Lights Out

“Sorry, senor,” he said, unable to restrain a smile. “He had a girlfriend up there. I got to know her a little bit.”

Eddie kicked out at Julio, striking him in the side of the knee. Julio cried out, lost his balance, fell. Eddie rolled on top of him, got a hand on Julio’s ponytail, a thumb in Julio’s eye. Then the rope dug deep into his neck and something hit his head. He got lost in a fog.

For a while he was aware of nothing but the wind and the sea, both growing louder. Then Julio was screaming, “I can’t see, I can’t see.”

Paz said: “Quiet. You’re all right.”

Julio screamed: “I can’t see.”

El Rojo said: “Control yourself.”

Julio went silent. Eddie, still in the fog, saw him glaring down, blood seeping from the corners of his eye, saw Julio’s foot draw back, saw the kick coming, waited. It came. The fog went red.

The sea was angry. It put on a spiky face and tried to toss the speedboat away. Eddie, sprawled over the transom between two outboards, with the rope around his neck and his face almost in the water, felt the power of the sea. The sea was his friend. It slapped his face, stinging and cold but friendly, driving away the red fog.

In Spanish, someone shouted, “I don’t see it.”

“They’ve moved farther out,” El Rojo said, “because of the weather.”

“I don’t like it,” said the first man. “How will I find the cut in this?”

“Steer,” said El Rojo.

A wave lifted the boat high, banged it back down. Eddie fell on something hard-edged. The fuel tank. Hoses dug into his chest.

The next wave was bigger still. It raised the propellers out of the water and almost threw Eddie overboard. Only the rope around his neck kept him in place. In the weightless moment before the stern dropped back down, he glimpsed two plugs in it, one above the deck line, for drainage, and the other about a foot below, indicating a double hull.

The boat rose again, swung sideways. The engines stuttered, the props came up, whining in the air, someone heavy fell on Eddie’s back. The rope tightened around his neck. Then the boat crashed down in the trough, the heavy weight slid off, the rope slackened.

“Where the fuck are they?” said the man at the wheel, raising his voice over the storm.

“Radio them,” El Rojo replied. “Tell them to turn on the lights and move in.”

“Liberador, Liberador,” called Paz. “Come in, Liberador.”

Someone moaned, close by. Jack. “It hurts,” he said, but not loudly. “It hurts.”

Double hull. That meant an airspace, didn’t it? Eddie reached one hand below the waterline, felt for the bottom plug. Why not? The sea was his friend, and the alternative was being part of Gaucho’s therapy.

He found the plug. It had a metal-ring handle, snapped tight to the hull. He unsnapped it, pulled. Nothing happened. He tried rotating it, first one way, then another. The ring turned, counterclockwise, releasing tension in the rubber plug, shrinking its volume. It popped out. Eddie let it go.

A wave tossed the boat up again, and he saw the round hole in the stern. Then came the fall into the trough, and the hole sank from view.

“Lights at two o’clock,” shouted Paz.

“Those?” said another. “So far?”

“Steer,” said El Rojo.

“It hurts,” said Jack, close by.

Eddie lay slumped over the transom, waiting for the hull space to fill with water, waiting for the boat to turn heavy and sluggish, to go down. But the boat didn’t turn heavy and sluggish; it pounded on, into the waves. Why? Some time passed before Eddie figured it out, time that took them farther out. It was simple: forward motion kept water from entering the hole. Forward motion would have to be stopped.

Eddie felt for the fuel hose under his chest, ran his hand along it to the coupling with the starboard engine, saw that a second hose connected the starboard engine to the port. The sole feeder of fuel was the hose that ran from the tank, under his chest, to the starboard engine. Eddie reached for the coupling, unsnapped it, and hung the hose over the stern.

The engines roared on. Maybe he had miscalculated, maybe there were factors he knew nothing about. He pushed himself up on hands and knees, and had his hand on the clamps that fastened the starboard engine to the hull, when both engines coughed and died.

There was a moment of quiet. Then sound poured in: the sea, the wind, raised voices from the cockpit. Eddie turned, saw a wave looming over the bow, saw El Rojo, Paz, Julio, and the olive-skinned men, all gazing at the engines, saw Jack sitting doubled up, his back to the hull, saw that the other end of the rope around his neck was tied to a cleat.

The front slope of the wave raised the boat high; the back slope crashed it down. This time cold water swept over the transom, and the stern swung heavily in the wash.

El Rojo said: “Julio.”

Julio made his way to the stern.

“We’re sinking,” cried a man in the cockpit.

“Silence,” said El Rojo.

Water ran across the deck. Julio slipped in it as he reached the stern. He rose, kicked Eddie out of the way, examined the engines.