The Last Family

56

The four interlopers crouched at the Shadowfax’s stern and stared at the sight Martin had constructed. Woody’s mouth was covered with duct tape. His forearms were duct-taped together from the elbows to the wrists. His fingers looked like twisted oak limbs with the bark removed in places where broken bones showed through the skin. When he rolled his head up, Paul thought his eyes had been gouged out but realized that someone had packed the sockets as well as the ear canals with caulk.

“Dear God,” Paul whispered. Woody was living in a dark, silent world where there was only pain for stimulation.

Ted crossed himself and pulled a knife out of a boot holster to cut the ropes that held the young baby-sitter to the mast.

Paul grabbed his wrist, stopping him as he started the first cut. Then he circled around behind Woody and saw what he had expected. A small, all but invisible trip wire led from Woody’s waist to a coil of cotton rope. He looked into the coil and saw a fragmentary grenade wired to a chrome stanchion. The trip wire had been wrapped around the pin, and the pin had been pulled out so that only a small bit of the tip was still providing purchase and holding the device’s spoon in place. Just to make sure it would come out easily, there was grease on the pin to kill any friction. Hell of an alarm system! He pointed it out to the others and pushed the pin back so that it was fully locking the detonator, then bent the metal slightly, using Ted’s knife, so that it would take a hard tug to pull it out. Then he took the cop’s knife and cut the trip wire. They lifted Woody and laid him on the deck. He was alive but mercifully unconscious.

Paul took one of the extra Mae Wests from its carry pouch and secured it around him. Then, with the help of the others, they dropped Woody into the sailboat’s wake. He bobbed there, his head and shoulders out of the water, then disappeared into the wall of rain in their wake.

They began moving slowly and silently up the side of the boat. Thorne stopped to cover the aft cabin door; Ted knelt with his back to Thorne’s and kept his gun trained on the cockpit door. From his position Ted could cover the cockpit and the door to the galley. He would see whoever was coming up before they could see him. Paul and Brooks moved slowly and quietly the length of the boat to the cabin in the bow.

Paul removed the snap buckle from the hatch’s hasp, tossed it into the lake, and eased the door open. The music from Erin’s radio escaped, and the first thing he saw was Reb’s upturned face, filled with surprise. Paul put his finger to his lips for silence as he held out his other hand.

Laura looked up and beamed. “Paul!” she whispered. “Okay!” She grabbed Reb by the waist and held him up to his father like an offering. Paul pulled him free and into the rain, then reached in for Laura.

Brooks laid his machine gun on the deck and put a Mae West on the shivering child.

Paul pulled Laura up and into his arms. She kissed him hard on the lips. The policeman handed her a Mae West, and she started to put it on.

“Erin?” she whispered.

“At the yacht club. Fine. You two go on over the side. Brooks will stay with you. There’s a boat behind us that’ll pick you up in a minute or so.”

“Where’s Wolf?” Reb asked.

“With Erin. Safe.”

“Biscuit!” Reb said. “Biscuit’s in there!”

“It’s just a bird, Reb,” Laura said.

“He’s not just a bird! Daddy, he trusts me and they’ll kill him. I know they will.”

“Where is he?” Paul asked.

“Down there by the bed. Please let me go get him.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” the policeman said.

“No, I’ll get him,” Paul said. “You just do what I say.”

The young policeman put the machine pistol’s strap on his shoulder, grabbed Reb in his arms, and stepped to the railing. “Come quickly, ma’am,” he said.

“Biscuit?” Reb said, fighting to get loose from the policeman’s grip.

“Reb, trust me.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

“Cross your heart?”

“Promise. You take care of your mother till I get there. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Ready?” Brooks asked.

Reb nodded and pinched his nose closed as the cop tightened his grip on the child’s waist. Then, as Laura’s and Reb’s eyes stayed locked, the cop took Laura’s hand, and they all three went over the rail and out of Paul’s sight.

“Good-bye,” he whispered. “May God keep you safe.” He moved to where Thorne and Ted were.

“Okay,” he said. “I want you two over the side, too.”

“What?” Thorne said. “You nuts?”

“Thorne, I don’t need you now. Take him and go. Follow in the Cheetah and make sure Martin doesn’t get away if it goes wrong. Please?”

Thorne shook his head. “No. I’m staying until we drop the hammer on these assholes. You just want to have all the fun.”

The policeman looked at his watch. “I don’t have to be home for two hours yet,” he said. “Let’s put this franchise out of business.”

“Okay, then,” Paul said. “I’ll go in from the V berth. Wait two minutes, or until you hear the first shot, and then come in. Thorne, the aft cabin. Ted, you come in through the cockpit. We have to take them by surprise, before they can think to set the bomb off.”

“Good luck, Paul,” Thorne said.

“I don’t need luck,” he said. “I got looks.”

Paul went back to the V berth and opened the hatch. He tossed the cane down onto the bed. Then he followed it in. He looked around. The bird was in the cage on the dresser. He smiled at Reb’s attempt at drownproofing the caged bird. But there was probably no way to save the bird, he decided. Can’t let it go-it can’t fly with clipped wings, and it sure as hell can’t swim. He took the cage’s handle and, using his cane tip, placed it up onto the deck in the rain.

“friggin’ two-dollar bird,” he whispered.

He looked at what Laura had been doing before he’d interrupted, and once again smiled. She had peeled the end of the looted lamp cord, wrapped the frayed copper ends around the knob, and plugged it back into the outlet. She had planned to fry Martin. The cord, with its off on switch, would fire up the door. She had a flowerpot filled with water, which he imagined she had planned to pour under the door when Martin came. Whoever opened the door could have been electrocuted. Paul imagined the circuit was on a ground-fault interrupter, which would break the current before any harm was done. So the effort would have failed, but he was damned proud of her ingenuity. He was sorry that he’d never get to tell her how proud he was of her, how much he loved her, and how deeply sorry he was that he had destroyed their happiness. Maybe she’d know anyway.

Then, as he was ready to move to the door, the knob lever turned. “Open the door, Laura,” Martin said.

Paul walked over, held the gun up, unlocked and opened it. He wouldn’t have recognized Martin, but he was delighted at the pure shock that was painted across the new face. He wondered fleetingly what had happened to Martin that had required a field stitching. Paul had the drop on Martin. His hands were at his side, empty.

“Paul!” he said.

“Surprised, asshole? You invited me.”

Paul held the cocked Colt against Martin’s head while he patted him down with the left. He removed the electronic trigger from Martin’s pocket and used his teeth to open it. Then he pulled the nine-volt battery out, dropped the device to the floor, and smashed it flat with his heel.

“Where’s your little pal?”

Martin shrugged. “Kurt? You know how hard it is to keep up with the help.”

“Where’s Reid?”

“You mean Mr. Spivey?”

Paul nodded.

“About now I imagine he’s telling some convoluted tale to St. Peter. So T.C. really didn’t tell you about Reid, did he?”

“That shouldn’t matter to you, Martin.”

“No.” He smiled. “But the question is why he didn’t warn the others. Might have got at me sooner, don’t you imagine? Didn’t warn you that your days were at an end, either, did he?” Martin laughed, pleased with himself. “He never liked you, you know,” he said softly. “Politics at its most lethal. You gonna kill him for it? No, you aren’t a killer, are you? I never have figured out what you are… besides lucky. You should have died in Miami.”

Paul peered over Martin’s shoulder into the empty lounge, the galley, and the darkened hallway.

“Where’s the little family? Upstairs? Gone? And I thought they were enjoying the cruise.” He laughed, and Paul saw that there was no fear in his eyes. He looked happy, even excited. Paul knew the time had come to shoot him, but his trigger finger remained at rest.

“Okay, Paul, what’s next?”

An alarm went off inside Paul’s head. He isn’t worried. The bomb. There’s another triggering device with… Where’s Steiner? Paul’s answer came by way of a flash from the darkened hallway. Then he was falling backward, shot. It was almost as though he had simply lost his balance, except for the pressure in his upper chest.

As he lay on his back beside the bed, he heard the rattle of Ted’s machine gun fill the lounge and the answering bark of another machine gun, unsilenced, deafening. He lifted his head and looked at the doorway where Martin had been. The pain wasn’t there yet, but his left shoulder was shattered, useless. He tried to get up, but he was like a flipped turtle. Then the pain found a path through the natural defenses, and it was blinding. Paul flailed at the bed, reaching for the cane, but it was beyond his fingers somewhere.

There was a pitched battle being waged on the boat, and he couldn’t move. He cursed and reached deep down inside himself for the strength he needed. Maybe Martin thought he was dead. He raised up again to look for his Colt, but it was gone. Either in Martin’s hand or it had fallen into the lounge. He tried to steady his thoughts, concentrate, but the pain was searing his mind, filling him with panic. Unbidden, a memory was flowing back. Something that had been lost to him for six years.

He was remembering something he had not supposed he could ever recall-something the doctors assured him was lost forever to the trauma. He remembered the dock in Miami, seeing the doors of the shipping container opening, and he remembered seeing the dark faces of the men behind brown sacks of sand. He saw the surprise on the Colombians’ faces that they were alive, that the bomb had not gone off when the doors opened, the trip wire had failed. He remembered them bringing up their guns as Barnett or Hill pulled him back and both took position in front of him to protect him with their own bodies. He saw, over their shoulders, the flashes from the Mac-10s. And he saw, as he fell backward, a slow, silent ballet of blood and brains turning and falling through the air above him as he fell.

Paul lay there on his back against the carpeted floor with his mouth open, needing to cry but knowing there wasn’t time, fighting his way back from the then to the now. Those two boys in Miami had sacrificed their lives for his, and no one but he had seen it. They could have stayed safely on the side, but he had been in the line of fire. Had they known they were trading their lives for his?

Was that why I kept seeing them?