Crimson Waters. James Axler

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      Chapter Three

      “Yonder she lies,” the old one-legged black boatman said grandly. “Nueva Tortuga. Or NuTuga, as the folk who live there like to call her.”

      “If I am not mistaken,” Doc said, “this is the island of Nevis we see before us.”

      “So ’tis,” the boatman said.

      “Call me Oldie of the Sea,” he’d told them. “Or call me Ishmael. Just don’t call me late for supper.” Then he’d laughed and laughed, so hard it was infectious despite the fact the joke was older than Doc and twice as worn-out. He’d appeared out of a sun falling into a brownish-black bank of clouds on the western horizon, rowing his little skiff, towing a net full of writhing silver-sided fish.

      Ryan frowned out across water that danced with midafternoon sun-dazzle at a hilly green island to the north and east of the little boat. A shiny white ville with neat orange-and-red-tile roofs tumbled down some of the hills to a harbor crowded with boats. None of them was as much as a hundred feet long, as far as he could tell.

      It looked like the last place on earth settled by, inhabited by and run exclusively for the benefit of the coldest-hearted pirates in the West Indies.

      He and his companions had found an inhabited island late the previous afternoon. Actually, they’d found the boatman’s camp, which consisted mainly of a firepit and a shanty made of warped, sun-silvered planks and a roof of ancient corrugated plastic, a mottled cream color with little hints of original orange remaining in the troughs. Ryan couldn’t see it surviving the next stiff breeze, to say nothing of the next hurricane.

      A quick search of the island, which wasn’t much bigger than the one they’d jumped in on, showed no one else was currently on it. But the fact that there were ashes and burned wood chunks visible in the fireplace, instead of drifted sand, showed somebody had been there recently. After a brief conference they agreed to hide in the brush. Except for Ryan, who sat to see who showed up by boat.

      “So...Oldie,” Mildred said reluctantly. “You sure you’re going to be okay here?”

      “Sure,” he said. “Ever’body’s safe as houses in NuTuga. Houses’re safe, too. Syndicate don’t let anybody act out. Ever’body’s equal before the law.”

      He was a wiry guy of medium height, just a finger or two taller than J.B. His skin had started black and gotten blacker from constant exposure to the Caribbean sun. It made for a startling contrast with his hair and beard, full despite his years although cut close to his skull, and white as the snow he’d likely never seen. His face was a mass of wrinkles, as much, Ryan reckoned, from habitual good humor as age or sun.

      He’d haggled briefly and halfheartedly before agreeing to feed them, refill their canteens from his hidden water cistern, let them sleep rough on his island and ferry them to the nearest port in the morning for three 7.62 mm rounds from Ryan’s Steyr Scout longblaster. Ryan got the impression he only accepted payment because his new friends would naturally suspect him of plotting something if he hadn’t—and that what he was really after was some company, however brief.

      His skiff, named the Ernie H, was well kept but seemed as ancient as Oldie was. Right now, the little vessel ran on a broad reach across a breeze from the northwest, using a single triangular sail on the mast. Oldie had a pair of oars locked up under the gunwales for calm seas.

      He also had an Ishapore 2A longblaster clamped under a tarp by his seat in the stern. It was the reason he’d been willing to take the 7.62 mm rounds in exchange for passage, since the Indian-made rifle had been built to fire those rounds. Though the forestock was secured by windings of bright red copper wire, Ryan had seen how the steel of the barrel and receiver shone with a faint coating of oil. It was a piece both well used and well maintained.

      “So truly,” Doc said, peering toward the near ville, “the city is ruled by a council of pirates?”

      “Right as rain,” Oldie said. “They started using the place soon as the quakes settled down after the war. Much as they ever settled down, that is. Wasn’t much commerce to raid in those days, but a lot of richies tried to weather the nuke-storm at sea on their yachts. They made pretty ripe plucking.”

      The wind died as they approached the mouth of the harbor. Oldie calmly stood and began furling the sail, easily shifting his weight to accommodate the boat’s rocking.

      “Pirates did a lot of coastal raiding in those days, too,” he said. He was clearly doing something he did every day. It didn’t take much conscious attention on his part. “These days, too, of course. Anyway, what with one thing or another, this side of the island wound up with a double-cherry natural harbor—if you could call what made it ‘natural,’ speaking rightly.

      “Since the quakes and storms and whatnot had pretty much leveled Charlestown, which was pretty much the only town that counted, here or on St. Kitts just off to the north, there—” he nodded his white-bearded chin at a humpy green line lying off on the horizon as he lowered the sail “—the place tended to attract folks. Took hold right quick as a place to trade. ’Course, being as the only folks with much to trade—or at least, the means to insist on getting paid for what they had to trade, if you catch my drift—were pirates, pirates it was as settled it. Some got so successful they decided they could do better by staying put, keeping things running smooth and taking their cut off the top, than by sea-roving. Less work, and a shitload safer.”

      “So they sell rum, gaudy sluts and beans to the gangs that bring in loot,” J.B. said. “Good income, if you got the weapons to hang on to it.”

      Oldie grinned. “Told you, they was pirates to start with. They may put on airs and strut around cocky, but they didn’t forget their roots. They call their sec men Monitors. People as run afoul of them live to regret it.”

      He got out his oars and set them in locks to either side of the bench that ran across the bow, then sat and began СКАЧАТЬ