The Intimidators (27 page)

“A lot of shooting over this way, followed by a spectacular explosion. Keep your fingers crossed. Let’s hope the whiz-bang boys get the right island. Don’t go on the preliminary popping. Wait for the big bang. There should be enough light with it to kill the night vision of anybody out there. That’s when you go. Just turn those big diesels loose and streak for home.”

“I know about the explosion,” she said. “You told me. You really did mean it, didn’t you?”

“Somebody’s getting very tough in Washington, at the wrong time as usual,” I said. “All the times they’ve let themselves be intimidated by some silly jerk with a gun; and now they get brave and ruthless and blow up a lot of dead bodies. And a lady named Robinson if she’s dumb enough to hang around.”

She said, “Assuming you’re telling the truth about that, what about the shooting? Who’s going to be shooting at what?”

“Sweetheart,” I said, “you’re just as cute as Little Red Riding Hood, but this is no time for your ducky little games. You know, because you arranged it, that the whole damned Cuban Navy is out there by now, just waiting for us to stick our noses out so they can blast them off. That’s why you were going to run off and hide, and watch the lovely fireworks from the shore, clapping your little brown hands in sheer delight.”

There was a little silence. “So you know,” Harriet murmured at last.

I said wearily, “She’ll never give me credit for one little brain cell. I don’t know what I’m going to do to convince the girl I’m really a very bright fellow. She’s been trying to have me killed since the first time we met; and I’m supposed to think she’s given up the idea just because we made a little lovely music together? Maybe it isn’t the Cubans. Maybe it’s some other guys. But
somebody’s
out there. You and your friend Manderfield couldn’t possibly pass up an opportunity like this.”

Harriet said defensively, “Well, it’s what you asked me to do, isn’t it? Help them set a trap for you?”

“That’s right. And I’m grateful as hell. Now get up on that dreamboat’s bridge and get those people out of here. It takes somebody who knows the boat, and our friend Haseltine’s off chasing blondes. You know the waters better, anyway. I’ll wait here as long as I can. At three-fifty I’ll go, with or without passengers. The action should draw away any cats watching the other rathole west of Cayo Perro, where you’ll be. After all, as far as they know out there, only one boat went in. If they see one coming out, over here, they’ll all move this way to intercept. You’ll have a clear run for it, off to the west.”

She hesitated. “You’re really serious, Matt? A goddamned sacrifice play like that?”

“Sacrifice, hell,” I said. “I’ve never seen a Cuban marksman yet who could hit a fifty-knot target on a dark night.” The fact that I’d actually seen very few Cuban marksmen was hardly worth mentioning, heroic as I was being. I went on confidently: “That little bomb of yours will take us right through them like a magic carpet; a bulletproof magic carpet.”

“Who do you think you’re kidding, darling? They’ll have everything out there short of sixteen-inch naval guns.”

I grinned. “So it is the Cuban allies. I wonder if they know they’re doing Mr. Manderfield’s Moscow-assigned chores for him. Well if they did, they probably wouldn’t care. They’ve got a thing about Yankees trespassing on their shores. Considering recent history, maybe you can’t blame them.” I looked at Harriet for a moment in the darkness. “Get the hell out of here, Hattie,” I said. “You hate my guts. You brought me here to see me die. That’s why you weren’t too unhappy when I made you come along; you’d even hoped for that, a little, and made arrangements in case it should work out that way. Although it involved a certain risk, being present at the kill was worth that much to you. Well, hop along and watch the show from the far end of Dog Key. I’ll make it fancy enough to suit me.”

She was looking at me steadily. I saw her shake her head. “No, you’re not that brave,” she said. “You’ve still got something up your sleeve.”

I said, “We’re wasting time. Dammit, Hattie, the whole world is crawling with people plugging to live forever. Well, it’s always seemed like a hell of a futile endeavor to me. On the record, nobody’s managed it yet. Methuselah racked up nine hundred years, they say, but I’ll bet the last eight hundred really weren’t much fun. Nobody else has even come close that I know of. Personally, I’m off the longevity kick. I figure, if I get to operate the way I like for a reasonable length of time, I won’t squawk if I don’t even quite get to finish out the first century.”

“And the way you like to operate is to go out of here at fifty knots right into the muzzles of those guns?”

I drew a long breath. “I was talking to a guy in Nassau just the other day,” I said patiently. “As a matter of fact, it was Pendleton, the man who was later killed in my cabin, remember? We were discussing an agent I’d left behind to die, in the line of duty, some years back. Well, maybe now it’s my turn to get left behind in the line of duty. Let’s try it and see. Now get those people out of here—”

She said harshly: “Okay, you big, brave, phony martyr. You win! Make your turn at the stake, damn you!”

“What?”

“The stake,” she said. “You remember, just before we came to the old overgrown spoil bank left when they dredged the harbor, and turned in here. There was a stake in the water, a marker, put up by the local fishermen. That’s where you cut out of the channel, right to course oh five five. Have you got that?”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I go out of here. I head out the channel. I come to the stake; and I turn right and run deliberately onto the shoals on course oh five five. Crunch. What happens then besides a lot of Cuban target practice?”

“Don’t be any more stupid than you have to be!” Harriet snapped. “Do you know anything about running a fast-planing boat in shallow water?”

“Brent said put her on top and keep her there.”

“That Brent had a little sense and a little seamanship, unlike some people I know! You’ve got about a hundred yards to get her going, once you hit the channel. When she’s up and planing, back off just a little so you don’t skid too wide on the turn. You haven’t got much room in there. The moment you’re around the stake and on course, give her everything. Ram those levers right up to the stops and forget them. Don’t dodge, don’t zigzag, don’t slow down, don’t look up from that compass, no matter what they throw at you. Oh five five and nothing either way. Keep her wide open. The depthfinder will go haywire. The steering will feel funny. Once in a while, maybe she’ll touch, and the tachs will jump around like crazy. Pay no attention. What’s it to you if you cream one of my props or blow one of my motors? Just keep her blasting. Do you understand?”

“It’s becoming clear, gradually,” I said.

“If you stop, if you even think of slowing down, if you let her settle at all, you’re dead,” she said. “You’ve got just about a seven-mile run through the shallows on that course, before you hit deep water. With a little luck you can make it. She’s on the big side for it; but on this tide I think she’ll clear everything if you just keep her planing right on top, really screaming. And the chances are they won’t have anything out there small and shallow and fast enough to chase you across the flats. They’ll have to go the long way around, following the channel and the edge of the reef, and by that time you’ll have a nice big lead. If you can’t shake them after that, with the speed you’ve got, to hell with you.”

She started to turn abruptly toward the nearby cruiser. I said, “Hattie, thanks.”

She looked back. I saw her grin crookedly in the dark. “Now you can have lots of fun deciding whether I’ve really given you the straight dope, or whether I’m running you onto a sandbar so they can shoot you to pieces. Try flipping a coin; maybe it will help.”

Then she was gone. A moment later she was up on the
Red Baron’s
flying bridge; and men fore and aft were taking in the docklines at her command. Anyway, if manpower would help, she had crew enough to run a Roman war galley. The red boat seemed to blend into the darkness a few moments after it pulled away from the dock. I couldn’t help remembering that I was blessed with a light-colored craft that a blind man could spot in a Nantucket fog. I was also blessed with a couple of passengers playing some kind of childish tag out in the dark, on an island that was going to be just a big hole in the ocean in just about thirty minutes....

He came in lugging her, with a minute to spare before the deadline I’d set myself. After all, even in Hattie’s nautical rocket, I had to give myself a little time to get clear. Having had to transport a few human bodies myself, from time to time, I could appreciate the strength of the big guy, marching in like that with a substantial young human female slung over his shoulder. One hand held her in place; the other carried something. As he came up, I saw that he had a pair of satin bedroom slippers there. Unique as Miss Phipps might be, and I certainly hoped she was, she apparently shared with her fellow-women the inability to stay in her shoes when the going got rough.

“Dump her in the stem and let’s go,” I said; but Haseltine placed her gently on the starboard seat, and put her footgear in her lap. I gave a shove, and threw the motors into gear as the boat slid away from the dock. I said, “Miss Phipps, your job is to hang on. This bucket will toss you overboard if you give it half a chance, once we’re up to speed, so grab a piece of that handrail and don’t let go for anything. Bill, if you don’t mind, get over here to port and brace yourself against the console. The choppers and clips are on the seat up there where you can reach them. I don’t suppose the lady knows how to reload a Thompson, so you’ll have to keep switching between them, feeding in new clips as you get the chance.”

“You sound as if you expect a real firefight,” Haseltine said, taking his post and reaching for a weapon. “Who’m I going to be shooting at?”

We glided past the ancient, rotting pier and the ugly stumps in the water. I said, “Does it matter, as long as they’re shooting back? When we get into the channel, I’ll hit the throttles; don’t get left behind. We’re not going to have time for any man-overboard drills tonight. A hundred yards, and there’ll be a sharp right turn; be ready for it. That should put your targets well off to port. Try for the lights; to hell with the guns and personnel. Okay?”

“If you say so, Admiral. Maybe Loretta should lie down—”

“That’s up to the lady. She’ll be safer down, but at the speed we’ll be going she’ll take an awful beating, bouncing around on that Fiberglas deck. How about it, Miss Phipps?”

“I... I’ll stay here, thanks.”

“Okay,” I said. The spoil bank was slipping past to starboard. The jungle had taken it over, but you could still see, after all the years, that the material beneath hadn’t got there naturally. It was the wrong shape. I made the turn into the channel and reached for the throttles. “Everybody ready? Here we go.”

They were out there, all right. Nothing happened at first, as we picked up speed; but then we came out of the shadow of the shore, and there were suddenly more searchlights ahead than you’d see at an old-fashioned Hollywood première. We were barely on plane before the Thompson was hammering at my left ear. Standing at the controls for a better view, I kept my eyes from the glaring lights, watching the black water rushing toward us as she came up and out. The Plexiglas windshield twanged loudly as something went through it. Lions one; Christians nothing. The nearest searchlight flamed out. One and one. Haseltine was cursing, or praying, in a language I’d never heard as, one gun empty, he reached for the other.

The narrow channel hampered them a bit. Without shooting each other’s ears off, only a few could have fun at one time. What they were, is anybody’s guess. They didn’t seem to be very big, but they had lots of firepower. In any case, I was trying very hard not to look at them and their damned lights and muzzle flashes. I was trying to concentrate on a stick protruding from the water ahead, nicely silhouetted by the glare. Haseltine opened up once more, in tidy little bursts.

“Hang on!” I yelled at him above the noise. “I’m coming right...
now!
”

I swung the wheel. The outboard leaned hard into the turn, shaving the stake. I said a quick little prayer of my own, and rammed the throttles forward. I’d thought we were moving pretty well already, but the burst of power was like a kick in the pants. The boat leaped ahead, just as everything landed where she’d been. Even with my eyes focused on the compass, I was aware of the ocean being turned inside-out astern.

The night was full of noise and flashing lights. The big outboards were howling out their eerie, banshee, full-throttle war song. Haseltine was reloading, cursing, and firing. Standing at the helm, I found my eyes watering in the fierce blast of air over the top of the windshield. There was no need for that now, I realized. I didn’t need the extra height now. All I had to see was the compass, for seven miles; and I could watch that sitting down. I sat down, out of the direct slipstream, holding her grimly on course.

We’d taken some more hits. I couldn’t tell where, but I’d felt them; but we were still afloat, still hurtling across the calm shallows with so little water under us that the depthfinder was giving no indication at all except for occasional crazy flashes all around the dial. The steering felt peculiar, as Harriet had said it would; and once in a while, as the props grazed something harder than water, the high scream of the motors would waver for an instant, only to come right back up to pitch once more. Still there were no hidden rocks to wreck us, no sandbars to bring us to a grinding halt, no coral heads to rip the bottom open....

I was aware that the black silhouette of the island was getting lower and more distant off the starboard quarter. Presently I realized that the searchlights astern were going out and the guns ceasing to fire back as we rocketed out of range. I saw that Haseltine had stopped shooting, presumably because a .45 slug won’t carry more than a hundred yards with any kind of accuracy. He sat down on the seat forward of the console. Steering by compass, I didn’t really need to see what was ahead, since I wasn’t going to stop for it anyway; but it seemed a funny place for an experienced seaman to pick, right in the helmsman’s line of vision. As the the thought came to me, the big guy collapsed and slid to the floor—excuse me, Hattie, the cockpit sole.