Pirate Latitudes

Hunter shrugged, went to the door, listened a moment, slipped off his boots, and gently pushed the door open. Looking back, he saw Don Diego also removing his boots. Then Hunter went inside.

The interior of the magazine was lined in copper sheeting on all sides, and the few carefully protected candles gave the room a warm, reddish glow. It was oddly inviting, despite the rows of gunpowder casks and the stacked bags of cannon charge, all suitably labeled in red. Hunter moved soundlessly across the copper floor. He saw no one, but heard a man snoring from somewhere in the magazine.

Slipping among the casks, he looked for this man, and eventually found a soldier asleep, propped up against a barrel of powder. Hunter struck the man hard on the head; the soldier snorted and lay still.

The Jew padded in, surveyed the room, and whispered, “Excellent.” They immediately set to work.

…

IF THE FORTRESS was silent and sleeping, the rough shanty town that housed the galleon’s crew was boisterous. Sanson, the Moor, and Lazue slipped through the town, passing windows through which they could see soldiers drinking and gaming in yellow lantern-light. One drunken soldier stumbled out, bumped into Sanson, apologized, and was sick against a wooden wall. The three moved on, toward the longboat landing at the riverside.

Although the landing had not been guarded during the day, a group of three soldiers were there now, talking quietly and drinking in the darkness. They sat at the end of the landing, hanging their feet over the side into the water, the low sound of their voices blending with the slap of water against the pilings. Their backs were to the privateers, but the wooden slats of the landing made a silent approach impossible.

“I will do this,” Lazue said, removing her blouse. Naked to the waist, her dagger held behind her back, she whistled a light tune and walked out onto the dock.

One of the soldiers turned. “Que pasa ca?” he demanded, and held up a lantern. His eyes widened in astonishment as he saw what must have seemed to him an apparition - a bare-breasted woman nonchalantly walking toward him. “ Madre de Dios,” he said, and the woman smiled at him. He answered the smile in the instant before the dagger passed through his ribs into his heart.

The other soldiers looked at the woman with the bloody dagger. They were so astonished they hardly resisted as she killed them, their blood spurting over her bare chest.

Sanson and the Moor ran up, stepping over the bodies of the three men. Lazue pulled her tunic back on. Sanson climbed into one boat and immediately set out toward the stern of the galleon. The Moor cut free the other boats, and pushed them out into the harbor, where they drifted free. Then the Moor got into a boat with Lazue, and made for the bow of the galleon. Nobody spoke at all.

Lazue pulled her tunic tighter around her. The blood of the soldiers soaked through the fabric; she felt a chill. She stood in the longboat and looked at the approaching galleon while the Moor rowed in swift, powerful strokes.

The galleon was large, about one hundred and forty feet, but mostly she was dark, only a few torches demarcating her profile. Lazue looked to the right, where she saw Sanson rowing away from them, toward the galleon’s stern. Sanson was silhouetted against the lights of the raucous shanty town on shore. She turned and looked left, at the gray line of the fortress walls. She wondered if Hunter and the Jew were inside yet.

…

HUNTER WATCHED AS the Jew delicately filled the possum entrails with gunpowder. It seemed an interminable process, but the Jew refused to be hurried. He squatted in the center of the magazine, with an opened bag of powder at his side, and hummed a little as he worked.

“How much longer?” Hunter said.

“Not long, not long,” the Jew said. He seemed completely nonchalant. “It will be so pretty,” he said. “You wait. It will be very beautiful.”

When he had the entrails filled, he cut them into various lengths, and slipped them into his pocket.

“All right,” he said. “Now we can begin.”

A moment later, the two men emerged from the magazine, bent over with the weight of the powder charges they carried. They crossed the main yard of the fortress stealthily, and paused beneath the heavy stone parapet on which the guns rested. The two lookouts were still there.

While the Jew waited with the gunpowder, Hunter climbed onto the parapet and killed the lookouts. One died in complete silence and the other gave only a quiet groan as he slipped to the ground.

“Diego!” Hunter hissed.

The Jew appeared on the parapet and looked at the guns. He poked down a barrel with a rammer.

“How delightful,” he whispered. “They are already powdered and primed. We will make a special treat. Here, help me.”

The Jew pushed a second bag of powder down the mouth of one cannon. “Now the shot,” he said.

Hunter frowned. “But they will add another ball before they fire.”

“Of course. Two charges, and two balls - these guns will breech before their eyes.”