Free Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

which seemed odd for the weather. We veered left around them and they turned and spread out and said something in Spanish.
    One of them, a guy with a thick mustache, showed us a knife and a big grin. He said something in Spanish we didn’t understand, but the big knife was speaking loud and clear and needed no translation.
    It was at that moment that I remembered some of the literature I had read on the boat: Don’t wander off from the main areas. Play del Carmen is a beautiful, quaint little town with the amazing ruins of Tulum nearby. But off the beaten path, thieves often rob tourists at knifepoint on the outskirts.
    “Bad day for this,” Leonard said to the trio, but they just smiled at us. I watched carefully. The other two didn’t pull knives, but one of them did pull a machete from under his coat. I had sort of thought that coat was suspicious.
    I didn’t feel up to fighting a machete, but I didn’t feel all that inclined to give them my money.
    “Dinero,” one of them said.
    “We’ve already eaten,” Leonard said.
    “He means money,” I said. “Not dinner. Dinero.”
    “I know that.”
    “I think we should give it to them.”
    They were circling us, waiting on us to make some kind of decision.
    “What if we give it to them and they cut us anyway?” Leonard said.
    “It’s still going to work out the same, they’re going to end up with the money. We give them the loot, we got a chance.”
    “That what you want to do?”
    I watched the guy with the machete ease around in front of me. Leonard and I had now ended up back to back, sort of rotating with the guys as they went around us.
    All three were speaking Spanish, and shaking their hands at us like we should fill them.
    “What I want,” I said, “is to stick that machete up his ass, crank it around like I’m trying to start a prop plane.”
    “Stop moving, and let them make their move,” Leonard said.
    “It’s the machete worries me,” I said.
    “What, the knife don’t bother you?”
    The guy with the machete grunted and his arm went up, brandishing the weapon. I went to him, got under his arm before it dropped, got a hand on his elbow, one on his wrist. I had tried to move to his outside, but couldn’t, so I was inside. I held the wrist with one hand and shot my elbow into his face, flicked his wrist, and the machete went away and we went down, him on top. He tried to choke me, but I rolled out from under him and pushed him aside. He came up and had both hands on my shoulders. I kicked at his balls, but he moved his leg in the way, so I kicked to the inside of his legs a couple of times, real quick, and the second shot made him go down. I kneed at his face, but he grabbed my leg and we were rolling on the ground again. I flipped him over, landed on top, bit a chunk out of his ear and pounded him a couple times and got up.
    I caught a glimpse of Leonard out of the corner of my eye. He had lost his hat and the mugger with the knife was standing in the middle of it. Leonard knocked the guy with the knife down, but the man still had the knife. The other guy grabbed Leonard’s arms from behind, and Leonard stomped his feet and shins, and the guy was letting go as the man with the knife leaped forward and the blade went into Leonard’s stomach. I let out a scream, then the guy I had been fighting was on me again.
    I flicked my fingers against his eyes and he groaned and got out of my way.
    Leonard was down and the guy with the knife was stabbing him again. I got there just in time to slide behind the guy, reach around, and rake both hands across his face, gouging one eye deeply.
    The guy shrieked like a rat with a boot heel on its back. He turned, lunged. I went sideways and he went past. I hit him with everything I had, right behind the head with a hammer fist. He went down and didn’t move. The guy who had been holding Leonard had him down now and was punching. Leonard brought a leg up and over the guy’s head, swept him off, got up