Authors: Donald Hamilton
“Help me lift him onto the cot, please,” she said. “Gently, he’s got an ugly hole in his hip from one of those screaming ricochets. But I think I’ve stopped the bleeding.”
When we laid him down, the boy’s eyes, opened. “Like with mosquitoes,” he whispered.
“Shhh, don’t try to talk,” Molly said.
“I mean, you hang out a gooey strip of something and it attracts all the mosquitoes around and they stick to it and don’t bite you. Well, you hang out a Sanderson and he attracts all the clubs and bullets around so they don’t hurt you… Did we win, Coach?”
“The game, yes,” I said. “The series is still in doubt.”
The girl beside me stirred irritably. “I hate professional optimists!” she snapped. “You know perfectly well we’re still locked in here; I heard, the hatch close. We killed two men for absolutely nothing.”
I said, “You’re looking at it backward, sweetheart. There were two doors between us and freedom; now, whichever way we go, there’s only one. There were, say, a dozen men between us and freedom; now there are two fewer. And we were unarmed; now we have a gun. I consider that pretty good progress.”
She looked at me for a moment; then her lips twitched and formed a reluctant grin. “All right. Sorry again. If that’s the way the game is played, I’ll be a little Pollyanna from now on. I’ll be so cheerful you won’t be able to stand me. But I must say, if this is what you do for a living…” She hesitated, then went on: “I know it’s horribly self-centered of me to say it with a dead man on the floor I helped kill; but I don’t really like being turned into a wild animal, particularly a naked wild animal. I must have looked perfectly ridiculous and quite disgusting!”
I said, “In other words, Mrs. Brennerman, you’d prefer to die dignified rather than live undignified, is that it?”
She shook her head ruefully. “You can twist anything around, can’t you? But I owe you an apology. I thought, when you were being so polite and humble to that pompous little prick, calling him sir, sir, sir…”
I grinned. “I know what you thought. The point is that he thought it, too. Very useful word, sir. I learned long ago in somebody’s army that you can generally castrate a man with one hand and he’ll never even notice it as long as you’re saluting him with the other and calling him sir…”
“Hey!” That was young Sanderson, weakly trying to attract our attention. “If you two senior citizens will stop arguing… I think something’s happening out there. I heard a funny noise.”
“Sit tight,” I said. “Molly, maybe you can take that other mattress and use it as a shield for both of you; it could stop a ricochet if more lead starts bouncing around. And don’t stick your heads out into the passage. I want to be able to shoot in any direction without clobbering any friendlies.”
I moved across the room and stepped into the passageway cautiously, gun ready. As the kid had said, something was happening. There were scuffling and rattling sounds from the other side of the door to the main hold. I heard the squeaky noise of rusty metal moving against rusty metal, like a half-frozen nut being forced to turn on a corroded bolt. Okay, Friend Homer, for some reason, had decided to come in after us; but he wasn’t about to descend that exposed ladder in the face of a submachine gun he had to assume was now in enemy hands. This time, instead of using the high road over the deck, he was taking the low road through the ship’s hold.
I looked around. The doorway of our cell was the obvious cover from which to shoot; but all Allwyn had to do, once that watertight door was flung open, was have a couple of machine gunners outside spray the metal passage at different angles. Sooner or later a bullet would take the right bounce off a wall and solve all his problems, or at least his immediate problem: me. I put a fresh clip into the MP40, slung the weapon over my shoulder, and started up the ladder. The cracked rib didn’t help, and I was still conscious of the groove Gina had put into my skull, and the new nick in my scalp wasn’t exactly comfortable; but we stoical heroes of the undercover services are, of course, quite immune to discomfort and pain. Or supposed to be. I settled myself as securely as I could at the top of the ladder right below the deck hatch, looking down at the door through which they would come. Clinging there, like a monkey on a pole, I wasn’t in a good position for pinpoint marksmanship; but at that range, with that quick-fire weapon, William-Tell-type accuracy would not be required.
I heard the final fastening yield to the accompaniment of a muffled grunt of pain as somebody barked a knuckle. The door swung open creakily. Somebody stepped over the high sill and paused. Almost directly above—I seemed to be making a habit of potting them from the trees, so to speak—I couldn’t see clearly for my own knee in the way. I wanted to scream at the guy to go on, get moving, and bring all his friends. I wanted them well inside the passage where I could mow down the lot of them before they mowed me…
The figure below me moved forward into the clear. I clung there under the ship’s deck, steadying my weapon awkwardly, finger ready on the trigger, just waiting to see if a few more wouldn’t move into my sights before I took this one. I wasn’t looking at it as a human being. I was regarding it simply as a target with the ten-ring clearly marked between the shoulders. Then the shape below me paused to suck at its skinned knuckles in a way that was wholly feminine; and I realized that I was looking at the silver-blond hair and slender figure of a smallish girl I’d once got to know pretty well.
I released the trigger pressure hastily and drew a shaky breath. I said, “Amy, what the hell are you trying to do, get yourself shot?”
Belatedly I realized that I was taking for granted that the girl below me was on my side, just because we’d once made beautiful music together—and actually it had been a little off-key. Well, I’d also been told she’d refused to play Delilah to my Samson for the PNP, wherefore Gina Williston had replaced her as my sailing companion.
On the other hand, when Minister had summoned her she’d apparently run right to him; and he’d recently referred to her in a very possessive way. In any case I was acting very trustingly for an agent of my age and experience. This seemed to be my day for naive behavior; and the situation could easily blow up in my face, now that I’d revealed my trap and given away my position. I waited for the lights to flash, the sirens to wail, and the guns to fire, signaling the end of another dumb agent who’d made optimistic assumptions about the wrong wench; but nothing happened. Amy merely turned her head to look up at me curiously.
“What in the world are you doing perched up there?… Oh.” She shook her head quickly. “You don’t have to worry about them. They’ve all gone to the boats; they’re getting out of here. Matt, do you know what they’re
doing
? Do you know what they’ve
got
in there?”
“Yes, I know.”
“How crazy can you get? I mean, it’s the thing we’re all fighting
against
, isn’t it? When I learned about it, I knew I had to do
something
… Anyway, I couldn’t leave you trapped here to be, well, incinerated, could I?” She giggled abruptly. “You look very silly up there!”
I dropped down beside her, getting a clear look at her at last. “You look pretty silly yourself,” I said. “Is it raining outside?”
Actually, she didn’t look so bad. In a pretty dress, or even a pair of smart slacks, she’d have been a mess; but you can be dripping wet. in a snug black jersey and blue jeans and people can hardly tell the difference. Her clothes were a bit saggy and shapeless, to be sure, and a small puddle was forming about her blue canvas shoes as she stood there; but the most obvious flaw in her grooming was the lank, soaked hair. You’d have thought I’d have spotted this earlier; but what you notice looking down the barrel of a quick-fire weapon, or any weapon, isn’t quite what you notice under normal social circumstances.
Amy glanced down at herself and said ruefully, “It seems as if, ever since we met, whenever I go away from you I come back a sodden wreck, either with booze or with seawater.” She squeezed the wet hair back from her face. “But it isn’t very nice of you to make fun of the girl after she’s just swum through a sea of sharks to save you!”
“You came across the lagoon?”
“Just the entrance channel.” She hesitated. “I had the captain’s cabin here on the ship. I think you saw me at the window last night. I meant for you to see me…”
“I saw you.”
“Anyway, when they said we were all leaving just now, I was assigned to a boat like everybody else. I was supposed to go on Albert’s boat, of course; the flagship, you might call it. Albert’s and Mrs. Williston’s, and Mr. Paul’s. The one from which…
it
will be fired. The other two boats, with Homer Allwyn in charge, are simply going to head straight back to the States with the rest of the PNP action group. They’ll all disperse until they’re called together again for another project… Well, anyway, I told them that the Dramamine they’d passed around in preparation for the sea voyage was making me very sleepy and I wanted to go to the boat and lie down a little. But on the way I dodged in among the villas and sneaked past the dock and around the far end of the lagoon. I came up this side of the island while they were all going down the other, well, back and forth along the other side, to load the stuff they want to save from their private atomic GÖtterdämmerung.” She stared at me bleakly. “Matt, I had no idea, before Albert told me about it the other day, very proudly, that they were planning anything so totally, utterly mad! I mean, even with the best motives in the world, how can they dream of deliberately doing exactly what we’re trying to prevent everybody else from doing? We’ve got to stop them!”
There was moral outrage in her voice; the atom bomb seems to affect some people that way. As far as I’m concerned, a weapon is a weapon; and the primitive gent who, way back at the dawn of history, first chipped out a crude stone knife advanced the world along its homicidal path just as significantly as the modern scientific characters who figured out the latest H-bomb. But she was right; it had to be stopped.
“We’ll give it a try,” I said. “But let me have the rest; did anybody at all see you coming here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. They were all very busy with last-minute stuff, particularly Albert. He wasn’t worrying about me; he was making the final tests and checks on his… well, I guess you’d call it a transmitter, wouldn’t you? A long-range detonator?”
“Where does he keep it on the boat, up on the bridge or down in the deckhouse?”
“On the bridge. He’s built a weatherproof box for it there. I guess it’s pretty sensitive; and there’s no protection up there, just a windshield and the controls and something to sit on.”
“Go on,” I said when she paused.
She licked her lips. “As I said, I think I got away unseen. Swimming the channel was no fun at all; I kept waiting for something to grab my leg or… me. But there was a good tide rip, wind against current, nice and choppy; I don’t think anybody spotted me there, either. Crawling ashore, I put my shoes back on and sneaked up here. The last ones were just leaving with the last loads. When they were gone, I slipped into the building and climbed aboard the ship. It felt very strange, all dead and deserted. I went to the cabin I’d been in, but they’d already taken my things to the boat. No dry clothes. So here I am, still sopping wet, just in time to get my head blown off by the man I came to rescue.” She hesitated. “Oh. Here. I didn’t know you already had a gun. Looking for something to wear, I found this in a bureau in the cabin next door, the one
she’d
been using.”
It seemed that Amy was having as hard a time bringing herself to use Gina Williston’s name as Gina had had using hers. I didn’t allow myself to crack a smile. Amy lifted her soggy jersey in front and pulled out a familiar weapon: the .38 Special revolver, complete with clip-on holster, that I’d been carrying earlier, that Gina had hidden away after putting me to sleep the night we’d paid our visit to Connie Grieg. I found myself rather proud of Amy, and of myself. She could probably never have brought herself to touch a fearsome firearm—she wouldn’t even have been thinking in those terms—except for our little weapons-training session out in the Gulf Stream.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping it onto my belt after checking the cylinder: full house. I asked, “How much time do you figure we have?”
“Until tomorrow morning, when they get the coded message from Nassau that’ll tell them the convention delegates are ready to appreciate the fireworks… Matt, how did I ever get mixed up with these high-class lunatics, anyway?”
I couldn’t answer that; but at least I’d figured the time factor correctly.
“Who’ll have the honor of setting off the blast?” I asked.
“Albert, of course. It’s his pride and joy; and anyway, only he knows how it works.” She grimaced. “I still think of him as Albert; I can’t get used to his real name. When he gets the word, he’ll warm up his magic box, go through the safety routines he’s set up to prevent accidental detonation, and push the pretty red button that says ‘Fire.’”
“From where?”
“I don’t really know where we’re supposed to go, just that we’re going to anchor the
Cuttlefish
behind some island a safe distance away, to await the signal from Nassau.
Cuttlefish
, that’s a kind of squid, isn’t it?”
“Or octopus; I forget, exactly,” I said. “Which one is the
Cuttlefish
?”
“It… she has a blue hull. The other two are white.”
I said, “He didn’t by any chance tell you anything that would help us disarm it?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Well, he did let something slip, but it’s not very helpful. The bomb is booby-trapped. He always does that, he said, so that if somebody does catch him after he’s planted it, he’ll have the consolation of knowing it’ll probably go off anyway.”
So I was right again; but, as she said, it didn’t help a great deal. I said, “Nice playmates you pick.”
“That’s right,” she said dryly. “One blows them up with high explosives; the other shoots them with guns.”