Paul saw there had been a subtle change in the attitude of the two men. In the minds and limited imaginations of Winkler and Donny, he and Linda were already dead. There remained only the details of effecting it neatly. Winkler seemed to be growing more calm. Donny seemed taut, unable to look at Linda.
The Baby Barnacle thumped gently against the stern of the cruiser. Both men looked down into the smaller boat. Paul saw Linda had tucked the rusted knife under her thigh, out of sight.
“It’s a stupid idea,” Paul said softly.
Winkler barely glanced at him. Donny shifted the rifle, and the muzzle swung and centered on Paul’s face.
Winkler hit the barrel up with the heel of his hand. “Fool!”
“Oh,” Donny said. “I get it. No marks on the boat.”
“Which one of you killed him?” Linda asked.
Winkler looked at her with annoyance. “Don’t talk.”
“Which one of you was it?”
Donny didn’t look at her. He said, “I did it, if that makes you happier. I was out there before daylight, standing on bottom, wearing the air tanks. I looked up and saw him coming, above my head, so I jumped up and clubbed him with a hunk of corral.” Paul saw him slant his eyes toward her and quickly look away.
Winkler took a length of line and threaded it through the ringbolt and took the rifle from Donny and handed him the two long free ends of the line. He said, “Get down there and knot one end good to her ankle and the other end to his. And don’t get between me and either of them, hear?”
Paul was aware of the clear blue of the sky overhead. Tied to a common rope, they would dance down there in the deep-green current, swinging apart, coming back together again, her wild hair afloat, deep-sea maiden in the sea-rotted cotton. Once the line was firmly knotted, Winkler had only to heave the improvised anchor overboard. There would be a hard tug. And then Donny could muscle them over the side, loosen their desperate fingers, and stand, watching the steep, slow-motion falling, the dwindling, and then the empty sea. Paul looked at Linda. Her face was a sick color under the tan.
Winkler had the flat eyes of a man who is not susceptible to any improvised diversion. It would, Paul saw, depend largely on how cleverly or how stupidly Donny approached him to affix the rope. And he knew, thinking of it, exactly how he would do it. Make a slip noose, direct the leg to be raised, toss the noose over the foot, and tighten it with one hard yank, trusting to the water to soak the knot quickly, make it too stubborn for fingers that would fumble at it during the slow fall through the deepening green.
“Move back to the stern, girl,” Winkler directed. Paul saw Linda half turn her head and then slump, her head thumping with a painful sound against the thwart.
Donny pulled the Baby Barnacle a bit closer and jumped lightly in. Winkler held the barrel aimed directly at Paul’s eyes. Donny seemed not to want to touch the unconscious girl. He wet his lips and wiped his hands on the side of his shorts, and finally squatted and looped the rope around her slim ankle, pulled it tight, knotted it expertly. He tested it, wiped his hands on the sides of his shorts again, and stood up, turning with the other end of the line in his hand to look at Paul.
In that instant, Linda moved like a cat. She was in an awkward position. Paul realized, even in that flash, that he had not noticed that her fingertips had been tucked under her thigh as she had slumped in an apparent faint. Too low and a shade too far from Donny to reach any vital part of him with the rusty blade, she did, apparently from some primal instinct the only damaging thing she could do. She sliced hard across the backs of his knees.
Paul had once heard a pack mule scream with sudden, unexpected agony. He did precisely what he had rehearsed mentally for the past fifteen minutes, a linked series of movements so completely thought out that now there was no thought involved in the performance. He tumbled backward off the hatch, catching the hatch cover in his fingers, hurling it aside, rolling to his knees, knowing he was taking far too long, even though Donny’s scream was still high and clear and he had only begun to fall, then snaking his arm down beside the motor, yanking out the heavy automatic pistol, working the slide as he dropped back to use the maximum possible cover of the engine compartment, hearing the flat crack mingling with the fading scream, feeling the hot rawness along the side of his face as the heavy pistol in that same instant jumped in his hand. He did not hear the sound of his own shot, but he watched the slow and vivid dance Winkler did in the sunlight, the slow-motion disintegration as when a cliff is dynamited a long way off. Winkler had been working the rifle bolt, and he took the slug in the pit of the stomach. It swept him backward and off his feet, his face wild and slack with surprise.
Donny rolled in agony. Paul straightened up, hearing his grunting and thumping, and saw Linda with the rusty knife poised above the broad hard brown back, her lips flat back against her teeth, and she was on her knees. She dropped the knife and sagged back on her heels and covered her face with her hands.
First Paul tied the Baby Barnacle close to the cruiser. He looked at Winkler. The man was unconscious from the force of impact, flat on his back, a viscid hole an inch above his belt and a shade off center to the right. There was a knife in a rack near the wheel. Paul took it and cut short lengths of rope and found a screw driver and a short-handled gaff, which could be used as tourniquets. The right leg, where the stroke hit first, was the worse of the two. He rolled Donny onto his back. Donny watched the sky with gray face and his powerful fingers dimpled his thighs as Paul worked over him. The hamstrung legs were sickeningly distorted because the severed tendons had pulled back up into the muscle tissue of the thighs and down into the hard calves.
“Is there something I can do to help?” she asked at his elbow, in a weak voice.
“Take that knife and cut two more pieces of line about a yard long, please.”
“You’re bleeding, Paul.”
“It’s wood splinters. He hit the engine compartment an inch from my cheek.”
She brought the pieces of line. Donny lay still while he got the tourniquets tightened and lashed in place. Paul straightened up and wiped his bloody hands on his swimming trunks. Most, but not all, of the flow had stopped. Donny’s face looked shrunken, simian. He propped himself up on his elbows, looked unbelievingly at his legs, and slumped back.
She tore off a scrap of her skirt and wet it and made Paul hold still while she gently cleaned the side of his face. The salt stung tears into his eyes. She bit her lip and gingerly pulled out the more obvious splinters. One had missed the corner of his eye by a quarter of an inch.
They towed the Baby Barnacle to the Cove’s End municipal dock. Winkler regained partial consciousness on the way back. They did not talk on the way in. Reaction was too heavy in them. There was no exhilaration at escape. Only a heavy weariness.
The Miami office where the three men questioned them was frigidly air-conditioned. The men were neat, trim, brisk, efficient, and formal. At last the one in charge reached over and turned off the tape recorder.
“We’ll want your signatures on the transcription. Now, I’d like to show you this.” He took a plum-sized object of burnished glowing gold and handed it carefully to Linda.
“Why, it’s a buckle, isn’t it?”
“The experts cleaned it up. They tell me it was made in Oaxaca. That face is supposed to be the Aztec god called Xipe. I guess my accent is a little shaky. The experts were almost in tears thinking of the other priceless things that crew melted up into little bars worth six thousand apiece, approximately. Corson and that Donny Walto agree on the number of bars they turned out and sold. Nearly a hundred and sixty. Figure it out. It’s a million-dollar business.”