Dead Sea

Menhaus in tow, they left, leaving Cushing alone out by the rail. Cushing wasn’t even aware that they were gone. He watched Fabrini’s cap (it said CAT above the brim) get tossed about by the conflicting, angry winds. It came to rest on a wave, was inundated by the crest of another. Still it floated, drenched, bobbing, carried by ripples of foam. Something silvery came out of the deep and nudged it.

But by then, it was out of range.

3

George Ryan was feeling more himself by the time darkness fell over the ocean. There was no twilight. No moment where day and night stood balanced in some beautiful neutrality. One moment the dying arcs of the sun were glinting off the spray-beaded pane of the porthole, the shadows growing long like teeth, and the next, it was dark. More so, black. So black he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. The only light there was spilled in from the porthole, from the dimly-lit decks. Beyond the railing, it was utter blackness. Like a mineshaft at midnight.

Darkness.

Complete.

Unrelenting.

George rubbed his eyes and lit a cigarette. According to Morse, the captain, and good old Saks, they would be docking in Cayenne, French Guiana late the next evening. Saks said they could spend the night out on the town. But come first light, they had a job to do and they were damned well going to do it. George thought he’d probably pass on a night of drink and debauchery and just rest up in his hotel room on dry land. The other could wait until the job was done. He started thinking that two days at sea wasn’t bad. Not when you thought of the days when people spent months, years even, on a voyage.

“I could’ve stayed home,” he said under his breath.

And part of him still wished that he had.

But that part of him didn’t worry about creditors. It didn’t have the banks biting at its ass. It didn’t have two ex-wives salivating for alimony. It didn’t have a son to raise. It didn’t have a big, fat, juicy mortgage to worry about. It didn’t have monstrous dental bills from the kid’s braces. And it surely didn’t have to wade hip-deep through medical bills from the wife’s back surgery. No, that part of him didn’t give a shit in a high wind about any of that.

All it had was paranoia.

All it had was that tinny, metallic voice that kept echoing in George’s skull about how all of this was one colossal fuck-up. How this was one big mistake and he should’ve listened and now it was just too goddamn late, buddy.

George took drags off his cigarette, licking his dry lips.

Saks had organized the job. He’d recruited the crew which included George. The set-up was simple: west of someplace called Kaw just off the Kounana River, there was a diamond mine on the Guiana Shield that had been hacked from the jungle. It was owned in partnership by a French mining company and Franklin Fisk. The same Fisk of Fisk Technologies, the electronics magnate out of Miami, who’d made a killing with lithium batteries. The problem was this mining camp had no airstrip. Supplies had to be brought in by truck which took several days and the product had to go out the same way. During the rainy season, many of the roads were washed out, and in some cases, washed completely away. It cost money to keep rebuilding them not to mention the money lost while trucks idled away for days waiting for a decent, passable road. So Fisk wanted an airstrip. It would save the collective millions every year. Fly in what you need, fly out the product. What took trucks days to manage on hazardous jungle roads, planes did in a few hours.

It made sense.

Saks was a construction jobber out of Miami. He was the lowest bidder. He got the job, set everything up. Fisk’s people would have flatbed trailers waiting for them in Cayenne to off-load the heavy equipment onto. They would also have all the labor needed and all the materials waiting at the camp. Saks had already been there a few times and surveyed it all out. When the crew arrived, they would cut a strip into the jungle and each get fifteen grand a piece. Saks, of course, got a bigger cut. They all got paid well for a month’s work and Saks said they could wrap it up in three weeks tops. The local labor, mostly Maroons and Amerindians, didn’t fare so well – they worked for practically pennies a day.

George had already spent his money.

The fifteen grand – cash, no taxes – would pay off the dentist and take a good bite out of the medical bills. Lisa hadn’t wanted him to go. She didn’t like the idea of him cruising over the open sea in a ship loaded with big dozers and barrels of diesel fuel. But the money had changed her mind. Jacob, his boy, thought it was great. It was like an adventure to him. He wanted to come along. And wasn’t that just like a boy? Bring me something home, dad, he’d told George. You know, like a big snake or a shrunken head.

“Be careful of those big crocodiles,” Lisa had said before he left. “I saw it on TV. They eat people down there.”

Yeah, George thought, and so do the ones in the New York sewers.