The Revengers (28 page)

Okay. So Mr. Bennett, with his knee-jerk anti-terrorist reactions, had been played for a fool by a bright young hippie with a beard, who presumably, after reading of the
Fairfax Constellation
incident and realizing its connection with the other sinkings, had sent threatening ransom notes to various shipping firms in the name of an activist group with a crazy title; but they’ve all got crazy titles these days, Symbionese Liberation Army, for God’s sake! The companies had naturally gotten in touch with the Office of Federal Security. The head of that august organization had advised paying up, undoubtedly with the intention of trapping or tracing whoever came for the money; but apparently the kid with the Mephistopheles whiskers had been too smart for him, setting up a very tricky drop, as he’d said, and getting clean away with the money.

All this must have happened, I realized, before I’d encountered Bennett’s men in my room in the hotel in Nassau. It explained why Bennett had been so desperate to have Eleanor to himself that he’d even been prepared to take her from another agency at gunpoint. He’d hoped to retrieve the situation with the data she could give him, or he thought she could give him—I had a hunch that, without Mac’s intervention, and mine, she’d have had a very hard time at his hands. He’d known that she’d been working on the case for weeks; he’d undoubtedly convinced himself that she must have come across something he could use, and to hell with freedom of the press. His career and reputation were on the line. He was, at the very least, the man who’d advised payment and then lost the payment. It seemed likely that by this time the dreadful suspicion had crossed his mind that he’d been suckered into paying off the wrong man and the wrong gang.

Total ruin stared him in the face; and then I’d gotten that phone call telling him where he could strike with at least a possibility of getting back the money and saving himself and his organization from public disgrace. But the people who’d tricked him could obviously not be allowed to survive. He could not afford to have them describing happily, in court, how easily they’d conned the director of the OFS out of a million bucks of other people’s money. Hell, if that happened, they might even go free on a nationwide wave of laughter at the agency’s expense. Something was needed to discredit them, like, say, a dead body brutally murdered by those vicious young terrorist criminals when they were cornered like the rats they were— after which a massacre could take place quite justifiably. But what dead body? Obviously it should be a dead government body. And what more suitable defunct govern mental torso could be found than that of the loudmouthed jerk, who’d bluffed Mr. Bennett into backing down shamefully in the presence of his men. . . .

Suddenly the guns were silent. I heard the distant rattle of a magazine being removed and replaced somewhere on shore, and the soft voice of the sandy man, Burdette, “That’s enough, you trigger-happy young punk. Hold your fire.”

It was time to drift silently away before they boarded the houseboat and started examining the canal beyond for potential targets; but a movement caught my eye. Something had stirred at one of the shot-out windows. Incredibly, somebody was still alive in the bullet-riddled hulk. Slowly two heads appeared, not just one: the blond head of the girl and the dark head of the whiskered man. Well, it was a good demonstration of what you can accomplish by spraying a lot of lead around haphazardly—and what you can’t. The man was behind the girl, steadying her, urging her on. There was blood on his face.

“Easy now,” I heard him whisper. “Go straight over the side, slip out of that glamor-rag, leave it floating for them to shoot at, and swim under water as far as you can. . .”

“Elmer?” Her voice was thin with shock, but there was more to her than I’d thought; she could still remember her friends.

“Elmer’s dead. When I say go—”

“You?”

“Right behind you, baby. Now go!”

They rose together, the man knocking away some broken glass with his bare hand to clear the way for her, freeing her long garment when it snagged, boosting her into the opening with, I could see, the last of his strength. He wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it; he was just holding himself together by sheer willpower long enough to get her away.

Then the deckhouse door slid open and a machine pistol opened up. I saw the bearded man deliberately interpose his dying body between his small blond lady and this new hail of death; but in a moment he fell away and left her helplessly balanced on the sill. Her body jerked sharply several times as she clung there. There was enough light that I could see the shocked and unbelieving expression on her pretty face. A little blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she made a vague attempt to wipe it away with her sleeve; then her lips parted and a thick dark torrent poured down the front of the beautiful robe her boyfriend had bought her to introduce her to the rich and beautiful life. She teetered there a moment longer, and let go, and fell back out of sight.

Well, people who try to find Eldorado in other people’s bank accounts can’t complain too loudly when they get caught. Still, the kids hadn’t really hurt anybody, except in the pocketbook. Although I’m a fairly violent guy myself and perhaps should feel otherwise, I make a very sharp distinction between muscle crimes and brain crimes, or, if you prefer, crimes of violence and so-called white-collar crimes. Endangering a man’s life is one thing; endangering his money is, I feel, a considerably less heinous offense. Hell, as long as they leave you with life and health, you can always go out and make more money. It’s when they kill or cripple you that things get serious. These young folks hadn’t inflicted any physical damage on anybody. The savage retribution that had struck them seemed like, if you’ll pardon the word, overkill.

But it was no time for sentimental reflections. If you play with rough people, rough things happen to you. I eased myself forward along the houseboat’s side and waited in the shadow of the blunt overhanging bow. I’d barely established myself there when the vessel rocked noticeably in response to the weight of the other two joining Lawson on board. I knew it was Lawson who’d hit the door and done the final shooting because I’d heard his voice back there right afterward telling the others it was okay to come in now. After a little, I heard stumbling footsteps and violent retching sounds; that was young Ellershaw losing his dinner over the rail after discovering that firing at live targets wasn’t quite the same as practicing on the OFS range. The other two came out on deck.

“As soon as lie stops puking,” I heard Lawson say, “take him ashore and spread out and find that guy and take care of him. Dammit, I had him right in my sights, but he moved too fast. . .

“No.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Burdette replied coolly. “I don’t go into heavy brush after wounded grizzlies, and I don’t prowl vacant lots at night after a guy like that, particularly not after I’ve helped try to kill him. Hell, the man’s a pro. He’s out there right now waiting for us. I’m not taking a green kid—and I do mean green, look at him—and playing tag with that character in the dark. You want Mr. Helm, you go chase him yourself.”

“Listen, we’ve got to—”

“You got to. I don’t got to. Now if you want to rearrange things slightly on board, make them look better for our side, stick guns in people’s hands and such before we call in the police, give the orders. But suicide orders I don’t take, and I’m not letting the kid go out there, either. He’s an okay kid except he gets a bit excited, and you’re not sending him out to get killed by a professional manhunter he can’t begin to handle. You feel brave, you try it. I’m a yellow-bellied coward and I’m staying right here. And I’m not even staying here very long if you don’t make up your cottonpicking mind.”

“You’ll hear about this, Burdette!”

“That’s right, I’ll hear about it. Dead men don’t hear so good.”

“Actually, Helm’s probably long gone by this time. Hell, he knows he’s outgunned; he didn’t have anything on him but a lousy little thirty-eight.”

“Go ahead, talk yourself into it. You’re not talking me into it, or the kid here. And if you want us to help you rig that mess inside so it looks a little more convincing, you’d better tell us how you want it done before the stuff congeals. Or before somebody sends some cops to investigate the goddamned Battle of Miami.” There was a little pause, and I heard Burdette speaking in a different, gentler voice, “Come on, Sonny. If you’re going to shoot at them, you’re going to have to learn to look at them.”

They moved inside where I couldn’t hear them. I pad-died gently toward the dock and found myself a spot where a big piling gave me protection and a crossbeam gave me something to stand on. I waited. Eventually, having put his gang to work, Lawson came. They never learn, particularly the ones with fancy gold badges. Well, that wasn’t quite right. Burdette had learned; he knew. But this one couldn’t conceive of the possibility that there were people around who could get tired of having revolvers and submachine guns waved their way, and even fired their way, by wonderful, important Mr. Lawson. He’d had two cracks at me and that was enough. Besides, a dead body was still needed, badly, and I wasn’t about to offer mine.

His thick figure came around the deckhouse, heading for the ladder. He heaved himself up and reached up to lay his weapon on the dock above so he’d have both hands free to climb with. It was really very unsporting of me. He didn’t have a chance, any more than the girl in the deckhouse window had had a chance. I just leaned over a bit for a clear target and shot him four times in the body, through the ladder. It was wasteful, one bullet would probably have done the job, two would have been perfectly adequate insurance, but I wanted to be absolutely certain and, besides, I was curious about whether or not the cartridges would all fire after the way they’d been submerged. But they do very well with ammunition these days.

He clung there for a despairing second or two after the last shot, like the dying hippie girl; then he tumbled limply back onto the deck. I pitched the weapon down there and watched it slide along the deck and come to rest against the motionless body. A moment later, young Ellershaw came charging around the deckhouse, submachine gun ready; but Burdette was close behind him, and clamped a strong hand on his shoulder as he prepared to spray the neighborhood with unaimed fire.

“Easy, Sonny.”

“But he shot Mr. Lawson! He can’t have gone far!”

Burdette was leaning over the body. He rose holding the revolver—my revolver, but we don’t carry weapons that can be traced. Burdette didn’t look toward the dock at all, but his voice was loud and clear as he said, “It’s too damned bad, but at least we’ve got us a nice corpse with the bullet holes in front. I wasn’t looking forward to arguing that little detail with the medical examiner, the way it was originally set up. And we’ve even got a gun to match the holes. Come on, Junior, lend a hand and let’s fix the pretty picture so we can report to Mr. Godalmighty Bennett how his fine upstanding agent died heroically at the hands of those murderous activists. . .

I slipped away while they were taking care of it. It was a long hike along the canal to the marina Brent had told me about; and several times I had to dive for cover as police cars went by, heading for the scene of the crime at last. The little pickup truck was parked with some other cars in the marina lot and I attracted no attention getting it away. When I’d put a safe distance behind me, I stopped at a gas station, closed at that hour, and used the public phone there. I hadn’t expected to catch Brent himself, since he’d been assigned to watch over Eleanor Brand; but he was supposed to have somebody covering the phone in his absence. I was totally unprepared for hearing Martha Devine’s voice.

“I thought you were in Washington by this time,” I said.

“Who said I was going to Washington? I just went to the airport to see Daddy off; then I. . . Matt.”

Her voice warned me. “Trouble?”

“Yes. Your friend, Mr. Brent’s been hurt and he wanted to be sure you came to the hospital as soon as you could. He said . . . he said for you to shoot your way in if you had to, but he
had
to see you right away.”

Assorted fears went through my mind very quickly.

“You don’t know. . . .”

“I know very little, Matt. Just that the poor boy wants you badly; he insisted on my coming here to wait for your call so I could make you understand it was very important.”

“How the hell did you get mixed up in? . . . Never mind. What hospital?”

“St Margaret’s.” She gave me the address. “I’ll meet you at the information desk. . . . Oh, Matt.”

“What?”

“Don’t be too hard on him. I’m sure he did his best.”

You learn to turn it off. There was absolutely no point in my wearing out the brain cells as I drove by, wondering how badly Brent was hurt or what was happening to Eleanor Brand in his absence. That information would be forthcoming in due time. Speculating about it beforehand could gain me nothing.

One unpleasant subject that I had to consider right away, however, was the possibility that I, like Bennett, had been played for a sucker. Rather belatedly, I was beginning to realize that, if the anonymous telephone lady with the husky voice had merely wanted to direct Bennett’s attention to those grubby kids calling themselves the Sacred Earth Protective Force, she could have called Bennett directly. Why had she brought me into it at all? Unless she knew Bennett’s reputation well enough to know that he’d never have shared the dangerous information with us if it had been given to him alone. He’d have managed without us somehow.

The way she’d done it, however, through me, she could be fairly certain that, having received the address and dutifully passed it on as interdepartmental cooperation re-

quired, I’d very probably take a part in the ensuing action, meaning that I would, at least for a little while, be unavailable for bodyguard duty. The job of watching over Eleanor Brand would temporarily devolve upon somebody else. It was likely that, lulled by the total lack of activity to date— after all, the only threat to Eleanor’s well-being since I’d been watching over her had been Bennett’s own abortive action—we would not go to the trouble of hastily importing another experienced senior agent, of whom we don’t have an unlimited number, for a mere evening’s protection of a lady who seemed to be in no real danger at the moment. We’d simply make do with what we had at hand.