Dave kicked out in front of him, his boot smashing the glass in the shower door. The guy was strangling him. Twisting one way and then the other, like a dog on a short lead, Dave tried to elbow the guy in the stomach, but his own vest and the machine gun got in the way. Another minute and it would all be over. Another sixty seconds and he would be dead. Already he could feel the edges of his world becoming dark and hazy, as if the void was closing in upon him.
The head door slammed open and something spat twice into the air, jolting the man behind him like a bolt of electricity. The pressure on the line around his neck slackened and hot steamy liquid trickled down the back of Dave's neck. It was another second or two before he realized that it was blood from the dying man who groaned as Al lifted Dave clear of his attacker. Then Al stood back, levelled the silencer and fired another shot into the guy's throat, just to make sure.
Al looked anxiously at his coughing partner and asked, 'You OK?'
Trembling, Dave took a deep and unrestricted breath. Holding his nylon-burned neck, he stuck his throbbing head under the cold shower, hardly paying attention to the blood still running out of the dead man's bullet wounds and washing down the plug. When Dave finally answered Al, his own voice sounded as if he'd smoked a couple of cartons of cigarettes.
'I think so. Thanks. He'd have strangled me for sure.'
'Don't mention it. Kind of fuckin' actor are you anyway? I mean, there are no Oscars for what happened down here. Not even a lousy Emmy. Goddamned bedroom. It looks like The Wild Bunch through there.' Al lit a cigarette for Dave. 'Here. This'll help you get your breath. What did happen in there, as a matter of small academic interest?'
Dave pulled a towel over his head and sighed.
'Damned if I know.'
'It's like I said, then. The Alias Smith and Jones factor? It's bullshit. People carry guns, people get shot. Stands to reason.'
'They gave me no choice. I had to shoot them. It was them or me.'
'No doubt about it. I guess there was something about your manner they objected to. Me, I can relate to that. Your small talk can be like fleas sometimes. It itches like fuck. The sight of that badge drove 'em to it, perhaps. Who the fuck knows? But it's lucky for you I came down here or you'd be John Brown, man.'
'They thought we were pinching them. They thought it was a real bust. That's why they went for their guns.'
But Al hardly cared to listen. He was already heading back through the stateroom where the two bodies lay grotesquely twisted on the bloodstained bed, on his way upstairs. He said, 'The fuck difference does it make now? They're dead, ain't they? For them it was a real bust. Dead's the biggest bust there is.'
Coming upstairs into the moonlight, Dave took a deep breath of the cool night air. The Britannia looked so pure and white that it was hard to connect it with the bloody scene in the master stateroom below. It was a couple of minutes before he realized what else had happened.
'The storm's died away,' he said.
'That's what I came down to tell you,' said Al. 'Happened just like that.'
'I guess that's something.'
'Still want to do this the hard way?' asked Al.
'Meaning?'
'No killing.'
'More than ever.'
'You're being a mite particular, aren't you? These guys ain't gonna be any more co-operative than the three we just greased.'
'Al it's my understanding that you're a professional killer. But me? I'm a rank amateur. Like I said before, I didn't want to be a killer. And now that I've killed two people -- the first two people I ever killed -- I want to be a killer even less. What I did back there makes me feel sick to my stomach.'
'Hey, don't let it spoil your evening. That was self-defense. Them or you, just like you said. It's intention that counts. Even the law knows that much. A real Fed would have blown them away just the same as you did. So being dead is their fault, not yours. They were fuckin' stupid. Had to be stupid to think they could pull a gun on a man carrying your kind of heat.'
'One of them was a girl, Al.'
'That much I noticed. Nice-looking broad too. Good tits. But a nice-lookin' broad with good tits and a handgun. Makes all the fuckin' difference in the world. And the next one, too, if it comes to that.' Al shrugged. 'I still reckon we should grease these fuckers. That's why we've got the silencers on the ends of our dicks.'
'Tell you what, Al. I'll make you a deal. If we can avoid any more bloodshed, you can have half my share.'
Al thought about this for a moment. Since he was planning to murder Dave the minute he saw the Ercolano sailing toward the rendezvous point, and since Naked Tony had already promised Al Dave's share anyway, the deal didn't sound so good. But he had little choice but to agree, or else risk Dave's suspicion. He was a nice guy for a dead man.
'OK, you gotta deal. Half your share and no more human tragedies.'
'We stick to shooting only in self-defense.'
'Right,' sighed Al. 'But don't go soft on me, Dave. Remember, I'm supposed to be the one with the conscience. Not you. I'm the Catholic round here. You. You're an atheist. You don't believe in shit.'
Al tripped and fell upon the explanation for the lack of any resistance they met on the Baby Doc almost as soon as they had set foot inside the smelly lounge. The boat's shabby interior was littered with empty vodka bottles and on top of the dining table was what looked to have been a serious game of Monopoly -- not least because it had been played with real money. There were loose piles of dollars all over the place and in Dave's eyes it was easy to see what must have happened.
First a hell of a lot of drinking; although few, if any, of the three crews were actually Russian, it was as if the idea of Russianness had exercised such a powerful effect on the crewmen that they had felt an obligation to live up to the hard-drinking reputation enjoyed by their employers; second, the idea of playing the ultimate game of Monopoly, with some of the real cash that was being smuggled to Russia; and third, a lot more hard drinking. One of the crewmen lay insensible on the lounge sofa, and another had passed out on the floor of one of the heads. A third they found dead drunk in the wheelhouse, curled up like a baby in the cockpit chair. The rest of the three crews were sleeping it off in the Baby Doc's staterooms. Most of them so drunk that even after Dave and Al had tied them up with plastic ties, they stayed asleep, or unconscious.
'Will you look at these drunken bastards?' laughed Al, when he had tied up the last man in his stateroom. 'Be a while before they even know we've been and gone. Jesus, that's some fuckin' Monopoly game they got upstairs. Must be a couple of hundred thousand dollars on that game board.' He stood up, checked the knot, then kicked the man in the small of the back. The man grunted and rolled quietly away. 'How many's that?'
Dave was checking the three crews off against the ship's own list of supernumeraries. He nodded and said, 'That's all of them.'
'Bet you wish you hadn't made that deal now,' Al said harshly. 'This was a piece of sponge cake.' He picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka, unscrewed the top and took a short pull from the neck. 'Wasn't it?'
Dave said nothing, and it was then Al noticed the clasp knife in the younger man's hand. Al's gun lay on the coffee table, several feet away. He swallowed nervously, because of the deal he had made and the ease with which their objective had apparently been achieved. Maybe he had pushed him too far. He held out the bottle for Dave to drink.
'Want some?'
Dave thought he probably needed a drink. Since killing the two in bed his stomach had felt like he'd eaten something disagreeable. Maybe some vodka would fix it. He took the bottle, gulped a mouthful, and handed the bottle back. Then, rolling the man he had tied roughly off the bed, he turned the mattress on top of him and plunged the knife deep into the seam of the divan underneath. He tore away the cover to reveal a six-foot square of something faintly green under a thick polythene sheet. The knife flashed again and the two men stared down at an enormous pallet of cash wrapped in smaller, pillow-sized bundles.
'Didn't I tell you?' grinned Dave.
