Odd Hours

filled with the drumming of the four-stroke diesels, with the throb of the pumps, with the rotational rata-plan of driveshafts, and with myriad other rhythms, and when we began to move, the boat yawing slightly as it had not done in its berth, I knew that I was alone, because Joey had committed to being in the radio room when we got under way.
    Though I breathed more easily, I didn’t relax. I knew that what was coming would be terrible, that even if I were not shot or cut, I would come through this night with wounds that would never heal.
    I bear similar wounds from other such encounters. To protect the innocent, to avoid being one of Burke’s good men who do nothing, you have to accept permanent scars that cincture the heart and traumas of the mind that occasionally reopen to weep again.
    To do something, to do what you feel sure is right and in the aid of justice, you sometimes have to do things that, when recalled on lonely nights, make you wonder if in fact you are the good man that you like to believe you are.
    Such doubts are high cards in the devil’s hand, and he knows how to play them well, in hope of bringing you to despair and ennui, if not to self-destruction.
    Ozzie Boone, my novelist friend and mentor in Pico Mundo, had instructed me, on the writing of the first of these accounts, that I keep the tone light. He says that only the emotionally immature and the intellectually depraved enjoy stories that are unrelentingly grim and nihilistic.
    As I have said and as I hope that you have seen, I am inclined to a love of life and to a sunny disposition even in the face of bleak skies and persistent storms. I can find a laugh or two in a split lip and even greater hilarity in the threats and posturings of a sadistic chief of police.
    Fair warning requires the acknowledgment that some events resist the touch of a humorist, and what jokes may arise from certain acts can call forth only a less hearty kind of laughter. We are coming now to dark shoals in rough waters, to straits so narrow that virtue and wickedness voyage close together and may be at times more difficult than usual to differentiate from each other.
    Across the bay and into open sea, I waited without light in the belly of the boat. In spite of noise that hammered effectively at concentration, I used the time to mull over what I had learned since coming aboard.
    Junie’s Moonbeam must have been only a few miles offshore, for the engines cut back sooner than I had expected and, after a thus far straight course, the big oceangoing tugboat began to maneuver. They were aligning the vessels to effect the transfer of the nukes.
    The Pacific seemed to be nearly as calm here above the deeps as it had been all day nearer shore. With smooth water, their work would go faster.
    I rose to my feet and eased through the pitch-black chamber, aware that surfaces previously safe to touch might be scalding hot. I kept an image of the compartment door in my mind, relying on psychic magnetism to lead me to it through the lightless maze.
    Instinct told me to reach for a lever handle, and I found it after a minimum of fumbling.
    When I cracked the door, I saw a deserted passageway. With the transfer of the shipment begun, Joey would be at his radio, while Utgard and the other three would have to be above, all hands needed to ensure a successful delivery.
    I stepped to the first starboard compartment, tried the door, found it unlocked, and went inside fast, shouldering it open, the pistol in a two-hand grip.
    The room was dark, but light played on the porthole. Certain that no sleeper lay here to be awakened, I felt my way to the bright circle of glass.
    Alongside the tugboat lay Junie’s Moonbeam, its port side to our starboard, at a distance of perhaps ten or twelve feet. A white yacht in fog, it would have been a stealth vessel but for the hotel’s worth of lighted portholes and windows that made it appear as festive as a luxury cruise ship.
    From the main deck, the yacht’s crew had slung down inflatable black-rubber bladders that would serve as protective bumpers when the boats drew close enough to knock hulls in a set of rogue waves.
    Retreating to the passageway, I quietly pulled shut the door and crossed to the first portside compartment. I prepared to go in fast, as before, but the door opened on darkness.
    Soft lamplight filled the aftmost port compartment. When I went inside, Joey looked up in disbelief from a photo spread in a copy of Maxim