“I’ve noticed.”
“But I can’t always do what I want to do. The needs of our organization come first.”
“Nice to know I’m advancing a cause,” I said.
“If I thought I could convert you, I would, Billy.”
“I don’t think so.”
He leaned closer. “You say that automatically, and that’s to be expected. You are a product of our times, and our times have prohibited all of us from thinking independently.”
He smiled. It was dazzling. “I don’t come at this cause from ignorance, Billy. My convictions are a result of years of study, thought, and observation. I was like you once.”
“Hard to believe.”
“But true. We all start as liberals, because liberalism is a picture of the world as we want to believe it is.” He shook his head. “But it isn’t, Billy. You know that. It isn’t that way at all.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “The world is not the way we want to believe it. Look at what happened to you.”
He gazed at me, a look filled with compassion and strength. “I read your personnel file, Billy. I know what happened to your family.”
He looked. I had nothing to say.
“Would white men have done that, Billy? Good, honest, God-fearing white men? I don’t think so.”
“Good, honest, God-fearing black men wouldn’t either,” I said, struggling to break his spell.
“Of course not,” Doyle said. “And there are many of them, I’m not denying that. Because the white social order is powerful, and it has converted some, brought some up out of darkness. But the unreachable, the ungovernable, the ones who don’t just live at the bottom but drag the rest of us down—there are a lot more of them.
“And they are winning! Against all odds, the weak minority is overcoming the powerful majority, Billy! Something like that doesn’t just happen, Billy! It’s made to happen!”
“Sure,” I said. “The international Zionist conspiracy.”
“That’s only part of it,” he assured me. “The fact of the matter is, the rest of us make it happen. Through intellectual and moral laziness. The greatest sin is the failure to act rightly, and we as a society have committed that sin. We could stop this headlong slide into the gutter, and we don’t. Because we are unwilling or unable to look at the problem and call it by name.
“It’s a race problem, Billy. If you look at this historically, dispassionately, you will notice all our problems started with integration. It was at that precise moment in time when our decline as a society began. Is that a coincidence? Or is it simply the crystallization of the final struggle, the battle lines drawn? If you could see it without prejudice, you would see that final struggle for what it is—order and decency and all we represent as a white culture, against the anarchy and ignorance of the black culture.”
He was just getting started. I could tell by the way his eyes were focusing on something in the distance instead of me. So I stopped him.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I think you better just kill me.”
His eyes refocused on me. There was no anger there, no hate, just a friendly regret.
“I want to make sure you understand your choice,” he said with one eyebrow raised.
“I understand. If I won’t sieg heil with you, you’re going to drown me in crocodile tears.”
There was a faint glint in his eyes. Something was funny. “There’s more to it than that,” he said. “I told you I’m only killing you for effect. So I have to get mileage out of it, the most bang for my buck.” His eyes twinkled. “Learned that in the budget fights at LAPD.” He leaned forward, the happiest guy in the world. “What I’m saying is, it’s going to be a little bit of a spectacle, Billy. Not pretty, not pleasant. But effective. We videotape it, show it to the troops. An example of what happens to our enemies.” He winked. “Public relations. Part of every administrator’s workload.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. That didn’t seem to matter too much. I’d tuned out when his eyes had gotten distant and his face started to flush slightly from sincerity of his ideas.
Doyle was a true believer. He knew he was right, so he was sure he could find a way to convince me.
But I was more interested in finding a way out. As he talked I had looked around, hoping desperately for something, anything, besides what I knew was there: three heavily armed, well-trained men guarding the only exit, and between me and the exit a guy with apparently superhuman speed and strength who had already beaten me senseless once.
I didn’t see anything helpful. But unless he shot me right now, I thought it had to get better—especially since he was planning to turn my death into some kind of pageant to boost morale.
“Okay, Billy,” Doyle was saying. “I had to try. You’re a warrior, and I need warriors.” He shook his head with a friendly smile. “Besides, it’s a shame that this has to happen to you twice.”
Before I could figure that one out Doyle stood and took me by the arm. His fingers felt like what Captain Spaulding’s grip would have been if the captain had been really strong.
“I could have forgiven a lot for a soldier like you,” he said, dragging me towards the door of the forward cabin. “Even your moment of weakness with that black slut.” He unlocked the door and frog-marched me in. “It’s just too bad.”
Someone was lying on the bunk inside the cabin. And as Doyle’s words sank in and a cold knot rose up in my throat she looked up. “Billy?” she said.
It was Nancy.
“Just too bad,” said Doyle happily.
For a moment I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. I could only think, Not again.
I turned on Doyle as fast as a human being can turn. He was wearing that same friendly grin. I got one good shot into that happy face, a hard right hand with everything I had behind it.
Doyle took a half-step backwards from the force of the punch. I had the satisfaction of seeing his lip split open. Then he clubbed me with a right hand so fast I barely saw it.
I started to fall towards the bunk, but I never got there.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I was pretty sure I’d been here before. The throbbing darkness was the same, and the cool hand on my forehead. The voice that was speaking my name softly had been there the last time, too.
“Billy,” it said with a warm rum-and-honey tone. “Billy.” The hand moved gently across my forehead. “Wake up now, Billy.”
I floated up towards the voice—and towards a whole collection of pounding pains.
One of the oddest was the back of my head. It was throbbing, but I could feel that throb in my nose, as if the two places were connected.
My hands were pounding too. They felt like somebody had stuck them in large and awkward mittens.
“Come on, Billy,” urged the voice. I swam up; I liked the voice, even though it was up there where everything hurt.
I got an eye open at last. My head was in Nancy Hoffman’s lap. It seemed like a good place to be. I was just starting to enjoy it a little when she shook me out of it.
“You’ve got to get up, Billy. I think this is our only chance.”
I thought it was good that we had a chance, but that only part bothered me. It was so hard to put it all together. “What…?”
She slapped my face. It stung. That didn’t seem right. I shook my head and a few cobwebs fell away. “Why are you here?” I managed.
“I came out of work and they were waiting for me. Just threw me in a car. I think they used chloroform. I woke up once in a small airplane, and then I was on this boat. Doyle thinks he can get back at you and my brother at the same time by killing me.”
“The spectacle,” I said. Nancy looked at me like she was going to slap me again. “Something Doyle said. He’s going to make a circus out of killing us. Show the tape to the brotherhood as a lesson.”
She bit her lip. “That doesn’t sound like very much fun. I think we better get you on your feet fast. How are your hands?”
I looked
at them. They really were too big, puffed up out of shape. I flexed them a little. They worked, but not perfectly.
“They were wired together. I got the wire off, but it may be a while before you get full use back. Can you stand?”
I tried. I managed to sit on the edge of the bunk. The room was heaving violently and I shook my head again to clear it.
But then I realized the room really was pitching. The boat, in what should have been a calm anchorage, was rolling frantically.
I looked at Nancy. “A storm came up,” she said. “I heard them talking. They were planning to take us out into the Gulf Stream and drop us over after they kill us.”
“That would do it,” I said.
“But this storm moved in. The tail end of that hurricane, what is it?”
“Hurricane Andrew,” I said. “It’s supposed to miss us.”
“Well, it’s blowing pretty bad here, so they’re staying in the lagoon overnight. They’ve all gone in the dinghy to set an extra anchor.”
I sat up straight. “All of them?” It didn’t seem possible.
“The two in your boat are dead.” That would be Bob and Bill, or whatever their names were. “Doyle killed them and left them in your boat. He wants it to look like there was a fight and all of you died.”
That would make sense. When they found my battered boat, it would look better if my charter was on board. Nobody would connect it to Doyle. Still, the brutality of it shook me.
“But there’s only one guarding us,” Nancy went on. “The rest of them are in the little boat doing the anchor.”
I thought about it, which was still a little harder than usual with my head throbbing. But she was right. “It’s not going to get any better.”
She nodded. “I know that. Now here’s what we do.”
I looked around. There were two portholes, but they were tiny. Above was a hatch. I pointed. “The hatch is our only way out.”
“Will you be quiet a moment? I’ve been thinking about this. The guard knows the hatch is our only way out, too. Besides, it’s locked from the outside.”
“Then how—?”
She put a hand on my mouth. “Just hush, Billy. I’m going to start pounding on the hatch. The guard will yell at us to stop. I’ll keep pounding. He’ll think it’s you pounding.”
“Why will he think that?”
“Trust me, Billy. I was a tomboy, I hit hard. The guard will open the door. You’ll be beside the door. When he comes in you’ll knock him out. Can you do that?”
I checked my hands. I wasn’t sure I could open a pickle jar with them, but I thought they might work as bludgeons. If the guard was Carl and not the one who didn’t blink. “I can do that.”
“All right,” she said. And then she leaned forward and kissed me, hard, on the mouth. She pulled back again too quickly for me to do anything but stare stupidly. “Let’s do it,” she said.
I stepped over beside the door and flattened myself against the bulkhead. “Okay,” I said.
Nancy stood on the bunk under the hatch and doubled her hands together. “Billy, no!” she screamed, winking, and then she slammed her fists against the hatch. “Please, stop!” She got into a good, strong rhythm, pounding the hatch. I had to admit, the pounding didn’t sound like a slim, beautiful woman’s.
“Hey!” the guard called cautiously. “Hey, knock it off.” We were in luck; it sounded like Carl.
I cupped a hand to project my voice away from the door and roared something incoherent. Nancy screamed again and pleaded with me to stop, still pounding in a mad rhythm.
“All right,” yelled the guard. “You’re asking for it.”
I heard him scrabbling at the lock. So far so good. I braced myself.
The door swung inward. And then—nothing.
He must be playing it smart, staying a step back from the doorway.
I looked at Nancy. She was frozen where she was, staring past me through the door.
“Get down from there, nigger,” Carl hissed. “Where’s the guy?”
Nancy shook her head.
“Where is he? I mean it!” Nancy flinched slightly.
“He’s—hiding.”
“Hiding where?”
She pointed down. “In the locker under the bed.”
“Get him out.”
She stood frozen for a moment, and then I could see her get an idea. I hoped Carl couldn’t see it, too. “All right,” she said, and got carefully off the bunk onto the deck.
The lockers were under the bunk. You had to lift the cushions off to get them open. That’s what Nancy did. She lifted one of the six-foot cushions, turned toward me and, her face hidden from Carl by the cushion, she mouthed, “Now, Billy!” and shoved the cushion towards the doorway.
“Get that out of the way!” Carl shouted. The thing filled the doorway. I slid in behind it and pushed.
The cushion flopped forward onto Carl’s assault rifle. In the half-second the barrel was aimed down I was on him.
He snarled and yanked up on the barrel. I moved inside, past the end of the gun, and chopped hard at the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t a clean hit or he’d have dropped. He froze for a moment, dazed, and I rammed the heel of my left hand up under his chin and chopped hard at his Adam’s apple with my right.
Carl gave a dry gurgle and dropped the rifle, clutched at this throat, and fell to his knees. I had hit him too hard and crushed his throat. He was dying. I hadn’t wanted to kill him, but when someone is pointing an assault rifle at you, your options are limited and so is your compassion.
“Billy?” Nancy whispered from the cabin.
“It’s okay. Stay there.”
Of course she didn’t stay. She stuck her head out at once and saw Carl, flopping and drumming his heels on the deck. It made my skin crawl. Nancy hardly blinked.
“Oh,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” My hands were vibrating hard enough to stir cake batter. But my head was clear, probably from the adrenaline rush of combat. And maybe from the nausea of killing somebody. Anyway there wasn’t enough time to feel bad right now. “I need a knife.”
“Why? He’s dying.”
I moved through the cabin, searching. “The anchor line.”
“Can’t you just untie it?”
“The line will end in a length of chain. The chain will be bolted to the boat. I need to cut it. Find a knife.”
I cautiously stuck my head up through the companionway and looked for the inflatable dinghy.
It was about a hundred feet away, straight off the bow. Doyle was looking over the side and one man sat beside him. As I watched, the third man surfaced beside them, wearing mask and snorkel.
They were setting the hook solidly by swimming down and ramming it hard into the sandy bottom. That was the safest thing to do in a bad storm. It also gave me an extra minute.
I looked behind. The Windshadow bobbed behind the sailboat on a short rode. A plan was forming.
“Billy?” Nancy called softly from below. I ducked under. “I found this in one of the bags,” she said, holding up a knife that Crocodile Dundee would have liked.
I took it. “Hand me the rifle, too,” I said.
Nancy stepped over Carl, who was all done kicking. There was a stench in the cabin. Carl was all done living, too. His bowels had opened in a very appropriate last gesture of defiance.
It didn’t seem to faze Nancy. She picked up the rifle and handed it to me.
“All right,” I said. “Come up here. And stay low.”
In a moment we were crouched together at the wheel. I pointed to the controls. “This starts the engine. Push the black lever forward, the boat goes forward. Back is reverse, middle is neutral. It’s in neutral now. The red one is power. Push forward to go faster.”
“I think I can handle that,” she said.
“I’m going to cut the anchor lines. The boat will fall off and start to drift that way.” I pointed towards the gulf. “On my signal, start the engine, ki
ck it in gear, and steer for that channel marker.”
“What about Doyle?”
I patted the rifle. “I’m going to sink his boat. That gives us time to get away. The Coast Guard can come back for him later—he won’t get far in this storm. He’ll have to hole up on the island.”
The wind was rising as I moved forward, and I was lashed by the first hard drops of a rain squall. The taut steel wires of the rigging were squealing. I crouched low, squinting against the wind and rain, and slid forward to the anchor lines.
The lines ran out onto a roller on the bowsprit. But I didn’t need to crawl out that far. The lines came up through a metal fitting in the deck. I just had to get that far and cut them there.
I crawled along the deck, rifle in one hand and knife in the other. A sudden blast of thunder almost made me jump overboard. At the inflatable, the man with the mask came up for air again and Doyle said something to him. The man in the water raised a hand, said something, and then went under again.
I got to the two anchor ropes. The first line was holding all the boat’s weight at the moment. I pulled carefully and eased the boat ahead, just enough to get two turns around a cleat. That way the boat would not lurch and give me away when I cut the first line.
I cut it. I reached for the second line. The man in the water was climbing into the inflatable. Holding the end in my hand, I cut the second line. I reached for the first and untied it, dropping both lines over the side.
The boat rolled immediately and fell off before the wind. Doyle looked up as the anchor line went slack. And then things started to go wrong.
“Now, Nancy!” I yelled. But nothing happened.
I turned back to Doyle, raising the rifle. But with no anchor to hold it, the sailboat had drifted in a half-circle and now the cabin roof was between me and the inflatable. I couldn’t see over it.
“Nancy, start the engine!” I shouted again and scrambled over the top of the cabin.
A shot went past my ear with that flat popping noise you can never mistake for anything else once you’ve heard it. I hit the deck, inched around the mast, and looked.
The inflatable was fifty feet away and coming in at top speed. Doyle was crouched in the bow, a Glock in his hand. He snapped off another shot and the mast beside me gave a hollow bonging sound.