Excerpt
“You gotta come see this,” Tom said.
I was up to my oxters in pump casing just at that moment, trying to shift a seized crank. Tom was standing at the edge of the package as I twisted to look up.. Lenin, was shuffling the parts we had extracted from the pump into some kind of order on the groundsheet as if they might predict his future. I wiped his hands.
“Ryker’s here,” Tom said.
I told Lenin to touch fuck all till I got back followed Tom back down Broadway towards the laydown area. Half of the deck crew and most of the African techs were already there, leaning across the rail.
Thirty metres out, a marlin broached, twisted in the air and crashed back into a smudge of white foam. A launch was pulling fast and Ryker was there, strapped into the seat, winding the big gearsome reel, hauling back on the rod, the line singing taut. The two local girls were clinging to the gunnels as the launch rocked and pitched, smashing into the swell, its bow rising up, falling. The sea had picked up since lunchtime. The marlin broke surface again. It was not huge but awesome just the same. I could see Ryker was checking out his audience. A cooler crammed with beer, two honeys from Luanda, hot flesh in short-short skirts, breasts filling out those lycra crop-tops, nipples all firmed up by cold air and excitement, wet maybe, and a big fish on the line just like he always said.