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Chapter 22
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At any other time in my life sleeping on a boat in the Bahamas would have been a dream, but the soft rolling couldn't soothe me that night. I woke up in my cramped bunk with hot pieces of horror racing through my brain, whirling patterns that made me feel like air wasn't getting into my lungs. I didn't dare close my eyes again, and I lay there frozen, gasping sometimes, watching Enzo breathe softly in the opposite bunk, until dawn. I must have drifted off because I woke up smelling bacon and coffee. My stomach turned.
All day I had a hard time keeping track of what I was doing, and Enzo could see it. He told me to relax and do my job with the tourists. I could make a dive with them if I wanted. I didn't want to. Everything about me was off kilter. I just wanted to get back home.
After dinner everybody else drifted into town. The captain told me and Enzo to follow him to his cabin. We sat side by side on the bunk while he dug into a canvas bag and brought out a small zippered bag that he handed to Enzo.
"Same routine as always," he said. "This time the numbers are twenty-five, thirty-six, twenty-two, and seventy-nine, eighteen, fifty-seven. Got it?"
Enzo repeated the numbers while I looked at him, wondering what kind of crazy measurements they were. I thought of telling the captain I didn't understand a thing and maybe they should cut me out.
"Red float this time," Blondie said.
"Got it. Piece of cake," Enzo said. He squeezed my shoulder, but hardened his eyes to give me a message. "With Ramona along nobody will give us a thought. She's so wholesome." He pinched my cheek and I tried to smile. "Hell of a good dive buddy too."
Captain Blondie lowered his eyes to my tits then down to the crotch of my bathing suit, and he licked his upper lip. Enzo ignored it.
"Uh huh," Blondie said. "Whatever you say, Enzo. Just get the job done."
I thought of flipping him a bird, but he reached back into his bag and brought out a hard leather case. I knew what it was from the shape. I could feel myself shaking when Enzo took it and weighed it in his hand. I looked at his face. He was smiling down at the gun. "All set," he said. His eyes were bright.
"We don't need that." I put my hand on Enzo's forearm and pushed it back toward the captain.
Enzo released my fingers. "Captain's orders, Mona. Just a macho thing. Never gonna use it."
I was shaking, but I straightened up. "Let's get going."
The divers were all still ashore, as Enzo had predicted. We pulled the dinghy to the stern and transferred our gear into it, along with a fuel can, extra line, lobstering gear, and spearguns for cover. It was a fifteen- foot hard boat so there was room to stow the precious packages of nightmares. Enzo gave the cord a pull. It was only a nine horsepower engine and we chugged slowly away not to draw attention. A half moon slipped in and out of the clouds and parts of the sky were specked with stars. The water was glass. Fucking perfect conditions for a night dive.
We hugged the north side of the inlet since we were running without lights. Then Enzo cut across and we headed past South Bimini toward Turtle Rocks again. It was a short way and I didn't say a word. I was shivering in the warm humid air.
When we passed the third small island, Enzo opened the square case and took out a piece of electronic equipment. "G.P.S. It's gonna take us right to our catch. I put in the lat and long and it gives us a heading."
He punched in the numbers the captain had given him. "Degrees . . . minutes . . . seconds . . . . Okay." He hit the second set. "Now all we have to do is follow the course."
The heading and a map showing our position appeared on the screen and Enzo handed me a flashlight to shine on the compass mounted under my seat. He turned the dinghy a little to follow the course. "We've only got about four miles to go. The GPS will tell us how to correct if we need to."
I wasn't excited with the electronics. I just let him do his thing while I concentrated on telling myself it was only one time and would soon be over. I looked at our pile of gear and wondered where the other piece went.
Four miles took a long time. I started to wonder if we'd missed the mark.
"What if somebody else saw the float?" I said. "It seems pretty risky."
"No. For one thing, it's like any other lobster ball. Unlikely that somebody would bother it. Besides, it was way below the surface. The line was held down by a solenoid and battery attached to a timer." He looked at his watch. "Until fifteen minutes ago."
Something about his eyes and his bone structure in the moonlight scared me.
"It's an easy rig, and these guys have a lot of practice," he said. "You can bet that float didn't pop till it was due."
I spotted the fucking thing before Enzo even told me to start looking. It was twenty yards ahead on our port side, like a round pill on a mirror. At least we didn't have to spend time searching. There were no other boats in sight. We chugged up to the float and Enzo dropped anchor. We were surrounded by flickering chartreuse lights under the surface, little sizzling rings.
"Phosphorescence," Enzo said. "The nights are magic here."
While Enzo put the GPS away, I cracked my cyalume light, fastened it onto my tank, and wrestled into my B.C. Then I helped him shrug into his vest. I asked why we couldn't just pull up the trap by the float line, like the lobster fisherman do.
"It's on a thin line. Another precaution."
"Makes sense," I said. "Let's get it up."
"Atta girl. I knew you had the spirit."
My spirit was shit, but I strapped my knife to my calf, and put on my mask and stuck the regulator into my mouth. I went backwards over the side into the cool water and headed down by the line to wait for Enzo on the bottom. It was against buddy rules. So what. Rules were fucked.
I had my light pointed ahead and saw the lobster trap growing larger beneath me. The plastic cover inside was white, not black like I'd imagined. No lobsters in there, something a hell of a lot more expensive per pound. I landed, put a little air in my vest for neutral buoyancy and perched myself on the box, one hand on the line. I checked my depth gauge. It read about fifty feet. That meant we had over an hour, plenty of time. I was past being frightened. I was angry enough at Enzo and myself to wipe out everything else.
Enzo touched down beside me and started pulling out the lift bags. He seemed to be in a hurry all of a sudden and I thought maybe the pressure was getting to him. There were four lift bags, one to hook on each corner. He handed me two and I watched while he tied it down and filled it off his regulator.
I tried to do the same. It was a clumsy job, holding the light and your breath and fixing the bag at the same time. Enzo was working at top speed and had two attached before my first one was filled. When we got the three on, the trap lifted from the bottom and with the fourth it began to rise. We each took a side and finned up guiding the box between us. It was an easy swim. I shined my light on the trap to see how it was doing, then on Enzo. He wasn't wearing any trunks. He had a hard on that could have conducted a symphony. He knew I was looking. I heard him laugh through his regulator.
It gave me the creeps, how invulnerable he seemed. I looked to both sides as if somebody were watching. I thought about the easy meal he'd make, his perfect plump bait. He went to work in the ghostly green glow of the cyalume over his shoulder, releasing air a little at a time with the dump valves on the lift bags so the trap would continue to rise slowly as it got shallow.
We broke the surface and Enzo left the box hovering just below it. I filled my vest and held onto a corner. Enzo was at my ear.
"Stay low. Keep quiet. There's a boat--I think it's Bahamians fishing--a few hundred yards north."
I jerked around to look behind me. I could make out a boat with two men against the lights of Bimini in the distance. I felt sparks of panic flash through my skull.
"Enzo. Christ. Are they headed this way?"
"No. They're just drifting. I don't think they can see us, but if we splash around pulling that cage out of the water, they're sure to."
"What if they do? Huh? What do we say?" I caught some water in my throat on the last word and started to cough. I put my hand against my mouth and choked and panicked and choked some more. When I finally stopped I saw Enzo staring behind me in the direction of the boat. He dropped his weight belt and unhooked his vest. The vest floated away past me as he finned hard and lurched over the side into the dinghy. I saw his white cheeks go over.
I waited with the trap, not knowing what I was supposed to do and not daring to call out. I heard the clunk of the anchor inside the hull. The engine rumbled.
Enzo never said a word. I pushed off the side and the engine sputtered uncomfortably close to my feet as he turned. Then he was gone.
There I was hanging onto a crate of something illegal in the middle of the Atlantic. The only sign of land was a glow in the distance. The water was warm and smooth as glass. I could float until daylight. But what then? All I could think was that Enzo had left me there to be arrested-- or shot. He had a gun. All these drug people probably had guns. If it wasn't the police, it could be anybody wanting to make a quick million or so. I had no idea how much the stuff was worth, but much more than my life, no doubt. Enzo knew the stakes and he'd made his choice.
I started to feel scattered, look around the blackness for sharks. Think about Charlie, Dennis, Gary. What would they hear happened to me? I was paying the price for taking my chances. What was I after? It was hard to remember. Freedom, adventure, control over my life--I'd fallen short of getting those. Something else had sneaked in and taken over my mind.
It was a crazy thing to be thinking, clinging to an
island of dope in the middle of the ocean at midnight, but finally the meaning of love
became clear to me--take or be taken, use or be used. Any variation was only by degree.
There was no possible equality of feelings. The loved one had all the advantages. Enzo,
the bastard--he goddamn fucking-well knew it.
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Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1852426284
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Copyright © 1999 Vicki Hendricks. All rights reserved.