The tropic dawn caught them a good five miles off the far shore of the lake after a long wet voyage. The sun popped over the eastern horizon with the odd green flash of a clear day this far south, and night gave way to day almost as quickly as if some jungle god had flipped an electric switch. They were heeled before a spanking breeze but the waterlogged boat seemed to crawl across the open water as Captain Gringo peered into the wall of trees. Tina lay dozing with her head in his lap, but Gaston was bright and chipper as he said, “We are almost there. Now, aren’t you sorry about the terrible things you said all night about Pablo’s mother?”
Captain Gringo swept his eyes casually over the wider horizons to the west and frowned thoughtfully before he observed, “There’s a smoke plume out on the lake.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “I have already noticed this. But what of it? I told you there are steamboats on the lake.”
“That one seems to be headed this way. I thought you said this stretch of shore was supposed to be uninhabited.”
Gaston muttered something to the Indian at the tiller and squinted at the rising smoke in the distance. Then he said, “You are right, damn it. It must be a government patrol boat. But we shall be ashore any minute, hein?”
The American looked over the side and muttered, “Shit, we’re barely moving, thanks to all the water we’ve shipped, along with the heavy load we already had! I’d say that patrol boat’s six or eight miles out and coming our way with a twelve-knot bone in her teeth.”
“True. But we are making, what, three knots?”
“I doubt it. You’d better find something to start bailing with. I’m taking the helm.”
But as he nudged Tina awake and off him to edge sternward along the windward side, Gaston said, “Pablo won’t let you. He was most adamant when I offered to spell him, last night.”
Captain Gringo made his way aft, pointed at the patrol boat in the distance, and said, “You’d better help bail, Pablo. I think I can milk a bit more speed out of this breeze.”
The Indian scowled and said, “This boat is mine.”
“Hey, I don’t want to take it for keeps. I just want to get away from that fucking patrol boat out there!”
Pablo stared at the duckboards, clinging to the tiller with one hand as he reached for the gun on his hip with the other and insisted, “I am El Capitan and a most skilled marinero! I will not have my seamanship insulted by gringos!”
“Come on, Pablo. I used to sail Long Island Sound in a boat like this when I was a kid. You’re using too much sail and rudder and you’re a good two points off her trim.”
“He who touches my woman or my tiller dies!”
Gaston called out, “Regardez! That is a patrol boat out there! And she has seen us! I believe those signal flags they just ran up are meant for us.”
“Bail the fucking boat!” said Captain Gringo, as he covered the last few feet with surprising grace for his size and, before Pablo could come unstuck, backhanded him away from the helm.
He hadn’t intended it, but the Indian went over the stern in a back flip, to splash spread-eagled into the water astern.
The boat yawed wildly with nobody at the tiller and Captain Gringo almost followed Pablo as the duckboards tried to slide out from under his wet soles. Then he’d grabbed the tiller and seated himself and the sail spilled as he swung the bow around into the wind.
Gaston called, “Why are you heaving to? That thrice-accursed patrol boat is almost upon us!”
Pablo’s head was bobbing about fifty feet away and Captain Gringo called, “Hey, over here! Let’s go, Pablo!”
The Indian trod water, shouting curses. The American said, “I know. But start swimming, anyway. I’m having a time holding this tub into the wind, damn it!”
Gaston yelled, “Fuck him! We don’t have time to pick him up!” and, in truth, Pablo seemed more interested in bobbing around out there cursing than he was in rejoining them.
Captain Gringo shot a glance over his shoulder at the approaching gunboat and saw Gaston had a point. He shouted, “¡Pablo! ¡Tiberones!” And that did it. Pablo started swimming as hard as he knew how, and, while they’d have laughed at him in a Y.M.C.A. pool, he made good time. Most men did, when they thought sharks were after them.
Meanwhile, Gaston and Tina were somehow splashing water over the side up forward and when Gaston heaved a couple of cases over the side without being told, Captain Gringo felt a lighter bob to the boat under him. Bracing the tiller with his free hand, he reached down and caught Pablo by the hair. Then he swung the helm hard over as he hauled the waterlogged Indian over the stern. He swung their stern to the patrol boat and hauled the sail flatter as Pablo tried to rise, sputtering. Captain Gringo warned, “I’ve got my hands full, Pablo. If you don’t behave, I’m going to have to kick you silly.”
“This is not just.” Pablo protested, adding, “I lost my gun and you are a pirate!”
Out on the lake, a ball of cotton seemed to blossom near the bow of the gunboat and something rolled like a garbage can through the sky above them. The shell exploded somewhere in the jungle on shore and as a brown mushroom cloud sprouted above the treetops, Captain Gringo said, “Pablo, shorten sails one reef and don’t argue about it.” Then he yelled forward, “Watch your heads!” and tacked.
The second shell spanged into the water where their bow had just been headed and skipped like a flat stone across the lake a couple of times before exploding near the shoreline. Pablo gasped and said, “Si, si, sir! One reef it is!”
As the Indian started to shorten sail the American deliberately yawed to throw off the distant gunner and then, finding a faster natural reach for hull, rudder and sail, streaked shoreward, eyes on the distant gunboat, rather than the approaching trees.
Once again the bow gun blossomed, now about three miles away. Captain Gringo swung the tiller hard, spilled his sail, then resumed his course. The shell skipped across their bow, missing by about ten yards, as he’d hoped. The next time they fired, he ignored the warning smoke puff and this time the shell slammed down astern, since the gunner, expecting the luff, had corrected for it.
Gaston climbed over the packing cases to join him in the stern, gun in hand. The Frenchman said, “We are not going to make the shore before they get the range,” and Captain Gringo noticed his bantering accent had faded. He knew Gaston tended to forget he was a sophisticate when things got really bad.
Captain Gringo said, “I know. I figure we’re less than a mile out, now. Our best bet would be to heave to.”
“You mean, just give up?”
“Hardly. If I point her into the wind and drop the sail, they’ll think we’re giving up and stop shooting. Meanwhile, we’ll go over the far side and start swimming.”
“Are you mad? I just heard you warn Pablo about the sharks all around!”
“I didn’t see any sharks. I did that to make the damned fool move.”
“But there are sharks in Lake Nicaragua.”
“Sure, there are sharks in the Atlantic, too. Have you ever been to Coney Island on a hot Sunday?”
Gaston grimaced down at the water between them and the swampy shoreline before he nodded and said, “Well, it can be most distressing to be chewed by shrapnel, too. When do we dive?”
Captain Gringo said, “Hold it, they just fired again and … yeah, it’s going to miss.”
Then he swung the tiller over and dropped the sail. As the boat began to bob in one place he yelled to Pablo and the girl, “Come on in, the water’s fine!”
Then he jumped overboard, hopefully screened from the lookout aboard the gunboat by the sagging canvas. He heard someone dive nearby and assumed it was Gaston. He didn’t try to find out. The gun belt and boots made it a bitch to swim, but he knew if he kicked them off he’d wind up ashore unarmed and barefoot. That was as frightening as the thought of drowning.
The water suddenly clamped down on him as another shell exploded in it, somewhere close. He ducked his head under and swam as far as he could hold his breath, wondering why they’d fired again. When he came up for air, he heard Gaston, sputtering, “Les chamelles! They are serious!”
“Where are Pablo and the girl?” the American gasped.
Gaston said, “Keep swimming. They both stayed in the boat, and the boat is no more!”
Captain Gringo ducked his head under and did as he was told. The lake water was warm and when he opened his eyes under the surface he could see the bottom. It was covered with moss the color of vomit. He saw a tree root in his way, grabbed it, and hauled himself onward. There were more roots and submerged logs now, and he started making better time by hauling himself hand over hand, hoping Gaston would have the sense to do the same. He knew the crew of the gunboat would be watching the shoreline now, and he forced himself to stay submerged long after his tortured lungs told him it was impossible and that he was drowning.
And then he couldn’t swim any farther because of the roots. He braced his feet against the bottom, stood up in knee-deep water, and bulled his way into the green wall of brush and creepers just ahead of him. Captain Gringo staggered into the jungle as a shell exploded somewhere in the trees to his right. Howler monkeys swung cursing through the branches overhead as a bug flew into his open mouth. He spit it out. He was totally bushed and couldn’t run another step, but he ran until the forest floor opened up into the dank cathedral gloom he’d learned to expect, away from the sunlit edges along water or trail.
Gaston called out, “Enough! I can’t run on another step!” and the American slowed to a walk, but kept going as he spotted the Frenchman over to his left through the trees. As they veered to join one another, Gaston said, “You lied. There were sharks back there! I saw a fin as I was climbing out!”
“Was it chasing you that close to shore?”
“Mais non, it was headed for the wreckage of the boat. I know the girl stayed because she thought she was on their side. I have no idea why Pablo stood there like an idiot until they blew him to bits.”
“Jesus, are you sure they’re both dead?”
“Anything left after the shell hit amidships was no doubt enjoyed by your imaginary sharks.”
“The bastards don’t fool around, do they? I wonder why they did it, though. They had no reason to lob a shell into a boat that had just hove to.”
Gaston shrugged and suggested, “Target practice? The military down here tend to be a bit more brutal than professionals.”
“I thought you said the Nicaraguan army was armed and trained by Americans.”
“I imagine the crew we just escaped from were navy personnel in the first place, and trained by hired Yankee thugs in the second place.”
“Okay, the Wall Street Wolves play rough. But they play smart. Old Cornelius didn’t get to be so rich by shooting pigs and chickens. The private dicks he sent down here to whip his stooges into shape would know you don’t get a hell of a lot of information out of hamburger.”
Gaston nodded, but said, “Commodore Vanderbilt is dead, despite what people down here believe. We seem to be dealing with a rougher crowd.”
“Then things are looking up. You don’t win by killing dumb. If I’d been the skipper of that gunboat, I’d have wanted to question Pablo and have a look at his cargo.”
“Perhaps they already knew? Poor Pablo boasted he’d been smuggling across the lake for some time. That patrol boat came out of a pitch black night as if it knew where it was going. They may well have recognized the boat by the patches of its sail, or the mad way Pablo sailed it, hein?”
Captain Gringo slowed, but kept walking deeper into the jungle as he mused, “Yeah. And they might have known where Pablo, you and I were going, which is more than can say. Do you have any idea where your rebel friends might be right now?”
Gaston’s voice was cheerful, considering, as he said, “Mais non, I am completely lost. I thought you knew where we were going, Dick.”
Captain Gringo walked as far as a fallen log, sat down, and pulled off a boot to empty it before he muttered, “Me and my big mouth. I was a lot more comfortable, up to now. Don’t you even know if we should go north or south?”
Gaston sat down beside him and said, “Pablo was to ghost along just off shore until they signaled us with a light.”
“A light? We didn’t make it across until it was broad daylight, for God’s sake!”
Gaston sighed and said, “True. I know it is inconsiderate to speak ill of the dead, but I do not think Pablo was a very good sailor.”
Then he took a packet from his shirt pocket and added, “Would you like a smoke, Dick?”
Captain Gringo frowned and asked, “How did you manage that? I didn’t see you walk on water.”
“I keep everything in rubber contraceptives. Everything but my cock, that is. I tried fucking a woman with a rubber, once. Merde alors, it felt like taking a bath in a raincoat.”
Captain Gringo laughed incredulously as the dapper little Frenchman took a pair of long cheroots and a kitchen match from the odd albeit waterproof package and handed him one. As Gaston thumbed the match aflame and they both lit up, the American said, “For God’s sake, this cigar smells like rubber!”
“True, but at least you can smoke it, hein? I have another rubber filled with paper money, one full of shells for my pistol, and, of course, my quinine. Did I ever tell you of the woman who worked in the farmacia in Tampico? The one who sold rubbers with a most appealing blush?”
“I’d rather talk about the rebels we came over here to meet.”
“I don’t know where they are at the moment. You see, I was getting ready to do a job on the rainy side of the Sierra Oriental and, of course, I needed a lot of rubbers to waterproof my matches and so forth and there was this lady druggist near the docks and—”
“Screw the lady druggist near the docks!”
“Oh, I did. She told me, later, she became most curious about a man my age buying rubber after rubber at a time when the U.S. Fleet was in, and so she invited me to help her close at siesta time and—”
“God damn it, Gaston! You don’t have to convince me that you’re a dirty old man. Get back to the rebels!”
As Captain Gringo emptied the other boot the Frenchman said, “Alas, I don’t know how. They must be somewhere on this side of the lake, but as I just explained, they were to signal where to land and, as you know, our landing was a bit unplanned, just now.”
Captain Gringo took a drag on his smoke, stood up, and said, “We can’t stay here. The skipper of that gunboat may send a search party ashore.”
Gaston said, “I agree. But which way should we go?”
Captain Gringo took a coin from his soggy pocket, flipped it, and pointed south with his chin, saying, “The odds are fifty-fifty either way. The important point is to get our butts out of here.”
Gaston tagged along, muttering about jungles and snakes, until something exploded in the’ trees behind them and Captain Gringo said, “See what I mean?”
Gaston smiled and answered, “Oui, things are looking up. If they are shelling the shore, it means they are not sending in a landing party. It sounds like a British four-inch gun, non?”
There was another roar, muffled by the trees behind them, and the American said, “Whatever it is, they’re cruising north, away from us.” He stopped and turned around, adding, “We’d better follow the sounds.”
Gaston asked, “Have you lost your desire for life, my old and rare? I am not given to needless hysteria, but I have always preferred moving away from a barrage, rather than into one!”
But the American noticed Gaston was following him toward the sound of the gun. Captain Gringo said, “That patrol boat didn’t stumble over us on a lake this big. Someone tipped them that Pablo was making another run, or else they have a general idea where the rebels are and they’re maintaining a picket along this stretch of shore.”
“That sounds reasonable. But they are not shooting at a stationary target, like a camp. They are walking their shells north.”
“Right. Ergo, they think we ran that way, after floundering into the trees. They must be doing it because they think we have a reason to head north. The only reason I can think of would be rebels up that way.”
Gaston tripped over a root, cursed, and said, “It’s a good thing that coin sent us south, first, hein.” Then he frowned and added, “The gunner on that boat out there may have flipped a coin, too, non?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I doubt it. If they’d had no idea which way we should head, they’d have stood offshore and fired north and south in a sweeping fan of fire.”
There was another explosion up ahead and Captain Gringo waited until a tree had finished crashing down through the canopy before he nodded and said, “They’re cruising slow and walking the shells north at about three knots. They figure we’re somewhere to the north of the bursts and running scared.”
Gaston said, “I am walking, and if I am not scared, I am thoughtful. Why don’t we rest, here, and let them cruise on about their business?”
The tall American said, “We want to be close enough to hear the final shell.”
“But why? I fail to understand why you find the explosion of a four-incher so interesting, if it lands well away from you.”
“Come on, Gaston. You’ve been under fire before. You know damned well they don’t expect to hit anything important, firing blind like that.”
Gaston started to say something, thought, and sighed, “Merde, you are right. They hope to herd us up the coast in a panic, keeping us from the shoreline and any possible view of their smokestack.”
“Right. Then they’ll fire a salvo, tear full steam ahead, and send a shore party in, a couple of miles north, to ambush us!”
Gaston grabbed Captain Gringo’s elbow and said, “Chacun à son goût! Let us retire to the south as you and your most intelligent coin first suggested!”
The American said, “There’s nothing down that way, Gaston!”
“Au contraire. The south end of this thrice-accursed lake is down that way. If we circle far enough, we can get back to our own boat and be on our way. The current revolution does not agree with me at all. Things are much more complicated here in Nicaragua than I was led to believe.”
Captain Gringo stopped, took another drag of smoke, and frowned down at his partner as he mused, “You may have something, there. But it’s one hell of a walk back to our hidden yacht.”
“Pooh, not more than a hundred miles, even should we fail to obtain horses somewhere along the way.”
“Okay, figure three or four days making our way through jungle and some open farmland here and there. Assuming nobody’s found our boat in that swamp, the fuel gauges were pretty low the last time I checked them. We don’t have enough bunker oil to make it down the San Juan to the sea and I assume you did intend to head somewhere after we got to the sea, right?”
“But of course. Garcia’s rebels, in Cuba, need guns and ammo just as much as anyone here does.”
“Okay, that means we’re going to have to top our bunkers and anyone who’ll sell us that much oil without asking questions is going to make us pay through the nose. How much money do we have left? Those friends of Tina got my share of the money we found aboard the yacht when we pirated it.”
Gaston looked sheepish and asked, “Dick, do you remember the girls we stole from those gunrunners, along with everything else?”
“Ginnie and Pru? Of course I remember them. They both screwed good. But we ditched them right after we arrived in Nicaragua, remember?”
Gaston sighed and said, “Virginia caught up with me in Managua while we were out of touch. She said the whorehouse they’d told us about was no longer in business and—”
“Come on, damn it! We gave them each a grubstake to go with the steamboat tickets to the capital, Gaston.”
“True, but Virginia said they’d spent most of it looking for their friends and, well, I felt it was better for everyone if I saw them safely off to Jamaica. The girls were homesick when we found them and they know too much about our activities to be allowed out of our sight in the same country.”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “In other words, you let those whores put another bite on you. Get to the bottom line. How much cash do we have to work with?”
Gaston fumbled out his rubber-covered bankroll, took the bills out and began to thumb them as he said, “I must have nearly four hundred dollars left, Dick.”
Captain Gringo swore under his breath and the Frenchman hastily added, “You see, I thought we had a sale for the guns and ammo across the lake and it did make sense to get those girls out of the country before we got down to serious business, so ...”
“So we’re stuck,” the American cut in, adding, ‘There’s no way in hell we’re going to re-provision for an ocean voyage until we sell the fucking rebels some fucking guns and ammo!”
“Maybe we could work our way back to Granada and lay low until things are less hectic? You have that cantina girl back there and—”
“That’s stupid, Gaston. Dorita’s probably sore because I didn’t come back last night as I promised. Assuming she’s a good kid and hasn’t had second thoughts about turning me in for the reward, she’s not too bright and the authorities have her listed as a suspected rebel sympathizer. We’d be safer just walking until we got to Costa Rica, for God’s sake.”
Gaston protested, “That’s too far to walk, and even if we got there, what would two soldiers of fortune do there with no money and not a revolution in sight?”
Captain Gringo said, “Exactly. Let’s keep following those guns until we think of something.”
Gaston shrugged and trudged after him as Captain Gringo moved north on the sound of the guns. They’d covered less than a mile before the American slowed and drew his revolver. He started to explain, but Gaston’s own gun was out as the Frenchman nodded and said, “Oui, the shelling has stopped.”
Then he added, “You are probably right about them landing up ahead to trap us. But have you considered that we are walking into the trap?”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “It can’t be helped. We have one advantage. They don’t know that we know they’ll be staked out up ahead.”
Gaston smiled crookedly and said, “Oh, that makes it all right, then. The two of us simply have to move in on a party of undetermined size who will no doubt be dug in, hein?”
“Can you think of a better way to do it?”
“No. Let’s get it over with before the sun gets higher. I find it most fatiguing to fight down here between noon and sundown. Did I ever tell you about the girl I met during a noonday lull in the Siege of Camerone?”
“Save it until after we’ve mopped those bastards up ahead.”
“This may be my last chance to tell it. You realize, of course, that we are probably committing suicide?”
“You can stay here, if you want.”
“What, and miss all the fun? I’ll cover your right and you cover my left, hein?”