Hubbard, L Ron - Novel 14
Page 24
Smith spoke angrily at Pedrito. "What did I do? Excuse me, but what did you do to the U.S. Navy? I had a reputation to uphold!"
Pedrito made a gagging sound. "Your reputation! I'm well acquainted with your miserable reputation, thank you!"
A scrawny arm whipped around the corner and rolled a grenade, which bounced down the cement floor toward them. Pedrito darted forward to grab the grenade like a fumbled football. "Damn you, Smith, you loused me up!"
More interested in arguing with his look-alike than in paying serious attention to their attackers, he hurled the grenade underhand back around the corner where it had come. "I had a good, fine plan for stealing U.S. secrets."
He motioned for Smith to hunker down into shelter. The two of them crouched back in the corridor, covered their ears and squeezed their eyes shut.
An orange belch of flame burst from the side corridor. Soldiers shrieked, and mangled bodies flew from one side of the corridor to the other.
The two redheads let go of their ears, and Smith shouted, "Yeah, well, I was a fine, upstanding naval officer. You wrecked my whole career! What do you have to say about that?"
Pedrito shrugged. "Wasn't much of a career."
With Smith leading the way and stumbling in his wet-suit flippers, they ran along the corridor in search of an escape route. When he came upon the first cross-corridor. Smith dropped on one knee and fired the rifle to the left. "Face it, Pedrito—you bungled the whole thing!"
Pedrito dropped on one knee, aiming down the corridor in the other direction. "Don't blame me for your incompetence, Smith!"
In the radio room the Cuban operator frantically worked his equipment. He glanced in terror in the direction from which the furious sounds of battle erupted. "Havana, Havana! Rush up that frigate you were sending for Pedrito Miraflores! He's shooting the place to bits! We've got a war going on here."
Pedrito rushed to an ammunition bunker with a huge red sign on the door, EXPLOSIVES. He yanked the bunker open and grabbed sticks of dynamite, which he shoveled at Smith.
"You could never handle this lifestyle, Smith. I bet you brought the troubles down on yourself with women—" Pedrito grumbled, "probably the same women I'd already learned my lesson with."
Smith frantically tied the sticks of dynamite together. "Me? You're the womanizer! They fell all over me because of your reputation. Yaquita, Bonita—they were only interested in getting married."
"Don't forget Joan Turner," Pedrito snorted. He fired three shots at a group of approaching guards. "Same story there. It's like they're all brainwashed." He shook his head in disgust.
Smith lit a long fuse stuck into the dynamite. "You're the one who doesn't know how to handle yourself, Pedrito. I bet you brought it on yourself with drink!" he snapped back. "Be honest: you boozed it up and wrecked my nice apartment in New York. Didn't you?"
"It wasn't a very nice apartment to start with."
Pedrito ducked a hail of bullets from inside the corridor, then fired his rifle again. "Besides, I don't drink anymore!" he snarled. "I gave it up."
"From what I hear, you're a sot!" Together, they sprinted up the passageway.
"Your bartender wouldn't give me anything but milk." Pedrito spat. "Vile-tasting stuff. Comes from cows!"
Smith hurled the package of dynamite with the burning fuse. Ahead, a mob of sentries barged into the ammunition bunker through the splintering outside door. They opened fire without even looking for targets.
Kneeling, Smith and Pedrito shot repeatedly, aiming carefully. The sentries went down in a tumble. Smith and Pedrito rose and dashed for the outside door. "My bartender is a good judge of character. He probably took one look at you and could tell you weren't to be trusted, Pedrito."
"Are you calling me a liar?" Pedrito said.
They charged through the bunker's outside door and dove for cover behind a nearby sand dune. The dynamite fuse burned down.
"Yes, I'm calling you a liar!" Smith sneered, buckling his flippers tighter around his ankles in case he had to run again. He glanced at the Russian chronograph on his wrist. "Get down!"
The whole bunker exploded in a towering pillar of flame and debris that rolled up into the clear Caribbean sky.
The sand dune offered little protection from the blast. Pedrito and Smith covered their heads. Debris pattered and thunked all around them, chunks of fused sand, smoking plywood and smoldering Spanish fashion magazines.
Pedrito balled his fists. "Then I'll have to challenge you to a duel. Smith!"
A huge slab of concrete fell next to them like a bomb, spraying sand. "You're too yellow to fight me, Pedrito," Smith said with scathing contempt.
They hauled themselves to their feet and stood face to face. Pedrito's cheeks turned purple with rage. "I'll kill you. Smith!"
"Big talk!" Smith said. "You couldn't even swat a fly!"
"I won't swat him—I'll shoot him. Pistols!" Pedrito said.
"Suits me!" Smith agreed. "Dueling pistols!"
Pedrito hesitated, then frowned. "Well, we haven't got any dueling pistols. But you can't get out of it like that—we'll use rifles instead!"
Smith swung down his gold-heavy backpack. "Wait, I've got these fancy laser pistols—"
"You've got my laser pistols?"
"They were in the false bottom of my suitcase. I mean, your suitcase. Say, whatever happened to my own suitcase?"
"Forget the suitcase—you won't need it after I kill you. And forget the laser pistols, too," Pedrito said. "Not messy enough. I want to watch you bleed."
Smith slung his rifle. "All right, rifles it is." Grim and businesslike, he gestured toward the hill in the center of the island. "There's a level place on top of the key. We'll duel there, where you can't duck into any holes."
Pedrito held his rifle at his side, and Smith gave him a push toward the indicated spot, but the other redhead walked directly beside him. "Don't try to get behind me," Pedrito said. "You'd shoot me in the back!"
"Look who's talking! The back-shooter of all time! You can trust me—I work for the U.S. Navy."
"Oh, is that why you blew up the CIA installation in Colodor?"
"Stop giving me reasons to shoot you, Pedrito."
They marched grimly toward the rise, where one of them would die. Smith's wet-suit flippers made him look like a duck.
Chapter 54
FROM THE RISE in the center of Pirate Key, stunted palms and dumps of pampas grass blocked all but a strip of the surrounding turquoise sea. Scattered clouds scudded across the morning sky. Smith and Pedrito marched across a level stretch toward a large sinkhole in the center of the hill.
Pedrito pointed with his rifle at the hole. "There's our landmark. We'll each go fifty feet on either side and then we'll turn and fire when I give the word." Pedrito laid his rifle against his shoulder.
Smith looked at Pedrito. "Hah! What's your word worth?"
Pedrito froze with a retort on his lips as he looked past Smith toward the open sea. He gasped, and his arm slung out to knock Smith into the sinkhole.
"Get down!"
Smith scrambled to his hands and knees in a rage, spitting sand. He hauled back his fist to strike. "Foul play!" he said. "I knew I couldn't trust you—I could tell by your shifty eyes and your criminal features."
As a whistling scream arced overhead, Pedrito dove next to him, knocking Smith flat on his face. Violent explosions erupted near the sinkhole, a flare of greenish light followed by a shower of sand.
Coughing and sputtering, both redheads peered cautiously over the edge of the sinkhole. A Cuban missile boat cruised in the water like a prehistoric shark. The missile boat fired another round from its bow gun, and a second shell exploded near the sinkhole, inundating them both with wet sand.
Pedrito knocked dirt from his clothes and hair, very peeved. He slapped Smith in the shoulder. "See the trouble you got me into, Smith? Now my own side is shooting at me!"
Smith opened his mouth to retort, but a new sound filled the air.
In tandem, the look-alikes scrambled across the blasted sinkhole and peered cautiously over the opposite edge. On the side of Pirate Key, a U.S. Navy missile frigate bristling with deck guns skimmed across the waves toward the island. The Stars and Stripes flapped from its signal bridge yard. A blast belched from one of the bow guns as the ship fired a missile.
Pedrito and Smith covered their heads. "And that's my side shooting at me!" Smith wailed. "Now look what you've done."
Another flash of green light, another violent explosion, and more sand showered into the hole. The U.S. missile frigate fired again and again from one side, while the Cuban ship fired from the other. More explosions followed.
"They got us surrounded," Pedrito said. "Thanks to you!"
"No, thanks to you, Pedrito!"
"You should have planned this better, Smith. You're a disgrace."
"It was your plan! I just thought I was getting a prize vacation to Colodor."
"Some vacation!"
The signal bridge of the Cuban frigate had no roof against the pounding Caribbean sun. The captain pressed a pair of field glasses to his eyes as he listened to the distant explosions. "I never could understand those capitalist dogs," the captain snarled at his gunnery officer. "Why is that Yankee frigate shooting at their own spy?
"Maybe it's a new example of East-West detente," the gunnery officer said.
"Well, our orders are to kill their double-agent Pedrito Miraflores," the captain said. "Keep firing on Pirate Key We'll send in a crew with brooms and dustpans to bring back his body."
A U.S. four-stripe captain and his own gunnery officer stood on the bridge of the missile frigate, looking through binoculars toward the low island. White, acrid smoke from the pounding bow guns drifted back across the men, making them cough and choke.
"Why are the Cubans shooting at him, too?" the gunnery officer asked.
"Trying to destroy the evidence of their spy?"
"Damn the evidence—just kill that bastard Smith!" The captain gasped from the artillery smoke. "We've got to wipe him out before the Cubans do. It's a matter of national pride.'
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said. "I'll get him with repeated fire."
The captain set his jaw. "Shift to full automatic fire control and saturate the place!"
Missile launchers on the forward deck of the U.S. frigate adjusted their aim to blast Pirate Kev. Rockets streamed out.
Smith rummaged in his backpack, brushing sand away. Happily, he pulled out a bottle of rum and sat with his back against the side of the sinkhole.
Pedrito squatted beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
"Both ships have increased their fire," Pedrito said.
Smith pulled the cork from the rum bottle. A blizzard of sand from a nearby explosion rained from the sky, and he covered the open bottle. "Might as well die happy." Smith took a long swig. Rockets whistled overhead.
Pedrito looked at him, incredulous. "You and rum? I thought you didn't drink, Smith. Too strait-laced."
"Have some?" Smith offered the bottle.
Pedrito shook his head in disgust. "No more for me. Never again." They both flinched from another rain of dirt and debris. "I've reformed! Completely!"
"So have I!" said Smith. He gulped another long swig.
Pedrito turned around and inched up toward the top of the hole. "I want to take a look at the U.S. frigate."
Smith swatted him back. "Get down! That U.S. craft has an automatic heat control firing system. I know—I approved the blueprints myself. If they sense a steady heat source—like your hot head—they'll home in right on it!"
"Is that a crack about my red hair?" Pedrito said.
"You mean our hair," Smith said. "No, it's a fact. If we show ourselves, we're doomed."
"Well, you're the naval expert," Pedrito said. "So think of something!"
Smith jolted with a sudden thought. "Wait a minute." He dug in his rucksack and came up with one of the high-tech laser pistols.
Pedrito was incredulous. "What, you want to duel to death after all?"
"Nope. This is going to save us." Smith smiled with supreme confidence.
"How are you going to sink a frigate with a pistol?" Pedrito held his aching head in his hands.
Smith carved a notch in the sand of the crater lip and lay down, aiming the laser pistol through the notch. He squinted with one eye and aimed at the Cuban frigate's bow plates. "Just watch me."
He adjusted the sensitivity dial on the laser, then pressed the trigger. With a loud sizzle, a pencil-thin beam of light stabbed out of the muzzle, striking the bow of the Cuban ship. Smith cradled the pistol to hold the beam steady.
A large area of the steel plate on the Cuban frigate went cherry red, heating up to violet blue and smoking. The sailors on the frigate ran to the deck rails, looking over the side and shouting.
Smith smiled and continued firing....
The automatic targeting systems of the U.S. missile launchers suddenly shifted upward to fire at a higher angle. The heat-seekers locked in, and a shower of missiles spat out.
A huge gout of water geysered just beyond the Cuban captain on his signal bridge. "That Yankee is firing at us," he said in astonishment. He and his gunnery officer stared at each other for a fraction of a second, then the captain shouted new orders. "Shoot back! Forget the island—just blast those capitalist dogs out of the water. This is war!"
The Cuban gunnery officer leaped to his own missile launchers, changed the aim point, then fired with everything he had. A salvo of missiles sailed up from the Cuban ship in an arc over Pirate Key.
Farther along, another salvo of rockets sailed from the U.S. frigate toward the Cuban ship, trailing white smoke over the island. At the peak of their trajectory, they turned downward, sensors activated, hurtling toward the red-hot spot on the Cuban bow plates.
The Cuban ship exploded into flame and fragments.
A moment later the U.S. frigate did the same.
Pedrito stuck his head up above the edge of the sinkhole. He stared in astonishment at the smoking wreckage of both ships. The island fell silent, with only the sound of the wind, the waves and a few sea gulls overhead.
Smith calmly tucked the laser pistol back in his wet rucksack on top of his waterlogged paperback of Famous Naval Battles. "I just moved Nelson into the twentieth century," he said.
Chapter 55
FORLORN, SMITH AND PEDRITO trudged along a flat, sandy beach on the bomb-battered Pirate Key. The bright sunshine, lapping waves, fresh air—and above all the peaceful silence, now that the two attacking warships had been sunk— made the small island into a Caribbean paradise. Both redheads negligently carried a rifle by the breech at hip level.
Ahead, they spotted a rubber inflatable boat drawn halfway up onto the beach. "Maybe we could take that raft and escape," Pedrito suggested.
"Even if we got out of here, there's no place to hide," Smith said. "We've got to face it, the U.S. is against us."
"Yeah," Pedrito said, "and Cuba and Russia are against us."
"And we're certainly not welcome back in Colodor ... in fact, probably not anywhere in South America."
Pedrito stopped as inspiration struck him. "Hey, we can always start a revolution somewhere else. I'm good at that."
"That's brilliant. Let's do it together—what do we have to lose?"
Pedrito gestured toward the inflatable raft with his rifle. "We better get out of here, then. Time's wasting."
"You get the first shift rowing," Smith said as they trotted down the beach.
Suddenly, Bolo stood up out of the inflatable raft like a jack-in-the-box. He wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and a fedora slouched over his face. His hands at his sides were empty. "Hello, my friends," he said with a bland smile. "I've been waiting for you. Congratulations on your survival, both of
you."
Pedrito halted in surprise. "Bolo!" He peered closely, suspicious. "Say, are you the one who radioed me to come to this spy assembly station in the first place? That sounds like something you'd do."
"That guy sure looks familiar," Smith said.
Bolo shrugged and beckoned for them to join him in the raft. "Come along, we've got some business to discuss. A proposition." He stepped out of the inflatable boat and prepared to launch it without saying another word. Smith and Pedrito looked at each other with raised eyebrows, then climbed into the raft.
At dusk on the calm ocean, an unmarked submarine lay in the water like a beached whale. As the inflatable raft carrying Bolo, Pedrito and Smith approached, no one moved about on deck. The submarine's conning tower and forward deck shimmered copper in the last rays of the setting sun.
After he lashed the inflatable raft to the sub, Bolo clambered aboard and moved to a large hatchway in the forward deck. He lifted the heavy metal hatch and stood waiting for the two redheads. "Come on, sirs. This is what you've been waiting for all along."
Smith and Pedrito, still carrying their rifles, went down the hatch into the submarine. Smith moved awkwardly in his wet-suit flippers, and Pedrito gave him a hand. Bolo followed last, closing the hatch from below. Then he pressed a signal button on the wall. With a low growl of engines, the sub moved forward slowly, submerging. It had a long way to go to its final destination.
Up on the surface, as the submarine dove, the rubber raft raced forward for a moment, as if it were being dragged by an enormous fish. Then it dove underwater. Moments later, as the raft popped like a balloon from the tremendous stress, a ball of air rose out of the ocean with a sound like an enormous belch.
Smith and Pedrito walked side by side in a narrow passageway. Bolo directed them to a closed stateroom door, which opened mysteriously ahead of them. "After you," said Smith.