It was another five minutes before the trouble began. Suddenly several of the smaller boats were stopping dead in the water, the men aboard bailing furiously. Some of the larger boats were forming bailing lines, pitching bucket after bucket of water over the side. Even his own ship was starting to sag under the weight of leaking water.
“What the fuck’s going on?” he yelled back.
“Water,” one of the men responded in a panic. “We’re taking it in all over the place. Fucking hull looks like Swiss cheese.”
Thor ran back along the deck, ducking down to go below deck. From the ladder he saw the foot of water swishing about the boat bottom.
“Better turn around,” the captain, a con who’d smuggled drugs into Florida by ship, suggested. “Even then we’ll be lucky to make it back to Alcatraz before she goes under.”
“What happened?” Thor demanded.
The captain scooped up a bucket of water, passed it to the man next to him, who passed it to the next man, and so forth. “Don’t know. Just know that we’ve got holes all over the place. They weren’t there a few minutes ago.”
“What do you mean they weren’t there a few minutes ago?” Thor asked. The captain flinched at Thor’s anger, certain the mighty hammer would soon be cracking his skull. But it didn’t. “You telling me that mermaids swam up and did this?”
“No, sir. We’re too far away from land and moving too fast for divers to have done this out here. Unless ...”
“Ravensmith,” Thor growled, as if that explained everything.
“Here they come!” D.B. hollered from atop the guard tower. She scrambled back down the stairs to join the others.
Eric already knew. He watched their progress through binoculars while everyone around him stripped naked out of their wet clothes and into the dry ones they had hidden in the brush. There were about fifty of them: eight men and the rest women. All armed. “The small boats are already going down. The others are bailing and making a run for Alcatraz. A few should make it.”
“What about the rest of their men?” Maggie asked.
Eric looked over at her. She was naked, toweling herself dry with the sweat shirt she was about to put on. The muscles on her buttocks and lean legs stood out like a dark relief map. “They’re not stopping to take on more weight.”
“That means those men will die out there,” Riva said buttoning her blouse.
“If we’re lucky.” Eric put the binoculars aside and stripped off his own clothing. His skin was mottled with goose bumps. They had worked on those ships for almost thirty minutes in that freezing water. Five of them were incapacitated from the loss of body heat. They were resting back in the infirmary with Dr. Fishbine, who’d done his share in the water.
It was an old trick Eric had learned in ’Nam. Drill the hulls with holes, then patch them up with packed mud and sticks. Depending on the water and the boat, the temporary plugs were good for anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes before they dissolved and the water started coming in. By then, those aboard were sitting ducks.
Eric stepped into a pair of pants Maggie had found for him, ones to replace the pair Dr. Fishbine had cut up fixing Eric’s leg. As he pulled the pants up over his hips, Eric felt the soft touch of someone drying his back.
“Maggie?” he said without turning.
“Who were you expecting?”
“I wasn’t expecting. Just hoping.” He turned and smiled at her. She looked like she wanted to kiss him, but he knew she wouldn’t. He knew she realized that this was not the right place or the right time or the right circumstances.
So he kissed her instead.
Quickly, but firmly. Enough to tell her what she needed to know: he cared.
“Where’s the line form?” D.B. teased.
Riva thumbed a shotgun shell into her gun.
Eric lifted his crossbow and bolts, stuck the .38 they’d given him into his waistband. “Everybody ready?”
They nodded.
“Let’s do it.” Eric led the solemn troops down to the side of the island where the ships were approaching. There was no feeling of jubilation or gung-ho shouting. They were all there to do a job. An ugly job, but necessary. And they were all up to it.
The crippled ships started coming in one at a time. The soaked men from Asgard poured off, their weapons blazing. But no use. They were picked off with little problem by the well-positioned guardians of Alcatraz. Eric had placed everyone to create a crossfire no matter where the ship landed.
Boat after boat came in. Man after man was wiped out.
But then something went wrong. Not as many of the ships actually sank, not as many as had been hoped anyway. The ships and boats started landing in packs, and men began leaping from them in numbers too large to contain. The battle raged and several of the women were killed, leaving their position open. The crossfire was no longer working.
When Thor’s ship landed, the battle was so intense and spread out, he managed to break free from the fight and lead a small pack of men inland. Eric watched from the other side of the firefight. “I’m going after them,” he told Maggie and disappeared into the brush.
“Give me your gun,” Thor said.
Without hesitation, the man handed his Winchester carbine to Thor.
Thor snapped his fingers. “Ammo.”
The man reached into his pocket and gave Thor a box of .45 calibre cartridges. Thor poked one of the other men with the Winchester. “What’s that for?”
“That’s a grappling hook, Thor.”
“I know what it is, asshole. What’re you gonna do with it here?”
The man shrugged. “In case we gotta climb something.”
“I’m going to the top of the guard tower. How about you climb up after me. Only use the fucking stairs, okay?”
“Sure, Thor.”
“The rest of you spread out around here. Anybody tries to knock me out of my nest, you take them out.”
Two minutes later Thor leaned his heavy hammer against the guard tower fence railing while he looked down on the rest of the island. From here he could pick off anybody approaching the main compound. And he could start peppering some of Ravensmith’s bitches, keep them busy while more of his men hit the shore. Everything had not gone quite as smoothly as he’d anticipated, but it was about to work out. No different than dozens of hits he’d done on the outside.
The wind blew Thor’s blue tie over his shoulder where it flapped for a moment. He straightened it, adjusting the knot just so before shouldering the Winchester, sighting a target, and squeezing the trigger. A blond woman, maybe thirty, not a bad looker really, arched her back as the bullet tore through her spine. Riva flopped face down in the dirt. “Nice ass,” Thor said.
He rested the rifle barrel on the rail and pivoted, looking for another target. He saw the balding head of an elderly man kneeling behind a wall, picking off the last few men aboard one of the ships. Thor squeezed the trigger and the man’s bald spot turned into a red geyser.
Over there, lying flat behind some bushes. A thin black girl with short black hair. She’s up on one knee now, tugging her bowstring back to her chin. She releases the arrow and one of Thor’s men hurtles backward off the dock. Thor centers his rifle sights on the middle of her back. His finger tightens against the trigger.
It was hardly a sound. More like a sigh.
But it was enough to bring Thor whirling around with his rifle blasting, chewing up hunks of wood as Eric dove across the platform, his .38 flying out of his hand and over the edge. Out of sight. Out of reach.
Eric hugged the wall of the tiny cabin. Perched about sixty feet above the ground on a platform with an armed maniac, he was grateful for anything to be between him and Thor. He unhooked the crossbow from over his shoulder and hunkered even further down. He couldn’t see Thor, but Thor couldn’t see him. Stalemate.
If only he’d been a little more careful climbing those rickety stairs, taken his time. But there wasn’t any time left. He’d killed two of Thor�
�s men below, then started easing himself slowly upward, hoping to catch him by surprise. Then he’d heard the shots, seen the woman and man fall. And he’d hurried.
Now he was pinned down with only his bow against Thor’s Winchester.
“Oops,” Thor said, “what’s that down there on the ground? A couple of my men.”
“Fair trade,” Eric said.
“A trade maybe. But fair? Hardly.”
“A couple of them managed to run away.”
“I’m not talking about men, Ravensmith. I’m talking boats. That was a damn nice boat I had and you drilled a bunch of fucking holes in it. That’s inhuman.”
Slowly Eric crept on hands and knees toward the edge of the guard’s hut. Just a quick peek was all he wanted. His face was still a few inches from the corner when the corner blew up in a mist of wood chips.
“Wouldn’t try it, Warlord,” Thor said. “I’ve been stalking men for a long time. Since before Elvis died. In fact, same day Elvis died, I knocked off some union lout in Boston. Know who paid me? Some other union lout. Knocked him off a year later. I love it.”
Eric lifted his head up to look through the window. Maybe he could look straight through the other window and get a shot at Thor. His head barely lifted to the level of the sill when the glass over him shattered in a spray of deadly shards. A couple splinters gouged his neck, but he plucked them out and tossed them over the side of the platform.
The battle at the shore was still loud and violent. The boats had stopped coming in now and all the fighting was leveling off to a battle of survivors on both sides. Eric decided that it could go either way. But however it went, he was still stuck up here with Thor. Neither was going to wait for the outcome of the battle and be trapped.
“Well, buddy?” Thor said. “Guess we got our work cut out, eh?”
“Guess so.” Eric peered over the edge of the platform. The two bodies of Thor’s men were sprawled on the ground, one of Eric’s arrows stuck in each man’s chest. Coming up over the embankment toward them were three more of Thor’s men. They’d spotted their leader in trouble and were coming to help him. One carried a rifle, the other an automatic, the third two Perrier bottles with rags sticking out the end. Molotov cocktails. Eric wasn’t going to waste an arrow on them. If he fired now, he wouldn’t have time to reload before Thor was on him with that Winchester.
“Uh oh, Ravensmith. Looks like company. And me with nothing in the fridge.” He shouted to his men, “Up here, boys,” and they waved acknowledgment as they ran.
Except the one with the automatic suddenly sprouted an arrow in the back of his neck. His shoulders snapped back as if he thought he had wings and wanted to fly away. All he managed to do was dive face first into the ground.
Eric saw Maggie and her bow dodge behind a tree just as the man with a rifle fired a volley of shots at her. Using his friend’s fire as cover, the man with the Perrier bottles jogged toward the tower, taking two steps at a time as he charged up the stairs. Maggie popped out behind a wall thirty feet from where the last bullets had been fired at her and shot an arrow at the man climbing the tower. Eric leaned over the edge for a better look.
The arrow barely missed the man, lodging in the stair just as his foot lifted off. She launched another arrow and barely nipped his calf. Panicked, the man stopped to call to his friend for more cover, but his friend was busy trying to locate whoever was firing rocks at him. He peppered a few bushes, but the rocks kept flying, bruising his arms and legs. The man with the bottles decided to handle it himself. He lit one of the rags, cocked his arm back to throw, arching his back and gripping the railing with his free hand for leverage.
“No!” Thor shouted at him. But too late.
One of Maggie’s arrows torpedoed straight into his stomach. The Perrier bottle dropped, bouncing down several stairs before finally breaking. The diesel fuel ignited immediately. Smoke curled up around the platform.
“Fucking moron!” Thor cursed the dead man. “See what I have to work with, Ravensmith? Idiots.”
“Got any ideas how to get down?”
“How about jump?”
“You first.”
Thor laughed. “Soon it’s gonna be too late for either of us. So let’s get on with the killing, okay?”
“Sounds right,” Eric said. He clutched his crossbow in both hands and got ready to do just what Thor wouldn’t expect. Attack. He took three deep breaths, forcing the air deep into his lungs, then jumped out from behind the cabin. Thor was twisted around, heading in the opposite direction, his gun out of position.
Eric fired.
The string twanged its 175 lbs. of pressure and the bolt darted toward Thor with a crackling zip.
But Thor was fast. He flopped straight down to the floor of the platform and the arrow blasted off over the side of the railing and toward the ocean. Clumsily, Thor struggled to bring his Winchester around. Eric didn’t wait. He dove straight onto Thor, driving his fist hard against the back of Thor’s head. Thor sagged from the blow, but only for an instant. Immediately he was on his hands and knees, bucking Eric off his back. Eric slammed backward into the railing, almost flipping over the edge. He saw Thor grabbing for the Winchester. There was no way Eric would be able to wrestle it away from him in time, not from this position. So he did the next best thing. He kicked it out of Thor’s hands and watched it tumble end over end over the side.
“Shit, man, now you’re just dragging it out,” Thor said as he climbed to his feet and looped his hand through the leather strap of his hammer. “Let’s play carpenter, Warlord. You be the nail.”
The smoke had thickened and Eric could feel the heat radiating from below as the fire climbed each stair in a frenzy of flames. The stairs were almost impassable now. In another minute, no one would be able to use them. In another five minutes, the whole tower would probably collapse.
“Thor!” his man with the rifle hollered.“Get him near the edge, I’ll shoot him.”
“Forget shooting him!” Thor said. “Throw the grappling hook. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The man hurried over to his dead companion and stripped the grappling hook and coiled rope from the man’s shoulder. One of Maggie’s arrows whistled by him and thudded into the corpse he was leaning over. One of D.B.’s rocks hit him in the back, but he kept going. He positioned himself so the burning tower was between him and Maggie and began tossing the hook up to the railing. He fell short twice.
Atop the platform, Thor didn’t wait for his man’s throwing arm to improve. He stalked Eric around the platform, his hammer poised in front of him, waiting for the opportunity to strike Eric. Eric backed along the wire fence railing. Finally Thor struck, his hammer slamming down, denting the fence all the way down to the platform. Before Eric had a chance to launch his own attack, the hammer was flying back at him. He barely managed to duck out of the way as the wire fence took another crippling blow that caved it in all along that side of the platform. When it folded, Eric scooted to a more secure section of railing. But as he did so, the grappling hook lobbed up over the edge of the fencing and came down on Eric’s shoulder, hooking straight through both shoulder and upper arm. A great weight pulled the hook deeper into his flesh and he let out a scream. His head was dizzy, but he could still see Thor ambling toward him, a wide smile on his smooth face, his tie perfectly knotted. He was hefting the hammer high over his head.
“That must hurt,” Thor said quietly. “But not for long.” He lifted his hammer even higher, clenching his jaw in preparation for the swing.
Eric couldn’t budge his shoulder. The man pulling it tight on the ground had pinned him to the fence for good. His shoulder felt brutalized, as if a shark had taken a bite out of it. Even so, he wasn’t ready to die. Not quite.
He lifted one foot and kicked out with all his might, catching Thor in the solar plexus. The air whooshed out of him as he catapulted backward through the glass window. It gave Eric enough time to twist around for a look over the platform’s edge. Bel
ow, Thor’s man with the rifle had released the rope to return fire at D.B. again. Maggie seemed unable to get a clear shot with her bow. Then suddenly the man’s left side tore open and he spun around. Another shot punched a hole through his chest and kept him spinning. When he stopped spinning he dropped in a crumpled heap on the ground. Lynda Meyer stood up and waved at Eric.
Eric didn’t have time to wave back. Nor did he have the energy to battle with Thor, even a groggy, dazed Thor, who was now stirring up out of the broken glass inside the hut. Instead, Eric gritted his teeth against the searing pain and worked the grappling hook out of the holes in his arm and shoulder. He heard Thor slowly climbing to his feet amid the broken glass, and that inspired him to scramble to his own feet. The fire was tickling the bottom of the platform now and the wood felt like a hot plate. Eric quickly pulled up the rope attached to the grappling hook. When he had it all, he wove a knot around the fence post that would take an hour to untie. Had he climbed over the edge relying on the hook to support him, he knew Thor would just pry the hook loose with his bare hands and toss it over the side.
After testing the knot’s strength, Eric dropped the hook over the fence railing. It dangled just ten feet above the ground. He stepped over the railing just as Thor lumbered through the doorway, blood snaking down his face in a fishnet pattern from the glass cuts on his head. He didn’t even bother with his hammer. He lunged straight for Eric, his hands clamping around Eric’s throat. But the force of his charge carried them both over the platform’s edge into empty space, hurtling toward the ground.
They both freefell for only a few yards, both being close enough to the rope and having quick enough reflexes to grab hold as they dropped through the smoky air.
Eric snagged the rope first, so he was higher up on the rope, but his weakened arm didn’t leave much strength and he began sliding quickly down the rope, the friction tearing away at his palms.
Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland Page 17
