XVII
She sat bound to a heavy leather chair, her legs tied wide apart. She was naked, brown body looking frail and defeated in the white neon glow of the study lamp. Her dark breasts heaved, glistening with the sweat of Benjamin Ellsworth, and small streams of blood dripped down the corner of her bruised mouth, and down the thighs of her immobile legs.
A cigarette hung rakishly out of the corner of Ellsworth’s thin lips. He looked at the girl, laughed derisively, and opened the door to leave.
Quickly, I pulled the rubber tip off an aluminum shaft, lifted the Cobra, and fired.
“Shit!”
Some great SEAL; some cold professional I was. In my haste I hadn’t even cocked the crossbow.
And then it was too late. Ellsworth was gone, pulling the door closed behind him.
I was trembling with rage. Poor Bimini, poor little island virgin. Her head lolled back on the chair pathetically, her eyes closed as if she wanted to make the world disappear. I lowered the crossbow and tried to figure out how to intercept Ellsworth. I didn’t give a damn about my game plan now. I wanted to kill him and kill him now.
He would probably head for the sportfisherman. I had heard the men talking. They were just about loaded. So he would go out the front door. And I was just about to leave the awful vision through the window to meet him when I saw the study door open again.
It wasn’t Ellsworth this time. It was the guard. A huge black man. I watched momentarily, hoping for some sign of sympathy; hoping the guard would cut her free and give Bimini her clothes.
But he didn’t. He had something else on his mind. He shook her by the shoulders and touched her naked body roughly. Bimini opened her dazed eyes, saw the huge man, then half cried and half screamed, “Stay away from me, you bastard!”
The huge man grinned.
“Gonna give you somethin’ nice, darlin’.”
“No . . . !”
He turned away from her, facing the window, and dropped his pants. The awful grin still creased his face. And he died with that grin; a horrible, frozen leer.
The silver Cobra arrow shot through the window as if it were tissue paper, entered and exited the guard’s heart, then buried itself in the wall.
F-f-f-tt—CRACK—thud—CRACK.
All in a microsecond.
The guard studied the tiny hole in his chest, like a bear studying a bee sting. He tried to push the sudden gush of blood back in with a big black hand, and then he fell heavily to the floor, still leering.
“Gonna give you somethin’ nice, darlin’.”
Right.
Bimini’s eyes widened in surprise and horror, and she inhaled as if to scream—but then didn’t. Her eyes swept the darkness beyond the window where I stood.
“Oh, Dusky,” she whispered in agony. “Oh, God . . . ”
I kicked the window out, unconcerned with the noise now. I whipped out the Gerber and cut the ropes, and she stood up painfully and clung to me.
“I knew you would come back. I couldn’t let myself believe that you were dead.”
I pulled a blanket, neatly folded, off the leather couch and spread it around her shoulders. She shivered as if she were suffering from hypothermia.
“The Senator—is he coming back, Bimini?”
Her eyes were glazed, the glaze of severe shock. “I just knew that you would get here, Dusky. And now you’re going to kill him, aren’t you? But you can’t. You can’t because you have to let me kill him—”
“Bimini!”
“And I think I know how I’m going to do it. I’ll take a knife and—”
“Bimini!”
She shook herself and stared at me, as if waking for the first time from her ordeal. And then she fell against me, crying in long, sweeping waves of anguish. I stroked her short black hair. “It’s okay now, lady. I’m going to take you away from all this. But first you have to tell me—is the Senator coming back?”
She shook her head, still crying. “No, no, he went off and . . . and left me with that . . . that animal. Dusky, he . . . he . . . ”
“I know what he did, Bimini. And he’ll pay for it. I swear to you, he’ll pay. One more thing, Bimini—the Senator’s private papers. Did he take them with him?”
“In his desk,” she said, motioning. “I don’t know.”
I sat her down on the couch and went to the desk. It took about five minutes to find the one with the false bottom. I jerked it open—nothing. Nothing but my Randall knife. He had cleaned the place out when he left. Left for where? South America, probably; left with a bundle, never to return. Unless one Norman Fizer had reason to hunt the Senator down. And I would give him reason. Plenty of reason. A whole boatload of it.
I secured the knife in my belt.
“Where are your clothes, Bimini?”
She nodded toward a pathetic little heap of underwear beside the chair.
“Stay right here. I’ll get some stuff out of your room.”
I went out into the hallway. Someone, attracted by the sound of the breaking window, was coming. I pushed myself against the wall, praying it was Ellsworth.
It wasn’t. Another of the drug flunkies. He was so surprised when I stepped out in front of him that he took a wide, flailing punch at me, the kind of punch that angry little girls throw. I hit him once in the throat, a good one, straight from the shoulder. He went down gagging and gasping. I didn’t even stop to see if he would live or die. I got jeans, a wool sweater, and shoes from Bimini’s closet. I took them back to her and, ludicrously, turned my back as she dressed. When she was ready, I took her out the side door and back down the mound.
The boat was loaded now. The big twin engines rumbled, muted in the wind and downpour of the storm. We crouched there by a sweet-smelling hibiscus bush, and I told her what I was going to do.
“It’ll take about ten minutes, Bimini. Do you think you can wait?”
She nodded, looking me in the eyes. I couldn’t tell if the water on her autumn colored face was rain or tears. “Whatever you say, Dusky. Just take me away—that’s all I want.”
When I was sure that it was safe, I hustled her across the clearing to the mangroves. We waded along the bank, back into the little cove where the Boston Whaler lay at anchor.
“Sit flat on the bottom of the boat. Don’t mind the water—I’ll run it out later. And don’t lift your head up for anything, Bimini. There might be some bullets flying around after the first explosion.”
When I was sure that she was comfortable, I waded back along the mangroves to the first pier. I could see the toolshed, beyond two big trees. It was about two hundred yards away on the other side of the mound, dimly lit at the outer edge of the big yard light. Ellsworth and his men were nowhere to be seen. The work done, they had all been driven into the boat or into the big house by the rain. I took out the Wise penlight and readied a shaft. I added the proper weights. It was not guesswork—I had done it before. Back in Nam. And when the shaft was properly weighted, I took out one of the thermite grenades. In Asia, I had had one true great horror—that of being wounded by thermite. It is terrible stuff. When it goes, it throws a white-hot flame, in excess of four thousand degrees. And the smallest fragment of it can burn through your skull, right down to your toes. I gauged wind and distance. Then I fixed the thermite canister to the tip of the shaft, pulled the pin, aimed, and fired.
Crack—wo-o-o-osh!
It looked like the wooden toolshed had just been hit by a meteorite. The entire back half of the island was illuminated by a hellish white light as the building burned.
“Hey . . . fire!”
“Get some extinguishers, man!”
“Someone tell Mr. Ellsworth that lightning or something hit the toolshed!”
They came running out of the boat and out of the house like ants from a damaged anthill. But, with the extreme heat, they couldn’t get near the building. I wondered if Ellsworth would remember what thermite was like. And then I wondered if he had ever let himself get close enough to actual combat to find out.
When I was sure the fire had everyone’s attention, I scrambled across to the next pier and climbed aboard the Independence. It was about forty feet of class fishing boat—like the ones you see in the exclusive yacht basin in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Mahogany and brass were all polished to glass; the latest electronics and nautical niceties. It was a craft decorated and outfitted to impress visitors, not to work. And that made it even more like the yachts of the big rich boys. She had probably been the vehicle of half a dozen real fishing trips, but a hundred cocktail parties. I felt sorry for her in a way. She was solidly built but misused through kindness—like a good hunting pup who is raised and, finally, ruined in the show ring.
The door to the forward salon swung back and forth in the wind. The cabin was empty. I moved across the color-coordinated carpeting to the forward berth. It was jammed with the boxes I had seen the men carrying. With my knife, I cut through the plastic and the cardboard to find a paper bag which read “North American Sugar, Inc.”
Sugar?
I ripped the sack open, the white powdery contents spilling down on my rubber dive boots. I touched my finger to my tongue: an odd numbing flavor with the texture of baking soda. Cocaine or heroin—I didn’t know. We hadn’t covered narcotics in SEAL training. But it sure as hell wasn’t sugar. I stuck three bags of it in my knapsack and then went through the drawers beneath the bunks. Clothes and food and supplies. That wasn’t what I was looking for. I checked to see how the Senator’s little army was doing. They were still busy. Real busy. The thermite had spewed over onto the main house when it exploded, and now that was on fire, too; the roof of the north wing was aflame.
I ransacked the galley and ripped the seats of the kitchenette open: nothing but foam rubber.
It had to be there someplace—but where?
It took me awhile, but I finally found what I was looking for. A metal waterproof case, shoved way back beyond the twin engines, in the bilges. I pulled it out, foul and dripping, busted the lock, and opened it wide. Neat bundles of cash, sealed in brown wrappers. Twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Used bills. I thumbed through two stacks. A little over a thousand in one, a thousand even in the other. There were more than fifty stacks. I stuck thirty of the stacks in my knapsack, resealed the rest in the metal case, and tossed it back into the bilges.
I was safely away when I blew up the boat. I had run along the pier, across the clearing to the covering mangroves. I flipped back the spring-lock cover of the detonator, pressed the button, and, after a microsecond pause, there was a tremendous ka-a-BOOM that shook the little island so completely that, for a crazy moment, I thought it might sink beneath me.
I put the detonator away. I took the Cobra crossbow off my shoulder and crouched there in the shadows, waiting.
I doubted if the sinking Independence would bring Ellsworth out of hiding, but I hoped the money might.
But it didn’t. Oh, it brought the others on a run. They came wheeling down the mound like kids on an Easter-egg hunt.
“Shit, man, what the hell’s goin’ on here?”
“Goddam place goin’ nuts—hey, gotta be some cash on that tub!”
“Screw the cash, Jack. Save some o’ th’ stash—we all gonna be rich. Ain’t nobody around to stop us!”
The Independence lay stern to bottom, bow high in the air, and the men swarmed aboard. She looked sadly like a huge dying animal.
If the sinking sportfisherman didn’t bring Ellsworth on the run, then he knew. He knew that the thermite explosion was not an act of God and lightning; he knew that the floundering boat was not the victim of a poor fuel-ventilation system. He knew that something or someone was after him. And to find him, I would have to hunt him down.
I watched for him as I ran back up the mound toward the burning house; watched for the dark trousers and blue foul-weather jacket he had pulled on after raping Bimini. I strained to see through every flash of lightning, but he wasn’t around. The roof of the house was burning merrily, popping in the weakening shower of rain. No one guarded the doors now. The men were in happy revolt, each trying to salvage his own future from the sinking boat. I kicked open the front door, went in, and switched on the lights. The ceiling steamed above me, the acrid odor of thermite and burning shingles everywhere. I went through the house a room at a time, one by one.
Nothing.
In the Senator’s study, I took special care. I opened the drawer with the false bottom, stuffed in the sacks of drugs, and added ten stacks of cash. Stormin’ Norman could run him down on income-tax evasion if nothing else. The desk was built of sleek metal, and the stone walls of the house would never burn. The federal boys would find evidence enough—if they looked for it.
After checking the cellar, I ran back up the steps, outside.
Where? Where?
I had decided to check the old caretaker’s cottage when I heard the roar of the racing boat being started. I couldn’t believe it. I ran around to the front of the house and, from the high vantage point of the Indian mound, I saw it: somehow the boathouse had protected it from the brunt of the explosion.
Ellsworth was at the controls.
His men were yelling at him. I couldn’t make out the words. A lanky kid with long, long black hair tried to jump aboard, and Ellsworth shot him down. The kid had his arms full of drug sacks, and the white powder spilled over his bloodied face. The rest of the men stepped back in horror—and then ran, none of them taking the time to drop their booty.
The boat was already in motion when I shot. He was more than two hundred yards away, through the trees and down the hill. The stiletto-shaped boat wallowed as if about to sink as he pulled out, then he jammed the throttles forward and it struggled to plane—so, it had been damaged by the explosion.
I lofted the arrow. A tough shot—but I had killed men with tough shots before.
But I didn’t kill Ellsworth.
The arrow left with a hiss, and, a second later he stiffened, sagged momentarily, and then disappeared into the darkness. I had wounded him. But how badly? No way of telling.
But there was one thing I knew for sure. I would find him. Maybe not on this night, maybe not the next. But his time would come. If he wasn’t dying now, he would; die by my hands.
“I’ll hunt you down like a dog, Ellsworth,” I whispered, my words lost in the storm wind. “I’ll hunt you down and make you beg—that I vow.”
Bimini had followed my orders well. She didn’t sit up until I called her name through the darkness.
“Let’s get out of here, lady. I want to get you to a hospital,” I said as I threw my gear into the little Whaler.
“Did you . . . did you kill him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so—but I wounded him. I don’t know how badly. He just took off in that big powerboat.”
She put her arms around me and pulled herself close. Warm little island woman; the fear in her voice edged the brave front. “Are we going after him . . . now?”
“No. No way we could catch him. Another day, Bimini. I’ll meet Mr. Benjamin Ellsworth on another day—if he lives.”
It wasn’t my imagination. She sagged with relief.
I pulled the stern-well plug, running the rainwater out as we went. Bimini snuggled close beside me while, behind us, Cuda Key burned. It threw an eerie light across the water: green and bile-like, as if all the evil of that place were being leached out by the August storm.
We talked softly together as we banged through the choppy night seas.
“I’m so sorry, Dusky. So sorry about what he did to me. I wanted it to be you.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Bimini. Not a bit. When we’re sure you’re well, maybe we can take a little cruise. A . . . a sort of friendship cruise. I can’t promise you love or lovemaking. I just know I need to get away. And I want someone along. Someone who isn’t afraid to speak up when there’s something to talk about, and who isn’t afraid to say nothing when talk is unnecessary.”
She kissed me softly on the cheek. “I would like that. And I understand. You need time, Dusky MacMorgan. That’s what we both need—time.”
