The Intimidators (26 page)

“Oh, no!” Amanda breathed. “Buster loved that boat!”

I wasn’t concerned with anybody’s yachts at the moment. “That’s the
Ametta Too?
You recognize the rig?”

“Yes, of course. They must have scuttled her. The other one should be somewhere beyond her.”

I raised the beam, and found it. Sir James Marcus’ vessel, with no fin keel, had settled almost straight, with the upper part of its camouflaged superstructure showing.

“Cover me, Bill,” I said. “Somebody may get jittery when I swing this thing toward shore. But remember, there are supposed to be friendlies around.”

There seemed to be nobody around, however. I swept the light over some muddy banks, a shaky-looking dock, and the decayed pier of which Amanda had warned us, off which rotting pilings stuck out of the water like bad teeth. A second, higher sweep got me a lot of palm trees and a big, weathered building with broken windows.

“The Lodge,” Amanda whispered. “Leo and the rest stayed there. But where—”

I interrupted her. “Take her in to that dock, Hattie. Starboard side to, heading out.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. I’d play hell trying to dock the other way, with that outboard alongside, wouldn’t I?”

“If there’s anything I hate, it’s a smart-ass sailor,” I said. “Okay, Chief Haseltine, look sharp. On a night like this I have to be stuck with a lousy Texas Kiowa, not even a good, fighting New Mexico Apache.”

Haseltine said, “Look who’s talking. Hell, your Viking ancestors couldn’t hang on more than one winter in that Vinland they discovered. The local Indian tribes booted them back onto their ships and ran them to hell out of there—”

“If you comics can bear to interrupt your routine for a moment, somebody’d better help me get some lines ashore,” Harriet said as we touched the dock lightly.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I said. Amanda dropped back down the ladder to let us through. Down in the cockpit, I stopped Harriet as she was about to climb forward along the deckhouse. “Hattie. Come over here a moment. This boat’s not going anywhere.”

In the aft end of the cockpit, she faced me questioningly. “What is it, Matt?”

“It occurs, to me,” I said softly, “that you might have some notion of ducking ashore and hiding out, leaving us to our fates. Don’t do it.”

She hesitated. “If I did have some such wild idea, why not?”

“Because you need us to get you out of here. If you’ve got some arrangements made, if you think you’re going to hide in the bushes until daylight, perhaps, and wait for somebody to come for you, forget it.”

She was watching me closely. “Keep talking, darling,” she murmured. “Why shouldn’t I wait until daylight?”

“Because this island isn’t going to be here that long,” I said.

There was a lengthy silence. “I don’t believe you,” she said at last.

“It’s in the computers now, doll,” I said. “Cayo Negro, Black Key. Latitude this, longitude that. Time on target, oh four hundred. Countdown will start in umpteen minutes. Of course, this is strictly top secret, and I never told you anything of the sort. It will never have happened even after it’s happened, if you know what I mean. What will really have happened, officially, is that those dumb, primitive, patriot types stored a big cache of their revolutionary ammunition here, and it happened to go up, kind of accidentally.”

“I still don’t believe you. You’re bluffing.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself, Hattie. Just remember, if you miss this ferry out of here, you’ll be in for a long ride straight up. Now let’s get those damn docklines over—”

“Matt.”

“Yes?”

“I wish I didn’t hate you so much,” she said. “You’re really kind of an entertaining person, full of bright ideas.”

“This wasn’t my idea, and I can’t stop it,” I said. “So don’t dream about pushing a gun in my back and making me send the abort signal. There isn’t any.”

“Better throw a line around that piling while you can reach it,” she said. “I’ll get the bow.”

My job done, I watched her khaki-clad figure working confidently on the insecure, streamlined forward deck that would be a hell of a place to handle an anchor in a gale, but maybe you didn’t anchor boats like this in gales. With the ship secure, I looked up at Haseltine with his squirt gun, still standing watch on the bridge.

“Anything?”

“Not a movement.”

“Well, I guess I’d better go ashore and have a look around,” I said. “The boat’s all yours. If things go wrong, cut that outboard loose and make a run for it—”

There was a quick movement in the cockpit. Amanda Phipps was on the dock before I could grab her. I jumped ashore after her, but stopped with the Thompson ready; you can’t shoot and run at the same time. At least I can’t, I was aware of Haseltine on the flying bridge above me, his gun at his shoulder. We covered the white figure runing toward the shore.

“Buster!” she called. “Buster, it’s me, Amanda. Where are you? It’s all right, dear. It’s all right. They’re friends.”

I snapped, “Easy!” as Haseltine stiffened above me.

I’d seen it, too: a man’s shape detaching itself from the shadow of the lodge building and running forward. The two shapes merged.

“Wouldn’t you think grown people would have more decency than to neck in public?” I asked at last of nobody in particular.

“The trouble with you is, you’re jealous,” Harriet said, joining me. The trouble with me was that she was perfectly right.

Amanda was calling to us. “It’s all right. Everything is all right. They were just hiding because they didn’t know who we were.” People seemed to be springing out of the bushes and palm trees everywhere. “Matt,” Amanda called.

“I’m coming.”

Haseltine said, “I’ll keep an eye on the boat. You go ahead.”

“Sure. Come on, Hattie. Looks like I’ll have to settle for your company.”

What I really meant, and she knew it, was that I didn’t want her near the boats. We went up there, and were introduced to Mr. Wellington (Buster) Phipps, in dark silk pajamas, in spite of which he looked like the reasonably bright and competent gent I’d been led to expect.

“My daughter Loretta,” he said. I gathered from his voice that, unlike his wife, he did not think his offspring was kind of a pill.

I could see that the girl was somewhat taller than her mother, and of course younger, and perhaps slimmer. The long blonde hair was worn far enough forward to shadow her face mysteriously, but her soft greeting and brief handshake were reassuringly straightforward. Perhaps I’d done the girl an injustice, passing judgment on the strength of a single snapshot. She had on a short, ruffly, blue nightgown-and-negligee outfit that would probably have been intriguingly transparent under normal illumination. Here, without light enough to penetrate the thin layers of nylon, she seemed to be quite properly and modestly attired—well, as properly and modestly as any young lady wandering around outdoors in her nightie and bedroom slippers.

Under other circumstances, all these people standing around under the palms dressed for bed might have seemed funny; at the moment, my sense of humor wasn’t functioning very well. We got Harriet introduced; and all the time I couldn’t help thinking of a big clock with a sweep second hand counting off time in a well-instrumented control room somewhere. I glanced at my watch. It read two forty-three.

Phipps was talking: “I understand Bill Haseltine’s with you.”

There was the same funny constraint in his voice, when the Texan was the subject, as there had been in his wife’s.

“He’s watching the boat,” I said. “Look, I’m very eager to meet all these lovely people, but not right now. Brief me, fast. What’s the situation? Where’s the raiding party your wife told me about? Where’s Leo Gonzales and his patriot crew?”

There was a brief hesitation; then Phipps said, “The raiders are gone, all of them. Hours ago. Leo and the others... well, they’re right over there at the end of the airstrip. Oh, don’t worry. They won’t cause us any trouble. Have you got a flashlight?”

It was quite an exhibit. We could hear the flies before we could see what they were working on. I was aware of Harriet, not the most delicate lady in the world, gripping my arm hard and making a funny, choked little sound as the flashlight beam hit the row of bodies on the ground. There was blood in great quantities. I stepped forward and ran the light over them. They were all there, all the ones I’d heard about but had never seen, from Leo with his maimed hand to the pretty black girl in her splotched and stained stewardess’s uniform. They were all there; and they were all dead.

“They were lined up, and made to kneel, and shot while we watched,” Phipps said. “A man just walked down the row with a pistol and shot each one in the back of the head. They called him Mr. Manderfield. Then more pictures were taken—”

“Pictures?” I said.

“Yes,” said Phipps, “there was quite a photography session; two or three cameras with those strobe-type flashguns, whatever you call them. Each shooting was photographed from a couple of different angles. It looked like multiple lightning from where we were; we couldn’t figure it out at first. Then there were all kinds of pictures taken of the bodies where they fell; and then they were all turned face-up as you see them now, and a man walked down the line and got closeup shots of each one; and finally there were some group pictures with Manderfield and his henchmen posing behind the bodies. What does it mean, Helm?”

I didn’t know what it meant. All I could do was report it when I got back and hope the information would reach somebody who could interpret it. If I got back. At the present rate of progress, I’d never make it....

“Damn!” It was Haseltine’s voice. “I wanted those bastards. I wanted to fry them over a slow fire! Who beat me to them?”

There was a funny little silence, as we turned to look at him. I opened my mouth to point out that he’d left his post of duty; but Harriet, the most likely source of trouble at the moment, was still beside me, and it was no time for discipline, anyway. The big man stood there grimly staring down at the dead bodies. He took a step forward and nudged one with his toe.

“Okay, Leo,” he said. “That’s the only way you could have got away from me. So okay.” He drew a long breath, took a fresh grip on the submachine gun he still carried, and swung to face Wellington Phipps. “Hi, Buster,” he said, a little defiantly.

Phipps said, “Hi, Bill.”

They stood facing each other, as if neither of them knew exactly how to handle the situation, whatever it was. Obviously, they were men who’d known each other well, perhaps liked each other; and obviously there was something between them now, something big and terrible that had to be talked about, and neither knew how to approach it. Phipps cleared his throat, and Haseltine started to speak, and they were both silent once more, each waiting for the other. The impasse was broken by a fierce little rustle of movement. A fury in blue nylon hit Bill Haseltine squarely; a blonde fury with long fingernails reaching for his eyes.

“You... you callous Texas roughneck!” cried Loretta Phipps. “You incredible cheapskate! You...”

She went into some descriptive terminology that wasn’t very nice; and all the time she was all over him, drawing blood. I grabbed Harriet and pulled her away, ready to throw her to the ground and flop down beside her. I mean, that kind of spectacular tantrum may look great on TV, but in real life you just don’t climb the frame of a gent holding a loaded submachine gun, not with a bunch of innocent people standing around who may get their heads blown off if the safety happens to get bumped the wrong way and the guy happens to brush against the trigger accidentally while you’re working him over with your nails.

“Loretta, for God’s sake let me.... Damn it, Lorrie, give me a chance to get rid of....”

Haseltine was doing his best to cover up, while acutely conscious every second, as a good marksman must be, of the deadly firearm in his hands. He wasn’t resisting, he was simply trying to keep the action away from the chopper. As he turned from the attack, hunched over the gun, his elbow grazed the girl, knocking her off balance. She went down in a flurry of blue ruffles and white legs.

“You... you
hit
me!” she gasped, picking herself up. “You cheap, dismal brute... Oh!”

Then she whirled and ran blindly off into the darkness. Haseltine straightened up, looking after her. He checked the weapon he held, and looked at me as I came up. His face was bleeding in several places, but he seemed unaware of it.

“I’d better go find her,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know why,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” he said; and that was the truth. “Here, take this. Careful, it’s still loaded.”

I took the Thompson and watched him disappear down the landing strip, at the end of which was a black something that seemed to be the burned-out hulk of an airplane, presumably the one belonging to the French baron I hadn’t met socially yet. Manderfield had made a nice clean sweep.

I looked at Phipps and Amanda. “Any explanation will be gratefully received,” I said. “No? Okay, let’s get everybody aboard the cruiser. There’s not one whole hell of a lot of time....”

There wasn’t much time; but at three-twenty, Haseltine and the girl were still missing. We had the
Red Baron’s
engines turning over, ready to go. The open outboard lay along the dock just astern. For something to do, I stepped down and started both motors to make certain they’d run, and shut them off again. It wasn’t time for that, yet; and the plugs might foul, idling too long. Diesels don’t have plugs and can idle forever.

I pulled myself back up to the ancient dock where Harriet waited. Everyone else was on board the cabin job. I still hadn’t been introduced to the aristocrats, not to mention the mere commoners, but it didn’t weigh on me greatly.

“How much longer should we wait?” Harriet asked.

“Not any,” I said. “You take the first section out of here now. Run east behind Cayo Perro, slow and quiet, no lights. You don’t want to get to the end of the island much before four. Don’t go too far. Stay hidden from seaward until you get the sign to go.”

“And the sign is?”