The Betrayers

Chapter Twenty-six

IT WAS TRICKY work. The lenses were glass, all right, but getting one out of the frame intact, and then cracking it just right to get a usable edge, wasn't easy with my wrists lashed together. The motion of the boat didn't help, and there was always the possibility that Monk would stick his head in at any moment. He didn't even have to open the door to do it.

As usual with those small-cabin entrances, there was a sliding hatch above to give light and headroom in the doorway, and to save you from having to crawl in on hands and knees. With the hatch pulled aft to meet the upper edge of the closed door, protection would have been complete, but with the hatch shoved forward as it was, the rear end of the cabin was open to the sky. All Monk had to do was lean over from his helmsman's chair and look down.

Fortunately, he didn't, in the time it took me to prepare my cutting implement and look around for a way to hold it securely. I glanced at Mr. Soo. He'd been watching, of course, and he nodded when I showed him the half-moon of glass. We had to squirm around a bit on our bunks to get into position, but it was a cozy little place and a lot of reach wasn't needed. Soo took the glass carefully. I saw the question in his eyes. The first man cut free, of course, had all the advantages.

Mr. Soo didn't say anything. He was a realist. There was an armed man in the cockpit, and dealing with armed men was my specialty, not his. He wasn't silly enough to try to extract any meaningless promises. He just braced his hands against the edge of the cockpit to steady the improvised knife. The fact that they'd used fishline helped. Cutting through heavy rope would have taken much longer. At that, we shattered two lens-halves and had to go to a third before the strong cord parted.

I rolled back on my bunk to clear my wrists of the multiple loops Irma had used to tie me. I was barely in time. I heard Monk swear out there, and the boat swerved; then the door was flung open and he was standing there with his shiny gun in his left hand-the right was reaching out to one side to hold the steering wheel. His face was pale and furious. At first I thought he had spotted the cut cords; then I realized that his mind was on something altogether different.

"You bastard!" he said. "How did you do it, Eric? How'd you get word to them? She's turning! The damn ship's turning, do you understand? She's been recalled to harbor. How'd you do it?" The gun steadied. "Aren't you going to grin triumphantly, you cocky bastard? I'll give you one last grin, friend. Just one!"

There was no hope of jumping him. I still had yards of twine firmly wound around my wrists, not to mention the stuff on my ankles. I just looked up at him and told myself that Isobel had made it. Somehow, in spite of wounds and weather, the damn woman had made it. She'd got the word through. She was wasting her time on the cocktail circuit; she should have been an agent. She was doing a hell of a lot better than some.

I stared at the stainless steel revolver and watched the finger take up the slack of the trigger; then the muzzle dropped and Monk laughed, a short, harsh bark of sound.

"Okay, Eric. One point for you. It was the woman, wasn't it? I should have known better than to take Irina's word for it. These one-shot kids, when will they learn to finish off their cripples? But don't look so damn smug. Nothing's changed. We'll just take the Hughes coming in, instead of going out." He rammed the pistol back under his belt. "Just lie back and listen to the fireworks, friend."

He slammed the door shut and disappeared from sight. I hurried to clear the stuff off my wrists and got to work on my ankles, but here the fishline was against me: the little knot was tougher to solve than a big one would have been. Irma had set it up good and hard. I was thinking desperately of trying the glass once more, when my fingernails finally found the right purchase and the knot came apart. A few seconds later my legs were free.

I saw Soo looking hopefully my way, and I gave him a big friendly smile, no more. It was going to be rough enough dealing with the Monk without an unknown quantity at my back. I lay there trying to judge what was going on outside. I had a feeling we had other seagoing traffic around us: there were frequent bounces when we hit what I took to be the wakes of other boats.

Then there was a straight run and a gradual left swing, and suddenly the ship was above us, sliding past at high speed. I could see the gray side through the open hatch, and even faces looking down from the decks above. I thought I could hear masculine hoots and whistles, but the speedboat's exhaust echoed noisily from the ship's side, drowning out the other sounds.

I sensed a movement up there, and lay back, and saw Monk reach across to the electronic console to port before I realized what he was about. I'd thought he was just going to check on us in the cabin. I braced myself for noise and concussion, but there was only a click, faintly audible above the sound of the boat's progress.

Mr. Soo said calmly, "That was the ready switch, Mr. Helm. Circuits are now active. Red light is on. Charges will explode when firing button is depressed."

"What's the maximum range of your machine?"

"Approximately one mile as now set. It will operate to ten miles or farther, but the responding circuits would have had to be so sensitive that they might have been activated prematurely by stray electronic transmissions, say from the ship's own radar."

The ship was gone. I started counting seconds. Monk had said he'd fire at a quarter-mile. With the ship going one way and the boat the other, the speed of separation was somewhere around forty miles per hour, depending on the angle. Say a minute and a half, or ninety seconds, for a mile: that was a little over twenty for the quarter. I didn't dare cut it too close. I went out of there at fifteen.

I was early. He was still in his seat with both hands on the wheel, but my luck was in. For the moment he was looking back at the ship or Irma, I couldn't tell which. The ship was back there all right, receding fast, and so was the girl: a slim bronzed figure in her scanty white suit, riding her skis gracefully in the speedboat's wake.

I didn't take it all in; it was no time to be admiring the view. Monk was turning, but I managed to clip him once and yank him from the seat and, bracing myself against the cabin, kick him aft, away from the firing box at my right elbow, on which a red light now glowed. I didn't follow him all the way. There were things to be done first, and I gave a twist to the steering wheel with my left hand to send the boat straight out to sea. I glanced at the instrument board on my right. There were too many switches and dials. I knew I didn't dare monkey with them until we were well out of firing range; I might set up the wrong combination.

Monk crouched there for a moment, partially dazed; then he came around with a gun in his hand, but I was ready for him, and I kicked, and the gun went flying over the side.

He showed his teeth in a smile. "Just like old times, eh, Eric? That time you wore me down with your dancing around and long-range jabbing. Just try that here, friend."

He was right, of course. Here the advantage was all on his side. There was no place in the cramped cockpit full of bolted-down seats for any fancy footwork, and my longer reach wasn't going to be much help, either. Monk lowered his head and came for me. I just waited for him. There was nothing else to do. I was Horatius at the bridge; I had to stay between him and that glowing red light. Grudge fight or no, I knew him well enough to know that he'd break off in a minute and dive for the firing button if I gave him an opening.

So I just stood there and let him come to me and we tried a few tricks, for a starter, with the edge of the hand and the stiff fingers, and they didn't work. We both knew all the tricks, and time was running out for him. The ship was nearing the harbor again, and we were heading the other way at a good clip, running straight out to sea. He might still be able to fire if he hit it now. If not, he might still be able to swing around and close to firing range, if he got rid of me. But he had to do it fast.

He moved in with the fists to overwhelm me. I blocked some blows and took some and managed to hold my place in the aisle. He glanced around frantically and came in swinging once more with all the power of his big arms and gorilla shoulders, and I weathered that attack, too, but just barely. I looked past him.

"Your girlfriend's gone," I said. "She's lost the rope." He grinned breathlessly. "An oldie, friend. Oh, what an oldie!"

I shrugged. As a matter of fact, I was telling the truth. Behind the boat was only the wooden bar of the tow-rope, dancing along the water. Far back I could see the floating skis and the girl's head. Monk threw a quick glance over his shoulder and saw them, too. Maybe there had been something between them, after all: he rushed me hard once more, this time trying to reach the boat's controls, to steer back there.

In his haste, he slipped and went to one knee, and I brought my knee up under his chin and, using the seats for leverage, kicked him back once more to the rear of the cockpit. That gave me a moment to examine the control board again. I prayed that Mr. Soo's one-mile range was an optimistic estimate and moved one switch from ON to OFF. There were no spectacular displays of pyrotechnics in the direction of the harbor. The red light just went out.

I heard Monk's hoarse cry and looked in his direction. He was bringing his hand out of his pants pocket with a gun that looked very familiar: not one of the fancy stainless-steel jobs that had been brandished so frequently in this business, just a plain old workaday blue weapon with a shrouded hammer. I remember Irma tossing it to him at the time of my capture. Whether he'd simply forgotten that he was carrying it-it seemed to be an easy gun to forget-or whether he'd just wanted to take me barehanded, there was no telling. He had it now.

He pointed it at me. The circuits were off, I hoped; I could risk leaving my post. I moved in on him, and threw my arm across my eyes as he fired, not knowing just what was going to come out of the gimmicked weapon. I heard two sharp little cracks like those of a kid's cap pistol, as he pulled the trigger twice. He tried a third time and the gun blew up.

I mean, it exploded like a bomb in his hand. I felt a heavy blow against my hip, and my bare chest and arm and face were sprayed with powder and scraps of hot metal. What had happened was simple enough to understand: it's as I once said, when you start playing games with firearms, nobody can predict the results.

I remembered reloading the weapon with live cartridges to deal with Pressman and switching the loads back again. But the spare-ammunition gadget holds six cartridges, and the gun only holds five. For a little while, there had been an extra live round in my pocket with the powderless ammo, and somehow I'd managed to get it into the gun. When Monk fired the first two cartridges, one or both of the bullets, with nothing but primers behind them, had stuck in the gun barrel. Then the full-charge load had fired into the blocked barrel. The pressure, with no place to go, had simply blown the weapon to pieces.

I tried to take a step forward, and my leg gave way under me. I caught myself by one of the seats, and saw the Monk standing there, but he was no longer interested in me. Blood was running freely down his face and he was wiping at it vaguely with a shattered hand.

It was almost too easy, after all the years of hate and all the blows that had been traded. I found that my leg would hold me, if I didn't trust it too far, and I moved in and did what I had been sent here to do.