Kill Zone (25 page)

Macklin had started to turn. He looked at the young man who had spoken. He was seated on one of the chairs, holding hands with an attractive redhead whose parted lips exposed a slight overbite. She was wearing a man's sportcoat like a cape over her bare shoulders. One of the young man's cheeks was swollen and discolored where the flesh had been broken.

“He's a crewman Don shot,” he said. “I patched him up. He's resting in the captain's quarters below the pilot house.”

“You're a doctor?”

“I'm interning at the U of M.”

“Ted Delano, right? That's Carol Turnbull with you.”

The young man pursed his lips on the verge of a question. Macklin cut him off, speaking to the woman. “Your father's worried about you.” His eyes swept the group. “We'll have you all back with your families by morning.”

More questions came all at once. The armed men turned their backs on them and went back the way they had come, stepping around Fay's body.

“Her father?” asked Ackler.

“Clarence Turnbull.”

“Who's he?”

Macklin made the same speech to the hostages in the stern, who listened in silence with alert expressions on their drawn faces. Then the pair turned to the stairs. At the foot Ackler handed Macklin the M-16.

“Give me the knife.”

Macklin surrendered the weapon. “Wait here till I call you,” Ackler said, and headed upstairs without waiting for an answer.

Three minutes later, Macklin heard his name whispered from above. He made sure the safety on the automatic rifle was off and started up cautiously. Ackler was standing at the top, light glistening off the dark stuff slicking the blade in his fist. They traded weapons again and started forward, pausing at the emaciated boy lying on its face in a voluminous sportcoat. Macklin grasped a handful of hair and lifted the man's narrow features into the light.

“Delbert?”

Ackler hesitated. “Yeah. I had to think. We've been calling him Ray so long. I got him under the ribs while he was lighting my cigarette.” He crushed out the butt glowing on the deck. “Anyway, that stops the clock. He was the whiz with explosives.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybes about it. It was his job to touch 'em off.”

“I know Blakeman's file. It isn't like him to trust that kind of thing to anyone not named David Blakeman. Where are the passengers on this level?”

“Up front. Don—Blakeman, damn it—had them moved yesterday. Ray wasn't that good with people and the boss man didn't want to take a chance on someone jumping him before he could set off the charge.”

“Who's up front?”

“Teddy. His Royal Excellency Captain Philip MacKenzie.” He paused. “This one'll be noisy. He doesn't trust anyone.”

“Okay.”

They approached the lighted bow along both railings, Ackler port, Macklin starboard. A stony-faced young man with crewcut hair who wore his jacket and tie as if they were part of a uniform, sat with one hip on the rail with the hand holding his .45 pistol resting on his thigh. The passengers were sitting crowded together on the deck without an open space to be seen. The skin of the young hijacker's face was taut and white and his eyes were ringed purple. He jumped a foot when he saw Macklin striding forward holding the semiautomatic Ackler had given him and raised his own weapon just as Ackler opened up with a short burst from the shadows to his left. Flame stuttered from the muzzle. Teddy bared his teeth in a grimace and slammed into a deck support, barking his elbow and dropping his gun. He slid down into a sitting position, his legs spread and blood leaking down his left side.

A bearded black man seated with the passengers leaned forward and scooped up the abandoned .45. Both killers drew down on him. “We're friends!” shouted Macklin. “Dump it overboard.”

A woman had been screaming since Teddy was shot, drowning out the words. He said it again louder.

“How come, if we're such good friends?” The man was holding the gun flat on his palm.

A black woman sitting next to him touched his arm. “Leon, do like the man says.”

“I been doing like the man says my whole life.” But he pitched the pistol over the rail.

“Lot of metal down there tonight,” reflected Ackler.

“Fay, what now?”

It was the radio, resting on the deck beside Teddy. Ackler stretched a leg between passengers to pick it up.

Macklin said, “Leave it.”

“Fay?” said the radio.

Teddy groaned. Blood came to his mouth and spilled over his chin. Ackler said, “Shit,” moved the indicator on his rifle to single, and put a slug into the wounded man's brain. He arched and sagged.

The woman stopped screaming and started laughing hysterically. Someone shook her. The laughter soared and then receded into rhythmic moans.

The radio said, “Teddy?”

Macklin looked at Ackler. “You said Beaver Cleaver and Gidget are on the top deck. That's John Carlisle and his girl, Melissa What's-her-name?”

“Yeah. Larry and Doris.”

“She's yours. Wait.” The radio had started up again.

“Larry, go see what's going down with Teddy and the others.”

“Okay.”

A forward staircase trimmed in elegant brass led up to the top passenger deck. Macklin signaled to Ackler and they took up positions on either side, out of sight of anyone coming down. Ackler returned the indicator on his rifle to full automatic.

CHAPTER 30

Larry felt like superman.

With less than an hour to go before the deadline, he had felt safe in using the last of the cocaine Don had given him and his senses had never seemed so acute. There were a thousand smells in the lake air, each one different, and his ears were so sharp he swore he could hear the engine crew moving around in the hold. He could see in the dark and through the soles of his shoes his toes felt every lump and ripple in the metal deck as if he were barefoot. When he started down the echoing steps to the second deck, the heavy semiautomatic pistol felt as light as something carved out of driftwood in his hand. It was a shame not to be spending some of this energy on Doris.

He felt movement to his left and stopped and said, “Teddy?”

There was no answer and he felt a tingle of unease. Then a platinum head moved into his line of vision. He smiled in relief. “Sol, what—?”

Something shoved him hard from behind emptying his lungs and throwing him against the brass banister but his senses were clicking and he swung around with his momentum his shirt getting wet against his back and squeezed the trigger of the .45 blindly and nothing happened and then flame splatted in front of him and this time he didn't feel the blow the stairs came up …

The echo of the big pistol's report pressed Macklin's eardrums, dulling the screams and crying from the passengers while bitter gray smoke curled over the young man sprawled face down over the stairs. Ackler moved in quickly to retrieve Larry's gun, smiling tightly as he looked at it before shoving it under his belt. “Someone should've told him they don't work when they're not cocked.”

“Johnny!”

It was a shriek. Macklin spun with his own .45 in time to see a slight figure with long blond hair in a pale dress standing at the top of the stairs before the night shattered into pieces of blinding light and more noise hammered at his thickened eardrums and something hot burned his right hip. He returned fire, the pistol throbbing in his hand. He was deaf now. From the corner of his eye he saw the muzzle of Ackler's M-16 flash in sputtering silence as in a film without sound, but by that time the girl was gone. They hit the stairs running.

Macklin skidded on something slippery at the top, looked down and saw the dark spots on the deck. His hearing was blinking back, on and off like bad radio reception, and shrieks and shouts from among the passengers on that level led him to the stern, where the blood trail broadened and vanished into a milling crowd of hostages. Ackler followed him. As they approached on the trot, people got out of the way, and Macklin shouted and threw himself sideways just as a fresh burst splintered the air where he'd been standing. He didn't look back to see if Ackler had been hit. His ribs were throbbing from the running and his right leg was soaked to the knee with something thick and warm.

The girl was at the rear of the boat with her skirt hiked up to her thighs and one leg hitched over the rail, trying to balance the M-16 in one hand while with the other she sought to staunch the dark flow from just under her left breast. Her face was a smear of white against the darkness behind her. Her mouth worked. “Johnny, Johnny.”

Macklin, lying on his stomach, stretched his right arm along the deck and sighted down it to the end of the pistol. He fired just as Ackler's rifle clattered behind him and to his left. The girl perched on the rail jerked several times and a black hole opened in the center of the white smear of her face and she lifted a stained palm as if to grasp at a deck support and then she was gone. Something bumped the side of the boat. Water splashed.

“Macklin!”

The shout was Ackler's. Macklin reacted without thinking, rolling inward toward the shelter of the wall of the enclosed section rising out of the center of the deck. There was a noise like a string of firecrackers going off and a dazed passenger who was standing near where he had been lying howled and grabbed his leg and fell. He rolled back and forth, grasping his knee and moaning. Macklin looked up over his left shoulder and saw a man's silhouette moving along the roof of the crew quarters near the smokestack. Twisting painfully, he rested the .45 on the corner of his shoulder and pressed the trigger. The figure ducked behind the stack.

“Is he hit?” Macklin called.

Ackler, crouched near the rail, shook his head. “I couldn't see. I saw some kind of movement near the bridge just before he fired. He's got a Luger converted to full auto. I think he's got a spare clip.”

“Keep him busy.”

“I'm knocking on empty now.” He patted the M-16.

“You've got MacKenzie's .45.”

Hugging the wall of the enclosed section and dividing his attention between the skyline and the deck in front of him, Macklin crept forward. His right leg was growing numb and he was thankful for that. He didn't have time to worry if the bullet was still in his hip or if he'd just been grazed, or if any major artery had been clipped. It was just like him to get shot by the one member of the band least likely to hit him. But he was still better off than the innocent wretch sobbing over his shattered kneecap on the deck.

He kept to the center and the minimal shadow offered by the enclosed passenger section and the quarters of the captain and first mate. The moon was high now, and while the lights in the pilot house had been extinguished, probably by Blakeman's order, pale illumination washed the painted metal at Macklin's feet. He made for the steps that led to the bridge.

Ackler fired twice, yellow and orange flame flicking out of the end of his .45 in time with two solid blams. He was saving the ammunition in his M-16, Macklin knew for whom. Without looking to see if the young killer had hit anything above, he sprinted the rest of the way and started up the metal steps on a dead run. Three hornets sped past his face, one of them knocking paint off the rail two inches in front of his hand. Before the stuttering reports of Blakeman's burst faded away, Ackler's gun spoke again once. Macklin hurdled the remaining steps and leaped through an opening into the pilot house. Another bullet struck sparks off a post supporting the roof.

“He's by the funnel!”

Macklin didn't wait to learn which of the figures standing with him in the dark had spoken. He bounded across the enclosure, colliding with and shoving someone's body out of the way, leaned out through the opening across from the one by which he had entered, and raised his gun just as a bulk vaguely man-shaped moved into view between the smokestack and the funnel curving up on the starboard side. Something glittered in the hand that wasn't holding a gun.

“You better not, Batman!” Blakeman shouted. “This is an electronic detonator. I press this button, we all go up in burning pieces.”

Macklin lowered the .45.

Watching the man he had glimpsed earlier in the act of shooting Doris, Don cursed the panic that had caused him to waste ammunition on a fleeting target and the muzzle flashes that had destroyed the night vision he'd gained after killing the lights inside. But his brain was clicking as it hadn't since his last fire fight. He had no idea how many reinforcements this faceless commando had brought with him, but now that Don had found cover from whoever had been sniping at him from the passenger deck, he stroked with his thumb the single button on the simple electronic device Ray had designed and pretended it was the world.

“Put it down, Blakeman,” said the man. “You don't want to die.”

“The name's Don. And I've been dead since I got on board.”

The man paused, and Don knew an instant of bleak fear that he wouldn't behave as predicted. He didn't care about dying, but he didn't want to do it with his back to the wall. That wasn't the reason he'd planned the thing from the first. To expire in a sheet of flame at the moment of greatest triumph; that was what it came down to. Then the man spoke.

“What do you want?”

Don grinned. He'd been imagining monsters under the bed. “Ditch the piece. Dump it overboard. Or there won't be enough left of any of us to feed the fish. Do it, man!” He brandished the detonator.

After a brief hesitation the man moved to hurl his pistol out beyond the lower decks.

A hideous bellowing wail rent the night, shearing through Don's eardrums and making the boards buzz beneath his feet. He staggered. The Luger vibrated in his hand, splattering fire. Blindly his thumb sought the detonator's button. There was a single flash from the bridge. A fist slammed into Don's chest. Both his hands sprang open, relinquishing their burdens. He knew pain and noise and falling and darkness.