Point of Honor

by Maurice Medland

  He slid down the ladder to the second level, flicked on his light and blinked at the reflection thrown back from the shiny cans of ether. The pleasant sweet scent seemed to have a calming effect on him. Tenderly, he felt the wound in his arm where the chief had accidentally shot him and flexed his muscle. It was sore as hell, but it had healed more quickly than he’d thought. He knew that fasting could do that; that’s why animals refused food when they were injured. He flashed his light up the tower of black fifty-five-gallon drums of acetone. It wouldn’t be easy to lift the steel drums out of the hold with a bad arm, but he thought he could do it, assuming he could find a way to empty them out without blowing himself up or anesthetizing himself in the process.

  Something made him stop and listen, a faint shuttling sound in the distance. The acoustics in the open hold were such that he couldn’t tell if it was coming from deep down inside the cargo hold or from outside. He paused and strained to hear. It was the pounding of air, the unmistakable sound of a helicopter rotor drumming through the sky. Blake sprang for the ladder. As his head reached the weather deck, he could tell by the growl of the blades that it was a four-rotor helicopter. It had to be a Seahawk, the Navy’s version of the Blackhawk. His heart leaped. The good old Carlyle had come through. He climbed out of the cargo hold and squinted into the sun. It was too far and too high for him to see. Pulse racing, he ran to the bridge for his binoculars.

  He took the steps to the bridge two at a time and burst into the empty pilothouse. The ship’s wheel was locked on course. Kelly and Maria were standing on the bridge wing, pointing excitedly toward the eastern sky.

  “There,” Maria said, pointing. “Can’t you see it?”

  “No,” Kelly said, squinting into the brightness with her hands cupped around her eyes.

  “I wish I had her eyesight,” Blake said, adjusting the binoculars.

  “That’s two of us,” Kelly said, squinting. “Can you make it out?”

  “Not yet,” Blake said. “But it sounds like a Seahawk.”

  “I don’t think I care what it is,” Kelly said. “Just as long as it takes us off this thing.”

  “Strange,” Blake said, adjusting the focus. He could see its face now, a light green grasshopper, hovering in the air. “Looks more like a Blackhawk.” He fine-tuned the focus on the binoculars and saw the light green fuselage. “That is definitely a Blackhawk,” he said. “I don’t get it. What would an Army helicopter be doing way the hell out here?”

  “Maybe it’s an interservice search and rescue team,” Kelly said.

  Blake studied the wavering form, the afternoon sun beating down on the back of his neck. The helicopter turned slightly in the direction of the ship, and the fuselage came into view.

  “Shit!” Blake said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a Blackhawk, all right, but it’s not one of ours.”

  “How can you tell? Doesn’t it have markings?”

  “It’s got a big blue star on the fuselage.”

  “A star? Isn’t that what the Army has?”

  “Not like that. It’s solid blue, like a corporate logo.”

  “What does it mean?” Kelly asked.

  Blake let out a long breath. “It means the owners have come for their ship.”

  “Pistoleros,” Maria said in a whisper.

  “Oh, God,” Kelly said. She put her arm around Maria. “What are we going to do?”

  “We can’t let them land,” Blake said. “Once they get aboard we’ve had it.” He unholstered his pistol and checked the chamber. It was still cocked from the boarding. He snapped the safety off. “I don’t know how much good we can do with this popgun against a Blackhawk helicopter, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  “Do you think it’s armed?”

  “I can’t tell, but we’ve got to assume it is,” Blake said. “Probably a pair of M-60 machine guns mounted port and starboard. But even if it isn’t, the people on it will be.” He squinted and sighted down the Beretta, trying to line up the white dot on the front sight with the cockpit, his vision blurred by heat vapors.

  “Look!” Maria said, pointing beyond the bow of the ship.

  Blake and Kelly turned and squinted at a brown-and-pink lump coming into view on the western horizon.

  “You did it!” Kelly said. “You got us to land. I knew you could do it.”

  “That’s the good news,” Blake said, turning back to the helicopter.

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news is that our silent friend doesn’t need us anymore,” Blake said. “You still have your gun?”

  “Sure.” Kelly put her hand on her pocket.

  “You two go belowdecks and take cover. But keep an eye out for that lunatic. With land in sight and his bosses here, he’ll be emerging any minute now. I’ll stay here and see if I can discourage them a little.”

  “Just you and a handgun?” Kelly said. “Against a helicopter with machine guns? That’s crazy.”

  “I doubt if they’ll return the fire,” Blake said. “They know the ship is loaded with ether. If I can hold them off long enough to get the ship beached, we can slip down the Jacob’s ladder, make a run for it.”

  “Two guns are better than one,” Kelly said. “I’ll stay with you.”

  “No,” Blake said. “They might be crazy enough to strafe the bridge. We can’t endanger Maria. Hop to it and get below.” He took a practice sight at the small green spot coming into view, shaking his head at the ludicrous situation.

  Kelly and Maria hung back, hesitating, staring at the helicopter. It turned slowly, exposing the solid blue star on the fuselage, and Maria said something in Spanish. Blake turned and saw her pointing at the helicopter, trembling.

  “La estrella azul,” Maria said in a shrill voice. “La mano de muerte.”

  He glanced at Kelly. “What’s she saying?”

  “‘The blue star. The hand of death,’” Kelly said.

  “Ask her what she means.”

  “She sees the blue star on the fuselage,” Kelly said.

  “What does that have to do with the hand of death?”

  Maria said something in Spanish.

  “She said that El Callado had a blue star tattooed on the back of his hand,” Kelly said. “Everyone called it the hand of death.”

  Blake’s mind flashed on something Doc had said during his update on the bodies. The corpse that had grabbed Alvarez by the ankle had a blue star tattooed on the back of its hand. The corpse from the vault. The corpse that had disappeared . . . Something was gnawing at him, but he couldn’t make the connection. He glanced up at the helicopter. “Take Maria below. Now. That’s an order.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going,” Kelly said. “But I still think this plan is nuts.”

  Kelly and Maria scrambled down the starboard ladder to the deck below. Blake squinted down the barrel of the Beretta, trying to line up the shimmering helicopter in his sights, waiting for it to come into range. Minutes ticked by. The helicopter grew larger in his sights. He heard the sound of footsteps coming up the port ladder to the bridge. He glanced between the approaching helicopter and the door of the pilothouse, his guts churning. Sweat beaded up on his forehead, trickled into his eyes. He heard the latch turn and spun on the door, his pistol aimed in a two-handed grip.

  A giant of a man wearing the blue chambray shirt and denim pants of an ordinary seaman stepped into the pilothouse. Square-jawed and expressionless, he stood facing Blake, staring at him with yellowed eyes, a rifle held at waist level. The mass of him blocked out all light from the door. He pointed the rifle at Blake and motioned toward the engine-order telegraph.

  Blake tensed, aimed his pistol at the hulking figure. He had never seen a bigger man in his life. The carbine looked like a toy in his hands. Hands that had pulled him back from the brink of death. He glanced at the rifle. It was Sergeant Rivero’s M-16. The man’s finger seemed to barely fit inside the trigger guard. They stared at each other for what seemed a full
minute.

  “So,” Blake said with a dry mouth, heart hammering in his chest. “The silent one.”

  The yellow eyes flashed. He understood. And he didn’t like the name. He nodded again toward the engine-order telegraph, this time with more urgency.

  “What is it?” Blake said. “You want me to stop the ship?”

  One quick nod, a jerk of the massive head.

  “That wouldn’t be a great idea,” Blake said, swallowing hard. “The ship is sinking.”

  The man nodded toward the helicopter, now more visible in the eastern sky and jerked his head violently toward the engine-order telegraph.

  “You want me to stop it so they can land? Is that it?”

  Another nod.

  “That wouldn’t really be in my best interest,” Blake said.

  The giant’s face turned dark. He seemed to sense that there was more to stopping the ship than pulling the telegraph handle to ‘All Stop.’ He needed Blake to do something, but he didn’t seem to know what. He jerked the rifle up and aimed it at Blake, the frustration evident on his lined face.

  “Uh-uh,” Blake said, tensing his grip on the Beretta. He stared back. “I’ve got one too. And you don’t look real comfortable with yours.” Blake wondered if he even knew how to shoot it. He didn’t want to kill this giant beast if he didn’t have to. “Just put it down, friend.”

  The man stared at him for a long minute. The rifle seemed to sag. Blake almost felt sorry for him for a minute. He relaxed his stance enough to blink. In that instant, something flew at him with blinding speed. He instinctively brought his arms up to protect his face. The M-16 caught him across his raised forearms and knocked him back against the bulkhead. A mass of flesh covered him in an instant, twisting the Beretta out of his hand, knocking him sprawling across the deck. He felt the wind go out of him as the giant fell on him, straddled him with his massive weight and circled his neck with steellike fingers. The smell of him was overpowering, the acrid stench of a wild animal. Blake’s fingers dug into biceps that felt like his own thighs as he tried to break the grip. Staring into a face contorted with rage, he struggled with everything he had, but nothing was moving. He felt himself drifting away. A darkness came over him. He felt a sense of peace.

  The dark shadows that enveloped him grew lighter. He felt the grip around his throat loosen. He opened his eyes and saw a demonic figure, face blackened with camouflage makeup, pull the giant’s massive head back by the hair with one hand and plunge a combat knife hilt-deep into his right temple, the tip of the blade emerging from his left. The square face went slack, eyes wide, mouth open. Sergeant Rivero straddled him, holding the ponderous head back with one hand, twisting the knife handle with the other, grinding El Callado’s brains into mush. The mound of flesh went limp and collapsed on Blake, smothering him with his weight.

  Sergeant Rivero pulled the Ka-Bar combat knife out of El Callado’s skull with a scrape of steel against bone that sounded like a chicken being cut up. He rolled the massive corpse off Blake and wiped the knife on the front of the blue chambray shirt, leaving a trail of bloody brain tissue. He rocked back on his heels, breathing hard, and looked at Blake.

  Blake sat up, rubbing his throat, gasping for air. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He stared at the features beneath the nightmarish face paint. He should have figured it out before now, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have prepared him for the apparition that sat before him.

  “I thought you were dead,” he finally managed to rasp out.

  Rivero gave him a condescending look. “Did you think I could be defeated by this garbage?”

  Blake glanced at the blue star tattooed on the back of the corpse’s hand and nodded. “The big guy in the vault. The one who grabbed Alvarez by the ankle-”

  Rivero snorted with contempt. “That was the great El Callado, the silent one,” he said, nodding at the pile of flesh sprawled in the corner. “I had heard reports of this ‘legend’ for years, but I had never had it confirmed. When he attacked me in the vault, I suspected it was him. When you shared with me what you had read in the log, I knew.” Rivero wiped the blade against the leg of his fatigues and stood up. “He was hard to kill,” he said, looking down on the corpse. “I thought I had done it until he grabbed that stupid seaman by the ankle.” His eyes grew dark. “I should have sunk a knife in him then, but that idiot corpsman pronounced him dead. I thought he was until his ‘body’ disappeared.” Rivero slipped the combat knife into his ankle sheath and snapped it. “That’s when I went underground and tried to hunt him down. He was as cunning as a rat and even harder to kill, as you just saw.”

  Blake looked out at the helicopter hovering against the bluish sky. “That must be the Ramirez cartel, if he wanted to surrender the ship to them,” he said. “Looks like you were wrong about who owned it.”

  “Perhaps.” Sergeant Rivero picked up his rifle.

  Blake sat for a minute to clear his head. The rotors of the helicopter grew louder. He rolled over and picked up the Beretta that was lying on the deck and came to his feet. If it was the Ramirez cartel, it would be payback time for Sergeant Rivero. He could still see the look in Rivero’s eyes when he described the murder of his family. Blake glanced at the carnage behind him again and looked out the window at the Blackhawk. He shook his head, almost feeling sorry for the first guy to scramble out the door of the helicopter.

  Sergeant Rivero ejected the banana clip from the M-16 and checked it, then shoved it back in place with a click. He took a practice aim out the window, checked the sights and made some adjustments. Satisfied, he turned toward Blake and leveled the rifle at him.

  “Put the gun down, Lieutenant.”

  Blake turned, smiling. The look on Rivero’s face said he wasn’t kidding. He felt something tear in his guts. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The Colombian marine’s face shifted into a strange, almost apologetic, look. “They need to land soon,” Sergeant Rivero said. “They’ve come a long way, and their fuel is low.”

  At that instant, Blake saw Kelly’s radio backpack by the door. He felt his whole body stiffen, staring at the radio, then back to Rivero’s blackened face. He looked at the helicopter. It wasn’t the Ramirez cartel; it was the Gallardo cartel, and Rivero had been guiding them in on Kelly’s radio. That’s why he’d gone underground. He stared at the Colombian marine in amazement, shaking his head, astonished that he’d missed all the signals.

  “The gun, please, Lieutenant,” Rivero said. “We don’t want any shooting with all this ether aboard. This shipment is very important.”

  Blake stared at the marine, his blood pounding at his temples. He leveled his Beretta at Rivero. If it was the end of the line, he would take this treacherous bastard down with him. “I can’t see any real good reason why I should do that.”

  “I have the señorita and the chica safely secured belowdecks. If you put it down now, you have my word that they will not be harmed. If you kill me, the others will not be so kind,” Rivero said, nodding at the approaching helicopter.

  Blake tried not to show the alarm in his eyes. Kelly and Maria hadn’t been gone that long. Did he have them, or was he bluffing? “I don’t believe you.”

  “You have no choice but to believe me. The gun, please. On the deck.”

  Blake stared at Rivero for a long minute. Whether he had them or not, it wouldn’t take these thugs long to round them up after he was dead. He couldn’t bear the thought of Kelly and Maria falling into their hands. Rivero was right. He had no choice. “All right,” he said finally. “What happens to me doesn’t matter, but I want your word that you’ll protect Kelly and the girl from those people,” he said, nodding at the Blackhawk.

  Rivero nodded. “I regret that I can do nothing for you, Teniente. You are a casualty of war, but I will not allow women and children to be killed.”

  “Fair enough.” Blake laid the automatic on the deck in front of him and raised his hands. He looked at Rivero and shook his hea
d. “But what is your reason for it?”

  “You couldn’t hope to understand, Teniente,” Rivero said. “The rich never understand the poor. Kick it over here, please.”

  “If you think I’m rich, you’ve been misinformed,” Blake said. He shoved the pistol across the deck with his foot.

  “It’s your rich, arrogant country that doesn’t understand,” Rivero said. “Coming down here, meddling in things you can’t begin to comprehend.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, of course, you don’t,” Rivero said. “If you had grown up among the campesinos as I did, you might.”

  “Campesinos?” Blake said. “What the hell are you-”

  “Peasants, Lieutenant. You don’t even know they exist. Your people have everything. Mine have nothing, only the coca leaf. The rich never understand that when the poor have only one thing to sell, it cannot be so easily taken away.” Rivero reached down and picked up the Beretta slowly with his left hand, never taking his eyes off Blake. He flung it through the open door of the pilothouse, over the side. It went spiraling into the sea without making a ripple. The distant drone of helicopter rotors grew louder. Rivero nodded to the engine-order telegraph. “Heave to.”

  “Are you crazy?” Blake said. “This ship is sinking. The only chance we’ve got is to beach it on that atoll.”

  “Your shoring job was excellent, with my help,” Rivero said. “The ship will stay afloat. Heave to just long enough for them to land. It won’t take long.”

  “So it was you all along,” Blake said. “You stole the radio. You killed Sparks and Alvarez.”

  Rivero nodded, his face impassive.