Odd Hours

crates, neither of which had been there when we had motored out of the harbor, lay toward the starboard quarter of the deck. The size of coffins, wrapped in fog as they were, these twin containers suggested that we had not taken aboard anything as fantastic and grotesque as weapons that could destroy whole cities, but instead merely the less unnatural cargo of Count Dracula and his bride, who were sleeping now on beds of Transylvanian soil inside sunproof caskets where soon they would wake.
    Utgard Rolf—dressed in black nylon pants with elastic cuffs tight at the ankles and a matching jacket—and a man I had not seen before were conferring near the small crane.
    Two other men were at work on the port side, stowing tools in a secured deck box.
    Pulling pistols as they moved, Utgard and the man to whom he had been talking, no doubt Buddy, crossed the deck behind the other two men and shot them in the back. Both sprawled facedown, and their executioners bent to administer a final shot to each at the base of the skull.

 
    THIRTY-EIGHT
    HESITATING BEHIND THE COMPANIONWAY DOOR, I thought that they would weight the dead men with chains before tossing them overboard.
    Evidently, they were confident that from this distance the sea would not bring the bodies to shore for days—if ever—and that by then they would have vanished into their new lives in far corners of the world. They put away their guns, grabbed the cadavers by collars and belts, and began to drag them toward the portside deck wall.
    Their backs were to me, but they would remain vulnerable only briefly. Bull strong, Utgard did not long drag his victim, but soon lifted him clear of the deck and carried him.
    I dared not think about what was required of me here, but had to focus my mind on why I must not fail to act: the possibility of children seared to the bone by blast heat, of women crushed and torn by the detonation wave, of men atomized, buildings hammered to dust, museums in rubble, churches obliterated, blacktop streets boiling like rivers of lava, and square miles of ashes soaked with the blood of millions.
    With no awareness of having pushed through the stairhead door, I found myself on the open deck, in motion.
    The immediate fog was silver with halogen reflections, white overhead, and gray beyond the limits of the boat, the yacht lights already having been swallowed as completely as Jonah and his lantern.
    The chill wet air on my face was not as cold as the pit of my stomach, and the plume of my breath across my lips seemed cold as well.
    With his burden, Utgard reached the port wall. He heaved the body overboard, but the dead man’s feet hooked on the gunwale. For a macabre moment, he hung that way, until Utgard gave him a final push into the sea.
    Fearing a fall, I nonetheless negotiated the wet and gently rolling deck as though born on a ship. In a two-hand grip, I brought the gun to bear.
    The other man wrestled the second corpse halfway over the gunwale. Utgard grabbed one of the cadaver’s arms to assist.
    Seeing the difficulty of this disposal, I waited for them to finish the job.
    A hero does not shoot his adversaries in the back. But hero is a title others have wrongly given to me, which I have never claimed for myself.
    As the second corpse vanished into the night and fog, I shot Utgard twice in the back from a distance of less than eight feet. He fell forward against the gunwale, but did not tumble overboard.
    The other man recoiled in shock but in the same instant went for the weapon in the paddle holster at his hip.
    I squeezed off two rounds, trying for abdomen and chest, but I allowed the pistol to pull too high. The first round took him in the face, and the second only parted his hair.
    The head shot was enough, and he went down dead.
    In bad shape, supporting himself against the gunwale, Utgard turned toward me. Filled with halogen reflections, his demented coyote eyes were lanterns burning unholy oil.
    His face was bruised, one eye swollen half shut, one ear crusted with blood—the consequence of events in the interrogation room.
    As I stepped closer, he reached, and I shot him twice again.
    He slid down the gunwale and toppled onto his side. His head knocked the deck hard enough to bounce.
    For a while I took great deep breaths and blew them out, trying to exhale the tension that had suddenly begun to make my hands shake like those of a palsied old man.
    Having watched them wrestle the corpses overboard, I changed my mind