"Who do I murder? El Conejo Grande? Yes. I like that. It encourages the others."

The Englishman patted Brody's control yoke and told him to keep the plane straight and level.

Then he twisted in his seat. He grabbed Lomas's harness and pulled him close. When he smiled, a chill ran up Lomas's back. The Englishman's sky-blue eyes were half-lidded, but they were suddenly the eyes of death.

"You listen to me, Lomas," Newcombe said in Spanish. "No lynching in the square, you filthy pig. And no Bahamian jail. You are going to be extradited to the States. You are flying to Miami with me when this is done."

The chill returned. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency would throw away the key.

"That is kidnapping, señor, not extradition."

"Yes. And I will get you tried for murder too."

Lomas calculated swiftly. "You will go to jail if you return to the Bahamas. It would be wiser for you to take..." His mind whirred. How much? El Viejo would spend a good deal to rescue him. And they could always take it back. "What? A million dollars? Two?"

"I think not."

Lomas felt his heart plummet. "No, el Inglés? Por qué no?"

"There was a girl, puerco." Newcombe's voice cut like a razor through the slipstream. "She was just sixteen. A muchacha of much beauty, blond and sweet..."

The English muchacha? The Englishman must have been talking to one of his coqueros; no one else would know the story of La Inglesa. When he got out of this, he would take the campesinos one by one and question them. Then he would know who had the loose tongue, and it would be looser still.

"An English girl?" Lomas shrugged. "Señor, she wanted smack. I did not kill her. She killed herself." He moved uncomfortably. He did not like the look in those lazy eyes at all. He swallowed. "What was that one to you?" Suddenly he knew the answer, and where he had seen those eyes. He swallowed. "Su hija?"

"Sí, sí, my daughter, puerco. This bust was mine, I set it up. But it is her sting that you feel, you filthy pig!"

The Englishman roughly pushed him back in his seat. Newcombe turned, nodded at Brody, patted the yoke, and took back control.

Lomas sat back. Somehow he must get his hands on the big English cannon again, or he was dead.

***

Ellen Brody stood on the starboard quarter of the ketch and fired blindly into the water. The bullet plunged ten feet abeam, and the shot reverberated loudly off the side of the hull.

Through the open door of the deckhouse she heard the heartbeat: Boom... boom... boom... She braced herself and moved back, amidships.

Boom, boom... boom, boom... boom, boom... The shark was coming; she could tell by the quickened pace.