Assassin's Shadow

by Striker, Randy

  Now was the time to end my winter suffering.

  The March wind that dawn had a razor edge to it. I stood, hands on bare hips, facing it. Half a mile away, I could see the fitful blinking of the white four-second navigation marker off Fleming Key. There was a gray corona of light haloing Key West, then tailing away eastward along the overseas highway like a comet’s tail. My hands tugged experimentally at the fat I had let settle on stomach and sides. I hacked, spit with disgust, then went back inside and poured myself a mug of black coffee. I use a fiftyfifty mix of espresso and regular grind. I drank it quickly, burning the sleep, the fogginess, the laziness away.

  Today’s the day, MacMorgan. You’ve gorged yourself and slept the winter away. Now winter’s over, no matter what that bastard north wind says. One more false start and you may never start again. . . .

  The roof of my stilthouse is covered with tin and braced with stout Florida heart pine. I washed my coffee mug, put it away neatly. I took a deep breath, then jumped up and grabbed the middle beam. When I’m in shape, when I have my weight down to two-oh-five, I can do thirty-six backhanded pull-ups. When you spend your boyhood in the circus, working the trapeze two shows a day—plus a morning practice session—your shoulders and arms develop a lot faster than your vocabulary. But I wasn’t in shape now. And I was twenty pounds over my best weight. I huffed and puffed and trembled and shook, and twenty-four pull-ups was the best I could do.

  Disgustedly, I jerked a towel from the shelf and went outside to Sniper, mopping my face.

  Dammit, MacMorgan, you may have let it go too long this time. Maybe that’s what you really want to be: just one more overweight, middle-aged American; just one more flaccid face in the crowd....

  I reached above the wheel and the chrome gleam of twin throttles and snapped on my new Horizon VHF. Channel 16 was as empty as the March dawn.

  “Fred Astaire, Fred Astaire, this is the charterboat Sniper, Whiskey Foxtrot Lima 7739, over.”

  I gave it two minutes, then repeated the call. Finally, the VHF answered me: “Vessel calling the Fred Astaire, this is the Fred Astaire. Channel sixty-eight, Dusky?”

  “Switching six-eight.”

  I could picture Steve Wise aboard his floating hulk of a Houseboat, Fred Astaire. He’s dockmaster at my marina, and a popular man with the tourist ladies around Key West. When he’s not having a party, he’s usually enjoying a more private form of entertainment. More than one vacationing Midwesterner has caught the flight out of Key West with a flush on her face and a smile on her lips. And frankly, I felt kind of bad about waking Steve Wise up so early.

  He didn’t seem too pleased about it either. After we had both switched channels, he said, “Dusky, old buddy, old pal, it’s not quite six a.m. by the lady’s wristwatch I can see on the counter by this VHF. I hope you have a good reason for calling me out of my warm bed a full hour before I have to start dealing with the rest of the crazy charterboat captains.... Over.”

  “Stevie, you’d have a dull life without us, and you know it.”

  “Yeah? Well, the young blonde who sleeps yonder in my master stateroom has been begging me to give it a try. She wants to stay aboard for the summer and go cruising across to the islands.... Over.”

  “And you don’t have the heart to tell her that that floating strumpet parlor of yours doesn’t have a healthy engine in it. Right?”

  He was still chuckling as he transmitted. “Hey, keep your voice down. People monitor this channel. So, what’s your business, captain? Now that I’m up, I don’t see any sense in wasting the rest of the morning.... Over.”

  “Just wanted to officially cancel today’s charter. Tell Dr. Taylor of Baltimore that we’ll have to try it his next time through Key West. I’d have called you later, but I’m going to be busy. It’s such a pretty day I’m going to go for a long swim.... Over.”

  “What? Oh yeah, sure, Dusky, sure. Winds gusting to thirty knots, seas eight to ten feet, and you’re going for a swim. Right. By the way, that bald friend of yours was at the marina yesterday. Said he wanted to see you. He must have got in touch, huh? Over.”

  I thought for a moment. My bald friend? It could be only one person—Colonel D. Harold Westervelt. And no, he hadn’t gotten in touch with me. But if he had reason to see me he would—you could bet the bank on that. And he would have a damn good reason for seeing me. D. Harold doesn’t leave his private orbit of discipline and work capriciously.

  It could mean only one thing.

  A mission. And if ever there was a time in my life when I wasn’t fit for a mission, it was now.

  “Yeah, that’s right. He contacted me,” I lied. “And if he stops back, Steve, tell him I’ll be in touch.” We chatted on a few minutes, trading good-natured barbs, and then signed off. I adjusted the squelch and turned the volume up full so that if someone tried to get in touch with me I could hear it in the house.

  D. Harold Westervelt. We were similar byproducts of two very, very different wars. His was the world conflict where men died for a reason. Mine was the Asian exercise in political lunacy where the mealy-mouthed fat cats used us as pawns. Still, neither of us had been able to leave our wars behind us. For years I had thought that his only official capacity was that of weapons inventor for the United States military. Later, after the murder of my family had led to my being retained by a federal agency to help expedite its private wars, I learned that his unique genius was being used for much more than just unusual weaponry.

  Even so, I was surprised that it was Colonel Westervelt who was trying to get in touch with me. My usual contact was an old acquaintance from Nam, one Stormin’ Norman Fizer. I put the coffeepot on the little Franklin stove so it would stay hot as I thought about it. Why Westervelt? Why not Fizer, as it had been on the other missions? Did that mean it was more important—or less important? Or maybe it wasn’t a mission at all; maybe D. Harold just wanted to say hello.

  No, the key phrase was “That bald friend of yours was at the marina.”

  And Colonel D. Harold Westervelt doesn’t “just happen” to stop by anyplace. He plans his days of exercise and work like a human computer, allowing himself only a few well-loved recreations like classical music and growing orchids.

  It had to be a mission.

  Still naked, I strapped on my Randall attack-survival knife. A long swim at open sea is not without its hazards. Outside, the gray March wind blew the tops off waves. Frigate birds soared in the high distance, omens of a storm. I stood on the dock and looked out toward the blinking navigation light a half mile away. That would be my destination—there and back. I did about five minutes of stretching, waiting for the sun. But it never arrived. Morning was to be a pallid slash in the east.

  Another nasty winter’s day in Vacation Land.

  But at least I was facing this one head-on. And there was the promise of a mission. Later, I was sure, D. Harold would offer it to me in intricate, calculated detail. Infiltrate what, attack where, and maybe kill whom. It didn’t matter. I’d accept. Because lately I’d been doing too good a job at slowly killing myself.

  2

  When the human machine has had a long and fattening vacation, the first sign of physical activity makes it whimper. It whimpers and pleads and begs you to stop. The lungs whistle, the throat burns, the heart pounds within its fleshy cage like an animal gone mad. The body is sending you a message. A false message. It’s telling you that no way, no how, can it do any more, go any farther. But it’s a lie. You can always do more. You can always find a way of going on.

  My machine began its protest a quarter mile from the stilthouse—only halfway to the marker. The shoulders began to ache, and the lungs began complaining about the amount of oxygen I was burning. The cramping of hips and legs suggested that I was out of fuel. And that’s when the brain turns traitor—because it too has become soft, lost its disciplined edge.

  There’s always tomorrow. Turn here and swim back to the stilthouse. After all, a half-mile swim in stormy seas is a prett
y good workout. And you can go farther tomorrow—or the next day, or the next....

  It’s a critical moment in the dreary process of getting back into shape. You can heed the message and give up. After all, that’s what most people do. Or you can lock in on the cold-sober brain-whisper: to stop is the loser’s game; the winners go on and on, always and forever.

  It’s a decision the world-class athlete makes every day of his or her life.

  And you know what their decision always is—because they’re the ones you see in national championships. Or the Olympics.

  So I stopped momentarily, sculling in the thrust of green sea, feeling the north wind blow spray across my face. Behind me the stilthouse looked invitingly close. Smoke angled out of the tin chimney, dissipating in the wind. Ahead was the white flash of marker—too far away to see that it was green, or that it was number 13 of the Garrison Bight channel way. I sighed, vectored in on the marker, and forced the arms to pull onward, swimming up one side of a wave and sliding down the other.

  So I played the game. It is a game I learned when I was young. And all my life, when the going gets tough, I’ve played it. An old circus escape artist, Julian Ignazio, taught it to me.

  “Always remember, Henry MacMorgan, that while it is impossible to separate body from brain, it is possible to separate brain from body. You must watch yourself as if from above. Coldly, objectively. You are the spirit. The body is nothing more than a machine. By removing yourself, you can command the machine precisely, with a minimum expenditure of energy. Believe me, my boy, it takes practice. Only with daily meditation can you make it a dependable fixture of self. With me—especially in my submerged escapes—it is a way of life. Without the ability to remove brain from body, I would have drowned long, long ago. . . .”

  So I played the game.

  I tried to see myself as if from above. Naked man swimming through green morning storm sea. His shoulders ache, but the pain is not as important as the goal. His breathing is labored, yet there is air aplenty. His leg muscles are cramping, but all he must do is relax and command them to carry on.

  The game was difficult at first. My body kept jerking the drifting mind back to earth, rubbing the mind’s nose in the pain of the long swim.

  I hadn’t been doing my morning meditations. When you are feeling good you always come to believe that you no longer need the fifteen minutes alone in your own brain.

  And you are always, always wrong.

  So it was tough. But finally I could thrust my body away for longer and longer expanses of time. And then it didn’t matter, because the marker was only a few hundred yards away. The body had found its place again; found its rhythm as a machine. The lungs felt better; the cramps and knots had worked themselves out.

  Dutifully, I swam on toward the loom of the light tower. And when I was near enough, I adjusted my course so that I was down-sea of it. The pilings were barnacle-covered, and the last thing I wanted was to be washed into it.

  It was late enough now that the light-sensitive switch had snuffed out the four-second flasher. I hung on the bottom brace of the light station, feeling my legs sweep up behind me in the rush of wave and current. There was the acrid odor of bird guano and creosote on the wood. And beyond that was the distant black hedge of mangrove island off Fleming Key.

  I was feeling good now. Fulfilled. The long swim back meant nothing. There was no dread involved. If I wanted to get back, I had to make it. And I would. The important decision had been made halfway out. That’s what I was enjoying now. The victory of mind over body.

  But I didn’t have long to enjoy it.

  Because that’s when I saw it. That’s when I saw her. Some crazy woman in a pretty little sloop. Only a few hundred yards away. In the battle against body and cresting waves, I hadn’t noticed the boat before. The hull was yellow with a red waterline stripe. The wind was driving it farther and farther onto the sand-and-coral bottom of Calda Bank. She stood on tiptoes upon the cabin of the small boat in a blue rain slicker. She was fighting to get the sail down and not having much luck. The hood of the rain slicker was off, and her blond hair was braided in a long rope to the small of her back.

  More than hear it, I felt the small boat crash into the bank. It heaved, listed to port, then took a full wave over the bow before smacking back heavily aground.

  Stupidly, I began yelling commands at her. But there was no chance of her hearing me above the surf. So I took out for the boat in a long fast crawl stroke, timing it so I could grab a breath and a quick look at the top of every wave.

  It didn’t take me long to get there. Even so, the boat had been shoved even farther aground. She was still battling the sail, but she had at least gotten it partway down.

  I stayed well up-sea of the sailboat. If it went over I didn’t want to be under it. Remotely, I noticed the name of the boat in blue script upon the stern: Sleek.

  I scared her, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Hey—do you have a centerboard?” The water was so shallow, I stood in stomach-deep water, cupping my hands to yell at her.

  “What? . . . Oh, Jesus!”

  Surprised, she jumped backward, caught her foot on something, and tumbled ass endward into the cockpit, disappearing momentarily. I timed the next wave and used it to propel me toward the boat. I caught the gunwale and pulled myself aboard, realizing at the last minute that I wasn’t exactly dressed for a meeting with a strange woman.

  In fact, except for the belt and knife, I wasn’t dressed at all.

  “Are you okay?”

  She lay cupped in the cockpit, legs draped over the tiller, one arm braced against the port seat, the other hand rubbing the back of her head. She looked to be in her mid-twenties—far enough into life to exude a certain aura of independence. She wore new Topsiders, the standard shoe of the pop boating set, and no socks. The rain slicker was the expensive kind, a material that resembled honest oil cloth. The face was well tanned, a little too square-jawed to put her in the moon-faced beauty queen category, but a striking face nonetheless. It was the kind of face that, in later years, would make her a very handsome lady indeed. With the long blond hair, the eyes should have been blue. But they weren’t. They were the brown of natural leather. And right now they were wide with shock and, then, anger.

  “Who the hell are you?” She pulled herself to her feet, bracing herself because with the ebb of every wave the boat smacked on the sandbar.

  “The patron saint of crazy women. Now, do you want help or don’t you?”

  I felt the eyes sweep over my body, saw the obligatory cringe when she noticed the jagged scar on my pelvis from a long-ago shark attack. But there was no blushing, no comment on my being naked. Just this:

  “After we get this boat off, remind me to get the address of your tailor.”

  “You have my solemn promise, lady.”

  And that quickly, she went back to work on the sail, yelling over her shoulder, “I’ll handle this. The big thing is, that damn centerboard is stuck. If you can manage to crank that up, we can swing her around, give her just a touch of canvas, and I think we can sail her off.”

  So I went to work. No need to tell her about the brain coral and staghorn downwind that would rip the bottom out of her boat if we didn’t get things under control quickly. Warnings in a desperate situation are a waste of time.

  The crank on the centerboard had been knocked loose. I refitted it and gave it a try. The centerboard wasn’t stuck—just wedged between boat and sandbar. With every lift of wave, you could gain a few inches on it, but then the boat would collide again with the bottom and knock the crank handle off. I gave it four tries with the same results.

  “Damn!”

  “How’s it going down there?” She stood on the little cabin, holding the sail bundled in both arms. “Need some extra muscle?”

  “You just get the sail ready, lady!”

  There was an opening in the centerboard trunk for ready access to the pin and cable. By wedging my hands in, I co
uld get a pretty good hold on the cable. It took every ounce of strength to budge it and hold it when the little boat smacked bottom. But slowly, hand over hand, I pulled it free, then finished with the crank. I didn’t need to tell her we were off. The boat righted itself, lifted, then careened sideways toward the coral.

  “I’ve got the tiller—get some sail up!”

  She handled herself well. She went to work fast, but not so fast that she made mistakes. She did a dandy piece of jiffy reefing, got the light lines tied. I was surprised—surprised that someone foolish enough to be out sailing on such a day could handle herself at all. That done, she came aft, staying low. Her hair was darker, water-soaked. She wiped her face, and I noticed, absently, the wedding ring on her left hand.

  “I’ll take it now,” she said. There was no hesitation in her voice. It was not a request.

  “You know about the coral ahead?”

  She paused, looking forward. There was too much wind to read the reef. She made the wise decision. “Guess not.” She studied me for a moment, evaluating me. It was her boat, and, obviously, if the boat was going to be reefed again, she wanted to be the one at the tiller. Suddenly satisfied, she nodded. “Okay. You take it. But take a little more line through the clam cleat. We’re luffing.”

  I did as told. The little boat bore down toward the coral. She could see the reef now: black shapes beneath translucent waves. I expected her to call out, to yell some nervous warning. But she didn’t. At the very last possible moment, I said, “Ready to bring her about?”

  “More than ready.”

  I shoved the tiller hard, ducking beneath the swing of boom. She handled the lines flawlessly, and the boat sailed herself out of danger, rocking in the new beam sea.

  I heard the woman exhale a long-held breath. “Nice sailing,” she said.

  “Living around here, I have the advantage of knowing the water. It helps. You ready to take over?”

  She took the tiller and, without looking at me, said, “I’ve got an extra pair of foul-weather pants below that might fit. They’re in the starboard closet.”