Death Takes Passage #4

by Sue Henry

  “Is the ship held together with this stuff?” Walker had asked, when they took it from a storage cabinet.

  “Sir,” Alex had assured him, “Alaska is held together with it. You aren’t issued a resident’s permit till you can prove you have your own roll of duct tape and know at least fifty ways to use it.”

  They used it unstintingly to secure the guard they dragged into the purser’s office, taping him to a Pullman bunk so tightly that he could neither pound the wall to attract attention nor roll himself off onto the floor. When he was thoroughly taped and couldn’t move, they tossed a blanket over him, concealing him from any quick search of the room.

  “Certainly hope we remember where we put ‘em, as we catch ‘em,” Ray commented.

  “We’ll draw a map,” Walker told him without cracking a smile. “Now, get your own personal roll of tape and a couple of extra, and we shall take care of the next one.”

  “First, let’s recruit a couple of people,” Jensen said. “I want Don Sawyer. I know he’s okay. But I don’t know which stateroom the centennial committee’s in.”

  “Oh, I do. It’s 203, next to the outside door. We were right in front of it.”

  They were in luck. Sawyer had not yet gone to breakfast. He looked up in surprise when they walked in and he was quickly clued in to what was happening. Jeff Brady, Skagway committee chairman, was also recruited, and finished shaving in record time.

  “Damn it all,” he swore. “After all the planning we did to make sure everything ran well, all we’ve had is trouble.”

  “Okay,” Jensen said. “We are five. Do either of you guys have any kind of weapon?”

  They did not.

  They split up this time, Jensen, Sawyer, and Brady creeping carefully up the interior midship stair, while McKimmey went with Walker to the more exposed exterior one at the stern.

  It went almost as smoothly as before, though Jensen and the two with him were almost surprised when an unknown man came around the corner from the outside deck, just as they exited the stairwell. For no particular reason, Alex had expected this watchman to be the second guard from the gold room, and not the complete stranger who appeared. For an instant, he took him for a passenger. Luckily, Walker and McKimmey came around just behind, to tackle him efficiently and quietly.

  Taped and silenced, they secreted him in the convenient linen storage room, taping him securely to a shelf they cleared of clean sheets. When he was as stationary as the guard a deck below, they replaced as many sheets as possible on the outer edge of the wide shelf, effectively building a wall of linen between him and anyone looking for him.

  By now, most of the passengers had gone to breakfast, but, leaving his recruits to wait in the linen storage, Jensen went cautiously around to the forward staterooms to check on the Berrys, and Dallas and Rozie. The Berrys’ stateroom was empty, but he found the two women about to leave for the dining room, and he explained briefly what was going on.

  “I’d like to get you both down with Jessie and Lou, but there’s no way to get you past the guard in the dining room now,” he told her with regret.

  “Don’t give it a second thought, Alex. Figured out a long time ago that, if you want to get anywhere in this life, you’d better learn to saddle your own horse, and to take however many tumbleweeds the wind blows in. I’ll take my chances whatever they are. But, if I have to go down there, Rozie doesn’t.”

  “What do you take me for?” Rozie’s look was grim. “You think I’d leave you to go alone? Besides, everyone’s seen me with you. They’d know in a minute I was missing. We’ll go down together, as if nothing was wrong.”

  It was clear that she meant every word, and that time arguing would be time wasted, so they left it.

  “What can we do to help from the dining room, Alex?” Dallas asked.

  “I’m not sure, because I don’t know exactly what the situation is down there now,” he told her. “There was just one guard, when we made our escape from Four Deck, but that might have changed. There’s a red-haired crew woman, one of the waitresses, that helped McKimmey, the engineer, and me get out of there earlier. She’s okay. Just keep your wits about you, and remember, if it starts to go bad, to put something solid between yourselves and any guns. Assault rifles are nothing to take chances with. Sit as far to the rear as you can. Those beautiful, old-fashioned, wood-paneled walls are solid metal fire-proofing underneath and as good as anything down there for protection, if you can get into Soapy’s Parlour. We left Jessie there with Lou, behind the bar. If it’s really necessary, try for a trap door in the room next to it. It leads to the steerage compartment.”

  He had leaned forward to place a hand on the arm of her wheelchair, as he earnestly tried to give her all the advice he could. As he finished, she laid her hand, with the large blue sapphire on her arthritic finger, on his and patted it gently.

  “Thank you, Alex. That’s a lot more than we’ll need, I’m sure. Give me that cane, please, it might come in handy. Let’s be off, Rozetta, dear, before someone horrid comes ahunting.”

  Head high, she allowed her niece to push her wheelchair around the deck to the elevator. Just as the doors closed, she gave Alex a dignified nod and a wicked wink. Then he thought he heard “Yahoo!” in a Texas accent echo back up the elevator shaft.

  32

  7:30 A.M.

  Thursday, July 17, 1997

  Spirit of ‘98

  Grenville Channel, Inside Passage British Columbia, Canada

  ONE BY ONE, THEY HAD BEGUN TO NEUTRALIZE THE BAD guys, though Jensen knew it would become more difficult as they moved closer to the center of the operation. After the first two, they added one more passenger to their group of five—Vern Repasky, the tall, bald doctor with fuzzy, gray eyebrows.

  He came around a corner in a hurry, late to breakfast, and ran full tilt into the center of the small group before anyone could move. Walker and McKimmey instinctively grabbed him and were attempting to wrestle him to the ground, when Jensen hissed, “Stop! I think he’s one of ours.”

  Apologies given and accepted, Repasky volunteered as soon as he realized the reason for their defensive reaction.

  “We can’t stand here,” Walker warned. “The next one around that corner could be one of theirs.”

  They went back down to the purser’s office, where they could lock the door and hold another war council. Somewhere in Jensen’s mind the voice of his training and conscience reminded him, once or twice, that he should never include or endanger a civilian in a police action. But there was very little he could do about it. What other way was there? A hundred passengers were a large consideration and changed the equation he tried to work by.

  “It seems they’re in some kind of holding pattern,” Walker analyzed. “None of them have come to see why the guards for these two decks have disappeared, and the dining room must be just about full by now. They really must not have anything planned until we get to the end of this channel. How long is it, Jensen?”

  “Forty-five miles.”

  “And how far do you suppose we’ve gone now?”

  “Ray?”

  “I don’t know exactly when we went in, but we were already going through when it got light, so we must be somewhere around halfway.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “That’s good enough. Can we figure out where the rest of these guys may be? We’ve got two on ice, or, I should say, in duct tape. Let’s count, say, seven more, just to be safe.”

  Alex used his fingers again to count. “One on the bridge.”

  “Hard to reach at this time.”

  “The owner’s suite.”

  “Same.”

  “The dining room.”

  “I’ll bet with all the passengers there and not wanting to let them out, they’ll have at least two there by now. What do you think?”

  “I agree. So, two in the dining room.”

  “Getting them’s not a good idea unless we can figure out a distraction, or some other way of splitting them up, so
we don’t get anyone killed.”

  “One … well, I’d think they’d put someone to guard the gold.”

  “Why? Nobody could steal it from them, or hide it without being seen.”

  “True. But I think someone will at the very least look in on it.”

  “So. That’s five. We might be able to take that last one, if we’re careful.”

  “Pretty close to the dining room,” Brady commented. “And those two we’re counting on to be there. We could be wrong, you know.”

  “There may be someone still on the powerboat.”

  “We’d better check on Carlson,” McKimmey reminded him. “If he’s still there, we can count three out of commission. That’s actually nine sort of accounted for. But Jeff’s right. Two or three of those may not, probably will not, be where we think they should be.”

  “I think we should make a try at the …”

  The doorknob rattled suddenly, startling them all. Then there was a gentle two-knuckled rap at the door, and a soft voice called, “Alex? Are you in there?”

  “It’s Jessie, let her in, quick.”

  Walker took Jensen at his word and opened the door.

  Inside, she leaned back against it, face pale, hair tousled, the tail of her white shirt pulled out of her jeans, a blue apron tied around her waist. In one hand she held a serving tray.

  “What in the world have you been up to?” Jensen asked, stepping forward to hold her shoulders in his big hands, guiding her into the chair he had vacated. “Where’s Lou?”

  She sat down with a sigh.

  “Still down behind the bar. I had to take the chance I could come and find you, Alex. There’s another man with a gun in the dining room now. The two of them came back into Soapy’s, lit cigarettes, and stood next to the bar talking. I heard every word, and … Alex … there’s a bomb on this boat somewhere.”

  Everyone in the room stopped moving, and it was dead still for a second or two.

  “A bomb? You did say bomb, right?”

  She nodded, and there was fear in her eyes. “From what they said, they’re going to steal the gold, take off in the boat, then, with all of us here, on board, a bomb will go off and sink the ship.”

  “God. When?”

  “I don’t know. Just sometime soon after they go away from the ship.”

  “How did you manage to get out of the dining room?” McKimmey asked.

  “After those two men went back to the front of the room, I saw Dallas and Rozie come in and sit at the table next to the Parlour door, so I told Lou where I was going, crawled out, and got under it. When the guards weren’t looking, I got up and sat in one of the chairs, like I’d been there all the time.”

  She looked suddenly at Alex.

  “Oh, and while I think about it … John Stanley was sitting at a table near the center of the room. They caught him when he went down … when Lou couldn’t find him … I think, because they brought him in and made him sit. I got a chance to signal him that Lou was okay.

  “Anyway, Cindy was serving our table, so I whispered to her that I had to get out of there and find you. She thought you might be here, or come back here, where the phone is, and brought me an extra apron from the galley. I put it on and took off my sweater. When she moved to another table, she left me the tray. I just stood up and started working at our table, then I followed her back to the galley and walked right on through to the hallway beyond it. No one stopped me, so I came on up the stairs, and past the lounge to here. Thank God you’re here. And you’ve got help.”

  “A bomb,” Kepasky muttered, drawing their attention back to the situation at hand.

  “Bastards!” Sawyer said aloud, slamming his fist into a filing cabinet.

  “They didn’t say where it was, or even hint, did they, Jess?”

  “No, Alex. Not a word.”

  “And they didn’t say what kind of bomb, or how it will be detonated?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Brady spoke up. “It seems like there’d be two options. They could leave it with a timing device, or set it off from a remote control of some kind from their boat.”

  Jensen nodded. “It’s the first kind that worries me. They’re not going to leave it sitting right out in plain sight. They’ll hide it, or already have hidden it, somewhere. We’re going to have to find it, unless we can get them before they set it up, if they haven’t already done that. Otherwise, it’ll be a race to see if we can locate it before it blows.”

  “It would have to be in the hold somewhere.” McKimmey frowned as he considered something that might damage his ship and its engines. ‘To sink this ship, it would have to blow a hole below the waterline.”

  “You’re right,” Alex agreed. “But we can’t look for it until we either get these lunatics taken care of, or they leave. I’d rather it was before we’re left alone with some explosive device.”

  “Well,” Walker spoke up for the first time in this discussion, “whatever happens, we’ll either sink, or not. Let’s take things one at a time. Right now, let’s concentrate on our goal of catching a few more of them. What else can we do?”

  He was right. They could all see that.

  “Can you tell us anything else about who’s down there?” Alex asked Jessie.

  “Not much. The two that I heard talking mentioned a couple of names. Walt and Nelson.”

  Walt. Walt? Why did that name ring bells, Jensen wondered. Somewhere in the last couple of days he’d run into that name before. Yesterday! It was yesterday, in the Ketchikan paper … the article about the stolen powerboat, stolen and burned sailboat, and the woman they had found dead in Tracy Arm. So it might be part of this after all. And he’d thought it had nothing to do with them.

  Damn. What a tangle, and how little sense it made. Maybe it wasn’t the same Walt.

  “What, or who, shall we go after next?” Brady asked.

  “The owner’s suite, I think,” Jensen answered. “They seem to be spread out pretty thin. I can’t imagine they’d put more than one man in there. We should be able to take him, if we can just get in fast enough.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Alex gave Jessie a speculative look.

  “How’re you feeling, Jess?”

  “I’m okay. Why? You want me to do something, right?”

  “Yes. You looked enough like crew to fool them in the dining room. Would you give it another try?”

  “In the suite, you mean?”

  He nodded. “You could knock and ask if they want breakfast. Say you’re there to take orders. When they open the door, we’re in.”

  She thought about it, but only for a minute. “Sure. I can do that.”

  “Okay. Take the tray and hold it in front of you. Whoever’s in there with them will have a gun.”

  He turned to the others. “It can’t be all of us. Two, three at the most.”

  “Agreed,” said Walker. “More, and we get in each other’s way. Have to get through that door. Let’s do it military, like we were trained, Alex.”

  “How’d you know …?”

  “Never miss an ex-Marine. Might as well carry a sign that says, Semper Fi …”

  “Okay. You outline what you’re thinking.”

  “Three of us go; you, me, and Repasky, all military. Vietnam, Repasky?”

  The others glanced at Vern, who grinned and rubbed his bald head. “Don’t I wish. Korea.”

  “Right. Can you operate that thing McKimmey’s clutching?”

  “AK-47? Sure.”

  Ray handed it over with no reluctance at all.

  “I have a pistol we took from one of those guys we put away. You’ve got your own, Jensen?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Ray, you take the other guard’s pistol. A pistol you can handle, right? You three can back us up, follow a little behind.”

  “Okay.”

  “Everybody ready? Let’s go.”

  “Lawrence.” Jensen stopped him. “It would be a good idea to have Jessie come along
to get us in.”

  “Oh, right. You’re right. Sony. And we’ll be right behind?”

  “Exactly, guns and tape in hand. But the most important thing is that we do not want a shot fired, at any cost. Another of these guys on the bridge could hear it and cause problems. The bridge can contact the rest of the ship, and we certainly don’t want them all coming to pin us down in the suite, do we? We need to be quick, and quiet, and cause no commotion or sound to attract attention. Got it?”

  “Right.” They all nodded.

  “Counting this one, four of their guys, almost half, will have disappeared and the rest won’t know where,” Sawyer observed.

  “That’s right,” Jensen told him. “When we get this done, I think there’ll be at least three more of us than there will be of them. We’re getting someplace now.”

  *

  It worked almost the way they wanted it to, with one slight hitch. The man who opened the door was not the gunman they had expected, but Dick West, the company CEO. Behind him in the room, in a chair, with another assault rifle trained on Dick’s father, was the gunman. As West realized there was more to the visit than a breakfast order, he moved to the side, giving them access to the suite but at the same time allowing the man with the rifle a clear view not only of Jessie, who was still standing just inside the door, but also of Jensen and Walker, who were on their way in from either side of her. He began to move his weapon in their direction, but just before Jensen was about to shoot him, the gun suddenly flew out of his hand and landed on the floor.

  Jessie, almost without thought, had swung the tray she carried like a Frisbee, flinging it in a dead-on shot that she would probably never be able to duplicate. It had flown across the room and connected solidly with his wrist, causing him to drop the rifle with a howl of hurt.

  Unfortunately, the tray did not stop there. As it hit him, the guard was already swinging his other arm to meet it. He backhanded it away from him with all his might. It sailed back again, missing Jensen by an inch, straight into the face of Repasky, coming fast in the door behind him. The sound, as it made hard contact with his left eyebrow, was an empty metallic bonk, but it stopped him only momentarily. With Sawyer and Brady, Jensen had the tray-batter surrounded before the man could recover sufficiently to pick up his rifle.