A Five Year Plan

Chapter Twenty-one

‘What took you?’ growled Al. ‘Or did you feel impelled to fuck that Fed bitch again? For old times’ sake.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Dave told him. ‘The way it turned out was something rather more poetic than just a straight fuck.’

Al laughed. ‘Nothing’s more poetic than a straight fuck, shit for brains. Except maybe one that deviates up her ass or something. All those books in prison must have turned your dick to Jell-O.’ Al wiped his sweating forehead and bare arms with a bar towel he had taken from the last boat he’d been on. ‘You were right about one thing though.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘This FBI shit works better than a gun. You just tell people what to do, snap your fingers like Mary fuckin’ Poppins, and they do it. It’s better than a gun. And no questions asked.’

Dave said, ‘It’s like I was telling you. Alias Smith and Jones. There’s no need to shoot anyone if you’re wearing that badge on your chest.’

‘Tell that to David Koresh. One thing though. You do uncover a lot of bad shit when you just walk in on people uninvited. That bitch on the Jade for instance. Rachel Dana?’

‘What about her?’

‘Bitch was in bed with one of the girls in her crew. Pair of them as naked as the day they hatched. I didn’t know whether to flash my dick or my badge. Lesbians, the pair of them. I swear they were both attached to the same fuckin’ dildo. Like they was on a life-support system.’

They were on the Duke’s port stern stack, looking back up toward the bow of the ship. Al threw the towel into the pitching sea with disgust and lit a cigar.

‘I’d forgotten about your homophobia,’ said Dave. He shrugged, ‘Hey, whatever floats your boat.’

‘I’m not homophobic,’ Al insisted. ‘But I just can’t figure that dildo shit. I mean if you’re a dyke, it means pussy’s your thing. If you want eight inches of length inside you, you might as well choose the real thing, right? ’Sted of some plastic dick looks like it belongs in a toy store. I mean, how do you figure it?’

‘Doctor Ruth, I’m not,’ said Dave. ‘What did they say, after you interrupted them?’

‘They were kind of pissed at me. But I told them I didn’t care what they got up to. Or what got up them. They could fuck a cat with a broken back for all I cared just as long as they stayed on their boat. Less they wanted to get their heads blown off.’

‘That was cute,’ said Dave. ‘OK, how many boats have we got left to visit?’

‘Apart from our three Russians? Just the one.’ Al pointed at the Britannia. ‘That one. The getaway from it all boat.’

‘Good work. You’ve been busy.’

‘Like I said. This FBI thing works like beetlejuice.’

‘Take a breather. I’ll handle the Britannia.’

‘Be my guest. Hey did you know Calgary Stanford is on this ship? The movie actor? He was hitting a pipe when I caught up with him. Lousy doper.’

‘Takes all sorts to make a world, Al. Least that’s what it says in the Bible, doesn’t it?’ Dave started to walk down the stairs toward the stern of the Britannia.

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘Well, you’re the Catholic, aren’t you?’

‘Ain’t you heard? Catholic Church don’t like people reading the Bible. They used to grease you for it.’

In the moonlight the sea looked like something animate, like the scaly skin of some enormous reptile. Perhaps even the one he was feeling like. He thought he’d given Kate a choice — to come with him or to stay on the boat. But really he’d given her no choice at all. And she wouldn’t have been the girl he loved if she’d agreed to come with him. He knew that and it didn’t make him feel any better about himself.

Dave stepped onto the deck of the Britannia still unaware of the special cargo that was concealed inside the yacht’s enlarged fuel tanks. He was set to impress those on board with his impeccable credentials. With all that he and Al still had left to do, he’d forgotten that Kate Furey and her Fed friends had been keeping someone else under surveillance. There was no way he could know that the Britannia’s crew might feel a little less sanguine than most about being boarded by the FBI. His heart was still in bed with Kate. His mind was already boarding the first Russian boat where he expected to encounter the real resistance. Not to mention the money.

The Britannia looked quiet enough, although the owner’s taste left something to be desired. Flashing his Maglite around the lounge, Dave liked the furniture well enough, but the art on the oak-panelled walls was the worst kind of kitsch — the kind of bland stuff you bought with both eyes on the room’s color scheme. He went downstairs. When he had real money he was going to buy some real art. Paintings. Not interior decoration.

Below deck, in the three en-suite staterooms, all was quiet. Dave opened the first door to find a twin-bedded cabin. There were clothes all over the place but the beds were empty. He opened the second door to find a sophisticated art deco room more to his taste, and a double bed with a naked man and woman staring at him blearily through the hard flashlight he’d aimed at them. There was no window or porthole in the cabin, so Dave closed the door quietly behind him and turned on the light.

‘Who the fuck are you? What the hell’s going on?’ the guy was demanding.

‘US Federal Bureau of Investigation, sir,’ said Dave, waving Kate’s badge. ‘I’m sorry to break in on you people in the middle of the night like this. But if you could just keep your voices down, I’ll explain what this is all about.’

The woman slapped the sheet around her with both hands and shook her head bitterly.

‘I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. Oh Jesus. Well, that’s just fucking great,’ she said. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

Dave said, ‘Take it easy, will you? Look we’re about to make an arrest on another boat. Some drug smugglers. But before we do, we’re trying to warn all the passengers to stay put in their cabins. If you do hear shooting, then you should lie down on the floor, until you hear from us that it’s all clear. Just in case. It’s only a precaution. I don’t think there’s any need to worry.’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Nicky Vallbona.

‘You stupid bastard,’ said Gay Gilmore, punching him hard on the shoulder.

‘Me? What the fuck did I do?’

‘I told you they were onto us, didn’t I? Back in Lauderdale. I said they were watching us. But no, you wouldn’t listen. Not you. You knew better. Mister Pro-Fessional Arsehole.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked Dave.

‘You couldn’t believe that I would have spotted something you didn’t. Well, if you think I’m going to prison for a prick like you, Nicky, you can forget it. I’m not. I’ll tell them everything. I’ve got the rest of my life to live and I’m not doing it inside jail.’

‘Will you please keep your voices down?’

‘Fuck off,’ snarled Gay. ‘What difference does it make? If you’re going to arrest us, then arrest us, but don’t expect us to be happy about it, mate. Or is being arrested normally some kind of party? Tell me, Mister G-Man. I’d like to know how I’m supposed to react to this shit.’

‘Arrested?’ Dave frowned. Suddenly it dawned on him. Hers was one of the voices on Kate’s tape. This was the boat with the drugs. No wonder they were so unnerved by his presence. Now if he could only get her to shut up for a second then he might be able to explain.

‘We did some coke earlier on,’ explained Vallbona. ‘She’s still a little high.’

‘Not any more, lover. I’m on a fucking downer now, thanks to you.’

‘Will you shut up?’ snapped Dave. ‘Shut up. Just for a minute. Look, this is not a bust. You’re not being arrested.’

‘You said to lie down on the floor,’ Gay insisted.

‘Then do it, for Christ’s sake.’ Dave jerked his silenced .45 at the floor. He was going to have to get rough with them anyway, when the time came to steal their boat. Maybe now was as good a time as any. ‘I don’t have time for all this bullshit.’

Suddenly the door behind him opened, banging against Dave’s head. He heard someone in the corridor outside say, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

It was all the opportunity the two in bed needed. Each reached for a handgun.

The big automatic in Dave’s hand seemed to take charge of what happened next and with the laser-sight it was as easy as taking a photograph with some idiot’s idiot-proof camera. In a split second his entire world was reduced to a red circle with a central dot floating inside it, and Dave had fired several times more before the door behind him banged hard open again, knocking him onto the blood-spattered bed.

Dave slipped to the floor, pursued by this new assailant, whose hand gripped the fist holding Dave’s gun as tightly as the other held his windpipe. Dave punched the man hard underneath the chin, but with no result and the two struggled to their feet only to crash through the door of the en-suite head. For a second, the grip on his windpipe released, and Dave could smell the cordite in the air from when he had fired the shots. He might have shot his attacker too if the barrel of his gun had been shorter. They collapsed over the edge of the empty bath, Dave’s wrist caught on the shower door and the gun clattered into the bath underneath him. Dave lunged at the man with the top of his head, butting him hard in the mouth, then fell back against the tiled wall. He reached down below him for the gun but by the time he had the grip in his hand, the man had hauled the nylon clothes line out of the wall-mounted spindle and had wound a good length of it around Dave’s neck. This time the grip was tighter and Dave kicked out in front of him, his boot smashing the glass in the shower door. The guy was strangling him. Twisting one way and then the other, like a dog on a short lead, Dave tried to elbow the guy in the stomach, but his own vest and the machine gun got in the way. Another minute and it would all be over. Another sixty seconds and he would be dead. Already he could feel the edges of his world becoming dark and hazy, as if the void was closing in upon him.

The head door slammed open and something spat twice into the air, jolting the man behind him like a bolt of electricity. The pressure on the line around his neck slackened and hot steamy liquid trickled down the back of Dave’s neck. It was another second or two before he realized that it was blood from the dying man who groaned as Al lifted Dave clear of his attacker. Then Al stood back, levelled the silencer and fired another shot into the guy’s throat, just to make sure.

Al looked anxiously at his coughing partner and asked, ‘You okay?’

Trembling, Dave took a deep and unrestricted breath. Holding his nylon-burned neck, he stuck his throbbing head under the cold shower, hardly paying attention to the blood still running out of the dead man’s bullet wounds and washing down the plug. When Dave finally answered Al, his own voice sounded as if he’d smoked a couple of cartons of cigarettes.

‘I think so. Thanks. He’d have strangled me for sure.’

‘Don’t mention it. Kind of fuckin’ actor are you anyway? I mean, there are no Oscars for what happened down here. Not even a lousy Emmy. Goddamned bedroom. It looks like The Wild Bunch through there.’ Al lit a cigarette for Dave. ‘Here. This’ll help you get your breath. What did happen in there, as a matter of small academic interest?’

Dave pulled a towel over his head and sighed.

‘Damned if I know.’

‘It’s like I said, then. The Alias Smith and Jones factor? It’s bullshit. People carry guns, people get shot. Stands to reason.’

‘They gave me no choice. I had to shoot them. It was them or me.’

‘No doubt about it. I guess there was something about your manner they objected to. Me, I can relate to that. Your small talk can be like fleas sometimes. It itches like fuck. The sight of that badge drove ’em to it, perhaps. Who the fuck knows? But it’s lucky for you I came down here or you’d be John Brown, man.’

‘They thought we were pinching them. They thought it was a real bust. That’s why they went for their guns.’

But Al hardly cared to listen. He was already heading back through the stateroom where the two bodies lay grotesquely twisted on the bloodstained bed, on his way upstairs. He said, ‘The fuck difference does it make now? They’re dead, ain’t they? For them it was a real bust. Dead’s the biggest bust there is.’

Coming upstairs into the moonlight, Dave took a deep breath of the cool night air. The Britannia looked so pure and white that it was hard to connect it with the bloody scene in the master stateroom below. It was a couple of minutes before he realized what else had happened.

‘The storm’s died away,’ he said.

‘That’s what I came down to tell you,’ said Al. ‘Happened just like that.’

‘I guess that’s something.’

‘Still want to do this the hard way?’ asked Al.

‘Meaning?’

‘No killing.’

‘More than ever.’

‘You’re being a mite particular, aren’t you? These guys ain’t gonna be any more co-operative than the three we just greased.’

‘Al it’s my understanding that you’re a professional killer. But me? I’m a rank amateur. Like I said before, I didn’t want to be a killer. And now that I’ve killed two people — the first two people I ever killed — I want to be a killer even less. What I did back there makes me feel sick to my stomach.’

‘Hey, don’t let it spoil your evening. That was self-defense. Them or you, just like you said. It’s intention that counts. Even the law knows that much. A real Fed would have blown them away just the same as you did. So being dead is their fault, not yours. They were fuckin’ stupid. Had to be stupid to think they could pull a gun on a man carrying your kind of heat.’

‘One of them was a girl, Al.’

‘That much I noticed. Nice-looking broad too. Good tits. But a nice-lookin’ broad with good tits and a handgun. Makes all the fuckin’ difference in the world. And the next one, too, if it comes to that.’ Al shrugged. ‘I still reckon we should grease these fuckers. That’s why we’ve got the silencers on the ends of our dicks.’

‘Tell you what, Al. I’ll make you a deal. If we can avoid any more bloodshed, you can have half my share.’

Al thought about this for a moment. Since he was planning to murder Dave the minute he saw the Ercolano sailing toward the rendezvous point, and since Naked Tony had already promised Al Dave’s share anyway, the deal didn’t sound so good. But he had little choice but to agree, or else risk Dave’s suspicion. He was a nice guy for a dead man.

‘OK, you gotta deal. Half your share and no more human tragedies.’

‘We stick to shooting only in self-defense.’

‘Right,’ sighed Al. ‘But don’t go soft on me, Dave. Remember, I’m supposed to be the one with the conscience. Not you. I’m the Catholic round here. You. You’re an atheist. You don’t believe in shit.’

Al tripped and fell upon the explanation for the lack of any resistance they met on the Baby Doc almost as soon as they had set foot inside the smelly lounge. The boat’s shabby interior was littered with empty vodka bottles and on top of the dining table was what looked to have been a serious game of Monopoly — not least because it had been played with real money. There were loose piles of dollars all over the place and in Dave’s eyes it was easy to see what must have happened.

First a hell of a lot of drinking; although few, if any, of the three crews were actually Russian, it was as if the idea of Russianness had exercised such a powerful effect on the crewmen that they had felt an obligation to live up to the hard-drinking reputation enjoyed by their employers; second, the idea of playing the ultimate game of Monopoly, with some of the real cash that was being smuggled to Russia; and third, a lot more hard drinking. One of the crewmen lay insensible on the lounge sofa, and another had passed out on the floor of one of the heads. A third they found dead drunk in the wheelhouse, curled up like a baby in the cockpit chair. The rest of the three crews were sleeping it off in the Baby Doc’s staterooms. Most of them so drunk that even after Dave and Al had tied them up with plastic ties, they stayed asleep, or unconscious.

‘Will you look at these drunken bastards?’ laughed Al, when he had tied up the last man in his stateroom. ‘Be a while before they even know we’ve been and gone. Jesus, that’s some fuckin’ Monopoly game they got upstairs. Must be a couple of hundred thousand dollars on that game board.’ He stood up, checked the knot, then kicked the man in the small of the back. The man grunted and rolled quietly away. ‘How many’s that?’

Dave was checking the three crews off against the ship’s own list of supernumeraries. He nodded and said, ‘That’s all of them.’

‘Bet you wish you hadn’t made that deal now,’ Al said harshly. ‘This was a piece of sponge cake.’ He picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka, unscrewed the top and took a short pull from the neck. ‘Wasn’t it?’

Dave said nothing, and it was then Al noticed the clasp knife in the younger man’s hand. Al’s gun lay on the coffee table, several feet away. He swallowed nervously, because of the deal he had made and the ease with which their objective had apparently been achieved. Maybe he had pushed him too far. He held out the bottle for Dave to drink.

‘Want some?’

Dave thought he probably needed a drink. Since killing the two in bed his stomach had felt like he’d eaten something disagreeable. Maybe some vodka would fix it. He took the bottle, gulped a mouthful, and handed the bottle back. Then, rolling the man he had tied roughly off the bed, he turned the mattress on top of him and plunged the knife deep into the seam of the divan underneath. He tore away the cover to reveal a six-foot square of something faintly green under a thick polythene sheet. The knife flashed again and the two men stared down at an enormous pallet of cash wrapped in smaller, pillow-sized bundles.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ grinned Dave.

‘You were right.’

‘Didn’t I fucking tell you?’

‘How much do you reckon is there?’

Dave picked up one of the bundles, slit the edge of the polythene with his knife and thumbed through a corner of used notes.

‘Hard to say exactly. It’s mixed bills. Hundreds, fifties and twenties. Nothing smaller. I don’t know. Maybe a couple of million?’

‘There’re five staterooms on this boat,’ breathed Al. ‘Do you know how much that is?’

‘Five times two? I’m sure you can work it out if you try, Al.’

But the sight of so much cash had made Al impervious to Dave’s sarcasm, and instead of cursing him he said, ‘That deal we made? Forget it.’ The last thing Al wanted now was to have Dave mad at him. Being mad at him might make Dave a little harder to kill when the time came. ‘You keep your share. You’ve earned it.’

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Dave repeated. Now there was a note of triumph in his voice.

Al said, ‘I’ll get the bags. You find the rest of the money.’

A few minutes later, Al came back carrying a flat-packed bulk-purchase of Nike sports bags bent across each shoulder. Dave had already ripped apart the four other divans as well as the three-piece leather suite in the Baby Doc’s lounge.

Laughing like a crazy man, Al stuffed one of the heavy-duty nylon bags with parcels of cash. Then another. ‘Will you look at all this dough?’

Dave zipped up two bags full, hooked a strap over each shoulder and stood up. Being rich couldn’t have looked or felt more unwieldy. He was glad of the gloves and the flak-jacket, for the bags weighed close to fifty pounds apiece.

Al was already staggering upstairs, puffing under the weight of the two bags he was carrying. He said, ‘Jesus, this is like going to the airport with Madonna and the kids.’

‘Now you know what people mean when they talk about the burden of wealth.’

‘I sure hope I live to spend it. All this exertion, my heart’s beating like Thumper’s foot.’

‘Make up your mind to be an unfit rich motherfucker, instead of one of those healthy-looking kids always asking for change.’

‘I can deal with that.’

Breathing hard, both men came up on deck and dumped the bags gratefully.

Al said, ‘Oh man, this is hard work.’

‘Got a problem with that?’

‘Shit, yeah. I got my modus vivendi down man. I didn’t ever figure to be no fuckin’ hotel porter.’

‘Kinda tired myself,’ admitted Dave.

‘Time is it?’

‘There’s two more boatloads of money to think about. You’ve got a lot more bags to carry upstairs before your ass can sit down in the front lobby.’

‘I know that. I was just askin’ the time. I thought you might be pleased to help me out, you being the proud owner of the Rolls fucking Royce of watches.’

‘Be dawn soon.’

‘Do I look like a fuckin’ vampire? If I want that kind of shit I’ll wait for a cock to crow. Numbers. That’s what I like to hear. Tick fucking tock. On account of my citified ass and urbane fucking ways.’

‘What are you, Stephen Hawking or something? It’s nearly 3 a.m. What difference does it make? I’ll tell you if we’re behind schedule. First thing I do when I get back to Miami, I’m going to buy you a watch, Al. That way you’ll know when it’s time to shut your mouth. Now let’s move before some of these supernumos on their boats start to get curious about what’s happening. I’ve killed enough people for one evening.’

‘That shit still bothering you?’

‘Oddly enough, yes, it is.’

‘Chill out. Like I said before, it was you or them. An accident.’

‘That doesn’t sound like an accident.’

‘Sure it does. An unforeseen contingency. That’s all that happened. You want to find your cloudy ass a silver lining damn quick, pal. I don’t want you goin’ Leonard Cohen on me. Lift your eyes to the good news with which your situation is replete. First, that you are now one rich motherfucker. And second, it could have been them Feds you greased. The real ones. Think how lower than snake-shit you’d be feeling now if it was that Fed bitch you’d terminated instead of the other one.’