Seawitch (19 page)

Within ten minutes the helicopter was on its way back to the mainland. Five minutes after that, the Georgia's own helicopter had returned and ail the helipad lights were switched off.

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Chapter 8

JlT was due only to cruel ill luck and the extremely jittery state of Durand's nerves that John Roomer and Melinda Worth found themselves the first patients in Dr. Greenshaw's sick bay.

Durand was in a highly apprehensive state of mind, a mood that transferred itself all too easily to his four subordinates. Although he held control of the Seawitch, he knew that his hold was a tenuous one: he had not bargained on finding Palermo and his cutthroats on board, and even though he held the master keys to both the occidental and oriental quarters in his pocket— the drilling crew was in the former quarters,

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Palermo and his men in the latter—he was acutely aware that there were far too many windows in both quarters and he didn't have the men to cover every possible exit. He had broadcast a message over the external loud-speaker that anyone found on the platform would be shot on sight and had two men on constant patrol round the oriental quarters—he had no fear of the unarmed drilling-rig crew—and another two constantly patrolling the platform. He had no fear of Lord Worth, his seismologists and the girls—as sources of danger he held them in contempt. Besides, they were unarmed. Even so, the two men patrolling the platform had been instructed to do so in such a fashion as to make sure that at least one had an eye on the doors to the suite of Lord Worth, the laboratory and the sick bay, all three of which had intercommunicating doors.

No one inside those three places had heard the warning broadcast—and this, ironically, because Lord Worth was not above indulging in what he regarded as the bare minimum of basic creature comforts. Oil rigs can be uncommonly noisy places, and those quarters he had heavily insulated.

Mitchell had been in his tiny cubicle of the laboratory at the time, reading the complete plan of the layout of the Seawitch over and over until he was certain that he could have found his way around the rig blindfolded. This had taken him

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about twenty minutes. It was in the fifth minute of his studying that the shots had been fired, but again, because of the soundproofing, the sound had not reached him. He had just put the plans away in a drawer when his door opened and Marina entered. She was white-faced and shaking and her face was streaked with tears. He put his arms round her and she grabbed him tightly.

"Why weren't you there?" she sobbed. "Why weren't you there? You could have stopped them. You could have saved them!"

Mitchell took no time out to dwell upon the injustices of life. He said gently: "Stopped what? Saved who?"

"Melinda and John. They've been terribly hurt."

"How?"

"Shot."

"Shot? I didn't hear anything."

"Of course you didn't. This area is all soundproofed. That's why Melinda and John didn't hear the broadcast warning."

"Broadcast warning? Tell it to me slowly."

So she told him as slowly and coherently as she could. There had been such a warning but it had gone unheard in Lord Worth's suite. The rain had stopped, at least temporarily, and when Mitchell had retired to study the plans, Melinda and Roomer had elected to go for a stroll. They had been wandering around the foot of the drill-

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irtg rig, where most of the lights had been turned off since Durand had ordered the abandonment of drilling, and it was there that they had been gunned down without warning.

"Terribly hurt, you said. How bad?"

'Tm not sure. Dr. Greenshaw is operating in the sick bay. I'm not a coward, you know that, but there was so much blood that I didn't want to look."

Arrived in the sick bay, Mitchell could hardly blame her. Melinda and Roomer lay in adjacent cots and both were saturated with blood. Melinda already had her left shoulder heavily bandaged. Roomer had bandages swathing his neck and Dr. Greenshaw was working on his chest.

Lord Worth, his face a mask of bitter fury, was sitting in a chair. Durand, his face a mask of nothingness, was standing by the doorway. Mitchell looked speculatively at both, then spoke to Dr. Greenshaw. "What can you tell so far, Doctor?"

"Would you listen to him?" Roomer's voice was a hoarse whisper and his face creased with near-agony. "Never think of asking us how we feel."

"In a minute. Doctor?"

"Melinda's left shoulder is bad, Tve extracted the bullet but she needs immediate surgery. I'm a surgeon, but I'm not an orthopedic surgeon, and that's what she must have. Roomer hasn't been quite so lucky. He got hit twice. The

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one through the neck missed his carotid artery by a whisker, but the bullet passed straight through and there's no worry there. The chest wound is serious. Not fatal but very serious. The bullet struck the left lung, no doubt about that, but the internal bleeding isn't that much, so I think it's a nick, no more. The trouble is, I think the bullet is lodged against the spine."

"Can he wiggle his toes?"

Roomer moaned. "My God, what sympathy."

"He can. But the bullet should be removed as soon as possible. I could do it but I have no X-ray equipment here. I'll give them both blood transfusions in a moment."

"Shouldn't they be flown to a hospital as soon as possible?"

"Of course."

Mitchell looked at Durand. "Well?"

"No."

"But it wasn't their fault They didn't hear the warning.'*

"Tough. There's no way I'll fly them ashore. Think I want a battalion of U. S. Marines out here in a few hours?"

"If they die it'll be your fault."

"Everybody's got to die sometime." Durand left, slamming the door behind him.

"Dear, dear." Roomer tried to shake his head, then winced at the pain in his neck. "He shouldn't have said that."

Mitchell turned to Lord Worth. "You can be

Seawitch

of great help, sir. Your suite is in direct contact with the radio room; can you hear what is being said in the radio room?"

"That's no problem. Two switches and I can hear both sides of any conversation, either on the telephone, earphones or wall receivers."

"All right—go, and don't stop listening for a second.'* He looked at the two patients on the cots. "We'll have them airborne for the hospital within a half hour."

"How can that be possible?"

"I don't know." Mitchell sounded vague. "But we'll think of something."

Lord Worth left. Mitchell pulled out a slender pencil flashlight and started to flick it on and off in apparent aimlessness. His complexion had gone pale and the hands that held the pencil light trembled slightly. Marina looked at him first uncomprehendingly, then in dismay, finally in something approaching contempt. Incredulously, she said: "You're frightened."

"Your gun?" Mitchell said to Roomer.

"When they went off for help I managed to drag myself a bit nearer the edge. I unclipped the belt and threw the whole thing over the side."

"Good. We're still in the clear." He seemed to become aware of the tremor in his hands, put away his flash and thrust his hands into his pockets. He said to Melinda: "Who shot you?"

"A pair of very unpleasant characters named

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Kowenski  and Rindler.  We had trouble with them before."

"Kowenski and Rindler," Mitchell repeated. He left the sick bay.

Marina said, half in sadness, hah* in bitterness: "My idol with the feet of clay."

Roomer said huskily: "Put out the light and then put out the light."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say it. Man named Othello. That's the trouble with you millionaires* daughters. Illiterate. First Mitchell puts out the lights. He's got cat's eyes. He can see in almost total darkness where an ordinary man is blind. Did you know that?"

"No."

"Gives him a tremendous advantage. And then he puts out other lights."

"I know what you mean and I don't believe you. I saw him shaking."

"Ahh ... you don't deserve him."

She stared at him hi disbelief. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." Roomer sounded tired and the doctor was looking at him in disapproval. He went on in a somber voice: "Kowenski and Rindler are dead men. They have just minutes to live. He loves Melinda almost as much as he does you, and I've been his closest friend and partner since we were kids. Mitchell looks after

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his own." He smiled faintly. "I'm afraid he takes care of things in a sort of final way."

"But he was shaking . . ." Her voice was now lacking in conviction.

"He isn't afraid of anything that lives. As for the shaking—he's a throwback to the old Scandinavian berserkers: he's just trying to hold in his rage. He usually smiles." He smiled. "You're shaking now."

She said nothing.

Roomer said: "There's a cupboard in the vestibule. If there's anything in it, bring it to me."

She looked at him uncertainly, left and returned in a few minutes, carrying a pair of shoes. She held them at arm's length and from the look of horror on her face might have been holding a cobra.

Roomer said: "Mitchell's?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Better return them. He'll be needing them pretty soon."

When she came back, Melinda said to her: **Do you really think you could marry a man who kills people?"

Marina shivered and said nothing. Roomer said sardonically: "Better than marrying a coward, I'd say."

In the generator room, Mitchell found what he wanted right away—a circuit breaker marked "Deck Lights." He pulled the lever and stepped

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out onto the now darkened platform. He waited a. half minute until his eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness, then moved in the direction of the derrick crane where he could hear two men cursing in far from muted voices. He approached on soundless stockinged feet until he was less than two yards away. Still soundlessly, he held his pencil flash on top of the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and slid forward the flash switch.

The two men swung round in remarkably swift unison, hands reaching for their guns.

Mitchell said: "You know what this is, don't you?"

They knew. The deep-bluish sheen of a silencer-equipped .38 is not readily mistakable for a popgun. Their hands stopped reaching for their guns. It was, to say the least, rather unnerving to see an illuminated silenced gun and nothing but blackness beyond it.

"Clasp your hands behind your necks, turn round and start walking."

They walked until they could walk no more, for the good reason that they had reached the end of the platform. Beyond that lay nothing but the 200-foot drop to the Gulf of Mexico.

Mitchell said: "Keep your hands clasped and turn round."

They did so. "You're Kowenski and Rindler?"

There was no reply.

"You're the two who gunned down Melinda and Mr. Roomer?"

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Again there was no reply. Vocal cords can become paralyzed when the mind is possessed of the irrevocable certainty that one is but one step, one second, removed from eternity. Mitchell squeezed the trigger twice and was walking away before the dead men had hit the waters of the Gulf. He had taken only four steps when a flashlight beam struck him in the face.

"Well, well, if it isn't smart-ass Mitchell, the scared scientist." Mitchell couldn't see the man— and the gun undoubtedly behind the flashlight— but he had no difficulty in recognizing the voice of Heifer, the one with the sharp nose and ratlike teeth. "And carrying a silenced gun. Whatcha up to, Mr. Mitchell?"

Heffer had made the classic blunder of all incompetent would-be assassins. He should have shot Mitchell on sight and then asked the questions. Mitchell flicked on his pencil torch and spun it upward, where it spiraled around like a demented firefly. Heifer would have been less than human not to have had the instinctive reaction of glancing upward as his subconscious mind speculated as to what the hell Mitchell was up to: a speculation of very brief duration indeed, because Heifer was dead before the flash fell back onto the platform.

Mitchell picked up the flash, still surprisingly working, pocketed it, then dragged Heffer by the heels and rolled him off to join his friends at the bottom of the Gulf. He returned to the sick-bay

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vestibule, donned his shoes and entered the sick bay itself. Dr. Greenshaw had both his patients on blood transfusion.

Roomer looked at his watch. "Six minutes. What took you so long?"

A plainly unnerved Marina looked at Roomer, half in disbelief, half in stupefaction.

"Well, I'm sorry." Mitchell actually managed to sound apologetic. "I had the misfortune to run into Heifer on the way back."

"You mean he had the misfortune to run into you. And where are our friends?'*

"I'm not rightly sure,"

"I understand." Roomer sounded sympathetic. "It's hard to estimate the depth of the water out here."

"I could find out. But it hardly seems to matter. Dr. Greenshaw, you have stretchers? Complete with straps and so forth?" Greenshaw nodded. "Get them ready. Let them stay where they are meantime. Can you carry on the blood transfusions in flight?"

"That's no problem. I assume you want me to accompany them?"

"Yes, please. I know it's asking an awful lot, but after you've handed them over to the competent medical authorities, Fd like you to return."

"It will be a pleasure. I am now in my seventieth year and I thought there was nothing fresh left in life for me to experience. I was wrong." Marina stared at them in disbelief. All three

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men seemed calm and relaxed. Melinda appeared to have dropped off into a coma-like stupor, but she was merely, in fact, under heavy sedation. Marina said with conviction: "You're all mad."

Mitchell said: "That's what a lunatic asylum inmate says about the outside world—and he may well be right. However, that's hardly the point at issue. You, Marina, will be accompanying the others on the trip back to Florida. You will be perfectly safe there—your father will see that the most massive security guard ever mounted will be there."