The Detonators (39 page)

When I found the right spot, hidden in a rocky crack just above the channel, the two men on board
Cuttlefish
had said to hell with waiting longer and were casting off their lines. I saw them both clamber up the ladder leading from the cockpit to the flying bridge. Some cruising craft have inside steering stations as well; but sportfishermen are mostly equipped only with the topside controls from which the helmsman can watch the angler in the cockpit fighting his fish and maneuver accordingly. I wished I knew where on the bridge Minister’s detonator was located; and if it would trigger the bomb if I hit it with a stray bullet. That Minister would explode it himself in a last defiant gesture, if he saw himself trapped, I had no doubt whatever.

So it was a gamble at best; but the fact was that if he got away he
would
push the button as soon as he was clear, now that he knew things must have gone very wrong on the
Carmen Saiz.
He wouldn’t wait for any signals, and he’d ignore any orders Harrison Paul tried to give him. The operation had got all screwed up at the very last moment; but he’d made the thing, and it was the best thing he’d ever made, and by God he was going to fire it before somebody had a chance to tinker with it. And I hadn’t been sent here to protect the Bahamas from nuclear disaster anyway. I’d been sent here to get a man, and he was moving into range now, very nicely, like a mallard coming to the decoys…

Hunkered behind my rock, waiting, I felt my stupid conscience give another twinge: I’d promised a woman who was dead to let Minister finish his job before I took him. I told myself firmly that was okay, he had finished; and I’d never promised to let him push the button. I checked the MP40. It had a curious safety. Strictly speaking, it had no safety at all; you just hauled the operating handle back a bit and dropped it into a retaining notch, putting the weapon out of action. When you needed it again, you released the handle from the notch and you were back in business. Not exactly a speed rig, but simple and inexpensive. I readied the weapon for firing, with the folding stock extended for greater accuracy, and I waited some more.

Minister was taking it very easy. I had a feeling that he wasn’t comfortable at the controls of the big, vessel, in these close quarters, although he knew the moves. I couldn’t help sympathizing with him a bit: a fellow landlubber. I could see his head and shoulders above the plastic windshield. The chairman of the board was beside him; but as they approached, Harrison Paul rose and made his way to the ladder and started down it, presumably to tidy up the docklines trailing around the deck before one blew or washed overboard and got tangled in the prop. Although he was sheltered by a corner of the deckhouse as he descended, I could probably have reached him through the boat’s structure—those jacketed 9mm bullets have a lot of penetration—but I had nothing against Harrison Paul except that he was a prick, which was not a capital offense. Minister was the one I had to hit, without warning, hard and permanently, before he could activate his firing device.

I watched him start the turn that would take the big sportsfisherman straight out the channel past me. Range, seventy yards.
Come on, make your swing nice and wide now, amigo
… Range sixty. Fifty. Forty-five; and there was no way for him to check the momentum of the twenty-ton fiberglass monster now, and no place for him to take evasive action in that narrow slot without running aground. I rose up fast and lined up the sights and started firing, holding down the trigger and hosing down the bridge until the gun went empty and silent, stinking of scorched oil and burned powder.

Somebody went out of the cockpit in a flat dive: the chairman of the board, abandoning ship. Second clip. Range still closing. I ran it off deliberately, the bullets hammering the flying bridge into splintered wreckage; and blood was now running out through the scuppers and down the sides of-the cabin below. Mission accomplished, I hoped. The big boat, never properly lined up for the channel, ran up onto the rocks within twenty yards of me, with a great, grinding, rumbling noise. And things were happening around me now, men emerging from the sea in glistening frogman suits. Two of them had Harrison Paul in tow. Hauling him ashore, they set him on his feet. He didn’t look as good in wet jeans as somebody else I knew.

I saw Doug Barnett wading out of the water toward me. Well, it was about time he turned up; whose lousy mission was this, anyway? He looked like a goddamn wet black seal with flippers on. For an older man, he indulged in some peculiar sports. Maybe I was jealous because I don’t swim that well.

“Damn you, he was mine!” Doug said.

“Sure. He’s all yours now,” I said.

Belatedly, I realized that even with all my shooting, the doomsday device hadn’t fired. Well, concentrating so hard on my target, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it had.

I watched the two men studying the shiny cylinder resting in its cradle in the hold of the
Carmen Saiz
. They seemed to know their business. They couldn’t really get to work until the rest of their equipment arrived and the island and the surrounding cays had been evacuated, in case they goofed and, quite literally, blew it; but they were getting the feel of the thing.

They’d questioned me at length about Minister and his record and the types of bombs he’d been known to use, and the tricks he liked to employ. I was waiting around in case they thought of anything else to ask me. It wasn’t the most relaxing place in the world to wait, with that thing staring me in the face and the men scrutinizing it warily and checking it cautiously with various oddball instruments—including an ordinary stethoscope, for God’s sake! I kept telling myself that being here was really no more risky than being anywhere else on so-called Elysium Cay, since if detonation should occur for any reason, the whole island and everything on it, including me, would simply cease to exist.

Outside, I knew, the activity was tapering off; but it wasn’t my activity. My job was done. I’d seen Georgina Williston carried away on a stretcher, under a blanket, dead. I’d seen Ricardo Sanderson carried away on a stretcher, under a blanket, alive. I’d been told that the prognosis, in the latter case, was favorable. Ricardo’s papa, Admiral Antonio, the Coast Guard officer in charge of the amphibious assault upon the island—well, in cooperation with a Bahamian counterpart—had been grateful to me but more grateful, rightly, to the girl who’d stayed with his son and cared for him when it wasn’t easy. I hadn’t seen Homer Allwyn carried away, or his two dead henchmen, and it didn’t bother me a bit. I’d had no good-byes to say there.

“Matt.”

The voice behind me was quite soft; nobody was speaking loudly in here. I guess we were all afraid of startling the gadget into premature activity. Considering that guns had been fired on this ship and men had died, and a woman, it was a little ridiculous, particularly for Molly Brennerman, who’d been here through it all. She sensed what I was thinking and smiled ruefully.

“I guess my voice isn’t likely to set it off, but it’s kind of like being quiet in church, isn’t it? A church dedicated to the Devil instead of to God? And that’s the crummy altar!” Molly shrugged a bit awkwardly. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

I looked at her for a moment. Somebody’d given her a big blue coast guard windbreaker to cover her grimy prison costume; and I knew she’d be well taken care of in other respects, and not only because she was Coast Guard herself, widowed in the line of duty. She was a brave and competent and attractive girl, and it would be a long time before I forgot our little love charade; but the odd thing was how we had nothing for each other in spite of it. I could see that she felt exactly as I did. I was a nice enough older guy and a handy fellow to have around if you needed some shooting done, but in spite of the charged situation we’d shared, no spark of any kind had passed between us. Now the time for guns was past, and it was only left for her to say good-bye politely and forget the whole ugly incident, as far as it could be forgotten.

She held out her hand. I took it; and suddenly she was blushing fiercely. “Gee, that was some crazy act we put on! Good-bye, Matt. Take care.”

“You, too.”

I watched her depart hastily, fleeing her own embarrassing memories. The older of the two defusing experts, whatever they called themselves, was beckoning to me. I went over there.

“What can I help you with?” I asked.

He had the stethoscope around his neck, doctor fashion. “The bastard’s ticking,” he said. “Very faintly; but there’s a timing device running in there somewhere. He must have rigged a simple clock backup in case he wasn’t around to fire it by remote control. How long would you say we had?”

I glanced at my watch. “About twenty-four hours. He wanted to have the fun of setting off his toy himself, so he’d leave it as late as possible in case the signal from Nassau was merely delayed for some reason; but if somebody interfered with him, or his remote failed, he’d want the thing to go off while the conference delegates were still in session, before they adjourned for the day. That’s just a guess, of course.”

“Your guesses are all we have, mister. Okay, thanks.”

“A suggestion.”

“Give.”

“There are electronic timers around that don’t tick, aren’t there? If he put something in there you can hear, it could mean he wanted you to hear it and go for it, maybe overlooking some other nasty surprises he’d fixed for you. He was a very tricky fellow.”

The man was smiling faintly. “The thought had occurred to us.”

“Sure. Nothing like telling an expert how to do his job.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. We’re happy for all the help we can get. Well, if we’ve got until tomorrow, we’ll do it by the numbers and not rush it. Now you’d better get the hell out of here.”

I said, “If I’m wrong about the time, sue me.”

He grinned. “You can count on it,” he said.

I went outside. A helicopter was just lifting off, making the usual horrible racket. I watched it make its crabwise way toward Nassau, disappearing in the distance. I remembered an ancient book on airplanes I’d once come across, written back when just getting off the ground with a pair of wings and a prop was a real feat, in which it had been proved conclusively that helicopters couldn’t fly, it was aerodynamically impossible. Well, whoever wrote it had had a point. It still looked impossible. People in uniform were still milling around, but there were fewer of them than there had been. I made my way through them, as another helicopter settled into the place the first one had left vacant. A real military evacuation. I felt the wind of the rotor before it stopped. I went past and down to the dock, where the sailboat still lay, looking lonely and neglected.

“You and me both, girlie,” I said.

They’d found somewhere, and returned to me, my confiscated belongings, including my keys. I stepped aboard and unlocked the hatch and went below, thankful that Gina Williston had been a very tidy lady and hadn’t left any personal items behind. I opened the forward hatch to let a draft blow the stale air out of the cabin. I turned on the main switch for the batteries, found the right Bahamas chart, and spread it on the chart table, turning on the light since it was a dark little corner of the cabin. I determined at last exactly where we were and how I’d have to sail, or motor, to get out of there…

“Ahoy. Permission to come aboard?” It was Doug Barnett’s voice.

“Permission granted,” I said. “Come on down and have a drink.”

By the time he’d descended the ladder backward, the way you do on a boat, and turned around, I had the plastic tumblers ready. I put one into his hand. We faced each other in silence for a moment.

I asked, “How’s Amy, besides mad at me?”

“She’s all right. In fact, she…” He checked what he had been about to say. After a moment, he said instead, “I don’t suppose you could have saved him for me.”

“I figured you were probably somewhere around, but I didn’t know where,” I said. “It seemed best to take him while the taking was good.”

“Anyway, it got done,” Doug said, dismissing his vengeance and Alfred Minister, who was now defunct. Considering that it been his goal for several years, I respected him for this; but he had another bone to pick with me. “I had a chance to stop in Coral Gables a few days back. Marsha… Mrs. Osterman showed me her jewel box. A certain opal ring. A certain capsule. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Matt?”

“She asked for it and I gave it to her,” I said. “She’s an adult; she has a right to make her own decisions. If she’d asked you, would you have refused?”

He hesitated. “No, I suppose not. But why you?”

“Because I’m not a doctor, who wouldn’t have given it to her. And I’m not you, whom she happens to love. She didn’t want you to have it on your conscience. She couldn’t care less about mine, as she made very clear to me. A fine and courageous lady. And now that she’s got it, it’s your job to make sure she has enough to live for that she doesn’t use it, isn’t it? Now that you’ve finished your stint as the Relentless Avenger.”

He glared at me for a moment. Then, surprisingly, he grinned. “How does it feel to run other peoples’ lives for them, hotshot? Maybe you ought to give a little thought to your own affairs.” He raised his glass to me, then drained it. “There’s somebody topside who wants to see you. I haven’t done much in the papa department in the past, and it’s a little soon for her to forget my lack of faith in her, although I’m hoping; but you’d better be good to her or I’ll have your hide.”

I said, “You and what other six superannuated crocks?”

He chuckled, then stopped smiling. “Since you’re so free with advice to the lovelorn, I’ll pass some out, too. I’ve done some checking and got an opinion from one of our medical experts. The girl’s got problems; but her biggest problem is that she doesn’t like herself much. She wants to punish herself, and be punished, for being such an awful person, right? Well, I’ve kind of forfeited the right to build up her confidence in herself, but maybe you… Oh, Christ, I feel like a pimp, turning my own daughter over to a lousy old lecher like you! But I’ll be grateful as hell… Why do we always seem to get the ones with the broken wings?”