boat with an outboard engine, and Buck followed. Kate and I and Brenner glanced at one another, then climbed aboard.
Chet unfastened the mooring line, put a key in the ignition, set the throttle, and pulled on the starter cord. The engine caught, and off we went. But where were we going?
The only seat in the open boat was in the stern near the engine, and that’s where Chet sat and steered. The rest of us sat on overturned white plastic buckets. The boat smelled fishy, and our bare feet were submerged in about four inches of nasty bilgewater.
Also, not to complain, but the sun was starting to burn my exposed skin, and I could see that Buck, Kate, and Brenner were getting a little lobsterish as well. A more immediate concern was that our guns and commo were back on the beach.
Chet Morgan, I concluded, was crazy. And we were following him. That didn’t make us crazy; it made us stupid.
There were a few rocks sticking out of the water, and on one of the rocks stood a large black-and-white gull. As we got within fifty feet of the rock, Chet reached under his shirt into the small of his back, pulled a .40 caliber Glock, took aim, and popped off a round at the big bird. Kate, who hadn’t seen Chet pull his gun, was startled; the rest of us were astonished, and Chet was annoyed because he missed. The bird flew away.
To make him feel better, I said, “To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.”
Chet ignored that and informed us, “That was a masked booby gull.” He assured us, “Not endangered.”
I remarked, “And never will be with shooting like that.”
I thought Chet was going to shoot me, but he laughed—a real laugh, which almost made me think he wasn’t nuts. He said, “I’d never shoot a white-eyed gull. They’re endangered. And they bring good luck.”
Whatever you say, Chet. Now put the gun away.
But he put it on the seat beside him. Well, at least one of us had a gun. Unfortunately, it was the crazy guy.
Chet glanced up at Elephant Rock, and I followed his gaze. The Yemeni Army guys in the pickup truck had swung their heavy machine gun toward us, and one of the soldiers was looking at us with binoculars.
Chet commented, “They get jumpy when they hear gunfire.”
Me, too.
He said to us, “If we have time, I’ll take you shark fishing. I have good luck nearly every time I go out.” He smiled and said to me and Brenner, “The sharks almost got lucky when you went out.” He laughed.
So, here we were on a small boat with an armed psychopath. How do I get myself in these situations? I need to check my contract.
I glanced at Brenner, who I knew was thinking what I was thinking. Kate, too, seemed a bit unsure about Mr. Morgan, but she has a history of giving CIA nut jobs the benefit of the doubt. Up to a point. Then she shoots them. Well… only one so far.
Buck had a dopey smile on his face, and I knew he had a lot of tolerance for screwy behavior as long as the screwball was a colleague and a peer. I mean, I had the feeling, based partly on their preppy accents, that Buck and Chet had gone to the same schools or similar schools and came from the same social stratum. Chet was the bad-boy frat brother who was always on double-secret probation, and everyone loved him as long as he didn’t actually get anyone killed. Later in life, however, what had been funny and zany behavior progressed into something less entertaining.
Also, with these CIA guys, they all cultivated eccentric behavior, which became part of their self-created legend. They wanted their peers to tell stories about them and to spread the word of their unique flamboyance.
Kate’s aforementioned pal, Ted Nash, was a good example of all this. Plus Ted was an arrogant prick. But now he was dead, and you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Even if they were assholes. Which brought me to another thought: Did Chet Morgan know Ted Nash? Probably. But this wasn’t the time to ask.
Anyway, Chet Morgan had set the stage for his entry into the show, and as they say in the theater world, if you show a gun in the first act, you need to use it in the final act.
We rounded the