Aground Read online

  “No. This is about it.”

  “Then congratulations. Apparently you plowed on here at full speed on the highest tide of the month.”

  “So what do we do, sit here and cry? Let’s get going.”

  “If you were bound for the Caribbean, why were you on a northerly heading when you hit?”

  Morrison gestured impatiently. “We were trying to turn to get out of here. It was night, like I said, and we couldn’t see anything. And all of a sudden we heard something that sounded like a beach.”

  “You turned the wrong way. But I don’t get what you were doing in here over the Bank in the first place. You should have been at least ten miles to the westward.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no navigator. It looks like we could have used one. I tried to get Hollister to proposition you—”

  “Wait a minute. You mean you know me?”

  “Sure. I thought I recognized you when you came aboard, and when the pilot called you Ingram I had you made.”

  “Where did you see me before?”

  “In the lobby of the Eden Roc when you went to see Hollister the first time.”

  Rae Osborne broke in. “Why did this man Hollister want somebody else to inspect the Dragoon instead of going himself?”

  Morrison shrugged. “He said the watchman might remember him. He was an old boy friend of the owner, and he’d been aboard before.”

  She said nothing, and turned to stare out across the water to the northward. Well, at least her question was answered, Ingram thought. “Whose idea was it, stealing the boat?” he asked.

  “Hollister’s. Or whatever you said his name was.”

  “Patrick Ives,” she said.

  “Anyway, he was supposed to furnish the transportation and the know-how to get us down there. Said he’d been around boats a lot, and used to be a navigator in the Eighth Air Force during the war. From the looks of it, he wasn’t so hot. We could have used you.”

  “You did,” Ingram said. “That’s why I’m here. Where did you get the guns?”

  “We stole ‘em.”

  “All right, I’ll make you a proposition,” Ingram said. “I think I can get this schooner afloat when those guns are off. So we throw them over the side and take the schooner back to Key West. They’re contraband. Nobody can claim them legally, so there’ll be no charge against you except for stealing the boat. I think Mrs. Osborne’ll agree not to press that, if she gets the boat back undamaged, so probably the worst you’d get would be a suspended sentence.”

  “Nothing doing. We’re going to deliver the guns.”

  The throbbing in his head was agony, and he had to close his eyes against the glare of the sun. What was the matter with the stupid muscle-head; wasn’t there any way you could make him understand? He fought down an impulse to shout. “Listen, Morrison,” he said wearily, “try to use your head, will you? You’re not in a serious jam yet, but if you go through with this you haven’t got a chance. You’ll be facing a federal charge of kidnapping. They’ll run you down and put you away for life.”

  “Not me. I’ll be long gone.”

  “You think you’re going to hide out in Latin America? Did you ever take a look at yourself?”

  “It’s easy when you speak the language and you’ve got money and connections.”

  “Not when they want you for something big back here. The U.S. State Department’s got connections too.”

  Morrison’s eyes began to grow ugly. “I’m not asking you about this, pal. I’m telling you. We’re going to put those guns on that island. When we get the boat loose, we bring ‘em back.”

  Ingram looked out toward the narrow strip of sand. “The raft won’t carry over a couple of hundred pounds at a time. It’ll take the rest of the week.”

  “No, I’ve already got it figured out. We won’t have to ferry ‘em all the way. The water looks shallow over there. You haul ‘em to where I can wade out and meet you, and I take ‘em from there while you come back for another load. Like a bucket brigade. Now let’s get going.” He stood up and called down the hatchway. “You all set, Carlos?”

  “The ropes are off the left side,” Ruiz replied from below. “I’m starting on the right.”

  Ingram looked out at the surface of the water and could see the faint beginnings of movement. The tide had passed high slack and was starting to ebb slowly past the imprisoned hull. Well, let him go ahead and kill himself, he thought; it’d be one less to contend with. Then he shrugged uncomfortably, and knew he couldn’t do it; this wasn’t Ruiz’ fault.

  “You’d better tell your boy not to take the lashings off the starboard side,” he said to Morrison. “Not till he’s got room to unpile those cases.”

  “Why?” Morrison asked.

  “The tide’s started to drop. About two more degrees of port list and you’ll have to bring him out of there in a basket.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right at that. Youse is a good boy, Herman. Maybe we’ll put you on permanent.”

  “Go to hell,” he said. “If it’d been you, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  He walked aft to the helmsman’s station while Morrison was talking to Ruiz. Something still didn’t quite ring true; they shouldn’t have been in here over the Bank. He stood frowning at the binnacle. He stepped down into the cockpit, removed the hood, and checked the heading on the compass. The lubber line lay at 008 degrees. There was no compass-deviation card posted anywhere that he could see.

  Rae Osborne came aft and stood beside him. “What are we going to do?”

  “Just what he says, from the looks of it.”

  “Maybe there’ll be a search for us.”

  Probably not until it was too late to do any good, Ingram thought, but he said nothing. There was no point in scaring her. She probably didn’t realize how sad this situation was, anyway. Even if they managed to refloat the schooner, their troubles were only beginning. The Dragoon was dangerously overloaded, her trim and buoyancy destroyed; in anything except perfect weather, she could founder and go down like a dropped brick. And as for landing a cargo of guns on a hostile coast—His thoughts broke off. She was staring out at the empty horizon to the northward. Well, the chances were a million to one nobody would ever see Ives again, now that the tide had turned and the body was floating seaward.

  “All right, Herman, let’s go,” Morrison called out. They went forward to the break of the deckhouse. Ruiz was pushing one of the wooden crates up the companion ladder into the cockpit. Morrison had put on a shirt and a soft straw hat and carried a gallon jug of water in his other hand. “You take me across first,” he said, “and then start bringing the rifles. They’re packed ten to a crate, so each crate’ll go a little over a hundred pounds. The raft ought to carry two at a trip. Dreamboat, you stay here in the cockpit and guide ‘em up the ladder for Ruiz. And don’t bother trying to get to that radio when he’s not looking. We took some of the tubes out of it.”

  He gestured with the gun. Any further argument was useless. Ingram stepped down into the raft and passed up his suitcase and Rae Osborne’s purse. Morrison got in and seated himself aft with the BAR across his legs while Ingram cast off the painter. They rowed up the side of the schooner and around the bow. The narrow sand spit ran north and south, its nearest point some three hundred yards off the starboard bow. The channel of slightly deeper water which ran astern of the schooner and westward toward the edge of the Bank continued on around and up the starboard side approximately a hundred yards away, passing between the schooner and the western edge of the spit. Beyond the channel the water appeared to shoal abruptly, judging from its color, extending in a wide and barely submerged flat on all sides of the dry ridge.

  There was still no wind. The water lay flat as oil, reflecting the metallic glare of the sun. The day was going to be like the inside of a furnace, Ingram thought; and in a little over an hour the tide would be running out across here at two or three knots. He wondered if Morrison had even thought of that. Probably
not; he seemed to be in the grip of obsession and incapable of seeing obstacles at all. They crossed the channel, and the sandy bottom began to come up toward them. Morrison was peering down into the water. “Hold it,” he ordered. He slid his legs over and stood up; the water was only waist deep. They were still a little over a hundred yards from dry ground, and it was approximately twice that far back to the schooner. “All right,” he said. “Start bringing ‘em over.” Ingram turned and rowed back toward the Dragoon. The big man waded on ashore through progressively shallower water, put the BAR and his bottle of water on the sand, and stood watching. The pain in Ingram’s head had subsided to a dull throbbing, but the dried blood made his face feel stiff and caked. He dipped up water and washed it while he coldly sized up their chances of escape. You couldn’t give them much. How about trying for it in the raft? The BAR was a short-range weapon and not very accurate at this distance, so if they could give Ruiz the slip—No. The nearest land was the west coast of Andros, seventy-five miles away, and even if they made it before they choked to death on their tongues, they were still nowhere. There were no settlements on that side, nothing but swamp and mosquitoes and a maze of stagnant and forbidding waterways; they’d never get across the island. Forget the raft. They had to take the schooner. Play for Ruiz, he thought; they’d be working together loading the crates onto the raft. Watch for a chance to yank him overboard and make him lose the gun.

  He came alongside. Ruiz had four cases out of the cabin now, stacked on deck beside the forward end of the cockpit with their ends projecting outward. The Latin himself was standing in the cockpit behind them with the .45 stuck in his trousers.

  Ingram caught one of the lifeline stanchions. “Give me a hand.”

  Ruiz shook his head. “You don’t need any help.”

  “So. A general.”

  “Go ahead. Slide them down.”

  “El Libertador himself. It’s too bad we haven’t got a horse so you could pose for an equestrian statue.”

  Ruiz looked bored. “Put away the needle, Ingram. You’re wasting your time.”

  Apparently he’d guarded prisoners before. It didn’t look very promising.

  “Cómo está la cabeza?” Ruiz asked.

  So he couldn’t resist the temptation to do a little needling of his own, Ingram thought. “The head is nothing, my General,” he replied in Spanish. “In the great cause of freedom, I spit on all discomfort. Rut let us consider the General’s neck. How does it stretch?”

  “Shut up and start moving those crates,” Ruiz said in English, “before you get another lump on your head.”

  Ingram shrugged, and began easing one of the boxes down into the raft. It was an awkward maneuver, but he managed it without capsizing. He slid another down beside it. They lay between his outstretched feet and projected out over the stern.

  “Will it carry another?” Ruiz asked. “See for yourself, cabrón.” The raft was down by the stern, and cranky. One more would make it unmanageable or capsize it. “Okay. Get going.”

  He rowed up around the bow of the schooner and across the channel. Morrison had waded out again, without the gun, and was standing in waist-deep water waiting for him. The shirt stretched across his massive chest and shoulders was wet with sweat. “Shake it up, Herman. You’re taking too long.”

  “This is not my idea,” Ingram replied coldly.

  “Never mind your idea. Try dragging your feet, and you’ll get worked over with a gun barrel.” He heaved one of the crates over his left shoulder, took the other under his arm, and went plowing across the flat toward dry ground. As if they were empty, Ingram thought. He looked at his watch; it was seven minutes past eight. At the end of the next round trip he checked the time again and saw it had taken eleven minutes. Call it five trips an hour. Two hundred pounds each time—that would mean at least fourteen hours to move seven tons. And just one way. They’d still have to wait for the next tide, try to get her off, and bring it all back. And he was clocking it at slack water; wait’ll that tide started to run.

  On the next trip, while Morrison was picking up the crates, he said, “This’ll take three days, at the minimum.”

  The big man scarcely paused. “So?”

  “She’ll never make it across the Caribbean, anyway. She’s overloaded.”

  “This is June; she’ll make it. Hollister said so.”

  “Sure. He said he could navigate, too. And look where you are.”

  “Shut up and get going.”

  An hour went by. The current was picking up now as the tide ebbed westward off the bank; with each trip it became worse. By ten o’clock perspiration was running from his body and his arms ached from the battle with the oars. It was the loaded trip that was the killer; he was quartering across the current with the raft low in the water, and he had to point farther and farther upstream in order to make it before he was swept away to the west of the sand spit. In another half hour he had to row straight upstream from the schooner until he was above Morrison, and then turn across. It took fifteen minutes of furiously paced rowing, during which a slow or missed beat meant losing ground already gained. When Morrison caught hold of the raft, water was running past his legs.

  Ingram looked at him through the blur of sweat in his eyes. “That’s it until the tide slacks. Unless you want to do it.”

  Morrison nodded. “I see what you mean. We’ll knock off and have a sandwich. Hold it here till I get back.”

  Ingram stepped out and held the raft while the big man carried the two crates ashore; it was easier than doing it with the oars, and he couldn’t get any wetter than he was already. Morrison came back carrying the BAR, and got in. “That makes twenty-four,” he said.

  A little over a ton, Ingram thought; they’d barely started. He rowed back to the Dragoon. When he stepped aboard, the cramped leg gave way under him, and he had to grab a lifeline to keep from falling. A light breeze had come up at mid-morning, but it had died away again, and the deck was blistering under the brutal weight of the sun. Rae Osborne’s face was flushed, and tendrils of hair were plastered to her forehead as she collapsed on the cushions in the cockpit. Not far from a case of heat prostration or sunstroke, he thought. And there was no escape from the sun; below decks would be unbearable.

  “There’s an awning down in the sail locker,” he told Morrison. “If you thought you could take that gun out of my back for five minutes, I’d bring it up and rig it.”

  “Go ahead,” Morrison said.

  He went down the forward hatch with Ruiz watching him from above. There were three bunks in the narrow cabin just forward of the galley, with suitcases and scattered articles of clothing on two of them. He opened the small access door to the locker in the eyes of the ship and poked around in stifling semi-darkness among coils of line and bags of spare sails until he found the awning. He boosted it up the hatch to Ruiz, then carried it aft and rigged it above the cockpit. The air was still far from cool beneath it, but it did offer shelter from the pitiless glare of the sun. They sat down, with Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse holding the BAR. It’s an extension of his personality, Ingram thought; he probably never feels comfortable without it.

  “Who wants a sandwich?” Morrison asked.

  Ingram shook his head; it was too hot to eat anything.

  “Makes me sick at my stomach to think about it,” Rae Osborne said. She sat up and dug listlessly in her purse for a cigarette.

  Ruiz went below and returned a few minutes later with two sandwiches. He and Morrison ate in silence. Morrison threw the remainder of his overboard, watched it float away on the tide, and set the gun behind him on the deckhouse. “Mind the store,” he said to Ruiz, and went below. Ingram looked at the gun. Ruiz intercepted the glance, and shook his head, the slim Latin face devoid of any expression whatever. It was useless, Ingram knew. They were a team, and a good one, in the skilled profession of violence—whatever their particular branch of it was.

  When Morrison returned he was carrying a tall
glass containing some colorless fluid and three ice cubes. Rae Osborne looked at it with interest. “What’s that?”

  “Rum,” he said.

  “Is there any more?”

  “Whole case of it, Toots. You’ll have to use water, though. We’re out of Cokes.”

  She brightened visibly. “You’ve convinced me. Which way’s the bar?”

  “Straight ahead till you come to a room full of dirty dishes. Bottle’s on the sink, reefer’s under it. Bring Herman one while you’re at it.”

  “I don’t want any,” Ingram said.

  She disappeared below. Well, maybe that was the practical attitude; if you couldn’t whip ‘em, join ‘em, especially if they had anything to drink. He removed the soggy leather case from his shirt, found a cigar that might be dry enough to burn, and lighted it. He stepped back to the binnacle, removed the hood, and looked at the compass again. The heading had changed to 012. He nodded thoughtfully. Rae Osborne came up the ladder, carrying her drink, and sat down with her feet stretched out across the cockpit.

  “This is more like it,” she said to Morrison. “What about these guns? Where are you going with them?”

  “A place called Bahia San Felipe, just north of the Canal.”

  “You going to start a revolution, or what?”

  Morrison shook his head. “We’re just supplying the stuff this time.”

  “How did Patrick Ives get mixed up in it? It’s a little out of his line.”

  Morrison chuckled. “Money. That’s in his line, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I think you could say that. And then say it again. But just how did you meet?”

  “I ran into him in a bar in Miami two or three weeks ago. We got to talking about gun-running, among other things. It was a big business around there for a while during the Cuban fracas, you remember, and the Feds were still uncovering a batch now and then. Anyway, I happened to mention I knew where there was a whole shipment hid out in an old house down near Homestead—”

  “How did you know about it?” Rae Osborne asked.