The Devil's Punchbowl (76 page)

 

“It makes no difference,” Hull says, looking hard at the Irishman.

 

“It does to me.”

 

“Well, that’s the way it is. Who do you want, Cage? Whoever it is, make sure he has a nice suit.”

 

“Kelly,” I say without hesitation.

 

“No fucking way,” blurts Quinn.

 

Sands, too, is shaking his head.

 

“Anybody else is like no guard at all,” I say. “Sands could put down a city cop without breaking stride. I want someone who can control him.”

 

“Kelly it is,” says Hull. “Does he own a suit?”

 

“He’ll have one in fifteen minutes.”

 

“Then we’re done here.” Hull nods at the door, and the Green Beret steps forward and opens it. Quinn and Sands look like they’re on the ragged edge of making a move, but Hull’s bodyguard projects the feeling that he wasn’t party to the firearms prohibition governing this meeting.

 

Kelly’s hand is in the small of my back, pushing me through the hatch. He clearly doesn’t want the two of us left in the room with Sands and Quinn. As I pass into the corridor, I’m acutely conscious that I’m leaving behind the taped evidence that will give me control of William Hull, but there’s nothing to be done about this, short of fighting the two Irishmen for it. I’ll have to trust that Logan and his men can get down here and retrieve the recorder without trouble.

 

What fills my mind as we move up the passageway behind Hull is the real possibility of nailing Edward Po. I never quite believed that the billionaire would risk stepping onto U.S. soil, but maybe Hull knew his prey well, and did what was required to draw him into the net.

 

At the elevator we all bunch up again as we wait for Quinn to arrive and punch in the security code. The other three guards have gone, but when the elevator arrives and the doors open, it’s all we can do to fit the six of us inside the car.

 

Seldom have I felt more free-floating testosterone than I do in this elevator. Sands and Kelly, predictably, have gained the back wall, but I have to stand with Quinn’s chest pressing into my back. I half expect the knife he used to slice open my belt to slide between my kidneys.

 

“Fifteen minutes,” Hull says, as the car stops on the main deck. “You don’t have Kelly a suit by then, we’re leaving without him.”

 

“He’ll have it,” I say, my mind on the recorder downstairs as the doors open.

 

Hull and his man are first out. When they step around the partition, Hull beckons Kelly forward. As Kelly moves past me, I feel a hand grab my shirt and pull me backward, then a man’s breath in my ear. “Remember that night on your porch?” Sands whispers. “You make all the agreements you want with Hull, mate. Just remember this. Nothing in my world gets resolved on paper.
Nothing.
”

 

As I pull away, he twists a piece of flesh on my side hard enough to pop blood vessels, but nothing matters at this point. Nothing but signaling Chief Logan to get the recorder from below. Kelly fades back to me with a curious look, as though sensing that something has transpired, but I shake my head and push him forward.

 

Rounding the partition, I look up to the head of the escalator, but Logan isn’t there. A large crowd is upstairs, and I try to pick the chief from the moving mass of bodies as Kelly takes my wrist and tugs me forward.

 

The ring of a cell phone behind me makes me turn. When I do, I see Seamus Quinn holding his phone close to his ear, trying to hear above the jangling noise of the casino. I’m about to turn forward again when Quinn’s eyes go wide, and he grabs the arm of Jonathan Sands, who’s two feet to his right. Sands looks annoyed, but Quinn jerks him sideways and speaks urgently into his ear.

 

Every instinct tells me something has gone horribly wrong. Without even sighting Logan, I raise my hand to the top of my head and pat it three times. Sands’s eyes lock onto mine from a distance of ten feet, the malice in them absolute. For a brief time we are joined by mutual hatred, then his hand darts into his pocket, my eyes scarcely able to follow the swift movement.

 

A burst of white lights the night outside the casino, then a staccato blast like fireworks rattles the windows. The crowd falls into a shocked hush, and then the whole casino lurches away from the shore, sending hundreds of people reeling. As a collective scream of
panic fills the saloon, Sands gives me a savage grin, then turns and races toward the stern of the barge, Quinn close behind him.

 

“Get off the boat!”
Kelly shouts, knocking me aside as he flies past in pursuit.
“Go, go, go! I’ll get the tape!”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER
69

 

 

Water cascades from the sprinkler system, and alarms ring shrilly while a recorded voice directs people to the exits with absurd calm. The bow of the barge seems to be drifting away from the riverbank, slowly but with increasing speed, like a log being pulled into a flooding river. The sensation is eerie, as though a huge hotel ballroom had begun to spin on its axis.

 

A scream of terror draws my gaze to the escalator. Chief Logan stands at its head, shouting for calm. Below him, a surging mass of gamblers has clogged the motorized staircase. Many have fallen, and people higher up are trampling them in their headlong flight to reach the main deck. Logan tries to stop the stampede, but the crowd swells over him like a tide, everyone with a single thought in mind—reaching the main exit.

 

Whirling from the mob scene, I look for Kelly, but I can’t find him in the seething mass of bodies. Then, to my right, I see his blond ponytail disappearing through a service door disguised as a section of wall. Maybe the elevator has stopped working.

 

I charge through the door where Kelly disappeared and immediately hear footsteps on the staircase below. Leaning over the rail, I see the top of his head as he crashes through a fire door. Taking the stairs two at a time, I follow. Are Sands and Quinn somewhere ahead? Or is Kelly only after the tape? All I know is that whatever happened to
this vessel was triggered by Jonathan Sands. Someone phoned Quinn with information, he relayed it to Sands, and Sands triggered the explosions.

 

Beyond the fire door, I see Kelly sprinting down a narrow passage that seems to run the length of the lower deck. It’s the same corridor we were in only a minute ago. Ten yards past Kelly, Seamus Quinn veers right and disappears, and I realize he’s back in the room we just left—the torture room nicknamed the Devil’s Punchbowl.

 

Could Quinn know about the tape? Did someone betray the presence of the recorder?

 

Kelly darts though the hatch where Quinn disappeared. Before I can follow, the boat abruptly stops drifting, and I crash to the floor. Either the barge has hit something or it’s reached the limit of any mooring cables that remain intact. Scrambling to my feet, I move through the hatch after Kelly.

 

The interrogation room is lit only by red emergency lights. Kelly stands thirty feet from me on the landing of the metal stairs by the far wall, his back braced against a steel hatch. One arm is locked around Quinn’s neck, the other pins one of the security chief’s arms. Jonathan Sands crouches two steps down from the landing, both hands raised, his fingers curled inward. There’s blood on the side of his face. He seems to want to get to the hatch, but when he lunges toward it, Kelly flicks out a lightning kick, driving him back.

 

“Where’s the recorder?” I shout. “Did they get it?”

 

“I don’t know!” Kelly answers, wrenching his arm tighter around Quinn’s neck.

 

The cart at the center of the room looks undisturbed. Before I can reach it, the boat shifts again, and a thunderous rumble rolls through the barge. Then a vibration like thousands of running feet rattles the hull. On the monitor screens to my right, I see screaming passengers trying frantically to escape the upper deck.

 

As Sands rushes the hatch once more and Kelly drives him back, I snatch open the lower door of the cart and probe with my hand, unwilling to take my eyes off Kelly. Feeling several hard objects, I rake everything onto the floor. The recording device is there, amid rolls of wire and duct tape, but I have to blink before I can take in what also lies beside the recorder: a tiny, antique-looking pistol with a leather string attached to its curved butt.

 

Walt Garrity’s derringer.

 

Jiao…

 

Sands’s lover obviously feared that he’d never be taken as easily as we’d thought. Scooping up the recorder, I stand without reaching for the gun. There’s no need for it.

 

“Kelly, let them go! I’ve got it! Don’t risk your life!
They can’t get away!
”

 

Sands looks back at me and laughs, then makes another try for the hatch. Kelly drives him off with a kick, but as he does Quinn shifts in his grasp, and Kelly almost loses him.

 

“Danny and Carl are out there!” I shout. “It’s time to get off the boat! Carl can blow them away if they go through that hatch!”

 

“Sands still has the detonator!”
Kelly screams. “Call Logan! We need cops down here!”

 

As the significance of
detonator
hits me, Quinn smashes an elbow into Kelly’s chin, stunning him long enough for Sands to kick him away from the hatch. While Quinn engages Kelly, Sands spins the hatch wheel, then seizes the heavy metal door and throws it to the foot of the stairs with a clang. I drop to my knees, grabbing for the derringer, but too late. Kelly twists like a cat, flinging Quinn bodily over his shoulder in a judo throw. The Irishman’s legs slam the rim of the open hatch, and I hear the crack of bone. I’m running forward with the gun when Quinn snatches Kelly’s shirt from behind and yanks him backward with all his strength. Sands kicks out at the same moment, and Kelly tumbles through the open hatch, snatching Quinn after him as he falls out of the barge.

 

Sands and I are alone.

 

I stop at the foot of the stairs, aiming the derringer up at the Irishman’s back. He’s standing in the hatch, staring down at what must be Kelly and Quinn fighting in the water. Certain that Kelly can handle himself against Quinn, I’m tempted to run for the main deck, but I can’t leave Sands with a detonator in his hand—not if any unexploded charges remain aboard.

 

“Back away!” I yell. “Get back! We’re going up to the main deck!”

 

Sands looks over his shoulder and laughs again. “Look at those screens! Do you want to be trampled to death? Do you want to drown under a thousand people?”

 

The monitor screens are blinking erratically, but I can still see that the grand saloon is teeming with panicked gamblers who have nowhere to run. Sands is right. Trying for the main exit at this point would be crazy. And the likelihood that Logan and his squad can impose any kind of order on that mob is minuscule. Climbing the first two steps, I steady the tiny derringer in my right hand and aim between Sands’s shoulder blades.

 

“Look at me, damn it! Give me the detonator!”

 

Sands turns from the hatch and raises his right hand, turning a small metal box in the red light. “What are you going to do with that peashooter? You need to press that against a man’s belly to be sure of hitting him.”

 

I take another step upward, and Sands’s grin disappears. He looks out the hatch, curses, then turns back to me.

 

“That first charge was nothing. Primacord on the mooring cables. I can blow the bottom out of this tub anytime. You might hit me if you shoot, but that pimp gun won’t kill me. Not before I push the button.”

 

Come on, Kelly,
I think, wishing the commando would catapult back through the hatch like a ninja assassin. The river can’t be more than three feet below the hatch, if that.

 

“They’re gone,” Sands says, reading my mind. “You got what you wanted, Cage. You threw a wrench into the works. You queered my deal with Hull and cost me my fucking casino. Jiao helped you, didn’t she? She planted the recorder.”

 

“If you step through that hatch, a sniper’s going to blow your head off.”

 

Holding the detonator tight, Sands crouches and looks out over the darkening river. “I don’t think so.”

 

“He’s got a night-vision scope.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure. But where is he?”

 

“Helicopter.”

 

“Well, then. You’re going to call him off.”

 

“Why would I do that?” I move one step higher.

 

Sands wields the detonator like a Taser. “Because if you don’t, I’ll send this bitch to the bottom. I’ve got seven or eight hundred hostages in my hand.”

 

“You can’t destroy this boat while you’re still on it.”

 

Sands gives me a defiant sneer and presses the remote.

 

The
Magnolia Queen
shudders like a bell being pounded with a sledgehammer. When the reverberations subside, the sound of screams reaches my ringing ears. Whether they’re coming from the speakers or from other parts of the casino I don’t know, but I’m certain Sands has mortally wounded the barge.

 

“If they don’t seal the forward hold in sixty seconds,” he says, “this tub is going to the bottom. Call off your sniper, Cage. I have two more charges left.”

 

The barge shifts beneath my feet, wallowing in the river.

 

“Okay! I’ll do it.” I take out my cell phone and pretend to make a call, but there’s no way I can let Sands leave this hold. If he gets twenty feet from the hull, he’ll blow every charge he has left just for spite.

 

“Call him off,” Sands says, scanning the river from the hatch. “I’m leaving. You can stay and die with the white trash and niggers you love so dearly.”

 

Walt’s derringer spits flame as I pull the trigger.

 

Sands’s eyes register an instant of terror, but his fear fades into a smirk when the ricochet pings off against the steel wall.

 

“What did I tell you?” he cries, laughing. “One shot left.”

 

“No. I’ve got four left, thanks to a good friend. And your old lover.”

 

Sands’s arrogance twists into rage before my eyes. He whistles shrilly, then spins toward the hatch as I fire again. A bloom like a red paintball round blossoms on his right shoulder blade, then he drops through the hatch.