I helped him aboard, hoping he wouldn’t make too much noise, and he was about as silent as the situation permitted. While he stripped off his flippers, I rose to a crouch and chanced a look through the open door into the boat’s pilothouse. No one was visible, so I crept inside, and then froze.
Two figures were visible, and though I hadn’t met either one I recognized them from photographs that my uncle Iago had made me memorize. They were both members of Fidel Perugachi’s band, the bass player and the bombo player to be exact. It appeared that Perugachi had brought his whole rhythm section. One crouched in a wet suit on the after deck, working with some cylinders and a B.C., readying the outfit for a dive. Every few seconds he’d glance aft, to make certain that bubbles were still rising from our decoy cylinder. The other Ayanca, in shorts, baseball cap, and a Pokari Sweat T-shirt he must have stolen from the wreck, stood forward of the pilothouse by the port rail, watching whatever was going on in the launch.
A pistol was stuck casually into his shorts at the small of his back, and I recognized the distinctive toggle of a German Luger. The century-old Luger had been the standard sidearm of the P.R.C. police until recently, and when it was replaced by another weapon, the thrifty Chinese had sold tens of thousands of Lugers all at once. Perugachi must have picked up this one in the Hong Kong or Macau black market.
At least Fidel Perugachi hadn’t been able to bring his own weaponry into China with him, and this gave me hope that his resources were fairly limited.
If I attacked the man with the Luger, it would be in full view of everyone on the launch; whereas the bombo player in the stern was crouched down out of sight. I gestured for Sztephen to be quiet, then slipped further into the cabin in search of a weapon. I suppose I could have slit the drummer’s throat with my little knife, but that seemed drastic, and I hated to set that kind of precedent unless I needed to.
I was considering one of the five-pound lead divers’ weights when I noticed that the drummer had his tool box open. Two crouching steps took me to the box, where I found a large wrench laid out neatly in its own compartment. Another two steps took me to the bombo player, who I promptly whanged behind the ear.
I probably hit him much harder than I intended to, as he only began to wake a couple hours later. Blame an excess of adrenaline if you will.
After checking my victim to see if he was still alive, I slipped to the rear corner of the boat, where a line had been tied holding the catamaran to the launch. I slipped the line off the cleat, then moved forward again, back to the pilothouse, where I had a quick whispered conversation with Sztephen about whether he felt he could steer the boat. He gave a quick scan of the instrument board and said that he could. The engines were idling, and all he had to do was put them in gear and shove the throttles forward.
As we hadn’t heard any shouts or complaints that we were drifting away from the launch, I surmised that there was another mooring line, and that this one was forward and under the supervision of the bass player.
I told Sztephen to shove the throttles forward when I yelled, then slipped out of the pilothouse on the port side, the side away from the launch. I intended to use the pilothouse for cover on the approach, come up behind the bass player, then pull his own pistol and stick it in his back. If Perugachi’s crew saw me at that point it wouldn’t matter, as I’d have a ready-made hostage.
It didn’t work out that way. I crept around the pilothouse and approached my target, using as cover a big galvanized storage compartment. I looked around the corner of the compartment and saw the bass player a few paces away. His back was to me, and he was chatting in Aymara with a man in the launch.
My heart gave a sudden thud against my ribs as I realized that this second man was Fidel Perugachi himself, and then another great knock as I saw Perugachi’s heavy-lidded demonic eyes drop from his bass player to look straight at me. I suddenly realized how hot it was inside my wet suit, and how odd that was considering it was still full of seawater.
Before the loathsome offspring of the Ayanca moiety could cry a warning, I crossed the deck in three strides and kicked the bass player with both feet in the small of the back. This catapulted him over the safety line and- he most satisfying part- on top of Perugachi himself. Then, yelling demented abuse at the Ayancas in our native language, I sprawled forward on the deck to reach for the remaining mooring line.
“Allu!” I yelled. “Umata urqu!”
Taking my invective as his cue, Sztephen threw the catamaran into gear and shoved the throttles forward. Impellers screamed, jets boiled, and the craft lunged into the next wave, taking the launch with it.
This was fortunate, as it turns out, because the Ayancas were in the process of organizing a response just as the sudden acceleration jerked them off their feet. I untied the mooring line and let it fly through the chrome-plated cleat and off the boat.
Luger bullets flew wild as the launch, checked by its anchor, came to an abrupt halt astern, and everyone on the boat took another tumble.
I rose and shook a fist. “Jallpi amp;nTilde;a chinqi, you lunthata llujchi!” I shouted.
It was only then that I noticed the dive boat had another passenger. Leila was crouched in the shadow of the pilothouse, where I hadn’t been able to see her, and was looking in alarm at the Ayancas, all of whose arms were suddenly waving weapons.
I got to my feet and ran to the pilothouse, where Sztephen was crouched down in cover, steering the boat with a wild expression on his face.
“Good work,” I said and took the controls.
Fidel Perugachi still had the launch, which had a powerful motor and could quite possibly outspeed the heavily laden catamaran once they got the anchor up.
I swung the boat into a wide circle, aimed straight at the launch, and let the boat build speed. There was a fusillade of shots from the Ayancas- I had to wonder what possible good they thought it would do- and then the white splashes of five bronzed Apollos making perfect entries into the water. The Ayancas stared at the twin-hulled doom approaching at flank speed, and then most of them followed the Apollos.
Fidel Perugachi was made of sterner stuff. He stood on the boat’s thwart, arms folded in an attitude of defiance, glaring at me with his ferocious eyes until the catamaran thundered right over him.
Showy, flamboyant, and self-dramatizing. What did I tell you? Just like his flute-playing.
I didn’t want to cut the launch in half, so I struck it a glancing blow with the left hull, which was strong enough to roll the craft under. It came bobbing up astern- it was a tough boat, stuffed with foam to make it unsinkable and suitable for use as a lifeboat- but we lost most of our diving gear.
I slowed and began to circle. That provided me an opportunity to step out of the pilothouse and glare at Leila, who was still crouched against the pilothouse, paralyzed with shock at the bullets her erstwhile allies had been volleying in her direction. She seemed otherwise unharmed.
“Young lady,” I said, shaking a finger, “I’m very disappointed in you.” She looked up at me.
“Fidel met my price,” she said. “We needed money to start the Fabulous Femmes Water Ballet of Zuma.”
My indignation at her being on a first-name basis with Perugachi only heightened my disapproval. “You’ll get nowhere through this kind of imitation,” I said. “Look at where it got the Ayancas.”
We picked up the Apollos first, and they sat wet and bedraggled on the stern deck- I believe it was the only time in our acquaintance when at least some of them weren’t posing- and then we brought aboard the Ayancas, one by one. They hadn’t hung onto their weapons, but we patted them down just in case and tied them on the afterdeck and put them under guard of the Apollos, who soon regained their swagger.