Djibouti

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I DON'T RECALL," BILLY SAID to Xavier, "if I told you I'm blowing up the gas ship tomorrow."

"I heard you were thinkin about it but nobody had an idea of when. You must have a good reason you want to get to it."

Billy said, "I'd like to hit the fucker while she's sitting there in the stream."

The two were stretched out in lounges on the hotel's sea-level pool deck, watching ships pass in the distance barely moving. Billy had on blue bikini briefs, his stomach trying to hide them, his hair a month wilder than when they'd met. Xavier thought Billy was cool in his way, how he knew everything and believed he could shoot up a highly combustible ship and not worry about getting away.

Xavier had on his silk-looking skimpy green trunks.

Billy had his binoculars resting on his stomach and a local map of the Golfo de Tadjoura, both of them smoking Billy's Havanas. Xavier liked the way Billy made judgments, cool about it in a way Xavier didn't understand, but most often was right how he saw it.

"So you think you'll do it tomorrow," Xavier said.

"I'll light up the sky tonight about dusk. Hit her in her sweet spots and take off. The weather's suppose to be like it is today."

"Hit it with your double-barrel rifle?"

"Firing armor-piercing incendiary rounds. You'll see a sight you won't forget."

"I can watch," Xavier said, "without leavin my lounge?"

Billy raised his binoculars.

"Aphrodite is sitting about twelve miles off, the other side of those islands, the Mouchas, I always thought a good place for pirates to lay in wait. Not anymore. There thirty, forty navy ships in these waters now."

"I was talkin to Idris," Xavier said, "after Dara spoke to him. He called to say good-bye. Said he wasn't sure what he would do now. Pirates shot and killed the Syrian captain of a Panama-flagged ship off Mogadishu. Idris thinks it'll bring enough heat to put the pirates out of business before long."

"He's hanging on by his fingernails," Billy said, "waiting for somebody to offer him a job."

"I told him," Xavier said, "he could always go back to sellin guns to warlords, once he does his R amp; R in Paris. I'm not gonna worry about Idris."

"He called Dara this morning?"

"Around nine," Xavier said.

"You had something you wanted to say to him, so she handed you the phone?"

Xavier turned his head to look at Billy staring at the gas ship through his binoculars. Xavier said, "Dara put the phone on the table and got back in bed." Xavier paused. "See, then I picked up the phone and talked to him."

Billy said, "You were staying there?"

"In the same suite?" Xavier said. "No, I had my own." He let a few moments pass. "But happened to be with her when Idris called. You got it straight now?"

"I had an interesting call," Billy said, "from the other Gold Dust Twin. Harry said he was wondering could he hitch a ride with us, we happened by any chance to be going up the Red Sea. You understand what he's doing?"

Xavier said, "Jama could be waitin for him at the airport. Harry wants to slip away in your boat."

"He said he'd get off at Suez. That is, unless I'm going on to Great Britain. That's what he called it. I told him we won't know where we'll be for a few days. I'm assuming," Billy said, "we'll be delayed. But once we're free to go we'll be heading toward the rising sun."

"Keep on round the world," Xavier said. "That takes pluck, man."

"Well, I've never been accused of lacking it."

He was quiet for a few minutes.

"Dara learned about the shooting last night from Idris."

"That's right."

"Then you talked to him."

"What you doin," Xavier said, "is beatin around to find out did I spend the night with Dara. You think I did?"

"It's none of my business," Billy said. "I'm only trying to get your story straight in my mind."

Xavier said, "It's best you don't try too hard." THE FIRST THING DARA said was, "You win," once she settled down and was herself again. "Boy, did you."

"But I'm not takin your money, even if it was a bet. I'm not a paid escort," Xavier said, up on his elbow so he could look at her next to him, the room light still on, no time being wasted when they came in. "I had some help from my friend Horny Goat Weed. I'm admittin to you it wasn't all me."

Dara said in her drowsy voice, "You have any left?" THEY WERE OUT ON the sea twenty-seven days alone and had flirted with each other some. They were in the hotel three days and did it with the light on.

Xavier went back to his suite thinking, Man, like he was ten years younger. Or even twenty years to the easy-does-it times. Girl, what's your hurry? You heatin up on me? Take and put my fire hose on the job. Breathing all that kind of cute shit in her ear.

He could not hear himself saying these things to Dara.

She'd had a few out clubbing, came back to the hotel to bang on his door and he knew looking at her it was gonna happen. She said, "Let's go to my room, okay?" Like she'd been thinking about it, seeing them doing it in her bed. It was fine with Xavier, feeling Horny Weed stirring in him. She was more girlish than he'd ever seen her, using moves on him, high-course she was high-but feeling good about it and being herself, he could tell.

This was the time and they let it happen, grooving to a big finish, and he thought, Now what? She gonna hide on me? No, she said, "You win."

After she came out of the bathroom, no longer girlish, she said, "I have to go back to bed, okay?" Putting on a face like she expected him to object. That's all it was, Dara being a tired little girl. Course she could come back to bed.

He wondered how it would work the next time.

You start thinkin about the future now, the first time in your life?

She looked around the bedroom for her nightgown talking about Idris and Harry's experience, Xavier staring at her naked, knowing she wasn't showing herself on purpose, for any reason, she was just letting herself show in a natural way.

That was a good sign.

Don't think about the next time. It would happen when it happened. Xavier, seventy-two years old thinking like a boy. XAVIER AND BILLY HADN'T moved from the hotel pool.

"What I was wondering," Billy said, resting his glasses on his stomach, "if you ever served on an LNG tanker."

"I tell you I have," Xavier said, "I know the next question. I served almost a year on a LNG tanker called Methane Princess when I was a boy. Drove me crazy waitin to off-load, waitin for escorts, waitin for inspectors lookin for cracks in the tanks full of deadly gas sleepin there. I was a kid, I didn't like crewin on a ship wasn't movin."

Billy said, "The tanks sleeping, I like that," and said right away, "You know how a ship like that works?"

"We get to Lake Charles and tie into the lines suck the gas off. That's all I know. You let it leak, the air turns it to vapor. Water makes it a kind of mist you can see. Somethin touches it off and you got the biggest maritime explosion in history."

"I've been thinking," Billy said, "of asking you to join my crew."

"Who's your crew, Helene? You don't need a seaman, you aren't goin no place after."

"I shoot holes in the five tanks and say 'Go,'" Billy said, "I want a seaman at the helm of a Donzi to get us out of there."

"While they shootin at you, all the surveillin they have around a gas ship?" Xavier said, "A Donzi, huh?"

"One day's work. Tell me what you want."

"You pay my bail?"

"You're making a movie with no clue I'm gonna blow the fucker out of the water. The networks hear about it, you make a fortune."

"I could film you," Xavier said, "tellin why you think you can blow up a two-hundred-fifty-million-dollar gas ship and get away with it."

"My man," Billy said, "I've got lawyers up the ying-yang. They'll show I acted with purely heroic intentions, took the only means to prevent a major catastrophe, sunk the ship while it's out of harm's way."

"You don't care if you kill the crew?"

"I'll give anybody still aboard ten minutes to abandon ship. We have fatalities other than al Qaeda, my lawyers will meet with the next of kin."

"How 'bout gettin brought up for murder, even if they bad guys?"

"Don't worry about it," Billy said.

"I won't, you say so," Xavier said. "I believe what you doin is workin through me to get to Dara, huh?"

Billy said, "You think she'll do it?"

Xavier knew she'd jump at it. He said, "I don't know, I'll talk to Dara, see if she thinks gettin put in irons'd be worth it. I'll find out how much she charges extra for goin to jail, keepin her from workin."

"Nobody's getting locked up," Billy said. "You're innocent bystanders making a buck. Tell her that. But I better tell her how I'll pierce the double hull with my high-potency rounds. Get the gas leaking out to pool, the ship's hull losing eighty percent of its tensile strength in five minutes and starts to come apart."

Xavier said, "Yeah…" like he understood what Billy was saying. It didn't matter, long as he knew the ship was gonna blow.

"We're upwind," Billy said, "the gas vapor seeping out away from us and the ship. I set it off with another explosive round, light it up and the fire gushes back to the ship."

Xavier said, "All hell break loose?"

"Like you've never seen in your life. The ship goes up with flames reaching six hundred feet into burning air. Makes the Hindenburg disaster look like a weenie roast. But don't tell Helene that. She cries every time she watches the zeppelin burn up."

Xavier said, "You seen this happen to a gas ship?"

"My information," Billy said, "comes from studies of LNG fire hazards, thermal radiation damage, impact scenarios, all by guys with PhDs in chemical engineering, the top names in the liquefied natural gas field."

"But you haven't," Xavier said, "actually seen a LNG gas ship set afire."

"It's never happened at sea. TV will be all over this one, but I'm not looking for credit. I squeeze the trigger, chemistry does the rest."

"All we do," Xavier said, "is watch, huh?"

"You're gonna see an explosion with a force of energy," Billy said, "fifty-five times more powerful than the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima." BILLY GOT READY TO leave the pool, picked up all his papers and handed the binoculars to Xavier to keep an eye on the gas ship out on the horizon. "You see it move, call me. I'm having a Donzi 26ZF brought to the hotel pier, five hundred horsepower. Ready to go tomorrow." He said, "I'm gonna get some room service and take a nap."

Xavier watched him walk off, going to the glass doors to the hotel. He opened one and stepped back and now Xavier saw Dara appear to stand talking to Billy, Billy doing the talking at first, Dara listening. Now Dara was talking, Xavier would bet setting him straight about something in her nice way. She even reached up to give Billy's cheek a pat. She came over to Xavier taking off the robe. Now he was looking at her in her yellow bikini showing her tan. Xavier remembered her tan lines last night, the light on. Now as she reached him he said, "That's the most clothes I've seen on you lately."

Dara bent over and kissed Xavier's mouth, Xavier looking at her lollies right there in the tiny bikini top. She stood up adjusting the bra, telling Xavier, "You know what Billy was doing? Hinting around, trying to get me to say we slept together last night. I know he thought I'd make up something, so I said, 'Yeah, we got it on and then went to sleep. What else you want to know?'"

"And you gave his cheek a pat."

"Did you like that?"

"Loved it," Xavier said. "Billy wants you on his go-fast boat when he blows up the gas ship. Wants you right there filmin it."

"Perfect," Dara said. "We won't have to rent Buster again."