The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘You may be right,’ I said and picked up the revolver. I wasn’t at all certain whether I’d have the guts to put a bullet into my own head if it came to the push. ‘Keep a check on what’s happening outside. Gatt said he’d give us an hour but I don’t trust him that far.’

  I crossed over to Katherine and dropped to my knees beside her. Her eyes were now dry although there were traces of tears on her cheeks. ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I broke down—but I was afraid—so afraid.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you be afraid?’ I said. ‘Everyone else is. Only a damn fool has no fear at a time like this.’

  She swallowed nervously. ‘Did they really kill Rudetsky and Fowler?’

  I nodded, then hesitated. ‘Katherine, Paul is dead, too. Gatt told me.’

  She sighed and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘Oh, my God! Poor Paul! He wanted so much—so quickly.’

  Poor Paul, indeed! I wasn’t going to tell her everything I knew about Halstead, about the ways he went in getting what he wanted so quickly. It would do no good and only break her heart. Better she should remember him as he was when they married—young, eager and ambitious in his work. To tell her otherwise would be cruel.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry, too.’

  She touched my arm. ‘Do we have a chance—any chance at all, Jemmy?’

  Privately I didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell. I looked her in the eye. ‘There’s always a chance,’ I said firmly.

  Her gaze slipped past me. ‘Fallon doesn’t seem to think so,’ she said in a low voice.

  I turned my head and looked at him. He was still sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched before him and gazing sightlessly at the toe-caps of his boots. ‘He has his own problems,’ I said, and got up and crossed over to him.

  At my approach he looked up. ‘Smith was right,’ he said wanly. ‘It’s my fault we’re in this jam.’

  ‘You had other things to think about.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Selfishly—yes. I could have had Gatt deported from Mexico. I have that much pull. But I just let things slide.’

  ‘I don’t think that would have worried Gatt,’ I said, trying to console him. ‘He would have come back anyway—he has quite a bit of pull himself, if what Pat Harris says is correct. I don’t think you could have stopped him.’

  ‘I don’t care for myself,’ said Fallon remorsefully. ‘I’ll be dead in three months, anyway. But to drag down so many others is unforgivable.’ He withdrew almost visibly and returned into his trance of self-accusation.

  There wasn’t much to be done with him so I arose and joined Smith at the window. ‘Any sign of action?’

  ‘Some of them are in those huts.’

  ‘How many?’

  He shook his head. ‘Hard to say—maybe five or six in each.’

  ‘We might give them a surprise,’ I said softly. ‘Any sign of Gatt?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Smith. ‘I wouldn’t even know what he looks like. Goddamn funny, isn’t it?’ He stared across at the huts. If they open fire from so close, the bullets will rip through here like going through a cardboard box.’

  I turned my head and looked at the plunger box and at the wires which led to it wondering how much explosive Rudetsky had planted in the huts and whether it had been found. As a kid I’d always been overly disappointed by damp squibs on Guy Fawkes Night.

  The hour ticked away and we said very little. Everything that had to be said had been torn out of us in that explosive first five minutes and we all knew there was little point in piling on the agony in futile discussion. I sat down and, for want of something better to do, checked the scuba gear, and Katherine helped me. I think I had an idea at the back of my mind that perhaps we would give in to Gatt in the end, and I would have to go down into the cenote again. If I did, then I wanted everything to work smoothly for the sake of the survivors in Gatt’s hands.

  Abruptly, the silence was torn open by the harsh voice of Gatt magnified by the loudhailer. He seemed to be having trouble with it because it droned as though the speaker was overloaded. ‘Wheale! Are you ready to talk?’

  I ran at a crouch towards the plunger box and knelt over it, hoping that our answer to Gatt would be decisive. He shouted again. ‘Your hour is up, Wheale.’ He laughed boomingly. ‘Fish, or I’ll cut you into bait.’

  ‘Listen!’ said Smith urgently. ‘That’s a plane.’

  The droning noise was much louder and suddenly swelled to a roar as the aircraft went overhead. Desperately I gave the plunger handle a ninety-degree twist and rammed it down and the hut shook under the violence of the explosion. Smith yelled in exultation, and I ran to the window to see what had happened.

  One of the huts had almost literally disappeared. As the smoke blew away I saw that all that was left of it was the concrete foundation. White figures tumbled from the other hut and ran away, and Smith was shooting fast. I grabbed his shoulder. ‘Stop that! You’re wasting bullets.’

  The plane went overhead again, although I couldn’t see it. ‘I wonder whose it is,’ I said. ‘It could belong to Gatt.’

  Smith laughed excitedly. ‘It might not—and, Jeez, what a signal we gave it!’

  There was no reaction from Gatt; the loud voice had stopped with the explosion and I desperately hoped I’d blown him to hell.

  III

  It was too much to hope for. Everything was quiet for another hour and then there came a slow and steady hail of rifle fire. Bullets ripped through the thin walls of the hut, tearing away the interior insulation, and it was very dangerous to move away from the cover of the thick baulks of timber Rudetsky had installed. The chief danger was not from a direct hit but from a ricochet. From the pace of the firing I thought that not more than three or four men were involved, and I wondered uneasily what the others were doing.

  It was also evident that Gatt was still alive. I doubted if the chicleros would still keep up the attack without him and his bully boys behind them. They wouldn’t have the motive that drove Gatt, and, besides, an unknown number had been killed in the hut. I was reasonably sure that none of the men in that hut could have survived the explosion, and it must have given the rest a hell of a shock.

  The fact that the attack had been resumed after an hour also demonstrated that Gatt, no matter what else he was, could lead—or drive—men. I knew personally of three chicleros that had died; say another four, at a low estimate, had been killed in the hut, and add to that any that Fowler or Rudetsky had killed before being slaughtered themselves. Gatt must be a hell of a man if he could whip the chicleros into another attack after suffering losses like that.

  The aircraft had circled a couple of times after the hut blew up and then had flown off, heading north-west. If it belonged to Gatt then it wouldn’t make any difference; if it belonged to a stranger then the pilot might be wondering what the hell was going on—he’d certainly been interested enough to overfly the camp a couple of times—and he might report it to the authorities when he got to wherever he was going. By the time anything got done about it we’d all be dead.

  But I didn’t think it was a stranger. We’d been in Quintana Roo for quite some time and the only aircraft I’d seen were those belonging to Fallon and Gatt’s little twinengined job that had landed at Camp One. There’s not much call for an air service in Quintana Roo, so if it wasn’t Gatt’s plane then it might be someone like Pat Harris, come down to see why Fallon had lost communication with the outer world. And I couldn’t see that making any difference to our position either.

  I winced as a bullet slammed through the hut and a few flakes of plastic insulation drifted down to settle on the back of my hand. There were two things we could do—stay there and wait for it, or make a break and get killed in the open. Not much of a choice.

  Smith said, ‘I wonder where all the other guys are? There can’t be more than four of them out front.’

  I grinned tightly. ‘Wan
t to go outside and find out?’

  He shook his head emphatically. ‘Uh-uh! I want them to come and get me. That way they’re in the open.’

  Katherine was crouched behind a thick timber, clutching the revolver I had given her. If she had not lost her fear at least she was disguising it resolutely. Fallon worried me more; he just stood there quietly, grasping the shotgun and waiting for the inevitable. I think he had given up and would have welcomed the smashing blow of a bullet in the head which would make an end to everything.

  Time passed, punctuated by the regular crack of a rifle and the thump of a bullet as it hit thick timber. I bent down and applied my eye to a ragged bullet hole in the wall, working on the rather dubious principle that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. The marksmen were hidden and there was no way of finding their positions; not that it would have done us any good if we knew because we had but one rifle, and that had only two rounds in the magazine.

  Fowler’s body was lying about thirty feet from the hut. The wind plucked at his shirt and rippled the cloth, and ten-drils of his hair danced in the breeze. He lay quite peacefully with one arm outflung, the fingers of the hand half-curled in a natural position as though he were asleep; but his shirt was stained with ugly blotches to mark the bullet wounds.

  I swallowed painfully and lifted my eyes higher to the ruined hut and the litter about it, and then beyond to the ruins of Uaxuanoc and the distant forest. There was something about the scene which looked odd and unnatural, and it wasn’t the ugly evidence of violence and death. It was something that had changed and it took me a long time to figure what it was.

  I said, ‘Smith!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The wind’s rising.’

  There was a pause while he looked for himself, then he said tiredly, ‘So what?’

  I looked again at the forest. It was in motion and the tree-tops danced, the branches pushed by moving air. All the time I had been in Quintana Roo the air had been quiet and hot, and there had been times when I would have welcomed a cool breeze. I turned carefully and strained my head to look out of the window without exposing my head to a snap shot. The sky to the east was dark with thick cloud and there was a faint and faraway flicker of lightning.

  ‘Fallon!’ I said. ‘When does the rainy season start?’

  He stirred briefly. ‘Any time, Jemmy.’

  He didn’t seem very interested in why I had asked.

  I said, ‘If you saw clouds and lightning now—what would you think?’

  ‘That the season had started,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all?’ I said, disappointed.

  ‘That’s all.’

  Another bullet hit the hut and I swore as a wood splinter drove into my calf. ‘Hey!’ shouted Smith in alarm. ‘Where the hell did that one come from?’ He pointed to the ragged hole in the wooden floor.

  I saw what he meant. That bullet had hit at an impossible angle, and it hadn’t done it by a ricochet. Another bullet slammed in and a chair jerked and fell over. I saw a hole in the seat of the chair, and knew what had happened. I listened for the next bullet to hit and distinctly heard it come through the roof. The chicleros had got up on the hillside behind the cenote and were directing a plunging fire down at the hut.

  The situation was now totally impossible. All our added protection was in the walls and it had served, us well, but we had no protection from above. Already I could see daylight showing through a crack in the asbestos board roofing where a bullet had split the brittle panel. Given enough well-aimed bullets and the chicleros could damn near strip the roof from the top of us, but we’d most likely be dead by then.

  We could find a minimum shelter by huddling in the angle of the floor and the wall on the side of the hut nearest the hill, but from there we could not see what was happening at the front of the hut. If we did that, then all that Gatt would have to do was to walk up and open the door—no one would be in a position to shoot him.

  Another bullet hit from above. I said, ‘Smith—want to break for it? I’ll be with you if you go.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I’ll die right here.’

  He died within ten seconds of uttering those words by taking a bullet in the middle of his forehead which knocked him back against the wall and on to the floor. He died without seeing the man who killed him and without ever having seen Gatt, who had ordered his death.

  I stooped to him, and a bullet smacked into the wall just where I had been standing. Fallon shouted, ‘Jemmy! The window!’ and I heard the duller report of the shotgun blasting off.

  A man screamed and I twisted on the ground with the revolver in my hand just in time to see a chiclero reel away from the already long-shattered window and Fallon with the smoking gun in his hand. He moved right to the window and fired another shot and there was a shout from outside.

  He dropped back and broke open the gun to reload, and I leaped forward to the window. A chiclero was jumping for cover while another was staggering around drunkenly, his hands to his face and crying in a loud keening wail. I ignored him and took a shot at a third who was by the door not four feet away. Even a tyro with a gun couldn’t miss him and he grunted and folded suddenly in the middle.

  I dropped back as a bullet broke one of the shards of glass remaining in the window, and shuddered violently as two more bullets came in through the roof. Any moment I expected to feel the impact as one of them hit me.

  Fallon had suddenly come alive again. He nudged me with his foot and I looked up to find him regarding me with bright eyes. ‘You can get out,’ he said quickly. ‘Move fast!’

  I gaped, and he swung his arm and pointed to the scuba gear. ‘Into the cenote, damn it!’ he yelled. ‘They can’t get at you there.’ He crawled to the wall and applied his eye to a bullet hole. ‘It’s quiet out front. I can hold them for long enough.’

  ‘What about you?’

  He turned. ‘What about me? I’m dead anyway. Don’t worry, Gatt won’t get me alive.’

  There wasn’t much time to think. Katherine and I could go into the cenote and survive for a little longer, safe from Gatt’s bullets, but then what? Once we came out we’d be sitting targets—and we couldn’t stay down forever. Still, a short extension of life meant a little more hope, and if we stayed where we were we would certainly be killed within the next few minutes.

  I grabbed Katherine’s wrist. ‘Get into your gear,’ I yelled. ‘Get a bloody move on.’

  She looked at me with startled eyes, but moved fast. She ripped off her clothes and got into the wet-suit and I helped her put on the harness. ‘What about Fallon?’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Never mind him,’ I snapped. ‘Concentrate on what you’re doing.’

  There was a diminution in the rate of rifle fire which I couldn’t understand. If I’d have been in Gatt’s place now was the time when I’d be pouring it on thick and heavy, but only one bullet came through the roof while Katherine and I were struggling with the harnesses and coupling up the bottles.

  I turned to Fallon. ‘How is it outside?’

  He was looking through the window at the sky in the east and a sudden gust of wind lifted his sparse hair. ‘I was wrong, Jemmy,’ he said suddenly. ‘There’s a storm coming. The wind is already very strong.’

  ‘I doubt if it will do us any good,’ I said. The two-bottle pack was heavy on my shoulders and I knew I couldn’t run very fast, and Katherine would be even more hampered. There was a distinct likelihood that we’d be picked off running for the cenote.

  ‘Time to go,’ said Fallon, and picked up the rifle. He had assembled all the weapons in a line near the window. He shrugged irritably. ‘No time for protracted farewells, Jemmy. Get the hell out of here.’ He turned his back on us and stood by the window with the rifle upraised.

  I heaved away the table which barricaded the door, then said to Katherine, ‘When I open the door start running. Don’t think of anything else but getting to the cenote. Once you are in it dive for the cave.
Understand?’

  She nodded, but looked helplessly at Fallon. ‘What about…?’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Move…now!’

  I opened the door and she went out, and I followed her low and fast, twisting to change direction as soon as my feet hit the soil outside. I heard a crack as a rifle went off but I didn’t know if that was the enemy or Fallon giving covering fire. Ahead, I saw Katherine zip round the corner of the hut and as I followed her I ran into a gust of wind that was like a brick wall, and I gasped as it got into my mouth, knocking the breath out of me. There was remarkably little rifle fire—just a few desultory shots—and no bullets came anywhere near that I knew of.

  I took my eyes off Katherine and risked a glance upwards and saw the possible reason. The whole of the hillside above the cenote was in violent motion as the wind lashed the trees, and waves drove across as they drive over a wheatfield under an English breeze. But these were hundred-foot trees bending under the blast—not stalks of wheat—and this was something stronger than an English zephyr. It suddenly struck me that anyone on the hillside would be in danger of losing his skin.

  But there was no time to think of that. I saw Katherine hesitate on the brink of the cenote. This was no time to think of the niceties of correct diving procedure, so I yelled to her, ‘Jump! Jump, damn it!’ But she still hesitated over the thirty-foot drop, so I rammed my hand in the small of her back and she toppled over the edge. I followed her a split-second later and hit feet first. The harness pulled hard on me under the strain and then the water closed over my head.

  TWELVE

  As I went under I jack-knifed to dive deeper, keeping a lookout for Katherine. I saw her, but to my horrified astonishment she was going up again—right to the surface. I twisted in the water and went after her, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing, and grabbed her just before she broke into the air.