by Paul Malmont
That must have been about the time the rifle butt hit him for a second time, because the RKO antenna in his head began broadcasting pain again, and he lost consciousness. Now as he lay on the floor, looking up, he felt the truck incline gently and heard the sound of tires rumbling over wooden planks. It was the sensation any New Yorker, especially a Dodgers fan who took cabs out to Ebbets Field, knew well. They were leaving Manhattan by way of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Episode Thirty-Eight
AS THE tiny boat carried Lester and the cowboy farther away and closer to the black ship, The Flash turned to Driftwood and said, “I would have bet money that if anybody had gone overboard tonight, it would have been you.”
“Me too,” he muttered through his clenched teeth.
“All right,” Mrs. Dent said, as the current swiftly drew the launch through the ice floes behind the freighter. “We’re going to have to circle back and get them when they come back.” She pointed to a wide expanse of black water, free of ice, in the distance. “We can come about in the waters between Red Hook and Governors Island.”
“Sure,” Driftwood replied as she went below. “Maybe they’ll pick up some beer and steak from the galley on the way back. Invite some of those nice fellas on the dock to come back for a cookout.”
“Why don’t you take it easy, Driftwood? That’s the lady’s husband out there.”
“And he’s not coming back,” he replied darkly.
The Flash felt his blood rise. “This whole trip you’ve been calling me a liar to my face, trying to pick a fight with the cowboy, and putting the make on Mr. Dent’s missus. Now, I introduced you to them and they’re nice people and I feel responsible, so show a little respect.”
“You have to admit you’ve spun some yarns.”
“I’m sure when you start telling Mrs. Dent the truth behind your whoppers, she’s completely going to throw her husband over for your skinny, weak-lunged, hoboing, grave-digging ass. Send me an invite to the wedding. I’ll bring something from Tiffany. Meanwhile, we got a boat to sail and you’re at the helm, so sail already.”
In a subdued voice Driftwood asked The Flash to let out some sail so they could pick up some speed. The Flash did what he was told for Mrs. Dent’s sake, but he was tired of taking orders and tired of being on the boat.
He picked up the binoculars and could see the two men forging their way across the Stygian scene, the blocks of ice, some as small as a dime, others as big as a flat house, adding chill impediments to their progress. Below him he could hear Mrs. Dent as she tried to raise the Coast Guard, but the radio issued only static. She emerged, frustration clearly showing on her face. He handed her the binoculars.
The little boat made its way along the starboard side of the freighter to a hatch just above the waterline. It was identical to the one on the port side which had hooked Lester’s gaff. “He said he had the keys,” she said. A moment or two later and the hatch was open, the two men vanishing into the bowels of the ship. She lowered the binoculars and smiled slightly. The tone of her voice and the steely glare in her eyes made The Flash think that, for a while at least, Lester would probably be safer aboard the ship. She tossed the binoculars back to him and went below again.
“Coast Guard! Coast Guard! Come in, please. This is the Albatross. Come in, please! Coast Guard. Coast Guard? Come in. Do you copy?”
“Copy that,” the radio finally crackled to life, as she fiddled with the squelch, “This is the Coast Guard. Go ahead. Over.” The voice was young. The Flash imagined that the radio operator was one of his readers.
“I’m reporting a hijacked ship at the pier just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The ship is named the Star of Baltimore. There are lives in danger. Do you copy?”
“Copy that, Albatross.” The radio sputtered again and an icy voice, nearly metallic in timbre, interrupted the conversation.
“Attention, Coast Guard.” The new speaker commanded attention. Speaking softly, but with a power that caused Mrs. Dent to adjust the volume, the new voice said, “This is Colonel Towers. Do you copy?”
“Yes, sir!” The young man responded with fear and respect.
“Do you recognize my authority in this matter?”
Colonel Towers. The Flash looked at Driftwood, who acknowledged his shock with a nod and a grimace.
“Yes, sir, Colonel Towers, sir. I am fully aware of your standing orders. There is no ship. Repeat. There is no ship. Over.”
“Good, sailor. Good work.”
“Coast Guard!” Mrs. Dent pleaded. “Listen to me. The ship is named the Star of Baltimore.”
The Flash looked out across the water to Governors Island, the headquarters of the United States Coast Guard’s Atlantic fleet. He imagined the young signalman at his station. He chose a window in a building and decided that was where the young man was. Stu was his name, he decided. Stu, from Nantucket, who had grown up on the coastal shores of his island. Stu was one of his fans. Stu would help.
“Attention, Albatross,” Stu spoke at long last. “There is no vessel registered as the Star of Baltimore. This channel is for emergency use only. If you persist in your hoax your ship will be impounded and you will be prosecuted to the full extent of United States maritime law.”
“No! Please! You have to help!”
“Coast Guard, Governors Island Station, out!”
Damn you, Stu, The Flash thought angrily. The next time I write a coward who shoots men in the back, he’s going to have your name. The radio remained silent.
Mrs. Dent came up from the cabin. Her jaw was clenched and roses of fury blushed her cheeks. She took a deep breath.
“It’s gonna be close,” Driftwood said. The Flash turned and watched the blackness which indicated open water rapidly approach. “Sure wish we’d fixed the motor.”
“You up for this?” The Flash asked him. His eyes were trying to factor in a dozen different potential hazards at once.
“It’d be easier with an engine.”
“Well, we don’t have one,” Mrs. Dent snapped at him. “And if you don’t feel like you’re up to it, just step aside and let me do it.”
“That’s okay,” Driftwood said, cowed. “I can do it.”
The Flash looked into the frigid, swirling waters. Once, fishing as a boy in the early Montana spring, he had slipped in the mud and fallen into the Missouri River. The runoff from the winter snow had been colder than anything he could have imagined. His head slipped only briefly beneath the surface of the water but his breath had been snatched away from him by the cold. His diaphragm would not expand even as he struggled to inhale, and panic had set in almost immediately. The stabbing of a thousand chilling needles in his flesh, the vicious, ruthlessly gripping current, turned him into a violent thrashing animal, a wolf with its paw in a trap. All he knew, had ever known, would ever know, was that this cold death was so fast, so powerful, so overwhelming. Only his clawing hand, reaching for a low-hanging branch, had secured his rescue. Only the feeling of his hand on that branch, that security, had restored his reason, had allowed his rib cage to expand with air in spite of the water’s viselike grip.
He knew exactly what it would feel like to die in the water.
“Ready to come about?” Otis asked. His voice was thin and tight.
“Ready!” Mrs. Dent stood ready to cast her sheet off.
The Flash grabbed the handle and prepared to coil his sheet around the winch when the sail was tossed free. “Ready to come about!” he shouted.
“Coming about!”
The boat heeled over in the opposite direction and The Flash braced himself against the cabin. He felt a solid thump as ice cracked against the hull. They were right up against the ice shelf.
“We’re aground!” he shouted. “We’re on the ice!”
“I know!” Driftwood grunted, wrestling with the wheel. “I know!”
From his angle he could see only ice below. The boat scraped against it with a crackling shriek. He secured his lines and the sails filled wi
th wind, the Albatross trembling as it ground against the outer edge of the ice.
“Get ready to jump to the ice!” he yelled to Mrs. Dent.
“No!” She shook her head. “She’ll make it. You hear me?” she hollered to Driftwood. “She can make it!”
Suddenly the Albatross shook with a thud as it knifed back into the water, free of the ice and heading back up the channel. The Flash sank against the cabin to catch his breath. Mrs. Dent reached for, and he gave over, the binoculars. She looked for a long time and he peered at the ship, following her gaze. He thought he saw the blur of a figure ducking behind a vent at the front of the ship, near the cabins, but he couldn’t be sure. She swore and lowered the glasses. He took one look at her face and knew something terrible had happened.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s Lester,” she said. “He and the cowboy are up on deck.”
Episode Thirty-Nine
GIBSON HEARD the sound of lapping water. He had been concentrating so hard on making the pain in his head go away that it took him a few moments to realize the truck had stopped moving and the engine had been shut off. Zhang Mei’s men filed off the truck as before, unconcerned with the prostrate white man.
He staggered to his feet, using the bench for support. Through the cargo flap he could see glimpses of Manhattan across the water. He parted the canvas and looked out. The truck had backed down a large wooden pier, much greater than the one he had explored in Providence. He made his way cautiously off the truck. To his right loomed the Brooklyn Bridge. To his left a great black ship—blacker even than the putrid water beneath its hull, a ship old and carrying the scars of decades of battle against the sea and elements—soared high above him. There were still more Chinese men on board the ship, speaking excitedly with their comrades on the dock as they lowered a gangplank down. Zhang Mei led the ascent, embracing the men on the ship as he reached the deck.
Gibson began to back away, hoping to steal off down the dock, but a hand shoved him forward. It was his old friend, the soldier with the busted jaw. Overhead, the deck crane had been brought roaring to life. Its arm swung out over the truck and the operator slowly lowered the hook at the end of the steel cable toward the truck. Men helped guide the heavy hook inside the cargo truck, where the hook was fastened to the chains binding the crates of money to the first pallet. Then, with men shouting directions, the operator began to winch back, soldiers inside the truck guiding the pallet out as the slack went out of the cable, then the pallet swung free and began to rise. The first load of lost Chinese loot began its journey home.
Gibson’s escort forced him on toward and up the gangplank. He heard the sound of grinding gears and saw that the great doors to the hold in the center of the ship were being winched open and the pallet was being lowered into its depths. Zhang Mei watched from the edge of the hold, arms crossed in satisfaction. Gibson was allowed to sit on a crate and smoke. The men worked efficiently and quickly, but even so, Gibson grew weary.
Finally Zhang Mei beckoned to him. He rose and walked to the hold, wary of the yawning opening. “America is a young country,” Zhang Mei said, “but one thing they have become better at than anyone else is the art of killing.”
Far below them, arranged like neat little clusters of eggs in a country farmer’s stall, were dozens upon dozens of the ancient army drums. Thousands of gallons of malevolent death waiting to be spilled across distant battlefields.
“You can’t use this,” Gibson said, horrified. “It’s obscene.”
“Once wives and children become the targets of war, that word loses its relevance. I will use this gas to drive the Japanese from every inch of the Middle Kingdom, then I shall take what’s left of it and bring it to their shores. By the time the summer flowers bloom beyond the walls of Shenyang Palace the war will be over. And I will once more be able to lay those same flowers upon the graves of my wife and my son.” He leaned in close to Gibson and whispered his final thought before sweeping away from Gibson’s side and vanishing down the gangway.
Walter Gibson felt the weight of his life upon his shoulders and was unable to move. The shouts of men and the grinding of the crane gears receded along with his sense of the rest of the world. He knew that he was about to die and suddenly all he craved was the sight of one more dawn.
Across the great distance that seemed to separate his unmoored mind from reality he heard a sharp crack, as if some ice on the river were breaking up. He looked up and saw the engineer operating the crane stagger from his cab, a hand against his bloody face. Something seemed to strike him and he fell back against the control levers. The arm of the crane suddenly dropped down with tremendous speed, crashing against the deck with tremendous force; he could feel the entire boat shudder. The pallet that had been dangling near the hold opening fell to the deck, then was yanked with great force by the falling crane across the deck. It skidded away from where he stood and smashed into the gangplank, dislodging and shattering it. Together, the pallet of heavy cases and what was left of the gangplank toppled to the pier, exploding through the wood into the water. The cable, still attached to the pallet, was drawn taut before snapping; it sailed into the air with the crack of a whip, then fell across the ship. The recoil of the cable springing back was enough to send several heavy iron beams that had been part of the crane structure hurtling into the hold. Fascinated, horrified, Gibson watched as the debris slammed into a bundle of canisters, crushing them like tin cans.
The men below never had a chance. He looked down into hell. Gas jetted out through the hold in a horrifyingly wide spray. Great feathery plumes spurted up into the night sky, then fell back to become part of the roiling gray mass, devouring the luckless men trying to escape it. It spread to fill the floor of the hold and then rose up, like a tub filling with water. So quickly, he thought. The sight of onrushing doom was paralyzing; he was rooted to the deck.
Robert. I’m sorry.
For a moment the turmoil below seemed to coalesce into a giant form in which he could see the rage of The Shadow, his Shadow, his dark angel of retribution, sweeping up toward him, eyes ablaze with wrath. The mass spilled out onto the deck, flowing over his shoes.
Litzka. I’ll try to hold my breath for you.
He felt the impact of a body slamming into his side. The impact lifted him off his feet, knocked the wind from his lungs. He had the dizzying sensation of motion, of being swept down the deck by a great force, of arms around him. Someone was dragging him. A man. Not The Shadow. The gas poured across the deck toward him. He was at the bow. How had he arrived here? There was a thunder in his ears.
Then he felt himself being lifted up against the rail. His mind finally seemed to uncloud and he looked at the man forcing him up.
“Dent?” he said, amazed, and then began the long fall into the black abyss.
The pain he felt was immense beyond measure. It was as if all the pain he had ever felt in his life had revisited him all at once. As a writer, he never believed that words could fail him, yet this was a pain beyond describing in any sense that could be conveyed to another person.
It was a complete and resounding agony.
Episode Forty
THE FLASH could never have imagined that bodies could fall so fast.
“Oh my God,” Mrs. Dent cried. “They’re in the water!”
The midsection of the Star of Baltimore disappeared beneath the thick, lethal fog billowing from its hold. A light breeze stirred the gas to starboard; it flowed heavily over the side almost like a liquid, sizzling away as it made contact with the seawater. Behind the ship Lester’s head emerged; then, within a moment or two, the form of the other man he had thrown over the ship’s bow appeared several yards from him.
“Is that the cowboy?” Driftwood yelled to them.
“I can’t tell,” The Flash hollered back.
Dent swam to the limp form as the current pulled them both away from the freighter and the roiling gas.
“Get them,” Mrs. Dent commanded t
o the both of them. Driftwood angled the Albatross to intercept, while The Flash grabbed the life ring. Suddenly they heard a low roar, like a bow being drawn along a bass fiddle.
“What’s that?” The Flash yelled. “What’s that sound?”
“That,” Driftwood said in a choked, hoarse voice, “is the sound of a machine gun.”
With the excitement on the ship The Flash had forgotten about the men on the dock. A half dozen or so men stood there now, amidst the gangplank wreckage and the debris from the pallets. The air around them was alive with fluttering slips of paper. A man in a long black coat stood in their midst towering over the other men. While the men on the dock pointed at Dent in the water, this man stood still with his face turned away, looking back at the ship. Another one of the Chinese men gripped a machine gun and fired bursts into the water. Lester struck out against the water with one hand while supporting the other man.
“No way in hell am I going near those machine guns!” Driftwood’s face was white, drained of blood.
“You have to! That’s my husband up there.”
Driftwood kept his eyes focused on the water in front of him. The Flash realized that Driftwood was terrified. Beyond terrified. He was panicking. He slid down the deck to the helm as the sails began to luff.
“It’s all in your head.”
“Get away from me.” Driftwood looked at him angrily. He was almost beyond reasoning with. “You ever stare down a machine gun? I’m not dying that way.”
“It’s just in your mind. You need to get control of it. Get your monkeys in order.”
“Monkeys?” The seeming randomness of simians’ being introduced into the conversation caught the edge of his attention. Just as The Flash had intended.
“The monkeys in your head. The ones that are running in a million different directions. You gotta get them running in one direction. That way!”
Driftwood pushed him roughly away. The Flash slipped to the deck by Mrs. Dent’s feet. He pulled himself up and looked at Driftwood, who was staring at the dock. At last he looked up and met The Flash’s eyes. For a long moment The Flash couldn’t tell (and afterward he was never sure) whether Driftwood at that moment was completely sane or completely insane. A sardonic smile twisted across Driftwood’s face, making his mustache twitch. “Monkeys!” He gave the wheel a tremendous spin; the sound of the spoke smacking into his hand when he finally stopped it sounded like wood cracking. The sails filled again with a steady breeze. The Flash felt the Albatross heel again. He slid to the other side of the deck as the boat swung around toward the Star of Baltimore.