I couldn’t resist sneering a little. During the last few days of sharing boat and bed we had reached that free and easy, comfortable, stage where we did not mind sharp tongues or fear to hurt each other’s feelings.
I said: “The blacks bug you a little, don’t they? You’ve got to use them, because there aren’t enough of you brown people, but you don’t trust them. I see your point — you mulattos make the revolution, then the blacks step in and take over and hang you along with Papa Doc.”
Lyda shrugged. “If I were invading I would worry about that, but since there is to be no invasion it doesn’t signify. Forget the invasion, Nick. You have my promise not to try any tricks.”
I figured that the promise was worth about a half a Haitian gourde. A dime.
She put her finger on the chart, then picked up a pencil and made a mark. “Just here, on the northwest coast of Tortuga, there is an inlet and a little river. Only a creek, really, but it should be deep enough for Sea Witch.”
“No problem. We’ve got a depth finder. We can nose her in slowly, as far as she will go. A little risky, but we’ll have to take that chance.”
I was worried about getting hung up on a bar.
She pushed the pencil into her thick hair and smiled at me. “It should be all right. The last time I was here I was on a boat that draws more than we do, and we didn’t have any trouble. Once we’re into the creek mouth we can lie against the side and the palm trees will hide us.”
I watched her eyes. “When was that? The last time you were here?”
“About three months ago. I told you that once. I come and go in Haiti whenever I please.”
She had told me, come to think of it.
I said: “You were setting up an invasion even then?”
Her dark eyes were candid and cool. “I was. I knew even then that Duvalier wasn’t going to ransom Dr. Valdez, that he was only playing us along.”
I nodded. “Good. Then we do it the way we planned. We use your invasion people, and the invasion route, but without the invasion. What are you going to tell your people? We have to use them without them knowing they are being used.”
Lyda frowned at me and wet her lips. “I know. That could be a little tricky, even dangerous. I might have to lie a little.”
I grinned at her. “No problem for you, kid.”
She ignored that and said, “I can handle it, Nick. I’ll tell, them that this is a last reconnaissance before the actual invasion. But I’ll have to make up a story to explain you.”
I put on a tee shirt and the fatigue jacket and checked the Luger and the stiletto. I strapped on the web belt with the .45 Colt snug in its old worn holster.
“Tell them anything you like,” I said. “Just be sure that I know what you tell them. Okay. That’s it for now. I’ll get her underway. I want to be in that creek and hidden before the sun comes up.”
At the companionway leading up to the deckhouse I glanced back at her. “Wear your fatigues and the cap, if you want, but leave off your star. And find yourself a weapon — a hand gun that you can handle. A light gun. If you can’t handle it I’ll give you a couple of lessons.”
I went back to the engines and started them in neutral. I hauled in the sea anchor that was holding Sea Witch into the wind. As I got under way again, running without lights, I wondered if I was being smart — using her invasion setup for my own purposes. I shrugged. It was better than going ashore and floundering around in the jungle with no contacts at all. I just had to watch her every second, even closer than I had been doing. See that she didn’t kill me, or have me killed, and then stage her invasion anyway.
When the sun came up and gilded the one low mountain on Tortuga — the chart said 1240 altitude—Sea Witch lay snug in the creek under a thick canopy of coco palms with plenty of water under her. Lyda, so excited that she was jittery, got ready to go ashore and find her people. She was wearing the green fatigues and cap, without the brigadier’s star, and she carried a little Smith and Wesson .32 and some spare cartridges in a belt pouch. I would have bet she had a knife on her somewhere. I couldn’t see it and I didn’t ask her.
Just before she went ashore I told her, “Stay out of trouble. If I hear gunfire I’ll wait ten minutes, no more, then m run for it. You got that? Ten minutes.”
She laughed and pressed herself against me and gave me a wet kiss, sticking her tongue in my mouth. She writhed against me, and she was so excited and hotted up that she wouldn’t have minded taking a quickie right there on the deck. I pushed her away, tempted as I was.
“Get going. Come back as soon as you can. Make a little noise when you come back and whistle before you get too close. I’d hate to kill you by accident And don’t bring anyone back with you.”
She gave me a smile and a snappy little salute and dropped over the side. The creek ran so deep here that I had been able to snub the boat right into the bank. A moment later she vanished into a thicket of wild cane. I listened and I couldn’t hear a thing. I marked that. She moved in the thick growth like a ghost.
The funny thing was that I missed her. I had grown accustomed to this lovely, slim wench. I made a pot of coffee, spiked it with a shot of booze, and then went forward. I selected three of the most modern machine guns from our arsenal, pawed through a crate until I found the right ammo, then took the guns back and laid them out on the deck close to hand. There are always a million things to do on a boat and now I kept busy so the time would go faster and I wouldn’t get nervous.
After an hour or so it began to rain, big bullet-sized drops spattering silver on the deck. I took my guns and went in the deckhouse.
Noon came and no sign of her. The rain stopped and the sun came back and the jungle began to steam. I monkeyed around with the engines. From the stern I could see down the creek and across the cove to open sea, and once a coastal sloop boat beat across the inlet under full sail. A snatch of Creole song reached me, and then the sloop was gone.
I sat with my legs dangling over the side, a machine gun in my lap, and watched parrots flutter in a tangle of wild orchids. A big lizard came to the bank and eyed me, decided he didn’t think much of me, and went slithering off.
The drums started. Somewhere to the south and east, a deep vibrating basso, a nervous and irregular dum-dum-dum? dum. After five minutes or so the first drum stopped and another one picked up the beat. They talked for half an hour, back and forth, then hushed abruptly.
A long green snake with yellow markings came sliding past the boat. I eyed him and made a little sound and he stopped and arched his head to peer at me.
“The natives are restless today,” I told the snake. “Beat it.”
It began to rain again. By three o’clock it was still raining, and I was as nervous as a whore in church. Where in hell was she?
At ten after three I heard the pistol shot. It sounded like the .32, a light whip of sound from not far off. I snapped the safety off the machine gun and ran for the shelter of the deckhouse. I crouched out of sight and laid the muzzle of the gun across a port ledge and waited.
Dead silence. That one shot had hushed everything in the underbrush. Not even a bird moved. I peered into the scrub growth and the wild cane and I couldn’t see a damned thing.
She whistled in Morse as we had arranged. Two shorts, two longs, two shorts. Ditty-dum-dum-ditty. Question mark. Everything okay?
I whistled back a K. Long, short, long. Dah-de-dah. Come on in.
She came out of the cane and walked toward the boat. There was an odd, tight look about her and she was carrying the .32 in her right hand. I went to meet her with the machine gun cradled across my left forearm and my finger on the trigger.