The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  Wolf appeared in the hatchway door, one arm in a sling, the other a cast. He was followed by Pam, just zipping a jacket over the T-shirt she’d slept in.

  Constantine stopped, seeing Wolf and Palm, and asked a question. Mikki shook her head. He gave a command in Portuguese, and the seaman from the front went below, rifle at the ready. He called out from below. Constantine looked at Mikki, shook her arm. She responded, and he repeated it loudly to the seaman below. Five minutes passed before the seaman came up the steps, rifle slung over his back, carrying two aluminum cases, each about the size of a small suitcase. They were padlocked.

  This was Ebola. Boyd wondered at how its strategy seemed to find just what it needed at the right moment. Greed had opened its cage. Perversity had refined it. Malevolence now reached for the lever of its power. The seaman nimbly leaped across the gap between the vessels and disappeared into the wheelhouse of Constantine’s fishing boat. He returned holding a case of dynamite. Just as nimbly as before, he hopped back onto Chardonnay and descended the stair.

  “Wait! This is piracy,” Neville cried out. “You’ll all hang for this!”

  Constantine laughed. He shoved Mikki toward the ramp joining the two vessels. She tripped, falling to her knees. With a grunt, Constantine’s boot lifted her thin butt waist high, and her high-pitched yelp of pain distracted the seaman behind Constantine.

  Boyd leaped forward, covering the six feet between them before the man realized his mistake. The gun barrel turned back in Boyd's direction just as he reached it with his hand. He grabbed the gun and shoved it down, momentum carrying him into the seaman. His left hand delivered a body blow with all he could muster.

  The muzzle of the big pistol in Constantine’s hand exploded, and flame shot across the deck toward Boyd. In that instant, the flash illuminated Constantine’s face. Beelzebub stood there, fire blazing in his eyes, death in his hand.

  Boyd was hit in the right chest, the impact straightening him up and slamming him backward. His buttocks hit the safety railing. Powerless against the force of the huge bullet that carried pieces of his sixth rib and scapula many yards behind him, Boyd’s body flattened backward and sailed out over the rail.

  Peace settled over Boyd as, silently, slowly, he dropped the eight feet to the water below. He felt like an autumn leaf falling from the top of a great oak, languidly drifting down. The impact with the water was like settling into a feather bed, and the Atlantic closed over him, warm and kind.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Ponta Delgada, Portugal

  ACORIANO ORIENTAL NEWSPAPER

  September 18

  (translation from Portuguese)

  YACHT EXPLODES, ALL HANDS LOST!

  Ponta Delgada, San Miguel, Azores, Portugal. The luxury yacht Chardonnay exploded and sank with all hands early this morning just hours after an armed confrontation in front of Peter’s Café Sport in Horta, Faial. The vessel pulled out of Horta without Port Authority permission, and the Portuguese Navy frigate at Ponta Delgada was put on alert. The captain of Chardonnay had agreed to stop at Ponta Delgada for a customs inspection and to release into custody those responsible for the exchange of gunfire. In addition, communication with the government of the United States had warned that this vessel was smuggling contraband material and should be detained and searched. The explosion, 25 miles off the southeastern corner of Sao George Island, came without warning or distress call at 3:45 AM and rattled windows as far away as Ponta Delgada. Chardonnay, owned by the Meilland family of Luxembourg, has been a frequent visitor to the Azores for many years. There is speculation that piracy might be involved. An investigation is pending.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  The Atlantic Ocean

  The veneer was gone. Donn Wilde had been hiding inside big stories, fancy cars and expensive clothes for 20 years. He’d always known he was a lie, and he assumed everyone else was, too. Now he was coughing seawater out of his lungs and treading water, clad only in his boxer shorts, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The only man he’d ever known who’d been real everywhere Donn tested – more than real, bedrock – had just jumped in front of certain death to give him a chance to swim 25 miles to the nearest island, and he wasn’t man enough to even try.

  Chardonnay blew up with a concussion that kicked him in the nuts and stopped his breath. He cringed as the mainmast tumbled a full turn and lanced down into the fireball like a toothpick into a canapé, and the whole thing sucked down into the black, leaving only some scattered debris on the surface. Donn was ready to quit, slide beneath the waves and be gone.

  Donn saw a head bobbing in the water, visible only because of the dying glow of the debris reflected on the surface. He swam toward it.

  Boyd Chailland was there, barely alive. Only his eyes and nose were out of the water.

  “Boyd,” Donn said, cradling the head just as it was about to sink

  There was no answer, the eyes were fixed on infinity, staring out at the glowing remains of Chardonnay. The limbs had stopped moving.

  Donn had been this close to death, teetering on the railing, with Wolf towering over him and unleashing a fury that in itself was incapacitating to a lifelong coward. Boyd Chailland had stepped in and stopped the big German with his first blow. The savagery that followed was the stuff of myth.

  Those had not been mortals on the deck that night. Backlit by the spotlight on the mizzenmast, gods fought there, as bone splintered and blood sprayed. Good and evil had had a showdown, and Donn had laid there, a slave to the winner.

  “Boyd, are you alive?” Donn asked, his own plight forgotten for the moment.

  There was breath.

  The extra weight caused Donn to have to speed up his legs. He pulled Boyd across his chest, face near his own, and kicked toward the wreck. There would be something floating there.

  A swell lifted them and Donn rolled sideways to see debris floating down in front of them. The two men dropped into a trough and blackness was all around. He kicked steadily.

  First it was a piece of railing that he draped his left arm over to help hold him up, kicking still, but able to catch some breath now. Then a cushion from the cockpit came into view, and he stuffed it beneath to float Boyd’s chest. He saw the blood smear over his own bare chest, and kept kicking.

  The life raft was in a white plastic case that was supposed to deploy a beacon if it got wet. There was no beacon. Donn traversed the debris field, then rolled from under Boyd to kick himself out of the water as far as possible to see further on the next swell. The case was fifty yards back the way he had come. He started kicking again.

  Nearly exhausted when he reached it, Donn held on to the side, barely able to maintain his hold on Boyd. Vaguely, the brief Neville had given on their first day out returned. He deployed the raft, and inside were life vests, flares, food, water and a radio. He crawled in and hauled Boyd over the side. That’s when he saw the hole in Boyd’s back. He could put his fist into the place where a shoulder blade should have been, and blood and bubbles oozed out all over the bottom of the raft.

  “Anybody!” A faint call came from the direction of the wreck.

  Donn found a flashlight and turned it toward the call. Like a wet dog, Pamela was paddling steadily toward him.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Terceira Island

  Serenely, he floated in the hot tub in Narvel Rhoades’ backyard. Narvel, mayor of Kennett, Mo., Boyd’s hometown, talked about rendezvous and beacons. Narvel’s wife, Betsy, floated next to Boyd in the hot tub, her soft breasts periodically covering his face, her thighs entwined with his. A cold wind came, and Boyd was chilled. He and Betsy sank beneath the warm water while Narvel droned on.

  Narvel -- the lanky Lothario of the Missouri Bootheel who had found ways to beat Walmart at the small-town drugstore game -- and Betsy -- bleached, tucked, augmented, psychoanalyzed and saved -- had been his best friends since grade school. They’d stayed home and made excitement in their own fashion while Boyd saw the world. His visits were
always a major reunion. They’d been in the tub a few times but never with Betsy rolling around on him and Narvel expounding, oblivious. Still, it felt good. He dozed.

  ******

  Whack, whack, whack. The beating had a powerful background-engine sound.

  Boyd awoke to a strange face strapping a belt around his middle. He was lying, wet and cold, in the bottom of an inflatable, seven-man life raft. Pam and Donn’s faces peered over the shoulder of his new acquaintance. A Puma helicopter hovered 50 feet above them. It was morning.

  Confusion reigned. Where were Narvel and Betsy? Who was this guy? Where was Chardonnay? Why did he feel so bad? Where was all that blood coming from?

  “Boyd!” Donn shouted. “You crazy son of a bitch! You’re still alive, and the Portuguese Air Force is here to rescue you!”

  The sea was picking up, and whitecaps were at the top of some swells. They rose and dropped in that rhythm he had become accustomed to in these last three weeks.

  He was on a board, in a wire basket that started to move upward. The movement shot fire into his shoulder and chest. He coughed, and the pain was excruciating. He moaned and felt the winch begin to pull him away from the raft and his friends. The cable twisted as he ascended and he got a revealing 360-degree view of the open Atlantic with the sun just above the horizon and just below a bank of low clouds. Dawn would be brief today, he thought. Then the basket turned, and he could see a pink glow as a brief moment of sunlight hit the mountain Pico far to their rear, then another island behind Pico that he’d not seen, and then as he turned, another ahead of the Puma, green and terraced with fields.

  The rotors pushed the waves into the sea, blowing off the crests and sending spray out in all directions. In spite of the perfectly timed moment of maximum sunlight on a dull day, the sea appeared gray and foreboding.

  “Bon dia,” a Portuguese with a bushy mustache called out as Boyd neared the open side of the Puma.

  He was dressed in a flight suit with one hand casually held onto the inside top of the door, while the other was on the winch control just inside it. He smiled as he crouched and grabbed the cable, pulling Boyd toward the door. Another man behind him stood ready to help.

  “Good morning, Capt. Chailland,” a clearly American voice came from a middle-age man, also in a flight suit, who helped slide the basket into the helicopter. “I’m Dr. Abbott from the Air Force hospital at Lajes Field, Azores.”

  Warm hands stripped away his bloody wet shirt, a cold stethoscope probed front and back. A prick at his arm drew his attention for a moment as a needle probed for a vein. He shivered as voices talked about shock and hypothermia, and warming the saline.

  **********

  Sunlight was streaming in through lace curtains tied open when Boyd awoke. Something had touched his side, and he felt it all the way through to his back. He looked toward the bubbling sound on his right and saw the top of a girl’s head, bent, hands working on that something that was sticking out from his side.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” She looked up.

  Wide hazel eyes caused him to focus close, and her smile made the pain disappear. She was dressed in a green scrub suit, and around her neck was a pink plastic stethoscope.

  Pain shot through his chest again when he inhaled to speak, and he just winced instead.

  “You have a tube in your chest, see?”

  She stepped back, holding up a tube the diameter of Boyd’s index finger and filled with blood. His? Bubbles coursed through the tube toward a glass bottle, also filled with blood.

  Donn Wilde had been dozing in a chair at the end of the bed. Turning to look out the window of a hospital room and beyond, Boyd could see the ocean, azure under a blue sky, with fluffy white cumulus clouds moving sedately past. The events of the day before were as a dream, misty, vague and unreal.

  The nurse efficiently gathered up the gauze and tape from the dressing change and deposited it in a large red container labeled Biological Hazard.

  Boyd was offended that fluids from his body might be labeled as hazardous.

  “I’m Lt. Kelly. If you need anything, I’ll be right outside the door,” she said with a bright smile as she picked up her dressing tray and left.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” Donn said, stretching. “You’ve been out for 24 hours. The doctor tells us you didn’t lose much lung. You were lucky.”

  “Didn’t lose much lung?” Boyd pinched his face into a look of disgust.

  “You do remember getting shot?”

  “Yeah. Constantine.”

  “That was a .357 magnum. It blew you over the side like you’d grabbed a handle on a southbound freight.”

  Boyd nodded.

  “We assumed you were dead, and that we’d be, too. When the shooting started and Pam and I jumped, there you were, treading water and bleeding into that great black ocean.”

  Donn perched at the edge of his seat, imitating Boyd treading water and slowly looking about, dazed.

  “Don’t remember,” Boyd responded darkly.

  “The rest of the story is bad. People died yesterday, Boyd. Our friends.”

  Donn stood, walked to the window and turned back to face him.

  “Pam?” Boyd asked.

  “No. She’s fine. She’s sacked out in the next room. We’re quarantined here. More about that later. When you jumped the Portuguese seaman, Wolf pulled a pistol out of his sling and started shooting. He yelled for us to jump, and we did. Neville came up with that AK-47 Wolf used in the afternoon. He had it hidden under the cushions in the cockpit. Pam and I were port and aft, no place to go but overboard.”

  “Did somebody shoot that son-of-a-bitch Constantine?” Boyd asked, remembering the fire in the big Portuguese’s eyes as he had discharged his hand cannon.

  “They shot somebody, but we don’t know if it was Constantine. We drifted away. Then they shot Wolf. He cried out and fell in not far from us. Neville kept shooting, hunkered down in the cockpit, for several minutes, and then it was quiet. Constantine’s boat cranked up and left. Chardonnay blew up about five minutes later. It was a big ball of fire with pieces flying all around. Afterward, I swam over there and looked around. There was stuff floating in the water, including the life raft, but no Neville, and no Wolf.”

  Donn continued, tears glistening in his eyes.

  “Wolf casually opened the latch on the life raft while Constantine was beating Mikki. He looked at me and motioned with his head toward the side. I’ll never forget him standing there, behind the doghouse. Bullets were zinging everywhere, glass breaking, splinters flying off the teak, and him firing left handed, the sling still flapping from his arm, right arm in a cast, yelling for us to jump. Wolf saved our lives, Boyd. We’d all be dead if not for him and Neville.”

  “He nearly killed you himself last week,” Boyd reminded, painfully moving himself higher in the bed.

  “We got over that. He apologized. Mikki had led him to believe they were going to be together, then she assigns him the watch, and when he comes up there a little early, as is his habit … You know, he was always early for everything.”

  Tears were streaming down Donn’s face.

  “Yeah.” Boyd remembered Wolf, totally Germanic in habit and mannerism. He was always early, prepared, his stateroom neat as a military school.

  After Boyd busted him up and he was nearly helpless in cast and sling, he cheerfully assumed a support role. He pitched in wherever he could, joked and talked with Donn and Pam and the crew, even did some cooking. For a moment, Boyd chuckled as he remembered Wolf flipping pancakes in the galley by working a spatula under them with his casted right arm and then jumping into the air.

  “You must be used to this life. I’ve never done anything like this, Boyd. It’s too much.”

  Donn broke down completely. He was sobbing, chest heaving uncontrollably.

  “Wolf and Neville, and that beautiful ship, all gone.”

  “What about Mikki?”

  Donn shrugged, drying his face, re
gaining control.

  “Donn, I’m no different from you. Small-town guy, played some ball, got into the Academy on a football scholarship, went to flight school. Last year, the Air Force decommissioned my squadron, and I was without a job. I stumbled onto some guys jinking with the system, and the Air Force sent me under cover. Some people got killed. It turned out all right, so now, apparently, they think I’m some kind of fixer they can send in when the shit gets deep.”

  “The shit is deep,” Donn answered soberly.

  “Take the long view on this thing,” Boyd said, painfully rolling back to his back and scooting up in the bed again. “This is an important job. We didn’t pick you at random, just like they didn’t pick me at random. You had something we needed, and you still do. We’ve got to figure out where that virus went and what they plan to do with it. It’s like any other military mission. You do it or go down trying. Later, you sort out how it felt.”

  “Well, we don’t know where it went,” Donn said, turning as the door opened and the nurse entered.

  “Capt. Chailland, you have a telephone call. It’s a general.”

  The young nurse was all business as she picked up the phone from the bedside and put it within his reach. As she stepped around the electric cord to the suction machine pulling blood out of Boyd’s chest, she bent close to Boyd and he could smell her fragrance, faint, simple, pleasant.

  “Ferguson,” Boyd said heartily, feeling better in an instant.

  Maybe it was the nurse, a reminder that a sane and safe world back in the States still had fresh, young, normal women. Women who could blush if they came near a handsome man whom they were nursing back from a gunshot wound taken in the prosecution of some mission so secret that she’d been forbidden to mention him away from the hospital. He looked up into her eyes, and the blush spread from her cheeks to her ears and down her neck. She backed up against the suction machine, nearly stumbling.