“How?” Repin said in his clumsy Spanish.
“Come aboard, please, Citizen.”
There was a ladder down the patrol boat’s side with a platform at the bottom and a light shining on it. Repin stepped over to the platform, grabbed the metal rail of the ladder, and pulled himself across.
“The captain of this American boat?” the officer said.
“He is to be taking it home.”
“Where is he, Citizen?”
“Of what is that the importance?” Repin was at the top of the ladder now. He and the officer were almost nose to nose, their heads silhouetted against the glow of the ship’s lights. “Make you for Havana immediate!”
“Where is the American?”
“This is not of relevance! The arrangement is for me to be gone to Havana.”
“Precisely, respected Citizen. I have orders to deal with this boat, however.”
“This boat was not in the arrangement.”
“Precisely, Citizen.”
He called an order. His voice sound strange and faraway, like one of the sounds from the dark water. Repin wanted to protest, but the officer was drawing him away from the rail.
There was a thump, and Tarp’s boat rocked.
Boarding me, Tarp thought. Some arrangement.
A hand light flashed a beam in his stern and then a second joined it and came swinging forward. Tarp waited for one of them to come up the ladder, but one of the lights disappeared into the hatch and he knew that the man holding it had gone into the cabin under him.
There was a narrow space between the spray rail of the flying bridge and the handrail just above it. He could look up through this gap at the patrol boat. Now, squinting up, he saw a black mass between him and the lights on the boat; it seemed to grow larger and to float above him. His boat rocked hard to that side, and a big hand gripped the rail right above his head. Somebody had jumped from the patrol boat to the flying bridge.
A silhouetted head rose above the rail next to him.
Tarp struck upward with the butt of the shotgun, thrusting up and out, taking the boarder just below the chin. There was a strangled rattle and a gasp, and then the man was pitching backward, the hand sliding off the rail and clawing at the throat as he went back and down into the space between the patrol boat and the sportfisherman. Tarp was on his feet as the man hit the water, and he fired once down into the waist of his own boat where the hand light was, then pumped the gun and twisted, firing again at the lights above him, three quick shots as fast as he could work the mechanism, the twelve-gauge booming into the dead-still night. The lights shattered. Tarp was moving then, twisting, crouching behind the spray bulkhead, and there was a clatter of automatic fire under him as the man down in the cabin fired up through the ceiling at him, firing wildly, firing in confusion, nervous, firing out of bravado and fear and instinct, firing a little off because he knew where the patrol boat was and he knew where his own people were supposed to be; and Tarp felt pain along his left calf (thinking, Serves me right for gunning down the Agency man) and he dove for the blackness of his own deck, dove over and beyond the flashlight that had fallen to the deck there and was stabbing its light toward the open hatch like an arrow.
And as he dove into the darkness he saw a figure on the platform where Repin had stepped aboard the patrol boat, and it registered: Scuba diver; man in scuba gear on the ladder; and he was leaping into darkness.
On the deck of the patrol boat there were voices, alien, faraway, the Spanish like a language he had never heard before. “Cast off! In the name of Christ, cast off!” And there was movement on the ladder where the scuba diver was.
He twisted through the air and landed on his right foot, but off-balance. He tried to turn his body back toward the hatch, but his momentum carried him toward the stem, almost over the transom, and he stumbled over something yielding and heavy and went down, his right arm and the shotgun turned under him, and his head ducked as if he were going to do a somersault; then his back came up against the transom with a concussion that almost knocked the wind out of him. Yet he got his legs down and slithered forward until his shoulder met the yielding mass he had fallen over, and then, hurting in his back and his shoulder, he had the shotgun up and ready to fire.
There was no light at all now except for the flashlight that had fallen on the deck and that had rolled almost over into the scuppers on the port side as the boat rolled. The patrol boat had put out its own lights; men were shouting and the engines were roaring and the black bulk of the patrol boat began to slide away as if it were sinking, but it was only moving a few yards away from him to get running room, and then the engines rose to a higher pitch and suddenly it was gone, and he was aware of a void to his left where it had been.
And, with the engine sound going away, he could hear now the quick, disturbing sound of a dying man’s breathing. The breath came in little sighs, little whines of despair with a groan at the end of each one. The deck under his left elbow was greasy with blood and the man’s breath came like the panting of a dog that has been out running.
He fired one shot toward the open hatch, and a string of shots came back at him. The dying man was pushed up against him as if he were cuddling up for warmth, the force of the bullets pounding the breath out of him so that there was no more panting, but only a long, dignified, quiet gurgle as he gave it up. Tarp fired another shot at the muzzle flash and waited until the rolling light stuck its finger into the open hatch and showed him the top of a head when he fired again; the light rolled on, but not before he saw movement, and he pumped and fired.
The patrol boat was going away at flank speed. Tarp was still watching the hatch, which he could almost see as his eyes adjusted; as he waited, part of his mind was thinking, sorting it out, and telling him, There were two operations laid on here; one was Repin’s with the Cuban navy and one was something else that Repin didn’t know about, and now the navy’s getting out because their part is over and they want to stay clean.
From the hatch, a voice said, “Oh, Jesu, help me,” and Tarp fired another shot at it and waited. The dropped flashlight rolled back the other way and showed the hatch empty. Tarp counted twenty and moved to the dead man’s feet, from where he could reach far over to his left and grab the flashlight and shine it where he wanted. In that dead light, the hatchway looked as if it had been attacked by crazed carpenters.
Tarp got up on one knee. From there he could see the top of the man’s head. By stretching, he could see part of his back. The man was very still. A machine pistol was gripped in one hand, the arm twisted under him on the stair.
Tarp got up and went closer and saw that the man was dead. He forced the body down the ladder with his feet, sitting on the deck and pushing with both feet, and it went slowly down with the unwilling heaviness of dead weight.
Tarp started the engine and put the boat on a course that would take it westward, parallel to the coast and into the Caribbean. Heading straight for Florida would be stupid.
He was shaking a little. He sat at the controls and held on to the wheel and waited to run down. When he felt better, he lifted his left pant leg and shone the flashlight on it. An inch-long piece of wood from the flying bridge was stuck into the muscle like a spear. He found pliers and pulled it out and let it bleed.