The Revengers (40 page)

“Passing astern,” I heard her say as she hauled herself back up the ladder. “No way we can slow down enough to intercept. Carry on.”

I heard Giulio snort in the darkness of the cabin. I heard his voice, “I told you it was going to be a long night.”

It was.

The next ship didn’t come along until some time in the early morning hours. Serena had shoved my watch well up under my shirt-sleeve to tape me, so I had no way of telling time. It had been a long wait, but night was still black at the cabin ports and the stars were still bright over the main hatch. Eleanor was still curled up unhappily on the settee cushion beside me. She didn’t stir for the cry of the lookout—Adam this time—or the soft thumping of Serena’s feet on the companionway ladder, or the sudden red glow of the chart table light. She didn’t even react immediately to Serena’s triumphant call,

“We got us a live one! Adam, get forward and get that working jib down and give me the big genoa. I’ll need just about another knot of speed; but if he doesn’t change course, we’ve got him cold.” She reached for the microphone of the radio above the chart table and spoke into it, “Scramble I repeat scramble.”

The radio spoke back, “Scramble received. Position?”

Lacking Robert’s French accent, that would be the voice of Arturo, whom I’d never met, since he’d lived on
Ser-Jan’s
bridge all the time I’d spent on board the sportfisherman. Serena switched on a bulky electronic instrument of some kind next to the radio, fiddled with it for a little, and read off a latitude and longitude. Apparently the picturesque old-fashioned sextant is a thing of the past. The radio repeated the numbers back to her.

“Check. Activating homers,” Serena said into the mike. She turned her head to call to the cockpit, “Okay, Henry, hit those buttons.”

Henry’s voice said, after a moment, “Switch one.”

The radio said, “Unit one transmitting.”

“Switch two.”

The radio said, “Homer two transmitting. Reception clear. Good luck. Out.”

Serena replaced the microphone, turned off her instruments and the red light, and swung herself up on deck in agile fashion. Eleanor moved at last beside me. She fell back helplessly as her bound hands betrayed her. I didn’t try to help her. I could see Giulio, very alert, across the cabin. A forty-foot boat has a maximum beam of around twelve feet, and the pilot berths outboard took up some room, so the range could hardly be called excessive. He was a shadowy pale figure in his white sailor pants and light jersey; and I could see the glint of the steady weapon he held. He’d be on hair-trigger now, psychologically cocked and ready, expecting a last-minute break. It was no time for reckless chivalry. Eleanor succeeded in getting herself upright unassisted, and made a clumsy thing of pushing her untidy hair out of her face.

“How do you feel?” I asked her to remind her, if she needed reminding, that she wasn’t supposed to be feeling very well.

“Awful,” she said in convincingly miserable tones. “I still feel perfectly ghastly. Oh, God, I’m so sick and headachy I could die!” Then she swallowed hard; I could hear her throat work. “I guess ... I guess that wasn’t exactly the right thing to say, was it? Matt?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry I got you into this. We’re not going to make it, are we? I don’t believe a word that woman says.” After a little, she asked, “Does it. . . hurt very much?”

“The last few times I died it was practically painless,” I said.

“Damn you, don’t make fun of . . . Matt, is it true that when it happens you . . . dirty yourself disgustingly right afterward?”

“Sure,” I said. “Everything relaxes and it all comes out in your pants.”

“I can’t bear to think of it,” she said. “I don’t mind everything going black so much, but I can’t bear the thought of people seeing me all messy like that.”

It was a hell of a conversation, but it was a conversation, and one was needed. I said callously, “What do you care? You won’t be there to be embarrassed by your own repulsive condition.”

“That helps,” she said bitterly. “Oh, that really helps! Gee, thanks lots, you really know how to comfort a girl. . . .”

“All right, Giulio, send them up.” Serena’s head showed in the hatchway, a dark shape against the stars. “Make it snappy now. We haven’t got all night.”

“Here comes the dame,” Giulio said, giving Eleanor a sharp signal with the gun. To me, he said, “You get behind her and steady her as she climbs; and don’t you get any smart-ass ideas, either of you. Like putting on a big clumsy act just because you’re taped like that. No phony falls. If you let her tumble back on us, Helm, I’ll just step back and empty this piece into both of you; and it holds fourteen, including the one up the pipe.”

It was a little tricky, but it was a slanting ladder, actually a small, steep, wooden staircase; and only live steps high. I put my shoulders against Eleanor’s rear to support and steady her as, climbing, she had to release her first hand hold and reach higher up. Then Serena had her by the bound wrists and was hauling her out.

With my greater height, I just reached up and felt my right hand grabbed. I walked right up out of there, steadied by the black-haired girl’s muscular grip. A sudden yank might have unbalanced her, although she was pretty well braced; but the stunt would have got me nothing but a collection of nasty little metal-jacketed 9mm slugs in the back. They put hard coats on them so they won’t get malformed and jam in the clattering actions of the automatics and submachine guns. It’s also a gesture toward the so-called rules of civilized warfare—and that means they don’t expand when they hit, like the softer all-lead revolver slugs; but any size hole in me, even 9mm unexpanded, is too big as far as I’m concerned.

I waited in the cockpit, aware of Giulio climbing up to join us cautiously. I was also aware that Eleanor, despite her abject air of illness and defeat, was staying close to Serena as instructed, and that Adam was way up forward putting on a big jib in the place of a small one. Another ghost of an opportunity had slipped by while Giulio was emerging from the cabin; but Henry was right there at the wheel with the 12-gauge Winchester pump within easy reach, and instinct told me it wasn’t time yet. But if you pass up too many borderline chances you may wind up with no chances at all.

“Ready forward,” Adam called.

“Run it up,” Serena commanded, and turned to glance at Eleanor. “You can hold a line, even like that, can’t you? When I give it to you and tell you to pull, you lean into it and pull like hell.”

There was a great deal of noisy flapping forward as the big sail was hoisted, and Serena started hauling in a good-sized rope, hand over hand—the jib sheet, if my nautical terminology is correct. Then the strain got too much for her as the sail grew taut and she threw three quick turns around a large stainless steel winch mounted on the port side of the cockpit—there was a matching one to starboard —and grabbed one of the handles Eleanor had mentioned. She clapped it into the socket in the top of the winch and started cranking hard with one hand while pulling with the other. Finally that got too tough, and she passed the line to Eleanor.

“Now, pull !" She cranked with both hands, leaning over to watch the sail. “That does it. Okay, I’ve got it.”

She cleated the sheet. Straightening up, she dropped the winch handle back into its plastic cockpit holster and made the usual instinctive gesture toward hauling up her stretchy bodice. I looked around and saw the ship at last. It was far out toward the horizon, approaching from starboard; and it was not a very impressive or frightening sight, just a small pattern of pretty lights on the dark ocean, well off the bow. There were two white lights, the range lights, with the one to the left, forward, lower than the one to the right, aft. Under the latter was a small red glow: the port sidelight. The green one to starboard would, of course, be obscured from this angle. Confusing the picture was a cluster of weaker, yellowish lights that had to be the deckhouse windows.

Jamboree
was well heeled over and roaring right along now with the big genoa jib up and pulling hard. She was proudly showing her racing origins as she headed for Point X, still far ahead, where the courses of the two vessels would intersect. Even without sighting over compasses and drawing lines on oddball graph paper, I could see that it was going to be close when she got there. Very close.

Serena stepped over to the big steering wheel. “I’ll take her now, Henry. Get the Zodiac alongside. I’ll slow her with a luff when you’re ready to load. . . . Oh, don’t forget your homer.”

A black wet suit was laid out on one of the cockpit seats—but looking at it more closely, I saw that it was not really the type of close-fitting suit the active surfers and scuba divers employ under chilly conditions. This was a real survival suit; a thick, heavy, all-encompassing flotation garment with hood and feet like a baby’s sleeper. I’d heard of them, but I’d never seen one before. Attached to it were a couple of items of equipment. In the dark I could identify a signaling light of some kind, but I did not recognize the small rectangular orange box beside it. Another, somewhat larger, box the same color was not attached to the suit. When Henry picked it up, I saw the gleaming tip of what seemed to be an antenna that could be extended and, presumably, had been extended for the operational test I’d just heard. Homer. Well, actually, I’d been bright enough to guess that the reference had been to a homing device, not a Greek poet. Superior intelligence is, of course, a prerequisite for this racket; but if I were truly smart, I asked myself, would I be here? But that’s what you always ask yourself when things get a little tight.

Then the rubber boat was alongside and Serena was turning us into the wind. The sails were flapping and
Jamboree
was losing way and rising to an even keel. A gate had been opened in the starboard lifelines and a folding ladder had been dropped over the side. Henry, a dry sandy man, taller and leaner than Adam just as Eleanor had described him, in dungarees with, at his hip, the sailor-knife she’d mentioned, dropped down the ladder first, followed by the black man who’d returned from the bow. Henry seated himself near the motor but Adam remained standing, steadying himself by a grip on the ladder, waiting to receive Eleanor. At Giulio’s command she moved to the rail, turned her back to the water, got to her knees, and groped for the ladder with her foot. Finding it, she eased herself downward, clinging to a lifeline stanchion with her bound hands. Adam caught her around the waist as she came within his reach, and swung her back and down into the Zodiac. A moment later he had his fancy custom knife out of its sheath, its edge at her throat.

“All right, Helm,” Giulio said. “You see how it is. One false move from you. . . .Now get down there!”

It was childish, of course. It made me feel old and cynical to realize that there were still people around who’d use that tired old routine against us. Under normal circumstances, it would have meant nothing to me if I’d seen the opportunity for which I was waiting. It could not have been allowed to mean anything to me. We’re not supposed to be deflected from our duties by the mere fact that stray young ladies may get slightly dead; we don’t play that game at all. It’s tough, but that’s the way the standing orders read. Too many people think they have the world by the tail, these days, if they can just point a knife or a gun at a warm body, any warm body.

Nowadays, they’ll give you a jet airplane complete with pilot, crew, and pretty stewardesses—excuse me, flight attendants—if you can just manage to threaten the wellbeing of somebody, somehow. They’ll even throw in a million bucks or two to make you happy. Mac long ago came to the conclusion that an organization like ours could not afford to operate in this benevolent manner. The instructions went out:
no mission to be jeopardized for hostages of any description
. In other words, we’re just supposed to plug away at our jobs and let the bodies, amateur or professional, involved or uninvolved, innocent or guilty, fall where they may. The theory is that our missions are supposed to be reasonably important to the national welfare, and almost invariably involve some loss of life anyway; why should a hostage’s life be treated as more valuable than anybody else’s?

So, under ordinary circumstances, I’d have been duty bound to ignore the fact that this was a bright and attractive girl whom I liked and respected. My normal assignment did not include the preservation of bright and attractive girls—but this abnormal assignment, fortunately, did. In fact, my current mission was specifically concerned with keeping Miss Eleanor Brand alive, thank God. For once I did not have
that
grim choice to make; the choice that was supposed to be no choice at all.

I descended obediently into the Zodiac and took my place beside her on the wooden floorboards forward. There was only one seat, the box near the stem that presumably concealed the gas tank for the outboard motor, and Henry had that Some water had splashed into the boat and was washing around in the bottom. I felt it wet the rear of my slacks coldly as I sat down. I decided that even with a survival suit, even this far south in this mild season, paddling around neck-deep in that stuff was something I’d leave to Serena if I could, without envy. I watched Giulio descend the ladder backward and turn to sit down facing us. He winced as the water soaked through his sailor pants, but the Browning did not falter. Adam sheathed the knife and Eleanor, released, turned toward me miserably and buried her head in my shoulder. Above us, Serena threw off the lines that held the Zodiac alongside. As we fell away from the sailboat’s side, she hauled up the ladder and returned to the steering wheel. The big boat heeled sharply as the sails stopped slatting and filled; then
Jamboree
was pulling away, gaining speed rapidly and leaving us bobbing there on the dark ocean.

I glanced around and saw the ship again, closer and larger now. I could make out the dim, white shape of the superstructure, and even the ghostly outline of the black hull. It seemed to be a freighter with the deckhouse amidships. The red running light gleamed like a bloodshot eye.
Jamboree
, racing eagerly toward the meeting point ahead, was represented by a single white stern light, low, and, at the masthead, a red light over a green telling the world that this was a sailboat with certain rights at sea. The masthead lights, I knew, were not mandatory. Apparently Serena was serious about playing this deadly game of hers according to her own notions of fairness. . . .