Kill Zone (2 page)

More than likely, though, their curiosity had to do with so many young faces among these mostly middle-aged revelers eagerly awaiting their chance to step out to their favorite tunes from the thirties and forties played by an old-time dance band. These sailors, Larry told himself, saw thousands of people every day. Don and Larry were just two more, even if Don was the only one with an X branding his cheek.

In fact, First Mate Holliday recognized the tall young blond man with the gunfighter's moustache and the strange scar, but thought little of his presence tonight. Many tourists and natives made the same trip several times during the season. Boblo was a local institution, there was nothing quite like it in the country.

It was a long line and getting longer. Despite the slack period before the Labor Day rush and the cool weather, there were going to be more people to have to keep an eye on than anyone in the group had hoped. They were strung out through the line, Fay alone because Mike was gone and an interracial couple drew more attention than an unescorted black woman. They were all dressed better than usual, in keeping with the restrictions for the moonlight cruise; even Doris had climbed out of her teenage chic and into a white summerweight dress with small black polka-dots, a light blue sweater buttoned at her throat and worn over her bare shoulders like a cape. Larry had on the gray tailormade suit his parents had given him when he graduated from high school. Fay was wearing a simple green frock and the rest of the men wore sportcoats and ties. Ray's coat was large for his slight frame, but there was a reason for that.

Mike missing was a good sign. That meant he had succeeded in boarding with the band as arranged. That was the pivot their plan swung on. Mike had been rehearsing with the band for a couple of days now. Don had told him he had found and bribed the regular bass player to walk while Mike took his place. In fact, the regular bass player was lying in the Wayne County Morgue with a bullet in his brain and his body burned beyond hope of identification. Sol was earning his salary.

On board, Mike, broad as a barn in the band's uniform of scarlet blazer and white slacks, took his time selecting a cigarette from his pack and hunting up a match to cover the delay in opening his instrument case. The others were already assembling their horns and woodwinds and casting preliminary toots out over the empty dance deck. It had looked for a while as if he wouldn't get this far. When he'd showed up for his first rehearsal, the bandleader, a small thin man in his fifties with a bumpy brown toupee and the sour look of someone past his era, had glanced at Mike's union card and said, “Where the hell were you at rehearsal this afternoon, when I was on the horn all over trying to round up a bass man?”

Mike improvised. “Jack left a message on my answering machine before he went away on that emergency. I only got home and heard it an hour ago.”

“Well, you can just go back home and listen to some more messages. I've done without a bass before.”

Ordinarily Mike might have panicked at this point. But he'd shot up just before leaving the house and the calm was opening like an umbrella in his chest. He hiked the big case back under his arm. “Do what feels good, man. Personally I think a band without rhythm's like a bike without wheels. Catch you.” He'd started to turn.

“Oh, sit down,” said the bandleader. “You got music?”

Now, smoking, with one corny saddleshoe propped on the seat of his chair, he had second thoughts about the whole thing. What if the bandleader had found a replacement? If Don hadn't anticipated an unscheduled rehearsal, you had to wonder how many other things he hadn't anticipated. For the first time in a long time the musician felt the itch in his veins twice in one evening.

CHAPTER 3

The gate was opened finally and the chattering line shuffled through and onto the gangplank while a deckhand took tickets and the eyes of the security guards prowled the excursionists' clothes for suspicious bulges. Don smiled as he passed them and said something Larry didn't hear. When it came his turn he felt Doris' grip tighten on his arm but let the deckhand's calloused fingers take the tickets from his hand and moved forward, feeling the damp cold under his arms. The guards were big men, the older of the two steely-haired and sour-looking with a hard paunch pushing over his gun belt. But the pair barely glanced at the teenaged couple before turning their attention to the next people in line. Larry and Doris glided past the curious looks of the captain and first mate standing next to the gangplank, and then they were on board. Larry let out his breath.

The deckhand, a tall black man with a long jaw, smiled at Fay, who ignored him except to hand him her ticket. She had a complexion like antique gold and her short hair accentuated her Egyptian profile. On Sherman her lithe figure with its lean hips and small but firm breasts had made her popular with the Johns, but her refusal to go to bed with a white man had earned her the nickname of Princess among her less particular colleagues.

Clean-cut Teddy received the same cursory examination from the guards as had Larry and Doris, and if they saw Sol at all their attitude didn't reflect it. His build and features were deadly commonplace, as forgettable as last week's lunch. They reserved their closest attention for Ray, whose narrow hunted look and scrawny build under his voluminous sportcoat had drawn official suspicion all his life. They looked him up and down on his way through the gate and looked him up and down again when his back was to them. Nothing showed. But something unspoken passed between the security men when their glances met afterward. No one else in the very long line sparked that reaction.

The boards of the dance deck knocked hollowly under the passengers' feet, a broad varnished area between the bandstand and rows of folding wooden chairs for the wallflowers and those who preferred to watch the dancers and listen to the mellow music. The interior smelled heavily of fresh paint. The boat wore so many coats that a thumbnail left a clear half-moon on the blue-painted steel railing. Whispers brushed the slightly soggy air under the rafters.

There was a long wait while the people who were still boarding mounted the deck and climbed stairs to the other levels. The guards stepped aboard, followed by Cap'n Eddie and First Mate Holliday, who continued up to the pilot house fifty feet above the waterline. Then the burbling of the engine stepped up, tingling underfoot. The gangplank was drawn in, the windlass turned with a stuttering clank. The deckhand who had taken tickets uncoiled all lines from the piles, tossed them to mates on board, and leaped four feet onto the deck.

As the boat pulled away from the dock, loudspeakers in the bow and stern whistled and released a broadcast-trained voice throbbing with masculinity.

“Welcome to the Boblo boat. For the next four hours you'll be cruising on one of the world's busiest waterways that serves as the longest unprotected and freest border in the world between two great nations, Canada and the United States.”

Don, standing near the staircase that led to the second deck, took a last look around under the overhead lights to be sure everyone was in position. Ray loitered near the railing, his back to the older security guard, who was watching him. Mike was with the band. Fay and Sol were in the middle of the deck, almost empty now while most of the passengers were at the rail looking out. Larry and Doris were pretending interest in the lights on the Windsor side of the river. Don waited until they had all seen him, then started up the stairs.

“The ship you are on was built in nineteen-oh-two by the Detroit Shipbuilding Company,” the voice announced.

Ray reached into his inside breast pocket. The movement stiffened the guard, who relaxed slightly when Ray produced a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out.

“It has a capacity of twenty-five hundred passengers. It is two hundred and fifteen feet long and is moved by a two-thousand-horsepower engine. The captain is Edward Macomb Fielding, a seventeen-year veteran of the Boblo tours.”

Ray strolled away from the railing, the guard's eyes following him as he put a match to his cigarette. The guard was thus looking away from Mike while he unlatched the case that usually contained a bass fiddle.

“Everything possible is done to insure the comfort and safety of our passengers on this traditional moonlight cruise.”

There was a stiff breeze on the crown deck, where the younger guard approached Don as he was closing the gate marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY on his way to the ladder that led to the bridge. They were in the middle of the river now, with the ghostlit, spidery expanse of the Ambassador Bridge connecting the United States and Canada looming over the bow.

“Sorry, sir. Passengers aren't allowed on this level while the boat is in motion.”

“I was just looking for a men's room,” said Don, his easy embarrassed smile spreading behind his moustache.

The guard smiled back. He was giving directions to the head on the bottom deck when Don tugged the converted Luger out of the waistband of his pants and sank the muzzle in the guard's stomach.

“Get the hands up and turn around slowly.”

The voice continued to throb from the loudspeakers. “All of us at Boblo want you to enjoy your evening. For your dancing pleasure, we are proud to present the music of Chester Crane and his Whoopers. And don't forget our daytime cruises to Boblo Island, the only international amusement park in the world.” The tape-recorded Boblo theme came on under his last words and swelled to fill the boat, the singers' voices echoing tinnily off the river's surface.

The music was the cue to move. Mike flung open the big case, hauled out one of the three M-16 rifles and threw it to Sol, who caught it on the fly and wheeled on the older security guard. The guard, just then turning away from Ray, jerked his right hand spasmodically toward the gun on his hip, then threw both hands in the air as Sol flipped off the safety catch with a sharp snick.

“Over the side with it.” The killer's tone was dead.

The guard hesitated. But the greasegun-shaped rifle was a rock in the hands of the bland-looking man. The guard lowered his right hand slowly and fingered the gun from his holster and dropped it over the railing. It splashed into the boat's wash.

Most of the passengers were still at the rail. The few who had seen what was happening looked blank. Don had counted on that brief moment of assimilation and had drilled the others to take advantage of it. Mike threw another automatic rifle to Fay and the last to Doris, who almost dropped it, clapping it against her stomach in both arms. They had discussed arming her instead with something she could handle, but she was even more inept with handguns and Fay had argued that she might as well
look
dangerous. The pistols came next; Ray, Teddy, and Larry got one apiece and Mike jacked a shell into the chamber of his and stuck it in his belt under his loose blazer. Next came the portable transmitters, which went to Fay, Teddy, and Larry, with a fourth for Larry to pass up to Don. He slung one over each shoulder by its elastic strap. All this was accomplished in just under ten seconds.

Then a woman passenger screamed, but by then Ray, Larry, Doris, and Teddy were on their way up the stairs carrying their weapons and transmitters. Ray and Teddy hit the second deck running and took up posts at the bow and stern, their .45s drawing gasps and squeals from the couples gathered there. Larry and Doris took the third. The wicked-looking rifle in the girl's hands started a stampede toward the other end that actually tilted the great boat for a moment.

In the pilot house, Don had his Luger on the guard, the captain, the first mate, and the young man who served as lookout, while the helmsman stood rigid with his back to the gunman and his hands on the wheel. The guard's .38 was stuck in Don's waistband and his free hand held the microphone to the public-address system.

“You are all political prisoners of Siegfried.” His words rang tonelessly from the speakers. “Stay away from the rail, do what you're told, and maybe we'll all survive this cruise.”

On the second deck, Ray opened his coat and unwound a webbed belt bulging with gelatin explosives from around his waist.

On the dance deck, Chester Crane, his face going angry red under the toupee, said, “Those guns aren't real.”

Up close the M-16s, made entirely from plastic and stamped metal, did look like toys. Don had anticipated that reaction and given Sol his orders. The killer swung the squat muzzle on Mike and pressed the trigger.

Mike had time to grin and say, “Shit, man,” and then a short, coughing burst spun him into the rail. He sagged sideways, leaving a glistening smear along the painted steel.

The tape recording was still playing in the pilot house. In the pause before the first scream, the professional chorus sang, “Take someone you love to Boblo I-hi-land.”

CHAPTER 4

“Kind of early for you, isn't it, Red?” asked Bill Chilson.

Randall Burlingame, director of the Detroit office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rose from behind his battleship gray desk to grip Chilson's outstretched hand, a weary smile tugging out the corners of his lips.

“I'm used to it,” he said. “It's been a long time since I stayed up past two playing stud with drunken Secret Service agents.”

The FBI man was tall and broad-shouldered but running to fat around the middle, the soft rolls drawing a large V-shaped crease in his charcoal vest. His once-flaming hair was a bled-out pink these days, and the only people who still called him Red were those who had known him a long time. His bony face, classic in youth, had taken on a granite cast over the years of bickering with Hoover. He owed this long-overdue promotion to the Chief's death and the resultant backlash in Washington.

“You know I'm a grandfather now,” he said.

“No kidding. Which one, Randy?”

“Phyllis.”

Chilson's brows slid up. “Little Phyllis? Last time I saw her she was catching hell for squirting your shaving cream on the dog.”