Butler Did It! (22 page)

“You sick bastard!” Butler
growled.

Simon ignored the insult and
continued.

“It’s always been one of my secret
fantasies to see this used on a woman, but I’ve never had the
opportunity, so your arrival at SUBIOS was a gift from the gods.
They say that a rank amateur can kill a victim in just a few
strokes, but it takes an expert to keep them alive.”

“Mr. Levasseur, bless his black soul,
is a true sadist whose favorite victims are women.” Simon began
flicking the whip back and forth with his wrist, emphasizing his
words. Katherine had become mesmerized by the tip of the whip. With
each flick, her eyes followed the movement. “You know, I’ve always
suspected that the pain from the Sambok is even more excruciating
for a woman, because their nerve endings are closer to the surface
than a man’s.” He stroked the oiled leather whip and smiled. “Yet,
women are said to have a greater tolerance for pain than men.”
Simon turned to Katherine, “I will take great delight watching him
use the Sambok on you, my dear.”

Simon reached out and caressed
Catherine’s cheek with his free hand as he slid the length of
Sambok over her shoulder, letting it smoothly slide down her back
like the deadly mamba.

Katherine gasped and visibly shuddered
at his touch.

Butler couldn’t stand it any more. In a
burst of profanity that would have shocked a sailor, he verbally
attacked Simon in the hope of drawing the bastard’s attention away
from Katherine.

Simon laughed, “Oh, save your curses,
Mr. Butler. I’m certain Levasseur will want to do you first.” He
thought for a moment, as if the fate of his two victims were
something weighing on his mind, before speaking again.

“You know, Mr. Butler, I believe it
could be a fine evening’s entertainment to watch Alexander cut you
into dog food. Until then, if you will excuse me, I have other
tasks to complete.” With that, he threw the Sambok onto the teak
desk, and turned to the bodyguards with instructions.

“Lock these two up until your Master
returns. I suspect that they’d like some time to reflect on what
little remains of their lives.”

With unsubtle pokes and pointed kicks,
the two Ice Maidens bustled Butler and Katherine down a narrow
corridor to a small pantry closet, and unceremoniously locked them
inside.

<<>>

It was just dark enough in the pantry
that Katherine couldn’t make out what Butler was doing, but in her
mind his gyrations were bordering on the obscene.

“Damn, I can’t get a good enough grip.
Here, can you turn around and hold this?” Butler
requested.

She carefully maneuvered herself in the
tiny space to give him access to her bound hands.

“Just what are you doing?” She asked
hopefully, trying to get a grip on the roughly rectangular object
he pushed toward her.

“Working to get us out of these nylon
ties before our hands go numb.”

“Do you have an escape
plan?”

With a mighty heave, the square
container parted suddenly and a greasy object flew past Katherine’s
head, ricocheted off a shelf and landed at her feet in a soggy
splat. A slightly tainted nitrate-loaded odor rose from the juices
that dribbled from the can down the back of her beautiful blue
dress.

“No, but I do have the next best thing,
a can of Spam. One of the nicest things about Spam is that even in
the dark one can recognize the product by the distinctive shape of
the container. We were lucky. The rest of the cans in here are all
steel and require an opener. Fortunately, Spam has a pull-tab lid
with what I hope will be just the right kind of edge to cut through
a zip tie. Hold still and I’ll cut you free.”

In less than a minute, he cut through
her ties and passed over the greasy lid so she could return the
favor.

“But, now what do we do?” Katherine
asked as she industriously sawed at Butler’s restraints.

“The door is locked from the outside;
however, its hinges are on this side. With a little bit of luck, I
can pry up the pins on the hinges and we’ll be able to waltz out of
here.”

It took only a couple of minutes to saw
through Butler’s zip ties. Once free, Matthew turned to the door
and began working on the hinges using the Spam lid and a #10 can of
pork and beans as a hammer.

Katherine, having little to do but
encourage Butler, idly played with the empty can.

“Ugh, who eats this stuff?”

“Hawaiians mostly, but back in the
early 60’s, it was a mainstay luncheon meal for an entire
generation of school children.” Butler answered tartly, and then
shuddered violently at the memory.

“You’re not old enough to have been one
of those.”

“Nope, I missed that era by a decade or
two, but Momma didn’t.”

“I’m guessing that your mother must
have served it regularly.”

“No, Momma only made it once; I
distinctly remember those strangely curled slabs swimming in a
fluorescent tomato sauce.”

“Let me guess, everyone
gagged…”

“…
and, we all went out for
pizza.”

Just then, the last hinge pin came
free. “Rule #46,” Butler proclaimed, as he pulled the door off the
hinges and carefully escorted Katherine out of the pantry, “never
get kidnapped without a handy can of Spam.”

Matthew quickly led the way to the
kitchen door, which opened invitingly to the back of the sprawling
steel and glass mansion. An alarm began to wail the moment they
opened it. “Well, they know we’re out now,” he said, “let’s go.”
The pair headed down a path that led around the side of the house
and joined with another one leading toward the dock. A sixth sense
told Matthew to get off the path just as a guard came running
around the house behind them. Grabbing Katharine around the waist,
he dived into the underbrush of ferns and palms lining the sides of
the path. He heard something tear as he continued to roll, dragging
her away, just as a burst of machine gun fire kicked up the soil
where they had been a moment before.

“You okay?” he whispered. Not really
waiting for her answer, he got her up and moving again as quickly
as possible.

“It’s my dress,” she explained, as she
stumbled along behind him. “It’s a lot shorter than it used to
be.”

Abruptly, he dropped to the ground
again, so quickly that she blundered over his feet and landed on
top of him. “Look who’s coming,” he whispered and
pointed.

The twin Ice Maiden bodyguards were
jogging up the path. As they passed, Butler noticed that both
carried automatic weapons.

“Come on.” Matthew whispered, taking
the girl’s hand. Butler and Katherine eased from their hiding
place, and hurried as quietly as possible down to the
dock.

Katharine immediately headed to one of
the Zodiacs tied halfway down the dock, but Matthew slowed at the
sight of the Rapier. Levasseur’s sinister black yacht loomed
menacingly in the darkness against the starlit sky.

“Forget the Zodiacs,” he said. “We’ll
take this.”

“We what?” she squeaked, as he grabbed
her hand and ran toward the rear boarding deck.

“If we took a zodiac, they’d catch us
with this boat in no time.”

Seeing someone moving around inside the
salon, Matthew pushed Katherine behind a bollard. He put a finger
to his lips, and then crept onto the boat. Katherine barely had
time to duck down behind the bollard as two panels of black glass
at the rear of the Rapier slid aside and Levasseur
emerged.

Having no reason to suspect trouble,
the arms dealer stepped imperiously from the well-lit interior into
the gloom of the main deck, expecting to see his two sinuous
bodyguards. Matthew crouched and leapt from the rear deck.
Spreading his arms wide he caught Levasseur around the torso. The
tackle carried both men to the deck in a loud crash. Levasseur
struggled, trying to go for the gun in his shoulder holster. A
couple of seasons of high-school wrestling gave Butler the skills
he needed now. Getting his feet under him, he hauled the big man
into the air and unceremoniously threw him over the boat’s
railings, into the dark water.

Katherine hurriedly scrambled aboard
just as Matthew slapped the control to fold in the stern loading
deck.

“Gotta go now,” he bellowed, racing for
the cockpit.

Thanking his stars that the keys were
in their slot as he had hoped they would be, Matthew started the
gas turbines of the powerful black yacht.

“Should I cast off the ropes or
something?” Katharine asked, looking around in amazement at the
minimalist elegance of the ship.

“No time,” Matthew replied, “besides,
with the power this baby’s got, she’ll break free, no any trouble
at all.”

At the sound of the Rapier’s diesel
engines and Xander’s spluttered screams of rage, the Ice Maidens
and the two guards from the house raced down the path and onto the
dock.

“This’ll give them nightmares,” Butler
said, gunning the ship’s powerful engines. “Time to say good
night,” he crowed, as the yacht churned a frothy torrent of
seawater and effortlessly tore the dock from its pilings, dumping
the twins, the guards, and their useless machine guns into the
bay.

Katharine’s mouth dropped open, “I
can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Spinning the wheel so that the yacht
pulled away from the dock in a graceful arc, Matthew pushed the
throttles to the max. .

With a roar, the newly liberated Rapier
made its escape, still dragging the remnants of the dock like a
xylophone waterskiing in its wake. The zodiacs, ironically still
tied to the remains of the dock, flapped along for the
ride.

Bracing against the Captain’s chair,
Butler pulled the girl close to him. “I hope you’re enjoying
yourself,” he joked

Katherine stared at him in disbelief.
“Well, what do we do now?” She asked.

“How about you go below and see if
there’s any food on this tub,” said Mathew. “There’s nothing like a
daring escape and the smell of spam to make a man
hungry.”

“Are you kidding? How can you think of
food when they could be coming after us at any moment?”

“I suppose they will, but until then we
might as well enjoy the ride. She’s a sweet ship, that’s for sure,”
said Matthew, still riding on an adrenalin high. Katharine turned
to go below, wondering about the sanity of the man. Stopping
abruptly, she backed into Matthew standing at the helm.

Matthew turned to see a terrified youth
emerge from below, carrying a full trash bag. Even though Matthew
was not armed, the young man dropped the trash bag and threw his
hands in the air, his eyes wide with surprise and fear.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he burbled,
nearly in tears. “I’m not one of them. I’m just the
steward.”

“Well, as I see it, you’ve got two
choices,” growled Butler in his best West Texas accent. “You jump
overboard and swim for it, or…”

The steward’s eyes opened even wider,
as he realized that the shoreline was receding rapidly and nothing
had been mentioned about floatation devices. “Or?” he asked,
fervently hoping for an option that offered any improvement on his
situation.

“Or, you could rustle us up a snack,
and I’ll see that you get safely to Victoria.”

The young man nodded enthusiastically
and fled back down the galley steps.

Now that they were well away from
Xander’s compound and headed out into open water, Matthew turned
the radio to channel sixteen and keyed the mike.

“Hello Pelican, anybody out there?” He
called, “Didja miss me?”

Captain Z’s welcome voice came over the
radio, “Glad to hear your voice, my friend. It seems our redshirts
misplaced you.”

“It’s a good story. I’ll tell you when
we get back onboard, but right now, we need someone to pick us up.
Have you got anybody on the water?”

“Trask and his team are out in the
Rusty Duck, looking for Xander’s compound, and Tommy’s out with
Kobi in the Dolphin searching the area where you
disappeared.”

“Call everyone off, and have the Duck
rendezvous with us at ‘Little Curieuse’ as soon as possible. We
picked up a ride, but we’re going to have to dump it. It’s a little
hot. Oh, and tell them not to shoot at us; we’re on Levasseur’s
yacht.”

“Wilco. There’ll be a crowd waiting to
hear this story… Pelican out.”

<<>>

Back at Levasseur’s compound things
were not going well.

“Tell that bastard Larson to get back
here with my helicopter and go after them,” screamed Xander,
throwing his ruined silk shirt into Elke’s face. “I’ll have his
balls for leaving me with such a festering pile of incompetent
slime!” Stripping out of his soggy clothing, he stepped into the
shower still ranting.

Elke wisely retreated. She knew from
previous experience not to speak when the boss was in a rage, and
she had never seen one quite as bad as this. She met Eva’s eyes.
Both women nodded imperceptibly. Neither of them would ever
acknowledge that La Buse had not only been dumped in the bay but
that he had been done in by, of all things, an amateur. The
American had made fools of them all; humiliated the boss, and
stolen his 30 million dollar yacht, leaving them stranded until
Larson got back with the helicopter. With Xander’s ire raised,
anyone foolish enough to mention the name Butler would die
screaming.