Lone Wolf #2: Bay Prowler (13 page)

Anthony had had no intention of going to the ship himself but at the last moment he decided that he had better. The orders came from nowhere but inside; within his territory Anthony was as supreme as Nicholas Severo had mistakenly thought himself to be. Anthony supervised, delivered orders, sat behind glass and sheet metal as his orders were carried out. The field was fifteen years behind him.

But for this one he decided that he had better show.

It was just too risky, that was all there was to it. There was too much at stake, too much had been invested in the shipment, and beyond that there was this lunatic Wulff wandering around. The man was incredibly dangerous and he was capable of anything. It was one thing to meet the executive committee and deliver the word to them, then leave the room taking it as a
fait accompli.
Most men of his rank would have left the job at that level.

But Anthony, not so very long ago that he could not remember, had been in the field. He had worked his way up from a field operative and he had known what it was like, at least in the old days, when things weren’t as stratified as they were now. He felt that it was his obligation to be on the scene and at least supervise the job.

Then too, if something happened, which it could not possibly (could it?), there were people that he had to answer to. It was always a hierarchy, everything in rungs, little fish, big fish—and even at his position, Anthony could look up to another level and see, dimly inferred beyond, another level yet.

The captain’s room in the ship had been hastily if clumsily fitted out as some kind of executive quarters. There was a bottle of good scotch on a crude night table, a scatter-rug thrown on the floor; dust, moulding, the stink of sea had been ineptly scrubbed out. Anthony sat in a lounging chair by the desk, drinking a very small glass of scotch, straight, and looked at the oriental named Lee who had just come in.

“Everything is all right, sir,” Lee said deferentially. “The other parties have appeared.”

“Is the transfer being made?”

Lee looked at him calmly. “There is a question of completing arrangements.”

“Arrangements were completed on paper weeks ago,” Anthony said tightly. “Get that stuff moving!”

“Ah yes,” Lee said, “but it is not quite that simple. My men must be paid off, their own efforts must be compensated, we have our own expenses—”

“You want cash in advance?” Anthony said. “That was not in the arrangement.”

“I do not know with whom you made these arrangements, sir,” Lee said. “I can only speak for myself, and my policy has always been—”

“Son of a bitch,” Anthony said and then caught himself. This was no time for lapses of control. “All right,” he said, “have it taken care of.”

Lee remained implacable. “It is not that simple,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I have discussed this with some of your assistants and they appear unbelieving. I want fifty thousand dollars in cash,” Lee said.

Anthony held the scotch in his hand, looked at the man impassively. It had been a long time since anything had fractured his public facade; this Chinese son of a bitch was not going to do it. But the temptation was strong to throw the drink into his face and begin cursing.

“Fifty thousand is crazy,” he said.

“Overhead,” the oriental said blandly.

“Fifty thousand dollars worth of overhead?”

“We sailed this ship from the port of Spain to the Gulf of Mexico and then north. With certain stops on the way and attendant risks.”

“That was never provided for,” Anthony said.

“I believe,” Lee said smoothly, “that there is nothing in writing. It was understood that a fair price would be charged for fair services. The price is fifty thousand dollars.”

“We don’t have that kind of cash on hand,” Anthony said. He would have the son of a bitch killed. All right: he had not wanted it to be this way but he was offered no choice. He would have to do it. The bastard deserved it. That was the trouble with turning yourself over to what in effect were individual sub-licensees. It occurred to him that it was about time that an old idea of his were adopted: complete control of all facets of the operation, from the harvesting straight through to the supply. It was coming.

It was definitely going in that direction. But unless matters were somehow hastened along, they would be held up time and again by people like Lee.

“I am sure we can wait while you get the cash,” Lee said.

“You know we can’t. This has got to go off on schedule.”

“We would like it to go off on schedule too. Unfortunately my crew must be paid.”

“You could have warned us about this,” Anthony said bitterly. “You could have let us know—”

“We took it for granted,” Lee said. He stood there impassively. Finally he seemed to bow. “I am sure that you will work out something,” he said. “In the meantime, we will merely wait.”

“We can’t wait.”

“Do you see any choice?”

“Yes,” Anthony said, ponderously. “Yes, I see a choice.” He was trembling with rage. Really, he could feel the rage pulsating within him, rattling away like a man pounding into a woman.
The rage had made a woman of him.
He had the gun in his hand before he even quite realized what he was doing.

He showed it to the oriental. “Complete the delivery,” he said.

Lee looked at the gun unblinking. “That has no effect upon me,” he said.

“It doesn’t?”

“We have a different attitude toward death than you Americans do. We consider life to be a continuum of which death is merely another part. Believe me, I would welcome death.”

Anthony held the gun steady. “I mean it,” he said, “complete the delivery.”

Lee did not move. But there was a hint of expression in his eyes. “Besides,” he said, “it would not be worth your while to kill me. It would destroy all of your carefully-wrought plans.”

Anthony picked up the glass of scotch, looked at the glisten, downed the remaining inch. He had not shot a man for many, many years. It had been a long time since he had not been able to use intermediaries. But the feeling, he decided, came back. Like sex or playing the violin, once you got it, you never lost the sensation.

He shot Lee in the hand. The gun had a good silencer; the noise was no greater than that of a dropped cigarette butt.

Blood sprang from the oriental’s fist. It was the same color, Anthony noted absently, as his own. Underneath, they were all the same. Bags of blood. Lee held his hand and began to shake.

Anthony held the gun steady. “I don’t have to kill you,” he said. “I just can take you apart piece by little piece.”

He levelled the gun again and very carefully shot the man in the right kneecap. Lee tumbled as if the room had been turned upside-down. He lay on the floor then, kicking like an infant in his cradle. There was just a faint ooze of blood appearing under the pants leg.

“You see what I mean?” Anthony said.

The oriental was in agony. His eyes rolled. He seemed to dwindle on the floor. Underneath the yellow, his face was ash.

“You’re killing me,” he said.

“No,” said Anthony, “I’m not going to kill you. The wound is very slow bleeding and you’ll find that you’re able to crawl or even limp when you try to stand up. I’m just going to take you apart.”

Lee gasped. He gagged and choked, a thin spew of saliva turning into vomit, dribbling from a corner of his mouth and into the rug. “I misjudged you,” he said.

“That was your mistake. Nobody should misjudge me. Get out there and get the transfer arranged.”

“I can’t move.”

“Yes you can. You can crawl and you can limp. The hand may keep you from holding a gun for a couple of years but you don’t need a gun anyway. Get on out there.”

Lee braced himself against the floor, managed a crouch. His face convulsed and then smoothed as if he were exerting will from within. “I congratulate you,” he said.

“Not necessary.”

“You are far more ruthless and determined than I would have thought.”

“Necessary.”

“Also you are more farsighted.” Lee grunted with pain. Sweat that Anthony had never expected to see came out on his forehead. “You have hurt me very badly,” he said.

“Not as badly as you think.”

“I cannot move. You go out and tell them that our arrangements have been—ah—completed.”

“No,” Anthony said. “I’m not walking into anything. You’re going to go out there. Right now.”

“I can’t move.”

“Try. Grit your teeth.”

The oriental reeled from the crouch to a standing position moaning and clutching his knee. Blood began to pool more rapidly at the spot where Anthony had seen it. The hand wound, however, was closed.

“See,” he said, “it’s not as bad as you thought, is it? You can move, Lee.”

The door opened convulsively and the bearded man who had been on the deck with Lee came in, looking only momentarily at Anthony. “There’s trouble down at the wharf,” he said to Lee. “There’s shooting—” and then he noticed what had happened. Understanding seemed to move into him in what were small stages. Anthony could see the surprise slowly, almost imperceptibly turn into comprehension and rage. The bearded man might be a slow thinker but he seemed to feel things deeply.

“You shot him,” he said to Anthony.

Anthony held the gun in front of him so that the bearded man could see it. There must be no misunderstandings. “A disagreement,” he said quietly.

“You son of a bitch, you shot him!”

“Stop it,” Lee said to the man. “Stop it Harry. It is not necessary—”

“You’re crazy,” the man named Harry said, “this is our boat. You can’t do something like this.”

Anthony let him see the gun. The gun always stopped them, that was one of the basic things you could count on anyway. A gun would always take it out of them—even the angriest. “I said there was a disagreement,” he said.

“Don’t give me that, you smooth-talking son of a bitch!”

“Lee,” Anthony said, “I want you to go on and do exactly what you planned to. Go up there and get things moving.”

The oriental braced against a wall, little jabs of pain making his face move. “All right,” he said, coming off the wall, then, “I’ll try.”

“Don’t move, Lee,” Harry said. “Don’t listen to this bastard.”

“This is quite pointless, Harry. He has the gun and he is prepared to shoot me again. We miscalculated.”

“Yes you did,” Anthony said. He looked at the bearded man again. His face was beginning to discolor, suffuse. “But the miscalculation need not be fatal.”

“I’m going to kill you, you bastard,” the bearded man said flatly.

Anthony held the gun on him. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “This is pointless.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” the bearded man said. Step by step, slowly, he advanced on Anthony. “There’s shooting down at the wharf,” he repeated. “I don’t give a shit if we lose the deal or not.”

Anthony backed into the wall, the gun in front of him. “Don’t make me shoot you,” he said.

“You couldn’t kill me with three of those,” the bearded man said. He kept on coming.

Anthony felt the gun imperceptibly shaking in his hand. What was going on here? They always stopped when they saw the gun. Didn’t they? The bearded man, however, was not stopping. Inexorably he came on.

“I want you to hurt, you treacherous bastard,” he said. “Three months at sea for this. I want you to hurt. I’m going to hurt you bad.”

The oriental, fascinated, slid into a corner watching this. Anthony felt the gun now beginning to waver out of control in his grasp. There was no more than six feet between them now, the man named Harry closing ground more steadily all the time. His march had given him assurance. His face broke open into a mad, wet smile. “I want you to be scared, you cocksucker,” he said.

Anthony shot him.

The shot hit Harry in the lower belly. Little slivers of blood scattered in the room. Anthony waited for the man to go down. Stomach wound, deep in the plexus.

He didn’t go down.

His eyes, momentarily blank, reassumed purpose. He closed the gap by a stride, reached outward.

“I don’t care,” Harry said with what seemed to be a giggle, “I told you, you can’t kill me.”

Anthony shot him in the neck. Harry gasped, his hand went to his windpipe, his face turned green. He staggered and then took another step forward. Unable to talk, all of the purpose was in his eyes. He lunged toward Anthony.

Anthony’s control broke. He screamed, threw the gun and, running, slammed into the wall. Harry pinned him there.

He could feel the blood from the man raining down upon him and then the terrific pressure of Harry’s hands digging, digging in. And behind that, mad laughter from Lee.

Wulff had to work with almost no time margin. One instant the men were running toward him shouting, guns ready, the next he had the first grenade out and, pulling the pin, tossed it. God help him if it were a dud.

It was not a dud. The men and the ground in front of him vanished simultaneously. The impact sent him reeling, brought him to the ground. Instinctively he headed, rolling, for the cover afforded by the Continental. The big junker shook; he could feel heat coming off the frame.

But the balance held. He came up quickly, smelling the odor of explosion, mingling with the sharp penetrating odor of the sea which the grenade seemed to have lifted. The two men who had charged were ugly wet little heaps in front of him. They lay in a glaze of weaponry.

There was shouting on the dock. Men had appeared, what seemed to be hundreds of them shouting, jostling. Some of them were already heading toward him and others, brighter or with better reflexes were holding ground, trying to stop the charging men, or running in the opposite direction. In the opposite direction, however, lay only the sea.

There were men behind him too. Up to streetside there was a crowd charging him, screaming.
Cover the rear first,
he reminded himself through old infantry training.
What you can see comes behind what you can’t. Protect yourself from the invisible.

He had another grenade ready. He threw it toward the street, toward downtown. Little crackling sparks came off the grenade in flight, giving it a halo of death. It looked beautiful in an abstracted way.

It hit before it exploded and Conlan thought that this one had to be a dud but then it went off and everything vanished.

He was more prepared for the impact this time. He dived to the opposite side of the Continental, balling himself up, waiting out the waves and closing his eyes against the white, dreadful fire. It did not seem to last so long this time, or maybe he was becoming accustomed. How quickly you became accustomed to death. The junkies knew all about this. Waiting out the lashes of impact for only a few seconds, he came to his feet again, grabbed blindly for the machine gun which he had left on the front seat at ready. He found it, brought it to port arms, checked for the clip and the extra grenades wound around his waist and then he charged the ship.

He moved through haze, darkness, the rays of the sun splitting the landscape into little revolving spokes through he alternately saw and did not see what confronted him. The grenade had set off waves, and the ship rolled in the water, bobbing unevenly, moving from starboard to port in that motion which indicated that she was in some distress. A junker, just like the Continental. A quarter of a million dollars worth of pure Asian gold, Severo had babbled, and they took it in the hold of a ship which was falling apart. Wulff slipped and stumbled on the terrain, getting nearer the ship.

Corpses, or at least men who were on their way to being corpses, lay around him. Some of them worked feebly at his ankles as he went past them, not so much to hurt as to make some kind of contact, to retain him. They were looking for help. When you came right down to it, up the line of death it seemed that all differences were cancelled. They should have thought of that a while ago. At the ship itself there were screams, a rush of bodies. They were trying to get organized to gun him down it appeared, but the shock of the explosion had unmanned them.

“There he is!” someone shouted, and he heard gunfire, felt a substance like pebbles whisk by him. Close. That was close. He had the machine gun at ready and fired a short burst, crouching, sweeping the area, cleansing it. The gunfire stopped. Someone screamed from a high place, a yearning, lost scream, and a body plummeted in front of him. An expressionless man wearing a uniform. He might have been the captain.

Wulff put a clip into the man and went on.

The situation had collapsed. His perception was one of continuity absolutely fractured, the sequential nature of time being suspended by the assault. The landscape had broken open into slivers and shards of air, dirt, water, ship, pelting human forms. Someone less disoriented than most took a shot at him and this one Wulff felt as a direct hit into the bulletproof vest that he had taken out of the store. It worked. Everything so far worked. The owner sold good merchandise. He would have to give him a recommendation if he ever got out of this alive, but then again he better not. Word would get around further and the enemy would arm up with this excellent merchandise. The ship wavered in front of him.

He got onto the dock and moved in. No one stopped him. Behind, he had an impression of flight. The security forces, no matter how competent, only worked for money; money was not enough when opposed by absolute dedication. Wulff was dedicated. A man appeared at the end of a corridor holding a gun, unaware of Wulff. Wulff hit and killed the man before he knew what had happened. He went on in. He wanted the junk. He knew that he had the ship at his mercy. In fact, he had never doubted that he could sink it. Two more grenades lobbed casually from his protected position behind the Continental would have taken care of the ship and given him a clear escape route. But he didn’t want it. Not simply an escape. It could not all end here. He was going to go on.

He stormed down the corridors, vaulted the stairs. He did not know excactly where he was heading yet, but he was operating on a profound set of instincts which he trusted. Little fires leapt out at him. Someone had torched the ship, either panicking or as a deliberate attempt to sink it with the evidence.
Dog in the manger,
Wolff thought. The fire was an added complication. He doubted if a hulk like this could hold out for more than fifteen minutes before water started to ooze through the bulkheads.

All right. Fifteen minutes was better than five. This thing had sailed six to ten thousand miles on its horrid business; perhaps it would hold out a little longer. There was a room with an open door at the end of the corridor in which he found himself. From the room came little evil strobes of light, drawing him in.

He headed that way. The room was an abcess which, like the magic caverns of fairy tales, might open up to all knowledge, a new life. He plunged down the corridor and into the room, holding the machine gun, taking charge of the terrain with his old combat training. It was all the same. Hue, Hamburger Hill, San Francisco Bay. That was what they had done. They had brought the war home to everyone. It all applied.

A Chinese lay in the corner of this room, holding his hand, legs crumped under him. His eyes were shocked and desolate. He was sprouting blood. Probably he had tried to move but had been unable to. Wulff did not even consider the man further or check out the room before he shot him. He put the Chinese out of his misery with three fast bolts in the head.

He turned fast, saw the two others. A bearded man and a thin businessman type dressed in what might have been elegant clothing before the bearded man had gotten to him. Now the clothing was torn open, scratches and deeper wounds were on his exposed arms and legs. He lay on the floor, the bearded man over him. His eyes searched the light, then turned to Wulff, hopelessly. He moaned. His internal organs appeared to have been ruptured.

The bearded man was dead. He had been bleeding from two huge wounds front and center, throat and stomach. Nevertheless, his dead weight pinned the man underneath him with the insistence of life. His hands were poised like talons on the thin man’s wrists. The thin man was too weak to break the grasp.

Vultures. But unlike vultures, because in the absence of carrion they would eat their own. Vultures would never do this; they would rather starve. Nice, affectionate birds, vultures, performed a valuable scavenging function, they had been bum-rapped for years and years. Vultures had things like these on the floor beat all to hell. Wulff violently kicked the bearded corpse off the thin man and, oblivious of what further damage he might do, yanked the thin man by the collar to his feet.

The thin man screamed a despairing, soulless cry. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, trickled onto Wulff’s hand. Wulff held the collar. “Where is it?” he said, “where is the shit?”

The elegant man appeared to be trying to talk but he was not able. His mouth strained without sound, then he slumped against Wulff’s hand. With his free hand, dangling the machine gun, Wulff hit him. The man convulsed, opened his mouth. Grey fluid poured out.

“Where is it?” Wulff said. He was willing to do this indefinitely. Instinctively he knew that this man now dying in his grasp was probably the highest placed he had found yet. You either knew these things or you didn’t. He knew. This one outranked Severo. He hit the man again, almost lovingly. Let him suffer. Let him be beaten to death this way. Wulff half-hoped that he never got any information at all. He could take satisfaction this way.

If nothing else, the man’s pain centers seemed to be working. Agony of the most inexpressible sort flowed in and out of his features. He opened his mouth again; this time blood mixed with the greyish spittle. His eyes bulged.

“Ah,” he said, “ah God—”

That was distinct enough. If the son of a bitch could talk that well he could certainly think. Wulff hit him again, lightly this time. There was a science to it. Too hard a blow would only shut the man out of pain. But little taps, even caresses, were exquisitely agonizing. “You never thought of God,” he said, “what did God ever mean to you?
Your God is death.
Where is the shit?”

The man hung in his grasp, swinging like a sheet. His arms fluttered. The central nervous system was gutted out, almost gone. Probably all of the internal hemorrhaging. Still, the pain held out. He extended a thumb and worked it into an eyeball. Felt the jelly. It strained his finger.

“Here,” the man said, when Wulff released him. His voice had gone beyond pain and come out the other way. Now he seemed to be making an effort to speak in a controlled way as his only exit from agony. “It’s right here,” he said. He wept. He clung to Wulff. “Kill me,” he said.

“Where? Where is it? Tell me and maybe I’ll kill you.”

“Room,” the man said, “under—under the desk. Brought it with me. Treachery—”

Wulff flung him into the wall and charged toward the desk. The man hit with a wet sound, oozed down shrieking again. In and out of pain. Under the desk Wulff saw a heavy valise jammed at off-angles to the wall. He tugged on it, wedged it out, fumbled with the clips. He stripped down the clips and hoisting the valise onto the desk felt himself pausing again with that strange reluctance.

The man on the floor appeared to be in the last extremity of pain. He reached a hand toward Wulff. “Please,” he said, again in that curiously distinct voice. Precision, control. He must have been something to deal with when he was alive. “Please kill me.”

“In time,” Wulff said.

Pausing no more he opened the valise and looked into that abcess.

And saw the pure, fine bricks piled upon one another as carefully, as immaculately as if they were ingots.

Half a million dollars worth of junk.

He could see it in that moment, could see the junk watered, cut, ameliorated, combined, passed out then through the fine tendrils of supply, passing into warehouses, furnished rooms, small perilous holds on streetcorners, cut and cut yet again by the dealers, passing through water and solids, ending up in hypodermics or clear, white powder. He could see it stroked, inhaled, shot, pumped, ingested and taken into all of the flapping nerves which extended from those points and then it would come out, pure gold again, always gold, extending its measure of death.

He had never seen anything like this in his life. A big cache on the narcotics squad might have been fifty thousand dollars gross. But the narks were small-timers, of course, everybody understood that. Big hauls, meaningful scores would never get to them. Narks would pick up only the droppings. It had all been prearranged.

At length, he could take it no more. He closed the valise and sealed the clips. He put his weight on top of it and pressed it into the desk. Then he turned once again to the man on the floor.

“Where next?” he said.

The man said nothing. He had fainted. No mercy for the fallen. Wulff walked over and kicked him in the ribs. The man’s body gave under the pressure like a bag of water.

He revived, looked up at Wulff. Everything inside had been mashed, smashed, broken. Give him credit then. The spirit held on, imperishable yet in the framework of the man.

“Where next?” he said again.

The man’s eyelids fluttered. There was comprehension in the eyes but little more. The dead oriental kicked a foot in a curiously animate way. Flexus. Wulff turned and put another bullet into the head, just to be sure. Blood came out of the corpse like a geyser.

He went to the door, looked out, listened. In the distance he heard rumblings, screams, the pounding of feet but nothing at the rim of the corridor. Everyone was getting out. He was alone in the room with two dead men and one who would have been a better corpse. Little seams of water bulged out at the bottom of the walls and spread thickly, like blood, along the floor. The ship was listing. Already it had probably taken enough water into the holds to send it under. Time was limited—unless, of course, he wanted to stay here. He would have the valise to take down with him, though. That would be some comfort.

He went over to the fallen man and said yet again, very calmly, “Where next?” Speak to the dying and the agonizing very slowly, use simple words, repeat those words constantly. That was the only way to get through to them. You learned a few things lurking around hospital wards. Wulff had been there.

The man shook his head. “Kill me,” he said distinctly.

Wulff showed him the gun. “I’ll think about it,” he said, “but first you tell me where the stuff goes next.”

The man said nothing. It could have been agony or a last, desperate attempt to hold out. “That’s a bad idea,” Wulff said.

He shot the man in the forearm.

The man buckled on the floor. His eyes, far away from all of this looked up at Wulff, empty, detached. “I’ll tell you anything,” he said, “if you’ll just kill me.”