"Bats, Felix!"
"Are you all right, boss?"
"What's happening?"
"She's on fire. Mac and Rostow are dead. It was an RPG. It hit the bar in the fantail. All the liquor caught fire. We have to get off."
Felix pulled Charley out of the tree on the foredeck.
"I had this dream, Felix."
"It's the morphine. Come on."
They crawled aft along the deck and went into the main salon. Charley coughed from the smoke. The emergency sprinkler system was going, everything was wet. The fire had already consumed the fantail and was working its way forward, making the wet carpet and walls hiss and steam. The gold-glass panels from the old ocean liner Normandie had shattered. The pieces glowed in the fire like Art Deco embers. Charley and Felix leaned against a bulkhead to catch their breath.
"We have to abandon ship," said Felix.
"See if they're still out there."
Felix went out on deck. He crawled back in and said, "Two boats."
"Are they together, on one side?"
"Yeah, the starboard."
Charley stared into the fire for several moments. He said, "We'll use the inflatable on the foredeck. Toss it over the port side. There's a Navy base downriver. The current'll take us."
They crawled together up the deck on the port side. Felix wrestled the emergency inflatable life raft off its cradle. It would inflate automatically as soon as it hit the water.
"Tie two lines to it," said Charley. "We'll toss it in together and each hold a line. Once it's inflated, we can get in. But don't let go of the line."
Felix tied the two lines and hefted the raft up onto the railing.
"Felix, listen to me. In case something happens, it's all with the lawyers, the lawyers will take care of everything. You understand?"
"No," said Felix.
"You're, I, you're my only family left, Felix. Who else was I going to leave it to?"
"That's crazy."
"It's all been worked out, Felix. It's all with the lawyers."
"We're going together."
"In case, is all I'm saying. When you get to the Navy base, contact Gallardo. That was a damn fine supper I gave him. Let him start earning his pay. All right, ready? Now, we got to hold on to that rope tight. That's one hell of a current. We'll be in Juanjui by breakfast time. Don't let go, no matter what. On count of three."
Charley gripped his line and seated himself on the railing. Felix sat beside him.
"One, two, three." Felix pushed the raft overboard and jumped in.
The CO2 canister inflated the raft in seconds. Felix pulled himself aboard. By the time he'd climbed on, he was fifty yards downstream of Esmeralda. He could not see Charley waving to him from the deck, hear him call out, "Vaya con Dios, my old and good friend."
"Billonario, come in."
The fire was eating the boat. There was no more time. Rafi was on his way from Yenan with two more boats. The helicopter would take off at first light, but by then the boat would be a charred hulk, and the Manet… the Manet. How could the billonario have been so arrogant?
Gomez had taken command of Virgilio's boat. He signaled him over.
As it approached, he saw Virgilio's legs protruding from underneath a rubber poncho they had spread over him. They had covered him, not out of respect, but for morale.
He said to Gomez, "Take your men and go aboard and put out the fire."
Gomez looked at the flaming yacht on the mudbank. "But, Niño, what if they're still alive?"
"Then kill them."
"Maybe we should wait until dawn."
"By dawn it will be burned, Gomez!"
"So?"
"Gomez, there is gold on board. Bars of gold. Do you want it all to melt?"
"Pues… no, Niño, but, with respect, it's too dangerous. The sniper may still be alive. Let's wait for the boats and the helicopter."
"Gomez, you are dismissed. Pitu, take the wheel from that coward. Go and put out the fire."
"With respect, Niño, Gomez is right."
"You disgust me, all of you. Put Virgilio's body in my boat. I will not have him carried in a boat of cowards."
They put Virgilio aboard.
"Billonario, answer. We have to put out the fire. Neither of us wants the Manet to burn."
"Mohney?" Pitu said to Gomez.
"Manet?" Charley sat on a litter of Plexiglas crumbs in the bridge. The fine rectangular leather case lay opened in front of him, the finely engraved barrel and stock in two pieces on his lap. He fit them together and snapped them gently shut, then opened them and chambered two rounds of twelve-gauge double-ought buck. He could just hear his gunsmith. "Double-ought, sir? In the Purdys?"
"Billonario, we can't let the Manet burn."
How in hell did he know about the Manet? The pain in his head worsened. He took a light swig of whiskey and morphine. Manet? Had Gallardo told him? Was he on his payroll? Did everyone in the country work for the sumbitch? He reached for the hand mike.
"This is Esmeralda."
"Thank God, billonario. Are you all right?"
"Fine. Fine."
"Your ship is burning."
"I noticed."
"I want to help you put it out."
"Thanks, but you been enough help already."
"Is the Manet safe?"
Charley remembered Sanchez saying something during the interrogation about a room he had in the white house with paintings. Where he kept the surface-to-air missiles seemed more important at the time.
He opened the cabinet behind the wheel and rummaged through boxes.
"You and your men come out on deck. We will not shoot. You have my word."
"Son, you're a drug dealer. Your word just ain't enough."
"It was you who violated our last cease-fire, billonario. You killed a good man."
Charley found what he was looking for.
"Why you so hot for Manet?"
"Because he was the first modern artist with a social conscience. Because he told the bourgeoisie to fuck themselves. Because he was magnificent. What a question, billonario."
"What else you like about him?"
He's delaying. While the cabron with the elephant gun prepares to blow my brains out.
He crouched low in his seat. The men in his boat kept slipping in Virgilio's and Eusebio's blood. It was a mess back there, and not good for morale.
He said to them, "I need one brave man." No one spoke up. "Are you all women? Is there not one man aboard with balls between his legs instead of a tampon string?"
"Pues, si, Niño." It was Cacho.
"Bravo, Cacho. Take my pistol. I'll maneuver directly upstream of the yacht. All you have to do is float downstream to it. Get on the mudbank. Then get aboard. Go to the bridge. I'll keep him talking on the radio."
"What then, Niño?"
Cacho was a bit stupid. But this was why he was volunteering.
"Shoot him, Cacho. With the pistol."
"Bueno." Cacho began to strip.
"Cacho?"
"Si, Niño."
"Wound him. Don't kill him."
He went over the side. He turned to the other men. "Aren't you ashamed?"
"But, Niño, we can't swim."
"Billonario, are you there?"
The blade of Charley's penknife hovered over the stick of HMX. Charley calculated: if a foot of HMX was enough to blow apart an I beam or leave a thirty-foot-wide-by-twenty-deep crater in the ground, two inches ought to do it. Say, four inches. He cut off the piece and rolled it on the floor to flatten it, then pressed it onto his palm with the heel of his other hand, reminding himself of an old Mexican woman making a tortilla. That done, he took a nitro chip from its box and pressed that into the doughy tortilla.