Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (15 page)

Booth suddenly lunged forward, baring his teeth in his attempt to show Max he meant what he said.

Vincent laughed.

“You all can go to hell,” was Slater’s judgment. Harry had the feeling that he’d have liked to walk away and forget the whole business, but obviously there was nowhere to walk away to.

“I don’t believe this, I really don’t think I believe this,” Harry said. He had the vision of two dead crewmen, martyrs to lousy meat loaf.

He would have to do something. He preferred to let them grind each other into the deck, but it would be far better if they did so without the benefit of sharpened instruments.

So Harry stepped between them, knowing that all this action did was to invite getting stabbed from both sides. But for the moment he enjoyed the luxury of surprise. Neither Booth nor Max had made up their minds about what Harry’s intercession meant.

“Why don’t you throw down your weapons?” Harry said, his voice deliberately calm. “You want to fight, fight. God might not have given you any brains but He gave you two hands.”

Booth had to think about this for a minute. Harry knew if he got one he had the other. The question was would either of them accept his suggestion?

Finally, Booth dropped the speargun into Vincent’s hands. “I’m willing,” he declared, leaving Max with no choice. He surrendered his blade to Slater.

Booth didn’t waste any time. He delivered a nicely executed roundhouse kick straight to Max’s chest, knocking the wind right out of him. For unfathomable reasons Max remained erect. You could hear him sucking frantically for breath. It was clear that if he didn’t do something soon the fight would be over before it had started. Booth charged in again, battering Max with a succession of blows that sent him staggering back toward the starboard side. Max was not used to someone like Booth. Booth moved in, resolved to finish the job without further ado.

Although it surprised the hell out of Harry, he realized that he wanted Max to win. He disliked Max intensely, wished he’d never laid eyes on him much less accepted the responsibility for saving him from Harold’s wrath. But when the choice was Max or Booth, Harry decided to go with the lesser of two evils.

The lesser of two evils wasn’t faring very well. The only reason he was still standing was because he had the gunwales to prop him up. Still the gunwales weren’t very high, and it would only take Booth a few solid punches to send him crashing into the Pacific where, already bloodied, he might prove too much of a temptation to the sharks who made their home there.

Maybe he slipped, maybe he purposely stepped out of the way, it was hard to tell, but whatever impulse guided Max it was obviously the correct one. By moving to the left he managed not only to avoid a blow that might have dropped several front teeth down his throat but he also succeeded in unbalancing Booth. Booth, having expected Max to remain in one place, had lunged forward. But all he found himself hitting was thin air. And because he was in motion, he could not stop, and so propelled he slammed his belly against the gunwales, grimacing in pain.

Max, surprised to find he had an advantage, had recovered sufficient wind to drive a punch into the side of Booth’s head. Instantly Booth’s left ear turned deep scarlet. Booth half-turned, only to receive a left hook that found its resting place directly underneath his chin. Having not really gotten his balance back, Booth was hurled up against the wall of the pilothouse. His head made a loud cracking sound when it hit. Both his hands clutched his throat. For several moments he remained unmoving. Max’s blow must have temporarily jeopardized his air supply. He was gasping as hard as Max had been just a half a minute or so before.

Max, moving very slowly as though he were already immersed in water, now stepped forward and began to rain Booth with several more blows. Booth still could not react, and the only protective gestures he made were to turn his head and twist his body to diminish the target area Max had to work with.

Vincent didn’t like how this fistfight was developing. Harry could see that he was anxious to intervene on his friend’s behalf. Not being constrained by the rules established for the fight, he thrust out the speargun Booth had given him. Then he started his advance toward the two struggling men.

Harry reached forward, gripping him by the arm. “I wouldn’t do that, Vincent.”

Vincent glared at Harry. The tip of the speargun was now turned toward him. Slater noticed this and, with Max’s knife in hand, began to circle around just in case Harry required assistance.

This was one instance Harry was determined not to resort to fire-power. Producing a gun would only invite further suspicion as to what his role was on the
Confrontation,
and he refused to take that risk unless it was absolutely necessary.

Seeing that Harry had no intention of backing down, Vincent grumbled and lowered the speargun. He then went back to being a spectator.

Booth had by this point recuperated to the point where he was giving as good as he got. Neither of the combatants was making much headway mainly because they were both running out of energy. The punches were landing with negligible force, arms and legs were moving with such sluggish speed that it looked as though their bodies would soon shut down altogether.

Then Max, finding his second wind, let loose a fury of punches that thudded clumsily against Booth. Still, they carried a certain power to them and had the effect of driving Booth back against the wall of the pilothouse again. When Booth attempted to regain a more strategically viable position in the middle of the deck, Max sent a straight punch into his stomach. All at once Booth went down, because of the impact or because he’d lost his footing on a patch of water. He lay outstretched for a few seconds, stunned and indignant that he should be down at all. Then, with difficulty, he hoisted himself aloft again.

Slater now came forward, holding up his hands to keep the two contestants separated. “That’s it, that’s the end of it.”

“What the fuck do you mean, Slater, that’s it? I slipped.” Booth looked to Vincent to support his opinion. “You saw that, I just slipped. This asshole didn’t fucking knock me down.”

Max, not being content with Slater’s judgment of victory, stood there grinning, confident he could return Booth to the surface of the deck with no trouble at all. His ugly smirk dared Booth to come at him again.

No question about it, Harry thought, Max was an asshole. Now that the fight appeared over he could go back to despising him. It made him feel better.

“You men want to keep up, well, go ahead. But I’m raising anchor and getting on with the business of sailing south.”

“Forget it, Booth, we’ll have our chance later,” Vincent said.

Booth, his face smeared with sweat and blood that still dribbled out of his nostrils, regarded his antagonist darkly. Then he turned defiantly toward Slater and Harry, muttering, “Sure will have our chance later. Sure will.” It seemed that he was threatening not just Max but Harry and Slater as well. This did not surprise Harry. He was beginning to think that they would have to abandon the two mutinous crewmen in Mexico, let them find their way back on their own, because he could not see how they could be counted on once they started home. That is,
if
they started home.

Booth and Max got themselves cleaned up and then resumed work as though nothing had happened between them.

Slater was silent for the next hour afterward. He stood at the wheel, casting his dimming eyes toward the sea, staring straight into a setting sun that carved out a blood-red trail across the horizon. At last he spoke to Harry, though he never allowed his eyes to leave the Pacific.

“Wrong chemistry. Generally you get a better chemistry among a crew than we got here.”

“I’ll grant you that.”

“None of them alone’d be bad. Putting the three together!” He shook his head gravely. “But you never can tell, can you?”

Harry agreed that this was the case.

“Still you know that Booth he had a point.”

“Oh?”

“That meat loaf last night was shit.”

C H A P T E R
T h i r t e e n

T
he speedboat—a Cigarette—reached the target area at quarter past the hour. The sun had been gone from this part of the globe for several hours. The darkness was nearly total—the half-moon had already sunk below the horizon.

Milano finished what was left of his coffee and went up on deck. There waiting for him was Conrad, a humorless albino who’d once played bass for a Southern rock and roll band. He was strumming on a guitar now, serenading the Pacific with a song about a lost lover. Milano was tired of songs about lost lovers. Ever since Conrad had been recruited he’d been singing songs about the subject. All his lost lovers were male anyhow, which somehow disgusted Milano. But for what they were paying him Conrad was good. Once he managed to put down his guitar he could pick up a gun and put it to good use.

It wasn’t a gun that Conrad had to abandon his guitar for now though. Instead he opened up a briefcase and extracted from it an elaborate electronic device. Methodically he drew a long narrow antenna from it and then proceeded to drop it into the water. Into the control box he inserted a lead which was already connected to a small quartz clock. The time was 2:20.

Conrad and Milano now placed headphones over their ears and settled down on deck chairs to wait until they had their signal.

They didn’t have long to wait. Eight minutes later a red light began to blink on the panel of the device. Conrad rotated the antenna in the water, clockwise, then counter-clockwise. As he did so, the signal-strength meter fluctuated erratically. An expression of intense concentration came over Milano’s face as he strained to interpret the sounds coming over the radio. Conrad’s, by contrast, remained a perfect blank.

At last a smile gathered on Conrad’s lips. “I’ve got it.”

Milano listened a moment longer. “Yes, that’s it.”

Conrad fine-tuned the antenna to get it exact. “Eight miles, I’d say,” Conrad muttered. “Maybe nine. And ten degrees to our right.”

“Make it nine miles and ten degrees right,” Milano affirmed.

Removing the headphones, Milano strode over to the helm. The pilot watched him impassively, anticipating the instructions.

Milano told him the speed he wanted the Cigarette taken in at.

“Fifteen minutes we should be in position, right in their path.”

Milano had done these outings so often that he had the operation down to a science. He knew precisely how long these things required, how many minutes he should leave himself as insurance.

The thirty-foot powerboat assumed a southwesterly course that brought it to within three and a half miles of the
Confrontation.

There the Cigarette stopped dead. Conrad brought up a signal beacon which he placed down on the bow. The beacon shot an amber light out on the water, which indicated that their craft was in distress. The
Confrontation
would be coming on them in another four minutes according to Milano’s calculations.

Milano’s calculations were right on the mark.

A pale yellow light on the northern horizon, followed shortly by the low rumble of Lehman-Ford diesel engines, heralded the immediate appearance of the
Confrontation.

The Cigarette was so anchored that the larger boat would either have to stop or else alter its course if it was to avoid crashing directly into it.

As Milano hoped, the
Confrontation
began to slow, its motors dying to a muffled drone.

One man, then another, appeared on the port of the
Confrontation,
silhouettes in the glare of their deck lights.

“Ahoy there!” one of them called through a megaphone.

Milano popped into view in response. No one else was to be seen on the deck of the Cigarette.

“We need help!” Milano shouted back. “Out of fuel, food’s running low. You think you have a little extra gas to get us going?”

“You hold on there.”

“We’re appreciative of whatever you can do.”

Milano disappeared below deck for a moment. Conrad and the other two, Francis and the one who called himself Tennessee, were patiently whiling away the time until Milano issued them their orders. Close by their sides were the AKS rifles they relied on. The AKS was a recent Soviet addition to the burgeoning world of armaments, intended to replace that old favorite, the AK47 Kalashnikov. It had the advantage of being lighter and it fired a 5.54mm bullet with a hollow point and steel plug that slammed forward upon the bullet’s impacting with the result that the bullet mushroomed, causing a much larger wound. The AKS was first tried out by Soviet troops against Afghan insurgents, but like all rifles, it made no distinction among targets. The crew of a yacht died as easily as Afghanis did once they were visited by a 5.54mm bullet.

The old man on the
Confrontation
was shouting back something now. Milano returned to the deck to see what he had decided.

“You got anything like a dinghy you can get over to us with? We have a few gallons we can give you. That should see you into port.”

“No problem. We’ll be over in a few minutes.”

Conrad and Francis would be entrusted with the initial—and Milano hoped the final—assault. Milano would wait on the Cigarette with Tennessee as backup in case anything went wrong. But things hardly ever went wrong.

Milano deposited two packs of sugar in his coffee and stirred it inattentively while he watched the dinghy ease itself across the becalmed swath of water that separated the Cigarette from the Kong & Halverson Island Gypsy.

Because of his impatience and the state of his nerves, the short journey seemed to take an inordinate amount of time. But finally the dinghy came flush with the hull of the yacht. Francis, with Conrad right behind him, took hold of the rope ladder thrown to him and began clambering up to the deck. The canvas bags containing their weapons were slung unobtrusively over their backs.

Now all that remained for Milano to do was settle back and wait for the rattle of gunfire.