The Revengers

by Donald Hamilton

  Moving very slowly to avoid splashing, I fought my way along the bank under the tough overhanging foliage. I had a pitched battle with a boa constrictor that turned out to be a discarded tire, and I barked my shin on something hard and rectangular and submerged that could have been another discarded refrigerator. I thought of clear blue tropical waters and white beaches. I thought of Eleanor Brand and rather regretted not letting her come and get a firsthand taste of the wet and muddy delights of a secret agent’s life. The trouble with that was the screwball girl would probably have had a wonderful time sloshing along this mucky canal behind me, making notes in her waterproof notebook all the way. But it was just as well that Bennett had, unexpectedly, backed me up when I told her she had to stay home and play with her dolls, the only time he’d ever agreed with me on anything. . . .

  I stopped. The white houseboat was less than fifty yards ahead of me now, with the black shape of the dock almost level with the upper deck at this stage of the tide, if they had tides in Miami. I thought they did, but I didn’t really know. There were a great many things I didn’t know, of varying degrees of importance; but the most important at the moment, I realized suddenly, was that I didn’t know why a confirmed publicity seeker like Mr. Bennett of the OFS had been unwilling, tonight, to let a journalist accompany this expedition and record in deathless prose his organization’s triumph over the forces of evil and terrorism, Brent had already noted this phenomenon casually, but I’d been thinking of other things and let it pass. And then, I reflected grimly, there was also the very interesting fact that, to the best of my recollection, neither Mac nor I had actually insisted on my coming along. Bennett had simply assumed we’d insist; or he’d pretended to assume it. . . . The thought that came into my mind was fairly incredible; but I’d survived in the business longer than most, and I hadn’t done it by dismissing the incredible anymore than by avoiding the ridiculous.

  I drew a long breath and moved forward again very cautiously. A small night breeze had come up, sending ripples across the canal that helped to hide the water I disturbed as I moved, and the small splashing sounds I couldn’t avoid making. Then the dock was above me and I slipped between the black pilings and paused in the darkness beyond. Here the thump-thump music was louder and I could move more quickly without fear of being heard. I saw that the occupants of the houseboat had constructed a clumsy ladder to help them reach the deck from the dock above. It was a contraption of rough two-by-fours spiked together inaccurately by somebody who took no pride in his carpentry. I made my way there, finding the water quite deep where the houseboat lay; I had to swim a cautious stroke or two to reach the ladder. I raised myself slowly and cautiously, grateful for the loud music that covered the sound of water draining from my clothes.

  Two rungs above deck level, I could peer through the ladder, straight into the big deckhouse window opposite. It had been broken at one time, perhaps by a casual rock pitched from the shore by a passing vandal. Thin, transparent plastic had been taped over it, but this had ripped and now hung in shreds that stirred faintly in the breeze, letting the music—and presumably the air conditioning Brent had mentioned—escape almost unobstructed. I had a pretty good view of the interior of the deckhouse and it was an intriguing sight. It was the first time in my life that I’d seen a boat carpeted with money.

  There were bills everywhere, like dead leaves in autumn. They littered the shabby sofa, the scarred table, and the two armchairs with their tom upholstery, not to mention the threadbare indoor-outdoor carpeting. There were even bills on the stove and sink of the galley visible in the far corner of the deckhouse. In the middle of the floor sat a small, rather pretty girl with a moderately dirty face and stringy blond hair. She was wearing an elaborate and obviously new and expensive cream-colored satin negligee, lavishly trimmed with light, coffee-colored lace—ecru is the word that comes back from a long-ago brush with fashion photography. The inadequate fastenings of the garment made it obvious that she was wearing nothing else. She had a rather nice little body. She was holding a plastic champagne glass, the kind that comes in two pieces, stem and bowl, and you stick them together. With her free hand, she was tossing bills into the air from a sizeable suitcase that was full of them, and laughing happily as they fluttered down around her and on her. She tossed a handful playfully at somebody I couldn’t see.

  Abruptly, the music came to an end; a moment later there was a sharp sound that made me wipe my hand on the wet stuff of my turtleneck and get a fresh grip on my revolver. A man came into sight holding a foaming champagne bottle with which he refilled the girl’s glass. She made a helpless gesture toward her shining negligee as the stuff fizzed over.

  “Oh, dear, I’m getting it all spotty,” I heard her say.

  “Forget it, you’ll have a closet full of them where we’re going. I just brought you a small sample of the beautiful life so you could try it out. But now you’d better get your clothes back on. You can’t travel like that, although it would be nice.”

  He was the older one who’d been described to us, the one Brent hadn’t actually seen, on the tall side, dark, with a neat, pointed, devilish little beard that contrasted oddly with his ragged denim shirt and grimy jeans. He waved the bottle invitingly, and the third sinister member of this deadly terrorist gang came into sight: a plump boy, also in jeans, who had no beard, simply because he hadn’t managed one yet. Only a feeble blond fuzz decorated the lower part of his chubby face.

  The girl said uneasily, “Are you . . . are you sure it’s safe now?”

  The dark one said, “Hell, the tricky pickup I worked out went slick as silk; and I let things cool off for several days before I came back, didn’t I? Nobody followed me here, I’m sure of that.” He grinned. “Well, kiddies, let’s disband the Sacred Earth Protective Force. Jeez, I still can’t really believe anybody’d be a sucker enough to hand over all this lovely loot on a wild yarn like that.” He shook his head incredulously. “Well, it beats smuggling pot, you’ve got to admit that.”

  “I thought you were crazy when you started it,” the girl said. She giggled. “You were crazy all right, crazy like a fox.”

  The plump boy asked, "But. . .who really sank all those ships, have you any idea?”

  The bearded one shook his head sharply. “Don’t know and don’t want to know. People who sink ships are dangerous.” He glanced at the bottle, poured judicious amounts of champagne into the glasses that were held out to him, and finished the rest by putting the bottle to his lips, wiping his mouth afterward. “You know, I could make a habit of this stuff,” he said. “Well, who’s to stop me now? Drink up and let’s gather up our tax-free wealth, split this dismal scene and go join the idle rich.”

  It was time and past time; twenty-five minutes had passed since I’d left the car. Well, a little waiting wouldn’t hurt the creeps in the bushes, or wherever they were hiding, holding their cute little stutter-guns in their sweaty little hands. I drew a long breath, eased myself out of the water, and swung myself around the ladder to put a foot on the houseboat’s rail, transferring my weight to it very slowly. Even a large boat will react noticeably to a couple of hundred pounds landing suddenly on deck. Easing myself down at last, I scuttled below the window, straightened up, and moved swiftly around the comer of the deckhouse to the aft-facing door. I rapped on it hard with my gun barrel.

  “Office of Federal Security,” I said loudly. “This boat is surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

  Then I took two quick strides to the rail away form the shore and vaulted it, dropping into the canal feet first. Even so, I wasn’t quite fast enough. The first submachine gun burst was smashing into the door before I’d finished speaking; if I hadn’t already been in rapid motion sideways, it would have riddled me. As it was, one of the nasty little 9mm slugs burned my arm before I got clear. I could hear all three rat-a-tat guns chattering and racketing behind me as I hit the water. It sounded like World War III on a busy day.

  No wonder Bennett’s boys ha
d been a trifle nervous, riding into action in the same car with the gent—well, one of the gents, and ladies—they were planning to kill. And no wonder Bennett hadn’t wanted a sharp-eyed lady reporter along to watch the massacre.

  Chapter 23

  I’d gone in feet first remembering Brent’s report of old car bodies and hunks of concrete and two-to-three-foot shoals; but there was plenty of water where I hit. I must have gone down at least eight feet before my feet touched bottom, a rather soft and unpleasant bottom with which I didn’t want to associate any longer than I had to. On the other hand, I reminded myself, there was a certain amount of unpleasantness awaiting me on top, also. I got myself turned around and struck out underwater in the direction of the houseboat, the shadow of which—if shadow is the proper word where gunfire is concerned—seemed to be the safest place for the moment. Those little jacketed submachine gun bullets have considerable penetration, and they’d certainly make a sieve of the deckhouse, but I didn’t really think they could penetrate both the deckhouse and the heavier hull at the plunging angle they were being fired.

  Surfacing cautiously, I winced as a bullet screamed overhead with the nasty wavering sound of a ricochet, or a projectile that’s been deformed and destabilized by passing through something moderately solid. There were splashes in the water beyond me, but none close in where I’d come up. But the guns were still going. It didn’t seem possible that anything could be left intact at the focus of all that firing; but there was still a glow of light inside the deckhouse. Apparently all the electric bulbs had not been shattered in there. Even in the dark, I could see that the sides of the superstructure facing me were torn and splintered by emerging bullets. The windows were all smashed. It was lucky that nobody’d ever tried taking that cheapo tub to sea, I reflected, lightly as it seemed to have been constructed, with what seemed to be ordinary window glass, for God’s sake, instead of the much stronger stuff normally specified for marine use. Well, houseboats weren’t made for open water and big seas, but still. . . .

  Okay. So Mr. Bennett, with his knee-jerk anti-terrorist reactions, had been played for a fool by a bright young hippie with a beard, who presumably, after reading of the Fairfax Constellation incident and realizing its connection with the other sinkings, had sent threatening ransom notes to various shipping firms in the name of an activist group with a crazy title; but they’ve all got crazy titles these days, Symbionese Liberation Army, for God’s sake! The companies had naturally gotten in touch with the Office of Federal Security. The head of that august organization had advised paying up, undoubtedly with the intention of trapping or tracing whoever came for the money; but apparently the kid with the Mephistopheles whiskers had been too smart for him, setting up a very tricky drop, as he’d said, and getting clean away with the money.

  All this must have happened, I realized, before I’d encountered Bennett’s men in my room in the hotel in Nassau. It explained why Bennett had been so desperate to have Eleanor to himself that he’d even been prepared to take her from another agency at gunpoint. He’d hoped to retrieve the situation with the data she could give him, or he thought she could give him—I had a hunch that, without Mac’s intervention, and mine, she’d have had a very hard time at his hands. He’d known that she’d been working on the case for weeks; he’d undoubtedly convinced himself that she must have come across something he could use, and to hell with freedom of the press. His career and reputation were on the line. He was, at the very least, the man who’d advised payment and then lost the payment. It seemed likely that by this time the dreadful suspicion had crossed his mind that he’d been suckered into paying off the wrong man and the wrong gang.

  Total ruin stared him in the face; and then I’d gotten that phone call telling him where he could strike with at least a possibility of getting back the money and saving himself and his organization from public disgrace. But the people who’d tricked him could obviously not be allowed to survive. He could not afford to have them describing happily, in court, how easily they’d conned the director of the OFS out of a million bucks of other people’s money. Hell, if that happened, they might even go free on a nationwide wave of laughter at the agency’s expense. Something was needed to discredit them, like, say, a dead body brutally murdered by those vicious young terrorist criminals when they were cornered like the rats they were— after which a massacre could take place quite justifiably. But what dead body? Obviously it should be a dead government body. And what more suitable defunct govern mental torso could be found than that of the loudmouthed jerk, who’d bluffed Mr. Bennett into backing down shamefully in the presence of his men. . . .

  Suddenly the guns were silent. I heard the distant rattle of a magazine being removed and replaced somewhere on shore, and the soft voice of the sandy man, Burdette, “That’s enough, you trigger-happy young punk. Hold your fire.”

  It was time to drift silently away before they boarded the houseboat and started examining the canal beyond for potential targets; but a movement caught my eye. Something had stirred at one of the shot-out windows. Incredibly, somebody was still alive in the bullet-riddled hulk. Slowly two heads appeared, not just one: the blond head of the girl and the dark head of the whiskered man. Well, it was a good demonstration of what you can accomplish by spraying a lot of lead around haphazardly—and what you can’t. The man was behind the girl, steadying her, urging her on. There was blood on his face.

  “Easy now,” I heard him whisper. “Go straight over the side, slip out of that glamor-rag, leave it floating for them to shoot at, and swim under water as far as you can. . .”

  “Elmer?” Her voice was thin with shock, but there was more to her than I’d thought; she could still remember her friends.

  “Elmer’s dead. When I say go—”

  “You?”

  “Right behind you, baby. Now go!”

  They rose together, the man knocking away some broken glass with his bare hand to clear the way for her, freeing her long garment when it snagged, boosting her into the opening with, I could see, the last of his strength. He wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it; he was just holding himself together by sheer willpower long enough to get her away.

  Then the deckhouse door slid open and a machine pistol opened up. I saw the bearded man deliberately interpose his dying body between his small blond lady and this new hail of death; but in a moment he fell away and left her helplessly balanced on the sill. Her body jerked sharply several times as she clung there. There was enough light that I could see the shocked and unbelieving expression on her pretty face. A little blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she made a vague attempt to wipe it away with her sleeve; then her lips parted and a thick dark torrent poured down the front of the beautiful robe her boyfriend had bought her to introduce her to the rich and beautiful life. She teetered there a moment longer, and let go, and fell back out of sight.

  Well, people who try to find Eldorado in other people’s bank accounts can’t complain too loudly when they get caught. Still, the kids hadn’t really hurt anybody, except in the pocketbook. Although I’m a fairly violent guy myself and perhaps should feel otherwise, I make a very sharp distinction between muscle crimes and brain crimes, or, if you prefer, crimes of violence and so-called white-collar crimes. Endangering a man’s life is one thing; endangering his money is, I feel, a considerably less heinous offense. Hell, as long as they leave you with life and health, you can always go out and make more money. It’s when they kill or cripple you that things get serious. These young folks hadn’t inflicted any physical damage on anybody. The savage retribution that had struck them seemed like, if you’ll pardon the word, overkill.

  But it was no time for sentimental reflections. If you play with rough people, rough things happen to you. I eased myself forward along the houseboat’s side and waited in the shadow of the blunt overhanging bow. I’d barely established myself there when the vessel rocked noticeably in response to the weight of the other two joining Lawson on board. I knew it wa
s Lawson who’d hit the door and done the final shooting because I’d heard his voice back there right afterward telling the others it was okay to come in now. After a little, I heard stumbling footsteps and violent retching sounds; that was young Ellershaw losing his dinner over the rail after discovering that firing at live targets wasn’t quite the same as practicing on the OFS range. The other two came out on deck.

  “As soon as lie stops puking,” I heard Lawson say, “take him ashore and spread out and find that guy and take care of him. Dammit, I had him right in my sights, but he moved too fast. . .

  “No.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” Burdette replied coolly. “I don’t go into heavy brush after wounded grizzlies, and I don’t prowl vacant lots at night after a guy like that, particularly not after I’ve helped try to kill him. Hell, the man’s a pro. He’s out there right now waiting for us. I’m not taking a green kid—and I do mean green, look at him—and playing tag with that character in the dark. You want Mr. Helm, you go chase him yourself.”

  “Listen, we’ve got to—”

  “You got to. I don’t got to. Now if you want to rearrange things slightly on board, make them look better for our side, stick guns in people’s hands and such before we call in the police, give the orders. But suicide orders I don’t take, and I’m not letting the kid go out there, either. He’s an okay kid except he gets a bit excited, and you’re not sending him out to get killed by a professional manhunter he can’t begin to handle. You feel brave, you try it. I’m a yellow-bellied coward and I’m staying right here. And I’m not even staying here very long if you don’t make up your cottonpicking mind.”