“Strip to your trunks,” Stephenson ordered. “You won’t need the wet suit before tonight.”
“The water won’t get that cold even at night.” Macklin took off his windbreaker and unbuckled his belt.
“You don’t know shit about hypothermia. You can freeze to death in water warm enough to bathe in.”
Macklin flexed his bare shoulders contentedly in the heat of the sun and made no comment. His companion was no expert on bathing. The killer had put on his clothes over a pair of black swimming trunks in his size that Stephenson had found for him in a hamper smelling of sweat and mold. He had unwound the tape from around his ribcage and left it on the floor of the hut. Now, nearly naked, he felt as fragile as old crystal. He used melted ice from the beer cooler to wet his feet and put on his fins.
Under Stephenson’s close supervision, he donned mask and snorkel and practiced the awkward feet-first dive and the side and flutter kicks throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, resting between workouts while the fat man guzzled beer and held forth on atmospheric pressure versus water pressure and quoted Jack London. Finally Macklin hauled himself into the boat with every muscle in his body aflame and, he swore, steam rolling off the heat in his injured side. The wall of his mouth tasted like rubber from the mouthpiece of the snorkel and his head ached from blowing his nose constantly to equalize the pressure in his ears. He was a fair swimmer, but it had been two years since his last time in the water. He was starting to wonder if the hundred thousand was worth it.
“Okay,” Stephenson said, launching another crushed can out past the fantail, “let’s see them hand signals again.”
“Shove the hand signals. I won’t have anyone to signal tonight.”
“Okay. You’re the one wanted the complete course in one day. How’s the ribs?”
“They dissolved three dives back.”
“I got just the thing.” The sailor, who was sitting on the bench next to Macklin, leaned back, shoving out his massive belly, and rummaged a hand under the captain’s seat, coming up at last with a square fifth of Jack Daniel’s with four inches of liquid gone from the top. He thrust it at Macklin, who shook his head.
“C’mon. You want me to throw more Sea Wolf at you?”
“Christ, no.” Macklin accepted the bottle, uncapped it, and took a swig. The liquor burned a furrow down his throat, dozed in his stomach for a moment, then started the slow warm crawl up his spine. He took another short drink and handed it back. Stephenson rubbed the mouth with the heel of a filthy hand and accounted for two inches in a single slant. He lowered the bottle, drew his forearm across his lips, and jerked a thumb back over his left shoulder. “She’s out there someplace.”
“Who?” Without thinking, Macklin took back the bottle and drank. The inside of his skull was starting to echo. He hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours and the stuff was going straight to his brain.
“The Boblo boat. Don’t you listen to the news?”
The killer said nothing, searching the old man’s broad flushed face and faded eyes.
“I was in charge, I’d fly a helicopter in low and drop a bomb on her, blow them fucking Commies past hell to Philadelphia.”
“Could be that’s why you’re not in charge.”
The fat man stabbed a black-nailed finger at him. “That’s the thinking got them people on the boat in the fix they’re in. You ever wonder why you never hear about no terrorists taking no Russian citizens hostage?”
“Because the Russians would fly a helicopter in low and drop a bomb on them.”
“Damn right. None of this negotiations shit.” He tilted the bottle. The stubble on his chin glistened. Passing it back: “Oh, it’s tough on the hostages the first two or three times. After that the fuckers get the message and lay off. I said the same thing when Hitler went into Czechoslovakia, but who listened to me? I damn near enlisted in ’forty-two. But I was tied up shipping black market beef in from Amherstberg.”
Macklin spilled whiskey on his bare chest and grinned. “Stephenson, you’re a floating piece of shit, you know that?”
“Colorful, though.”
They slumped with their backs against the hull while the sun dried Macklin’s body and struck sparks off the blue waves. The fog had lifted entirely. More sails showed on the horizon. A speedboat ripped past below the curve. Five minutes later its wake slid under the Wolf Larsen, rocking it gently.
“You like putting the touch on folks?” Stephenson asked finally.
“You like taking doctors out after coho?”
“Yeah, I get you.” He drank and offered the bottle to Macklin. The killer declined. Stephenson tried to put the top back on twice, screwing at empty air, then flipped it over his shoulder and finished the rest of the contents in two swigs. The bottle slapped the water an instant later. “‘Their generation,’” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Conrad. The Nigger of the Narcissus. ‘Their generation lived inarticulate and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.’ Conrad, he knew. Just like London. They were sailors before they were writers.”
“I wish a killer had written something I could quote.”
Stephenson unzipped his baggy mouth to show black spaces among his orange teeth. “‘The Jews are the ones that will not be blamed for nothing.’ Jack the Ripper wrote that one on a brick wall.”
“He was an amateur. Good professionals die forgotten. Like good presidents.”
The sailor lowered an anchor fashioned from a motorcycle engine block and they napped in the shade of the cabin with the lake moving under them.
Macklin awoke in the first chill of evening with the red eye of the sun watching him warily over the water to the west. A stiff breeze licked up his spine and played among the curls of white hair on Stephenson’s great paunch across from him. The sailor was snoring with his mouth open. Immediately Macklin checked the plastic bag inside his trunks, into which he had placed the Smith & Wesson and all his cash, including what remained of the fifty thousand Howard Klegg had paid him. Everything was there. He reached for the wet suit lying like a rubbery octopus on the deck. A brass snap clinked, bringing Stephenson awake with a start. He was an even lighter sleeper than Macklin.
“How’s your head?” asked the killer. He was climbing into the suit.
“In my hat. How’s yours?”
“I haven’t had a hangover since high school. How about a couple of quick lessons while we’ve got light?”
“They’re your ribs.”
Afterward he toweled off, traded the wet suit and trunks for his clothes, and they put in to shore, where the two carried an eight-foot skiff with oars out of a lean-to in back of Stephenson’s hut and stowed it aboard the launch. The sailor stopped to put on deck shoes and a greasy linen wrapper and build himself a sandwich with cold cuts and sliced french bread from his refrigerator, but again Macklin declined to help himself. He had slept off the alcohol, and with the hollowness in his stomach his head felt as clear as alpine air. He could feel his adrenaline level climbing.
The moon was high and heel-shaped in a sky pierced with stars when they set out. Tiny drops from the bow wash pelted Macklin’s face like ice crystals, smarting and forcing him to lean forward into the shelter of the cabin. His face stiffened in the cold nighttime lake air.
It was a very long trip to the chart points he had given Stephenson, or it seemed that way. But after what felt like two hours, Macklin glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch and saw that they were less than forty-five minutes from the dock. He knew nothing of how far out those points were or how long it would take to reach them. Twice he spotted lights on the horizon and thought they belonged to the captive boat. But when he pointed them out to Stephenson he was told they belonged to ore carriers on their way down from the iron mines in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the foundries in Sa
ndusky and Cleveland.
When he did see the lights of the Boblo boat he thought they were just waves flashing under the moon. They were gone that fast behind the earth’s curvature as the Wolf Larsen dipped between ground swells. Then he spied them again, ghostly on the edge of the disc of water, and grasped Stephenson’s shoulder. The sailor nodded energetically.
“Seen it. Pleasure craft, probably.”
“How close are we to those points?”
“Hell, we’re right on top of them.”
“Stop.”
Stephenson throttled down. The engine slowed to a burble, coughed, and stopped. Wind hissed across the water. Waves slapped the hull. Starboard of the bow, the distant lights blinked on and off behind the rolling of the lake. Macklin stripped and climbed into the wet suit, stowing the plastic bag containing the gun and his money under the waistband. He clamped his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering when the cold damp rubber touched his skin.
“It’s a long row,” Stephenson warned him. “Hit a wave wrong, you’ll capsize sure.”
“Take the bow, will you?” Macklin grasped the skiff by the stern and lifted.
The sailor helped him hoist the small boat over the side and lower it into the water. “You ain’t rowing back.”
“I don’t plan to. As soon as I’m out of sight you can go home.” He gathered the rest of his gear under his left arm and held out his free hand. “You’re going to need a new rowboat.”
Stephenson took the hand in a horned grip. “You said I wasn’t going to be dumping no bodies into the lake. I’ll hold you to that.”
“Bosh,” said Macklin, and when the fat man stared at him: “I read The Sea Wolf when I was ten.”
“Then you know that was Larsen’s last word.”
Macklin climbed carefully into the skiff—had it been only hours since the feel of water beneath his feet had made him uneasy?—stowed his gear under the middle seat, undid the line from the ring and tossed it to Stephenson, who caught it one-handed. In the pale green glow from the boat’s instrument panel the sailor’s bulk carved a starless hole out of the sky. Macklin pushed free of the larger craft, unshipped the oars, and rowed away into the darkness. Behind him the Wolf Larsen undulated on the waves until its profile slid below the curve. Then its engine made a liquid rippling sound in the distance going away.
CHAPTER 27
Alone on water as black as the sky, Macklin knew the fear he had sought to make Charles Maggiore understand two days earlier.
There was no light anywhere except the chains of reflected moon on the hungry waves and the feeble interior glow from the Boblo boat—no running lights burned on its hull—and every time a movement of the skiff put the rolling lake between them, Macklin was sure he’d lost even that dim beacon. And whenever it did come back into view it was always the same distance away. He wondered with a cold stab at his heart if it was indeed anchored as he had thought or still under power. If the latter, it would soon be out of sight, leaving him stranded on one of the most unpredictable bodies of water on the planet. Death was nothing. In a world that was ninety percent water, man’s most primitive terrors had to do with being cast adrift on an endless sea under eternal night.
He brushed his chin against the smooth bright vinyl of his safety vest for reassurance and continued rowing with a sure, steady pull. Pain sparked his side, taking his mind intermittently off his fears and the soreness in his muscles. He hadn’t worked a pair of oars in almost twenty-five years, not since his father was alive and used to take him on fishing trips in the Upper Peninsula. In fact, his last clear memory of the old man was of him standing astraddle the center seat of a rented boat smeared with tar, a big man with legs slightly bowed, wrestling with a huge bass off Whitefish Point and cursing a blue streak when the line snapped and the fish took off trailing his favorite lure. Soon afterward he had made the mistake of changing pinball machines in his bowling alley on Lafayette, and a neighborhood dog was discovered playing with his head in the parking lot.
Macklin rowed, growing warm finally inside the rubber insulation of the wet suit. The butt of the gun wrapped in plastic gouged at his good ribs, a comforting annoyance. Up ahead the lights of the boat seemed closer at last, down from the horizon and taking on symmetry. He could make out three distinct layers with a pale glowing crown on top. No other vessel in these waters could be mistaken for it. His heart thudded dully, pumping adrenaline like electric waves to his brain and extremities. He had an erection such as neither Donna nor Christine could ever generate.
He quickly erased those two from his mind. They only clouded his thinking. His father had told him that the reason Indians were better hunters than white men was that they thought about nothing but their quarry. Macklin was concentrating on Siegfried.
You’ll be dealing with one pro, two semis if you count Blakeman and MacKenzie and their combat training, and two dangerous amateurs, Tonda Kalu and Delbert, the Beast That Blew Up Hollywood.
When he could make out the slightly lighter bulk of the boat against the black background, he shipped the oars and dug his face mask out from under the seat, spitting on the glass and spreading the saliva around with his fingers to prevent clouding, then put it on. He clamped the snorkel in his teeth and strapped on the waterproof sheath containing a knife with a broad blade and a wicked sawtooth edge near the hilt. Before lowering himself into the water he peeled off the safety vest and jammed it under the seat. It was designed to pick up light for quick rescue, but in his case it could only attract bullets. The only safety devices he could rely on were those that were ingrained.
Although the suit absorbed most of the shock of the cold water, he was completely immersed before his heart started up again. He tried a couple of side kicks to get his blood circulating, raised his head clear of the water to get a fix on the boat, then submerged again and flutter-kicked in that direction, stroking his arms close to his body in a streamlining movement that bartered minimum effort for maximum speed. Even so, in just a few hundred yards his chest was pumping fit to burst his damaged ribs. He came to the surface again and removed the snorkel to breathe air untainted by rubber, treading water.
The droplets on his mask gave him a bee’s-eye view of the triple-decked boat, fully visible now, its interior lights spilling out onto the water. He could make out figures moving within. The vessel was at anchor and reluctantly giving way to the motion of the more persistent waves; tall and curved and white and suggestive of mint juleps and magnolia blossoms, it seemed more at home than Macklin on this ancient lake. The danger would begin when he entered that circle of light. From that point on he would be square in the kill zone.
He ducked his head and resumed swimming, slower now.
“What do you want?”
With his back to the starboard wall of the pilot house, Don pointed his Luger at the face of Ted Delano coming up from the captain’s quarters below. Delano stopped. “Just getting some air. It’s close down there.”
The leader of the hijackers studied the square-jawed face. It was slick with perspiration and the young intern’s dark hair was plastered to his forehead. “How’s the hero?”
“Sleeping. I’m leaving the bullet in his arm for now; he’s lost too much blood to risk losing more while I tried to take it out.”
Don nodded and moved away from the opening, belting the pistol. Delano came up the rest of the way. His dinner jacket was on the dance deck and his dress shirt was wrinkled and clinging wetly to his drenched skin. He shivered a little in the cool air coming in over the bridge wings.
Don said, “In Westerns they just heat up a knife in the campfire and pop the bullet out, just like that.”
“What they don’t show you is how long the man lived until the infection killed him,” said the intern, smiling faintly. “Provided the shock didn’t do it first.”
Not having a medical bag, he had used first aid materials from the ship’s stores to cleanse the hole Don had put in the wheel man’s arm and patch it up. After the fi
rst round of cursing when the alcohol had touched the torn flesh, the sailor had lapsed into unconsciousness and hadn’t recovered yet. He had bled a great deal before Delano got to him. The intern’s gaze flicked down to the brown stains on the floor of the pilot house. Don saw it.
“I fired too fast or I’d have put one through his pumper,” he said. “I didn’t figure that one for the Batman type. I wonder who put him up to it.” He was looking at the first mate, sitting on the turning stool nearby.
“I’d have done it myself.” Phil Holliday glared at the well-polished tips of Don’s shoes, the curve of his handlebar moustache accentuating the grim set of his features.
“No, it’d be like you to use someone else’s balls.”
The mate tensed and started to rise. The young security guard, who had been half-dozing standing with his back to the windscreen, stepped in front of him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Don said, “Let him up. Let’s see how fast he moves. I’ll just start with my hands down here.” He hung them to his hips, well below the butt of the Luger in his waistband.
“That gun makes you pretty big,” said Holliday.
“No bigger than I have to be, Wyatt.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Captain Fielding was seated on the chart table with his big knotted hands on his knees and his cap hanging on the handle of the steam whistle. His white hair was thick in front but worn down to pink scalp at the temples from constant contact with the cap’s sweatband. “You call him Wyatt, but who’s acting like a gunslinger?”
“They’re all crazy,” Delano rasped. “Fay tried the same thing with the bandleader. Their own lives don’t mean anything to them. They’ve considered themselves dead since they came on board.”
The atmosphere inside the octagonal enclosure dripped silence. Except for light catnaps, and Don hadn’t even had that, none of them had slept in three days. Even the lookout, barely out of his teens, showed middle-aged lines in his face. Then Don smiled behind his drooping moustache. Tension drained out the openings leading to the bridge.
Kill Zone Page 17
