Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [36]
Augie talked. When he finished, the Colombian sneered.
“Tu madre,” he said.
It was a mistake. Albury’s hand flashed off the wheel and caught the Colombian on the left side of the face, savagely lifting him off his feet. The man capsized backwards into the wheelhouse bulkhead, his head hitting with a grating clunk. Then the Colombian slid to the deck and lay still.
“Que pasa aqui?”
The man named Oscar stepped through the wheelhouse door into a frozen tableau: Albury, right arm outstretched, a man who had just squashed a spider; Augie, rigid with fury, face contorted; Jimmy, wide-eyed, his voice raw.
“Here’s the head spic, Breeze,” he said.
He was a big man, balding, Indian-brown, with long and elegant sideburns that crawled toward his mouth. Albury guessed that Oscar was in his mid-thirties. A fashionably tight shirt, blood-red and open to the waist, revealed a powerful chest studded with a thick gold cross. In the eyes lay a feral street intelligence. Albury counted four rings on the right hand and a gold watch on each wrist. The man stank of sweat and sea and cheap rum. Albury could tell that he was a bit quicker, a bit smarter, and more than a bit tougher than the rest—the prototype of a coarse Latin ranch foreman or factory boss.
“Are you supposed to be in charge of them?” Albury demanded, his eyes motioning toward the man prone on the deck. “This is a fishing boat, not a zoo. You keep these people under control, or I will do it. You understand? If I have to do it, you won’t like it. Comprende?”
The Colombian watched impassively from behind hooded eyes. Whether he understood the words or not, the tone was unmistakable.
“Many people are hunting for us,” Albury went on. “The weather is getting bad, and there will be a storm soon. Go below and tell your people.”
The Colombian did not allow for translation.
“I am hungry,” he said in a rumbling baritone. “Where is food?”
“You assholes ate all the food,” Jimmy spluttered.
“There is no more food,” Albury said, “Mañana food.”
“Then whiskey?”
“There’s no whiskey for you. Jesus, Augie, talk to him.”
“Captains always have whiskey, no?” Oscar insisted.
“No. No whiskey. Mañana whiskey. America whiskey.”
Then Augie intervened, speaking harshly. Oscar cut him off in mid-sentence.
“The boat is bad. Is very small, and no rápido.”
“If you don’t like it, swim, shithead,” Jimmy snarled.
The Diamond Cutter began to pitch as it closed with the summer squall. Ahead, the clouds gathered in great purple bruises over the dull sea. Oscar rocked uncertainly in the crowded wheelhouse, blinking mechanically. He looked at Albury, at Augie, at Jimmy, a long measuring stare for each. The thin Colombian on the deck began to roll and moan.
“Mañana,” Oscar said finally. It was a promise. He stalked from the wheelhouse, dragging the injured man with him.
A shiver danced along Albury’s spine. “Jimmy,” he said softly, “what have we got besides your shotgun?”
“Not much. A couple of fish knives, the spear gun, the flare pistol. And the bang stick.”
“The knives are down below,” Augie said absently.
“Go get them, Augie. We’re all going to stay up here in the pilothouse until we reach Key Largo. Augie?”
Albury turned to look at the young Cuban. Augie’s face wore a far-off gaze; his jaw was working.
“Did you see what Oscar was wearing?” he asked. “That big gold watch with the green stones on the band, like emeralds?”
Albury nodded. “I saw it when he walked in. A watch on both wrists, for Christ’s sake.”
“Breeze, when I left the wounded guy down there—the one who’s gut-shot—he was wearing that emerald watch.”
Later, Albury and his mates would learn that the Colombians had thrown their badly injured compadre into the ocean. They could never know if he was still alive when he hit.
THE SQUALL WAS worse than Albury had expected. The wind gusted to thirty knots and pushed the waves to nine feet. Water cascaded across the bow and