Read The Detonators Online

Authors: Donald Hamilton

The Detonators (5 page)

BOOK: The Detonators
5.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

“You don’t have to
help
them track him down, do you?”

I sighed. “For God’s sake! What do you think this is, a Boy Scout jamboree? First of all, as I just said, they’ll find him easily enough without my help now that it’s daylight; why be obstructive for nothing? Second, Doug knows perfectly well that we—I—have to cooperate with the local authorities even though we don’t like it. He wouldn’t want it otherwise. He’s spent most of his working life with us; he wouldn’t want us to jeopardize the whole agency just for him. As a matter of fact, that’s the one bright spot in this hassle. We’re the ones who got him turned loose; if he does a lot of damage now, we’ll he held responsible. Of course, if he’s hurting badly enough and they make him mad enough, he could forget it. Keep your fingers crossed. Here we go.”

The conference was over. The young skipper spoke to the man at the wheel, and the boat swung to the left—excuse me, to port. The lazy sound of the big motors under our feet increased in volume. I steadied the girl as the boat surged ahead. Sanderson returned to us.

“I’m afraid it may be a little rougher than I promised you, Miss Barnett,” he said. “We may have farther to go than I thought; we’ll have to use a little more speed.” He glanced at me. “There’s a hundred-and-ten footer on patrol up ahead. The
Cape March
. She’s moving in to intercept.”

“Tell her to stay clear when she gets there,” I said. He studied me for a moment. “‘Yacht
Seawind
to be located and taken under observation; no other action without further instructions.’ Satisfactory?”

“As far as it goes,” I said. “But let me explain something about our organization, Sanderson. We’re a bunch of screwballs, as you may have noticed. Certain things were left out of us, or trained out of us, or beaten out of us. Like a normal reverence for human life, and that includes our own human lives. In other words, we were taught that if we gotta go, well, we gotta go; let’s just see how much company we can take to hell with us. Are you following me?”

“More or less.” His voice was dry. “You sound rather like a bunch of rabid wolves, Mr. Helm.”

“Hey, you’re getting the idea,” I said. “And when you see a rabid wolf trotting dumbly up the street with slaver dripping from its jaws, you know the disease has got it and it’s making its death run and you’d damn well better not get in its way. Well, Doug Barnett is out there making his death run, Mister. He can only see out of one eye, to amount to anything, and that one’s on its way out, thanks to you and your club-happy cop friends. His head is aching enough to drive him crazy. He knows he’s through, things are going irreversibly wrong inside his brain, and there’s nothing left for him but a lousy ending in the blind, black darkness. Remember, this is a man who’s spent his life dealing in violence, and your uniforms don’t mean a thing to him any longer. The old training rule is maybe you sometimes have to stand still for one blow or bullet, but nobody—
nobody
—ever gets two free shots. You’ve had your freebie, as far as Doug Barnett is concerned.”

Amy Barnett started to speak in protest, but Sanderson’s calm voice interrupted her: “What do you expect him to do, Mr. Helm?”

I said, “I can’t speak for him, only for myself. But I can assure you, if I were Doug on that sailboat up ahead of us somewhere, I’d be waiting hopefully for a bunch of you self-righteous, legalistic, uniformed bastards to come sailing within range all fat and sassy and self-confident. And I’d laugh and laugh as I emptied clip after clip into you, and to hell with the fact that we’re supposed to be working for the same government. It didn’t bother you when you had me arrested and clubbed with a nightstick and thrown in jail, so why should I give it a second thought? I’d make damn sure I got enough of you to force you to shoot back and kill me. I’d figure that after what you’d done to me, the least you owed me was a nice quick death. Doug may have other ideas, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“I see.”

Sanderson frowned at me for a moment; then he turned abruptly away and moved forward once more to speak to the skipper, who picked up a microphone. Again I couldn’t hear what was said but I didn’t have to: the word was being passed that the subject might be armed and mentally unbalanced and highly dangerous. Sanderson stood there awhile talking to the skipper. The boat roared on northward. The jolting wasn’t too bad, but it’s surprising how incompressible water can be at that speed; every now and then we’d slam into something that felt like concrete. I tried to steady the girl beside me, but she shrugged my hand away.

At last she burst out with the thing she’d been brooding about: “How could you talk about my father that way? You made him sound like a madman!”

I said, “Well,
there’s
a sudden access of filial devotion! A bit slow, aren’t you? If you’d given him something to hang around for yesterday, like a reconciliation, he might not be out here today looking for death in the large economy package.” Her face lost color, and she looked away. I was sorry I’d said it. I went on quickly: “Anyway, I thought it was myself I was representing as the madman. And if you’d think about it a little instead of going off half-cocked in your usual immature fashion, maybe you’d see that the more dangerous and crazy I make your daddy sound, the less likely they are to go charging up to him at full throttle with a lot of arrogant demands and ultimatums designed to make even the mildest character flip his lid.”

She drew a long breath and looked up at me. “I see. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were deliberately exaggerating…” Her voice trailed off. She looked away again. “And I wasn’t aware of displaying any conspicuous immaturity, Mr. Helm.”

I grinned at that, and she gave me a resentful glance and didn’t speak again for a long time. In bright sunshine, under a clear blue sky, the boat charged on up the Florida Straits. It’s a fifty-mile slot, as Sanderson had indicated, between the solid, densely populated mainland of Florida, and the widespread reefs and often uninhabited islands and islets of the Bahamas. We’d long since lost all land from sight.

I spoke to the girl: “Doug put you in my charge. Did he tell you that? If anything should happen to him, I’m your substitute papa.”

She started to speak quickly, perhaps in protest, then she smiled instead, rather maliciously. “Then you’d better stop ogling my nylons hoping for a better view, hadn’t you, Mr. Helm? I mean, when I’m wearing nylons. Under the circumstances that’s practically incest, isn’t it?” Her smile faded and she shook her head quickly. “I’ve been getting along without a father most of my life. And if I did have to pick a new one, it certainly wouldn’t be you.”

“Nobody asked you,” I said. “Who the hell gets to pick their parents? No, shut up and listen while we’ve got a little time to ourselves. I’m to tell you that there are twenty-five thousand dollars available to you at any time just by calling the Washington number you called before. You can use it to buy diamonds or ice cream cones or a fancy sports car. If you want. But he put it there originally for emergencies, like if you lost your job or got sick or something while he was off sailing where he couldn’t be reached. And when he dies you’ve got two hundred grand coming, more or less, depending on how the lawyers make out with the IRS. It’s Babcock and Phillips, St. Petersburg, Florida. Can you remember that? Well, if you forget, they’ll get in touch with you.”

She licked her lips and said stiffly, “Of course I can’t accept it.”

I said, “You really are a bitch, aren’t you? You won’t even give him the satisfaction of leaving his daughter in pretty good shape financially! This is danger pay he’s saved up over the years because he had nobody to spend it on, just the boat. Where do you think he’d rather have it go, to, his own flesh and blood or some lousy charity? Or the IRS? Think about him for a change instead of your lousy little pride and your lousy little self.”

She drew a long breath. “You don’t exactly practice the bedside manner, do you? Did he tell you all this just before he saw me?” When I nodded, she breathed, “If he was thinking of my… my welfare then, why did he have to be so
impossible
when he talked to me only a few minutes later?”

“Well, it can’t have been an easy scene for either of you, after all the years.”

“All right, I’ll talk to the lawyers, when… if there isn’t anybody else who’s better entitled to his money.”

“He said not.”

“So you’ve done your duty and given me the information. Now you can take off your daddy hat and be your simple, lecherous self again.”

I grinned. “What’s the matter, are you ashamed of your pretty legs, Barnett? But you’re wrong. I haven’t done quite all of my duty. There’s one more thing.”

“What thing?”

I spoke carefully: “I told you once; I’ve stayed away from my own kids because I didn’t want anybody ever getting the idea of using them against me or punishing them for something I’d done. It’s an occupational hazard we all face. And you’re Doug Barnett’s daughter and somebody out of his past with a grievance might just possibly decide to take it out on you if he’s unavailable. So if you ever run into a situation that looks even slightly menacing, that you don’t quite understand, call us right away. Same number, collect. If I’m available, I’ll come running; if I’m not, somebody else will. And that goes for what might be called non-service-connected problems as well.”

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I’m sure you can manage your life without our assistance under normal circumstances,” I said, “but you haven’t had much experience with violence. If anybody threatens you in a physical way, a rejected boyfriend who won’t stay rejected, for instance, or some syndicate jerk who doesn’t like the way you’re testifying in a court case, or even just the gang of dead-end kids you have to pass on your way to the bus or subway or whatever they have in Cincinnati, just pick up the phone. Or, hell, if you just get into a bad bind of any kind and need help. Somebody’ll come solve the problem for you, diplomatically, financially, or otherwise. Me, if I’m around.” I regarded her for a moment. “What I’m trying to say is that we take care of our own, Miss Barnett. You’re not alone. Regardless of what happens here, you’ve got a family of sorts, maybe one you disapprove of, but that’s often the way with families. Keep it in mind.”

She hesitated. I sensed that her impulse was to reject us and everything we stood for as her mother had done; but she checked whatever she’d been about to say and nodded.

“Thank you,” she said gravely. “I can’t imagine that I’ll ever have occasion to take advantage of the offer, but… well, thank you.”

Up forward in the deckhouse they’d been on the radio again. Sanderson made his way back to us, steadying himself by the overhead handrails.

“We’ve got Barnett located,” he said to me. “He hadn’t come nearly as far as you estimated. The
Cape March
just picked him up less than ten miles ahead. She’s closing in on him, but cautiously, as you advised.”

I nodded. “Okay, I misjudged him. I knew he wasn’t fleeing, but I thought he might goose it just a little, to get as far as possible before he was spotted. However, he wouldn’t normally have used the motor here even though the wind is pretty light, would he? With the favorable Gulf Stream current to help him, he’d have been doing it strictly under sail and saving his fuel to get him through real calms on the long passage ahead. So I guess he told himself he damn well wasn’t going to let you panic him into going even a fraction of a knot faster than he ordinarily would.… Christ, what was
that
, a sonic boom?”

Even in the deckhouse, which vibrated with the noise of the powerful engines below, we’d all heard it, or felt it: a short, hard clap of sound. As we started unanimously for the doors leading out on deck, the boat’s skipper turned quickly with the microphone in his hand.

“Admiral, it’s the
March
!” he called.

Sanderson hurried forward. I guided Amy Barnett outside and steadied her on the narrow side deck. We couldn’t see it at first; then I spotted and pointed out to her the little round smoke cloud just separating itself from the horizon ahead and rising deliberately like a released balloon, gradually losing its tight, hard shape as the breezes worked on it. Sanderson appeared in the deckhouse doorway, or whatever you call it on a boat. His face was grim.

“Was Barnett carrying explosives?”

I looked at him for a long moment; then I shrugged. “We had a case a while back, somebody who used sailing yachts as floating bombs. As a matter of fact it was my case, but Doug could easily have heard about it; and while he bought his hull ready-made he finished it himself. He could have built anything into it he wanted to, including a self-destruct apparatus for when things got really tough.”

Amy said desperately, “Stop it! Stop talking as if this is a polite tea party… What
happened
?”

I said, “Obviously he blew himself up when he saw he was caught. The only question is did he take their goddamn cutter with him, I hope?”

She looked pleadingly at Sanderson. “Tell me!”

“Helm is right, Miss Barnett. I’m sorry.” He stared coldly at me. “But I have to disappoint you, Helm. Barnett made no attempt to damage the
Cape March
. When he saw the ship taking up station astern, he raised them on the VHF and said he’d been expecting them, but it had been a hell of a fine good-bye sail. He suggested that it might be well if they fell back a bit now and stuck their fingers in their ears. They could see him sitting in the main cabin hatchway; he had one of those wind-vane gears that let boats steer themselves. He grinned at them over his shoulder and threw them a mock salute; then he reached down into the cabin and… well, the whole boat simply disintegrated and disappeared in the violent explosion that followed. He must have had something fairly potent packed away in that bilge.”

After a little, I spoke deliberately: “God, what an opportunity missed! I’d have coaxed your damn toy warship alongside before I pushed the bang-button. Well, Doug always was a softhearted slob.”

BOOK: The Detonators
5.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Partnership by Anne McCaffrey, Margaret Ball
Crusader by Sara Douglass
Archer's Quest by Linda Sue Park
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Peter Benchley's Creature by Peter Benchley
Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates
The Confessor by Daniel Silva
Atlantia by Ally Condie