"Actually it was Portagee's idea," Riley said.
"Couldn't have done it without you, Bob," Oreza said generously.
"Yeah, well, the trick was how to do the hangin'," Riley explained. "You see, we had to make it look real if we was gonna scare the piss outa the little one. Wasn't really all that hard once I thought it over. After we got him alone, the pharmacist mate gave him a shot of ether to knock him out for a few minutes, and I rigged a rope harness on his back. When we took him topside, the noose had a hook on the back, so when I looped the noose around his neck, all I hadda do was attach the hook to an eye I put on the harness, so we was hoistin' him by the harness, not the neck. We didn't really wanna kill the fucker - well, I did," Riley said. "But Red didn't think it was a real good idea." The bosun grinned at the quartermaster.
"The other trick was baggin' him," Oreza said. "We put a black hood over his head. Well, there was a gauze pad inside soaked in ether. The bastard screamed bloody murder when he smelled it, but it had him knocked out as soon as we ran his ass up to the yardarm."
"The little one believed the whole thing. Fucker wet his pants, it was beautiful! Sang like a canary when they got him back to the wardroom. Soon as he was outa sight, of course, we lowered the other one and got him woke back up. They were both half in the bag from smokin' grass all day. I don't think they ever figured out what we did to them."
"That was Red's idea. They had their own pot stash - looked like real cigarettes. We just gave 'em back to 'em, and they got themselves looped. Throw in the ether and everything, and I bet they never figured out what really happened."
"I wish we really could have hung 'em," Riley said after a few seconds. "Matt, you ain't never seen anything like what that yacht looked like. Four people, man - butchered 'em like cattle. Ever smell blood? I didn't know you could. You can," the bosun assured him. "They raped the wife and the little girl, then cut 'em up like they was - God! You know, I been having nightmares from that? Nightmares - me! Jesus, that's one sea story I wish I could forget. I got a little girl that age. Those fuckers raped her an' killed her, and cut her up an' fed her to the fuckin' sharks. Just a little girl, not even big enough to drive a car or go out on a date.
"We're supposed to be professional cops, right? We're supposed to be cool about it, don't get personally involved. All that shit?" Riley asked.
"That's what the book says," Stuart agreed.
"The book wasn't written for stuff like this," Portagee said. "People who do this sort of thing - they ain't really people. I don't know what the hell they are, but people they ain't. You can't do that kinda shit and be people, Matt."
"Hey, what d'you want me to say?" Stuart asked, suddenly defensive, and not acting a part this time. "We got laws to deal with people like that."
"Laws ain't doin' much good, are they?" Riley asked.
The difference between the people he was obliged to defend and the people he had to impeach, Stuart told himself through the fog of alcohol, was that the bad ones were his clients and the good ones were not. And now, by impersonating a Coast Guard chief, he too had broken a law, just as these men had done, and like them, he was doing it for some greater good, some higher moral cause. So he asked himself who was right. Not that it mattered, of course. Whatever was "right" was lost somewhere, not to be found in lawbooks or canons of ethics. Yet if you couldn't find it there, then where the hell was it? But Stuart was a lawyer, and his business was law, not right. Right was the province of judges and juries. Or something like that. Stuart told himself that he shouldn't drink so much. Drink made confused things clear, and the clear things confused.
The ride in was far rougher this time. Westerly winds off the Pacific Ocean hit the slopes of the Andes and boiled upward, looking for passes to go through. The resulting turbulence could be felt at thirty thousand feet, and here, only three hundred feet AGL - above ground level - the ride was a hard one, all the more so with the helicopter on its terrain-following autopilot. Johns and Willis were strapped in tight to reduce the effects of the rough ride, and both knew that the people in back were having a bad time indeed as the big Sikorsky jolted up and down in twenty-foot bounds at least ten times per minute. PJ's hand was on the stick, following the motions of the autopilot but ready to take instant command if the system showed the first sign of failure. This was real flying, as he liked to say. That generally meant the dangerous kind.
