Chapter 73
McGarvey stepped through a hatch onto a dimly lit catwalk that looked down into the engine room. The generators were humming, and one of the main engines was turning, but there were no crewmen.
Except for the few people on the bridge, the Grande Dame II seemed to be deserted. Below decks should have been alive with activity if the ship was being readied for departure, as she seemed to be. Yet the passageways were empty, as were the cabins he’d looked into, the galley, the crews’ dining area, and now the machinery spaces.
It made no sense unless something had happened ashore that had drawn the crew away.
Something incredibly powerful slammed into his right shoulder, sending him crashing against the railing, a tremendous pain rebounding throughout his body, nearly making him lose consciousness. Before he could recover, his pistol was snatched from his hand so violently his body was spun around.
Heidinora Daishi, the squat bulldog of a man from the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo, stood grinning at McGarvey, whose heart was hammering painfully in his chest. He was having trouble catching his breath and his vision was blurring.
“I hoped that I would see you again,” the Japanese killer said, his voice low-pitched and rough, and his English difficult to understand.
“This time you have lost your weapon, so the fight will be equal.” He casually tossed the Walther back into the passageway, sending it clattering along the deck.
McGarvey’s head was spinning as he desperately tried to work himself fully conscious.
Under the best of conditions this fight would have been unequal; the man he was facing was built like a Sherman tank, probably was an expert in any number of martial arts, and, more important, seemed to want to vent his power here and now.
“Stand up now,” Heidinora said, taking a handful of McGarvey’s drysuit and shaking him like a rag doll.
McGarvey feinted left, then came in under Heidinora’s right arm, and hammered three quick blows with every ounce of his strength to the man’s chest just over his heart.
Heidinora grunted in irritation, not pain, and batted McGarvey away like an insect, sending him sprawling on the catwalk, stars again bursting in his eyes.
Before he could move out of the way the Jap was on him, kicking him viciously in the side with his steel-toed shoe.
The pain was exquisite, and he knew that he could not take very much more punishment before he became totally helpless.
Heidinora kicked him again, this time on the hip, nearly dislocating his back.
Christ! The man meant to kick him to death. It could not continue. But he had no way of defending himself.
Heidinora kicked again, but this time McGarvey managed to rear up and deflect the blow with his left arm, momentarily pushing the man off-balance.
Rolling right, McGarvey pulled himself under the catwalk railing, and before Heidinora could react, twisted over the edge, and dropped the ten or twelve feet to the engine room floor, the hard landing knocking him temporarily senseless.
When he finally looked up, Heidinora was gone, on his way down to finish the job.
His head still spinning, McGarvey frantically looked around for something to use; anything. But the engine room was spotlessly clean. Not even an oily rag lay out; no empty coffee cups, no ashtrays, no tools.
He managed to get to his feet, where he had to support himself against a piece of machinery for a long moment until he regained his balance. The entire ship seemed to be spinning around, the decking heaving and bucking as if they were at sea in a heavy storm.
Straight ahead was a thick steel waterproof door on massive hinges. The sill was high, so that whoever came through would have to lean forward to step over it.
McGarvey stumbled as quickly as he could to the door and pulled it all the way open.
As he’d hoped, it was well-balanced, and swung easily.
Someone was coming down the stairs at the end of the short passageway, and McGarvey stepped back behind the door, out of sight.
A moment later Heidinora started through the doorway, his right leg first, his right hand on the doorjamb, and his head and shoulders bent forward.
McGarvey heaved the door closed with everything he had, the thick steel smashing into the Japanese killer’s face, driving him backward, and then catching the man’s leg against the jamb, crushing his kneecap.
Heidinora roared in pain and rage, and he shoved the door back, and tried to pull his way through.
McGarvey smashed the heavy door into the man’s face and forehead again, pulled it back, and shoved it again with all of his might, this time hitting the top of Heidinora’s skull with a sickening crunch, and then closing on his hand, severing all four fingers at the roots.
Heidinora was in trouble. His eyelids were fluttering and his breath came in big, blubbering gasps as if he were a drowning man trying desperately for one last breath of air. Blood pumped out of a wicked rent in his skull. The man’s chest heaved once, and then he slumped back. He was dead.
McGarvey hung on the doorframe for a long time, catching his breath, pain coming at him in waves, but the blurred vision and dizziness finally subsiding.
A plastic security badge was clipped to the lapel of Heidinora’s coveralls. McGarvey peeled off his drysuit, stashed it in a dark corner behind some machinery and back at the doorway took the security badge from the body and clipped it to his jacket.
The ruse would not stand up to close scrutiny, but all he needed was to get off the ship, across the dock and into the main building.
Careful not to step in the blood, McGarvey made his way down the corridor and painfully up the stairs to the catwalk where he retrieved the Geiger counter. Its case was cracked, but otherwise it seemed undamaged.
He found his gun in the upper passageway, and from there worked his way up to the main deck. He held up at the portside hatch. Ten feet away the rail opened to the boarding ladder down to the dock. The moment he started down he would be in plain view of everyone below, as well as anyone watching from the bridge. But there was no other way ashore.
Shoving the Walther in his belt beneath his jacket at the small of his back, he stepped across the covered passageway on deck, and started down the boarding ladder, making every effort not to limp or in any way show that he was in pain.
Two men in white coveralls, Uzi submachine guns slung over their shoulders, stood talking on the forward dock, near the ship’s bows. They looked up as McGarvey descended, said something to each other, then looked away, apparently uninterested, even though they could not have seen the security pass from that distance.
At the bottom, McGarvey crossed the dock without hesitation, and entered what turned out to be a ship’s stores and holding area within the main building. Someone was working with a forklift to the right, at the end of a long file, but there was no one else in sight.
Moving quickly now, McGarvey went to the far end of the warehouse, and through a door which led down a short corridor to a freight elevator.
The elevator was up one floor. He called it down, and then pulled out his pistol, switching the safety catch off, stepping to one side as the doors slid open on an empty car.
Inside, he studied the board. This floor was indicated by a light. There were four floors beneath it. He punched the button for the lowest floor and then moved back and to the side.
Something was nagging at the back of his mind. Something about the ease with which he’d gotten off the ship, across the dock and this far into the building.
The elevator opened on the fourth sublevel to a T-intersection of two corridors that disappeared both ways into the darkness. This place was deserted too; another fact that was somehow bothersome.
A few yards down the left corridor a pair of tall wire mesh doors led into a high-voltage electrical distribution cabinet. McGarvey glanced inside. This set up could accommodate the power needs of a big skyscraper, yet he
