“No. But grandma always said I had the slowest digestion of any baby in the whole of the South. They got one of my diapers in the Smithsonian Institute of the Confederacy.”
“Cut out the shit,” Willie said, leaning back in order not to talk loudly. “Are we doing all this in daylight, Tom?”
“Now.”
“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” said Willie. “I have fallen among thieves and bastards.”
“Shut up, Willie, and let’s see you fight.”
Willie nodded his head and looked ahead with his good eye toward the green mangrove key which lay tiptoed on its brown red roots.
He only said one more thing before they rounded the point, “They’ve got good oysters on those roots.”
Thomas Hudson nodded.
XVI
They saw the turtle boat when they rounded the point of the key and passed through the channel which separated it from another small key. She was lying with her bow close in to shore and there were vines hanging from her mast and her deck was covered with new-cut mangrove branches.
Willie leaned back and with his voice almost against Peter’s ear, said in a low voice, “Her skirl’s missing. Pass the word.”
Peters leaned his blotched, freckled face back and said, “Her skiff’s missing, Tom. There must be some ashore.”
“We’ll board her and sink her,” Thomas Hudson said. “Same plan. Pass the word.”
Peters bent forward and spoke into Willie’s ear and Willie’s head started to shake. Then he held up his hand with the familiar zero. Zero as in asshole, Thomas Hudson thought. They came up on her as fast as the little coffee mill of an engine would take them and Thomas Hudson put her smartly alongside without bumping. Willie lifted the grapple over the gunwale of the turtle boat and pulled it fast and the three of them were on the deck almost at the same time. Underneath their feet there were mangrove branches with their dead fresh smell and Thomas Hudson saw the vine draped mast as though now it were a dream again. He saw the hatch open and a forward hatch open and covered with branches. There was no one on deck.
Thomas Hudson waved Willie forward past this hatch and covered the other one with his submachine gun. He checked that the safety lever was on full automatic. Under his bare feet he could feel the hard roundness of the branches, the slipperiness of the leaves, and the heat of the wooden deck.
“Tell them to come out with their hands up,” he said quietly to Peters.
Peters spoke in rough, throaty German. Nobody answered and nothing happened.
Thomas Hudson thought, grandma’s boy has a good delivery, and he said, “Tell them again we give them ten seconds to come out. We will treat them as prisoners of war. Then count ten.”
Peters spoke so it sounded like the voice of all German doom. His voice holds up magnificently, Thomas Hudson thought, and turned his head fast to see if the skiff were in sight. He could only see the brown roots and the green of the mangroves.
“Count ten and put one in,” he said. “Watch that fucking forward hatch, Willie.”
“It’s got those fucking branches covering it.”
“Push one in with your hands when Peters goes. Don’t throw it.”
Peters reached ten and standing there, tall, loose-jointed like a pitcher on the mound, holding his submachine gun under his left arm, he pulled the pin of the grenade with his teeth, held it spurting smoke a moment as though he were warming it, and tossed it with the underhand motion of a Carl Mays into the darkness of the hatch.
As Thomas Hudson watched him, he thought, he’s a great actor and he doesn’t think there is anything down there.
Thomas Hudson hit the deck, covering the mouth of the hatch with his Thompson. Peter’s grenade exploded with a flashing crack and a roar and Thomas Hudson saw Willie opening the brush to drop a grenade in the forward hatch. Then to the right of the mast, where the vines hung, he saw the muzzle of a gun come up from between the branches on the same hatch where Willie was working. He fired at it but it fired five quick flashes, clattering like a child’s rattle. Then Willie’s grenade went with a big flash and Thomas Hudson looked and saw Willie, in the scuppers, pull the pin on another grenade to throw in. Peters was on his side with his head on the gunwale. Blood was running from his head into the scuppers.