He laughed and unzipped. "There are a lot of things you'd like, aren't there, Alice?" he said, and thrust into her. She yelped and gripped the edges of the table. Wet, he thought. This is one sick bitch puppy. Wet tightness around him. He began to move, eyes on the moonlit road across the waters behind the ship.

"You'd like to have a place where you could dish it out, too, when you felt like it," he said. "Gold and silk, wealth, girls, boys, do some real rough stuff of your own, with no laws and no place you had to stop. Real whips, real knives."

"Yes," she hissed, pushing back to meet him. "Yes, you bastard-you weren't just-Jesus!-you weren't just daydreaming."

He laughed, one hand gripping the back of her neck with painful force, thrusting into her with a savagery that battered her thighs against the edge of the table.

"I'm the man who makes dreams come true."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

October, Year 1 A.E.

"She's coming 'round," Coleman said.

Cofflin rolled his wheelchair closer. The left leg was straight out before him, the wound a dull ache under the anesthetic. The other pain couldn't be dulled-he could feel it nibbling at the edges of his mind, roiling with a killing rage. But there was no time for it, not if he was to do what had to be done.

Alston's eyes fluttered open. They were bloodshot, wandering. Coleman leaned over her and shone a light into one and the other. A long-fingered black hand came up; Swindapa gripped it in hers and bent close. Alston's eyes closed again for a moment, and she sighed. Cofflin fought down a moment of sickening envy; it wasn't Alston's fault that he was the one left alone.

"Water."

A nurse cranked the hospital bed up. "Hospital" was a bit too grand for the little forty-bed clinic that was all the island had-all it had needed, when the mainland's hospitals and specialists were close. Morning sunlight shone through the open windows, and a breath of sea and flowers. The garden outside was heedlessly, cruelly beautiful with roses.

Swindapa held a cup to Alston's lips. The officer felt at the bandages above her left ear. When she spoke, it was quiet but coherent. "Hurts like hell."

"You're a very lucky woman," Coleman said, in the semi-scolding tone doctors always used in these situations.

"Ah'm lucky… the bitch was usin' a popgun," she said. "Concussion?"

"It skipped around the bone," Coleman said. "Light bullet, as you guessed. Some blood loss, minor concussion"- which was better than a serious one, but that was all you could say for it-"and you'll have a small scar. White streak through your hair, maybe. It didn't even need a stitch."

Alston sighed again. Her eyes swiveled around to Cofflin. "Fill me in."

"It was Lisketter and her gang," he said. "They took a boat-the schooner, Bentley-and kidnapped Martha. And I couldn't do a God damned thing." His fist pounded the arm of the chair, once, twice.

"Not… with a bullet through your knee," Alston responded. "That the whole of it?"

Cofflin shook his head. "Your… formerly your Lieutenant Walker was in on it. We got a couple of prisoners, Lisketter's people who jumped ship. Evidently he and Isketerol, the Tartessian, scammed Lisketter-got her to help them hijack the town's weapons and create a diversion. Meanwhile Walker got a gang of his own together, some Coast Guard, most townies, and took the weapons from the Eagle's armory, together with the Yare, its cargo, and John Martins and his lady Barbara. They were kidnapped too, evidently. Lisketter thought Walker was going down to San Lorenzo, Mexico, up the Coatzacoalcos River, to help her, some crazy scheme to arm the Indians there to protect them from big bad us. Then when the Yare and the Bentley were both out beyond the breakwaters, Walker gave her the finger and sailed east."

"I'm… extremely sorry, Chief Cofflin." Alston said softly. "Extremely."

"You did better than any of the rest of us," Cofflin said roughly. Which isn't very fucking good. "We got overconfident. We got lazy."

Alston nodded and winced. "How long?" she said to Coleman.

"I will not let you out of that bed for another two days," he said. "I'd like to have you under observation for another week after that."

"Not possible. Is Eagle still here?"

Cofflin cleared his throat and jerked his chin toward the next bed. Alston rolled her head slowly and carefully. Sandy Rapczewicz was there, her lower face immobilized in a brace. She held up a slate, marked in chalk:

Bastard broke my jaw, Skipper. Sorry.

Cofflin saw something in her eyes that answered his. He nodded. "Can you catch them?"

"Which ones?" Alston said. "Eagle's got more hull speed than either, but they can both cut closer to the wind. If Yare's gone east, and she has, I can probably catch him. Those are following winds-best for a square-rigger. Bentley will be beating to windward most of the way down. Eagle'd be traveling three sea miles to her two. Plus it's a big ocean and we don't have spotter planes. Eagle's radar is short-range."

"And besides, if you did run Yare down, he's got the machine gun, and most of the rifles. Unless you could ram him"-as a former fisherman he knew how nearly impossible that would be, especially for two ships under sail-"it would be a… hairy proposition."

Cofflin waited; he saw with some amazement that Alston was suppressing a laugh. At last she spoke:

"Not all that bad… I've got a nasty paranoid mind. The firm' pin, bolt, and return spring for that Browning are in a box under my bed at Guard House. Plus the pins fo' the rifles, although he might be able to make more of those. Various other crucial parts, too."

This time she did laugh, a snarling chuckle which ended with a wince. Cofflin grinned, a baring of teeth. He had a score to settle with Lieutenant Walker, someday. But first…

He looked at Alston. There were two hostages on Yare, as opposed to one on Bentley… four on Yare, if Menendez and Hong hadn't gone of their own wills; their rooms were suspiciously unpacked.

"Bentley," Alston said. "We go after Bentley. More difficult… do that first. Then run down Yare."

Cofflin closed his eyes for an instant, shuddering, then opened them and met hers. His nod held a promise: I owe you one. Whatever the reason, she'd go after Martha first.

"Did I get… what's-his-name?"

"David Lisketter. We're not sure; they didn't leave a body, at least. They did leave the hand and the gun it was holding. They panicked, dropped any other plans and ran."

Alston nodded, closing her eyes and laying her head back on the pillows. Coleman stood and made shooing motions. "Let her rest; she'll recover faster that way. Out, all of you!

Well, you can stay, young lady, if you're very quiet. Out, the rest of you. Out!"

"You're not just a prick, Rodriguez, you're a stupid prick, you know that?"

The Yare was heeled over sharply, making twelve knots with a following wind. She was heading north by northeast, into the higher latitudes, and the raw wind was colder already over seas huge and ice gray. The schooner crested a rise, hesitated, then plunged downward with spray flying twice man-height from her bows. The others of her crew- twenty in all, not counting the women or Martins-were watching silently, except for the two at the wheel and a few more leaning over the rail, retching as the waves lashed their faces.

"I was just, like, trying to get some," the sailor whined. He was visibly forcing himself not to cringe, but there was a cornered viciousness in his eyes. "You got your squeeze, so does the wog-why shouldn't the rest of us get some?"