by Dane Hartman
Battered as he was, Harry clung on to the tangle of wreckage. He was wet and bloody, but still functioning. Functional, too, was his .44 Magnum, which was perhaps more to the point.
He found himself drifting closer toward the ferry until he was directly opposite the stern. To his surprise, he saw a part of the lower deck had become exposed and here water was flowing in at a slow, but inexorable rate.
Using his arms to paddle, Harry managed to draw himself up flush with the ferry. His movements went unnoticed; or so he assumed from the absence of gunfire directed toward him.
On all sides of the bay, launches and cutters, many with machine guns mounted on their bows, were beginning to materialize. Harry could hear loud, but indistinct voices booming out of megaphones. They were no doubt demanding the hijackers surrender. In answer, there was another rattle of gunfire.
The opening was narrow, but Harry struggled to squeeze through it, and at last succeeded. It was unnaturally dark. The lights seemed to have gone out. Until his eyes could adjust, the only thing he was conscious of was the water he was standing in up to his knees.
He advanced cautiously, bumped up against an object. He reached down so he could determine what it was. A fender of a car. He was in the hold where the passengers parked their vehicles. Little by little, he could make them out, rows of Chryslers, Fords, Chevys, four-wheel-drives and U-Haul vans.
Way in the distance, he discerned the steps leading up to the passenger deck. He trusted he’d sowed enough confusion so no one would notice when he finally made his appearance on deck.
Slogging through the gathering water he found the steps. Mounting them as quickly as possible, he pushed against the door he found waiting at the top of the steps. It refused to give.
Probably, the hijacker had barricaded it earlier to prevent anyone from seeking refuge in the cars. There was no lock on the door so he couldn’t very well shoot it off. He imagined some object of rather formidable size had been used to block it from the other side.
Not being too pleased about the prospect of being stranded in the hold and drowning along with an array of motorized vehicles, he redoubled his efforts by applying his entire weight against the door.
He hoped there was another door somewhere closeby, one that would possibly be less difficult to force open. Back into the water he went in search of it. Out of sheer habit, he glanced down at his watch and saw that its glass face had cracked, but the phosphorescent digits were still registering, indicating that the inner mechanism of the thing hadn’t given out. In any case, it was nearly five-thirty. Another half an hour and Sheila was going to start worrying about what had happened to him.
The water had risen to the extent that the cars were partially covered, leaving only their windshields still visible. When Harry surveyed the rows of drowning vehicles, he happened to notice glimmering off the windshield of a bright lavender VW, a startling gold light. This light had to be reflecting off something, and he began to hunt for its source.
He found it on the starboard side of the ferry; a hatchway enough ajar to allow in a trickle of October evening light that the VWs windshield had managed to intensify.
Opening the hatch, he saw he’d ended up on a passageway that seemed to skirt the length of the deck. Although he could hear the chopper rumbling somewhere overhead, and an indeterminate number of motor launches stirring up the surrounding waters, he couldn’t see anything. Certainly he saw no people. He imagined they were squeezed into the forward deck, where it would be easier for the hijackers to keep an eye on his captives.
Where the ferry had been listing before, it was now stationary. Though there was some ominous groaning coming from its lower decks—like an asthmatic’s wheezing—indicating that all was not well with the vessel. From way across the bay, Harry could see there was a mist beginning to form, and from somewhere in the distance a foghorn bellowed feebly.
Cautiously, he made his way along the narrow deck, maintaining hold of the railing as his shoes were so wet he was constantly in danger of slipping and falling overboard. With the approaching mist and the fading light characteristic of this time of day, it was a wonder he glimpsed the shadow as it fell across his path.
He flattened himself against the wall, waiting.
A man called out, “Dick, is that you?”
Who Dick might be was hardly his concern. But it did underscore the possibility that more than one person was involved in the take-over of the ferry. It also meant that while Dick’s identity might be of little relevance, his whereabouts surely were. Harry couldn’t help looking behind him to see if maybe the mysterious Dick was there. But no, no one was there at all.
“Dick, why the fuck don’t you answer me?” the man called again, more insistently, not at all pleased Dick was being so unobliging.
Harry thought now that there had to be a minimum of three hijackers. There was this clown who still hadn’t revealed himself, there was Dick who seemed to have disappeared, and he presumed there was at least one up front, keeping the passengers under guard. They must be paralyzed with fear, Harry thought. Not a sound could be heard from them.
“Dick?” the man called again, but his voice betrayed his growing doubt. He knew someone was there, and it didn’t seem to be Dick, and once this conclusion dawned on him, it placed him in a position where he had to do something.
He decided to lob a grenade in Harry’s direction. But since he had not the slightest notion of who or what he was aiming at, Harry was spared instant obliteration. The grenade, instead of landing on the deck, skipped over the railing and plummeted into the bay. A moment later it detonated, causing the water to erupt, drenching half the length of the boat while simultaneously setting it in motion again. Whether the ferry had been damaged or whether it was simply the convulsive surge of water around it, Harry had no way of determining. But it sure as hell felt as though the damn thing was going under the way it tilted way to the starboard side. It was all Harry could do to hang on. But hang on he did, and after two or three very tense minutes, the ferry, more or less, righted itself. Still, the groaning of machinery down below sounded worse than before.
Hearing someone behind him, a noisy sound of sloshing accompanied by curses. Harry turned and saw, not more than ten yards away, a man in a windbreaker, with a duffel cap shadowing his eyes. Harry had the feeling this was the elusive Dick.
Dick obviously had not been expecting to find Harry here. His face contained a look of such astonishment, it was almost comical. Like a twelve-year-old boy caught by his mother with a dirty book. Too late, he attempted to raise the Baretta he gripped. The .44 took him in the right shoulder, catapulting him over the railing and into the water. For an instant Harry could see his face, or rather just his continuingly astounded eyes and his improbable duffel cap. Then nothing at all except a gathering circle of blood on the water’s surface.
Now he could hear shouting. There was one hell of a racket, people screaming and exhorting one another to take cover. A series of shots came in angry reply, but they seemed to have no effect. No one fell quiet. From elsewhere on the disabled craft, the echo of a great many footsteps reverberated down the decks and passageways. Harry guessed the hostages had perceived an opportunity to escape and were doing everything possible to exploit it.
He raced down the deck, saw in front of him a series of stairs leading to the bridge, which he promptly mounted. Although in doing this, he almost was knocked back down by a panicking businessman who wielded his attaché case as if it were a lethal weapon. No doubt he was thinking this was one hell of a way to end a hard day at the office. A hijacking was no substitute for a cocktail.
Attaining the bridge, Harry discovered another armed man, who stood viewing the confusion on the deck below. He seemed uncertain how to reassert his authority. He might have wanted to shoot at somebody, but couldn’t quite make up his mind who. By now, his intended targets had scattered so he was left with no one.
Except for Harry. He might not have seen Harry—and how
could he when he was looking away from him?—but he evidently sensed his presence for all at once he dropped to the deck, and attempted in a clumsy motion to direct his shotgun toward this unexpected invader. Clumsy he might have been, but he was not without a certain manual dexterity. The weapon he possessed was the sort hunters use when they want to bring down wild game in the middle of African jungles and don’t want to take the risk of getting too close to their quarry. The noise it produced was deafening. God knows what it could do if it tore a hole in one.
Harry was engulfed in a cloud of smoke, his lungs stung with the pungent venom of it, but the shot had missed him by a distance he would rather not measure. The force of the blast, however, had disoriented him, and his ears were ringing painfully. Barely able to see, he fired just at the moment his antagonist loosened a second round. The ringing grew more painful.
It was enough to try a man’s patience thought Harry as he fired back.
The round from the Magnum hurtled the man back and over the bridge to the deck below. He came down with a tremendous thud and lay where he’d fallen, unmoving. Still alive, he kept puckering his lips, licking them dry of the blood that kept gathering.
Gazing out toward the portside, Harry watched the police launches approaching, maybe a dozen of them, each with their contingent of solemn-looking men with enough arms and ammunition to achieve the takeover of some forgotten banana republic. But they held their fire while they circled the ferry. One man was standing at the prow of one of these launches, calling out to the hijackers to consider the odds and surrender. That no one was answering seemed not to daunt him at all, he went right on with his shouting.
But there was enough for the police to occupy themselves for there were passengers diving into the water. All they cared about was getting the hell off the ship, and damned if they could swim. Harry caught sight of the man with the attaché case. Whatever was inside must have been very important because as he swam, he tried awkwardly to keep it above water with one upraised hand.
Harry was far from convinced that the danger was over in spite of the fact he’d killed one of the hijackers and critically injured the other. He was still working on the assumption there were at least three men involved in the seizure of the vessel. But when he reconnoitered the decks, he found only some very terrified people who were waiting to be rescued, preferring to stay right where they were rather than throw themselves into the bay. Until Harry indicated he was a police officer, their faces were filled with apprehension. Seeing that Harry was carrying a huge handgun, they naturally decided that he was in on the hijacking as well.
Harry asked them if they could point out anyone else who might have held them at gunpoint, but they were unable to help him. Everyone had his own story and one story inevitably contradicted the other.
Harry did discover something of interest though: an elegantly designed automatic manufactured by Ingram, a fine thing to have when one wanted to riddle one’s opponents with several hundred rounds a minute. It was not the sort of weapon people generally abandoned like umbrellas forgotten in a closet. Harry presumed whoever the third member of the boarding party was, had decided to jump into the water along with dozens of other fleeing people in the hope he could avoid being arrested.
But how, Harry wondered, could he hope to pull something like that off—unless he was disguised? To test his theory, he returned to the man he’d shot out of the bridge. He’d given up licking his lips free of blood—he hadn’t the energy anymore—and so the blood was pouring copiously out of his mouth and beginning to cover the whole of his chest. He was still alive, but barely, and his breathing was shallow and irregular.
To test his theory, Harry reached down, pinching the lush brown moustache, then yanked it hard. Not only did the moustache come off, but so did the entire face. It had proved to be an uncannily realistic mask, composed of some rubber-like substance. The mask certainly had a healthier appearance than the flesh that lay beneath it. There was more color in it at any rate. Nor was he an attractive man, his features were thin and angular. He was better off with the mask.
The officer in the prow of the closest launch was still shouting some message through his megaphone. Harry couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he figured he might as well reply and welcome him on board. Just then he remembered the time, and gazing down at his watch, found it was a few minutes after six.
If I work this right, he thought, I should get to Sheila’s only an hour late. It was a goal to strive for anyhow.
C H A P T E R
T h r e e
It was the unshakeable conviction of Grant Turner that the world was coming to an end. It would not end, as the poet said, with a whimper, he was goddamn sure of that. No, it would end with one hell of a bang. But that the world, and the human race along with it, was shortly to blow itself to smithereens was of scarce concern to Turner. On the contrary, he welcomed the occurrence, believing he would be one of the few—he’d go so far as to say one of the lucky few—who would survive the apocalypse. On the morning after World War III, he would walk out, in suitably protective gear of course, into the radioactive air and survey the waste of the city of San Francisco.
Turner was an ordinary looking man. That might have been his secret. He could have been a lawyer or a flunky for some corporate firm, with his wire rim glasses and his Brooks Brothers wardrobe. Only on weekends and late in the afternoons, when he’d left work for the day, would he do a Superman number, changing into a paramilitary outfit, pack up his arms and his provisions and set off into the woods. There he would take target practice, camp out, and subject himself to tests of all kinds. He had friends, but they were few. Mostly he had followers, those who looked upon him as their commander, the man who would lead them when the government had collapsed and millions lay dead, annihilated instantly because they happened to be standing at Ground Zero at the wrong time.
Not that Turner was simply waiting for the next war, caching tins of food and barrels of fresh water in his fallout shelter. No, Grant Turner was already capitalizing on people’s fears of worsening times. He didn’t need a damn war, he just needed panic and uneasiness and rampant inflation. The more people invested in collectibles, in antiques, in gold and silver, in Impressionist paintings, in Rolls Royces, and rare stamps, the happier Turner was. He could not afford to buy any of these things, but that mattered not at all to him. He stole what he wanted. He did not especially like seeing people killed during his heists—it meant that the police would investigate more thoroughly—but he would not lose sleep if that happened. The way he looked at it, they would die anyway when they dropped the big one.
It was not what his associates and acquaintances would have expected—Grant Turner changing from thief to leading survivalist and future commander of a post-holocaust elite military unit.
But everyone would have had to admit Turner was lucky. He should have been arrested and convicted long ago for the various felonies he had committed. Except for one youthful escapade in his hometown of Minneapolis, he’d managed to keep his fingerprints out of police records and his body out of prison cells. A great many who knew him, considered Grant Turner a law-abiding citizen with a penchant for hunting and mountain climbing. To all outward appearances, he was a bureaucratic functionary laboring in the county clerk’s office for no other reason than to collect his pension. They had no idea his only motivation for remaining in what was, after all, a dull and unrewarding job was to gain access to various deeds and title claims, giving him the leads he required to plan his raids on the very rich.
He occupied an office by himself. It smelled musty, as was to be expected with bundles of decaying records piled up, waiting until the day someone got around to putting them all on microfilm. There was no window in the office and that was what Gallant remembered most about it: the absence of any window, and the must in the dead air.
Something was missing though, a large framed painting of a rustic scene with a village and mountains in the background.
There was a bleached rectangle on the wall where it had been.
Turner looked much the same, his hair was sparse, but otherwise the six years had been good to him. For someone imminently expecting the end of the world, he appeared happier than any man had a right to be.
Because he could use the office as he wanted—with so many years on the job, he had his share of privileges and perks—he was able to conduct his illegal operations from it without fear of interruption.
Raising his eyes, Turner regarded the man who stood before him. He didn’t seem too pleased by what he saw. “You look like shit,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I’m supposed to be a corpse, remember? Corpses generally don’t look in the peak of health.”
Turner swivelled about on his revolving chair so that he was no longer facing Gallant. He was instead facing the blank spot on the wall. “What can I do for you?”
“I told you what I needed over the phone.”
“Yes, you did. Money you want, is that right?”
“And a car and papers, a Social Security card, driver’s license, that sort of thing. It shouldn’t be any problem for you.”
“No, it shouldn’t . . .” Turner agreed, swivelling back around to look into Gallant’s face again. “Here,” he said, tossing over a photograph to the other side of the desk. “You recognize that house?”
It was a mansion actually, that must contain well over forty rooms. While the photograph was not large enough to show all the grounds, it certainly suggested they were sizable, covering several acres that stretched over a hillside, above a body of bright blue water.
Gallant gazed admiringly at it for several moments. “I can’t say I’ve ever laid eyes on it before. But it sure looks like a pretty place.” Especially after a stretch in prison, he was about to say.
“Thirty-six thousand dollars a year in real estate taxes alone,” Turner said. To Turner it wasn’t enough that a residence exuded an aura of wealth, he had to know the exact dollars and cents value of it as well.
