I blinked. Had he guessed the trap that had been laid for him? Then I relaxed. Typically Heller. He was referring to the Verrazano plaque he had read that morning. You could never tell when he was joking. It was a disconcerting trait, typical of the villain. Threw you off. He had owned the place once: he knew very well that, aside from Federal tax collectors, there were no cannibals in Atlantic City.
He fed throttle to the Sea Skiff, heading for a point to the north of the glow in the night. As he picked up speed and the Sea Skiff planed, the fans of spray cast a glow of their own—phosphorescence.
I grabbed a map. Judging from the position of Atlantic City’s lights off his port bow, he was not heading for the harbor entrance, Absecon Inlet. He must be going for Little Egg Inlet, ten miles to the north. Then I realized that he was not taking a frontal approach to the harbor. He was going to join the Intracoastal Waterway, go down Little Bay and Reed’s Bay back of Brigantine Beach! He was going to enter Absecon Bay by the back door!
Sneaky! Oh, you could never trust Heller! (Bleep) him! With what bitterness I recalled all he had put me through when I had had to leave Istanbul by sea.
I phoned the harbor master at Atlantic City. “This is the Fed. Your man is in a Sea Skiff, traveling at 42.3 knots. He will be coming down the Intracoastal Waterway and will approach through Absecon Bay.”
“Aha!” said the harbor master. “That means he’ll come down Absecon Channel to get to the yacht! We’ll muster at Farley State Marina.”
“Be sure to get him!” I said. “He’s a very desperate black terrorist, trained by the PLO.”
“Have no fear,” said the harbor master. “We’ve supplemented the regular force with a squad from the New Jersey National Guard. We’ll let him have it with machine guns!”
“Have you alerted the yacht?”
“Got her surrounded by collision floats in case this (bleep) tries a kamikaze.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “I estimate he’ll be amongst you in half an hour.”
“In half an hour,” said the harbor master, “your man will be blown to bits!”
“Knew I could count on you,” I said. “The national interest must be served.” I rang off.
Heller was streaming along over the black glassy water. There was a little radarscope back of the gyrocompass and he was apparently steering by that. The shapes of land were very clear on it and he was rocketing straight into a black gap. Tricky navigation at very high speed: those inland channels looked complex.
He was doing something else! I couldn’t quite make it out in the dim glow around him. Was he holding a bomb? I watched.
A can of beer!
He was drinking a can of beer!
Oho, I thought. You don’t suspect. Far too sure of yourself, Heller, much too relaxed.
I watched him as he banked into a constricted channel, speeding south. There were some marker lights. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to them. Then I realized that that Sea Skiff, with only its propellers and rudders in the water, probably did not much care about the depth of the channel. He was taking short cuts! Running by land masses, not buoys! He had me lost!
I studied my map anxiously. I wished I could read a radarscope. I saw a restricted place ahead of him. He was roaring toward it. I relaxed: it could only be the opening which carried him into Absecon Channel—the islands to the right and left were so long that he could not detour around them. In only a mile or so now he would reach Brigantine Bridge. There were its lights ahead! Right where they invisibly waited for him with machine guns!
He was doing something else now. He was propping something up in the pilot seat.
“Now you just sit there,” he said, “and keep your eye on things.”
A shape. A form! Good Gods, had he taken one of those luckless Coast Guardsmen prisoner? And making him run the boat?
Then Heller put the arms on the wheel and tied them with a flip of cord. The arms were too limp to be human.
A dummy! A work suit stuffed with pillows that had a pillow face.
Heller walked to the back of the Sea Skiff. He picked up a big sack.
He pulled something down over his face.
He rolled off the stern!
Right into the churning wake!
SPLASH!
He bobbed up.
He had something in his hand, hard to tell, silhouetted against the lights of the distant town. It was wrapped in plastic.
He pressed it.
The Sea Skiff banked!
He pressed it again, watching the spray of the roaring craft.
The Sea Skiff banked the other way!
A radio control! (Bleep) him! He had rigged the autopilot to the craft’s radio the moment I had my back turned. He was holding some sort of trigger in his hand!
The Sea Skiff was closing the distance to the bridge very quickly now. He made it zigzag.
A CHATTERING BURST OF MACHINE-GUN FIRE!
“I thought so,” muttered Heller.
He pressed the control. The Sea Skiff banked into a steep turn.
Rifles were going now!
A ricochet came skipping over the water and made a vicious whine past his head.
The Sea Skiff headed to his right.
“I’m sorry,” said Heller. “You were a good boat.”
The Sea Skiff turned again. It passed under the bridge and was racing toward a nearby marina entrance.
The sharp staccato hammer of machine guns above the roar of engines.
The crash of a shattered windshield!
The vicious multiple whines of ricochets!
A heavier burst of fire!
Still surging toward the marina docks, the Sea Skiff seemed to stagger. Then it went lancing on!
A gout of flame!
The blue white flash of exploding gasoline!
All the extra fuel cans must have gone up as one!
BLOWIE!
The remains of the rocketing speedboat hit the end of a pier!
CRRRRASHHHHH!
Wood and bits of metal flew into the flame-rent air!
What seemed to be a body was visible for an instant and then was gone!
Flaming bits of debris were spattering all around, hissing as they hit.
The end of a dock was burning and lighting up the scene.
A searchlight came on and raked the water.
Heller dived.
I was instantly on the phone. I demanded the harbor master. There was a wait. He came on the line.
“You missed him!” I shouted. “He escaped off the back of the boat before you fired!”
“Nonsense,” said the harbor master. “The boat was under control and seeking to avoid us.”
“He had a radio control!” I yelled. “He’s still out there in the harbor.”
“You bet he is,” the harbor master said. “In bits and pieces. I saw him fly through the air myself and explode to nothing!”
“That was a dummy!”
“I know a live man when I see one that is dead!” said the harbor master. “We got him! Are you Feds trying to take away the credit?”
“No, no! The credit is all yours! But mind what I say. He’s still alive. He will still try. You search that harbor and if you find him, kill him. It’s a Federal order!”
“All right,” he said and rang off.
I was fuming. How could Heller have known? Then I recalled that he had read the message sent by Captain Grumper of the Coast Guard and might have suspected it had gone to all points.
(Bleep) Heller! Him and his can of beer!
PART FIFTY
Chapter 3
Haggardly, I watched to see what would happen next.
All I got for two solid hours was an occasional slop of water and a bubble’s-eye view of the harbor.
They had a workboat under searchlights recovering debris. But that was not important. They also had a patrol launch cruising around, sweeping the water with long beam fingers.
I couldn’t really make out
where Heller was. At length when he lifted his arm, I saw that he was wearing a wet suit. I cursed. He had had a whole afternoon and all the resources he could loot from the Coast Guard ship to prepare his entrance. He was operating in a practiced role, that of the Fleet combat engineer, an officer with a fifty-volunteer star. But he was in very hostile waters and I doubted if ever before he had had as accurate a spy device on him as I had placed: this very viewer system.
I called the harbor master twice more, telling him I knew for sure the man was in the water and would be making for the yacht. He said he was taking every precaution.
Then suddenly I got a clear view of the ship. The Golden Sunset was lying to anchor, well away from everything else. My, she looked big—like a liner.
Floating stages were all around her, secured to her by cables. On her starboard side, her own landing ladder and white side were bathed in her own floodlights.
The view vanished and I had only blackness.
Then suddenly another view: her bow loomed up like a knife. Then it was gone.
If I could just determine exactly where he would be, I could alert them!
Another view. The ship seemed far away. She was broadside on and the landing stage and floodlights were glaring beyond the black expanse.
Excitedly, I called the harbor master. “He’s about a hundred yards abeam of the ship on her starboard side!”
“Got it!” he said and slammed the receiver down.
And he certainly did! I heard the approaching pulse of engines almost immediately. The harbor master, bless him, must be in radio contact with his patrol launch.
A brief view of the launch, coming head-on at speed, directly toward Heller!
Then blackness in the viewer.
I waited, breathless. A minute, two minutes, three minutes . . .
Another view! He was directly astern! About fifty yards from the yacht! The scroll, Golden Sunset, New York, was plain in the shimmery harbor lights.
I got the harbor master again. “He’s fifty yards astern of the yacht! GET HIM!”
“Right!” barked the harbor master.
The view was gone. But engines began to churn in the audio, getting louder.
A water-washed glimpse of the patrol launch showed. It was coming straight at him!
Blackness. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. I was holding my breath. Four minutes, five minutes . . . What the Hells was going on?
Dizzy and lightheaded from not breathing, I shook my head to clear it. My viewer was just staying black!
Scuba gear! He must be using scuba, taken from the 81! Yes, there was the hollow, rhythmical sound I had ignored. But where was he?
Time passed.
Then I thought I saw something. I could not be sure. It was just blackness against black.
I turned up the viewer gain all I could. Yes! An underwater piling! Heller was underneath a dock!
A view!
He was looking at a gas/Diesel supply float with a huge sign on it. The Marina!
I grabbed the phone. “Now you’ve got him!” I shouted. “What’s the dock directly across from your floating fuel stage?”
“That’s my office!” said the harbor master.
“He’s in the water under it!” I said. “SHOOT HIM!”
The phone went back on the hook hurriedly.
Voices! I heard voices in my audio.
“That god (bleeped) Fed on the phone says he’s right under this dock!” It was the harbor master’s voice!
“How the (bleep) would he know?”
“The hell with that! Get down on that fuel stage with rifles, fast. You, Hyper, get down that ladder and start shooting under there!”
Blackness.
The funky thud and moan a bullet makes going under water! Another shot. Another!
The churn of the launch engine.
A view!
It was from mid-channel, looking back at the dock.
BEROOOOOOM!
Flame geysering into the sky!
Concussion in the water!
The whole office went in slow motion up into the sky, turned over and fell apart in flaming chunks.
BEROOM!
The patrol launch disintegrated in a flash of fire.
BEROOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The whole fuel depot went up! A roaring mushroom of churning fire blossomed in the sky.
Fragments struck with a thunk and hiss close by.
At water level, a sweep of the scene.
It was just fires now, burning bright.
“Well, it wasn’t underwater detection gear, anyway,” muttered Heller. Then his eye fastened on a distant floating body. He said, “I’m sorry, you guys. May your Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your souls.” He sounded very sad.
I was cursing. I didn’t have anybody I could call.
But hope was not dead. The yacht had been alerted and he still had that gauntlet to run. That lighted landing stage could not be approached. Possibly they’d get Heller yet!
PART FIFTY
Chapter 4
About ten minutes later I got another view. It was of a wire cable, lighter black against the darker black of night.
He looked up. He was on the dark side of the yacht. He was holding on to the edge of the rigged collision stage which lay against its side. From where he was, the wire that secured the stage went up twenty or more feet to the lowest visible deck.
There were two more decks visible above and a man was visible against the stars and faintly luminescent sky. A guard. With a rifle. He was looking aft and across the water to where the explosions had recently occurred. The light of a renewed burst of flame flicked against his white uniform.
Heller reached up and took hold of the wire cable. With his other hand he made sure that the semi-floating sack was secure to his scuba tank straps.
Then, hand over hand, he began to lift himself up the cable.
“Ouch!” he said in a whisper. He was looking at his right hand while he held on with the other. He had apparently snagged his palm on a wire cable fray.
It made me feel better, with all the trouble he was causing me! He didn’t have engineer gloves and wire cable always has loose strands like needles broken in it and sticking out. Served him right, getting in my way!
But it didn’t stop him. With a glance at the guard above, Heller began to climb again, hand over hand, up the wire.
I couldn’t understand why the guard couldn’t see him! All he had to do was look down!
Heller stopped twice more. The cable was biting his palms, tearing the cheap cotton gloves to bits!
Hand over hand he went. He glanced one final time at the guard above and went over the rail onto the deck.
Why hadn’t that idiot seen him! Then I realized belatedly that the guard, glancing now and then at the fire on shore, was keeping himself night blind, the stupid fool! He couldn’t see something black against black water.
Heller found a deck locker, probably life jackets. He opened it. He crushed aside whatever it held and then got out of his scuba tanks, mask, weight belt and flippers and put them in.
He picked up his sack and went to a deck door. With ear against it, he listened. Then he opened it and stepped into a passageway. The lights were on but they were dimmed for night.
He looked around, orienting himself.
Footsteps clattering down a ladder.
Heller opened a door and stepped in, closed it behind him. He fumbled for a switch and turned the lights on.
A crewman was asleep in the bunk!
He was in the crew area of the ship!
A cook’s hat was on a peg.
Heller shut the light off.
The cook turned over with a grunt.
Heller opened the door and listened. Only some machinery running.
He went out, located some steps and went up a deck. Suddenly he found what he could use: a posted emergency-drill plan of the ship. It was set in a brass frame upon a walnut-paneled wall. It gave an outline of the sh
ip, deck by deck, with all lifeboats, fire hydrants and compartments plainly marked.