The Gulf by David Poyer Read Free Book Online Page A

Green and gold, its mascaraed eyes like inlaid disks of polished obsidian. But still it was just a bird in a cage. It smelled bad. The man had eight of them hanging over his back. A bicycle jostled him and they all screamed, a hoarse, terrible chorus of rage and vengeance that sliced through his Benadryl tranquillity like a honed straight razor.
    â€œHow much you askin’?” Phelan said in that same shy voice.
    â€œFifty dollars, U.S.”
    â€œForget it.” But at the mention of money his hand had gone to his back pocket, and the merchant’s eyes had followed.
    At last Bernard shook him off. He was fifteen minutes off Long Beach and had forty-eight hours of liberty ahead. He had things to do, places to be. And though he wasn’t sure yet where they were, he didn’t plan to look for them with a parrot on his back.
    He’d looked forward to Karachi for weeks. Long weeks, out on the Be No Station. That was what they called it. Be No Booze, Be No Broads, Be No Liberty. Pakistan looked like a hellhole, but everyone said it was the best liberty in the Indian Ocean. The place was made for sailors. You could get anything there, they said in the gray passageways. Anything you wanted. Just make sure you took the bucks.
    He slicked back sweat-wet hair and torched a Marlboro. The street was wide for the Middle East, lined with carpet shops and jewelers and Pakistanis selling shoes and leather and rugs. It reminded him of that place in New York City he’d gone once, couldn’t remember the name, but it was crowded with street people like this. Lot of Paks there, too, Ethiopians, Russians, just about anything you could name.
    Now that he thought about it, though, he’d never seen another American Indian the whole time he’d been in Manhattan. That was a kick. His people had kept their land. Thrown the Spanish out, killed the priests, then holed up on Sacred Mesa and dared the conquistadors to fuck with them. And made it stick, too.
    Hospitalman Bernard Phelan, USN, hurried through the throng, and his reflection followed him in the storefronts: a lithe little man with a roll to his walk, broad cheekbones, a drooping mustache, and black eyes that never looked directly at anything. His bare shoulders were pale with old knife scars. His face was so smooth and expressionless no one could have guessed his age or his emotions. He had on Levis, Dingo boots, and a tooled leather belt with a hammered silver buckle. He’d had to wear a shirt across the quarterdeck, but now it was stuffed into the camera bag tossed over one shoulder. His sleeveless tank top said I’M STUPID .
    For a moment, glancing back, he thought he saw a face looking his way. Then it turned away, looking into a window crammed with cameras. The lenses looked like birds’ eyes. He stood rigid, anxiety struggling against the haze in his brain. Then he made himself relax. No problem, he reassured himself. They just never seen a Zuni before.
    A few blocks on, he stopped before a curb full of cutlery. The vendor, a toothless old guy with something growing on his nose, immediately handed him a four-inch folding blade with a brass hilt decorated with rosewood. Bernard tried it on the sparse hair of his forearm. It was sharp, all right.
    A little bargaining, meanwhile trying not to stare at the guy’s nose, and he tucked the knife into his jeans with the money. Four hundred bucks. His paycheck, plus a nice chunk of change from coming in second in the anchor pool. He’d decided to plow it into the business.
    He squatted back to the old man’s level. The nose aimed left and right, then bent forward.
    Phelan held out a five-dollar bill and asked him where he could buy some hash. The old man, grinning, told him to go to the sari market.
    He figured it wouldn’t be hard to find.
    *   *   *
    Phelan was Bernard Newekwe’s second name. His Melikan name, his white name. He didn’t care for it, but