Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

  “And you gave his cheek a pat.”

  “Did you like that?”

  “Loved it,” Xavier said. “Billy wants you on his go-fast boat when he blows up the gas ship. Wants you right there filmin it.”

  “Perfect,” Dara said. “We won’t have to rent Buster again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  UBU KALID, AN ASSISTANT at Djibouti Marine, drove Jama in a golf cart out to the pier where several trawler yachts were tied up. He said, “This first one we see is the Coaster 40. It has two staterooms and is designed for comfort and not paying too much money.”

  Jama said, “How you know I speak English?”

  “From words you use with Arabic. You say you don’t want a fucking dhow, you want a small vessel with a cabin. I think fucking is a good word you can use different ways in speech, angry, being critical, or simply to say it. Or you want to show you have surprise, you say, ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ I know French since I was a boy. My boss say I have to learn English too, for doing business with Americans.”

  “I see you wear a white shirt and a necktie,” Jama said, “dressed for business. Your glasses, good. Make sure your fingernails are always clean too.” He said, “What’s that one down there has orange trim on it?”

  “Oh, Buster 30,” Ubu said, on the pier now. “Buster is one tough little power cruiser. It has a Saab engine that will produce two thousand five hundred rpms a minute.”

  “What’s that get you,” Jama said, “ten knots?”

  “If I tell you six and a half,” Ubu said, “will you be disappointed? Two travelers were out in Buster for a month and return very happy with her.”

  “Tall black dude and a white chick name Dara? They friends of mine,” Jama said. “Told me, take her out for a shakedown, she’s all the boat you need.”

  Ubu said, “A shakedown?”

  “A trial run. See she behaves, easy to maneuver around.”

  “But you want her only one day. This is for pleasure?”

  “I’m taking my girlfriend out for a night cruise. See if we can set off some fireworks.”

  Ubu didn’t like the sound of that.

  “You mean explosions?”

  Jama said, “No, man, like in the movies. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are fuckin on the sofa and out the window you see the fireworks goin off, the same as what’s happening in the room.”

  Ubu said, “They have fireworks, Grace and Cary?”

  Ubu staring at him, trying to get it.

  “Fireworks,” Jama said, “you shoot off Roman candles, rockets that burst in the air, it’s meant to be the same as fuckin, what the two major stars are doin the same moment. Does Grace get up and go in the bathroom? You know Cary Grant ain’t wearin a slick. See, what should be the real part ain’t even real.”

  Ubu frowning now, trying hard to understand.

  Jama said, “Forget it,” and went aboard with his bag over his shoulder. He wore his kikoi in the streets, his head scarf. He had on his jeans and a cotton jacket now, visiting Djibouti Marine. He stood on Buster’s deck watching Ubu coming from the golf cart with life jackets and Jama’s cardboard box of provisions.

  Jama went below to look around. He didn’t care about any of it, the galley, the head; he’d be on the boat twenty-four hours, no more than that. Still, he kept looking. The mattress in the bow…He tried to see the two sleeping together. Couldn’t do it. Not with that high-ass nigga, that old man. She was polite, didn’t use any tone of voice on you. She’d give the old man some shit how he was her best friend, her buddy, her protector…her employee. He was pretty sure they’d cleaned the boat. He started looking in drawers. There were papers in one they’d missed, a pamphlet had her picture on it…He closed the drawer as Ubu came below wearing a yellow life jacket and the box of provisions he placed on the counter.

  He said, “You know the rental charge for Buster is four hundred dollars a day.”

  “Let’s get going. I’ll pay when we get back.”

  “You have the rental fee?”

  Jama reached in a back pocket and brought out his roll of bills. “You want your money?” He peeled off four hundred, said, “Here,” and handed the bills to Ubu.

  Ubu said, “Thank you, sir, for the fucking money,” grinning at Jama.

  THEY WERE OUT IN the Gulf of Tadjoura now, Buster chugging along. Jama said, “I want to see how close we can come to that ship.” Jama had the wheel, pointing Buster toward the LNG tanker now.

  Ubu had come in from the deck using his shirttail to wipe his glasses. He put them on and said, “No, you get close they tell you to give way, get away from the ship.”

  “You think we’re being watched?”

  “Yes, of course, from the sky. Soon a boat or a helicopter approaches you don’t turn away.”

  Jama cocked the wheel and they headed off to starboard.

  He said, “I don’t have to be too close. I phone a cell number and the ship blows up like that, boom. Becomes the biggest fire you ever saw in your Arabian life.” He saw Ubu thinking but didn’t know if he got it.

  Yeah, he did. All eyes now.

  “You going to blow up the LNG ship?”

  “And haul ass out, man, fast as this love boat’ll go.”

  “You don’t return Buster to us?”

  “If I have time.”

  “I become fired from my job.”

  Jama saw panic setting in and cut the engine. He said, “Let’s go out on deck while it’s quiet,” and pushed the young guy in his shirt and tie, his clean glasses, saying, “Go on. I’m right behind you.” Ubu stepped out of the wheelhouse and Jama came after him, taking his Walther from the bag hanging on his shoulder.

  Ubu stood on deck looking toward the LNG tanker, more than a mile to port now, Jama waiting for him to see the gun pointing at him.

  “I’m taking the boat,” Jama said, “but I don’t need a deckhand. Nothing for you to do.”

  Ubu turned as Jama began talking and now had his eyes fixed on the gun, Jama thinking he’d start pleading for his life. No, he held on, this boy learning English, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He said, “I don’t know why you want to shoot me. I don’t do nothing to you. Are you a robber? Take the boat. There is nothing the company would expect me to do about it.”

  “You’re doing good,” Jama said. “Standing up ’stead of crawling on the deck to kiss my shoes, these Adidas given to me by a buddy of mine.” He said, “You want to get off the boat, go ahead.”

  Ubu Kalid looked at the sea lying almost still in the fierce glare of the sun, and looked at Jama.

  “I don’t know how to swim.”

  “You don’t have to, you float ashore on the tide.”

  “I don’t know how to float.”

  “Lay your head back and relax your body,” Jama said. “I never told you my name, did I?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jama Raisuli.”

  “That’s what I been going by. My real name’s James Russell.”

  “Russell,” Ubu said, “that’s a good fucking name.”

  Jama pushed him over the side. He watched him fighting the water and yelled at him, “Be cool, Ubu. Take it easy.” He saw the boy looking up at him, eyes staring in his glasses, trying to calm himself now, Jama realizing, Shit, he’ll never sink wearing the life jacket. He put the Walther on the jacket, right below the kid’s face, and shot him twice.

  He’d use the boat hook to pull him alongside. Get the jacket and the four bills he’d paid him.

  HE HAD TO SHOOT him. Couldn’t let him drift off. He wanted to say something like, Don’t take this personally. You’re a witness, that’s all. It had nothing to do with the kid knowing his real name. Then why’d you tell him? He thought the kid ought to change his. Ubu. That wasn’t a name for a man spoke pretty good English. Why’d you tell him? Jama told himself. Because he knew he’d have to shoot Ubu and wanted to have a good reason. Man, everybody knew his name by now. He’d have to change it. Get it done while he was still in Djibouti, passport w
ith a different name, like Hunter. He knew of people in town forged things like that.

  Find Dara next. Settle with her.

  After. Once he blew the ship. He was here to blow it and he would. Said, You can write that down, to himself. See to Dara after. He didn’t know yet how he’d find her but he would. Right now he was heading the Buster toward that big hump of coral sticking up out of the gulf, the main Moucha, the daddy.

  HE’D BROUGHT BANANAS AND a sack of dates, a gallon jug of water, cheese, pita bread and a fresh bunch of khat he chewed to stir up scenes of Celeste loving him all over his body. He fell asleep and opened his eyes to sunlight. But by the time he’d eaten the same things for breakfast—dates, he’d never had one before he was over here—clouds were coming in low, streaks of clouds, parts of them gray. He wanted to look around, see where he was.

  Buster was tied to a branch in a cove full of mangrove on the south side of Big Moucha. He’d seen outboards along the beach, people standing in water up to their ankles. Jama pulled the dinghy off Buster and paddled through an aisle in the mangrove that took him to a strip of beach and a view of the other side: a row of cabanas on the beach, people sitting under thatched palm umbrellas, looking at the sky. He knew this Moucha was popular with scuba divers. Get in the water and mess with reef sharks and manta rays. There was a gang of dive boats, tarps shading the decks and dive platforms on the stern, the ones on deck looking down through clear water, Jama believed, at divers fucking with the fish. Now he watched a girl step off the platform and thought if he was a shark, man, he’d nip off her rack for appetizers. He could hear their voices, words coming in French and some English, now they were laughing. Jama wondered for four seconds could he make up a story and join them, How y’all doin?

  And one turns out to be a scuba-lovin cop never forgets a face from a poster.

  Best follow this beach around and look for the highest part of the island. Least thirty feet off the sea. Then go on back to Buster. Chew some khat and see if he could get Dara to show some life. He’d sleep till it started to get dark.

  What woke him up at four thirty in the afternoon, got him standing to look out past the mangrove, was the sound of a big outboard coming this way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  XAVIER REMEMBERED DONZIS FROM offshore powerboat racing. Cowes to Torquay along the south coast of England. He saw a race one time waiting on a ship. The Donzi Billy got hold of was different than the racing Donzis, this one an open-cockpit twenty-six-foot speedboat with two big Mercury outboards turning out 225 horsepower each. It reared up and flew when Billy let it out; Billy and Helene at the controls behind the high windscreen; Dara and Xavier in the bow with their camera.

  Dara felt the trip starting out like a midweek excursion. Helene brought a hamper of hotel appetizers, dozens of oysters on ice, fruit and cheese, pastries—napoleons, Billy’s favorite—Cokes and a half-dozen bottles of champagne. A snack, for the few hours they'd be on Île Moucha.

  Billy heading them out of Djibouti straight for the island’s southeast corner, Pointe Noire, the Aphrodite at anchor less than five miles from the island. Billy said, “Muff, why don’t we break out a bottle for the trip, drink a toast to our destiny.”

  Dara and Xavier gave each other a look but kept quiet.

  Once they were in sight of the island Billy said, “What you see is a big pile of coral less than two miles wide but with a weird shape to it. Picture a wolverine in profile biting a seal standing straight up, in the crotch.”

  Helene said, “A wolverine…?”

  “That’s the shape of Big Moucha I see on my map,” Billy said. “Bends around on itself with a bay taking up the center of the island.” Billy said, “Muff, let me have that one for the cockpit and open another bottle for all hands, the drinking lamp is on.” He swigged from the bottle and said, “Any green you see is mostly mangrove. Xavier, you know what those stunted trees are?”

  Xavier said, “I believe they bushes tryin to act like trees.”

  “We’re advised to bring our own water,” Billy said. “Tourists pay forty-five bucks to come out here and sit under a thatched umbrella, have a few drinks and fall asleep. They wake up and go back to Djib.” Billy raised his glasses to scope the beach. “Not many out today, or they’ve gone home. Army people come out and stay forty-eight hours.”

  Xavier said to Dara, “The man could be a tour guide.”

  “Talkative,” Dara said. “On his second bottle already.”

  THEY CIRCLED BIG MOUCHA to see what it was all about, up the east side and around north to Pointe du Scorpion, Billy reading from his map, Xavier shooting landscapes and thatched umbrellas along the beach. They passed the mouth of a bay to Plateau du Grand Signal and around to the south side of the island, not much to see but a few cabanas, until they approached a cove full of mangrove, the big Mercury outboards rumbling on low power.

  Something white caught Dara’s eye and she said, “Billy, stop,” Dara standing now in the bow, her hand on Xavier’s shoulder.

  Billy said, “You want me to come about?”

  “I swear I just saw the Buster,” Dara looking back toward the cove.

  Billy raised his voice circling out to come around, saying, “I imagine you’d know her after a month aboard. But there a bunch of those little trawlers come out of Djib.”

  “White with orange trim,” Xavier said. “It sure looks like her.” Xavier was shooting the boat now, tucked in among the mangrove.

  “This is the closest I can get,” Billy said. “You want to get out and look at her?”

  Dara thought about it and shook her head. “I was surprised, that’s all. It could be the Buster, but so what. It’s somebody scuba diving.”

  Xavier said, “In a mangrove swamp?”

  JAMA’S SISTER TOLD HIM when she was a little girl, a good ten years before she turned to prostitution, “You pray for what you want, and if God likes the idea of you havin it, he gives it to you.” He remembered thinking it might be true. The thing was, Jama never prayed for anything and always got what he wanted.

  It was Dara standing up in that speedboat, wasn’t it? See, he didn’t have to pray to find her again. There she was.

  He said to his sister that time when she was a child, “If God knows everything, what’s he do when you pray for something, have to change his mind sometimes?”

  His sister said, “God knows everything all at the same time. Knows you gonna pray and knows if you getting it or not. But when you pray and you get it, it makes you feel good, God wanting you to have it from the beginning of eternity.” His little sister who turned to hookin.

  He believed she was right. Jama got everything he wanted and thanked Allah for it after. Least most of the time.

  There was Dara out cruising.

  He’d bet money they saw the boat and recognized it. They might even’ve caught a glimpse of him in the wheelhouse. If any of them did, it would be Dara. He believed they both wouldn’t mind getting next to each other for a time. Right now he’d best take his gear and the rubber boat and go someplace else.

  THEY WERE STILL IN the Donzi, sucking oysters off the half shells now, Billy swigging champagne from the bottle, Dara having a Coke. Xavier helped himself to the champagne, have a glass or two.

  Billy said, “I’m not going near the target till I’m ready. Sneak up with the wind behind us—what there is of it—and put a round each into her five tanks. In other words I’m gonna shoot the ship.” He gave his crew time to grin or say something. No one did. Billy said he would put hot rounds in her from close on a thousand yards. Get the gas seeping out to thaw in pools. In a few minutes there’d be the biggest fireball ever seen by man. He raised his bottle of champagne and took a good swig.

  Helene said, “Hon, I think our guests would like some too.”

  “I’m sharing with my man Xavier,” sounding offended. “Muff, you know I’m a dead shot, even with a glow on.” He said, “Aren’t I?”

  Helene hesitated but said, “You sure
are, Skip.”

  Billy went back to sit low in the cockpit and Dara said to Xavier, “You haven’t said anything funny since we got here.”

  Xavier said, “Billy looked at me, gave me time to ask him, ‘You say shoot the ship or shoot the shit?’”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I don’t need a straight man. What I been wonderin is how I feel about bein here.”

  “You don’t see it as a big finish?”

  “What of?”

  “My documentary. I’m starting to get ideas.”

  “You don’t see any holes?”

  “This setting,” Dara said, “it’s a world where we fill holes with cuts to the Central Market, the mosque, women peeking out of their burkas, and see if we can build tension. If the explosion comes off anywhere close to Billy’s description, we’ll have a hot property.”

  Xavier sat there not saying anything, and Dara said, “What are you thinking?”

  “What you’re makin of all this. Wonderin could Jama be here with the same idea as Billy.”

  Dara said, “I’m wondering how he meant to blow it up.”

  “I thought about it for a while,” Xavier said, “but the man’s on the dodge. How’s he gonna work it?”

  “He’s still al Qaeda,” Dara said. “What else was he doing on the ship?”

  Billy stepped into the bow to tell them, “Minutes after I fire, we could have gunboats chasing our wake. What I’m hoping, everybody’s off the ship before it turns into a ball of fire. If the gunboats don’t know that, they could start looking for survivors, people in the water.”

  Xavier said, “Or the vapor catches fire and runs off the gunboats.” He said, “I’m goin ashore, maybe look up anybody still around.”

  Dara said, “You’re gonna check out the Buster, aren’t you?”

  Xavier said, “I’ll let you know if it’s ours.”