Butler Did It! (18 page)

“That one is easy. I can do that from
the bridge console.”

“Third, station your two security men
in the Mess hall near Broadway to contain the situation, if my idea
doesn’t work.”

“Lastly, leave all the lights on in the
Sickbay, but kill all the lights on Broadway.”

“That’s a bit more difficult, but it
can be done from an electrical panel down in
Engineering.”

Richard the Great responded with, “I
can do that! I know right where the switches are.”

“Do it fast, Richard, and come right
back to the Bridge. We’re going to need you.”

“Oh, and Mr. Bristow,” said Butler,
“call up the captain ashore and tell him he’s needed back
aboard.”

As people scrambled to comply, Chan
drew Butler aside. “The injured man sleeps in the sickbay. You will
be his only defense. If the intruders get as far as the sickbay
door, it means I failed. You must shoot to kill.”

“Yeah, but we need them alive.” Butler
objected.

“Matthew, I understand these men. They
have no respect for life. They will kill you without hesitation. Do
not give them the chance.”

“Okay, got it. Kill them! Words to live
by,” Butler answered with unintentional black humor.

Within minutes, the trap was set.
Butler grabbed a walkie-talkie to coordinate with the bridge before
slipping down the stairs to the Sickbay with Doc in tow.

After arriving in Sickbay, Matthew and
Doc woke Kobi, who was groggy with painkillers but able with their
help to move to the small room that housed the Pharmacy.

“This is a steel reinforced door, Doc.”
Butler emphasized this by tapping it with the barrel of one of his
automatics. “You and your patient should be safe in
here.”

“Be careful.” Doc cautioned before the
door closed. “Don’t make me have to stitch you up, I don’t need the
practice.”

Alone in the Sickbay, Butler turned on
every light. Even the high intensity lamp on the Dentist’s chair,
and shined it directly at the Sickbay’s main door.

Butler then tipped an examining table
onto its side, and piled up several mattresses in front of it into
a makeshift barricade. With a few more minutes of effort, he
carefully adjusted it to provide the best protection
possible.

“Ah, my own personal little Alamo,” he
muttered aloud, before pulling both .45 automatics from his
shoulder holsters. Clicking the walkie-talkie to establish
communication with the Bridge, Butler settled down to wait for
either the two intruders or Santa Ana’s Army, whichever came
through the doorway first.

Up on the Bridge, Mr. Bristow had left
a single video camera in operation, the only one with a fixed view
down the length of Broadway. Richard the Great had returned from
engineering and dropped into a chair in front of the console that
monitored all the cameras on the ship. With deft fingers, he
brought up a view of Broadway on the main monitor. Both he and
Bristow could see a rectangle of light spilling from the open door
of the sickbay, which modestly illuminated the corridor.

“There they are!” Richard spoke
tersely, pointing at some nebulous blobs on the screen. He worked
feverishly over a keyboard to increase the gain on the audio feed
from the camera.

Creeping out of the darkness, the two
intruders cautiously advanced down Broadway, stopping at every
doorway to listen before moving on to the next. Just as they
reached the halfway point and were only twenty feet from the
Sickbay door, as if by magic, a third blob detached itself from a
darkened corner and glided silently up behind the stalking
pair.

Bristow turned to Richard with a
curious look. “Don’t ask me how Chan does it.” Richard replied,
guessing the unspoken question. “He says it has to do with total
body control.”

“Here he goes.” Bristow announced. As
the third blob began to merge with the first two, the witnesses on
the Bridge subconsciously held their breath, awaiting the unknown.
Over the audio feed came a dull ‘thwock’ sound, as if someone had
hit a beanbag chair with a baseball bat.

Slowly, the large amorphous blob on the
screen metamorphosed back into three entities. One was still
standing, while the other two slumped slowly to the
decking.

Chan’s voice came over the audio feed.
“Both targets are down. You can turn up the lights now.”

Not wanting to leave his console,
Richard triggered the emergency lighting system that lit up
Broadway with a yellowish glow. On the monitor, Bristow and Richard
could see Chan rummaging through the fallen men’s
pockets.

“Two pistols with silencers, and two
knives” He called out the inventory as he discovered it. “No
identification on either man, but one looks to be Malaysian or
Indonesian, and the other could be Viet, or Laotian, or possibly
Cambodian.”

Chan flipped each man on to one side to
search further.

“No wallets, watches, or jewelry,
either” as he rolled both men over.

Hearing the good news, Butler and the
two security redshirts came out from their ambush points. While
Butler joined Chan in the body search, the redshirts took over
trussing up the intruders.

“Not much here.” Butler declared. “This
one has a pack of Turkish cigarettes and a crude map of an LST on
him. It’s certainly not a copy of the Pelican’s blueprints. It
looks like something generic printed off the Internet, and the
Sickbay has been circled with a red marker.”

“This one has a box of anise seeds, two
unused condoms, and a pack of pornographic playing
cards.”

“Emergency supplies in case he got
bored?” Butler speculated.

About then Doc unlocked the Pharmacy
and, being a conscientious medical man, decided to check on the
downed intruders. He gave each thug a quick medical check up;
correctly concluding that Chan had really put them into dreamland.
Noting the constriction of their pupils, Doc asked, “Damn, how hard
did you hit them?”

“Precisely, the correct amount,” Chan
answered.

“So Doc, what’s your prognosis?” Butler
asked.

“They’ll be out for the next hour,
minimum. What do you plan to do with them?”

“As soon as they come to, we’ll
question them. After that we will haul them in to the Victoria
Police and file formal charges.”

“You know that trespassing and shooting
out a couple of light bulbs won’t keep them in jail for more than a
minute.”

“We can’t prove attempted murder,
either.”

Butler and Chan looked at each other.
Both nodded in unison. It was the only rational course of action
available.

“So, do you want them sidelined or
locker-roomed?” Chan casually asked.

“I think sidelined will do it this
time. I certainly don’t want them to acquire more guns and decide
to return. Besides, the police might want them mobile enough to
tail them after they’re released.”

“Okay then, sidelined it is.” With
efficient skill, Chan bent to the two unconscious men and broke
each man’s left and right arms at the humerus.

“That should keep them from picking
their noses for 3 to 4 months.” Butler announced.

“Christ all mighty!” Doc yelled,
crouching down to the trussed pair. “This isn’t the Spanish
Inquisition.”

Doc huffed for a second or two trying
to burn off the angry adrenalin racing through his system. “You
know, I have to fix everything you two decide to break.” He paused
looking at Chan, his face becoming suspicious. “What in God’s name
would you have done, if Matthew had said locker-room?”

“They would never have walked again.”
Chan calmly replied.

<<>>

Captain Z slid a cup of coffee across
the table to Matthew Butler. Through the windows, the grey light of
pre-dawn was beginning to define the shape of Little Curieuse Islet
200 yards off their bow.

Matthew and Captain Nikos Zamora had
been friends for as long as the Butler Project had been in
existence. In his mid sixties, Captain Z was a lean and grizzled
Greek with the permanent tan of a lifetime seafarer. He had
captained Butler Marine ships for Matthew’s father for twenty years
before Matthew had asked him to be part of his new company. Captain
Z had been contemplating retirement, but his wife had died the
previous year and he found that life on land held no attraction for
him. Together he and Matthew had sought out a ship that would suit
the need of the project.

The pair chose a former US Navy LST
that had been decommissioned and sold to the Turkish Navy, where
she served as transport, until they too had decommissioned her. She
had then served as a ferry between Corsica and Sardinia. When
Butler and Captain Z found her, she was waiting to be scrapped in a
breaker yard in Tangiers. They spent the next year gutting,
refurbishing, and fitting her with the latest technology and
navigation systems. On a fine spring day, Captain Z christened her
The Pelican, first ship in the Butler Project fleet. The two men
worked well together, Matthew took care of the Project’s mission
and Captain Z took care of the ship. Each respected the other’s
territory.

“We need to find out just what kind of
a threat we’re under,” the Captain said, without preamble, “Whoever
sent the assassins must not have expected us to have any
defenses.”

“Yeah, or they would have sent a lot
more men,” Matthew replied. “If they come back, and I think they
will, we’d better be ready with everything we’ve got. In fact, I’d
like to get a little more firepower for Trask and his team. We
don’t want to be outgunned.”

“You remember my friend, Joe, who came
to our beach party? I think he can supply everything your heart
desires.”

“He’s a weapons dealer? You’re
kidding!”

“Yeah, but he didn’t start out that
way, when I met him he was a tour guide. Times change and people do
what they have to.”

“See if you can arrange for me to meet
with him around noon today, I’d like to get this taken care of as
soon as possible.”

“Right, in the mean time we’ll need the
security crew back on board ASAP.” Captain Z shook his head. “They
aren’t going to like having their shore leave
cancelled.”

“We’ll have to make it up to them once
this is over with.”

<<>>

Later in the morning Matthew,
Katharine, and Tommy boarded the Carmine Electra for the one and a
half hour cruise to Victoria, the capitol city on the Island of
Mahe.

During the cruise, Tommy and Butler
asked Katharine about her home in South Africa and her job as a
photographer. “It’s not as glamorous as you might think,” she said,
“I spend a lot of time waiting for the right conditions, or working
the image on the computer to bring the shot up to today’s
standards. It’s not anywhere near as exciting as what you do. You
get to go to exotic places and try out all of these new gadgets.
Your life sounds like fun to me.”

“Well, I gotta admit, some parts are
fun. Actually, it can be quite boring too. What’s that quote about
war? It’s defined as long periods of boredom punctuated by brief
moments of sheer terror.”

“It might be a little less boring if
some people didn’t have to do things the hard way.” Tommy
vocalized. “Take for instance, this boat ride…”

“Oh, not again,” Butler
muttered.

“Yeah, you know, this trip could have
been a fifteen-minute flight by helicopter,” Tommy complained, but
he had a mischievous look in his eye.

“Don’t start,” said Matthew.

“But then, it’s a nice day. I don’t
know why we shouldn’t relax and enjoy AN HOUR AND A HALF in a speed
boat on the high seas!”

Katharine looked from one man to the
other. Obviously, there was something going on. “Ok, I’ll bite,
what are you talking about?” She asked.

“Our friend Matthew here’s not a very
good flyer; in fact you could say he’s a bit green about the whole
thing.”

“You didn’t really have to bring that
up, you know,” growled Matthew.

“Speaking of bringing things up, I’ve
seen this guy lose his lunch in an airliner before it even got off
the ground. Small planes and helicopters are even more
fun.”

Matthew looked a bit pale, as if the
very thought was causing him a wave of biliousness. “You are a man
without an ounce of mercy,” Matthew accused Tommy.

Katharine laughed, “Seems like you two
have been through a lot of things together,” she said, “how did you
meet?”

Both men began to speak
simultaneously.

“This jerk,” they both started,
pointing to the other man.

“One at a time, please.” Katherine
begged.

“Age before beauty,” Tommy
started.

“Pearls before swine,” Butler
countered.

“I before E except after C,” was
Tommy’s riposte.

Butler laughed. “Okay, okay. I give up.
You have the stage.”

Tommy puffed up, and began eloquently.
“Once upon a time several years ago, I swallowed my pride, and
drove my beat-up 76 Pontiac to Mobile, Alabama to interview for a
job as a mechanical engineer at Butler Marine International, only
to find out that the job being offered wasn’t quite what I had
hoped. Broke and feeling sorry for myself, I decided to drown my
sorrow in alcohol. So I headed for the ocean, which meant driving
down to Dauphin Island, where I found a bar with a deck overlooking
the Gulf. That was where I noticed this jerk,” he gestured at
Butler, “trying to hoist an 1800 pound Cummins marine diesel engine
out of a boat without the proper tackle. While it was fun to watch,
I figured that if I didn’t help him quickly, he was going to drop
that engine right thru the bottom of the boat. So I called out.
‘For a beer, I’ll help you get that out of there.’”