The Detonators (38 page)

I grinned. “Touché. Well, I don’t know anything about defusing bombs. We’re going to have to get to
Spindrift
-radio and get help in here as soon as they’re well clear. They’re not planning to take the sailboat, I hope.”

She said, “It wasn’t mentioned. Just the three big powerboats.”

We stood there for a moment in the narrow passage, awkwardly, not really knowing what our relationship was now. I understood that the fact that she’d come here to release me didn’t necessarily mean that she’d rejected another man in my favor. It wasn’t a gesture of love. Not that she minded saving my life, but mainly she’d needed my help to do something about the immoral device in the ship’s hold, the thing she felt must not be exploded under any circumstances.

“Well, we’d better go,” she said. “The coast should be clear by the time we get out there.”

“I’ll bring my fellow prisoners.”

But when I entered the familiar little cell, Molly Brennerman didn’t greet me as eagerly as I’d expected; and young Sanderson, lying on his cot, didn’t greet me at all. His face was gray and shiny and his eyes were closed.

I said, “We’ve got to leave, Molly.”

Sitting on the edge of the cot, she glanced at me irritably over her shoulder. “Don’t be silly, he can’t be moved, can’t you see? He’s in shock and he’s still losing blood.”

“It’s the last boat out, sweetheart; and I mean that literally. We’re going to try to get some expert help in here to deal with the gadget next door; but it’s booby-trapped, so I can’t risk trying to disconnect it myself, or pour water over it, or whatever you do with the damn things to kill them. And if help doesn’t get here in time, it’ll be a long, fast ride straight up unless we start running right now. At six knots, all
Spindrift
will do, it’s going to be close, anyway; we may get all the way clear and we may not.”

She said stubbornly, “He’ll bleed to death if we try to move him.”

“Then we’ll just have to leave him and hope we can get back here in time with a doctor, if we can find somebody to deactivate the thing. If not, well, it won’t help him to have you blown up, too; it’s not a situation in which companionship counts for much. Come on.”

“No.”

She rose and turned to face me, a girl of medium height with a snub-nosed tomboy face and a figure that wasn’t boyish at all. The fact that she wasn’t in top sartorial condition didn’t matter a bit, at this moment.

“I can’t do that,” she said softly. “I’ve done a bit of whining, I know, but I’m not going to run away now. I know you’ll find a way of stopping it, and you don’t need my help. He does. It could make the difference to him, my being here.” She smiled crookedly. “After all, he’s my superior officer, Matt. I can’t just… just go off and leave him lying wounded on the field of battle, can I? I’ll stay here and do what I can. I’ve had some first-aid training. Come back as soon as you can, with help. And if you can’t… well, I’ll know you did your best; and… and I didn’t really mind fighting alongside you in that very unladylike way.”

They’re turning out a very good grade of female human beings these days. I wanted to kiss her, as a token of respect and admiration, but although we’d played a fairly intimate scene together, that had been strictly stage stuff. I didn’t really know her well enough to kiss her; and shaking hands seemed inadequate. It was no time for pretty gestures, anyway.

So I just nodded and turned away, passing Amy in the doorway and signaling her to follow me. The door to the hold stood open as she’d left it. As we approached it, I could see beyond it the shiny drum of destruction on its crude cradle in the middle of the open space. The ship was almost silent; but the generator was still running back in the engine room. I considered shutting it down, but that would have left Molly and her patient in the dark; and Minister wouldn’t have made it so easy to disable his toy. Maybe interrupting the current would actually trigger the device. I hoped next time, if there was a next time, Mac would pick me an assignment that involved things I knew something about, instead of sailboats and nuclear gadgets. Well, actually, I was catching on to the sailboat racket to some extent; but I doubted that I’d ever be a great atom-bomb man…

“Drop the gun, Helm!”

Entering the hold in that preoccupied fashion, I’d walked right into it. There he was, rising up from behind one of the workbenches along the wall to my left, with his .45 auto in his hot little hand. Both hot little hands; he was using the two-handed grip and the approved crouch. Great style. The chief storm trooper himself, Homer Allwyn, still in his natty khakis. Something moved behind me. I glanced over my left shoulder to see Gina stepping out from behind the swung-back steel door to aim my own little .25 pistol at my back.

“Drop it!”
Allwyn’s voice was shrill.

I flung the submachine gun away from me convulsively, as if in abject panic; throwing it to the right. There was a kind of sickness inside me:
I didn’t want this, dammit!
They followed the ugly firearm with their eyes, of course. They had to see if it would go off when it hit, didn’t they? I went left, fast, without waiting for it to hit, deliberately throwing myself past Gina and the little automatic in her hand. They never come to it prepared; it always takes them a while to make up their minds to it, particularly if it involves someone they know; and if she did do it, the chances of a little .25 bullet disabling me instantly weren’t overwhelming. But she didn’t fire in the moment I was directly in front of her gun. Then I was past her, hearing Allwyn’s big automatic go off with an impressive roar. Concentrating on moving fast and getting out the .38, I still heard the smack of the heavy bullet hitting flesh, and Gina’s shocked gasp as she took the slug meant for me.

After that it was easy because, as I’d known he would, Homer Allwyn was staring open-mouthed and bug-eyed at what he’d done. I had all the time in the world to finish drawing the Smith and Wesson and shoot him three times in the chest. In the movies they’re generally hurled backward dramatically when they’re shot. Here, in real life, Allwyn simply stood motionless for a moment, dying on his feet; then he pitched forward, still holding the big .45.

The gunfire had been very loud inside the steel chamber. The silence afterward had a ringing quality; or maybe the ringing was only in my ears. I stepped back and picked up the .25 Gina had dropped. Hugging herself tightly, as if trying to hold herself together, she’d slid down to a sitting position against the gray-painted bulkhead, by the steel door behind which she’d hid; but I didn’t have time for her yet. I went over and pulled the .45 out of Allwyn’s dead fingers. Then I gathered up the MP40 I’d thrown aside. It seemed to be in functioning condition except for a bent magazine, which I removed, replacing it with a fresh, straight one. I worked enough 9mm cartridges out of the damaged magazine to fill the partly used one I was also carrying. That gave me one full thirty-two-round spare. I threw the crooked clip away. I found a length of insulated electric wire on a nearby workbench, coiled it up, and stuck it into my pocket. Business attended to, I went back to Gina.

Amy, kneeling beside her, gave me a reproachful look, which was par for the course. Any time the damn fools get themselves killed, the bystanders reproach the smart ones still alive. For just being alive, I suppose. Who’d first pointed guns at whom, anyway? Gina watched me squat beside her, cowboy fashion. Quick-draw Helm, the terror of the Islands.

“You knew!” she whispered. “You knew I couldn’t shoot you in the back!”

“They never can,” I said. “At least not fast enough.”

“And you knew he’d… You had it all figured out, damn you!”

I said, “For Christ’s sake! Of course I knew. That he’d shoot, yes. That he’d shoot behind me, yes. How can you swing with a fast-moving target when you’re all crouched down like that with the pistol frozen in that rigid two-hand grip? Oh, the FBI boys can do it, but they practice. I’ll bet that bastard never shot at anything but a motionless piece of paper in his life. Did I know that he’d either hit you or come so close he’d be paralyzed with guilty shock? Yes, indeed, I was counting on it. Any other dumb questions?”

“You’re angry,” she whispered. “Why are you angry? I’m the one who’s… hurt.”

I said harshly, “There seems to be no way of keeping some people from killing themselves! Jesus Christ, I’ve been giving my little lecture about dangerous Helm every night for a week, but you’ve paid absolutely no attention. Hell, I even put on a demonstration for you, four men dead or dying in about three seconds; and still you try to take me with your silly .25 and your totally incompetent security genius! Would you pick up a bag of clubs at the local hardware store and stroll out to take on a bunch of professional golfers, betting your life on the game? Then what makes you think you can casually pick up a stray firearm and deal with a professional gunman like me? Christ, I can’t help it if people commit suicide around me! Damn you, Gina, I tried…”

But her eyes were looking far beyond me and seeing nothing but darkness. I closed them and got to my feet. It’s supposed to be all right for men to cry these days; but the trouble is that when you need to cry you usually have no time for it. And I doubt it does all that much good, anyway.

“You loved her, didn’t you?” Amy said, trying to make a tragic romance of it.

“Hell, I love everybody,” I said. “Just the little lover of all the world, that’s me. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Our departure was watched only by the dead and by the shiny object in the middle of the room, silent and waiting. We made our way past the cheerfully thumping generator, the only happy thing in the ship, doing its work and doing it well and having a fine, noisy time of it. We climbed the metal stairs. The daylight on deck, even filtered through the windows of the sheltering field house, or whatever Elysium Cay called its supposed recreation center, was a real shock. It seemed as if I’d been buried alive for years. I stopped at a place where the deck was reasonably clean.

“Turn around and put your hands behind you,” I said to Amy.

Her eyes widened. “Matt, what in the world—”

“Do as I say!”

She hesitated and swallowed hard, then turned away as ordered. I hauled the length of wire from my pocket and cut it into two pieces, using the buckle knife from my belt since my little pocketknife had been confiscated along with the decoy weapon I’d worn under my shirt behind. I used one piece to lash her wrists securely together.

“Matt, I don’t understand—”

“Sit down against the deckhouse there.”

She sat down reluctantly. I knelt and tied her ankles with the other wire. I rose and looked down at her.

Her face was very pale. She whispered, “You think I betrayed you!”

I shook my head. “No, Amy.”

“Yes, you do! You must! Why else would you be doing this to me? You think I was working with them. You think I opened that door for you just to lead you out into their… their trap. Matt, I didn’t, I didn’t!”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “They either spotted you making your channel swim or, more likely, they saw that you were gone when they brought your luggage to your cabin. They figured out where you must have headed. They couldn’t just sail away, guessing that you intended to turn me loose and that I’d be heading for a radio. They had to come back and stop me.” I shook my head again. “No, it’s nothing like that. You’re a sweet lady and I appreciate your help; but if you think hard, you’ll figure out why I have to do it this way. Don’t try to free yourself, you’ll only hurt yourself; and if things work out, somebody’ll be along to release you shortly.” I made a wry face. “And if they don’t work out, we’ll all go to hell together, and it’s been nice knowing you.”

I heard the distant sound of a boat’s horn, the kind they blow for fog and bridges. Somebody was getting impatient at the other end of the lagoon. They were saying clearly:
Get your asses back here fast or we’ll leave without you!
After a last look at Amy, glaring up at me hurt and resentful, I hurried off the ship and out the back door of the building. The sun was very bright outside, unreally bright at first; and the water surrounding the island was very blue, except close in where the reefs made a pale pattern. Two big white sportfishermen were in sight. That was the flotilla that Homer Allwyn had been scheduled to command; he must have put somebody else in charge and sent them off, while he came back to deal with me. Out toward Arabella Cay, one of the vessels had already cleared the reefs and fired the afterburners. It was riding high and throwing an impressive wake. I estimated twenty knots, but it could have been more. The other was still cautiously feeling its way out through the shoals. Their part of the great atomic adventure was behind them, and the PNP rank and file were heading back to their respectable, civilized homes and offices and to their wives and kiddies.

I hurried to the corner of the big building and looked around it without exposing myself any more than necessary. The blue sportfisherman was still at the dock, waiting. It was the
Cuttlefish.
Not the most appealing name in the world for a boat, but they do pick some odd ones. As I watched, the horn blew again. Maybe Alfred Minister was getting restless. He probably was; but I had a hunch the hooting was being done by Mr. Harrison Paul, chairman of the board, arrogant and impatient and panicky. Keeping the building between me and the distant dock, I made my way down to the shore where I couldn’t be seen and fought my way along it toward the entrance channel, the way Amy must have come not too long ago; but at least I wasn’t dripping wet. There seemed to be a lot of gutsy ladies around. I tried not to think about the fact that there were fewer, by one, than there had been.

It was tough going, over big broken rocks that were as rough as pumice but a lot harder. The fact that I was weighted down with firearms until I walked bowlegged didn’t help; but I didn’t dare jettison any of them. I couldn’t risk the noise of test-firing the MP40; and if it decided not to function after all, after being bounced around like a basketball, I might wind up trying to stop a twenty-ton sportfisherman with a palm-sized .25 automatic after emptying the .45 and the .38, neither of which was fully loaded.