Although the landing had not been guarded during the day, a group of three soldiers were there now, talking quietly and drinking in the darkness. They sat at the end of the landing, hanging their feet over the side into the water, the low sound of their voices blending with the slap of water against the pilings. Their backs were to the privateers, but the wooden slats of the landing made a silent approach impossible.
“I will do this,” Lazue said, removing her blouse. Naked to the waist, her dagger held behind her back, she whistled a light tune and walked out onto the dock.
One of the soldiers turned. “Que pasa ca?” he demanded, and held up a lantern. His eyes widened in astonishment as he saw what must have seemed to him an apparition — a bare-breasted woman nonchalantly walking toward him. “Madre de Dios,” he said, and the woman smiled at him. He answered the smile in the instant before the dagger passed through his ribs into his heart.
The other soldiers looked at the woman with the bloody dagger. They were so astonished they hardly resisted as she killed them, their blood spurting over her bare chest.
Sanson and the Moor ran up, stepping over the bodies of the three men. Lazue pulled her tunic back on. Sanson climbed into one boat and immediately set out toward the stern of the galleon. The Moor cut free the other boats, and pushed them out into the harbor, where they drifted free. Then the Moor got into a boat with Lazue, and made for the bow of the galleon. Nobody spoke at all.
Lazue pulled her tunic tighter around her. The blood of the soldiers soaked through the fabric; she felt a chill. She stood in the longboat and looked at the approaching galleon while the Moor rowed in swift, powerful strokes.
The galleon was large, about one hundred and forty feet, but mostly she was dark, only a few torches demarcating her profile. Lazue looked to the right, where she saw Sanson rowing away from them, toward the galleon’s stern. Sanson was silhouetted against the lights of the raucous shanty town on shore. She turned and looked left, at the gray line of the fortress walls. She wondered if Hunter and the Jew were inside yet.
. . .
HUNTER WATCHED AS the Jew delicately filled the possum entrails with gunpowder. It seemed an interminable process, but the Jew refused to be hurried. He squatted in the center of the magazine, with an opened bag of powder at his side, and hummed a little as he worked.
“How much longer?” Hunter said.
“Not long, not long,” the Jew said. He seemed completely nonchalant. “It will be so pretty,” he said. “You wait. It will be very beautiful.”
When he had the entrails filled, he cut them into various lengths, and slipped them into his pocket.
“All right,” he said. “Now we can begin.”
A moment later, the two men emerged from the magazine, bent over with the weight of the powder charges they carried. They crossed the main yard of the fortress stealthily, and paused beneath the heavy stone parapet on which the guns rested. The two lookouts were still there.
While the Jew waited with the gunpowder, Hunter climbed onto the parapet and killed the lookouts. One died in complete silence and the other gave only a quiet groan as he slipped to the ground.
“Diego!” Hunter hissed.
The Jew appeared on the parapet and looked at the guns. He poked down a barrel with a rammer.
“How delightful,” he whispered. “They are already powdered and primed. We will make a special treat. Here, help me.”
The Jew pushed a second bag of powder down the mouth of one cannon. “Now the shot,” he said.
Hunter frowned. “But they will add another ball before they fire.”
“Of course. Two charges, and two balls — these guns will breech before their eyes.”
Quickly, they moved from one culverin to the next. The Jew added a second charge of powder, and Hunter dropped in a ball. Each ball made a low rumbling sound as it moved down the cannon mouth, but there was nobody to hear it.
When they had finished, the Jew said, “Now I have things to do. You must put sand in each barrel.”
Hunter slipped down the parapet to the ground. He took the loose sandy surface of the fortress in his fingers and dropped a handful down each cannon mouth. The Jew was clever: even if, by chance, the guns fired, the sand in the barrels would destroy the aim — and ream the inside so badly that they would never be accurate again.
When he was finished, he saw the Jew bent over one gun carriage, working beneath the barrel. He got to his feet. “That’s the last,” he said.
“What have you done?”
“Touched the fuses to the barrels. The heat of firing the barrel will ignite the fuses on the undercarriage charge.” He smiled in the darkness. “It will be wonderful.”
. . .
THE WIND CHANGED, and the stern of the galleon swung around toward Sanson. He tied up beneath the gilded transom and began to scale the rear bulkhead toward the captain’s cabin. He heard the soft sound of a song in Spanish. He listened to the obscene lyrics but could not locate the source of the song; it seemed to drift in the air, elusive and faint.
He stepped through a cannon porthole into the captain’s cabin. It was empty. He moved outside, on the gun deck, and down the companionway to the berth deck. He saw no one. He looked at the empty hammocks, all swinging gently in the motion of the ship. Dozens of hammocks, and no sign of a crew.
Sanson did not like this — an unguarded ship implied a ship without treasure. He now feared what they had all feared but never voiced: that the treasure might have been taken off the ship and stored elsewhere, perhaps in the fortress. If that were true, their plans were all in vain.
Therefore, Sanson found himself hoping for a good-sized skeleton crew and guard. He moved to the aft galley, and here he was encouraged. The galley was deserted, but there was evidence of recent cooking — a bullock stew in a large cauldron, some vegetables, a cut lemon rocking back and forth on the wooden counter.
He left the galley, and moved forward again. In the distance, he heard shouts from the sentry on deck, greeting Lazue and the Moor as they approached.
Lazue and the Moor tied up alongside the midships ladder of the galleon. The sentry on deck leaned down and waved. “Questa faire?” he called.
“We bring rum,” Lazue answered in a low voice. “Compliments of the captain.”
“The captain?”
“It is his day of birth.”
“Bravo, bravo.” Smiling, the sentry stepped back as Lazue came aboard. He looked, and had a moment of horror as he saw the blood on her tunic and in her hair. Then the knife flashed through the air and buried itself in his chest. The sentry clutched the handle in surprise. He seemed about to speak. Then he pitched forward onto the deck.
The Moor came aboard, and crept forward, toward a group of four soldiers who sat playing cards. Lazue did not watch what he did; she went below. She found ten soldiers sleeping in a forward compartment; silently, she shut the door and barred it.
Five more soldiers were singing and drinking in an adjacent cabin. She peered in and saw that they had guns. Her own pistols were jammed in her belt; she would not fire a shot unless she had to. She waited outside the room.
After a moment, the Moor crept alongside her.
She pointed into the room. He shook his head. They remained by the door.
After a time, one of the soldiers announced his bladder was bursting, and left the room. As he came out, the Moor crashed a belaying pin down on his skull; the man hit the deck with a thud, just a few steps from the room.