Tropical Depression (31 page)

“Stay with them,” he was told. “Move this boat over to the
Battle
.”

“The
Battle
?” So that was the name of Doyle’s other sailboat. “Wouldn’t the
Retreat
be more like it?” He ignored me.

“How about the
White Flight
?” I asked him.

“Into the boat,” he said, waving the gun towards the inflatable.

I shrugged. Whatever Doyle had in mind for me, it would give me a better chance than getting cut in half with a burst from an assault rifle. I got in the boat.

The trip back to the
Battle
was quick. The man with the assault rifle kept it pointed at me. He didn’t even blink. I sat between him and the guy at the motor and looked for openings. There weren’t any. I couldn’t even think of any really cutting remarks.

Doyle stood on the deck watching us. He wore that same patient, understanding smile. As we got closer I thought there might be a little bit of strain to the smile, but that could have been wishful thinking.

“Billy,” he said as our inflatable bumped up against the side of the sailboat. There was real happiness in the voice. That didn’t make me feel great. “Come aboard.”

“Thanks,” I said, as if I had a choice. Doyle put one foot on the boarding ladder, reached a hand down and grabbed me by the belt and lifted me aboard, making it look very easy.

When I was on board Doyle leaned over and spoke to the leader of the two in the inflatable. “Where are Otto and Frank?” I guessed he meant Bill and Bob.

The leader shook his head. “They were wired to the seat. I left Carl with them. He’ll bring the skiff over.”

Doyle nodded. “Well done.” He said it to me, too, as if he was pleased that I’d overcome two of his men. And he spread an arm towards the companionway and said, “Come below, Billy.”

I stepped down the stairs and into the cabin. It was tall enough to stand in, with room to spare. Doyle had spent a lot of money on the best gear. The navigation station was state of the art, with every imaginable boat-show toy, and a few I didn’t even recognize. The cabin was made of half a teak forest, lightly upholstered.

“Well, Billy,” Doyle said, coming down the steps to join me. “You put quite a kink in our organization.”

I sat on one of the benches. “That’s good to know.”

He nodded. “Quite a kink. So I hope you’ll appreciate what I have to do.”

“You mean kill me? No, I don’t think I can really appreciate that.”

He sat opposite me and lowered his voice. His eyes locked onto mine, and again I couldn’t look away. I was holding my breath to hear what he said. I felt like I was about to be let in on big things. It was like talking to the coach, the principal, and the minister all rolled into one.

“That’s just a detail,” he said.

“Not to me.”

“I’m only doing what I have to do as a leader of the movement. It’s expected of me to set an example, take revenge. So I have to.”

“Was Hector McAuley revenge, too?”

He smiled politely. “No, that was showing off. When there’s an obstacle to our goals, I sometimes remove it myself. I like to set an example for my men.” He leaned forward confidentially. “And I have to tell you, Billy. It was fun. We come alive in danger, have you noticed? At least I always have. It’s a way to measure myself, to try to find my limits.

“I got tremendous
personal
satisfaction from hunting him like that. The area on fire around me, all of them would have killed me in a heartbeat if they’d seen me. His death was necessary,” and he sat back again, looking very content, “but by God, I enjoyed it.”

“And when Roscoe got on to you, you cut his head off.”

The cheerful grin broadened. “Using a straight razor like that—you knew it was a straight razor?”

“I knew.”

He chuckled. “And they say our movement has no sense of humor.”

“How did you get Roscoe to meet you in that alley?”

He shook his head, amazed and amused. “Incredible, isn’t it? A black cop with no street smarts at all. Moss called him and said he wanted to turn state’s evidence. But he was afraid for his life and needed to meet where I would never see them together.” Doyle chuckled. “He swallowed it. Can you believe that?”

“Hilarious. I hope it’s just as funny when you kill me.”

He shook his head. “No, Billy, killing you won’t be fun.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I owe it to my men, to our organization. You forced my hand. But I don’t want to kill a good, strong, righteous white man like you, Billy. You’re doing what you think is right, and that’s a rare quality today.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But I can’t always do what I want to do. The needs of our organization come first.”

“Nice to know I’m advancing a cause,” I said.

“If I thought I could convert you, I would, Billy.”

“I don’t think so.”

He leaned closer. “You say that automatically, and that’s to be expected. You are a product of our times, and our times have prohibited all of us from thinking independently.”

He smiled. It was dazzling. “I don’t come at this cause from ignorance, Billy. My convictions are a result of years of study, thought, and observation. I was like you once.”

“Hard to believe.”

“But true. We all start as liberals, because liberalism is a picture of the world as we want to believe it is.” He shook his head. “But it isn’t, Billy. You know that. It isn’t that way at all.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “The world is not the way we want to believe it. Look at what happened to you.”

He gazed at me, a look filled with compassion and strength. “I read your personnel file, Billy. I know what happened to your family.”

He looked. I had nothing to say.

“Would white men have done that, Billy? Good, honest, God-fearing white men? I don’t think so.”

“Good, honest, God-fearing black men wouldn’t either,” I said, struggling to break his spell.

“Of course not,” Doyle said. “And there are many of them, I’m not denying that. Because the white social order is powerful, and it has converted some, brought some up out of darkness. But the unreachable, the ungovernable, the ones who don’t just live at the bottom but drag the rest of us down—there are a lot more of them.

“And they are winning! Against all odds, the weak minority is overcoming the powerful majority, Billy! Something like that doesn’t just
happen
, Billy! It’s
made
to happen!”

“Sure,” I said. “The international Zionist conspiracy.”

“That’s only part of it,” he assured me. “The fact of the matter is, the rest of us
make
it happen. Through intellectual and moral laziness. The greatest sin is the failure to act rightly, and we as a society have committed that sin. We could stop this headlong slide into the gutter, and we don’t. Because we are unwilling or unable to look at the problem and call it by name.

“It’s a
race
problem, Billy. If you look at this historically, dispassionately, you will notice all our problems started with integration. It was at that precise moment in time when our decline as a society began. Is that a coincidence? Or is it simply the crystallization of the final struggle, the battle lines drawn? If you could
see
it without prejudice, you would see that final struggle for what it is—order and decency and all we represent as a white culture, against the anarchy and ignorance of the black culture.”

He was just getting started. I could tell by the way his eyes were focusing on something in the distance instead of me. So I stopped him.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I think you better just kill me.”

His eyes refocused on me. There was no anger there, no hate, just a friendly regret.

“I want to make sure you understand your choice,” he said with one eyebrow raised.

“I understand. If I won’t
sieg heil
with you, you’re going to drown me in crocodile tears.”

There was a faint glint in his eyes. Something was funny. “There’s more to it than that,” he said. “I told you I’m only killing you for effect. So I have to get mileage out of it, the most bang for my buck.” His eyes twinkled. “Learned that in the budget fights at LAPD.” He leaned forward, the happiest guy in the world. “What I’m saying is, it’s going to be a little bit of a spectacle, Billy. Not pretty, not pleasant. But effective. We videotape it, show it to the troops. An example of what happens to our enemies.” He winked. “Public relations. Part of every administrator’s workload.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. That didn’t seem to matter too much. I’d tuned out when his eyes had gotten distant and his face started to flush slightly from sincerity of his ideas.

Doyle was a true believer. He
knew
he was right, so he was sure he could find a way to convince me.

But I was more interested in finding a way out. As he talked I had looked around, hoping desperately for something, anything, besides what I knew was there: three heavily armed, well-trained men guarding the only exit, and between me and the exit a guy with apparently superhuman speed and strength who had already beaten me senseless once.

I didn’t see anything helpful. But unless he shot me right now, I thought it had to get better—especially since he was planning to turn my death into some kind of pageant to boost morale.

“Okay, Billy,” Doyle was saying. “I had to try. You’re a warrior, and I need warriors.” He shook his head with a friendly smile. “Besides, it’s a shame that this has to happen to you twice.”

Before I could figure that one out Doyle stood and took me by the arm. His fingers felt like what Captain Spaulding’s grip would have been if the captain had been
really
strong.

“I could have forgiven a lot for a soldier like you,” he said, dragging me towards the door of the forward cabin. “Even your moment of weakness with that black slut.” He unlocked the door and frog-marched me in. “It’s just too bad.”

Someone was lying on the bunk inside the cabin. And as Doyle’s words sank in and a cold knot rose up in my throat she looked up. “Billy?” she said.

It was Nancy.

“Just too bad,” said Doyle happily.

For a moment I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. I could only think,
Not again.

I turned on Doyle as fast as a human being can turn. He was wearing that same friendly grin. I got one good shot into that happy face, a hard right hand with everything I had behind it.

Doyle took a half-step backwards from the force of the punch. I had the satisfaction of seeing his lip split open. Then he clubbed me with a right hand so fast I barely saw it.

I started to fall towards the bunk, but I never got there.

I was pretty sure I’d been here before. The throbbing darkness was the same, and the cool hand on my forehead. The voice that was speaking my name softly had been there the last time, too.

“Billy,” it said with a warm rum-and-honey tone. “Billy.” The hand moved gently across my forehead. “Wake up now, Billy.”

I floated up towards the voice—and towards a whole collection of pounding pains.

One of the oddest was the back of my head. It was throbbing, but I could feel that throb in my nose, as if the two places were connected.

My hands were pounding too. They felt like somebody had stuck them in large and awkward mittens.

“Come on, Billy,” urged the voice. I swam up; I liked the voice, even though it was up there where everything hurt.

I got an eye open at last. My head was in Nancy Hoffman’s lap. It seemed like a good place to be. I was just starting to enjoy it a little when she shook me out of it.

“You’ve got to get up, Billy. I think this is our only chance.”

I thought it was good that we had a chance, but that
only
part bothered me. It was so hard to put it all together. “What…?”

She slapped my face. It stung. That didn’t seem right. I shook my head and a few cobwebs fell away. “Why are you here?” I managed.

“I came out of work and they were waiting for me. Just threw me in a car. I think they used chloroform. I woke up once in a small airplane, and then I was on this boat. Doyle thinks he can get back at you and my brother at the same time by killing me.”

“The spectacle,” I said. Nancy looked at me like she was going to slap me again. “Something Doyle said. He’s going to make a circus out of killing us. Show the tape to the brotherhood as a lesson.”

She bit her lip. “That doesn’t sound like very much fun. I think we better get you on your feet fast. How are your hands?”

I looked at them. They really were too big, puffed up out of shape. I flexed them a little. They worked, but not perfectly.

“They were wired together. I got the wire off, but it may be a while before you get full use back. Can you stand?”

I tried. I managed to sit on the edge of the bunk. The room was heaving violently and I shook my head again to clear it.

But then I realized the room really was pitching. The boat, in what should have been a calm anchorage, was rolling frantically.

I looked at Nancy. “A storm came up,” she said. “I heard them talking. They were planning to take us out into the Gulf Stream and drop us over after they kill us.”

“That would do it,” I said.

“But this storm moved in. The tail end of that hurricane, what is it?”

“Hurricane Andrew,” I said. “It’s supposed to miss us.”

“Well, it’s blowing pretty bad here, so they’re staying in the lagoon overnight. They’ve all gone in the dinghy to set an extra anchor.”

I sat up straight. “All of them?” It didn’t seem possible.

“The two in your boat are dead.” That would be Bob and Bill, or whatever their names were. “Doyle killed them and left them in your boat. He wants it to look like there was a fight and all of you died.”

That would make sense. When they found my battered boat, it would look better if my charter was on board. Nobody would connect it to Doyle. Still, the brutality of it shook me.

“But there’s only one guarding us,” Nancy went on. “The rest of them are in the little boat doing the anchor.”

I thought about it, which was still a little harder than usual with my head throbbing. But she was right. “It’s not going to get any better.”