Kill Zone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You’re a tough old fart, Cap’n Eddie. Bet you were something to see on one of those big ore boats in a storm.” He looked at the intern. “You stay quiet.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You’d just as soon blow this tub to toothpicks right now, and to hell with everyone aboard, even you.”

  “That’s up to the Governor and the warden of Jackson prison.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Steady, boy,” said the captain.

  Don glanced at the lookout. “Crank up that radio. Maybe they’re having trouble getting through.”

  “I’d like to go back down now,” Delano said. “I want to be with Carol when the boat goes up.”

  “What about your patient?”

  “You can get me on the P.A. if you need me. If it matters.”

  “Stay here.”

  “Why?” The intern bristled. “Scared I’ll spread the word and you’ll have a counter-mutiny on your hands?”

  Don swept the pistol out of his belt and backhanded it across Delano’s face. He staggered backward and would have fallen down the short flight of steps to the captain’s quarters had not Fielding sprung down from the chart table and caught him. Delano put a hand to his bleeding cheek, torn by the Luger’s steel sight.

  “Go back to your woman,” Don spat. “Try spreading that crap down there and Sol or Fay will feed you to the fish.”

  “Boblo boat, this is Detroit,” crackled the radio.

  A foot below the surface, the light from the boat turned the water lime-green, flashed off the bodies of schools of tiny fish, and made looming dark shadows of larger creatures gliding below. That sight made Macklin feel colder than he actually was in the watertight suit, for he knew he was a shadow himself and visible from above. If any of the terrorists happened to look down …

  The boat’s keel was black and solid below the waterline. He approached it broadside. If he were in charge of the hijackers, he would post one in the bow and one in the stern on each level to keep an eye on as many passengers as possible. He hoped that Blakeman or Don or whatever he called himself was as forward-thinking as he was. When he had drawn near enough to touch the peeling hull he surfaced, hunching his shoulders against the expected hail of bullets.

  There was none. A blue-painted ledge ran around the boat two feet above the water and he held on, letting his legs hang motionless for the first time since he had left the skiff. Water streamed off his rubber helmet and snorkel and mask. The noise it made seemed deafening. He propped himself on his left forearm and tore off the mask and breathing apparatus, hesitated, then lowered them into the water.

  The instant they drifted out of his reach he regretted it. The glass of the mask caught the light and threw it back like an undulating beacon as it bobbed on the waves. An oval of reflected white fluttered across the underside of the second deck. He poised himself, preparing to slide back underwater at the first shout. But again there was only silence and the trickling of water running off his suit.

  A very long time passed, or seemed to pass, before the motion of the waves pushed the flashing glass outside the circle of light. Macklin glanced at his watch, but moisture had seeped inside and clouded the crystal, obscuring the face. When what felt like another full minute had gone by, he reached down and slid the flipper off his right heel, then his left. Like dazed fish they spiraled down slowly through the illuminated water and disappeared into the murky depths. Peter Macklin, the barefoot killer.

  The center section of the bottom deck was closed in, with curtains blinding the sliding windows. He hoisted himself the rest of the way onto the ledge and flattened out against the painted metal, as much to rest and wait for the aching in his ribs to recede as to conceal himself from anyone standing by the rail in the open sections. He unsnapped his wet shirt from the pants, drew the revolver out of the plastic bag plastered against his pelvis, rewrapped his money, and closed the snaps. If nothing else he would die wealthy. Then before inertia got to him he crept forward along the ledge, feeling his way with his toes. The boat swayed and he pressed his hand flat against the vertical surface to maintain his balance.

  At the end of the closed section he brought the gun to chest level and peered past the edge, braced to pull his head back if spotted. He saw only stationary shadows in the dim overhead light.

  When after several seconds none of the shadows had moved, he gripped the edge of the metal and lowered himself through the opening until he felt more cold painted steel under his feet. He was standing there in a crouch and wondering which way to go when a quiet voice spoke at his left ear.

  “Hold still, frogman, or I’ll fill that rubber suit with leaks.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Louise Gabel, Randall Burlingame’s handsome burnished secretary, had gone home. Without her, the outer office looked and felt like an abandoned fort. Bill Chilson walked around the barricading desk and through the open door that was leaking light into the darkened anteroom. He found the inner office full of smoke and the FBI bureau chief, vestless and with his necktie loose, on the telephone. Burlingame raised his pipe in greeting and pointed it at the chair on Chilson’s side of the desk. The Secret Service agent sat down. The lights of downtown Detroit made a glittering sheet of the window behind the desk.

  “Play that back, will you?” Burlingame paused, then fitted the receiver into the speaker attachment to the intercom. A frantic, high-pitched squealing like dozens of mice caught in a fire came out, then stopped. Burlingame’s voice followed.

  “… into port and release those passengers. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Fuck you, Fed. I trained as an M.P. before I switched to infantry. I know that hostage negotiations crap inside out. Now, are you going to open those gates and let those political prisoners walk, or are you going to practice looking sad for the cameras when they bury what’s left of these people in a shoe box?”

  Chilson mouthed, “Don?” Burlingame nodded, fingering his pipe. His disembodied voice resumed.

  “We know your position, Blakeman. You’ve seen the helicopters.”

  “I’ve seen them. I see one more I’ll touch off the boat and to hell with the two hours left.”

  “What do you hope to gain from this? What does Siegfried hope to gain?”

  “Headlines. Bulletins. Götterdämmerung in living color on the six o’clock news. We are a high-profile industry. Bigger than Revlon.”

  “You won’t live to see yourselves.”

  “A lot of people like us will. The seed is planted in fire and blood. The revolution is on, man. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la …” He trailed off. “Two hours, Burlingame. Talk to you again at five minutes to midnight. This radio gets all the public frequencies. I got eight hundred people hoping to hear it’s Bastille Day in Jackson.” Something clicked.

  “Thanks, Carl. Get some sleep.” Burlingame turned off the speaker and cradled the receiver. “Interesting paradox. A madman pretending to be mad.”

  “Maybe he’s not mad. Just bored. It wouldn’t be the first time a suicide took somebody with him just for the pure hell of it.” Wiping his glasses with a handkerchief, Chilson blinked smoke out of his eyes. “The Governor’s waiting for your call. He’s got the papers all ready for those prisoners’ release.”

  The FBI man nodded absently. “I thought about feeding a phony statement to the broadcast networks that we were springing those cons, but that kind of cooperation went out when Nixon’s enemies list came in. They’ve got a hard-on for accuracy.”

  “You going to call the Governor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you heard from Macklin?”

  “Not since early this morning.”

  “That’s a lot of time to get dead in,” Chilson said. “Or change his mind.”

  “You couldn’t change his mind with a club.”

  “One middle-aged killer. Seven terrorists. Call the Governor, Red.”

  “Some choice. I dump a load of scum back into society or help fish ears and noses out of Lake Erie
. Either way I lose my pension.”

  Chilson smiled. “Maybe they’ll make a movie out of this and ask you to star. You could have a whole new career.”

  “What would be new about it?” He put down his pipe, lifted the receiver again, and got the switchboard. “This is Burlingame. Get me the Governor’s mansion in Lansing. Well, look it up.” He broke the connection.

  “If it means anything, Red, it wasn’t that bad an idea,” Chilson said. “This is a different world. I’m damn glad I’m just visiting.”

  “You can get used to anything, like the Indian said.”

  The telephone rang. Burlingame lifted the handset. “Yes, put him on.” Covering the mouthpiece: “In the old days you got hemlock.”

  “Progress,” said the other. But the FBI man was already in conversation with the Governor.

  “Ackler?” whispered Macklin. He remained motionless, his body turned away from the voice that had addressed him. The deck of the huge old steamer shifted gently beneath his feet. He sensed a lot of people nearby but could hear nothing of them.

  “Here it’s Sol.” It was a young man’s voice, scarcely a murmur. “You’re who?”

  “Macklin.”

  Pause. “Peter Macklin? Mike Boniface’s Macklin? No. Christ, he’s sixty.”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Well, flip the gun overboard, thirty-nine-year-old Peter Macklin. Let me hear it splash.”

  Macklin obeyed. The .38 made a little noise going into the water.

  “Okay, turn around slow.”

  He turned, hands out from his body. In the shadows, Ackler’s hair was his most prominent feature, blown full and sprayed to a metallic sheen so that at first glance he looked as if he were wearing a silver-plated helmet. His face was regular and ordinary and stubbled brown in contrast to the hair. He had on a sportcoat with a tiny check that looked as if he hadn’t had it off for a while, over an open-necked shirt and a pair of wrinkled dark flannel trousers. The squat ugly snout of an M-16 remained steady on Macklin’s midsection. By swinging it no more than three inches up and down, Ackler could squirt bullets from Macklin’s hairline to his toes, the trajectory was that sloppy. At this range it was not a weakness.

  The young killer kept his distance. No amateur barrel-digging-into-the-ribs for him. Well, Macklin had hardly hoped for less.

  “What’s a button for the wise guys doing way out here?” Ackler wanted to know.

  “I was thinking of asking you the same thing,” Macklin said. “Minus the cute jargon.”

  “Me first.”

  “Boniface wants out. The authorities want a hero. Boniface gave them me.”

  “No good. Go again.”

  “Okay. I just happened to be swimming by and thought I’d drop in and talk shop.”

  Ackler watched him. The whites of the young killer’s eyes glistened in the gloom. “Who else is coming?”

  “I left fifteen federal agents on the boat. They gave me a ten-minute head start.”

  Ackler’s face aged. “I guess you kill better than you lie.”

  There was something in his tone. Disappointment? And why were they speaking so low, on a vessel under his friends’ command? A wraith of hope stirred in Macklin’s chest. He tried something.

  “My turn. What’s a big kid doing playing with preschoolers?”

  A cloud scudded in front of the moon, filling in the spaces between shadows. Only Ackler’s hair and white shirt and the sour gleam of the automatic rifle showed. He stepped back, placing his shoulder blades against the wall of the darkened enclosure where snacks were sold. “Step into my office.”

  He gestured with the gun and Macklin walked ahead of him to the lighted rear of the deck. A large group of people were there, seated and lying on the deck and standing at the rail, their clothes wrinkled, their faces gray. Some of the women had on men’s suitcoats and sportcoats over shoulders left bare by their evening gowns and summer dresses, the hems of which were universally soiled. Surprise and hope rose in their eyes at the sudden appearance of the barefoot stranger in the wet suit, then fell back as the man they knew as Sol came into view behind him carrying the M-16. Macklin smelled despair.

  On Ackler’s orders he turned his back to the stern and draped himself, stomach down painfully, over the heavy painted mechanism of the windlass blistering four feet above the deck. In that awkward position he was expertly frisked and relieved of the knife in the waterproof sheath. Ackler tucked the blade under his belt, and before his coattail swung forward to cover it Macklin saw out of the corner of his eye the square butt of a semiautomatic pistol showing above the waistband of Ackler’s pants. Next came the plastic bag containing nearly fifty thousand dollars, which the young killer riffled, whistling low, and then transferred to an inside pocket. “I heard they paid you union boys good,” he said.

  Macklin said nothing. He tried to keep most of his weight on his right side to keep from caving in his cracked ribs. He had lived with the pain so long now it seemed like a tiresome old friend.

  “Okay, get up.”

  The process was more uncomfortable than staying as he was. He rolled off slowly, placing his weight on one knee and his right arm. He exaggerated the difficulty a little and let out a grunt. That wasn’t hard.

  “You sound sixty,” Ackler said. He was standing with his back to the rail, the automatic rifle cradled comfortably in front of him. But ready.

  “Swimming takes a lot out of me.”

  “Yeah. I can see.”

  He couldn’t tell if Ackler believed him or not. “You were going to tell me what made you decide to play junior commando,” he said.

  “Was I?”

  Macklin grunted again, leaning his hips against the winch. “I’m too old to play statues. I should be a grease spot amidships where you caught me. You would be, if the positions were reversed. You know why it’s harder for a professional to kill the President than it is for an amateur?”

  “The professional has to have an escape route.”

  “Any nut with a Saturday night buster can do the job if he isn’t concerned with getting away afterwards, just like any bunch of nuts can get automatic weapons and explosives aboard an excursion boat and take it over, because they don’t care if they’re still around after the band goes home. So how come a paid gun with as good a future as any in this business lets himself get talked into committing suicide with music? I mean, Siegfried, for chrissake. It sounds like a commercial for breakfast cereal.”

  Ackler looked at him a long time before speaking. His eyelids flickered. It was as much of his human side as he’d shown so far.

  “I made a mistake when I was nineteen,” he said. “I was out to make a name for myself in this line. A guy I met in a bar in Scranton sent me a plane ticket from L.A. and I flew out there. I was to skag his wife and make it look like a burglary. Only I didn’t think he might be getting drunk and whimpering the same thing in bars out there, and when I slipped the lock on the guy’s house and went inside, two uniforms who were waiting there got me on the floor and stood on my back and read me my rights.”

  “Christ.”

  “I know. I was nineteen, what can I say? They tried to get me to make a statement but I kept my mouth shut, and the guy that hired me pressed charges because his lawyer told him it’d look bad if he didn’t and the judge could have been good to me. I pled guilty to breaking and entering and it was my first offense, but I wouldn’t talk about the other thing and I was from back East. He gave me a year.

  “Well, I learned from that, and I don’t work for husbands or wives or brothers-in-law that didn’t get invited to Christmas dinner. But most of the people who might hire me on the straight are with the organization and only come to me when the available talent is low. So when a guy who said he met a guy I knew in Q sent me a thousand faith money and a plane ticket to Detroit I came. That guy’s up on the second deck. It’s his explosives we’re sitting on.”

  “A thousand isn’t a lot to kill yourself over,” Macklin said
.

  They had been speaking low, and some of the passengers present were straining to hear them. Ackler dropped his voice further. “It was a sweet deal. I was getting another thousand a week just for sitting around listening to this bunch of loonies talking about optimum maneuverability and the casualty factor and dreaming up cute names to call themselves. It was like you said, a cereal commercial. Cap’n Crunch and his Super Secret Assholes. This Blakeman that’s in charge won’t miss my cut out of what he pulls in dealing stolen guns and tape decks, you tell me why he has to go turn radical. Anyway, I did one job for him back on land—”

  “Jack DeGrew,” put in Macklin. “Chester Crane’s original bass player.”

  The young killer blinked. “They know that? I thought I did a pretty good job throwing a blanket over that one.”

  “You left a witness.”

  “Shit. The guy that was with him when I picked him up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I figured he’d be too stoned to remember.”

  “If that could happen, no musician would remember how to make the notes.”

  “Yeah. Shit. Anyway, I did that job for Blakeman and went on a couple of dry runs aboard the boat to get the lay and the rest was like retirement, only the pay was better. Right up until we took her I didn’t think anything would come of it. I mean, hijack a steamboat? We got Beaver Cleaver and Gidget up top and Sergeant York and the Mad Professor in the middle and Farina down there at the other end. Mission Impossible, right? And Blakeman threw in a month’s rent on a sweet cottage on Lake Huron. Then, wham! Here I am holding Sweet Mary in my hands and I get my cue to burn the powderhead we put in for DeGrew, and just like that I got a bee in a jar and you tell me how to unscrew the top without getting stung.

  “I wouldn’t have done it at all if I didn’t like being on the water. I wouldn’t mind coming back and fishing this lake sometime.”