And the Deep Blue Sea (18 page)

“Well,” she asked quietly, “how do we stop him?”

Goddard marveled at his own stupidity. If a man could figure out that she wouldn’t have been under that shower without her cap, washing her hair with a bar of soap instead of shampoo, twenty minutes before breakfast when it would take four hours to dry in this humidity, how had he expected another woman to fail to grasp it?

Before he could reply, the screen door swung open and Rafferty appeared, carrying a mop and a can of scouring powder. The beefy face was set in an expression of bland innocence and concern, which Goddard expected and dismissed, but there were two items he did find of more interest. One was the slight sag to the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and the other was a faint but undeniable thump of something inside the pocket as it brushed against the door facing.

“Geez, I guess she really took a header, huh?” Rafferty asked with a glance toward the unconscious figure on the bunk.

“Yes, I guess she did, Rafferty,” Goddard said pleasantly. “We’re not in your way here?”

“Naw, I’ll just crumb up the bathroom a little.” He disappeared inside it.

Karen was watching Goddard in wonder. He had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was winding it tightly about his right hand like a cestus, and the expression in his eyes was one she’d never seen before in those of a civilized man. There was something feral and wicked and almost hungry about them as he shook his head for silence and stepped casually over toward the doorway. He unhooked and closed the heavy wooden door and silently slid the bolt. The slapping sound of Rafferty’s mop continued inside the bathroom. Goddard stepped back and stationed himself beside its open doorway.

“Look!” he exclaimed. “She’s coming around. Her eyes are open.”

For a moment it fooled even Karen. She jerked her head around to look at Madeleine Lennox, and by the time she’d turned back Rafferty was emerging from the bathroom door, his eyes turned in the same direction. Goddard stepped out in front of him and swung, from far down and way back, with no necessity for subtlety or feinting, feet planted and all his weight moving forward. The fist clenched into a bound and rock-hard projectile at the instant of impact and buried itself to the wrist in Rafferty’s unsuspecting belly.

Rafferty grunted and doubled over. Goddard caught a jacket lapel with his left hand, clawed him out of the doorway toward him, and shot the right again. It smashed into the side of Rafferty’s jaw just below and in front of the ear. The head weather-cocked with the force of it and he started to spin, went off balance, and crashed back against the heavy wooden door with his head and shoulders as he fell to the deck. Goddard leaped on him, landing with one knee in the belly and slashing the wrapped hand across his throat. Rafferty was a bull and not much more than twenty, and the inexorable law in this kind of thing was that if you were going to win it at forty-six you had to win it fast. The second round was doubtful, and there was never any third.

Rafferty gagged, but heaved upward under him, sheer strength pushing Kim off the deck. Goddard opened a cut above one eye, smashed him across the mouth, and pushed back, as though trying to hold him down. Rafferty was still scrambling up. Goddard suddenly removed his weight, came up with him, reached backward, got an arm around his neck, heaved forward, and threw him. Rafferty’s body cartwheeled and slammed into the bulkhead. He fell down it on his head and one shoulder, and sprawled, reaching for the gun in the pocket of his jacket. It came clear. Goddard stamped down on the wrist and ground his heel. The gun slipped from Rafferty’s fingers. Goddard grabbed it and slashed the barrel down across the side of his head hard enough to open the scalp. Rafferty pushed back against the bulkhead, dazed now, and tried to sit up. Blood ran down across his face.

Karen watched in horror. A face appeared momentarily at the closed porthole, and there were running footsteps on deck. Goddard jerked back the slide of the .45 to arm it. A cartridge jumped out, glinting as it spun across the deck. There was already one in the chamber. He shoved the slide back, slid off the safety, and pushed the muzzle against Rafferty’s teeth.

“All right, you son of a bitch! What’d you give her, and how much?”

“Up yours,” Rafferty said, and then wished he hadn’t. Goddard grinned, and he’d never seen a face like that before. Goddard flicked on the safety, caught him by the shirt collar, leaned in on him, hard, and slashed his head again with the gun barrel.

“You want to wear your scalp around your neck like a lei, go ahead,” he said, fighting for breath. Somebody was hammering on the door. He raised the gun again.

“Two tablets,” Rafferty said.

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. He just give ’em to me. He didn’t say what they was.”

Probably codeine, Goddard thought. But whatever it was, two couldn’t be any more than double a prescription dose and unlikely to be fatal.

“Where’s Mayr?” he asked.

“Mayr? He’s dead and buried, you jerk.” He looked at Goddard’s face, and at the gun, rising again. “All right, he’s down below somewhere. I don’t know where.”

“How’s he supposed to get off the ship? And where?”

“A boat, somewhere ahead of us.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many are there besides Lind?”

“Otto, Sparks, Karl, Mueller—”

“Who’s Mueller?”

“The bos’n.”

There were more people in the passageway now. Somebody was battering on the door with what sounded like a sledge.

“And who else?” Goddard asked.

“One of the black gang, but I don’t know which one.”

“Any more?”

“I don’t know. You think he tells me anything?”

“You’re in it for the money, is that it?”

“Partly.”

The bolt was beginning to tear out of the door. Rafferty looked at it. Help was coming.

“What else?” Goddard asked.

Rafferty spat in his face. “What do you think, Jew boy?”

“I see,” Goddard said. “You’re dedicated.” He wiped the spittle from his face. Without looking around, he spoke to Karen Brooke between crashes on the door. “Karen, see if you can find that cartridge; we’ve only got one clip. Stay close to me, and don’t let anybody get behind you.”

He stood up and gestured to Rafferty with the gun. “All right, save the hammering out there,” he called through the door. “We’re coming out.” He worked the bolt back and pulled the door open. The screen door had been torn from its hinges and was lying on deck. Otto was standing in front of it with the nozzle of a fire hose, Lind was beside him, and Karl was coming up the passageway behind them with a fire ax. Otto started to raise the nozzle until he saw the .45 dangling in Goddard’s hand.

Goddard shoved Rafferty out. “Here’s your boy,” he said to Lind.

Lind nodded, but said nothing.

Goddard jerked his head at Otto. “Throw that thing forward, and go aft. You too, Karl.”

The nozzle and fire ax clanged on the deck. Goddard looked out and checked to his right. There was nobody in the passageway forward. He gestured for Lind and the other three to go on aft and out on deck, and followed close behind them with Karen on his heels. Barset was in the thwartships passageway near the entrance to the dining room, looking frightened.

“Don’t get behind me,” Goddard said. Barset turned and went the other way.

The four men went out on deck. Goddard checked to be sure they were all in view before he stepped out himself, followed by Karen. He moved to the right to get out from in front of the passageway. There was no breeze at all now and the sea was like polished metal. Just ahead and to starboard the sky was a poisonous mass of cloud veined with the nervous play of lightning. Thunder growled on the horizon, and the acrid odor of burning cotton stung his throat. Mueller, the bos’n, was running up the ladder from the deck below. Goddard gestured for him to stand clear, near the others, and spoke to Lind.

“Where Mayr is, or what you’re going to do with him, I couldn’t care less. But I’m going to move Mrs. Lennox into my cabin, and Karen and I are going to be there with her from now on. I don’t know how many of your crew are in this, but I’ve got a blanket policy that covers it; anybody who tries to get in will be shot. We may not make it to Manila, but some of you won’t either.”

There were no threats, no bluster. Lind merely listened, and waited for him to finish. He turned to Rafferty then, and said quietly, “I thought I told you not to carry that gun.”

Rafferty’s eyes were crawling with fear, but he tried to bluff it out. “Well, Chrissakes, we got plenty more—”

It was swift, deadly, and sickening. Lind made a quick movement of his hand. Rafferty threw up an arm. Lind caught it, twisted it behind his back, and ran him headfirst into the bulkhead. There was a meaty thud, and a grunt like that of a pole-axed steer. Lind picked him up by coat collar and crotch, stepped to the rail, and threw him overboard.

The whimpering little
yunh-yunh-yunh-yunh
he mouthed as he fell was cut off by the sound of the splash below them. Goddard winced. In spite of himself he turned and looked aft as Rafferty surfaced in the white water beyond the line of the poop and began to drop astern, his mouth open in a soundless scream and his arms flailing as he tried to swim after the ship like a dog chasing a car.

“Oh, God!” Karen cried out in a strangled voice beside him. She ran to the rail and gagged. Goddard raised the gun, but it was too late; Lind had already leaped and caught her. With his left arm about her waist, he swung her up over the rail as if to throw her into the sea. He caught a handful of her skirt and slip with his right hand and let her dangle over the rushing water below as the garments slid up under her arms. The slender body writhed as she struggled, face outward, trying to turn inward and grab the stanchion. Braced against the rail and holding her out behind him, Lind turned and looked at Goddard.

“All right,” he said, “toss Otto the gun.”

Goddard heard a brief, blood-freezing sound of seams beginning to tear. He tossed the gun to Otto. At the same time a voice in the after well-deck shouted, “Mayr!” Lind turned and looked.

There was another ripping sound. “Get her up!” Goddard shouted. He lunged for the rail. There was no way to tell whether Lind tried to lift her back or not. The dress tore away, she slid out of the half slip, and Goddard saw her body drop feet-first into the sea.

In the madness then, he didn’t know who hit him first. A fist crashed against his jaw. He reeled backward, swung at one of the faces boring in, and then he was down as they swarmed him under. He got a knee into somebody’s groin, smashed another in the face, and managed to fight his way momentarily to his feet, trying to get to Lind. As he went down the second time, he saw Mayr running up the ladder just beyond him, carrying a machine pistol.

Somebody got a clear swing at his face, knocking his head back against the deck. The barrel of the .45 chopped downward. He could see it, but there was no way to avoid it. They heaved him up, dazed but still conscious, and threw him over the rail. He was turning as he fell, and he saw the sky wheel above him, and the far line of the horizon, and then the water, rushing up.

T
HE IMPACT WAS NUMBING, AND
he was close to blacking out as he went under. The urge to fight his way upward and try to keep from being drawn into the wheel was instinctive—and admittedly irrational if he’d had time to think about it. The quick and sensible way would be to go on through the propeller and emerge in slices. But there was little danger of it with the ship loaded; the propeller was too far down. Then, slammed back and forth in the millrace of its turbulence and whirled and spun around by blows from water as solid as oak, he lost all sense of direction and had no idea which way was up anyway. His lungs were bursting and he was drifting off into a darkening winy haze when he came out on top, kicked to the surface by the violence itself. The counter loomed black and massive above him, drawing rapidly away to the thumping beat of the propeller. He was whirled again and kicked backward in the foaming water of the wake.

Blind panic seized him for a moment, and he had already taken two or three frenzied strokes after the ship before he got it under control. He didn’t know whether it was his hatred of Lind and contempt for Rafferty, or whether he was still partially immunized by the massive charges of adrenaline, but he was able to stop the ludicrous flailing of his arms. No doubt he would panic at the end or go completely out of his mind when he saw the ship go over the horizon, but at least he could do it in private. He treaded water instead, and turned to search the sea behind him. There wasn’t much chance he would see her, though, even if she were still afloat. She would be several hundred yards astern, only a head showing above the surface and still below the intervening billows of the swell. Only, he thought, if they both rose to a crest at the same time.

He was still being thrown about in the diminishing turbulence of the wake, and now he was facing toward the ship again. He stared unbelievingly. It was well over a hundred yards away, but it was beginning to swing in a hard-over turn to port, and he could see two figures out on the port wing of the bridge, undeniably looking back at him. Gooseflesh spread between his shoulder blades, but he killed the cruel surge of hope before it had time to start. It was only somebody who hadn’t heard the word. Then he saw the big figure that could only be Eric Lind, running up the ladder to the boat deck. The word was on its way.

Antonio Gutierrez, the Filipino messman, had just emerged from the passageway at the after end of the crew’s deck when he thought he heard something splash in the water on the starboard side. He walked over and looked down, but could see nothing; Rafferty was a hundred feet aft by that time and still below the surface. He looked off momentarily toward the squall, and was about to turn away when a gilt sandal fell past his face, followed by another, and then a long and very beautiful pair of legs dropped into view and stopped, suspended in front of his eyes so near he could have touched them if he had been capable of movement.