Free Cuban Death-Lift by Randy Striker

toward the wheelhouse. It’s eerie boarding any abandoned boat at open sea, but an abandoned boat that is hopelessly sinking adds a touch of the macabre which makes you strain to listen and obligates you to whisper. The ropes creaked in the wash of ocean, and a halyard tap . . . tap-tap-tapped in the light wind.
    I expected the dead man’s partner to be hidden somewhere in the cabin of the trawler. And I didn’t want the woman to face him alone. So by the time she was entering the wheelhouse, I was right behind her, Gerber skinning knife in hand.
    Even in the bright May sunlight, it seemed dark inside. Water covered the floor, and cushions and charts and clothing floated in shallow chaos. The electronic equipment had been ripped out by the dead pirate, and a box of more plunder—Danforth compass, ship’s bell, and a life ring, face down—sat on the booth table, waiting to be loaded onto the Mako.
    â€œWhy don’t you let me have the handgun and go first?”
    Androsa Santarun held up her hand, telling me to be quiet. She stepped into the water of the wheelhouse, the revolver following along with the sweep of her eyes. She pulled open a storage closet, then tried a cabin light—which didn’t work.
    â€œIt doesn’t seem likely he’d be by himself.”
    She shook her head, agreeing. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”
    On both sides of the wheelhouse were couches, the tops of which opened for storage. She lifted the first, then dropped it back.
    Nothing.
    I was about to check the other one—but that’s when I noticed. A line of bullet holes riveted inward along the port wall.
    She saw them, too.
    â€œAutomatic weapon,” I said. And then I added quickly in reply to her quizzical look, “I was in Nam for a year. You learn all about automatic weapons in the Army.”
    The holes swept across the bulkhead in a long arc, the smashed windows of the wheelhouse evidence of where they had finally halted.
    â€œThe guy in the Mako didn’t have a weapon like that. If he had, he’d have used it on me long before you got your shot off.”
    â€œPossibly,” she said. “But who else would want to shoot at some innocent private boat?”
    â€œDrug runners,” I said. “It’s not all that unusual. Maybe the people running this boat were carrying a load and the competition caught up with them. Or maybe they were just out here fishing and saw something they weren’t supposed to see. Like I said—it happens.”
    She sighed. “I guess you’d better notify the Coast Guard—”
    She stopped then, listening intently.
    â€œDid you hear that— shush. ”
    She tilted her head, straining to listen. And then I heard it, too. A soft, rhythmic thunk . . . thunk, coming from the forward berth beyond the door.
    â€œGive me the revolver.”
    She looked at me, said nothing, then headed for the door, the .38 poised.
    She put her right hand on the doorknob, hesitated for a moment, then jerked it open.
    The water was deeper in the forward cabin. It came out in a black wash, calf-deep, rivering more floating junk—and something else, too.
    A man, face up.
    He was naked to the waist, his arms thrown out as if caught in some strange slow-motion fall.
    His hair was short, blacker than the water, and his hands and face were a ghastly white.
    He looked as if he was in his mid-twenties. A gray blotch marked where his wristwatch had been. The mustache on his face looked ridiculously neat in comparison to the rest of his drained flesh.
    His throat had been cut; cut so deeply that his head bobbed slowly in the water as if it were about to come off. And that’s why the water was black—black with his blood.
    The woman was stock-still at first. Then she covered her mouth suddenly and stumbled toward me. I locked my arm around her, feeling ribs heave beneath breasts, holding her close.
    â€œOh my