The Threateners (29 page)

I interrupted: “What’s an MPS?”

The black girl, Lenore, said, “Dr. Weems is a professor of marine biology and probably the world’s greatest expert on the manatee, which he has studied all his life. Knowing that she’d supported a number of similar movements, both privately and as a director of the Earth Government Group, he went to Patricia for help. Between them they organized a branch of EGG called the Manatee Preservation Society—”

I’m afraid I was very rude. I couldn’t help it. I don’t hold with ridiculing people’s religions or beliefs, but it just burst out of me: I interrupted her with a hoot of vulgar laughter.

I shouted, “My God, Belinda, did you hear that? We’re going to die so they can finance a home for a bunch of lousy sea cows!”

The cot was pretty crowded with two of us on it. The fact that we had our wrists taped in front of us made things awkward, preventing me from assuming any of the positions I normally would have when sharing a bed with a girl, even with the purest intentions. So we wound up lying on our backs, squeezed together precariously side by side, staring at the ceiling. At least it was precarious on my side; Belinda had the wall to hold her in place. After a little she giggled softly.

I said. “Share it. Don’t keep it to yourself.”

“It would be interesting to see if we could, all tied up like this, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, my God!” I said. “Here we are, bound hand and foot with death staring us in the face, and the dame can’t think of anything but sex!” After a little I said, “Don’t wiggle, damn it. You’ll shove me off on the floor. . . . What the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve got pretty strong nails; I thought maybe I could peel some of that tape off your wrists. . . .”

“That wasn’t a wrist you were groping, baby. And I told you, just relax and let me call the shots, please.”

“Well, excuse me all to pieces!”

I didn’t want her angry, so I explained: “As Palomino pointed out, there’s an awful lot of mean jungle out there. Just because we can get loose from this tape, maybe, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea right now. Let’s stick it out for a while and see how the situation develops. Stick it, tape, that’s a pun, get it?”

“Ha-ha. Just so it doesn’t develop a bullet in the head,” she said tartly. She lay beside me in silence for a little; at last she asked, “Just what the hell
is
a manatee?”

"Well, it’s smaller than a whale and mostly it’s bigger than a seal, although I guess some sea lions and walruses will go that large. A thousand pounds or so, full-grown. It’s a placid, blimplike beastie, with a couple of flippers and a tail, that kind of paddles around in coastal waters—I think the range runs from Florida to Texas—and eats grass. A very peaceful animal, I understand. I’ve heard of attacks by walruses and whales, but never by sea cows. No aggression and not much sense of self-preservation. In particular, it has no sense at all about motorboats. Manatees are forever getting themselves killed by propellers along the Intracoastal Waterway and other channels; in fact I’ve been told that you rarely see a manatee without a prop scar or two. It seems to be just about the biggest cause of manatee mortality; which I suppose is why these folks are plugging for manatee preserves that are off limits to powerboats, at least, if not to all boats and people. They have a point. I’d hate to see the big ugly gentle things die off, myself. The catch is, I’d hate worse to see me die off. And Ruth Steiner. And you.”

“I was waiting,” she said. “I thought you’d get around to me sooner or later, but I wasn’t quite sure.” Belinda was silent for a little; when she spoke again, it was on a different subject: “These people, the ones in the other room, they’re kind of crazy, aren’t they?”

“Who isn’t?” I said. “Your boss is killing people, or trying to have them killed, for a little white powder; these people are killing people, or having them killed, for a big black mammal. Well, folks get pretty hysterical about saving the whales and the elephants, why not the sea cows? It’s the old crusader syndrome. It used to be just souls that had to be saved for Christ with a sharp sword or a hot auto-da-fe, but nowadays everybody’s saving everybody and everything—human, animal, vegetable, or mineral. It’s a fine idealistic impulse, no doubt, but apparently some of these world saviors are getting fanatic enough to sacrifice human lives for their pet salvation projects, which seems like overdoing it. But that’s enough amateur philosophy. Let’s shut up and get some sleep.”

In the business, you learn how to do it, or you don’t last long; an insomniac agent can turn into a dead agent very fast. I was tired enough that I had no trouble drifting off, and if I had any dreams, they’re none of your damned business; but suddenly I was teetering on the edge of a precipice and somebody was trying to push me off into the bottomless void. . . .

“Take it easy! Don’t tear it, damn you!”

Clawing for a handhold, I’d managed to grasp a flimsy bush growing on top of the cliff, that turned out to be Belinda’s blouse.

She said irritably, “God, you were
really
asleep! I didn’t think you lethal guys ever slept.”

“How many lethal guys have you known?” I asked, releasing her and trying for a little more of the cot. She wasn’t leaving me much. I noted that the light in our room was fading. Somebody’d opened the connecting door, presumably to look in on us, and left it ajar. Artificial light from the other room spilled through the crack, along with a murmur of conversation and some other sounds that I identified, tentatively, as the clatter of eating implements against plastic dishes. The slanting beam of light only made our room seem darker, too dark to read my fancy digital watch since I couldn’t reach the pushbutton that illuminated the numbers. When Belinda didn’t answer my question, I asked, “What made you decide to kick me out of bed?"

She said, "I just nudged you a little to wake you up. Maybe we’re going to get fed. At least I think somebody brought in some food, but they don’t seem to think much of it. Listen.”

I heard the black girl’s voice: “Damn it, I know a goat when I eat one! Don’t tell me mutton, no sheep was ever this tough.”

Dr. Weems spoke judiciously: “The flavor is . . . very interesting.”

“Somebody’d better take some to the prisoners.” That was Patricia Weatherford. “We can’t let them starve.”

“Why the hell not?” Lenore asked callously. “I’ll bet pretty soon Vasquez will send word to have them shot, anyway. Like Palomino said, they’re no use to him.”

“Well, let them die with full tummies,” said the voice of the blond boy, Charles. “And I don’t see why we have to keep talking about it. I know the project is terribly important and we have no other way of financing it, but this is still a dirty business and we don’t have to talk about it.”

There was a brief silence; then the Weatherford’s voice asked, “Where are you going, Lenore?”

“Somebody said to feed the animals.”

The door swung wide, spilling more light into our rapidly darkening room. The black girl entered cautiously, a lean, faceless silhouette with a gun; then she saw us on the cot, revealed by the light from behind her, and relaxed a little. She found a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and pulled the chain.

“My, don’t you two look cozy on that little cot. You can sit up now.” She laughed, watching us as we helped each other struggle upright, and said, “What’s the matter, Blondie, scared? Don’t worry, we’re not going to shoot you . . . yet. Right now, all we’re going to do is feed you, not that you need it. With that figure, you could live on your own lard for a month. No wonder your old man couldn’t get it up, it must have been like fucking a rubber balloon. . . .”

Patricia Weatherford, coming in behind her, said, “That’s enough, Lenore. Just cover me while I cut them loose enough so they can eat.”

I’d managed to dig my fingers into Belinda’s thigh, to keep her from responding angrily to the insults. The freckled girl did the job with a small, pearl-handled penknife, freeing both our wrists and our ankles. Dr. Weems came in with a steaming bowl in each hand. The blond boy, revolver ready, was playing backup at the door, but it was still an amateurish performance and I didn’t think we were going to have much trouble when the time came. The big problem would be recognizing it when it did come. As for the stew, well, it was food and I’d tasted worse, but not very often. Afterward, they let us use the bathroom; then they taped us up again and left us with the light on and the door open. After a little Belinda drew a long, angry breath.

“She’s mine! When we go out of here, the black bitch is mine!” When I didn’t respond to this, she said, “Tell me, just why don’t you want the Weatherford dame killed, aside from those cute freckles?”

I didn’t like talking about it, even though it seemed unlikely that this pseudo-jungle hut was wired for sound. I don’t really believe in psychic emanations, but somehow things you talk about seem to occur to other people more often than things you don’t. However, Id leaned on the girl pretty hard and I had to give her something in return.

I said, “I got a quickie version of her background. Miss Weatherford can fly. She’s got an amateur pilot’s license of some kind.”

Belinda said, “License or no license, I don’t think I want to be aboard when a Sunday bird girl tries to get a plane off that sawed-off airstrip. It looks bad enough with a real pilot at the controls; I thought Ricardo was going to wind up in the trees, both coming in and going out of here.”

I said, "Say we get loose and overpower the manatee boys and girls. The way they handle firearms, it shouldn’t be too difficult. We make sure that no matter what we do to the others, including Lady Lenore, the Weatherford survives. We tie her up, take the guns we’ve liberated, and dispose of Captain O’Connor and his security force. If we did die first part of the job quietly enough so that we have the advantage of surprise, we may even manage that. Let’s just hope the workmen don’t have arms enough, or interest enough, to interfere. We try to time the whole thing for when we know a plane is coming in; then we let it land and get control of it somehow.”

Belinda swallowed. “Wow, you rattle it all off as if you thought it would be easy!”

“Not easy, but possible,” I said. “People have these oddball notions about other people. They may be totally ruthless, themselves, but they never quite believe that anybody else is. They expect a little hesitation, a little menacing chitchat, at least, before the hammers fall and the guns go off. Particularly from a pretty woman. If you walk out there, even with a cocked Smith and Wesson in each hand, Hernando O’Connor and his four male Latin chauvinists will be quite sure they can sweet-talk you into letting them get close enough to disarm you. You should be able to get a couple of them, at least, while they’re telling you how you should put down your guns, beautiful lady, because you are obviously made for loving, not shooting, and you couldn’t possibly mean to hurt such handsome and virile gentlemen. . . . Meanwhile, of course, I’ll be sneaking up behind them to deal with the ones you leave alive. That’s one way we might work it; there are others. We’ll have to see how it breaks. But the plane will be the hard part.”

She grimaced. “Harder than dealing with the four MPS loonies and the five security guards: nine armed people?”

I said, “Forcing a pilot to fly you somewhere is very tricky, in fact practically impossible. Once in the air, he has your life in his hands. No matter how menacingly you wave your gun at him, he knows you can’t afford to shoot him, not unless you’re capable of handling a plane yourself, which I’m not—or unless you have another pilot in reserve, which is where Miss Weatherford comes in. Like you say, getting off that strip is probably beyond her aeronautical capabilities, although, athletic as she is, she may be better than we think; but once we’re airborne, her presence will help me keep Ricardo, or whoever, in line. He’ll know that if he gets too tricky, I can shoot him and figure on her bringing us down somehow, if only as a matter of self-preservation. . . . Well, let’s wait and see how it goes.”

Belinda said wryly, “I hope we don’t have to wait too long. Being wrapped up in duct tape and eating goat isn’t my idea of a tropical vacation.”

Actually, we were there a full week. It rained off and on and the roof leaked; otherwise nothing much happened of interest, except that I was moved to the other cot to keep us from working on each other’s bonds or whispering in each other’s ears. On the evening of the sixth day Lenore came marching in to us with her gun at mealtime, as usual; but there was malicious triumph in her attitude today.

“Better make the most of dinner, Blondie,” she said. “Our lady führer just got the word from Captain O’Connor. It came over the radio. Seems like that old fart, Vasquez, has finally made up his mind, and we go out of here in the morning as soon as it’s light enough for the plane to land. We go. The captain has other orders about you; and I don’t think you’ll be eating breakfast, honey, so like I said, you better savor every mouthful of this meal. Lousy though it is, it’s probably your last.”

We went through the usual routine of eating and peeing and were taped up again—the silver stuff was getting pretty low on the roll, I noted, but if the black girl was correct, it didn’t have to last much longer. It had been nice of her to let me know it was time to go to work. After they’d left us, I lay considering what I had to work with: a trick belt buckle and a little knife in each shoe and a silk handkerchief. Strangely, Palomino had taken my Swiss army knife but left me the gaudy bandanna; apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that this could serve the same purpose as his lethal black scarf. The fact that he’d missed the other hardware wasn’t surprising. It was designed to be missed, and he was presumably trained for strangling, not searching. One knife would have been enough; however, our armorer had explained that it had seemed advisable to have the shoes show up in the X-ray machines with identical-looking steel shanks. Actually, I don’t think he expected anybody to compare my shoes so carefully; he just likes to have things tidy and symmetrical.

I made my plans and waited for things to settle down. They had a kind of watch system; one would stay awake for two hours and then arouse his, or her, relief. Each one was supposed to take a good look at us upon assuming the duty. Tonight the first shift belonged to Patricia Weatherford. She took a step into our cell, saw that we were where we were supposed to be, and started to turn away; then she changed her mind and came over to my cot and stood looking down at me for some time.