The Revengers

by Donald Hamilton

  I said, “It did occur to me that it would be convenient. And to be cold-blooded about it, no real hurt to her— considering how she feels and what’s in store for her ashore.”

  “And what it would do to me, having that on my conscience, too; that didn’t matter a bit?”

  I looked at her for a moment. “I said it occurred to me it would be convenient, if it happened that way. Am I supposed to close my eyes to the possibilities, Miss Brand? I did not say that I arranged it that way deliberately.”

  “But you—”

  “I aimed you at the only opponent against whom you had a ghost of a chance,” I said. “And I psyched you up to make the most of that chance. Hell, you weigh what, a hundred and ten, a hundred and fifteen? And you get your exercise doing what, punching the keys of a typewriter? And do you think you’d have lasted five seconds against a girl twenty pounds heavier, in practically Olympic condition, if you hadn’t gone straight in for the kill like I told you? Look what you actually accomplished. You hurt her foot rather badly, you put a little crease in her scalp, and then you got lucky and she fell down a hatch and knocked herself out. Considering the weight you were giving away, that was a hell of a performance, but it was a pretty close decision, wasn’t it? How do you think you’d have made out if you’d been hampered by a lot of sentimental reservations? Hell, that young Amazon lady would have wrung you out and hung you up to dry.”

  Eleanor was silent for a moment; then she nodded reluctantly. “All right. I’m sorry; I was wrong.” She wasn’t looking at me. She continued not to look at me as she said, still speaking very carefully, “But, of course, you can still fix it. Her. Repair the lousy job I goofed.”

  We were relaxing with a couple of stiff drinks in the main saloon, which had been cleaned up after serving as a field hospital—even Eleanor had a couple of Band-Aids on her wrists where I’d nicked her, freeing her. Serena was lying on the leeward settee, literally bandaged head and foot. She still had not regained consciousness, but my amateur examination had indicated that the pupils of her eyes were of equal size and that there were no significant dents in her skull. We’d snipped away the matted hair and covered the scalp laceration as well as we could, considering the limitations of Jamboree's first-aid kit. We’d gotten the thing out of her foot—a pair of pliers had been needed, and she’d been lucky to be unconscious—and packed and wrapped the foot, using up most of what was left of our one small roll of two-inch sterile gauze. This, after cleaning and bandaging the holes in my leg, which Eleanor had insisted on doing first. Now we sat side by side, regarding the girl across the cabin, aware of the dead men still on deck, of the sails we’d lowered that should be lashed down more securely, and of the other untidy gear and rigging that should be attended to up there. Without sails up, Jamboree was rolling heavily in the long Atlantic swells.

  “That’s right,” I said agreeably. “Why didn’t you think of it before we went to all the trouble of patching her up? But, gee, you’re perfectly right, she’s got to be eliminated. I guess I’d better get at it. What method do you suggest? Cutting her throat would be kind of messy after we’ve just mopped the place up, and she seems to have a pretty hard head. . . . Hey, I know, I’ll just use a pillow like they did with that young guy in the hospital. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just put one over her face and sit on her for a few minutes.”

  “Matt, stop it.”

  I glanced at her. “It was your suggestion. What’s the matter, are you chickening out?”

  She licked her lips. “Don’t make fun of me. I never know. . . . I mean, you do kill people.”

  “So do you, now,” I said, and saw her wince. Then I said, “To save the world from total annihilation, yes, I might consider it. Even just to preserve the United States of America from an overwhelming sneak attack, yes, I might consider it. But for a small intramural matter involving Mr. Pompous Jackass Bennett, forget it. If he wants any helpless ladies murdered—any more helpless ladies murdered—he can murder them himself. Up to a point, I’ll do my best to keep his antics quiet for the sake of the government of which I’m a part. I’ll even make fine patriotic speeches on the subject, but what you suggest is getting a long way past that point. My real job here is to bring you back alive; the rest is strictly incidental.” I grimaced. “Now I think I need one more drink before tackling the burial detail. Then we’ll figure out how to start that auxiliary motor. I don’t know much about sailing, but I have run a powerboat from time to time. If you don’t mind, I think we’ll just make a stab at finding our way back to civilization by ourselves.”

  “Civilization, and people who’ll help you hush it all up.” But she was smiling a little as she said it.

  “And people who’ll help me hush it all up as much as it can be hushed with the girl alive,” I agreed, holding out my glass to be refilled.

  On deck, we were careful and methodical as befitted a pair of landlubbers stuck in the middle of the ocean on a boat they didn’t know how to handle. The sun was well up now and it was a bright clear day. We cleaned up the decks, and the less said about that the better. We got the shot-torn genoa off and bagged and put away in the sail locker under the cockpit seat. We furled the mainsail, lashed it to the boom and secured the boom. We did the same for the smaller forestaysail, forward, which had a little boom of its own. Eleanor, smaller and unwounded, got up in the narrow bow again and tied the working jib—over which the genoa had been set—to the protective stainless railing up there, so it wouldn’t be blown overboard. Then we found the motor manual and read it carefully. We started the motor and, after it had warmed up for a little, with water spitting out of the exhaust as it was supposed to, and all instruments registering properly, we put it in gear. It ran for about a minute and came to a groaning, shuddering halt.

  I tried it again, and it ran well in neutral, but stalled the instant it was put into gear. Finally Eleanor, who’d glanced down the side, beckoned me to the port rail and pointed down. I limped over there and saw a bar-taut rope leading down and aft, disappearing under the boat: the trailing genoa sheet I’d shot off, now neatly and tightly wrapped around our propeller. . . .

  Half an hour later I caught Eleanor as she stumbled off the boarding ladder. She was shivering violently, naked except for a strap around her waist to which was attached Adam’s fancy knife-sheath, empty.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped as I wrapped a towel around her. “I’m just no damn g-good down there, and it’s like hacking at iron, and I lost the stupid knife.” She seemed to read my mind, because she looked up sharply and said, “And don’t you dare get another knife and try it yourself, with that hole in your leg! If you get s-sick or infected or something. . . . What the hell are you looking at? Anybody’d think you never saw a nude lady before, Mr. Helm; and it isn’t as it she were particularly attractive, pale green and all over goosebumps. Throw me those pants, will you? God, you wouldn’t know they started out as an eighty-dollar pair of slacks!”

  “Elly,” I said.

  “Now the sweater, please. I certainly don’t have much luck with sweaters, do I? I wonder if this flossy yacht has a safety pin on board.”

  “Elly,” I said.

  She said, “I’m just so goddamned useless. Can’t even cut a lousy piece of rope.”

  “Elly,” I said.

  She looked at me in a strange, blind way. Then she was sobbing in my arms and I held her and told her what a fine and brave and lovely girl she was, and she didn’t believe a word of it, but the sobbing stopped. I pushed the towel-touseled damp hair back from her face and kissed her gently, and then not so gently. I felt her start to respond, and hesitate as if shocked and surprised at herself, and then yield herself fully to the kiss. Suddenly, we both knew that something that had been broken was mended, something that had been badly hurt was healed.

  At last she turned her face away and pressed her forehead against my shoulder. “Oh, my dear,” she breathed. “However did that happen?”

  “Don’t ask,” I said. �
�What’s your pleasure, ma’am?”

  She shook her head minutely. “Not here,” she whispered. “Not now. It’s too soon after. . . . Unless you . . ."

  “Your wish is my command.”

  “You’re a very patient man.”

  “When something is worth waiting for,” I said. “Well, so much for that. Let’s get some sail on this barge. I was checked out on sailboats—small sailboats—about a hundred years ago. We had a boat course just for us spooks at the Naval Academy that included a little bit of everything. I’ve forgotten most of it, of course, but it can’t be all that tough, considering the people who do it. I mean, they don’t all look like geniuses to me. . . ."

  Two instruments made it easy. The first was the boat speedometer, labeled a knotmeter. Once the sails were up, all I had to do was experiment until I got the highest possible reading on the dial, indicating that our windy power plant was operating at maximum efficiency. Soon the general principles of this means of propulsion returned to me; but I was still surprised at how far the sails should be let out. You’d think the harder you hauled them in, the faster the boat would go, but it definitely didn’t work like that.

  The second life-saving gadget was the fancy Loran navigation apparatus I’d seen Serena using. Once I’d figured out the instruction manual, there was nothing to it—just twiddle a few knobs and there were the latitude and longitude at a glance. How to be an instant navigator. The charts were no problem, of course; I’d dealt with nautical charts before in the fine of business. I laid out a course north of the Bahamas that gave the nasty-looking reefs up there a wide berth. By evening, things were pretty well under control. If it had not been for Serena, and the hole in my leg, I would have enjoyed myself thoroughly, learning how to manage a big handsome boat while basking in the admiration of a small pretty girl.

  But the other girl was a nagging worry. I had no idea what was going on in her mind. She had taken up residence in the forward cabin where we’d been kept, and she seemed to be in a kind of zombie state that was as much a reaction, I thought, to her frustrated suicide attempt as to the knockout blow she’d received. There were a lot of unpredictable forces trapped inside that handsome, bandaged, young head—I had to keep reminding myself that the girl was still in her early twenties. I would have been happier if she’d been tied hand and foot, but with a forty-foot boat to sail, ignorant as we were, we simply had no time to look after her. So Miss Lorca was left free to find her way to bathroom and galley as her metabolism indicated. As for my bullet wound, it made sitting painful; and you do a lot of sitting on a sailboat.

  Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience—if a little intimidating—after darkness fell and there was nothing to be seen but the glow of the running lights, the compass light, the stars overhead, and the dim horizon. We’d figured out how to work the automatic pilot, so there was really not much to do but watch and let Jamboree sail herself. We took turns sleeping on the cockpit cushions. Shortly after midnight, Eleanor woke me to show me a ship’s lights in the distance, but they passed far astern.

  Near morning, the stars disappeared in a large sector to the west, and lightning began to flash in the black area. I woke Eleanor and we fumbled all the sails down, finishing just as it started to rain. We made a dash for the cabin as all hell broke loose. Eleanor joined me on the main cabin settee after checking all the ports and hatches. She reported that Serena was asleep or pretending. We sat there holding hands like scared children while the rain sluiced down and the lightning blazed and the thunder crashed and the wind screamed in the rigging, while Jamboree rolled and pitched in a crazy manner. I guess we were both just waiting for the hull to break wide open and water to start pouring in, but nothing happened. After about an hour the storm simply stopped. We stuck our heads out the main hatch, cautiously, and found weak daylight. The boat was washed clean of the last traces of the battle that had taken place on board.

  The squall had killed the wind, so there was nothing to be gained by re-setting the sails at the moment. After Eleanor had cooked us a good breakfast, however, we ran them all up and tried to work our way west and somewhat north, using the vagrant breezes that never lasted long enough to really get her going. I decided that there was, after all, something to be said for the internal combustion engine. I left Eleanor in charge and went below for another navigation check, which showed that we hadn’t moved much since the last one. I poured myself a cup of coffee and wished my leg would stop aching, reminding myself again that the bullet could easily have damaged some part of me for which I had much greater affection than the back of my thigh. Sorry Fellows. Didn’t mean to seem ungrateful. But how about a little wind if You’ve got some to spare? . . .

  “Matt, you’d better come up here.” Eleanor’s voice was calm enough, but I knew she wouldn’t ask me to haul my damaged limb up that ladder just to light one of the cigarettes she’d found to keep her company during the long night watches. When I stuck my head out the hatch, she pointed. “What about that?”

  The ship was a small gray smudge on the northern horizon. I got out the binoculars to examine it, climbing up into the cockpit for a better view. Before I could see more than that the vessel was heading our way, I heard a husky laugh behind and below me.

  “Congratulations, you’ve got a live one,” Serena’s deep voice said. “Good luck, kiddies.”

  She was standing in the hatchway watching the distant ship. She had a battered, rakish look with the clumsy bandage on her head, but her tanned face was no longer gray and her eyes had come to life. Seeing me looking, she made the usual unnecessary gesture of tugging up her unsupported bodice, rather grubby by this time, like her shorts.

  I said, “Hell, you can’t tell yet—”

  “The masts are in line,” she said calmly. “The bearing isn’t drawing aft and it isn’t drawing forward; I’ve been watching through the porthole. And you’ve messed up my engine and you’re not going anywhere without any wind, so it’s strictly up to him. You can hope he hasn’t stepped out for breakfast, leaving it all to Iron Mike or Electronic Eddie. You’ll know in about ten minutes. Like I said, rotsa ruck.”

  She started to step down. I asked quickly, “Any advice, Miss Lorca?”

  She stopped and looked back at me. “Why the hell should I give you advice? You know what I want, what I really want. To hell with the public relations bit; that was just a cute wrinkle I thought up to make them sweat, make Daddy sweat.” She grinned maliciously. “Miss Lorca will await developments in her private stateroom. If we don’t meet again, it’s been a pleasure, I’m sure. I’ll be so happy to know that you learned what it’s really like. Maybe then you’ll understand—if only for a few seconds.”

  She disappeared below. I glanced at Eleanor and saw that the ugly question that had come into my mind had also entered hers. I really should have tied the girl up and to hell with whether or not she starved or wet the bed because we didn’t have time for her. I eased myself painfully down the ladder and limped forward, opening the door to the little bow cabin. Serena had already stretched out on the starboard bunk that had been mine for a while. She was studying her bandaged foot. She spoke without turning her head.

  “You’re really quite good, Helm,” she said. “How did you get that little girl to fight like that? She hurt me so damned badly at the start that I never really. . . . Screaming and sobbing like a little kid. I’m not like that, really. It was just such a ghastly surprise, that sudden excruciating pain. . . .”

  I said, “The arming switch for the proximity fuse. Where is it?”

  She turned slowly to look up at me. “Do you really think I’ll tell you?”

  “Is it turned on?”

  “Of course.”

  I said, “But you turned it off after that last abortive run. You wouldn’t have sailed back to pick us up with the fuse still armed. So you must have gone to it just now, after you saw this ship coming. It can’t be too hard to get at. Where?” She didn’t speak. I said, “You’ve proved you
don’t like pain very much, Serena. Don’t make me work you over. You just think Elly hurt you. You haven’t seen anything yet. Or felt it.”

  It’s not something I enjoy doing; but sometimes it has to be done. Even if I hadn’t cared what happened to the oncoming ship, I wasn’t going to have Eleanor killed by this vengeance-happy girl, not to mention the fact that I also preferred to go on living as long as possible. And even if the present ship was no real threat—I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that there was any danger of it running us down in broad daylight—I wasn’t about to sail around in a boat that could erupt like a volcano any time a large chunk of steel came near it. I had to get that circuit broken before I got into more crowded waters. I might as well get the job done right now.

  I had her wrists before she realized what I intended, but she was a hell of a strong girl and I couldn’t keep her pinned down. She slammed a knee into my injured leg quite deliberately and I felt sickness go through me. All the time I was aware that, out in another world from this tiny cabin filled with grunts and gasps and moans, there was a ship approaching rapidly. . . . Well, two could play that game. I threw my whole weight on top of her and kicked out three times before I found the bandaged foot. Her breath went out in a silent scream and she went slack under me.

  I became suddenly aware that the disaster she’d been at such pains to prevent for so long had finally occurred during our struggle. The elastic bodice had slipped clear to her waist, just a wide red belt now, leaving her breasts uncovered. They were very fine, brown and firm and wonderfully shaped. I was suddenly very much aware of her, and of my own automatic reaction to her—Gentleman Helm, the solicitous chap who cleaned up after distressed young ladies, comforted them chastely, and refused to take any advantage of them seemed to have gone off somewhere. I knew that she was aware of my awareness, and of her own semi-nudity. Something odd happened in her eyes: she seemed to leave me abruptly for another dimension. There was a period of silence, and the voice that broke it was not the husky contralto I knew.