“Don’t you want to eat, Tom?” Ara called up.
“I don’t feel hungry, kid,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll take the bottle of cold tea that’s on the ice.”
Ara handed it up and Thomas Hudson took it and relaxed against the corner of the flying bridge. He drank from the bottle of cold tea and watched the biggest key that was ahead. The mangrove roots were showing plainly now and the key looked as though it were on stilts. Then he saw a flight of flamingoes coming from the left. They were flying low over the water, lovely to see in the sunlight. Their long necks were slanted down and their incongruous legs were straight out; immobile while their pink and black wings beat, carrying them toward the mud bank that was ahead and to the right. Thomas Hudson watched them and marvelled at their downswept black and white bills and the rose color they made in the sky, which made their strange individual structures unimportant and still each one was an excitement to him. Then as they came up on the green key he saw them all swing sharply to the right instead of crossing the key.
“Ara,” he called down.
Ara came up and said, “Yes, Tom.”
“Check out three niños with six clips apiece and put them in the boat with a dozen frags and the middle size aid kit. Send Willie up here, please.”
The flamingoes had settled on the bank to the far right and were feeding busily. Thomas Hudson was watching them when Willie said, “Look at those goddam fillamingoes.”
“They spooked flying over the key. I’m pretty sure that boat or another boat is inside there. Do you want to go in with me, Willie?”
“Of course.”
“Did you finish chow?”
“The condemned man ate a hearty lunch.”
“Help Ara, then.”
“Is Ara going with us?”
“I’m taking Peters because he speaks German.”
“Can’t we take Ara instead? I don’t want to be with Peters in a fight.”
“Peters may be able to talk us out of a fight. Listen, Willie. I want prisoners and I don’t want their pilot to get killed.”
“You’re making a lot of conditions, Tom, with them eight or nine maybe and we three. Who the hell knows we know they have the pilot anyway?”
“We know.”
“Let’s not be so fucking noble.”
“I asked you if you wanted to come.”
“I’m coming,” Willie said. “Only that Peters.”
“Peters will fight. Send Antonio and Henry up, will you, please.”
“Do you think they are in there, Tom?” Antonio asked.
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Can’t I go with you, Tom?” Henry asked.
“No. She will only take three. If anything happens to us, try and nail her with the .50’s if she tries to come out on the first of the tide. Afterwards you’ll find her in the long bay. She’ll be damaged. She probably won’t even be able to make it out. Get a prisoner if you can and get into Cayo Francés and check in.”
“Couldn’t I go in instead of Peters?” Henry asked.
“No, Henry. I’m sorry. But he speaks German. You have a good crew,” Thomas Hudson said to Antonio. “If everything goes well with us I’ll leave Willie and Peters on board with whatever there is and bring a prisoner back in the dinghy.”
“Our last prisoner didn’t last very long.”
“I’ll try and bring a good, strong, healthy one. Go on down and see everything is secured. I want to watch the flamingoes for a little while.”
He stood on the flying bridge and watched the flamingoes. It is not just their color, he thought. It’s not just the black on that rose pink. It is their size and that they are ugly in detail and yet perversely beautiful. They must be a very old bird from the earliest times.
He did not watch them through the glasses because he did not want details now. He wanted the roseate mass on the gray brown flat. Two other flocks had come in now and the banks were colored in a way that he would not have dared to paint. Or I would have dared to paint and would have painted, he thought. It is nice to see flamingoes before you make this trip. I better not give them time to worry or to think too much.
He climbed down from the bridge and said, “Gil, get up there and keep your glasses on the key. Henry, if you hear a lot of noise and then the turtle boat should come out from behind the key, shoot her fucking bow off. Everybody get up and glass where the survivors are and you can hunt them tomorrow. Plug the dinghy where she is shot up and use her. The turtle boat has a skiff and you can plug her up and use her too if we don’t damage her too badly.”
Antonio said, “Do you have any other orders?”
“Just keep your bowels open and try to lead clean lives. We’ll be back in a little while. Come on, you two gentlemen bastards. Let’s go.”
“Grandmother always claimed I wasn’t a bastard,” Peters said. “She said I was the nicest-looking, most legitimate little baby in the county.”
“Mother claimed I wasn’t a bastard, too,” Willie said. “Where do you want us, Tom?”
“She trims best with you in the bow. But I’ll take the bow if you like.”
“Get in and steer her,” Willie said. “You got a really good ship now.”
“I got my finger on my number,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’m working up. Come aboard, Mr. Peters.”
“Happy to be on board, admiral,” Peters said.
“Good hunting,” Henry said.
“Drop dead,” Willie called. The motor caught and they were off toward the silhouette of the key that was lower in the water now because of their lack of altitude.
“I’m going alongside and we’ll board her without hailing.”
The two men nodded, one amidships and one in the bow.
“Get your junk hung. I don’t give a shit if it shows,” Thomas Hudson said.
“I don’t know where I’d hide it,” Peters said. “I feel like one of grandma’s mules now.”
“Then be a mule. It’s a fucking good animal.”
“Tom, do I have to remember all that shit about the pilot?”
“Remember it but use your head.”
“Well,” said Peters. “We haven’t any fucking troubles anymore.”
“We better all pipe down,” Thomas Hudson said. “We’ll all three board at the same time and if they are below, you ask them in Kraut to come out with their hands up. We have to stop talking because they can hear voices a long way above the noise of an outboard.”
“What do we do if they don’t come out?”
“Willie throws in a grenade.”
“What do we do if they’re on deck?”
“Sweep the deck according to our sectors. Me the stern. Peters amidships. You the bow.”
“Then do I throw in a grenade?”
“Sure. We ought to get woundeds that we can save. That’s why I brought the kit.”
“I thought that was for us.”
“Us too. Now let’s pipe down. Do you have it clear?”
“Clearer than shit,” Willie said.
“Has there been an issue of asshole corks?” Peters asked.
“They dropped it from the plane this morning. Didn’t you get yours?”
“No. But grandma always said I had the slowest digestion of any baby in the whole of the South. They got one of my diapers in the Smithsonian Institute of the Confederacy.”
“Cut out the shit,” Willie said, leaning back in order not to talk loudly. “Are we doing all this in daylight, Tom?”
“Now.”
“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” said Willie. “I have fallen among thieves and bastards.”