“A long way to go yet,” Ingram said.
“All right, here’s the ammo. Twenty-five boxes of it, around two hundred pounds to a box. Ruiz and I carried it up while you were flaked out over there on your fat with Mama-san. Probably have to take ‘em over one at a time. Ruiz’ll put a rope on ‘em and help lower ‘em into the raft so you don’t drop any.”
“Do we get anything to eat?” Ingram asked.
“There’s a mug of coffee and some Spam. That’s all anybody’s going to get till this boat’s unloaded.”
Rae Osborne was seated aft by the binnacle smoking a cigarette. “How about breaking out the rum?” she asked sulkily. “I think I’ve got crabgrass on my teeth.”
Morrison whirled on her. “You lay off the sauce or we’ll tie you up. We got enough to do without dodging some drunk staggering around in the way. You can have some coffee.”
She sniffed. “Coffee! Big deal.”
“And you better remember to stay clear of Ruiz. He’s fussy about people coming up behind him, and he’ll bend your teeth.”
“Ruiz and what other wet-back? Don’t forget I own this boat, little man. And I could buy you in sets, for book-ends.”
Ruiz stared through and beyond her without any expression at all. Morrison grunted contemptuously, and turned away. She was doing fine, Ingram thought, as he sipped his coffee; then he remembered the night in Nassau and wondered just how much of it was acting. She baffled him. He got permission to visit the head, with Ruiz following him with the Colt, and then rowed Morrison over to the sand spit. The labor began. When he came alongside each time, Ruiz had one of the boxes balanced at the edge of the deck with a line around it and would stand back in the cockpit to lower away while Ingram settled it onto the bottom of the raft. They were brutally heavy for their size, and he wondered if they would move all of them before the fabric bottom gave way. At the other end, however, Morrison hoisted them to his shoulder seemingly without effort and strode across the flat toward dry ground. The sun rose, and grew hot. The tide began to ebb. And still Ruiz’ guard was impregnable.
Ingram could see Rae Osborne moving about the after deck apparently at will when he was away from the schooner, but the moment he came alongside Ruiz motioned her astern and away from him. She cajoled, whined, threatened, and grew abusive, trying to get a drink, and all of it availed her nothing. A light breeze sprang up from the southeast around nine a.m., but in half an hour it died away and the heat grew unbearable as the sun attacked them from all directions, reflected from a sea as smooth as polished steel. They stopped for an hour and a half during the peak of the ebb, but were back at it by eleven. By 12:30 the tide had passed low slack and was beginning to flood again. They had unloaded sixteen of the boxes of ammunition, a little over a ton and a half. And still she’d had no chance at Ruiz. They had the rum put away where she couldn’t find it, and feigning drunkenness was obviously out of the question.
On the next trip, however, he caught a change in the pattern. Maybe she had solved it. She was below when he came alongside, and didn’t return to the deck until after he was loaded and pulling away. She moved listlessly, as though she were ill. He delivered the box to Morrison and rowed back. This time she sat quietly in the after end of the cockpit until the loading operation was completed and he was clear of the schooner’s side. Then she arose, slightly doubled over, and hurried toward the ladder.
“Again?” Ruiz asked.
“So you must have bad water on here,” she snapped.
Ruiz shrugged. “Water? How would you know?” But she was gone down the ladder.
All right, Ingram thought; I read you loud and clear. But it probably wouldn’t be the next trip; she’d build it up more subtly than that. The next did go by without incident. It was after one now, and the flood was quickening. When he came alongside on the return, butterflies moved softly inside his stomach; one mistake, or one tiny lag in reaction time, and he might be dead within the next few minutes. She was seated on the deck with her feet on the cockpit cushions, aft on the opposite side. He gave her only a passing glance and caught the lifeline stanchion. The box of ammunition was balanced on the edge of the deck just level with his shoulder, and Ruiz had hold of the line.
She leaned forward slightly. “Don’t stand between me and that ladder, Oliver.”
Ruiz gave her an indifferent glance as she stood up. Ingram reached for the box, walked it over the edge of the scupper, and let Ruiz take the strain on the line just as she started up the deck beyond him. He saw her turn and fall, and at the precise instant she landed on Ruiz’ shoulders he gave a savage yank on the line. The two of them fell forward onto the cushions on the low side of the cockpit, just in front of him. The box of ammunition struck the edge of the raft and almost capsized it as it plummeted into the water. He had hold of the lifeline and was lunging upward then, throwing a turn of the raft’s painter around the lifeline as he went over it onto the deck. Ruiz had pushed to his feet, but Rae Osborne was still fast to his back with her arms locked around his waist and over the flat slab of the automatic. The Latin clawed at her hands, broke her grip, and pulled the gun free just as Ingram crashed into them. Rae Osborne was whirled free of the tangle and slammed back against the cushions on the starboard side as the two men went down locked together in the bottom of the cockpit. Ingram could feel the hard weight of the gun between their bodies, and got a hand around the muzzle.
Not a word had been uttered, and there was no sound except the sibilant scrape of canvas shoes against the deck, and the meaty impacts of flesh against flesh and of furious bodies against wood, and the tortured gasps of breathing. Ruiz was incredibly strong for a man of his slender build, but not strong enough. Ingram got the other hand around his wrist, locked it in a paralyzing grip, and slowly forced the gun to his right until it was out from between their bodies. He twisted savagely at the muzzle, and tore it from Ruiz’ grasp. Pushing back, he sat up with his back against the binnacle, switched the gun end for end in his hand, and leveled it at Ruiz’ face as he fought for breath. He clicked off the safety, which Ruiz had never had a chance to do.
“Go below,” he said to Rae Osborne. “Bring up some of that line they used for lashings.”
She went down the ladder. Ruiz sat up and slid backward, his eyes never leaving the gun. It was intensely silent for a moment as they both came to rest, and Ingram was conscious for the first time that there had been no firing from Morrison. He must have seen it. Then it occurred to him that with the Dragoon’s port list and their sitting in the cockpit they were out of sight now, and even if the big man had had time to go back and pick up the BAR he was too much the pro to shoot when there was nothing to shoot at.
“When you come back,” he called to Rae Osborne, “don’t stand up. Crawl back to where I am.”
“Right, Skipper. I’ve got some rope now.”
Ruiz said softly, “You’re not going to tie me up.”
Ingram centered the gun on his chest. “But I am, amigo.”
“I won’t go back. Go ahead and shoot.”