CSONGOR HAD KNOWN it was a mistake to sit down. The only way he could remain awake was by staying on his feet. But when the boat worked its way out into the big swells, and the deck began to heave and bank underneath him, he finally had the excuse he needed. Until then he’d been standing in the middle of the bridge, looking out the front windows over Mohammed’s shoulders. But along the aft bulkhead was a short bench that had been calling to Csongor for a while. Like everything else of consequence, it was welded to the deck; these people used welders as carpenters used nail guns. Csongor backed away from Mohammed, moving slowly as he compensated for the pitching of the deck, and let himself down to the bench.
Yuxia’s voice was in his ears, nearby. Odd, since Yuxia was not on the bridge.
Another oddity: Csongor’s eyes were closed. He didn’t remember allowing that to happen. He got them open and discovered Yuxia just inside the hatchway with a mug in her hand. She was looking across the bridge at Mohammed, whose posture seemed to indicate that he had just spun around to gaze at Yuxia in astonishment.
Astonishment, and fear.
Mohammed was holding something in one hand: a gray plastic microphone, connected by a coiling black cord to a small electronic box mounted on brackets above the control panel. This had been dark when Csongor’s eyes had closed, but glowing LEDs shone out of it now.
The pilot was talking on the two-way radio, or getting ready to.
Csongor reached for the pistol in his back waistband while using his other hand to push himself up off the bench. He noticed that his feet were slow to move. At about the same time, Yuxia was throwing the contents of the mug at Mohammed.
Csongor’s body weight was now well forward, but his feet still hadn’t budged. They were somehow trapped. He realized he was going to fall flat on his face. His hands came forward instinctively to stop his fall. One of these had achieved a partial grip on the pistol. His ankles were getting torqued in a bad way and he was going down in an extremely awkward fashion, and at some risk of taking Yuxia down with him. He came to rest painfully and in discrete sections, like a big tree breaking into chunks as it fell over in a windstorm. The pistol went sliding across the deck. He could not reach it. Mohammed was crying out in rage and wiping hot tea out of his face. Yuxia hurled the empty mug at him, then dropped to her knees and clawed the pistol up off the deck. She aimed it in his approximate direction and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened because the safety was on.
“Yuxia, give it to me!” Csongor cried, with a beckoning motion, and Yuxia turned and slid the pistol across the deck to him.
Mohammed had recovered enough to reel in the microphone, which had been dangling at the end of its cord. He lifted it to his mouth.
Csongor flicked off the pistol’s safety and cocked the hammer. He aimed it at Mohammed, but his view along the sights was blocked abruptly by Yuxia, who threw herself across the bridge and made a grab at the microphone. There was a few moments’ wrestling match. Mohammed shoved her away, but she dragged him back with her. This happened to give Csongor a clear shot at the radio. One bullet through that box would put an end to the pilot’s broadcasting ambitions. Csongor drew a bead on it.
Mohammed reached up and grabbed a flashlight bracketed above the bridge windows and clocked Yuxia in the head with it and she fell backward to the deck, clutching her face and crying out, more in anger than pain. He raised the mike to his mouth again. Csongor squeezed the trigger and went deaf. The pistol snapped his hands back. A hole appeared in the window above the radio, and cracks networked across the glass. Csongor fired a second time and made another hole in the glass, a few centimeters from the first. He lowered his aim just a hair and pulled the trigger three times in succession.
Mohammed had frozen for a moment after the first bullet had been fired. Then, looking across the bridge to see Csongor aiming in roughly his direction, he assumed that Csongor was aiming at him and decided to get out of there. His way out happened to take him directly in front of the radio and so at least one of Csongor’s three-round fusillade struck him in the thorax. He went down immediately.
MARLON RAN HALFWAY up the steps and then paused, wondering if he was about to get his head blown off. But then he heard Csongor’s voice, and then Yuxia’s, and so he climbed up the rest of the way and entered the bridge.
