Renegade 13, p.1
Renegade 13, page 1
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Captain Gringo goes to hell and back in Guatemala!
From the brawling cities on the coast to the tortuous jungles deep in the interior, Captain Gringo’s always ready to serve the cause of freedom and the desire of a lady Now Britain and Guatemala are locked in a hot bout of guerilla intrigue that sets the Captain on a blood-spattered trek to a mysterious destination that can’t be found on any map. En route, Captain Gringo drops in on some Mayan Indians lustily engaged in their ancient rites of human sacrifice-and flies to dizzy heights of religious frenzy with a hellion of a high priestess.
RENEGADE 13: THE MAHOGANY PIRATES
By Lou Cameron, writing as Ramsay Thorne
First Published by Warner Books in 1982
Copyright © 1982, 2016 by Lou Cameron
First Smashwords Edition: July 2016
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover image © 2016 by Tony Masero ~*~ Visit Tony here
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Mike Stotter~ *~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
Their lives were saved by the Chinese cook aboard the Serpiente. This was not because the wayward Oriental was a hero or even a good cook. The little coastal schooner couldn’t afford to hire a good cook or even a matching set of sails. So as it wallowed down the Mosquito Coast in a heavy ground swell, Captain Gringo lay in his bunk as sick as a dog. The tall blond soldier of fortune seldom got sea sick and the seas weren’t all that bad that morning in any case. But as he lay there wondering how you said “bicarbonate of soda” to a Chinese who didn’t speak as much Spanish as he did, the miserable American knew he was going to throw up. So with a grimace he swung off the bunk and went out on deck to get it over with.
At the rail he found his side-kick, Gaston, already feeding the fish with his own greasy supper. Captain Gringo muttered, “Mind if I join you?” and heaved over the side.
As the two of them leaned there, feeling lousy, Gaston sighed and said, “We are going to have to murder that maniac in the galley before he kills us both, my old and rare! We face at least three more days to Limon aboard this tripple-titted species of a vessel!”
Captain Gringo gagged, saw nothing important was left to come up, and wiped a hand across his face before he muttered, “Don’t look at me. It was your idea to book passage on this tub. I thought you said the skipper was an old pal of yours.”
“Merde alors, how was I to know the man had the digestive system of a camel, Dick? What in God’s name do you imagine that crazed Chinese cooked those noodles in last night, hem?”
“I’m trying to decide if it was naphtha soap or coal oil. I think we’d better teach him to make sandwiches.”
The tall American took an experimental gasp of sea air and decided he was going to live. He glanced toward the east to see what time it was, but the early morning sun was hidden in the thin fog above the rolling swells. He asked, “Have you got the time, Gaston? I left my watch in the cabin.” Then he saw Gaston was standing in his bare feet and skivvies, too, and added, “Sorry. Dumb question.”
“Oui, one advantage of a voyage on a small smuggler is that one does not have .to consider one’s appearance before the other passengers, since there are no other passengers. I am beginning to feel better. Would you care to join me for breakfast?”
“Hey, come on, I don’t want to puke again. It’s kind of chilly out here in this morning fog. I think I’ll try for some more shut-eye. I hardly slept a wink last night, thanks to that God-awful grub.”
He turned from the rail just in time to see something looming high above them between the sails of the schooner and then, as he yelled, “What the hell?” a steamer hit them, hard, amidships!
The schooner was cut in two as it rolled under the big steel bow of the three-island steamer, but Captain Gringo didn’t notice. The impact had thrown him over the far side and, as he held his breath and tried to fight his way to the surface, one of his hands was stung by barnacle-studded steel and he realized he was under the steamer. He was being sucked back toward its churning screw.
He knew he couldn’t swim against the wash, so he dove deeper into the darkness below the ship, trying not to think of what the blood he was trailing in the water from his injured hand would mean to any friendly neighborhood hammerheads. He knew the big whirling blade above him would do an even faster job on him than any puny shark!
The screw almost got him anyway. He was head down, swimming as hard as he could, but moving the wrong way as the suction from the steamer fought him. Then the water around him grew lighter and, since he was about to drown in any case, he gave up and popped to the surface amid the foam of the steamer’s wake. He looked up and saw the name painted on the stern as the big steamer moved away, leaving him bobbing amid shattered planking and other debris from the run over schooner. He spit out a mouthful of brine and headed for a floating hatch cover, wondering if Gaston had made it and if the steamer’s crew was going to fish him out before some cruising shark scented the blood from his skinned knuckles.
As he reached the hatch cover he raised his hand from the water and started to kick away from the blood he’d left in the water. He spotted a human head and called out, “Over here! I’ve got a float!”
As the other swam his way, cursing and spitting, he saw to his relief it was Gaston. Gaston joined him, clinging to the far side, and remarked, conversationally, “How nice to see you again. Would you mind telling me what happened?”
Captain Gringo pointed at the stern of the steamer with his chin and said, “That big freighter ran us down in the fog. But just hang on a minute. It takes a vessel that size a while to turn.”
Gaston stared morosely at the steamer, now a gray blur in the fog, and said, “I hate to be a spoilsport, my old and rare, but I do not think they have any intention of stopping.”
It was starting to look that way to the tall American, too. “Aw, shit,” Captain Gringo replied, “they have to know they hit us, even if we were a rather small vessel. That was a hell of a bump. Do you see any other survivors?”
“Mais non. Aside from the helmsman, I do not think anyone else was on deck at the moment of impact. One gathers the poor individual at the helm was not a swimmer, hein?”
“The bastards! The no-good-stupid bastards!”
“Let us be fair, Dick. The rest of the crew were no doubt trés confused to awaken under water and upside down, non?”
“I’m not talking about our side, dammit! That fucking steamer isn’t heaving to! They ran us down and just steamed on, like a wagon running over a lizard in the road!”
“Oui,” Gaston sighed, “one gathers they did not wish to get involved? I am an old soldier, not a sea dog, but it seems to me I heard, somewhere, that a vessel under sail has the right of way over a steam-powered ship. Our hit-and-run steamship captain no doubt wishes to avoid tedious discussions with the maritime authorities regarding his master’s papers, hein?”
Captain Gringo nodded grimly and growled, “I’ll have something to say about that bastard’s seamanship as soon as we get ashore! I read that tub’s name and homeport off their transom. It’s the Imperial Trader, out of Liverpool. Goddamn Limey bastards think they own the whole damned ocean!”
Gaston looked around as a ground swell lifted them and then he sighed and said, “I admire your American optimism, Dick. Aside from the fact that the two of us are wanted by the law, have you noticed we seem to be bobbing about in the middle of this ocean you accuse the British of hogging?”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to make our way ashore. It’s hard to tell in this haze, but I think the coast must be over that way. Let me work around to your side and we’ll kick this hatch cover in that direction.”
As he joined Gaston on the seaward side, the older and smaller Frenchman muttered, “Merde alors, you species of idiot! We must be fifty kilometers or more from the Mosquito Coast in the first place and, in the second, I fear we are off Nicaragua!”
“So? What do you suggest? That Goddamn steamer’s not coming back and nobody else knows we’re here. Start kicking, damn it!”
Gaston did so, but protested, “This strikes me as a trés fatigue way to march to one’s execution, my old and rare. Have you forgotten we are wanted dead or alive in Nicaragua?”
“No. Remind me not to join the losing side in any more revolutions. There may be a chance we’ll fetch ashore along some deserted strip of the coast. We’ll die for sure if we don’t try. I don’t know how long it’s going to take the sharks to finish the crew that went down with the schooner, so let’s not hang around to find out!”
Gaston started kicking harder as he muttered, “One sees a certain method in your madness, after all, hein. But do you really think we can last that long, Dick? Regard how slowly we seem to be moving this thrice-accursed hatch cover. What if we were to simply start swimming?”
“Sixty kilometers? The English Channel’s not a quarter of that and nobody’s ever swum it yet!”
“We French prefer to call it La Manche rather than the English Channel,” Gaston grimaced, “but your point is well taken. As long as we are indulging ourselves in mad optimism, let’s hope we hit one of the many islands off the Mosquito Coast, hein? Some of the coral keys lie well out to sea. They are barren desert islands for the most part, and the ones with water and vegetation tend to be infested by cannibals, but—”
“Hey, save your breath and keep kicking,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “You don’t have to cheer me up, you old bastard. We’ve lost our guns, our money, even our clothes, and the last time we visited Nicaragua everyone was shooting at us. So you can leave out cannibals, Okay?”
Gaston shrugged and added, “I think they are called Caribs in any case. Could I have a drink of water, Pappa? This endless toil seems to be making me thirsty.”
“Just stick your head under and inhale, you asshole. Can’t you do anything without talking a blue streak?”
“Mais non, we French are born conversationalists. It’s bad enough I cannot move my hands as we struggle with this water-logged species of heavy timber, non?”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He knew he couldn’t shut Gaston up and he was already feeling the effects of the unexpected early morning exercise. He might have felt more up to shoving the hatch cover sixty kilometers if he hadn’t started out sick and tired to begin with, or if he knew, for sure, that they were really heading for shore.
~*~
By high noon it was worse. They were both cramped, thirsty and, now that the sun was shining straight down through the overcast, Gaston could be right that they were going in circles. There was no wind. There was no particular pattern to the sluggish swells as they rode up and down on them clinging to the hatch cover, and they weren’t making enough leeway to notice in any case. Gaston groaned, “My legs are killing me. That is the trouble with sharks. They are never about when you need them, hein?”
“I don’t think there are any sharks to worry about, right now, Gaston. They’d have had us by this time if there were.”
“That is what I mean. I confess I’m too weak willed to just let go of these soggy planks and get it over with. But when one is doomed in any case, I find the suspense trés fatigue. How long do you imagine we can last, my hyperkinetic youth?”
Captain Gringo stopped kicking as he said, “Take a break. We’d better rest until the sun moves enough to tell us east from west again. If we don’t spy land by sundown, it’s been nice knowing you. My banged up hand’s stopped bleeding and sharks almost never hit at midday. If there’s nothing particularly yummy in the water to draw them, they like to hunt at dawn and dusk. So if you suddenly find yourself alone out here toward sundown, forgive my rude departure and try to climb up on the hatch cover. It won’t hold me, and it sure won’t hold us both, but you’re a skinny little bastard, so it’s worth a try.”
Gaston swore softly in French, as he was too big a boy to scream, and then, as they crested a ground swell, he laughed and said, “Ah, just as I thought I was getting rid of you, too! Look over there, Dick! Am I seeing things or is that not a line of palms on the horizon?”
By the time Captain Gringo could swing around to look they were down in a trough between the swells. But then as they rose, he saw them too, and said, “Siesta’s over. Let’s get this raft moving, Old Buddy!”
It was easier said than done. It took them almost two hours to reach the breakers, where they abandoned the hatch cover and swam for the shore of the low lying key. As Captain Gringo felt sand under his bare feet he stood up, staggered wearily ashore, and fell face down on the gritty coral beach to recover his breath. Gaston lay a few yards away, moaning. Then, as the tropic sun, despite the overcast, dried them out and began to burn, Captain Gringo sat up and looked around.
There wasn’t much to see. The sand was chalk white and littered with broken shards of shell. A hundred yards inland, above the reach of the waves, a ragged line of palmettos formed the only landscape. The tall American muttered, “Shit, if those were coconuts we’d have something to drink. How are you feeling, Gaston?”
The little wiry Frenchman rolled over, spit out some sand and said, “Dead. But I need a drink before you bury me. Do you suppose the nearest cantina serves cerveza on credit?”
Captain Gringo got to his bare feet in his shorts and undershirt as he grimaced and muttered, “I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that. Aren’t you even packing one of those rubbers stuffed with goodies, like money?”
“Mais non, I left my bunk to throw up, not to go on a wild spending spree. All we face the unknown with, this time, is our fair white bodies, and if we don’t take them into the shade, we shall soon be red as lobsters, hein?”
They gingerly moved for the tree line over the shell-littered sand. Captain Gringo bent and picked up a thick broken clam shell, testing the sharp edge with his thumb. Gaston nodded, spotted a hefty conch shell, and armed himself as well. They walked into the meager shade between the squat palmettos. The ground was now littered with dry-splintered palm stalks even tougher on bare feet. The strip of vegetation was only about fifty-feet wide before they faced another stretch of dazzling white sand and the same sullen sea. They were indeed on a small coral key. Captain Gringo stared morosely at the far horizon and muttered, “Well, I grew up wanting to play Robinson Crusoe. Ain’t this gonna be fun?”
Gaston sniffed and said, “Fun for you, perhaps. I fail to share your Anglo-Saxon enthusiasm for that trés tedious English novel. You know, of course, the author was a homosexual, hein?”
Captain Gringo walked over to a palmetto and got to work with his clam shell before he asked, “Where did you hear that about poor old Defoe? He wrote Moll Flanders, too, and that was a pretty salty book for a sissy to have written.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Perhaps he was bisexual, then. Robinson Crusoe was not the work of a man who enjoyed the company of women. What are you doing to that poor tree?”
“Trying to get you that drink you were asking about. This shell makes a piss-poor knife, but if I can get to the growing tip amid all this dry crap we’ll have Heart of Palm salad for lunch. I must have missed something when I read Robinson Crusoe as a kid. I don’t remember anything in it about queers.”
“You don’t? What about Crusoe’s native lover, Friday?”
“Shit, Gaston. Friday was his servant, not his lover.”
“Oh no? Then tell me, my innocent lad, who did Robinson Crusoe make love to all those years on that island? Do you remember the part about how Friday began their relationship by kissing Crusoe’s foot? Trés suspicious, if you ask me!”
Captain Gringo cut six or eight inches of pale green watery palm heart out of the little tree, tore it in two, and handed half to Gaston as he said, “Here, shove this in your mouth and stop talking dirty. I might have known a Frenchman would worry about Robinson Crusoe’s sex life.”
“What is there to wonder? Had Defoe been a French author, Friday would have been a native girl. We do not share the English taste for buggery and ... hmm, this is not bad. It could use oil and vinegar, but at least we know we shan’t die of thirst, hein?”
Captain Gringo looked around as he chewed his own bland palm salad and swallowed pulp and all before he said, “Yeah, we can make a lean-to out of palm fronds, too. But we’re going to have to find something more solid to eat if we plan on staying here any length of time.”
Gaston wrinkled his nose and said, “I’m ready to leave at once, but I see the wisdom in your dismal words. There is nothing on this key to cause even a wandering Carib to visit it. If there were coconuts, there would be coconut crabs, perhaps. There is no skirting reef, so such fishing as there is promises to be poor, even if we had fishing gear. We could be stuck here for years, Dick, and I just told you I don’t share Robinson’s taste in bed partners, hein?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Captain Gringo muttered, “nothing to eat, nothing to wear, probably no way to start a fire, and he’s worried about bed partners! We haven’t even got a bed, you asshole!”
“Don’t speak to me about my asshole, yet. Perhaps after we have been marooned a few months I may be able to make the mental adjustments. What in the devil do you think you are doing, now?”
Captain Gringo was splitting a green palm leaf with his shell. He said, “This stuff looks pretty stringy. Hope it stays flexible when it’s dry.”
