Seafire

24 – SeaFire

The minutes became hours; hours became days. There was no question of sleep for Bond now. Every nerve and sinew had become alert, nervously jumpy with anxiety. It was not often that he allowed problems to so besiege his mind, but this was Fredericka, the woman he loved. The woman he intended to marry. In his mind a terrible ghost from the past appeared: a blurred picture of his first wife of only a few hours, Tracy di Vicenzo, lying dead, her face buried in the ruins of the steering wheel of his Lancia, which had been raked with bullets fired by his old enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

The picture was overlapped in his head, Tracy's features going through a metamorphosis, changing to Flicka's own sweet face. If anything has happened to her, he thought, then pushed even the idea away. He had already made up his mind to bring Sir Max Tarn to justice, dead or alive. If anything has happened… death would not be enough for Tarn.

The picture returned, and with it a kind of certainty that there was something wrong. With that certainty came a new sense of hatred toward Max Tarn. In his long career, Bond had rarely allowed any true emotion to exist between himself and any target he had followed or dealt with. Now there was true anger, a fury that seemed to rend him apart. If he had the fortune to come out of this alive and face Tarn, it would be face-to-face.

At around six o'clock, his worst fears were confirmed. They had stopped engines and were simply running silent, hove to under the sea. He had heard the captain say that it would take them only a half hour to get into position. "No sense in pushing our way in too early," he had told Goodwin.

Now the captain and Goodwin had walked back toward the stem, pacing along the deck as though taking a little exercise. They traversed the deck twice and finally stopped almost underneath the hatch where Bond was curled, not moving a muscle.

"So what happens when Sir Max proves his point with this AAOPS thing?" the captain asked.

"God knows." Maurice Goodwin's voice was flat, with no hint of how he really felt. "I suspect that I shall quietly disappear. I've saved enough money to keep myself comfortable for the rest of my natural, in Rio or some other place. I just don't want to be around if he gets his party really organized in Germany. The way things are in Europe, the mood of the people, leaves the way open for him. If that happens, true hell's going to return, and this time the madman could win."

"Ye'd leave the Man, then?"

"I suggest, Jock, that you grab your money and get the hell out as quickly as you can. I'm pretty sure that this AAOPS thing is unworkable. There's going to be disaster up there when you slam the fish into that tanker, and I've no doubt that the authorities will do their best to hunt him down. The man's mad, Jock. Mad as a hatter, but he's bloody clever. I wouldn't count on him getting caught, and if he is…"

"You think he'll let himself be caught?"

"You mean he'd rather be a suicide? Oh, no. Max will always think he's in the right, just as he has no true conception of right or wrong. Men like me – and you, for that matter – know where we stand. We know the things we've done and we can differentiate between good and, evil. Not so with Max. He has to be in the right. If he murdered his mother and was caught standing over her with the ax in his hand, he would have some argument, however spurious, to show that he was really doing the right thing. He's also a bad enemy to have. If you'd seen the things I've seen, Jock, you'd know."

After a few seconds' pause, the captain asked, "Wasn't there some talk of people actually after him, here in Puerto Rico?"

"Indeed, yes. One of them's still out there somewhere. British and American intelligence people. We've got the Yank and the Brit woman at the house. They're there with Beth. You've met Beth, haven't you?"

"Aye, and I'd rather not spend too much time with her. In fact, it wouldn't worry me if I never laid eyes on her again."

"She's Max's secret weapon, and a very nasty weapon at that. He provides the drugs and she gets her rocks off providing the pain and even death."

"She's not killed the Yank and the Brit?"

"Not yet, but give her time; with Max not around to control her, Beth could get homicidal. Strange woman. I've seen her kind and tender, but when she's on the drugs and Max suggests things to her, it's a different matter. Mind you, those two girls, Cathy and Anna, they can be deadly. They'll fight like trained soldiers."

"I thought as much. They like teasing the men as well."

"Either of them would sleep with a goat if they thought it'd give them pleasure."

Bond, stretching and trying to get his circulation going, had listened to the exchange with the kind of horror most people had when they faced a cobra, or even something less deadly, like a scorpion.

At least he knew Flicka was still alive, or had been when Goodwin last saw her. For the umpteenth time during that long day, his hand moved toward his pistol. Part of his senses told him to go now, try to take out the crew and to blazes with anyone else: just get to Flicka and make sure she was out of danger. The more sensible part of his emotions held him back. After all, it wouldn't be so long now.

His watch ticked on, and he began to glance at it automatically about once a minute. Finally, at around seven in the evening, they began to move again.

Half an hour later he heard the captain call, "Up periscope." The mechanism whined and shortly after: "Five degrees to port." At seven-thirty exactly the captain gave the final order. "Stop engines. We're there and Golden Bough is coming in. I can see her heading straight towards the headland. She's on time, and I reckon we'll have her bang in the sights at twenty hundred. On the button."

Another wait, and Bond's watch showed seven thirty-five. Fifteen minutes before his plastique would blow the boat to hell. Time to start getting ready. He slowly rose, his legs, arms, and back protesting after the hunched position they had been forced into all day.

From the control room he heard, "Mare Nostrum's up on our port side ready to go in. Fifty yards to port and holding steady. Stand by."

He took down one of the Steinke Hoods, then reached up, pulling himself toward the trunk. As he moved, the Hood slipped from his fingers and went clattering onto the deck.

He froze, then quietly began stretching back for another hood. As he moved, his right ankle was caught in what seemed like a steel trap. There was an immense tug, and he fell down onto the metal deck. Leaning over him was the huge shape of Kurt Rollen, who hissed, "Du englischer Schweinehund." For a fraction of a second, Bond found the words both amusing and apt, then two ham like hands grabbed him by the shoulders, lifted him high in the air, and dropped him on the deck again. He drew up his knees into a fetal position, then shot his legs forward with all the strength he could muster, his heels catching Rollen just below the knees.

The German gave out a gruff cry, half anguish and half rage, as he staggered back against a stanchion. Big he might be, but he was far from being agile. Rollen hit the metal hard, his arms waving about like branches in a whirlwind.

It gave Bond just enough time to draw his knife, and he moved in very fast, the knife held in the classic position – thumb down and fingers curling over the haft, blade forward. He threw himself onto Rollen, who was flailing around trying to get up. The blade of the knife slid home, like pushing a spade into soft ground.

Rollen managed one terrifying cry before he weakened and fell back with blood fountaining from his stomach.

The clatter and cry would certainly bring someone from the control room, so Bond slid the knife back into its scabbard and leaped upward, toward the hatch, grabbing another Steinke Hood, then scrambling into the trunk. He heard shouts and the clank of feet on the deck just before dropping the circular bottom hatch into place and rotating the wheel to lock it, making the trunk not only completely watertight but also impenetrable.

Adjusting the belt to ensure his automatic and the knife were both well strapped on, Bond turned the two palm-sized wheel taps, glancing at his watch to see that he now had very little time left. Water began to flood the compartment, much more quickly than he recalled from his last practice in one of these escapes. He put on the Steinke Hood, securing it and screwing the valve on to the air port, making sure that his head remained in the bubble at the top of the hatch.

By now the water was up to his shoulders and rising rapidly. He saw the pinpoint of light come on to show that his air reservoir was full, twisted so that he was free of the air port. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his watch. It was seven forty-six.

The water came rushing up over his head and the upper hatch popped open, catapulting him upward.

Though he rocketed to the surface in a matter of seconds, the journey seemed to take endless minutes, and when he burst through into the night above, he was completely disoriented. Just darkness, then the lights from San Juan. Tearing at the headpiece, he pulled it off, sucking in great gulps of air and kicking with his arms and legs to get moving again. He looked around a full 360 degrees and saw Mare Nostrum, with only her riding lights on, less than thirty feet away.

He began to swim, circling so that he would come in astern of Mare Nostrum, and was also aware of the sound of other engines nearby. There, coming through the channel, directly past the headland from which El Morro rose like a long stone battleship, was Golden Bough.

He reached the stern of Mare Nostrum just as he felt the shock wave. For a second he did not associate it with what he had done, taking it as some freak undertow. The sea seemed to lift around him, swirling like a whirlpool, catching him with dozens of hands bent on pulling him down. Then the explosion came from under the sea, a great whooming sound followed by a plume of white water that was the precursor of an even larger, long bubble. It was as though three or four depth charges had exploded just under the surface.

He reached out, grabbing at a rope dangling from Mare Nostrum's stern, and hung on, the sea still grappling with him as if it were a human thing, a primeval being turning him around and then throwing him upward. Mare Nostrum was pitching and rolling with the boiling sea, and he finally got both hands on the rope, dragging himself up and over the stern.

There were shouts and noises coming from for'ard around the wheelhouse, and he had no guilt about what he was about to do. Unholstering the pistol, he slipped off the safety and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Connie? Connie Spicer?"

"What the hell…?" Connie lumbered from the wheel-house, peering back toward him, clinging on to keep his balance on the still-pitching deck.

Bond fired four shots, two and then another two, grouped nicely around the chest area. Spicer did not cry out or even look surprised, but went in the blink of an eye from alive to dead. His body, lifted by the bullets as they slammed home, seemed to rise slowly and levitate parallel to the deck as though hanging there before it was flung against the guardrail over which it pitched.

Vesta Motley was screaming, and he could see Fritz on the deck where Connie had stood, holding out his hands in supplication.

"It's me." Bond ran forward, the deck still moving under his feet. Over the bows he could see the sea bubbling white, with pieces of debris beginning to be thrown up. As he ran, he wondered how he could see all this in the darkness of the night, then saw that the big tanker, even half a mile away, had two searchlights playing on the water.

"Mr. Bond!" Anton Fritz's mouth hung open as he saw the tall figure trying to run toward him.

"Yes! Now, start those bloody engines for me. I've a previous appointment to keep!"

"What happened?" from Rexinus within the wheelhouse.

"Never mind what happened. I just saved you from death by fire. Get those throttles wide open and head out of the harbor. Fast as you can."

"Was that the submarine?" Rexinus had gone from panic to sudden cool, pushing the throttles forward so that Bond had to grab at the wheelhouse doorway. The bows lifted, turned to circle the huge looming supertanker as Rexinus swung the wheel to take them out of the harbor.

"I want you to take her around the headland. I've got to make some kind of landing on the ocean side, as near to the rocks below El Morro as you can."

"Aye-aye," Rexinus shouted back. Then repeated, "The submarine? What happened to the submarine?"

"I think the crew must have been eating too much Indian food." Bond did not even smile. He was bracing himself against the wheelhouse and sliding a new magazine into the butt of the ASP 9mm converted Browning.

They were rounding the headland now, where the walls of the lowest part of El Morro reach down toward the rocks. "How near do you want to get?" Rexinus shouted.

"As near as you can manage. I've got to make it to those grassy slopes on the other side of the rocks."

"Don't think I'll quite be able to get you right in."

"I'll get over the rocks myself. Just bring her in as close as you can."

Fritz and Vesta Motley were speechless, soaking wet and white with fear. Then the bullets came, smashing into the woodwork on the deck as an automatic weapon opened up from the lower wall of El Morro.

"Far enough!" Bond yelled. "Get down. I'm going over the side." He saw the surf and the rocks coming up to meet him, climbed over the guardrail, and, as the boat dipped on the turn, dropped into the white foam.

It was luck rather than skill that got him over the jagged rocks. As he went into the water the tide was pulling back, gathering itself for another journey inland to slap into the shore. He was able to put his arms around one of the larger, slippery boulders and ride out the crashing waves until the sea drew back again, allowing him to move in over the old sea-worn stones. Halfway and he found another point between two rocks, where he hung on as the sea vented its force on him. The tide sucked back again, and on the third attempt, he made it over the final barrier and onto the rough grass above.

As he lay on all fours, winded and gasping for breath, a figure rose from the ground in front of him and snapped, "Who goes?"