Last Out From Roaring Water Bay (52 page)

Puzzled faces surrounded me.

“Now would be a good time; a screwdriver or something.”

There was hesitancy from everybody. Morgan and Hamer were around me now, using shayna as a shield in case I was bluffing and was about to try something drastic. They realized I wasn’t and Hamer collared the guard who was carrying a tool utility belt around his waist, obviously the same set of tools that had broken into the church.

Hamer handed me a long bladed screwdriver. I placed the tip down the hole and pushed. Still nothing happened. I twisted the screwdriver thinking there might be a slot to turn the stud. Still nothing moved. I’d only one other option; the brutal way.

“Pass me a hammer,” I cried out. One was put in my hand followed by a crescendo of automatic weapons having their firing pins engaged in readiness for my hammer attack. I looked at the pathetic fools, shook my head in disbelief and turned to the job in hand. I hit the top of the screwdriver with the hammer.

The first blow did nothing.

I struck again; thought I heard a noise; a scraping sound and then up popped a section of stone floor, approximately three feet square, and at a slight angle leaving a gap wide enough to get my fingers under. I slid the screwdriver between the gaps, as a precautionary measure, just in case it snapped shut again, and heaved the stone up so it stood on its end. The section of floor had been supported by an iron frame and was on a spring hinge. I stared down into a black hole.

Bodies slowly converged around me apprehensively, as if they were expecting some ghoulish fiend to suddenly spring out and scare the shit out of them. I took the initiative and popped my head down into the dark hole. I expected the smell of dampness but was surprised to smell what I thought was the smell of a bitumen.

“Someone pass me a torch?” I asked, excitedly when I shouldn’t have been.

A torch was quickly put into the palm of my hand, and my eyes followed the beam of light as it hit a dusty cobwebbed wooden stairway.

Morgan said, “Do the honours Speed and get down there.”

“How considerate you are,” I said with hesitancy. “I mean anything could be lurking in the darkness waiting for an unsuspecting victim like me.”

“Stop whimpering, Speed, you’re expendable!”

“Thanks, you ungrateful bastard,” I said, and for my insolence, a guard shoved the nozzle of his machine pistol into the back of my head to encourage me down the stairway.

My first step was a tentative one, a feeler, half expecting the steps to be rotten and to collapse under my weight. I was wrong. Each step was solid, not even a suspect creak. I confidently went down into a deep cellar.

At the bottom, as I reached out to steady myself, I unwittingly disturbed a settling of thick dust which clouded the atmosphere, causing me to cough and splutter.

I received no sympathy whatsoever.

“Not dying on us, are you, Speed?” Hamer shouted down.

“Why don’t you get your frigging fat hairy arse down here to find out?”

The rest of the entourage followed. Heavy clunking as boots clamoured down, torch beams bouncing off the walls. Some scared idiot let out a screech when my torch beam illuminated the two skeletal frames sparsely covered with the remnants of large deteriorating overcoats commonly worn in the forties. Each skull had a hole in the middle of the forehead.

“Friends of yours, Speed?” Hamer asked derisively.

“German spies actually” I said. “Let me introduce Harrington and Lodge, collaborators with IRA sym pathizers and murdered by Jimmy McCracken so he could mastermind the greatest hijack in all seafaring history. To be fair, you could argue that McCracken was solely responsible for preventing the Germans from continuing the war when he looted the I-52. Not that he will be receiving thanks for his contribution.”

“Do I look as if I care a fucking toss for history lessons?” Hamer jabbed me in the back. “Get moving!”

“You should do,” I said as I moved on. “Or else you wouldn’t find yourself down this hole shuffling up to my backside.”

Again Hamer jabbed me forward.

I moved the torch beam around in various directions and since nobody had bothered to clean up for sixty years it wasn’t surprising we had to run the gauntlet of the inevitable dusty cobwebs and listen to the varied splutters from unsuspecting recipients as they walked into one.

Someone let out a loud whistle of surprise when they came across shelves upon shelves of assorted armaments. I estimated there was enough to supply a rampaging army and I had no doubts that this was the IRA rebuilding for the renewed conflicts with British troops that would occur after the war, as history proved. Now they were useless relics, defunct for use, scrap value and not worth me attempting to slip one of the smaller weapons into my pocket for protection.

“Welcome to McCracken’s treasure trove,” I said to anybody who was listening.

Hamer definitely didn’t hear me. He’d scampered off around the cellar like a man possessed, pulling off tarpaulins and creating more expanding dust clouds. I stood back until he exhausted himself.

At least Morgan heard me, as he flicked the defunct weapons with the nozzle of his handgun. “It’s a pile of shit that belongs in a museum, Speed. The gold seems to be missing or is it just in your imagination?”

“I found McCracken’s bank. It’s your treasure hunt, not mine.”

Morgan ordered a guard to keep a watchful eye on me and Shayna before moving on to direct the searchers. Inside three minutes of frantic disruption someone shouted.

“There’s a padlocked wooden door over here!”

There was a mad rush towards the beckoning voice, including me, though mine was an involuntary momentum as I got swept up with the euphoria. I was shoved along by the guards who were obviously scared of missing the occasion. It included me. I’d come this far and I felt I at least deserved to smell and see the success if not feel the prize.

I watched in anticipation as a hefty brute of a man began sledging the large rusty padlock that secured the door. Even though he had bulging muscles it took him a lot of effort but the padlock finally gave with a crack.

It took three men to physically prise open the seized foot thick oak door, it’s creaking and groaning iron hinges refusing to give up its secrets. When the door was sufficiently wide enough, Hamer barged his way to the front and shone a torch into the blackness.

“The rooms full of wooden boxes!” Hamer blurted, and then hurried a guard to go inside to retrieve one for inspection.

Moments later the guard re-emerged carrying an oblong box with Japanese symbols stamped on the top and sides. By the way he carried and placed the wooden box to the floor, it appeared heavy.

Hamer took hold of a steel crowbar and smashed the box apart. Torch beams illuminated the contents, the colour of gold reflecting back off the collection of ingots and into our faces. I think we were all mesmerized by what we saw. The ingots matched the one I’d found in the cavern under Dun an Oir. It meant my job was done, but it wasn’t over. I now feared for my life. I feared for Shayna’s life too, and I wondered what Morgan had planned for us.

Without a shadow of doubt we were at the mercy of a cool customer in Morgan. Hamer was the opposite; a hothead, controlled by Morgan pulling on his restraints. The combination of the two obviously worked in the gunrunning business, notably under the cover of The Ministry. They were clever tactics by clever people. And afterwards, they simply sweep the enemy under the carpet like dust. I could see it in Morgan’s eyes that he was in the cleaning mood again and we were next on his list of chores. Morgan wasn’t going to let us go freely, not unless we were in a coffin and quite dead. We were witnesses to the crimes he had committed. He would never trust us to keep our mouths shut no matter how much hush money he offered.

Hamer stooped down and scooped a handful of gold and let the ingots drop back into the box. Speechless men listened to the metallic tinkling as the ingots piled. Wide eyes gloated on the wealth before them. Neither mine, nor Shayna’s gloated because we were on the same wavelength and understood that this was probably the moment when our lives were at terrible risk. The look we gave each other told the same story. We obviously had the same intentions to run the moment the opportunity arrived.

“Right, men,” Morgan bellowed. “Get the rest of the boxes. I want an inventory of the amount collected. Anyone found filling their pockets before the count will have their hands chopped off. The quicker you work the quicker we get back to the ship.” To me, he said: “Medical supplies, Speed, doesn’t seem to be available, perhaps your information was invalid?”

I expressed my surprise. “There’s nothing at all there with those boxes? Maybe the supplies are stored back there on the shelving. I’ll go and have a look.”

Morgan shook his head disbelievingly. “Why do I get these notions running around inside my head that you’re a liar?”

“I was right about the gold.”

“That’s true, Speed. Please correct me if I’m perhaps being a little over ambitious with my assumption, only I haven’t seen anything that even resembles a medical box on those shelves.”

I shrugged. “I can’t always be right!”

It was the narrowing of Morgan’s left eye that alerted me. It was that defining moment when I knew Shayna and I had no more than two minutes to live. The mere flick of his head to one of the guards indicated to me that Morgan had decided that this cellar was going to be our burial chamber. I never gave Morgan the chance to give the final order to his man. With lightening reactions I twisted, grabbed the guard and threw him into everybody else close enough to cause a human pile up. I grabbed Shayna by the arm and dragged her to the stairway and bolted up the steps, my shins catching two of the steps on the occasions I stumbled on the way up. Instantly a crescendo of bullets followed our stride in perfectly formed lines either side, splintering parts of the stairs, us as we clamoured to the top.

Over the gunfire I heard Morgan scream out to his men. “Stop shooting you idiots! There are unstable high explosives all around us. Do you want to blow us to smithereens? Get after them!”

I didn’t hang about. I pulled Shayna out of the hole and we ran for the exit. A guard emerged from outside, raising his machine pistol. I was onto him before he had the chance to cause me damage and I bundled him to the floor with a good shoulder charge. We were out into the open now, running for our lives. We ran as fast as we could, down the hill towards the quay, trying to keep our feet because the terrain was uneven and rough. We weren’t moving fast enough for my liking. We were an open target now and the bullets peppering our route had only missed us by good fortunate or the shooters were terrible marksmen.

I was breathing hard both with panic and exhaustion, and more disconcerting, Shayna was slowing me down. She might be a dynamist in the sexual energy department but she couldn’t run. My strength alone dragged her along before she dramatically fell down as if tackled by a fifteen stone rugby player which only served to knock me off balance when her knees hit the ground. She’d stubbed her toe on a rock that was protruding from the ground, I learned later. I jerked her back on to her feet. Checked who was doing the chasing, and again we were running with the intention of jumping into the motor launch we’d arrived on and getting out of there fast. That idea soon diminished.

When we approached the jetty we had to dodge another volley of sub machinegun fire coming from the motor launch, forcing us to veer left and leg it along the pebbled beach.

I kept a watchful eye over my shoulder to see who was in pursuit. Hamer was surprisingly amongst the forerunners, the fat bastard huffing and puffing as he gave chase. He was keener than the rest to stop me in my tracks. And though I didn’t observe it, I imagined the determination in his face, he wanted me so badly. Luckily his accuracy was thankfully hindered by his running momentum as the bullets he fired whistled past.

We were getting nowhere fast. Shayna seemed to have lost the will to run. Her legs were tiring rapidly as she struggled to keep her feet on the stony beach. Overall we were too easy of a target. We were too open and it didn’t require the accuracy of a marksman to spray us with a machine pistol. I frantically searched for cover, selecting the safety of two large rocks where we cowered behind to catch our breath; where I could review our predicament in quick time, what was left of it.

I sucked in huge breaths as I thought hard, peeping between the rocks to check on our pursuers. Hamer had obviously seen our place of refuge because he was hand signalling for one the pursuing goons with him to sweep around in one direction while he went the other. The situation made my mind up for me. It was pointless to run any more because the bullet in the back would be the outcome. I had no immediate plan swirling in my head other than I certainly wasn’t going to die in any cowardly fashion. If I could take Hamer or the goon down with my bare hands then at least I’d have gone down fighting.

I kept checking the progress of the two men to assess which one of them was gaining ground on us the quickest. The goon was winning or Hamer was being extremely cautious or frigging clever. I would have preferred Hamer but beggars can’t be choosy. I waited, thinking through my options. If I could disarm the goon quickly enough, I might have the time to have a crack at Hamer; maybe get one clear shot before he got me. I climbed the rock in anticipation that the goon would assume I was flat to the floor in hiding.

I held my breath waiting for the right moment. Waited for the shadow of the goon’s head to inch its way round the rock and then I struck. He was definitely surprised when I pounced and the first thing I grabbed was the machine pistol he held, knocking the weapon downwards, bullets firing into the ground as we grappled for supremacy. We fell to the ground, still grappling and rolling and twisting and kicking. Then the machine pistol went off again and we both stopped struggling.

I never felt a thing.

The goon’s eyes slowly widened with shock, his body stiffening. I became aware of a sticky substance running into my fingers where my hand had the weapon clamped. Eyeball to eyeball I stared at the goon, the stench of his breath making me recoil slightly. He became heavier and finally flopped down on top of me. I threw him off quickly while trying desperately to wrench the machine pistol from the dead man’s grip. The time it had taken me to climb to my feet and aim the gun at Hamer, was seconds too late. Hamer shot me as I twisted round.