But I wasted no time wondering about it. I dived forward and went through that doorway at a running crouch and snatched for the fallen rifle as I went. Nobody shot at me as I scurried hell for leather, angling to the left towards the edge of camp. I approached the hut by the cenote at a tangent, having arrived by a circuitous route, and I could not tell if the door was open or even if there was anyone inside. But I did see Fowler make a run for it from the front.
He nearly made it, too, but a man appeared from out of nowhere—not a chiclero but one of Gatt’s elegant thugs who carried what at first I thought was a sub-machine-gun. Fowler was no more than six paces from the hut when the gangster fired and his gun erupted in a peculiar double
booom
. Fowler was hit by both charges of the cut-down shotgun and was thrown sideways to fall in a crumpled heap.
I took a snap shot at his killer with no great hope of success and then made a rush for the door of the hut. A bullet chipped splinters from the door frame just by my head, and one of them drove into my cheek as I tumbled in. Then someone slammed the door shut.
When I looked out again I saw it was useless to do anything for Fowler. His body was quivering from time to time as bullets hit it. They were using him for target practice.
The rifle fire clattered to a desultory stop and I looked around the hut. Fallon was clutching a shotgun and crouched under a window; Smith was by the door with a pistol in his hand—it was evidently he who had shut it. Katherine was lying on the floor sobbing convulsively. There was no one else.
When I spoke my voice sounded as strange as though it came from someone else. ‘Rudetsky?’
Fallon turned his head to look at me, then shook it slowly. There was pain in his eyes.
‘Then he won’t be coming,’ I said harshly.
‘Jesus!’ said Smith. His voice was trembling. ‘They killed Fowler. They shot him.’
A voice—a big voice boomed from outside. It was Gatt, and he was evidently using some sort of portable loudhailer. ‘Wheale! Can you hear me, Wheale?’
I opened my mouth, and then shut it firmly. To argue with Gatt—to try to reason with him—would be useless. It would be like arguing against an elemental force, like trying to deflect a lightning bolt by quoting a syllogism. Fallon and I looked at each other along the length of the hut in silence.
‘I know you’re there, Wheale,’ came the big shout. ‘I saw you go in the hut. Are you ready to make a deal?’
I compressed my lips. Fallon said creakily, ‘A deal! Did he mention a deal?’
‘Not the kind you’d appreciate,’ I said grimly.
‘I’m sorry that guy was killed,’ shouted Gatt. ‘But you’re still alive, Wheale. I could have killed you right there by the door, but I didn’t. You know why.’
Smith jerked his head and looked at me with narrowed eyes. There was a question in them which he didn’t put into words. I closed my hand tighter round the butt of the revolver and stared him down until his glance slid away.
‘I’ve got another guy here,’ boomed Gatt. ‘Big Joe Rudetsky. Are you prepared to deal?’
I knew very well what he meant. I moistened my lips and shouted, ‘Produce him alive—and I might.’
There was a long pause. I didn’t know what I’d do if he were still alive and Gatt carried out his threats. Whatever I did would be useless. It would mean putting the four of us into Gatt’s hands and giving him all the aces. And he’d kill us all in the end, anyway. But if he produced Joe Rudetsky and began to torture him, could I withstand it? I didn’t know.
Gatt laughed. ‘You’re smart, Wheale. You sure are smart. But not tough enough. Is Fallon still alive?’
I motioned to Fallon to keep quiet.
‘Oh, I suppose he’s there—with maybe one or two more. I’ll leave
them
to argue with you, Wheale, and maybe you’ll be ready to make a deal. I’ll give you one hour—and no more. I don’t think you’ll be tough enough for that, Wheale.’
We stood there, quite still, for two full minutes and he said nothing more. I was thankful for that because he’d already said enough—I could see it in Smith’s eyes. I looked at my watch and realized with a sense of shock that it was only seven o’clock in the morning. Less than fifteen minutes earlier I’d been talking to Gatt outside the camp. His attack had come with a ruthless suddenness.
Fallon eased himself down until he was sitting on the floor. He laid the shotgun aside carefully. ‘What’s the deal?’ he asked, looking at his feet. The voice was that of an old man.
I paid far less attention to Fallon than I did to Smith. Smith held an automatic pistol; he held it loosely enough,
but he could still be dangerous. ‘Yeah, what’s this deal?’ he echoed.
‘There’s no deal,’ I said shortly.
Smith jerked his head towards the window. ‘That guy says there could be.’
‘I don’t think you’d like to hear it,’ I said coldly.
I saw his gun hand tighten up and I lifted my revolver. He wasn’t standing very far away but I don’t even know if I could have hit him. They tell me that revolvers are very inaccurate in inexperienced hands. Still, Smith wasn’t to know I wasn’t a gunman. I said, ‘Let’s all kill each other and save Gatt the trouble.’
He looked at the gun in my hand which was pointed at his stomach. ‘I just want to know about this deal,’ he said steadily.
‘All right; I’ll tell you—but put the gun down first. It makes me uneasy.’
The thoughts that chased through Smith’s mind were reflected on his face and were as clear as though he had spoken them, but at last he made his decision, stooped and laid the pistol at his feet. I relaxed and put my revolver on the table, and the tension eased. Smith said, ‘I guess, we’re all jumpy.’ It was an apology of sorts.
Fallon was still regarding the tips of his bush boots as though they were the most important things in the world. He said quietly, ‘Who does Gatt want?’
‘He wants me,’ I said. ‘He wants me to go down and retrieve the loot.’
‘I thought he might. What happened to Rudetsky?’
‘He’s dead. He’s lucky.’
Smith hissed in a sudden intake of breath. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Gatt’s way of persuading me to dive isn’t pretty. He’ll take any of us—you, Fallon or Mrs Halstead, it doesn’t matter—and torture him to put pressure on me. He’s quite
capable of doing it, and I think he’d relish using his imagination on a job like that’ I found myself looking at it in a detached manner. ‘He might burn your feet off with a blowlamp; he might chop you up joint by joint while you’re still alive; he might—well, there’s no end to that kind of thing.’
Smith had averted his face. He jerked nervously. ‘And you’d
let
him do it? Just for the sake of a few lousy trinkets?’
‘I couldn’t stop him,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m glad Rudetsky and Fowler are dead. You see, we got rid of the air bottles, and diving without them would be bloody difficult. All we have are a few charged aqualung bottles—the big bottles are at the bottom of the cenote. If you think I’m going to dive in those conditions, with someone screaming in my ears every time I come up, then you’re even crazier than Gatt.’
Smith whirled on Fallon. ‘You got me into this, you crazy old man. You had no right—do you hear me? You had no right.’ His face collapsed into grief. ‘Jesus, how am I going to get out of this? I don’t wanna be tortured.’ His voice shook with a passion of self-pity and tears streamed from his eyes. ‘Good Christ, I don’t want to die!’ he wept.
It was pitiful to watch him. He was disintegrating as a man. Gatt knew very well how to put pressure on a man’s innermost core, and the hour’s grace he had given us was not intended to be a relief. It was the most sadistic thing he had done and he was winning. Katherine had collapsed; Fallon was eaten up with cancer and self-recrimination, and Smith had the pith taken out of him by the fear of death by torture.
I was all knotted up inside, tormented by my sheer impotence to do anything about it. I wanted to strike out and tear and smash—I wanted to get at Gatt and tear his bloody heart out. I couldn’t and the sense of helplessness was killing me.
Smith looked up craftily. ‘I know what we’ll do,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll give him Fallon. Fallon got us into this, and he’d like to have Fallon, wouldn’t he?’ There was a mad gleam in his eyes. ‘He could do things with Fallon—and he’d leave us alone. We’d be all right then, wouldn’t we?’
‘Shut up!’ I yelled, and then caught hold of myself. This was what Gatt wanted—to break us down with a calculated cold cruelty. I pushed down the temptation to take out my frustrations on Smith with an awful violence, and spoke, trying to keep my voice firm and level. ‘Now, you look here, Smith. We’re all going to die, and we can die by torture or by a bullet. I know which I prefer, so I’m going to fight Gatt and I’m going to do my best to kill
him
.’
Smith looked at me with hatred. ‘It’s all right for you. He’s not going to torture you. You’re safe.’
The ridiculousness of what he’d just said suddenly struck me, and I began to laugh hysterically. All the pent-up emotions suddenly welled up in laughter, and I laughed uncontrollably. ‘Safe!’ I cried. ‘My God, but that’s funny!’ I laughed until the tears came and there was a pain in my chest. ‘Oh, safe!’
The madness in Smith’s eyes was replaced by a look of astonishment and then he caught on and a giggle escaped him, to be followed by a more normal chuckle. Then we both dissolved in gales of laughter. It was hysterical and it hurt in the end, but it did us good, and when the emotional spasm was over I felt purged and Smith was no longer on the verge of madness.
Even Fallon had a grim smile on his face, remarkable in a man whose life and manner of death had just been debated by a semi-lunatic. He said, ‘I’m sorry I got you into this, Smith; but I’m in it myself, too. Jemmy is right; the only thing to do is to fight’
‘I’m sorry I kicked off like that Mr Fallon,’ said Smith awkwardly, ‘I guess I went nuts for a while.’ He stooped and
picked up the pistol, took out the magazine and flipped the action to eject the round in the breech. ‘I just want to take as many of those bastards with me as I can.’ He examined the magazine and inserted the loose cartridge. ‘Five bullets—four for them and one for me. I reckon it’s best that way.’
‘You may be right,’ I said and picked up the revolver. I wasn’t at all certain whether I’d have the guts to put a bullet into my own head if it came to the push. ‘Keep a check on what’s happening outside. Gatt said he’d give us an hour but I don’t trust him that far.’
I crossed over to Katherine and dropped to my knees beside her. Her eyes were now dry although there were traces of tears on her cheeks. ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I broke down—but I was afraid—so afraid.’
‘Why shouldn’t you be afraid?’ I said. ‘Everyone else is. Only a damn fool has no fear at a time like this.’
She swallowed nervously. ‘Did they really kill Rudetsky and Fowler?’
I nodded, then hesitated. ‘Katherine, Paul is dead, too. Gatt told me.’
She sighed and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘Oh, my God! Poor Paul! He wanted so much—so quickly.’
Poor Paul, indeed! I wasn’t going to tell her everything I knew about Halstead, about the ways he went in getting what he wanted so quickly. It would do no good and only break her heart. Better she should remember him as he was when they married—young, eager and ambitious in his work. To tell her otherwise would be cruel.
I said, ‘I’m sorry, too.’
She touched my arm. ‘Do we have a chance—any chance at all, Jemmy?’
Privately I didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell. I looked her in the eye. ‘There’s always a chance,’ I said firmly.
Her gaze slipped past me. ‘Fallon doesn’t seem to think so,’ she said in a low voice.
I turned my head and looked at him. He was still sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched before him and gazing sightlessly at the toe-caps of his boots. ‘He has his own problems,’ I said, and got up and crossed over to him.
At my approach he looked up. ‘Smith was right,’ he said wanly. ‘It’s my fault we’re in this jam.’
‘You had other things to think about.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Selfishly—yes. I could have had Gatt deported from Mexico. I have that much pull. But I just let things slide.’
‘I don’t think that would have worried Gatt,’ I said, trying to console him. ‘He would have come back anyway—he has quite a bit of pull himself, if what Pat Harris says is correct. I don’t think you could have stopped him.’
‘I don’t care for myself,’ said Fallon remorsefully. ‘I’ll be dead in three months, anyway. But to drag down so many others is unforgivable.’ He withdrew almost visibly and returned into his trance of self-accusation.
There wasn’t much to be done with him so I arose and joined Smith at the window. ‘Any sign of action?’
‘Some of them are in those huts.’
‘How many?’
He shook his head. ‘Hard to say—maybe five or six in each.’
‘We might give them a surprise,’ I said softly. ‘Any sign of Gatt?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Smith. ‘I wouldn’t even know what he looks like. Goddamn funny, isn’t it?’ He stared across at the huts. If they open fire from so close, the bullets will rip through here like going through a cardboard box.’
I turned my head and looked at the plunger box and at the wires which led to it wondering how much explosive Rudetsky had planted in the huts and whether it had been
found. As a kid I’d always been overly disappointed by damp squibs on Guy Fawkes Night.
The hour ticked away and we said very little. Everything that had to be said had been torn out of us in that explosive first five minutes and we all knew there was little point in piling on the agony in futile discussion. I sat down and, for want of something better to do, checked the scuba gear, and Katherine helped me. I think I had an idea at the back of my mind that perhaps we would give in to Gatt in the end, and I would have to go down into the cenote again. If I did, then I wanted everything to work smoothly for the sake of the survivors in Gatt’s hands.
Abruptly, the silence was torn open by the harsh voice of Gatt magnified by the loudhailer. He seemed to be having trouble with it because it droned as though the speaker was overloaded. ‘Wheale! Are you ready to talk?’