Benchley, Peter (29 page)

They were still several hundred yards at sea when the offshore breeze brought them the strident sounds of taxi horns.

When he had secured the boat to the dock, Treece shut off the engine. Above the low murmur of wind they could hear the distant bleat of several taxi horns, apparently stationed at intervals around the island. The horns were blown in staccato bursts, with no rhythm or organization. Treece frowned. “What the hell

is he up to now?” “He?” Sanders said. “That’s Cloche? Those taxis?” “Aye. There are no cabs on St. David’s. He’s making bush again.”

A shiver touched Sanders” spine. “I’ve about had it. I hope he’s not going to try anything more tonight.”

“If he was, you wouldn’t think he’d announce it.

Besides, what’s he think he’ll get from another visit? He doesn’t know anything about the cave, and he’s not fool enough to believe he can make us tell him.”

“Then why… ?”

“I don’t know. He’s saying something, that’s for sure. If I had to guess, he’s spooking the Islanders, telling “em to stay indoors-all bush.

But you’re right: If he’s doing that, it’d seem he’s planning to pay us a visit.”

Treece snapped his fingers at the dog and pointed to the path. “Well, whatever. I’ll go get a couple of Kevin’s cannons and fix him a royal welcome. Too bad we lost that shotgun. It was a fine people-eater.”

There was no rebuke in Treece’s voice, so all Sanders said was “Yeah.”

Treece started up the path after the dog, with the Sanderses following. “Any weapon’s only as good as the man using it,” Treece said, “and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything. Ever kill a man with a knife?”

“Me?” Sanders said. “No.”

“There’s right ways and wrong ways. Most knives have three elements to ‘em: the point, the sharp side, and the dull side. Depending on what you want to do to the fellow…”

Bringing up the rear, Gail tried to block out the conversation ahead of her. It was all becoming unreal, inhuman … terrifying. It seemed that a new Treece was speaking now-not a wounded man or a compassionate man or a sensitive man: a killer. But perhaps this wasn’t new, perhaps it was the boy talking, the boy who played by his own rules, and when the rules called for killing, he killed. What scared her most was that the man Treece was talking to, explaining the rules to, was her husband. She heard Sanders say, “Yeah, but he could still-was

“Not if you go deep enough,” Treece said. “You snip that spinal cord just like a thread, he goes all to jelly.”

“Stop!” Gail’s voice was so loud that it scared her.

“Hush, girl! Christ, you’ll wake the dead.”

The cut on Sanders” arm had stopped bleeding; a caked crusty streak of brownish red showed through his wet suit.

Treece handed him a bottle full of a dark, viscous brown liquid. “Here. Wash your arm off and lard some of this on it. I’m going to bury the jewels in the wall.”

“What is it?”

“My grandmother used to make it; bloody junk defies chemical analysis. There’s some mango derivative in it, and berry juice, and something that might or might not come from spirea bark. Rest of it’s a mystery. But it works.”

When she heard Treece’s feet hit the cellar floor, Gail said to David, “I’m frightened.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Not for me. For you. Treece thinks this is a war.”

“That was talk.”

“Talk.

We killed three people.”

“We didn’t have much choice.” Sanders finished swabbing the medicine on his arm. “They tried to kill us.”

Gail heard the trap door close in the living room, and the sound of the chair scraping across the floor.

“This has

gone far enough,” she whispered. “I can’t take much more.”

Treece came into the kitchen. From a cabinet he took what looked like a brick of modeling clay, the bottom half of a champagne bottle, some plastic-coated wire, a small rectangular magnet, an egg timer, and a little cardboard box.

He set the paraphernalia on the table and made himself a drink.

“Looks like shop,” Sanders said.

“What?” Treece sat down at the table.

“Shop class. In grade school. You know: modeling, carving, making things for Mom.”

“Aye.” Treece smiled. “But if you came home from school with this, your mom would run like a rabbit.” Treece pulled chunks of the gray claylike substance off the brick and stuffed them into the bottom of the champagne bottle. “Ever use this stuff?”

“What is it?” asked Gail.

“It’s called C-4. Plastic explosive.

Fine stuff.”

“What do you use it for?”

“Normally, salvage work. Clearing harbors, knocking down piers, getting old wrecks out of the way, banging holes in reefs so ships can get through. But this time we’re gonna put what’s left of the drugs away for good.”

“Thank God,” said Gail.

“How? With that?” Sanders said.

“Not alone, no.” Treece had filled the bottle-half to the top. He opened the cardboard box, gingerly removed a blasting cap, and set it in the bed of explosive. Then he began to attach the coated wire to the cap. “But set this C-4 up against a load of other

explosives-say a cargo of live ammunition-and you’ve got enough to make Bermuda’s own Grand Canyon. Military term for it’s a shape charge.

These champagne bottles are indented on the bottom; a lamp goes up inside “em. Pack the C-4 around it, and when you set it off, the lump sort of aims the force of the explosion where you want it.” Treece tipped the bottle on its side.

“You lay it up against an artillery shell like this.”

He put his hand against the blasting cap. “All the power’s directed at the shell. Boom!”

“How do you get out of the way?”

Treece held up the egg timer. “That’s what this is for. I’m going to dive down, wire the charge to the timer, and set it for maybe five minutes.

That’ll give me time to scoot to the surface and get the hell out of there. Don’t want to be closer than a few hundred yards when she goes off. The ammunition would turn any ship nearby into an instant wreck.”

Gail said, “When are you going to do this?”

“Tomorrow morning, after we’ve had a last look-around.

Then we’ll come back and smash the ampules we’ve got.” Treece finished wiring the charge and stood up. “I’m going to nip down to Kevin’s and borrow a gun or two. I’ll leave Charlotte here.

She’ll let you know if there are any Peeping Toms about.”

The dog barked twice and jumped onto the window sill.

Treece looked out the window. “Nothing.” He patted the dog’s head. “Getting goosy, just like .

. .” Then he heard something, cocked his head, and listened. “Sonofabitch.”

“What is it?” Sanders asked.

“There’s a

boat

down there.”

Treece opened a drawer and rummaged through a tangle of kitchen knives. He took out a long, thin-bladed filleting knife and passed it to Sanders. “Remember what I told you; this thing’ll skin an alligator.” He removed a cleaver from a rack on the wall and handed it to Gail.

She recoiled, refusing to take it. “What am I supposed to do with

that?”

“Just have it.” He put it in her hand. “Got no esteem for yourself. You showed what you can do.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come along.” He selected a carving knife for himself-the cutting edge of the blade worn into a crescent by countless honings-and shut the drawer. Then he closed the window. “Stay in the house, Charlotte. Don’t need you raising an untimely ruckus.” On his way to the kitchen door, Treece stopped at a cabinet and found a waterproof flashlight.

They went out into the empty yard. The moonlight shone on the slick leaves of the bushes at the edge of the cliff. Treece motioned for David and Gail to stay low, and they ran, crouching, to the top of the path leading to the dock.

Looking down, they could see a boat at the mouth of the cove, barely moving. They heard a few muted clanks above the far-off drum sounds.

“Is it Cloche?” Gail whispered.

“Must be, but I’m damned if I know how he found out about the cave. You stay up here; keep in the shadows. We’ll go have a look. Could be they’re just snooping.”

Treece tucked the flashlight in the belt of his wet-suit pants and told Sanders to follow. They started down the path.

The high foliage shaded the path into complete darkness. Twice Sanders stumbled into bushes, heard Treece’s warning, “Sssshhhhh!” Then he found he could follow Treece by looking at the tops of the bushes: as Treece passed below and brushed a branch, the upper leaves shimmered in the moonlight.

A few feet from the bottom of the path, Treece stopped and waited for Sanders. The movement on the boat was clearly audible, and fighting that and the sound of the horns above, Treece had to put his lips to Sanders” ear to be heard.

“Stay here. I’m going out along the dock, see what’s up.” He touched the knife in Sanders’ hand.

“Comfortable with that?”

Sanders nodded.

Treece stepped to the end of the path and, with animal stealth, crept along the narrow space between the dock and the bushes.

Sanders rested on one knee, clutching the knife.

He felt all the symptoms of fear, but they were soothed by a sense of confidence in Treece. Like a young child on an expedition with his older brother, he felt excited-scared but comforted by the belief that he could take his cues from Treece.

So he was doubly surprised when he felt a thick, muscular arm slam into his throat, a hand push his head forward, cutting off his breathing, and a great weight knock him to the ground and blanket him with slippery, sweaty flesh.

He tried to scream, but the pressure against his throat reduced the scream to a gurgle. He still held the knife-blade pointing upward, as Treece had shown him-and he jabbed it at the flesh, but a knee jammed his wrist into the ground. His left arm was pinned to his side by the body on top of him.

He was helpless.

He relaxed his body, hoping desperately-through a film of waning consciousness-that he could convince his attacker that he was dead. But when the man felt muscle resistance ease, he tightened his grip.

Then, as suddenly as the weight had fallen on him, it left him. He was free. He drew a painful, rattling breath.

He heard Treece’s voice whisper, with bitterness and feral ferocity unlike anything he had ever heard, the single word “Kevin!”

Sanders raised himself on one elbow and looked.

Kevin lay on his back, Treece kneeling on his chest and pulling his hair so his head tilted at a cockeyed angle. With his other hand, Treece held the carving knife at Kevin’s throat. Kevin’s legs kicked, then fell to the dirt.

“You told him!” Treece whispered. “Why?”

Kevin said nothing.

“Why?

For money?” Treece’s voice was no longer angry; it was choked with the sorrow of betrayal. “For money?”

Still Kevin was silent.

In the reflections of moonlight off the water, Sanders could see their eyes: Kevin’s flat and expressionless, looking through Treece with a kind of blank resignation; Treece’s shiny, enraged, unbelieving.

“Oh, you sorry, sorry bugger,” Treece said, and when the last whispered word had faded, he punched the point

of the knife into Kevin’s throat and drew the blade quickly across the neck. There was a black line of blood, a foam of bubbles, and a wet, wheezing sigh. Treece hung his head and closed his eyes.

A beam of light swept across the cove toward them, and Sanders heard Cloche’s voice call, “Kevin?”

Sanders whispered, “Treece?”

Treece did not answer.

“Treece!”

The light moved closer, and Sanders knew that in a few seconds it would illuminate half of Treece’s back. He rose to his knees and lunged at Treece, hitting him with his shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The light swept over them, stopped, and moved back to the water.

“Kevin?” Cloche called again. “Idiot!”

Lying on the ground, with Sanders next to him, Treece gradually shook off his stupor. “All right,” he said. “All right. At least now we know.”

He crawled on his stomach to the end of the path, looked at Cloche’s boat, and returned to Sanders. “Looks like there’s two or three divers, plus a couple fellas they’ll leave on the boat. We’ll wait till the divers are overboard, then try to get to

Corsair

and throw on tanks and go down.”

“The tanks have bad air.”

“Not all. I only filled two that night. The others were already full. There should be four good ones aboard.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll see how many men there are and how they’re working. If they’re working two at a time in the cave, with hand lights, we’ve a chance to pick “em off.

Odds are, the

divers won’t be armed. They’ll have their hands full with the glass.”

“Pick them off?” Sanders said. “Why?”

“To stop ‘em before they get the ampules.

We

can’t get the glass up with those yahoos around, and I’m damned if I’m about to let Cloche have what’s down there.”

“What do we do? Stab them?”

“Only if you have to. Try to grab the regulator hose and cut it and get the hell out of his way. A man with a sudden-cut air hose is a bloody menace; he’ll grab a baby’s

mouthpiece.”

“But if we cut their air hoses, they’ll just come up; they’ll be waiting for us on the surface.”

“It’s my bet these chaps are still a bit wary of the water. Put ‘em in a panic, they’re like as not to hold their breath on the way up, or lose their way and drown in the cave. But even suppose they don’t. If we cut all their air hoses, they’ll be spooky as hell about going back down there. And Cloche doesn’t have extra equipment.”

“So they wait for us to come up and then shoot us.”

“We won’t come up. It’s dark. They’d have a hell of a time following a bubble trail. We’ll stay on the bottom, go out of the cove and around the corner. There’s a place about fifty yards down where we can land.”

“He won’t give up-especially when he finds that guy floating off the reef.”

“No, he’ll be back. But all we need is the rest of tonight to get that glass out of there and destroy it.”