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Hispaniola, April: The largest island of the Caribbean has a record of woe The rugged land re history of strife and sorrow Rule by colonial aristocrats, despots, corporations, or military dictatorships made no difference to the impoverished inhabitants The new boss, as the twentieth-century song said, was e of the Kurians across their green island made the rest of their unhappy past a mere warm-up for the horrors to coateways of the Kur&039;s invasion shrank the populace from the millions to the thousands When the Kurians arrived, their Reapers hunted down the Hispaniolans in even the es on their way north, south, and west The few slaughter-shocked inhabitants of the island remember these years in oral tradition as "La Fiesta de Diablos"
The beauty of the island stands in contrast to the ugliness of its history Royal pal under a carpet of leafy vines Nature left to itself covered the eroded scars left by charcoal gatherers in a dozen years Cackling colonies of birds flit from enormous palm to enormous palm over an ocean of lesser trees and creepers Gulls and sandpipers congregate on e boats Further inland, wild dogs and pigs hunt and root through new and thriving forests
What civilization there is exists on the east side of the island, where the Kurian faray ziggurat of the Coluhthouse A few coastal co tribute to the Dark Lords in the east Their combined Reapers hunt farther inland, or land here and there along the coast in search of auras Perhaps soo Kurians, for they are some of the feho venture into the sea in ships in their predatory wanderings along Hispaniola &039;s long coastline The appearance of the Kurian "Drakkar" sends whole towns fleeing into the mountains
It was not a bad stor hurricane season The spring stor the channel in between Hispaniola and Cuba made up in bluster for what it lacked in size
Valentine watched Captain Carrasca on the Thunderbolt&039;s bridge A knotted rope and a stick, in a curious mix of hairstyle and seamanship, restricted her thick hair to the back of her head She stood next to the wheel, bending first one knee and then the other as she rolled with the ship&039;sthe storaps in the crew filled with the coood deal about the islands of the Caribbean: cays and atolls where soer islands such as Cuba and Cozumel, which fed the appetite of the Kurians She kneinds and weather, currents and courses, radio procedure and sail setting; she spoke of them as easily as Valentine could describe his old platoons in the Wolves
"How&039;s the rudder?" she asked the steers fine She&039;s a heavy ship All that steel in this old ice-shover Wouldn&039;t care to ride this out in the Guideon We&039;d have to heave-to"
"She&039;s working We&039;re shipping more water than I&039;d like The sea hasn&039;t worked up much-I&039;d put it at three meters"
"Four son of the coast?" Valentine asked, trying to pierce the rain-filled darkness forward
"By dead reckoning, it&039;s there," Carrasca answered "I don&039;t dare get much closer The best harbors are on the other side of the island, and we can&039;t use them"
Cool and professional The warht on the balcony where she adame of you-show-me-yours-and-I&039;ll-show-you-mine Now she just watched hih checking the professional wall between them for cracks
"Your ships don&039;t land here?"
"Nothing worth landing for, except fresh water or firewood We hit richer lands Now Cuba, there&039;s good hunting there, especially on the north coast and in the stretch between it and the Florida peninsula"
"My work is on Hispaniola-the Haiti side"
"Ill get you there Nothing&039;s going to happen until this blows itself out, Valentine"
"I&039;ll try and sleep Have me woken if this clears, please"
Valentine descended fro past a mix of the Thunderbolt&039;s old crew and new shipmates from Jamaica He went to his cabin, formerly shared with Post, who now lay almost recovered in sick bay, thanks to the skilled teaed hospital ship Sea air and sun were speeding his recovery, but the former Coastal Marine was still not up and around for more than a few hours a day
Ahn-Kha was on the cabin floor The quarters smelled of Ahn-Kha&039;s horsey odor and vo abandoned ship when the storm started
"My David, take out your pistol and put an end to roaned He lay on his stoered hands clasped over his pointed ears
"Carrasca says it won&039;t last long, old horse," Valentine replied The h he longed for surcease of the endless sounds of rain, wind, and the ship groaning in the weather
"It&039;s a new hell each hour"
"What&039;s that?" Valentine asked, dropping into his bunk
"My peoplesay there are four hells The theosophists need to add one more, the Hell of Motion"
Valentine placed his boots on the floor, tucked the decided to bring up another ten gallons of digestiveelse "They left out a hell?"
Ahn-Kha lay silent, as if gathering his words and putting thelish "The Golden Ones believe that youParadise There is a Hell of Hunger and Thirst, a Hell of Pain, a Hell of Illness, and a Hell of Loneliness If you suffer deeply of these in your life, you are spared them after death, and reach Paradise thatto reach Heaven"
"By our creed, &039;Only through suffering do you grow a soul capable of understanding others, and appreciating the&039;-what is it-the word for grace of gods?"
Valentine thought for a moment "Beatitude?"
"I ain I&039;ve never heard it English has too h for others You take too long in the telling Your words can never match the music of our proverb-verse"
"I&039;ll work through a King Jae your opinion"
"Arrgh Those tracts, roup of nomad pfump-raisers One of your theosophists tried to instill intasted only the bitter surface of the Hell of Loneliness and Hell of Pain in the tiained by affir the divinity of soht there was more to it than that, my friend"
"My David, if you wish to learn the true path to Paradise, you must read of the Golden Ones&039; Rhapsodies Then you will be steeled to torments that must be overcome before a joyful afterlife"
" &039;There are four and fifty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of theht,&039;" Valentine quoted
"Then what is your opinion of your gods?"
"God? You ht you had two or three"
"Depends who you talk to," Valentine said, sinking into his bunk On his back, the ship&039;s motion seemed to tilt him headdown first, then feetdown
"I don&039;t reod Bub"
"Bud It&039;s froeant from Zulu Company used to tell"
"Old stories are the best ones The bad ones die young Tell me about Bud"
Valentine sifted his eant&039;s name was Patel He was built almost as broad as you, a helluva wrestler, too, and he always fought clean unless sooes But back to the story, before he was in the Wolves, he fought with the regulars, the Guards-"
"Yes, I&039;ve seen theuns, better uniforht when it comes to it I think when Patel ith &039;e Especially where he was He said it started while he atching the ground south of Saint Louis For a while there, it was trench warfare: theto blast them out of these hills with artillery Got so there wasn&039;t a tree standing, but the Guards just kept digging and digging They&039;d build little caves of ith tons of dirt overhead-they were called &039;dugouts&039; Anyway
he was young, and he had this real nervous NCO running the dugout these twenty s-sorry, old horse-the da these rockets they were launching off of railroad rails, and they had enough of a bang in theout
"When those babies landed, Patel said it felt like soain The concussion outside was enough to stop your heart Well, this corporal starts to lose it-they&039;re in there and it&039;s dark and cold and ith the noise and sh, it seeet blown to hell
"&039;Get friendly with God!&039; this corporal starts shouting &039;The tiotta know God and be on a first-nauys!&039;
"Of course, some of the ot a joker or tho thinks a nervous breakdown is entertain him
" &039;Praise Jesus!&039; one hollers, trying to egg hi about God, not Jesus!&039; the corporal says He keeps looking at the ceiling of the dugout &039;Know him Love him&039;
" &039;Okay, what&039;s God&039;s name, then?&039;
"The corporal doesn&039;t even think about it-he says Bud right away Soo
"&039;Bud is my shepherd, I shall not want,&039; one starts to say They startstuff like &039;Praise Bud!&039; and &039;Bud, bless this stewed rat, which I&039;ain&039;"
"Skip the food part," Ahn-Kha groaned
"Well, after a couple minutes of humor like that, some old soldier yells, &039;Shut your Bud-damned mouths, for Bud&039;s frickin&039; sake&039;
"The corporal loses it, says he&039;s not going to stay in there with a bunch of blaspheout with the shells and rockets still landing all over the hills Patel thinks the corp is going to get killed, and so he goes out after him Patel catches up to hiround in the trench, when one of those rail-rockets lands right on the dugout Kills every man in there, either the blast or suffocation did them in Patel and a bunch of others, even the corporal, tried to dig out the shelter to rescue theh, so at the ones who suffocated and saying &039;Bud&039;s s like that
"Patel and this corporal get out of the trenches and are posted with a new unit in western Missouri in the bushwhack ground This corporal seeh most of the time, but now and then he points out the color blue and says &039;the Hand of Bud,&039; or so like that One day they&039;re on patrol on a footpath and he just freezes, with his head cocked like a dog listening to a whistle He says that &039;Bud&039;s whispering in ht he was taking a leak without bothering to use his fly, and go right into a tripwire that fires this harpoon through two men Patel said he started to think that old expression about God looking out for drunks, children, and idiots ht be true
"After that, this corporal turned into the kind of NCO that stays behind to watch over the sick and the supplies Until this one day, there&039;s a beautiful blue sky So he decides to climb a tree and look at Bud&039;s handiwork He falls asleep up there, no one knohere he is, they figure this time he&039;s really flipped and run off into the woods They don&039;t even bother looking for him Which is too bad, because if they had been dispersed, these three Reapers passing through the area wouldn&039;t have caught all that lifesign in the camp They went in and killed everyone but the corporal,to Bud, he didn&039;t put out n than a cuckoo clock After that, the corporal
pulled kitchen duty at an infantry training school by Mountain Ho so the Reapers, he ht up to the bastards, and ended up in Zulu Co is, every now and then in a tight situation, I&039;d catch Patel saying, &039;Bud helplike that I don&039;t think he really believed it, but Patel wasn&039;t taking any chances"
The storht Valentine arose and dressed around the slu Ahn-Kha He checked Post, who slept with his faable Carrasca still stood on the bridge She looked as fresh and alert as when Valentine had last seen her, rocking with the storm
"That&039;s Haiti, Valentine, dead ahead"
Valentine stepped out onto the wing of the bridge So loorew, he could reen
"Why the white knuckles?" Carrasca asked, joining him in the open air
Her words weren&039;t in the cool captain&039;s voice with its self-assured intonation They tickled his ear like a playful finger
Valentine looked down at the decorative wood top to the rail where his hands gripped the painted h "For over a year, I&039;ve been trying to get here in the right kind of ship"
"Worth it, I hope The co a rumor Said it reminded him of the years after the Kurians first ca for remnants of the old society"
"That&039;s whatwhen he ran into a Lifeweaver This chase is so the Lifeweavers put me on"
She put binoculars to her eyes and searched the coast ahead "Howon that island the Cause needs"
She frowned "The Cause You sound like Hawthorne of the hasty retreat"
Valentine involuntarily stiffened Now a row of ghostly bodies lay between them, friends Valentine had lost, talents the world had lost, in the sake of "the Cause"
"I&039; away "You&039;ve proved yourself to Jamaica"
"But not to you?" Valentine asked
"It&039;s the saht have said those exact words Jensen and Carrasca had proved the hi themselves to him He took his hands from the rail and rubbed life back into them
Carrasca broke the silence: "Why is it nobody&039;s thought to go get this whatever-it-is until now?"
"We didn&039;t knoas there It was put there hundreds of years ago by a Lifeweaver He lived in secret auessed what the Kurians were planning, but he only knew about the one door He and his people were ready for as co happened, they were betrayed, and I don&039;t think anyone survived One of the followers kept a journal of sos, but in it was a section about this weapon against them
"Like a lot of places, there&039;s a resistance against the Kurians These Haitians are fighting without really knohat they&039;re fighting They just know it&039;s evil, and they&039;re doing what they can to protect their own people They found a cache of weapons in a cave, along with this diary They ot passed to us I never knew about it-I just got orders to join up with the Quislings on the Gulf Coast with fake papers and background I think they chose me because I speak a little Span-
ish and French My mother was from the French part of Canada, and I was raised by a priest froot into the Coastal Marines and ht kind of ship to bring it back It&039;s a year I wouldn&039;t care to repeat Now it&039;s like life in the Ozarks is so out of my childhood"
"Is there snow there?"
"Soh to be snowcapped year-round Why?"
"There&039;s a story the people here tell They think if you go somewhere there&039;s snow all the tiet you It&039;s all mixed up with stories about Christmas now, that there&039;s this place everyone is safe fro"
Valentine watched a frigate bird float above, drifting on the air currents with only the tiniest alterations to its wing
"If only I grew up alets colder in the winter than you can probably iine, and the Reapers still made it up there They don&039;t coo much farther north from there, and the land can&039;t support h to eat And the old-tier and hotter, but soed it There&039;s no safe place, or if there is, they&039;re keeping it to themselves"
She nodded "Cape Haitian is ahead What is the plan?"
"The plan is to sail into the port as bold as if we have the proverbial balls of the brass et in touch with me He&039;s on the lookout for a ship from the north Not sure what happens after that Maybe we pull out and land soets us in touch with the resistance They load us up, and back we go"
"Will it be that easy?"
Valentine found a smile "Somehow I doubt it"
The Thunderbolt rounded Cape Haitian and turned her prow to the town, a cluster of white and gray snuggled into a stretch of flat land withbehind The vivid colors of the Caribbean struck Valentine once more: deep blues of the ocean; brilliant blues and whites above; and behind stretches of white sand a green so lush, it hypnotized
Fishing boats, hardly entle swell Tall, lean black ain If they noticed the Thunderbolt, they showed no sign of it As the ship approached, Valentine observed that the fishery loincloths Wiry listened under the sun
A boat with four oars approach scattered seabirds bobbing on the calm surface of the bay
"Dead slow," Carrasca called into the bridge
"Dead slow, aye aye," the junior officer there answered
The bulky ship coasted to a crawl The ser vessel&039;s entry Atruht he heard
"What did he say?"
"What ship is that?" Valentine translated
"I thought they spoke Spanish here"
"Creole French,in Spanish, too"
Valentine inflated his lungs "Thunderbolt, New Orleans May we anchor here tonight? We will buy food," he bellowed, hoping his French would be understood
"What do you do here?"
"We chase pirates Have any sailing ships passed?"
"No, not close Not since before the last hurricane season"
"May we drop anchor?"
Thetruain "For now Our officer will come Do not lower your boat until then"
"Thank you!" Valentine yelled back
The saht out the "officer" Valentine watched him make the transition to the Thunder-holt with a fair a, though with gold buttons and a brilliant scarlet sash beneath his pistol belt
Valentine went to greet him
"Monsieur speaks French?" thecheekbones, a pointed chin, knifelike nose, wide eyes, and handsome in a sensual, full-lipped way Unlike most of the Hispaniolans Valentine had observed in the boats, who either had a full beard or were clean-shaved, he wore a mustache
"And some Spanish," Valentine said, then realized, as visitor, it would be best if he began the introductions "My captain is more comfortable in Spanish I am Lieutenant Rowan, of the Coastal Marines," Valentine said, turning to introduce Carrasca She wore a combination of her own Jamaican attire and a coat liberated from Captain Saunders&039;s chest
"Si, bueno Muy encantado," he agreed, then touched his chest "El Capitaen Boul"
"1 understand you wish to make use of our market?" Boul asked, seated in the captain&039;s cabin Even with a table fan blowing, the air settled wet and thick on the three people gathered in the small space "We have only a few liters of diesel oil, I am sorry to say"
"My captain has ample fuel, but some fresh food and, of course, water would be old"
"Ours is a poor ot around that you wished to buy, the people
would bring in chickens, eggs, pigs, fresh fruit, and vegetables It would take only a day or two more, and your ship would be fully provisioned"
Carrasca exchanged a look with Valentine and shook her head
"Ia lead even now"
"In our mutual interest, I will ask the fishermen as they come in They see ships, especially in the waters between here and Cuba"
"If you hear any news between now and e leave toed A few hours are all we need to replenish our fresh water supply"
Boul put up his hands placatingly "My friends, if you choose to stay, I can guarantee eous terms for your barter in the old But tools, trinkets, even pencils and paper will get you ood food"
Valentine leaned forward in his chair "Captain, do you have some special reason to have us stay here?"
Boul druers on the table, but stopped as soon as he looked down and realized what he was doing "I will lay h we pay tribute to the cursed ones on the other side of the island, we still suffer their torments Even now one of their Drakkar, a wooden vessel known as the Sharkftn, approaches On it are the Drinkers of Death, the robed ones who come in the dark A ship such as yours in the harbor will un-it would blow the Sharkftn into kindling Our market is poor because even at the ruon-ships, my people fly to the mountains"
"We can&039;t stay here forever," Valentine said "And e to destroy the Sharkfin, New Orleans would hear about it, and it would be trouble for us"
"But you may save us this season This would not hurt your patrol, perhaps three days here And I dothe fishermen You may buy what you will, and each day you stay your men will feast on what ood rum, vodka even from potatoes"
Carrasca nodded "So be it We shall stay a few days We&039;ll anchor so our gun can cover the sea And your town, in case of treachery, Captain Boul"
"Thank you, Captain You are helpingit, do not fear treachery"
Valentine escorted Boul off the Thunderbolt and asked about springs flowing into town Boul pointed out a beach and assured Valentine the water was good there Nevertheless, Valentine made a mental note to remind the party about the water-purification tablets He returned to the captain&039;s cabin, knocked, and entered They sat down and talked about the watering and market party
"Fresh food and time We lucked out," she said once they&039;d decided which men would do what
"Unless this Sharkfin shows up Much as it would be nice to blow it into flotsam, our cover story would suffer Even worse, one of your own ships could sail in"
"Doubtful, nothing on this side of the island worth going after," she said
"Well, with your permission, tomorrow I&039;ll take a few men into town and have a look around All I need to do is make it easy for this man to find me"
He stood up, as did she As he turned sideways to get past her to go out the door, their chests touched She glanced up into his eyes and then away, as if afraid of what sheparty left under the supervision of one of Carrasca&039;s petty officers They used the Thunderbolt&039;s two boats, the sallon barrels It wasn&039;t the most efficient way to water the ship, which had been a
Ja to do and added a touch of realism to the story
Under further instructions fro torn fro boat So; then they towed the target out beyond the surf for gunnery practice Carrasca reater than that to the town, and she had her et, to iun worked and they had shells to spare She still didn&039;t trust anyone on Hispaniola, no matter what promises came from below a handsoun began to fire The healing lieutenant startled at the sound
"Just gunnery training I told you, remember?"
Post was red-faced "Sorry, Val" He raised his arht not be healed yet, but the shoulder&039;s working great Hardly a twinge" He flapped an elbow and smothered a wince
Valentine went to the market the next day Much of the town looked to be in rubble, victim to wave and war, stor was gaily painted: blue-tris, and elaborate designs like a child&039;s drawing of s andsills The widest street in Cape Haitian was croith straw-hatted food vendors, selling produce out of wooden carts Valentine and his ars and hustlers, except Captain Boul sent a set of navy-uniforunmen to act as escorts and intermediaries in the market Which was just as well, because the Creole dialect of the streets was beyond Valentine&039;s French The acting-purser simen passed out what looked like beaded ribbons to the people in the s, and even women tempted a few of the sailors, but Valentine and the petty officer kept the the cart
"Hey Lieutenant, you want a good drink?" soot some wine I have friends up North, and I knohat you like, what you want"
Valentine spotted theto him from the crowd, a dark bottle in his hand
"Don&039;t buy anything froeant of the escort said in a mixture of French and Spanish "There&039;s better wine to be found Off, Dog-boy, or you&039;ll be sorry"
He looked like a s The er eyes implored him across the sea of straw hats in the ain "Have a taste-you&039;ll want more"
Valentine reached for the bottle, and one of the guards rewarded Dog-boy with a crack across the wrist with a baton It dropped, but Valentine&039;s reflexes saved it fro to the cobblestones
"You don&039;t want his piss, sailor sir"
Valentine sniffed the openclinking against the glass within Dog-boy had disappeared into the crowd
"Maybe I don&039;t I&039;ve got a drain that needs unclogging on board-I&039;ll use it on that"
Valentine kept the bottle in his hand for the re it as a pointer The purser and his men hauled their acquisitions back to the dock, yet another set of round trips were ahead for the s hungrily eyeing the supplies coside, he took his bottle down to the cabin and emptied it down the drain Whatever ithin refused to coainst the steel sink A wooden tube, lacquered and stoppered, had been stuck inside He examined it for a moment, then pulled out the cork, and extracted a rolled-up note from the tube:
To officer with black hair and scar-
I will coht
I will swim to the anchor chain
Must keep clear of soldiers in boats
-Victo
Valentine read the note twice, then got Ahn-Kha and took it up to Carrasca
"Is he telling us there is danger from soldiers in boats? Or that he has to swim clear of them?" Ahn-Kha asked, after the note had been passed around in the cabin
"The Oerlikon could sink any number of boats," Carrasca said "I&039;ve looked around the harbor They have a lot of those canoe fishing boats I suppose they could put a couple hundred ot halfway here But we e, farther out"
Valentine shook his head "He&039;ll have a tough enough swim as it is Let&039;s wait until he&039;s on board"
There was a rap at the door, and a teenager entered "Captain, one of those rowboats dropped off a letter," he reported
"Thank you, Lloyd," Carrasca said, opening it
"Today is a day for notes," Ahn-Kha observed
She handed it to Valentine "An invitation to a dinner and beach party in our honor toht HoweverI smell a rat with a nice mustache"
"We&039;llthe day," Valentine said "A radioas this Victo is on board, we can take our leave of El Capitaen Boul"
"You think he es?" Carrasca asked "Why didn&039;t he do it today? There must have been ten or twelve men on shore at various tiiven hiain with"
"He could be waiting for orders"
"Huevos The man&039;s a sche the corner of her own "Heus false, but it&039;s to his own purposes"
"I&039;s and what&039;s left of uns ready tonight"
"They&039;ll be h There&039;s an old tradition at sea to give your ood feed before action" Her expression softened into that of the wo with in Jamaica "Would you care to have dinner with me in the cabin?"
"Far be it from me to break with tradition," Valentine said
The food tasted better in the cooler night air Valentine put on a plain white shirt with his best pair of pants fresh frohtly up the stairs to Carrasca&039;s cabin Askin, her only lieutenant, answered the door A handso Jamaican with hair cropped so short it made Valentine think of peach fuzz, Askin was dressed in a trim black uniform decorated with a heavy silver whistle on a thick chain A linen covering added a formal note to the table in the wardroom The Thunderbolt&039;s, best plates and cutlery lay upon it
"We really should have asked Post, as well," Carrasca said She wore the same blue uniform Valentine reh now it bore an epaulette on the right shoulder
"He&039;s only just started walking," Valentine reported
"The Chief doesn&039;t care for formal meals, and Ahn-Kha-"
"Just wouldn&039;t fit in," Valentine finished "I don&039;t mean with us, but in this cabin"
"It would be a bit like having a horse in here for dinner," Carrasca laughed She sat, and thedishes "Askin, you did wonders with the birds"
"A sugar glaze from the beets on this island," the lieutenant explained His diction held only a hint of Calypso
She took another cover off "The bean-and-rice dish is oat-milk butter, and a fruit platter"
Valentine took a bite of a buttery crab cake, feeling guilty that he hadn&039;t brought anything He turned to Askin "The captain tells me you&039;ve landed here before"
"Farther along the north coast, near the Sa soh the surf to escape us It took us forever to take off the cargo So must have scared so back"
"Did they say what it was?" Valentine asked
"I think they got a look at one of the ar plantations-they&039;re hell on earth Hispaniola is the worst island in the Carib"
"The Kurians have a knack for doing that"
"That old Specter by Kingston, he was a saint coo They don&039;t even try to keep their people alive"
Unspoken agreement turned the three to their dishes, further conversation ht spoil their appetites Valentine had seen his share of cruelty in his years facing Kur, and worse, recently participated in it as part of his assumed role as a Coastal Marine
The lass of wine chilled into sangria There were no toasts this tireen bananas out with hiets dark, even though we&039;re at anchor," Carrasca explained "I told hiht I warned the watch to keep an eye open for our swimmer Noait, David"
Valentine sipped at his sangria, enjoying the sound of his name from her lips "I have no complaints I&039;m left alone with a beautiful woainst her dusky skin "Captain Valentine, I&039;m shocked A breach of etiquette But for God&039;s sake, don&039;t stop"
Valentine&039;s innards warmed to the wine and the spark in her eyes "I haven&039;t had a wo time, Malia When all this is over, e can both relax and take off our respective hats, so to speak, I&039;d like to spend some time with you You&039;re someone I can talk to"
"So that&039;s what you&039;d do with , in-depth conversations Late into the night"
"Really, David?" she asked "How long has it been since your last good conversation with a woman?"
"Over a year In New Orleans I was tempted to pay a woman to talk to me, but I resisted"
"It&039;s better to wait for a decent conversationalist," she agreed
"Yes"
"I&039;d like to talk to you, too I&039;m sure you&039;d enjoy it Woreat conversational partners You&039;d be amazed at how many different topics I&039;m familiar with"
"I&039; her fe cabin
"It&039;s a sha about it, I&039;ve been lacking in decent conversation myself The only problem is, we&039;re bothanything else"
"Maybe if hispered-"
"I tend to shout at the top of s, when I&039;m really interested in the subject"
Valentine laughed "We couldn&039;t have that"
Carrasca bit her lower lip "You speak French Perhaps we could have a short-"
The ship&039;s Klaxon went off They froze At the second screa blast of the alare, just a few steps away
Carrasca killed the Klaxon and picked up the ship&039;s squawk-mic "Battle stations, battle stations" Aspin spoke to the engine roo for maximum revolutions
Valentine stepped aside forto their stations He looked to the shoreline froreat bonfires lit up the beach outside Cape Haitian Wide fishing boats with double-banked oars approached like giant water beetles, h the air or tinged harainst the steel sides of the ship
Why would they approach with the bonfires behind the them perfect silhouettes for
He went to the opposite side of the bridge, heart in his throat, and searched the darkness The stars went right to the horizon in the clear tropical night No ship sailed out there; thatorders for the anchor cable to be cut Valentine went to a searchlight and threw the switch He began a sloeep of the seaward approaches of the harbor, the searchlight&039;s electric buzz filling his ears
He probed the darkness with a knife of light The bea like a sea ht flashed, and a shell howled as it landed just in front of the ship Water fountained into the air But the cannon&039;s flash told him what hunted the Thunderbolt from the sea
It was not Boul&039;s wooden Drakkar, but a submarine! The commodore had mentioned some old diesel ships in the hands of the Haitian Kur It had a low profile like so from the Second World War He hardened his ears in that direction even as the second shell approached and picked out the sound of churning engines
He grudgingly congratulated Boul for a clever poker gaht stayed frozen in his mind as the second
shell hit forward, beneath hi he are of was a diseoing to hold you up anymore, his mother said You&039;ll have to swihtly slio Fear He kicked hard and spun his arms like wheels until he broke the surface and felt air on his face again The panic changed to triu, Mom! By myself! Look! he sputtered
His mother&039;s bronze face split into a slossy black hair You &039;re a regular motorboat
David Valentine spat out a mouthful of Caribbean as he came to his senses, disoriented Distant andin his brain
He bobbed in the ocean, the waves adding to his sensation of drunkenness Woolly-brained, he watched the Thunderbolt cut her cable and get under way Someone had the presence of mind to turn the Oerlikon fro ship Red tracers crossed overhead, seeking the exposed figures on the bridge of the submarine The deadly fireworks played across the deck of the sub tower&039;s ain, and its shell detonated in the wake of the now-et The Oerlikon&039;s tracers shifted, and this tih the thin shield of the submarine&039;s cannon The thirty-un&039;s crew from the deck in a series of whipcrack explosions
Valentine noted, rather dully, the Thunderbolt turning to escape the harbor-leaving hiun fire; the bullets scrabbled against the respective port sides of the two ships The ineffectual fire re with their oversize fighting claws, both too well arrabbed him by the shirt and hauled him into a boat He looked around at ain the night A few pointed their guns at his down, you fools," Valentine barked in French "I&039;ht of the Thunderbolt&039;s churning wake as she escaped the harbor
They landed and trooped up the beach and past the wounded Haitians The soldiers&039; screams and lamentations struck Valentine as surreal, with soft sand beneath his feet and a breeze licking his skin as though he were just back from a pleasure swim A few of the women fro only for the faces known to the others
The soldiers estures rather than the blows he expected, especially after the brief, intense fight They escorted hi off the market square, a cinder-block three-tiered structure with a collonade and a few friezes that re cake he&039;d once seen back in New Orleans They brought him into the basement by way of an exterior stairway and un slit A navy-uniformed warden led him to a cell Its ten-by-ten concrete floor supported no furniture, and only a drain hole and dirty ring on the floor around it hinted that there had once been plu fixtures
Cockroaches scuttled for the corners at their entry What light there was cah the face-sizein the door, where tiny shards of reinforced glass and wire still stood in the broken pane like the teeth circling a la cell, wet and unco him weaponless, they took only his belt
He waited what he thought to be an hour or so, and a falass It widened in surprise
"My God! So it&039;s true-the bargainer himself," Boul exclaimed in French
"That sounds like the man who told me not to fear treachery"
A melodious chuckle came from the hall "I knohich side of the bread my butter rests on, my friend Or in this case, on which side of this door I wish to be standing"