Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  “El Diablo,” the old sailor remarked quietly.

  Sandoval looked upward. Out there in the dense structure of the squall he saw a flying ghost, a bizarre outline that was gone before he was certain he’d ever registered it.

  Ruhr could barely catch his breath in the storm. Only when he reached the hold and lowered himself into the darkness were his lungs able to function again. Exhausted by the struggle along the deck, he sat on the floor, breathing fast and hard until his energies returned. He turned on a flashlight and saw how the cruise missile, having slipped one of the mooring cables, lay out of balance. It was no great matter to secure it again. He followed the line of loose cable to a metal hook on the wall and there he anchored it, making certain it was tight. His hands were cold, his fingers stiff.

  The freighter rose in the swell, dropped again. The storm was magnificent still. He hauled himself out of the hold, clutching the rough fibres of the damp rope knotted round his waist. The other end of the rope was tethered to the handrail about thirty feet along the deck. He loved the idea of his life hanging by such a feeble lifeline.

  He reached the deck.

  Seventy feet above him, a grey helicopter swayed in the gale.

  Alejandro Bengochea took the chopper down toward the deck of the ship, but it was hard to hold the machine steady against the energetic frenzy of the wind. At sixty feet he was driven back; the chopper swung in a great circle, then returned to roughly the same point. Bengochea, sometimes bellowing with a sportsman’s laughter, sometimes quietly coaxing his craft, fought to hold the machine steady. Both chopper and freighter seemed tied together now as if bound by strands of the same rainy web.

  Pagan saw the deck briefly, then it was gone under water; up again, wet timbers, an upturned lifeboat, tar-black smoke zipping away from the funnel. The figure who appeared on the deck seemed to have come out of nowhere; he was roped and threading his way astern like a man following a string through a maze.

  Pagan, whose stomach came into his throat, felt the helicopter turn at an awful angle, tilting back down toward the ship before righting itself and hovering one more time, like a demented albatross, over the deck. There was the figure again, looking up this time at the chopper.

  Pagan recognised the man. As soon as he did so, he took the rope-ladder from behind his seat and pulled it out. “I’m going down,” he said.

  Bengochea smiled with approval and gave a thumbs-up sign. Pagan, despite the obstacle of being born English, was a man after his own heart.

  The chopper dropped another few feet. The daring Bengochea, the crazy Bengochea, would have landed the machine directly on the deck of La Mandadera if he’d had the manoeuvrability. Now the helicopter hung some fifty feet over the deck, dangerously close to the masts of the freighter. The ship, rising and falling twenty-five feet on the vicious swell, threatened at times to crest high enough for its masts to crash into the underside of the chopper or to snag the rotor blades. To avoid this calamity required very fine judgment on Bengochea’s part, an instinct for prediction in unpredictable circumstances – two feet higher, then three, four, whatever it took to keep the chopper just beyond the reach of the masts.

  Pagan opened his door, was almost sucked out into the skies. It was madness, and he knew it. He also knew there were certain kinds of lunacy you could transcend briefly because the fear of the moment carried you over the hurdle of craziness, imposing upon you an illusion of indestructibility. The notion of throwing down a rope-ladder from a helicopter perched precariously above a freighter sailing in a violent sea seemed almost logical to him just then; and he himself the kind of man who, because he was on the side of the angels, the elements would not destroy.

  Sweet Jesus! how frail the rope-ladder looked as it unfolded on its way to the deck.

  Alejandro Bengochea dropped as low as he could but the wind bedevilled his machine and he had to rise again another twenty feet, and now the deck seemed a long way down and the rope ladder too flimsy altogether. It blew violently back and forth beneath the chopper, more a means of transportation for a trapeze artist than for a London policeman with a wound in his chest and no great fondness of heights.

  Pagan took a breath, stepped out into nothing.

  Rain swirled in cold haloes about his head. His hands, gripping the fibrous rope, were red and numb. He hung in the air, defying physics and sanity. He imagined the storm picking him off the ladder and spitting him out into the maelstrom of the sea.

  He held on tightly; with the determination of a man who has no desire to look death in its seductive eye, he lowered himself. The storm threatened to suffocate him. He could barely get air into his lungs. Turning his face out of the direct roar of the wind, he gasped.

  Gunther Ruhr clutched the sixty-foot rope that would lead him back towards the cabin. His balance on the watery deck was poor and sometimes he slipped, tumbled, but always managed to rise again. Once, seeking a moment’s shelter in a doorway, he wiped water from his eyes and observed the man who hung from the rope-ladder. The ladder twisted round and was knocked by the sea-wind back and forth, but the man – the man was unmistakable. And Gunther Ruhr smiled.

  It was a fine effort on Pagan’s behalf. Ruhr, who realised he had underestimated his adversary, grudgingly admired the sight of the Englishman clinging to the ladder and descending rung by miserable rung toward the deck. Ruhr stepped out of the doorway, and, removing his gun from his belt, he fired once, more as a form of greeting than anything meant to hurt Pagan, who ducked his head and almost slipped from the middle of the ladder to fall the final twenty feet to the deck.

  Ruhr continued along the deck, holding hard to the rope. He had thirty, perhaps thirty-five feet to go before he reached the tiny room and the girl. Turning, he looked up again at the acrobat Pagan.

  Once, during an August Bank Holiday in Margate when he must have been about nine or ten years old, Pagan had thrown up during a ride on a roller-coaster. He remembered the screaming wind in his face, the shrieks of girls, and the way the thin trail of his vomit had caught the breeze and flown away and how his Aunt Henrietta had shoved a handkerchief into his face with a sigh and a tut-tut and I should’ve known you wouldn’t have the constitution for this, Frankie. Silly, silly boy, oh dear, oh dear …

  Where was Auntie Henrietta now when he really needed her? Pagan wondered. What the hell? He needed something more than her big white handkerchief that smelled of mothballs, he needed a bloody weatherproof parachute. The rope ladder was tossed first to the left, then to the right, and Pagan held on, watching Gunther Ruhr move along the deck, waiting for the German to fire the gun again. Ten feet, fifteen, Pagan wasn’t sure how far he’d have to drop to hit the deck, but he didn’t like his chances anyway. Overhead, the chopper roared and the big blades churned the air; the tumult thrust at Pagan, threatening to blow him back up far enough so that he’d collide with the blades. Hamburger meat. Mince. Razored neatly out of existence.

  Oil drums slithered and clattered across the deck, then bounced overboard; a Cuban flag, looking like a used designer tissue, was sucked away, as if it had imploded. On the bridge, Luis Sandoval shook his head in disbelief. The man who was coming down the rope-ladder was clearly loco, and so was the pilot of the helicopter. Who these men were, and what their purposes might have been, were matters of no importance to Sandoval. They were intruders. They were no part of any plan. He unlocked the rifle cabinet. He handed a weapon to Zaldivar, and kept one for himself. Both men loaded the weapons then continued to watch the maniac descend from the chopper which, at any moment, was certain to collide with the freighter’s masts – kaboom!

  “He’ll never make it to the deck,” Zaldivar said.

  Sandoval shrugged. “He might. He’s crazy enough.”

  “I’m not going out there,” Zaldivar said. “Let the storm take him. Let the storm take the German and his goddam missile as well.”

  Inside her cabin Steffie Brough felt the ship tilt, then correct itself again. Water covered the porth
ole, darkening the cabin. She felt claustrophobic. Even though she knew the deck would be exposed and unsafe, she needed to get out of this wretched coffin. She couldn’t breathe. She’d been in this stale little room for too long. She wanted air, rain in her face. Mainly she didn’t want to be here when Ruhr came back with his knife. Especially that. It was better to get out and take her chances with the weather than to wait in this place for his return.

  She tried the door, but it was locked. She yanked on the handle – nothing. The ship listed again, and she was thrown back across the bunk. She got up, hammered on the door, but of course nobody came to answer because nobody heard her voice.

  The only voice in the world was that of the wind.

  Was the storm faltering? Losing some fraction of its power? It was hard to tell because it was a deceptive thing, dying for thirty calm seconds then flaring up again just as you imagined it was fading. In one such lull Frank Pagan hit the deck, bent his knees, curled his body forward to spare himself the jarring effect of contact between skeleton and wood. He lost his balance at once, slid on his back and skidded toward the side of the freighter, seized a rail, held on, his mouth and eyes flooded with salt water. He blinked, saw Gunther Ruhr some yards ahead.

  Staying upright was impossible. Pagan fell again, tumbled forward, came to a halt on his arse. Ruhr looked back, fired his gun, Pagan pulled his head involuntarily to one side but the shot was wide anyway. He stood again and aquaplaned a few feet as the freighter creaked then listed to the starboard side. The ocean swept the deck and Pagan, with as much strength as he could still muster, clenched the rainslicked handrail.

  Staggering, he followed Ruhr. He almost missed the hold because its hatch was closed save for a narrow space at one side where it had either been carelessly placed or budged by the storm. He almost missed seeing the section of covered missile below him in the dim light. For the moment he passed it by, rather as a man might hurry past a glass case in a museum that contains artifacts of no fascination for him.

  He tried to keep Ruhr in sight. Catching up with him was impossible. His principal objective was not to be washed overboard. Ruhr clutched his rope, his lifeline, hurried, hurried, slid, hurried. Pagan, his breath knocked out of him by the storm, kept following. He took his pistol out, thinking he might wound Ruhr and stop him. He fired but couldn’t hit anything on board a ship that bucked like a mad horse. Water streamed across his face and eyes and into his mouth. He thought it was possible to drown without having to sink underwater to do it.

  Ruhr glanced back once, then kept moving, holding still to his safety rope. Pagan fired his gun again – useless, useless; and then the wind blew him back and the Bernardelli was jerked out of his hand and carried overboard and he saw it vanish into the heart of the foam.

  Ruhr kept moving with the assistance of the rope. Pagan, scudded by water, cuffed, landed on hands and knees. He crawled, rose, glanced up at the helicopter: it looked fragile and exposed and altogether unnatural where it hung. How much longer could Alejandro keep it hovering there? Pagan had to find the kid, get her into the chopper, and get the hell off this ship.

  Drenched, blinded, he kept going.

  Gunther Ruhr, about twelve feet from the door of the cabin, looked back at Pagan. It was amusing to see the Englishman struggle to stay upright – but then the whole day was one of imbalances and upsets, of symmetry broken down, composure destroyed. Ruhr wiped his eyes with his knuckles, saw the place where he’d tied the rope, saw the cabin door.

  He turned to look back one more time at Pagan.

  Frank Pagan thought he saw Gunther Ruhr toss back his face and laugh. It was something of which he’d never be certain.

  Steffie Brough hammered and hammered on the door until her fists ached. Useless. Then she tugged again and again on the handle.

  – Why hadn’t Ruhr come back?

  – She caught the handle, twisted, cursed, strained.

  – The bloody thing wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t, just wouldn’t.

  She closed her eyes; small tears slithered out from under her eyelids. There has to be something, she thought. There has to be some kind of way out. She kicked the door panel, nothing yielded.

  She took a deep breath, bit her lower lip in sheer determination, puffed out her cheeks, pulled together every fragment of strength she could find. She hauled on the handle, and felt a screw pop out from damp wood, a small, rusty screw, and the handle itself was loose and a second screw fell away and the door, warped by seasons and sea-changes, split slightly. In the core of the wood were tiny worm-holes, small tunnels that released very fine sawdust. Now the entire handle came away in her fist and she opened the door and the sea blast winded her.

  She saw Gunther Ruhr coming along the deck.

  He was attached to a rail by a length of rope. It was knotted only twelve inches from the open door of the cabin. She was conscious of a second man hanging on to the rail, trailing Ruhr from behind.

  She stepped forward. The idea that came to her was both inevitable and compelling. She had to do it.

  With frantic fingers she took the loose end of the knot, the kind known to sailors as a double timber-hitch, and passed it through two loops of rope, which undid the knot swiftly. She dropped the rope. She heard Ruhr shout at her in alarm. Released from his anchor of safety he slipped. She saw him fall flat on his back. The rope curled about his ankle and he slithered toward the side, toward the dreadful sea, even as the other man hurried to prevent him sliding out into the waves.

  Fingers clamped on Ruhr’s wrist, but he kept slipping away.

  “I cannot hold,” he shouted. “I cannot hold, Pagan –”

  “You have to fucking hold, you bastard!”

  Pagan groaned, clenched his jaw, caught Ruhr’s shirt under the neck and pulled with all his strength, dragging Ruhr back from the edge. He couldn’t let Gunther go, not now, not after all this distance had been travelled. If he released Gunther, then what had been the point of everything? He owed it to the dead men in Shepherd’s Bush to take Ruhr back to London. He owed it to the soldiers murdered during the hijack of the missile in Norfolk. And he owed it to Steffie Brough, to her parents, to all the people Gunther Ruhr had hurt.

  He couldn’t let Ruhr slide into the sea. Couldn’t lose him.

  The German wasn’t heavy, but the effort of rescuing him drained Pagan. He hauled him away from the rail, then released him; Ruhr lay flat and drenched and breathing badly near the cabin door. Landed, Pagan thought. Like a bloody great fish. Harpooned at last.

  Pagan’s sense of achievement lasted a second before he felt his heart frost over.

  In his good hand Gunther Ruhr held the pistol which he had produced from the belt of his trousers. He pointed the gun directly at Pagan. “You overlooked this, Frank. Stupid of you.”

  Pagan stepped back, alarmed. Why had he forgotten Ruhr’s gun? Why the hell hadn’t he let Ruhr slide into the bloody sea? Too damned anxious, Frank. Too damned keen to play Mr Justice, to take Ruhr back to London and the law. He didn’t deserve due process, did he? He was a killer, a terrorist. He had no sense of right and wrong, no charity, no humanity. He didn’t deserve his moment in a court of law, for Christ’s sake. Pagan glanced at the girl, who was clinging to the cabin door as if her life depended on it.

  Ruhr said, “Wonderful effort, Pagan. But futile –”

  The ship bucked suddenly again. The swell, surging under the hull with great might, momentarily forced the bow out of the water. The deck tilted up. Gunther Ruhr, slick and wet, slid seven or eight yards on his back away from Pagan, flailing his arms like a man tumbling down a slippery chute.

  It was an opportunity, and Pagan had to seize it before the ship righted itself. There might never be another. Fighting to keep his own balance, he caught the girl by the hand and they ran skidding together towards the rope-ladder which shimmied and flapped as if possessed by a life-force of its own, and was difficult to grasp. Pagan finally gripped it, brought it under control, helped the girl on
to the first sodden rung. The climb was strenuous. The ladder blew sideways, the helicopter swayed, all the balances were so delicate that everything seemed destined to fall at any moment from the sky. The girl climbed a couple of rungs, and Pagan came behind. There was a lull then, a few wonderful seconds in which the storm abated a little. Pagan and the girl were able to advance about one third of the way up, which was when Steffie Brough stopped climbing.

  “Keep going, for Christ’s sake.” Pagan looked down – always a mistake. He saw Gunther Ruhr, upright now, trying to steady himself on the deck for a shot.

  “Can’t,” the girl said.

  “Yes you can.”

  “My legs won’t work. They won’t work. I can’t make them work.”

  “Bloody hell.” Pagan heard the sound of gunfire; overpowered by a revitalised wind, it was strangely unthreatening. But it came close, and he knew it. So did Alejandro Bengochea, who had been watching Ruhr from the cabin. He turned the helicopter away from the Mandadera and out over the water beyond the range of Gunther Ruhr’s gun.

  Pagan reached up with one hand, placed it against Steffie’s spine, pushed gently, tried to ease her further up the ladder. She moved then, one slow rung at a time, panting, terrified of falling. He supported her even when the ladder swung to positions that made climbing impossible.

  Once, unable to resist the impulse, he glanced at the sea again. An evil dream of endlessly falling.

  The chopper kept moving back toward land as Pagan and the girl made their way slowly upwards to the cabin. The rain was falling hard, but the closer the aircraft came to the shore, the more the wind dropped and the sea quieted because the storm was pulling back and rolling out, to renew itself with a vengeance, across the Caribbean. It wasn’t completely dead yet. It gusted, still creating havoc as Pagan and the girl pulled themselves up, exhausted, gasping, inside the cabin.