The stiletto remained in Bolan's shoulder. He withdrew it and quickly crammed in a compress. It was a puncture wound, and not bleeding too severely. He tested the damage by pushing against the galleon with both hands and immediately ruled out a hand-over-hand descent via the cable. He stepped quickly to the overhanging fantail and stared down at the water for a moment, timing the insweeping swells.
The faint voice from the sea continued to summon El Matador. He wondered how far away lay that voice and how far a man could swim with a hole in the shoulder . . . but then, there was no other exit available. He watched the ocean gird itself and lift in a cresting swell, then he vaulted over and plummeted down, and he was once again swimming for an unknown destination . . . this time with only a phantom voice to guide him.
Chapter Eighteen
Living large
Bolan's left arm was useless, the pain in the shoulder becoming excruciating with the gentlest movement. He side-stroked and tried to guide himself by the elusive, wind-lofted calling from somewhere out there in the blackness. A stiff wind had begun to blow steadily and the water was turbulent, the troughs deep and the swells immense. The view behind his course was sporadic, though he had travelled no more than fifty yards or so. Lifting with the swells, he caught wet-eyed and spray-brown glimpses of blue lights and swirling action all about the beach in front of the Hacienda, an occasional rattle of gunplay and the booming of riot guns adding to the surrealistic atmosphere of the night. The nicest part was that Bolan was out of it; what was left, the cops were welcome to.
He was tiring rapidly and fighting for breath. His good arm and both legs were beginning to lose feeling, the compress at his shoulder was sticky and irritating, and he wondered about the stories regarding blood and sharks. He had flopped onto his back and was trying to relax and get his wind in a dragging float, allowing the waters to carry him where they would, when he sensed the throb of a powerful marine engine and the shape of something riding a high swell. The voice was no longer calling to him and he had to wonder about that, also. If there were blue lights on the beach, were there not also, as before, floating counterparts in the sea?
The sounds from the beach had either ceased or he had outdistanced them. This was now, for The Executioner, an item of entirely insignificant information. He was floating in the womblike hold of the sea, and he was feeling entirely comfortable, totally relaxed — and goodbye, world, Mack Bolan was getting off now.
He had never thought that he would die so placidly, so comfortably — it should come with searing pain and with hyperelevated senses straining into the release of death — not this way, not so easy, so downright lulling, like an old man in a rocking chair and nodding pff into the final sleep. It should be like la soldada and the . . . Bolan's lagging consciousness was jolted by that memory, and suddenly the comfort was gone, the quiet acceptance of death wrenched away in a painful floundering and a fighting to clear impacted lungs. He was under, and suffocating, and totally disoriented and trying to cry out against the unbreathable atmosphere of heavy water — and suddenly he was churning atop a high swell, liquids were being hastily expelled from irritated membranes, and he was shocked by the sound of his own voice crying out against the entombment of the sea.
Toro's voice also, very close now, was rattling off sharp commands in excited Spanish, and Bolan wondered if he was still reliving a memory. Then a dark bulk crested above him, a volley of excited voices restored his sense of reality, and immediately others were beside him in the water. Some one was forcing a lifering down over his arm and he was being tugged and dragged and then lifted; his heels bumped solid matter, and Toro's anxious face was looming above him, and Bolan knew that he was in good hands once again.
He was lying on the soft cushions in the cabin of a boat, the constant vibrations of a strong propulsion system jarring into him, and someone was sawing off his arm at the shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked into Toro's, and the Spanish Bull smiled and said, "Sorry, amigo, it is difficult to remain the gentle doctor in so turbulent a sea."
He was swabbing out Bolan's shoulder wound with raw alcohol. Another man hovered nearby, holding a tin cup. Toro relieved the man of the cup and held it to Bolan's lips. "Drink this, my friend," he commanded. "It is a transfusion of spirit."
Bolan lifted his head and accepted the transfusion. It was undiluted rum, and it momentarily took his breath. He coughed and pushed himself upright. Toro said, "See what I have told you? Already you are sitting up and looking for another fight."
Bolan smiled weakly and watched the Cuban apply a bandage to the shoulder, then he replied, "I guess I'm all fought out for a while, Toro."
"And Margarita, amigo?"
Bolan's eyes fell. His voice sounded unnatural in his ears as he heard himself saying, "She followed me, Toro. I should have spotted her, but I didn't."
Toro nodded his head to the other man, then told Bolan, "It is as we suspected. She is the cat, senor. You cannot feel that-"
"Was, Toro."
"Senor?"
Bolan lifted pained eyes to his friend. "Margarita is dead, Toro."
The Cuban stared at him for a long, silent moment, then he patted Bolan's good shoulder and wearily got to his feet, said something in Spanish to the men grouped around them, and lurched across the pitching cabin. The men began talking quietly amongst themselves and slowly drifted back topside.
Bolan moved his feet carefully to the deck and tested his equilibrium. "You know how I felt about Margarita," he called over to his friend.
"Yes, amigo, I know," Toro replied.
Bolan found a crushed pack of brown-leafed cigarettes and lit one. The boat was idling along, maintaining just enough headway for maximum stability, and that was not saying much. The craft was an old, much-patched, and several times renewed PT boat of World War Two vintage. Torpedo tubes and deck guns had long since given way to more practical space utilization for its successive postwar roles as private yacht, commercial pleasure craft, and deep-sea fishing sportsboat. The powerful Packard propulsion plant remained virtually intact and smoothly functioning. Now the boat was primarily a troop-carrier, small commando strike-force variety. Bolan was looking it over with casual interest when Toro returned and tiredly sat beside him. He explained to Bolan that the 15 men now aboard constituted a hastily recruited volunteer crew, and that they had come forth for the express purpose of offering tactical support to Bolan's war.
"We have learned the identity of this big boat, the floating home of your enemies," he further explained. "We have thought perhaps that El Matador would highly desire this information and -" He swept his arm in a half-compass of the little vessel. "— and the facilities of our navy."
Bolan smiled, genuinely affected by the offer of military aid. "Thanks, Toro. You risked your navy to pull me out of a tight spot, and that's plenty enough. Besides, I guess the Miami War is over. If you'll just put me ashore somewhere. . . ."
Toro's face clouded. He pointed through the cabin porthole to faintly winking lights in the distance. "She lays there, senor, this boat. Soon she will be forced to seek refuge in a safe harbor."