The Viking Funeral

Chapter 38

So, WHERE THE fuck is he if he's not in his room?" Jody asked angrily, looking at Tremaine Lane, Lester Wood, and Shane. But mostly he was glaring at Shane.

It was ten past eight in the morning; the black Mercedes SUV was a few feet away in the porte cochere with the trunk lid up and their canvas bags already inside. Eric was standing nearby, watching.

"You're asking me?" Shane said. "Since when am I in charge a'that steroid case? Like you advised, I'm giving that asshole all the room I can."

"Victory knew the Subu Maru was set to leave at eight. We're already late."

"We could split up and go lookin'," Sawdust drawled, not putting much energy into the statement.

"Okay, scout around; we'll meet back here in ten minutes," Jody said.

While Tremaine, Lester, and Jody took off, looking for Victory, Shane went to the reception desk.

"I gave the concierge a letter to mail for me last night," Shane said. "I changed my mind about sending it. Has it gone out yet?"

"Yes, sir. The mail left an hour ago."

Shane nodded and saw a Caribbean guidebook for sale. He picked it up, peeling off five U. S. dollars.

"How come I get the feeling you're not telling me everything, Hot Sauce?"

Shane spun around and found Jody standing right behind him.

"I really love this…" Shane said as his mind suddenly filled with the vivid image of Victory lying dead in the surf, his dark brain contents washing around in the light surf.

"You're thinking about some shit swirling around in the water," Jody said. "What's that all about?"

It was frightening how he did it. Shane forced his thoughts away, forced them on nothing… A trick he had perfected when they were kids.

Jody straightened up, and his expression changed. "It's gone," he said softly.

"Victory Smith is your problem. You wanna know how I feel about him going missing? I feel great. The guy was an unguided missile. Somebody probably did us all a favor and pulled his drapes."

"Papa Joe wasn't fooling about this Santa guy. He's an Argentine fugitive, a political terrorist, and he could be big trouble for us. We need Victory. He might be nuts, but he gives us a comfort zone."

"We should forget him and get moving."

Eventually, that's what they were forced to do.

Jody talked to them on the dock just before they boarded the ship. "I don't know what kinda bullshit we could be facing, so I got Sandy to score us some better firepower." He handed each of them a brand-new Polish MP-63 9-millimeter machine pistol. The weapon was compact, with a flip-down grip and retracting stock. Then he handed each of them two forty-round clips. The machine pistols fit easily into their gym bags. "If we get jumped by the whole town, we're pretty much fucked, but at least we'll take some greasers with us."

The Subu Maru pulled away from the Mantoor Duty-Free dock an hour past schedule. Its mostly Venezuelan crew gathered in heavy, oil-stained mooring lines as the gap widened between the freighter and the dock.

The old Caterpillar engines clanged into reverse, and the ship creaked in protest as the stern made a slow journey back and to starboard, pulling the ship away from the wharf.

Jody was on deck, somewhere aft as the bow of the Subu Maru swung slowly around and was now pointing toward the mouth of the harbor.

The breeze was ten knots on the stern and the slow-moving ship just managed to make up the difference, leaving them engulfed in a tropical stench, fouled by its own diesel smoke.

Then they cleared the jetty and were out of the harbor in a light following sea, the slow-turning propellers churning up a white wake, pushing them toward the southwestern horizon and Maracaibo, thirty miles away.

Shane stood at the rail feeling so content that even the clogging heat and stink of the ship didn't bother him. He was grateful to whatever divine force had prevented him from pulling the trigger, until Victory saved him for Alexa, Chooch, and their future together. Only yesterday at this same time he had felt empty and used up; now Shane was overcome with excitement and expectation. All he had to do was stay alive for one or two more days.

And that reminded him…

Shane reached into his pocket and took out the bottle containing the white transmitter pill. He unscrewed the top, then looked at his watch: 10:15 A. M. He shook the pill into his hand and was about to pop it into his mouth when Lester Wood materialized at his side.

"Got a cold, pard?"

"High blood pressure," Shane said as he popped the pill into his mouth and dry-swallowed it. He showed Sawdust the prescription bottle.

Woods looked at the label, then handed it back. Shane threw the bottle into the sea.

"Guess what?" Sawdust said.

Shane didn't answer but kept his eyes on the horizon.

"While I was out lookin' for Victory, I heard that some soft-drink vendor found a body up on the beach real early this morning. The corpse was buried in the sand."

"Why tell me?"

"I hung out down there and listened to them bean-eaters shootin' the shit. Kinda got the gist of it. The way they were talking the stiff was a big, ugly guy, lotsa muscle, flowered shirt, tattoos, American. Sound like anybody we know?"

"To these islanders all Americans look big and ugly."

"Appears this guy got on the wrong end of a corpse-and-cartridge party. Course, I didn't see the body, but they say he was built like Schwarzenegger. Tell me this don't sound like our own anabol-slammin', iron-pumpin' steroid case."

"Lotta big guys with muscles down here."

"I ain't making no accusations, Hot Sauce, but all them anabolics was makin' Vic buck real close t'the ground. I think maybe he finally came after ya, forced ya to burn some powder. But like I say, I'm not losin' no sleep over it." He paused, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a tin of chewing tobacco. "Course, Jody might see it differently."

"Is this a threat?" Shane said softly.

"A negotiation." Sawdust took a pinch of Skoal and put it into his mouth. "With Victory dead… That means we only got us a four-way split now. I'm thinking this information might, could stay between just the two of us."

"How much?"

"With Victory outta the mix, that means the fifteen mil now only gets divided by four. That makes each share worth three point seven-five mil, give or take a pony. I'm thinking, you kick back a mil to me. With Victory's cut thrown back in the pot, you still walk away with almost three million."

"You've got no proof," Shane said. "Your word against mine."

"Yer right… But we ain't in court here, pard. This ain't about proof, it's about anger and paranoia. Jody's stressed. Takes one phone call to the Mantoors back in Aruba. Dandy Sandy checks the body, finds a Black Talon parked in Vic's head, and you're in a heap a'grease, pard."

"Okay," Shane said softly.

"Good goin'." Sawdust was smiling, swaying with the rolling deck, his Ray-Bans kicking moving spots of tropical sunlight up and down Shane's face. "Nice tradin' time with ya." Then he spit a line of tobacco juice over the rail into the ocean before ambling off.

An hour later Shane could see the faint outline of the Peninsula de Guajira, which made up the western end of the Golfo de Venezuela.

Ninety minutes later they were steaming into the Straits of Zapara, which narrowed until they were in the spacious Bay of Tablazo, passing anchored freighters flying hundreds of different flags, each one waiting for its turn to offload cargo at the main dock.

Amazingly, the rusting Subu Maru steamed right past all of them, heading straight to the front of the line. Shane mused that drugs certainly had their place in the Latin American scheme of things.

The huge Venezuelan shipping port of Maracaibo loomed on all sides as the Subu Maru groaned and moaned, then jockeyed her ugly bow toward the dock, first in slow forward, then slow reverse, backing down on the port engine, straining to pull her canoe stern up to the concrete wharf. Commands were shouted angrily in Spanish over the loudspeaker from the bridge. Monkey-fist knots that gave weight to thin strands of nylon line were heaved overboard by sweating deckhands and hit the dock, where other men in blue overalls grabbed them and pulled hard, dragging the heavy oil-stained mooring lines they were attached to ashore. The heavy lines were then hooked to dock cleats, winched tight, and spring lines were set.

The growling engines on the Subu Maru were finally shut down, but loud dock sounds immediately replaced them. Cranes hummed and men shouted in Spanish.

They were in the Venezuelan portion of the Aruba duty-free zone. The Vikings were about to embark on an insane journey that none of them had bargained for.