Kill Zone (23 page)

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 first 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.

“You're a tough old fart, Cap'n Eddie. Bet you were something to see on one of those big ore boats in a storm.” He looked at the intern. “You stay quiet.”

“It's true, isn't it? You'd just as soon blow this tub to toothpicks right now, and to hell with everyone aboard, even you.”

“That's up to the Governor and the warden of Jackson prison.”

“Bullshit.”

“Steady, boy,” said the captain.

Don glanced at the lookout. “Crank up that radio. Maybe they're having trouble getting through.”

“I'd like to go back down now,” Delano said. “I want to be with Carol when the boat goes up.”

“What about your patient?”

“You can get me on the P.A. if you need me. If it matters.”

“Stay here.”

“Why?” The intern bristled. “Scared I'll spread the word and you'll have a counter-mutiny on your hands?”

Don swept the pistol out of his belt and backhanded it across Delano's face. He staggered backward and would have fallen down the short flight of steps to the captain's quarters had not Fielding sprung down from the chart table and caught him. Delano put a hand to his bleeding cheek, torn by the Luger's steel sight.

“Go back to your woman,” Don spat. “Try spreading that crap down there and Sol or Fay will feed you to the fish.”

“Boblo boat, this is Detroit,” crackled the radio.

A foot below the surface, the light from the boat turned the water lime-green, flashed off the bodies of schools of tiny fish, and made looming dark shadows of larger creatures gliding below. That sight made Macklin feel colder than he actually was in the watertight suit, for he knew he was a shadow himself and visible from above. If any of the terrorists happened to look down …

The boat's keel was black and solid below the waterline. He approached it broadside. If he were in charge of the hijackers, he would post one in the bow and one in the stern on each level to keep an eye on as many passengers as possible. He hoped that Blakeman or Don or whatever he called himself was as forward-thinking as he was. When he had drawn near enough to touch the peeling hull he surfaced, hunching his shoulders against the expected hail of bullets.

There was none. A blue-painted ledge ran around the boat two feet above the water and he held on, letting his legs hang motionless for the first time since he had left the skiff. Water streamed off his rubber helmet and snorkel and mask. The noise it made seemed deafening. He propped himself on his left forearm and tore off the mask and breathing apparatus, hesitated, then lowered them into the water.

The instant they drifted out of his reach he regretted it. The glass of the mask caught the light and threw it back like an undulating beacon as it bobbed on the waves. An oval of reflected white fluttered across the underside of the second deck. He poised himself, preparing to slide back underwater at the first shout. But again there was only silence and the trickling of water running off his suit.

A very long time passed, or seemed to pass, before the motion of the waves pushed the flashing glass outside the circle of light. Macklin glanced at his watch, but moisture had seeped inside and clouded the crystal, obscuring the face. When what felt like another full minute had gone by, he reached down and slid the flipper off his right heel, then his left. Like dazed fish they spiraled down slowly through the illuminated water and disappeared into the murky depths. Peter Macklin, the barefoot killer.

The center section of the bottom deck was closed in, with curtains blinding the sliding windows. He hoisted himself the rest of the way onto the ledge and flattened out against the painted metal, as much to rest and wait for the aching in his ribs to recede as to conceal himself from anyone standing by the rail in the open sections. He unsnapped his wet shirt from the pants, drew the revolver out of the plastic bag plastered against his pelvis, rewrapped his money, and closed the snaps. If nothing else he would die wealthy. Then before inertia got to him he crept forward along the ledge, feeling his way with his toes. The boat swayed and he pressed his hand flat against the vertical surface to maintain his balance.

At the end of the closed section he brought the gun to chest level and peered past the edge, braced to pull his head back if spotted. He saw only stationary shadows in the dim overhead light.

When after several seconds none of the shadows had moved, he gripped the edge of the metal and lowered himself through the opening until he felt more cold painted steel under his feet. He was standing there in a crouch and wondering which way to go when a quiet voice spoke at his left ear.

“Hold still, frogman, or I'll fill that rubber suit with leaks.”

CHAPTER 28

Louise Gabel, Randall Burlingame's handsome burnished secretary, had gone home. Without her, the outer office looked and felt like an abandoned fort. Bill Chilson walked around the barricading desk and through the open door that was leaking light into the darkened anteroom. He found the inner office full of smoke and the FBI bureau chief, vestless and with his necktie loose, on the telephone. Burlingame raised his pipe in greeting and pointed it at the chair on Chilson's side of the desk. The Secret Service agent sat down. The lights of downtown Detroit made a glittering sheet of the window behind the desk.

“Play that back, will you?” Burlingame paused, then fitted the receiver into the speaker attachment to the intercom. A frantic, high-pitched squealing like dozens of mice caught in a fire came out, then stopped. Burlingame's voice followed.

“… into port and release those passengers. Then we'll talk.”

“Fuck you, Fed. I trained as an M.P. before I switched to infantry. I know that hostage negotiations crap inside out. Now, are you going to open those gates and let those political prisoners walk, or are you going to practice looking sad for the cameras when they bury what's left of these people in a shoe box?”

Chilson mouthed, “Don?” Burlingame nodded, fingering his pipe. His disembodied voice resumed.

“We know your position, Blakeman. You've seen the helicopters.”

“I've seen them. I see one more I'll touch off the boat and to hell with the two hours left.”

“What do you hope to gain from this? What does Siegfried hope to gain?”

“Headlines. Bulletins. Götterdämmerung in living color on the six o'clock news. We are a high-profile industry. Bigger than Revlon.”

“You won't live to see yourselves.”

“A lot of people like us will. The seed is planted in fire and blood. The revolution is
on
, man. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la …” He trailed off. “Two hours, Burlingame. Talk to you again at five minutes to midnight. This radio gets all the public frequencies. I got eight hundred people hoping to hear it's Bastille Day in Jackson.” Something clicked.

“Thanks, Carl. Get some sleep.” Burlingame turned off the speaker and cradled the receiver. “Interesting paradox. A madman pretending to be mad.”

“Maybe he's not mad. Just bored. It wouldn't be the first time a suicide took somebody with him just for the pure hell of it.” Wiping his glasses with a handkerchief, Chilson blinked smoke out of his eyes. “The Governor's waiting for your call. He's got the papers all ready for those prisoners' release.”

The FBI man nodded absently. “I thought about feeding a phony statement to the broadcast networks that we were springing those cons, but that kind of cooperation went out when Nixon's enemies list came in. They've got a hard-on for accuracy.”

“You going to call the Governor?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you heard from Macklin?”

“Not since early this morning.”

“That's a lot of time to get dead in,” Chilson said. “Or change his mind.”

“You couldn't change his mind with a club.”

“One middle-aged killer. Seven terrorists. Call the Governor, Red.”

“Some choice. I dump a load of scum back into society or help fish ears and noses out of Lake Erie. Either way I lose my pension.”

Chilson smiled. “Maybe they'll make a movie out of this and ask you to star. You could have a whole new career.”

“What would be new about it?” He put down his pipe, lifted the receiver again, and got the switchboard. “This is Burlingame. Get me the Governor's mansion in Lansing. Well, look it up.” He broke the connection.

“If it means anything, Red, it wasn't that bad an idea,” Chilson said. “This is a different world. I'm damn glad I'm just visiting.”

“You can get used to anything, like the Indian said.”

The telephone rang. Burlingame lifted the handset. “Yes, put him on.” Covering the mouthpiece: “In the old days you got hemlock.”

“Progress,” said the other. But the FBI man was already in conversation with the Governor.

“Ackler?” whispered Macklin. He remained motionless, his body turned away from the voice that had addressed him. The deck of the huge old steamer shifted gently beneath his feet. He sensed a lot of people nearby but could hear nothing of them.

“Here it's Sol.” It was a young man's voice, scarcely a murmur. “You're who?”

“Macklin.”

Pause. “Peter Macklin? Mike Boniface's Macklin? No. Christ, he's sixty.”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Well, flip the gun overboard, thirty-nine-year-old Peter Macklin. Let me hear it splash.”

Macklin obeyed. The .38 made a little noise going into the water.

“Okay, turn around slow.”

He turned, hands out from his body. In the shadows, Ackler's hair was his most prominent feature, blown full and sprayed to a metallic sheen so that at first glance he looked as if he were wearing a silver-plated helmet. His face was regular and ordinary and stubbled brown in contrast to the hair. He had on a sportcoat with a tiny check that looked as if he hadn't had it off for a while, over an open-necked shirt and a pair of wrinkled dark flannel trousers. The squat ugly snout of an M-16 remained steady on Macklin's midsection. By swinging it no more than three inches up and down, Ackler could squirt bullets from Macklin's hairline to his toes, the trajectory was that sloppy. At this range it was not a weakness.

The young killer kept his distance. No amateur barrel-digging-into-the-ribs for him. Well, Macklin had hardly hoped for less.

“What's a button for the wise guys doing way out here?” Ackler wanted to know.

“I was thinking of asking you the same thing,” Macklin said. “Minus the cute jargon.”

“Me first.”

“Boniface wants out. The authorities want a hero. Boniface gave them me.”

“No good. Go again.”

“Okay. I just happened to be swimming by and thought I'd drop in and talk shop.”

Ackler watched him. The whites of the young killer's eyes glistened in the gloom. “Who else is coming?”

“I left fifteen federal agents on the boat. They gave me a ten-minute head start.”

Ackler's face aged. “I guess you kill better than you lie.”

There was something in his tone. Disappointment? And why were they speaking so low, on a vessel under his friends' command? A wraith of hope stirred in Macklin's chest. He tried something.

“My turn. What's a big kid doing playing with preschoolers?”

A cloud scudded in front of the moon, filling in the spaces between shadows. Only Ackler's hair and white shirt and the sour gleam of the automatic rifle showed. He stepped back, placing his shoulder blades against the wall of the darkened enclosure where snacks were sold. “Step into my office.”