The Hunt aka 27 (55 page)

Laughing heartily, Moyes brought a bottle of brandy into the living room, put two water tumblers on the table and filled them both.

“So you waded all the way out here in this storm to tell me that cock-and-bull story?” he said, still laughing. He held his glass in a toast. “Here’s to audacity, sir, which you certainly got your share of.”

The living room was a clutter of old photographs, fishing gear, mismatched furniture and bric-a-brac. There were several pictures of a boy in various stages of growing up, the last one showing him in cap and gown at what was obviously a high school graduation. There were also several photos of a hardy- looking woman. But the room gave no indication that either of them occupied the house.

Outside the windows, the bay was churning up as the storm descended on them again. Rain clattered against windows and walls.

“Mr. Moyes
.

“Tully.”

“Tully, I know my story sounds outrageous but believe me, it’s true. I came out here because Tom Sirioot said you’re just crazy enough to take me over to Jekyll Island.”

“In this storm?”

“Right now.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. If you won’t do it, can you call somebody who can?”

“Nope,” the lean man said, scratching his beard.

“Why not?”

“Phones are out. Been out for a couple hours now. Couldn’t call anybody if I wanted to. Besides, if I was to call anybody it’d be the Coast Guard. They wouldn’t believe you, but at least they wouldn’t laugh at me. No sir, we can’t call anybody and you can’t walk back to town. It’s over two miles and by now the water’s up to your knees out there.”

“Tully, I’m going over to that island if
I
have to swim over.”

“L.ook, Mr. Keegan, I’m eatin’ my Thanksgiving dinner. Me and Chelsea

He pointed to a black lab curled before the fireplace. It stared soulfully up at both of them, snorted and went back to sleep.

“Tully, you get me on the island over there and I’ll take you to New York and buy you the best turkey dinner you ever ate.”

“I’m eatin’ king mackerel, Mister.
. .
what’d you say your name was again
. . . ?“

“Frank. Frank Keegan.”

Frank. I don’t eat anything that has feathers on it and flies through the air.”

“Well, whatever you want. Christ, I’ll buy you a year’s supply of king mackerel. Here, look
.

He took out his money clip and counted out ten hundred- dollar bills and slapped them on the coffee table.

“Is that serious enough for you?”

Moyes perused the bills, separated them with a forefinger.

“That’s a thousand dollars!”

“You’re right.”

“You offering me a thousand dollars to take you right over there?” He jabbed his thumb toward Jekyll Island.

Keegan nodded.

“Government must pay you boys pretty well.” He took another swig of brandy, then got up and threw a log on the fire.

“Y’know, my son died on a night like this. Playing tug-
of
-
war
out in the sound. Kids’d get arguing over whose shrimp boat was toughest, tie two of ‘em back to back and then see which one would tow the other. Kind of like playin’ chicken in cars.”

He walked to the window, leaned over and peered through a brass telescope. He aimed it at Jekyll and waited for lightning to light up the bay.

“Be almost four years ago. Night they graduated from high school, him and his buddy Jimmy Wertz, they had a couple of beers, got challenging each other. So they went at it.”

He kept staring through the glass. Seas were running two feet, he estimated. Not bad. Wind was probably twenty-five knots.

“Seas were running about two feet just like they are out there now. Jimmy pulled Ray’s stern under. She flooded from the stern and tipped over. Ray was trapped in the cabin. He floated up on King’s Way Beach two days later. The boat’s still down there. Ninety feet down on the bottom of the channel.”

He walked back to the table and washed down the rest of his brandy.

“My wife died last year. She never got over that night. Wouldn’t eat worth a
damn.
Just
kind of wasted away. I think she really died of a broken heart. We were married twenty-six years.”

“I’m sorry,” Keegan said. “I know what it is to lose someone you love. My fiancée was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis. She died there.”

Moyes did not respond but his face clouded up. He stared across the table at Keegan.

“I found out about this Nazi agent, Twenty-seven, from her brother. He’s head of the resistance movement in Germany. At first nobody’d believe me. Thought I was nuts, just like you did. But I knew he wouldn’t bullshit me.”

He explained how they had turned up Fred Dempsey and later
Trexler
in Colorado and described the scene in the murdered family’s home.

“Look at it this way, Mr. Moyes. If I am telling the truth, what better time to kidnap these people than now? It’s a holiday. Everything’s closed. It couldn’t be any darker. And this guy has been on that island since Saturday or Sunday
. .

“Monday morning. Saw ‘em go over
. .

“Okay, since Monday morning. Point is, he’s not going to wait all winter to take these people. He’s going to do it quick

and he’s already been over there four days.”

He finished his drink. Moyes stared at him for a long time without speaking, then poured him another stout brandy.

“Thanks, I’ve had enough,” Keegan said.

“Drink it, you’ll need it, It’s less than a mile over there but it’s gonna be a tough, wet ride.”

“You mean we have a deal?”

“You know anything about runnin’ a boat?”

“Not that kind.”

“You know port from starboard?”

“That I do know.”

“Well He scooped up the ten bills. “
I
t wasn’t gonna be much of a Thanksgiving dinner anyway. Besides, this’ll
be a lot easier than shrimpin’ and a helluva lot more lucrative.”

In the dining room of the spired clubhouse, the women arrived in their formal dresses, the men in tuxedos and tails. It was going to be a gala feast and the mood was cheerful, despite the raging storm.

“Part of island life,” Grant Peabody joked as they scurried through the rain and sought the refuge of the wide piazza that surrounded the clubhouse.

Twenty-seven watched them from a dark cluster of trees. At his feet lay one of the guards, his heart pierced by 27’s SS dagger. Another guard was floating face-down in the inlet, his throat cut. The third guard was making his rounds. Huddled against the storm, he trotted from one cottage to the next, cursing the foul weather. He was hungry and looking forward to dinner. The guards would be fed after the others were finished. He finally found a moment’s shelter in the radio shack.

In the flickering flashes of lightning, he and the radio operator saw a man staring through the rain-specked window. He entered the radio shack.

“You gave us a start there, sir,” the guard said. “Looked like a ghost starin’ through the window.”

The man who was calling himself Allenbee smiled.

“I
am
a ghost,” he said, and they all laughed.

“Expecting a message?” the radioman asked without looking up. “I’ll tell you, sir, the reception is mighty poor and.
.

Twenty-seven leaned over the radio operator from behind, placed the palm of one hand under his chin, the other hand on the top of his head and snapped his neck. The guard, completely taken by surprise, stared open-mouthed at Allenbee as he let the radio operator’s head fall on the desk. Allenbee’s arm made a short upward stroke as he thrust his dagger up under the guard’s rib cage, slicing deep into his chest.

The guard’s head fell forward onto Allenbee’s shoulder and the Nazi agent shoved him away. He fell dead at Allenbee’s feet.

Allenbee dismantled the radio, then rushed across the compound to the telephone room. It was empty, the phones having been out for hours. He cut all the phone lines just to make sure, then stepped inside the small room, checked the clips in his machine pistol and his .38. He looked at his watch.

It was seven-twenty. Perfect timing. He rushed back to the clubhouse, looked in the window just as the kitchen and maid staffs were herded into the room. Lady Penelope entered with a birthday cake ablaze with candles. She walked to the front of the room. Allenbee walked around to the front of the dining room and entered through one of the French doors that lined one side of the room.

The guests looked at him with surprise. He was wet to the skin, his hair streaked down over his forehead. He looked like a wraith.

“Good grief, what happened to you?” Peabody asked.

Allenbee drew the machine pistol and fired a burst into the ceiling. A stream of plaster splashed on the floor at his feet. There was a chorus of screams. The men looked at Allenbee in shock.

“Everybody shut up!” Allenbee ordered but there was chaos in the room. He aimed the gun at the main chandelier and fired a burst into it. Crystal exploded. The bullets tore through the bracket anchoring the enormous light and it fell straight from the ceiling, crashing into a table.

“I said shut up!” Allenbee ordered.

The room got quiet.

“See here! What in hell do you think you’re doing?” Peabody demanded.

Allenbee glared at him and pointed the machine pistol straight at his chest.

“Sit down, Peabody, or I’ll kill you where you stand,” Allenbee said in a voice that meant business.

* * *

Captain Leiger held the sub at ten meters, its conning tower
just below the surface, and watched the St. Simons light spin slowly around, casting its long finger of light across the dark, rain- swept channel. He inched the sub around the northeast tip of Jekyll Island and entered the deep channel.

He swung the periscope around, fixed it on the dark, brooding shoreline of the island, marking the distance. He would hold his course due west, five hundred meters off the shoreline until he reached the northwestern tip of the island, then surface and swing into the inlet. The yacht dock was a few hundred meters south of the point.

Because he had to maintain his distance from the island, Leiger could not check the bay and the sound. If he had, he would have seen Tully Moyes’s forty-foot shrimp boat, the
Dolly D,
chugging through the choppy waters, heading for the same destination.

Aboard the
Dolly D,
Keegan shoved shells into Moyes’s automatic shotgun, then checked his .45. He had two extra clips which he put in his jacket pocket.

“You mean to kill this man, Frank?” Moyes asked.

“I don’t think he’ll have it any other way. He’s not the surrendering kind.”

“You got a plan?”

“Nope. I’m going to get on that island and hope to hell I can get the drop on him.”

As they passed the northwestern tip of the island a blazing streak of lightning lit up the entire cove. In its garish white-hot light, Moyes saw a streak on the surface of the water fifty yards off the port side. Ripples running against the wind-borne waves. He peered through the darkness. Another crack of lightning and then another rent the sky. In the flashing lights of the storm, the ripples turned to waves, then suddenly the conning tower of the U-l7 broke the surface of the water.

“Christ a-mighty!” Moyes yelled, “A damn sub, fifty yards off our port.”

Keegan scanned the turbulent waters. As the sky continued to blaze with lightning, he saw the gray tower rising out of the water and slicing through the small breakers. Beyond it was Jekyll Island and the yacht pier.

“He hasn’t seen us yet!” Keegan yelled.

Moyes yelled back, “He’s heading for the Jekyll Island dock.”

The sub’s nose burst through the surface. The long eel
-
like monster bounded atop the inlet, heading straight for the dock. The
Dolly D
headed straight for her.

There was no turning back. If they tried to run, the U-boat would shoot them to bits. But, thought Moyes, if the U-boat’s rear ballast tanks were still full, he could ram
he
r. A lucky strike on the conning tower could tip her over. If the hatches were still open, the sub would flood and sink. The dock approach was forty feet deep and the heavy shrimp boat would run right over the bastard.

Moyes’s decision was instantaneous. He slammed the throttles full forward.

“I’m gonna ram the son of a bitch!” Moyes yelled to Keegan above the howling wind. “Brace yourself.”

Moyes snapped on his floodlight as the hatch swung open and two German crewmen clambered on deck. Startled, they turned to see the bright single eye of light bearing down on them, closing fast. The first man ran toward the machine gun in front of the conning tower. Keegan focused the binoculars on the gray shadow, saw a face appear in the tower. The man was wearing a white, billed cap and he turned immediately toward Moyes’s boat, his eyes wide with surprise. He appeared to be shouting orders to the gun crew. Keegan swung the glasses down to the deck as the two gunners pulled a tarp off the heavy deck gun and loaded it. Keegan ran out on the slippery deck, steadied the automatic shotgun against the rail and fired two bursts. The first ripped into the deck a foot or so behind the German sailor. But as he grabbed the butt of the heavy gun, the second blast caught him in the chest. His arms flew over his head and he fell backward, sliding over the side. The sailor’s companion grabbed the heavy weapon, swung it around and fired a continuous burst into the cabin.

The windows exploded. Glass and bits of framing showered around Moyes. He wrapped his arms through the ship’s wheel to keep her steady but a moment later another burst tore through the small cabin, ripping into his shoulder. He screamed but it was an angry scream, a scream of challenge not pain.

Leiger saw only the ghostly light roaring down on him through the driving rain. Lightning split the sky again, the jagged streaks ripping into trees along the shore. In the glow, he saw the outline of the heavy shrimper as it chopped through the waves ten yards away. They were almost to the dock but the captain realized he would never make it.

Before he could duck back inside the tower, the
Dolly D
struck. The submarine lurched as the heavy wooden boat ripped into the conning tower. Leiger grabbed for the hatch cover but couldn’t reach it. He was thrown head-first down the narrow shaft. He plunged into the control room below as the shrimper’s heavy wooden bow ground up over the spire. The steel hull sliced through the wooden hull of the shrimper and tore it open. But the U-boat was already mortally stricken. The collision had ripped a
jagged crack down the length of the tower; the sub was on its side and still twirling. The captain landed flat on his back on the floor of the sub as it tilted crazily over on its side. The crash horn was shrieking. Men were screaming. The sea poured into the stricken boat through two open hatches and the tear in its con. The one remaining gunner on the deck of the sub was thrown end over end into the inlet.

Debris flew through the air like shrapnel. Rivets popped. Maps, flashlights and anything not tied down was thrown into the narrow shaft. Lights flickered. As they did, the stunned captain felt the burst of cold water as it poured through the open hatchway. The sub kept rolling. Sparks showered out of shattered lamps. The fuses blew. The sub was plunged into darkness—a tomb filled with the screams of the men and the sound of water roaring into it from two open hatches.

The shrimp boat groaned as it rode up the side of the tower, slashing it down sideways into the inlet waters and slamming it into the Jekyll dock. Timbers cracked and snapped as the two boats crashed into it. Keegan was thrown against the bulkhead. Lines snapped and twanged past his ear. The shrimp boat rose high out of the water, riding up over the sub then slamming down on the shattered pier. Its weight and the water rushing into the sub slammed the mortally wounded steel fish down to the bottom, into mud and silt.

Inside the submarine there was chaos. The crew floundered in darkness and panic, disoriented as the big fish rolled over and
its tower ripped into the muddy bottom. Throughout the slender boat, men tried in vain to find and close watertight doors but they foundered in the dark or were washed away by the torrents of water gushing the length of the U-boat. In the command center, the captain thrashed frantically, hanging on to a table leg. But as the underwater vessel rolled, he lost his grip and he too was washed like a leaf down through the bowels of the sub, bouncing off metal objects, carrying other crew members with him as he was washed toward the stern of the doomed vessel. The cries of the crew were drowned out one after another until there was only the groan of the sea monster as it settled into the muck thirty feet below the surface.

Keegan staggered to his feet and stumbled back to the main cabin of the shrimp boat. Tully Moyes was draped over the wheel, his arms still wrapped in the wheel, his feet turned on their ankles. He groaned and fell backward on the deck of the shattered cabin.

Keegan rushed to him, saw the bullet hole in Moyes’s shoulder and a gash over his eye but the shrimper waved him off.

“Go do your business, Keegan,” he said. “I ain’t dead yet.”

He took the Webley from Moyes’s belt and s
tu
ck it in his own. Carrying shotgun and .45, he ran to the front of the shrimp boat and jumped down onto the wet wreckage of the dock. He scrambled across the battered pier to the muddy ground. He saw movement to his left, fell against a tree, strained his eyes, then the sky lit up and he saw the gunnery mate scrambling ashore through the marsh grass.

The full fury of the storm was upon them. The German crawled onto hard earth and started running.

“Hold it,” Keegan screamed but his warning was lost in the wind. He started running parallel to the German, dodging trees. Both were running toward the tall clubhouse spire.

Inside the dining room there was chaos. Willoughby, his eyes bulging with fear and panic, stared through the windows of the dining room. In the gaudy flashes of lightning, he first saw the sub, then the glaring white spotlight, then heard the wrenching collision.

“My God,” he cried. “The sub’s been rammed!”

“Shut up!” 27 ordered as the dining room guests started to surge forward. He turned on them, leveled the gun at Grant
Peabody and snarled, “Everyone sta
n
d where you are or I’ll kill Peabody. Now.”

The surge stopped for an instant, then Peabody yelled, “You can’t kill us all.”

Allenbee leveled the machine pistol at Peabody.