Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (16 page)

Slater Bodkin and Vincent appeared to welcome their guests on board. Two cans brimming full of gas rested at their feet.

Conrad nodded in greeting, Francis offered a smile that revealed a lot of gum and little teeth.

“Tell me, how’d you go and get yourself stuck out in the middle of the ocean like this?” There was no sarcasm in Slater’s voice, he was just plain interested.

“Don’t really know,” Conrad said. “I know it sounds crazy but we strayed out farther than we expected. And something may be the matter with one of the tanks. Maybe sprung a leak.”

Slater shook his head, wondering at such ignorance of the rudiments of sailing.

“Well,” he said, gesturing toward the cans, “this should see you into the shore. By my reckoning there’s a town about twenty miles due east of where we are now. You should be able to fuel up there with what you need.”

Conrad nodded affably. “That’s most kind of you. If you hadn’t come along we might have been stuck out here for another day or two.”

Francis regarded his companion uneasily. In an operation like this the object was to take the initiative and move fast. This desultory, meaningless conversation they were having only served to delay matters. Francis could not comprehend why Conrad was procrastinating in this manner. What he didn’t realize was that Conrad was merely improvising a strategy on the spot. Something was troubling him, and he hoped to discover what it was before striking too precipitously.

“You don’t mind if I use your head for a minute, do you?” Conrad addressed Slater.

“Go right ahead.” Slater indicated the entrance to the cabin below deck. “Straight down and to your left.”

Francis was not good with words. He hailed from Bolivia, but it wasn’t a problem of not knowing English. His Spanish was halting at best. So he set his body up against the gunwales and smiled his toothless grin at Slater, eyeing his canvas bag much too often. He was growing itchy, figuratively and literally. He kept on grinning stupidly and scratching his face and under his sweat-soaked arms.

The albino meanwhile descended down into the cabin. No lights shown through from any of the staterooms. He assumed that the other crew members were asleep. Though it meant trusting Francis to act on his own without first alerting him to his plan, Conrad decided to seize the opportunity. He intended to eliminate all the opposition below deck in hope that Francis would do the same above.

To avoid the possibility of inadvertent discovery, he stepped inside the head, shut the door, and unzipped his canvas bag. From it he withdrew his AKS with its fresh clip.

Slipping quietly from the head, he approached the door to the master stateroom and cocked his ear to it. There was nothing to be heard. He threw open the door. Darkness greeted him. His rifle was targeted on the shadowy forms of the twin beds. But he refrained from firing for the simple reason that no one was occupying either bed.

He cursed, spun around, keeping the AKS extended. Two more doors remained to be opened, each leading to an aft stateroom.

When he was a child, Conrad had once heard a story about someone confronted with three doors. He didn’t remember much of the story, but he did recall something about there being a treasure behind one of the doors, maybe two of them, but behind the third there were venomous snakes ready to spring. He wasn’t exactly sure what the moral of this story was, but he had a strange feeling that he had become that character faced with the choices. And he couldn’t help wondering which door would bring him luck and which the opposite.

He strained to hear what was going on on deck, but he heard nothing. Francis had not uttered a word to signal his presence.

Conrad knew he would have to act quickly now before the old skipper or his mate came down to see what was taking him so long.

No sense in deliberating as to whether the door on the left or the one on the right was the more auspicious choice. He chose the right.

And for his trouble got only more darkness.

And silence.

One door left, all other options used up.

Francis couldn’t understand the reason for the delay. He feared that Conrad had fallen into a trap. He saw a hand reach out and muffle Conrad’s mouth while a knife swept across his jugular.

“Cigarette?” he asked. He wanted something to do with his hand besides put it to work scratching his fiery skin.

Vincent nodded, reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Salem’s. He gave a cigarette to Francis and lit it for him. This distracted Francis long enough for Slater to seize hold of the canvas bag looped over his shoulder and to pull on it.

Slater, despite his advanced years, was strong enough to throw Francis off balance. In this brief interval Francis couldn’t think of a proper response. Should he act outraged or try to get at his weapon?

“Let’s see what you’ve got in there,” Slater was saying, his voice deceptively soothing.

Vincent stepped within a foot of him, his eyes menacing.

Francis was stupid, that was something he himself would admit, but he was shrewd. He hadn’t gotten this far without learning a few crucial lessons. So he decided to let the two men think they had the advantage.

“Señor wishes to see inside?” He maintained his moronic smile and hoisted the bag from his shoulder, setting it down on the deck. “Please go ahead, look.”

When Vincent bent down to open it, Slater’s eyes followed him. At that precise moment Francis slipped out his Bolo machete, a twenty-three-inch instrument with a steel blade that he kept sheathed inside his jacket.

Slater’s eye caught the glint the blade made in the deck lights and instinctively ducked aside. Vincent turned to face him just as Francis brought the machete down. The blade sliced through the air, striking Vincent across the right shoulder but at such an angle that it slid across the bone rather than hacking into it. Nonetheless, it did succeed in tearing a great gash in Vincent’s skin. Blood welled up instantly and soon covered Vincent’s entire arm. “You fuck!” was Vincent’s assessment of Francis’ personality.

Francis, disturbed that he had managed to inflict such little damage, raised his machete again. Vincent and Slater had both backed off, but there was so little room on deck that they were virtually trapped.

But in the midst of his motion Francis abruptly stopped. The machete sailed out of his hands and thudded to the deck. Slater and Vincent studied him with immense curiosity as he stood there swaying back and forth, his hands busy trying to work the knife out of his back. It had come hurtling into him from the stern of the boat. It was a capable delivery. The knife had sunk in a few inches above his left kidney and almost to the hilt. There wasn’t a great deal of blood yet because the knife was staunching the wound. But to Francis the most important thing in the world right now was to extricate the knife and return then to the business at hand. But it was difficult to get at the knife and all he was doing was enlarging the wound. And each time he tugged at the knife the pain it produced in him was so intense that he felt in danger of losing consciousness.

Now Max sauntered forward, abandoning his hiding place behind one of the bulkheads. He took his time. The pride he took in his marksmanship was evident on his face. He walked up to Francis with the air of someone who expected to engage in polite conversation and very deferentially said, “Let me do that.” He then gently removed Francis’ struggling hands from the bloody knife and pulled it straight out—all in one motion. He wasn’t gentle. Francis gasped in pain and screamed out to his mother and God, both of whom had abandoned him long ago. Max, to shut him up, plunged the knife back into him—but in a different location this time just to add a little variety to the affair.

Francis no longer could summon the energy to scream. Rather he grunted with the onset of this new agony and sunk to his knees, his eyes rolling up in their sockets, showing the whites to the black sky. A stench rose up from him as his sphincter muscle involuntarily loosened. With one final shudder he toppled over, smacking his brow against the deck.

The albino meanwhile had yet to make a move. The AKS was still in his hands, but he felt himself paralyzed. He couldn’t understand it, this had never happened to him before. He wanted to be back on board the Cigarette, playing his guitar.

He could not bring himself to open the door to the one remaining aft stateroom. Instead he opened fire, tearing a series of gaping holes in the door. Then he rushed in, expecting to find a body or two writhing on the floor. This did not turn out to be the case. No one was in this stateroom either.

In his disappointment he failed to notice the two men who emerged from out of the laundry room and utility closet respectively. But the sound of Booth’s footsteps succeeded in alerting him. Booth was just naturally clumsy and loud. Nothing subtle about the man at all. It had been Booth’s intention to slip up behind Conrad and perforate some vital part with the ten-inch combat knife he carried. This was Booth’s nature. He liked to get close to his victims and dispatch them with a blade or hatchet or, failing that, his bare hands which were big, thick, and calloused. But now he had no chance to take Conrad by surprise.

Conrad dropped to his knees and immediately let off a burst from the AKS. But because he’d been taken off guard his aim was wide of the mark. The clean wood paneling that lined the walls of the stateroom, however, received the injuries Conrad had intended for Booth.

Still, Booth reared back as though he had been shot, so great was his surprise. The problem was that he had no protection, nowhere to escape to. Conrad scrambled out of the empty aft stateroom and was all set to deliver a fatal round into Booth when Harry appeared and very calmly fired his Magnum.

Conrad had no time to reflect on this latest source of opposition, being too busy dying. With his fading consciousness he realized that in a single instant he had been hurtled all the way back into the aft stateroom, landing conveniently on one of the freshly made beds. The blood that sprung out of the wound in his back—which had begun in his upper abdomen—oozed into the spread, then soaked through the sheets and saturated the mattress. It would never wash out completely, that was obvious right off.

Like a talisman, the AKS remained fastened in Conrad’s hands, but his grip was feeble and he could not make use of it much as he would have liked to. He thought once more of his guitar, and the image of an old lover to whom he’d addressed so many of his songs flashed into his mind in response. Then it was all gone, all gone. Conrad was not going to play guitar again.

Booth was still on the floor, hadn’t quite consolidated himself to get himself off it yet, still psychologically being somehow prepared to have several rounds pumped into him. He stared up at Harry, more specifically at Harry’s Magnum. It looked especially awesome at this angle. He had surmised that Harry was an agent of Keepnews, but Harry’s possession of the Magnum and the facility with which he had employed it caused Booth to speculate over his mission anew.

Harry knew enough about human nature to realize that far from showing gratitude to him for saving his life, or even acknowledging that he had done so, Booth would hate him more fervently. Booth did not like to be put in such a humiliating position; he was not accustomed to it. And while he would respect Harry and Harry’s powerful gun, he would nurture his hatred and one day, Harry was sure, manifest it in some particularly grim way.

But that was for another day. For now Booth said nothing, merely picked himself up from the floor and followed Harry up the steps to the deck which still stank of blood and feces and death. There Max was arguing with Slater about throwing Francis into the Pacific, an issue which Slater didn’t want to be bothered with at the moment. He kept trying to rush below deck to see what had happened, but Max had grabbed hold of him, strangely unconcerned about Harry’s fate or Booth’s. What was of paramount importance in Max’s mind was to dispose of Francis so that the deck could be cleansed of the godawful smell.

Vincent was paying attention to neither of these men. He was occupying himself in the pilothouse, bandaging the injury Francis’ machete had caused him. When the gunfire sounded below deck he’d turned, crouching in the shadows, keeping an eye on the deck to see what the outcome of the conflict was. With the reappearance of Harry and Booth, he was satisfied he could escape a casual death this night.

But there was still the Cigarette anchored in the distance to deal with. Its allegedly fuelless engines came roaring to life and it turned on a course that would send it crashing into the
Confrontation.
Milano, having failed to receive radio confirmation that the yacht had been successfully captured, lightly assumed the worst. He still had Tennessee with him and the pilot, who was adequate with a gun when he didn’t have to keep at the helm. If Milano had been wise he would have simply gone away. The powerboat was fast, and the
Confrontation
could never have caught up with it even if Slater had attempted to.

But Milano had never lost before, and it was not an idea he could get used to now. Hunkered down, he and Tennessee trained their AKSs on the yacht and opened fire even before they came in range, peppering the water about the
Confrontation
’s hull so that dozens of tiny geysers shot up everywhere.

Slater was desperately trying to lift anchor and guide his vessel out of the way of the advancing Cigarette. He was too involved in this operation to worry about the bullets that were now striking the boat itself, though still too low to do any damage. Occasionally, there’d be a nasty concussive sound that seemed to pierce the eardrums. Slater realized this was from the resistence offered by the bulletproof glass to the rounds impacting against it. Though the glass threatened to crack and in many instances was splintering, it did not give way completely. Which was fortunate for Slater since the pilothouse was partially wrapped in glass. Slater could have ducked down, he could have done this and still had a sufficient view of where he was going, but somehow he never considered it. It seemed right and proper to steer his boat fully erect and as confident as though this were just another normal outing.