off or walk up firing at them. Even Dara, without talking to her first. Maybe have to come back and go through this whole fucking drill again. What if the tanker wasn't here? Got moved someplace and he couldn't find it?
Let the high-ass nigga go. Catch up with him later on. More clouds were blowing in, making the look of the island dismal. Be dark early. Another hour, that's all. Make the phone call and watch the ship blow up. Go to all this trouble-he had to see it happen and thought, They'd see it too, wouldn't they?
For the first time he wondered about something should've been on his mind. What were these people doing out here popping champagne corks a few miles from the gas tanker? XAVIER WAS BACK, EVERYBODY ashore now sitting under one of the thatched umbrellas. They had dessert left, no more oysters, and the last bottle of champagne not yet opened. Xavier showed them the vest with bullet holes and the blood. Said he didn't see anybody but he might've been seen.
He said to Dara, "I know what you thinkin."
Dara said, "He's al Qaeda, he blows up ships."
"So does Billy," Xavier said. "He must be with the Republicans' al Qaeda."
Billy said, "You gonna tell me what that means, the whites' al Qaeda?"
"I doubt it means anythin but sounds like it does. The one on the Buster saw us or he wouldn't be hidin out now. Has his dinghy…I think he forgot his groceries and jug of water."
Billy said, "Or he doesn't want to be seen by anyone on the island. He could be an escaped convict, if they have any around here. Your Buster doesn't have a thing to do with our venture. I say let's get the show on the road. Muff, my weapon, please, and my vest with the hot new loads. I mean the new hot loads. It could be construed as hot because they're new, and I don't mean that."
Xavier listened and was patient, seeing he'd have to take the man's gun, but at the right time. He still wanted to see the show. JAMA FOUND HIGH GROUND where it rose on the other side of the bay, inland, the coral getting piled up over thousands of years of tides, maybe thirty feet above the gulf. It should be high enough to make his call. Coming here he saw who had to be army people on the island. Girls with tats coming out of their bikinis, one with a fish jumping up her arm. Girls from pokey towns come over to where everything's the opposite and got their bodies fucked up with drawings. It took him ten minutes to get up to the high ground and he saw Aphrodite way out there. A spotlight from the ship's bridge shining down on the five LNG tanks.
Qasim hadn't known what the shape charges would do to frozen gas. Rip it open, thaw it out quick with the heat from the blast? Qasim said if you were closer than three miles it could burn your skin. He said oxygen in the air kept the fire burning. Could blow this way or that. Have to be careful it doesn't come at you.
Any of the GI chicks happen to stroll by, he'd say, "Want to see what the end of the world's gonna be like?" They weren't too bad-looking for girls you run into on an island ten miles from the end of the line. Tattooed white girls drinking Cosmos, checking him out. He'd tell them to look at that ship out there all lit up. "See what happens I point my finger at it, the kind of power I have?" His other hand in his pants touching the cell number committed to his memory. He points at the ship saying, "Be gone," and the motherfucker explodes. The GI chicks freak.
If he tried to pull out tonight he'd be in open water two hours, searchlights swiping at him to pin him down. The best thing was to stay on the island. Wipe Buster clean and hang with the GI chicks. Tell them he worked on the base doing translations. Wear his Brown University T-shirt and recall some of Hunter's bullshit about college days. Get the GI chicks on his side, he'd be home.
Jama told himself to pay attention now, looking out at the lit-up ship. You ready to make the call? He believed he was. "LET HER DRIFT NOW," Billy said, "correcting enough to give me clear shots from the port side of the bow. I say go, you cut to starboard in a half circle and we'll be tying up at the Kempinski dock ten minutes later, assuming we get sixty out of these Mercs. The only trouble, ships'll be coming out of Djib and put their spots on us. I'll slow down and wave and ask the officer hanging over the rail what that big explosion was. Muff'll be looking up at the ship and her captain. This officer asks too many questions, I say, 'Lemme talk to your skipper.' Loved destroyers, we called him Tin Can Courtney. Or whatever his name is."
Xavier said, "What if it's Jackabowski?"
"He'd be down in the engine room," Billy said. "We get stopped again, don't worry, I'll handle it."
Xavier said, "You want to steer for a while?"
"No, I'm ready to shoot. The gun's loaded. I fire both barrels, open the breech and the Muffer slips in two more high-explosive rounds. I fire, hit two more pods and that might be plenty." Billy was holding the Holland amp; Holland in his firing position.
Muff said, "Can we practice doing it, Skipper?"
Billy lowered the rifle and opened the breech. Dara, eye to her camera, tripped and fell against Billy as Muff grabbed the rifle, jacked it closed, put it against her shoulder and fired the six-hundred-caliber Nitro Express rifle at the gas tanker. IN THIS MOMENT, JAMA holding the cell in front of him, pressed the final digit of the twelve numbers he knew by heart…
And the gas ship exploded five times.
Jama, looking right at it, said, "Jesus," awed by the sight and the air-splitting sounds, rocking booms like none he'd ever heard, waves of heat coming at him from the inferno he'd set off. THE ELEPHANT GUN KICKED Helene hard, slammed her into Billy's arms to see the sky on fire, Helene saying in a murmur, "I hit the ship?"