And the Deep Blue Sea

  He was thinking swiftly. The others? Lind, Mayr, the bos’n, and Karl would be on the boat deck, all armed, and only two of them, at most, busy cutting the bottoms out of the other three boats with the torch. Simple suicide. Lind alone, unarmed, could probably kill him with his bare hands. Otto? With a steel bulkhead behind him and fifty feet of open deck on each side, he was impregnable. And unless he was removed, they were all finished.

  “What could you do with a gun?” she asked again. “Against all six of them?”

  “Kill Otto,” he said.

  She understood what he meant. They had to get the crew back here. Even if he could get into the engine room, he didn’t have the faintest idea how to shut off the sea intakes or start the fire pump, to say nothing of the fact he wouldn’t recognize either of them if he fell over them.

  “But as soon as they realize what Lind’s doing,” she protested, “Otto won’t be able to keep them there.”

  He could until it was too late, Goddard thought, but there wasn’t time to explain. They knew already. Of the thirty, Otto could stop only the first six or eight, but who was going to be in the first six or eight? Until he emptied his clip, nobody would get to the top of either of those ladders. That also meant the second wave had to climb over a ladder full of wounded men, with Lind and Mayr shooting straight down on top of them from the bridge.

  Sparks! He was the only one who’d be alone and where there was a chance to reach him. He grabbed Karen by the arm and ran her down the passage to the door of the hospital. “Wait here,” he said. “Bolt the door, and don’t open it until you know it’s me.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The radio shack. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  He went up the inside companionway on the run, trying to visualize where the wireless room would be. The cage for the antenna lead-in was on the starboard side of the boat deck near the bridge, so it should be forward in the starboard passageway. He emerged into the thwartships passage of the officers’ deck and turned right, going softly now, and listening. As he turned the corner, he heard a noise ahead of him, but it wasn’t a radio receiver or the staccato chirping of continental morse; it sounded like a wrecking crew at work, metallic crashings and a splintering of glass.

  It was coming from the second door in front of him. He eased up to it and peered in. The radio console with its main, emergency, and high-frequency transmitters, its receivers, and its desk and typewriter stand, was in the middle of the room, facing the door. Sparks had all three transmitters tilted out in the servicing position with their circuits and components exposed, and was standing with his back to the door, using a fire ax to reduce them to electronic hash.

  Lind never missed a bet, Goddard thought. He should have realized a mind like that would never overlook even the possibility there might be another qualified operator aboard. He sighed, stepped softly up behind the Latin on bare feet, and slugged him over a kidney. Sparks slumped in agony, and dropped the ax. Goddard twisted an arm behind his back and ran him across the room into the steel bulkhead. His knees buckled. Goddard flipped him over onto his back even as he was collapsing, and he lay looking up, dazed but still conscious, the dark eyes eloquent with hatred. Kneeling beside him, Goddard patted his pockets. They were empty.

  “I want a gun,” he said.

  “La madre.”

  “Where is it?” Goddard leaned back and could just reach the head of the dropped fire ax. He set the pointed side of it on Sparks’ throat. “Why not tell me now? When this goes through your voice box, you’ll have to point.”

  “I haven’t got one.”

  “I guess I should have told you,” Goddard said. “I’m short of time.” He began to press on the ax.

  “If I had a gun, I’d be glad to give it to you.”

  “Sure, I know. And where.”

  “Listen. If you’ll take that thing out of my throat, maybe I can tell you so you’ll believe me. I hate you. I hate your guts. I hate all of you arrogant pigs. But if I had a gun and thought you could stop that murdering cabrón, I’d give it to you.”

  Goddard frowned, but released the pressure on the ax. “Why?”

  “I went into this for the money, because I needed it, and nobody was going to be hurt. But now it’s gone bad, so he’s going to leave the whole crew here to burn.”

  “What about that?” Goddard gestured toward the wrecked transmitters.

  “He said he’d gut me. In public. And he would.”

  Score another one for the Lind mind, Goddard thought; public was the operative word. You couldn’t depend on scaring a Spaniard with death; only with humiliation. He got up and tossed the ax into one of the transmitters. “Have at it.”

  Sparks stared. “Just take my word for it? You’re not going to tie me up?”

  “I haven’t got time,” Goddard said. “Anyway, nobody that hates me could be all bad.” He went out and hurried down the companionway.

  He might be taking a chance. If Sparks called Lind, he and Karen would be dead in the next five minutes, but he didn’t think he would. In a world of office-seekers and deodorant commercials, how could you doubt a posture like that?

  Smoke was growing thicker in the passageway on the crew’s deck, boiling up in dense clouds through the hatch from below. When Karen opened the door of the hospital she was coughing with it and tears ran down her cheeks. They were out of time already; they had to do something, and now.

  “Sparks didn’t have a gun,” he said, “so we’re down to the desperation stuff. We’ve got to go for Otto, and there just may be a way I can do it. As long as he’s in the middle of the deck, there’s not a prayer, because it’s at least fifty feet from the corner of the deckhouse, all in the open, and I’d never make it. But if I can get him to come toward me—”

  “How?”

  “If I go out on deck on one side, the men in the well-deck will see me. They wouldn’t give it away intentionally, but out of thirty at least ten will keep looking in that direction, so he’ll know there’s somebody around the corner. He’ll come over to see, and if I can hear him I can tell when he’s close enough to try to jump him.”

  “And you’re a producer?” She shook her head. “Harry, that man has gone toward that corner, or door, in a thousand pictures, and the only thing that’s always the same is that the gun is straight out ahead of him, ready to shoot. If you were close enough to dance, it wouldn’t work. But there is a way.”

  “What?”

  “Diversion. It’s just as old, but in this case it’ll do the trick. We both step out, on opposite sides, but I come on past the corner so he can see me. He’s certain I’m dead miles back there in the water, so he’ll freeze just long enough for you to reach him.”

  “Sure. And that grease gun will be pointed right at you, so when I land on him he’ll cut you in two.”

  “No. Just before you hit him, I’ll duck back past the corner. It’ll be only one step.”

  He nodded. There was another way, too, that he could ensure the gun would be off her before a reflex could trigger it. “Okay,” he said, “but one more thing. That rail where he is is solid, so if we crawl forward, the men in the well-deck won’t see us and give it away. But you stand-up two or three steps before you get to the corner. Give him some preparation, so you won’t startle him into shooting before he thinks.”

  “Don’t worry, Harry.” She was supremely confident. “I tell you he’ll freeze.”

  He had to have a weapon. They found a twelve-inch crescent wrench in a locker. It had a brutal heft to it, which was just what he wanted; it had to be done with one blow, and he didn’t care if he drove Otto’s skull into his pelvis. He slipped forward to the messroom porthole and checked again. The big sailor was still in the same place.

  They stepped out onto the after end of the deck to the roar and the heat of the fire. It was like a scene from hell, he thought, but the fury of the squall was beginning to slacken a little. He chose the starboard side. That way he’d be running f
or Otto with the bulkhead on his left, his right unhampered. They went in opposite directions, and when they reached the corners they looked back at each other. She smiled and gestured with circled thumb and forefinger. He wished he felt that relaxed; he was beginning to have butterflies. That was going to be the longest fifty feet in the world. He dropped to his knees and started to crawl.

  It was awkward because he could use only one hand. With nothing on but a pair of shorts he had no place to carry the wrench except in the other, and he couldn’t let it bump the deck. As he went forward he rehearsed it in his mind. One stride before he reached Otto, he’d sing out. The sailor would start to whirl, swinging the gun, so it would be well off her before the wrench landed. That was simple enough, but he wasn’t as certain about the other signal, that to the men in the well-deck.

  Mayr or Lind, or both, would be watching the well-deck too, and they would kill a lot of men on those ladders, shooting straight down from the bridge. But if he could signal them not to rush the minute they saw him get Otto, they wouldn’t have to file up like ducks in a shooting gallery. They’d all make it if he could get them to hold, as if Otto were still there, until he could go up to the after end of the boat deck and give them covering fire.

  He looked out at the sea. The wind and rain were lessening all the time now, and he could see the pall of smoke blowing out to leeward for several hundred yards. It was only a few more feet to the corner. He was beginning to tighten up. Suppose Otto happened to be looking this way just as he peeked around the corner? Well, for Christ’s sake, what could he do about it? Why get in an uproar over something entirely out of his control?

  He was there. With his hand as near the deck as he could get it, he leaned forward and peered around. Otto was in profile fifty feet away, staring unwaveringly down into the well-deck in front of him. His belly was against the rail, and though his forearms were resting on it, he held the weapon at ready, in both hands, with a finger inside the trigger guard. Goddard took a long, deep breath, and waited, conscious of that impulse to yawn which in a situation like this was just the opposite of what it implied.

  Thirty more seconds went by. She was giving him plenty of time to be set. But not too much, Danish doll; this can get pretty hairy. Now! Otto’s head was turning; he was looking to the left. The men in the well-deck had seen her. He tried to breathe against the tightness in his chest, and garnered himself to leap. Then Karen Brooke stepped out into the open at the other corner of the deck house. He stared, and almost forgot to go into action, with an impression he must be as goggle-eyed as Otto. She’d taken off Antonio’s jacket.

  She was facing Otto completely nude above the nylon briefs, and if that weren’t enough to nail any normal male under ninety-five solidly to the deck, she was also as wet and dripping as if she’d just emerged from the sea, and drowned strands of blond hair were plastered over her face. She made a beautiful ghost, he thought, but he almost felt sorry for Otto as he got into gear at last and started running softly across the long expanse of open deck. It seemed almost superfluous to hit him.

  But if Otto was no longer a problem, the men in the well-deck were something else. As he ran, presumably in full view of them, he made a slashing Cut! gesture with both arms and then pushed toward them with his palms, but not a damned one of them had even seen him. And suppose he couldn’t even get Otto to whirl and swing that gun off her? Take him by the shoulders and turn him, like a mannikin in Macy’s window? It was less than ten feet now, and he was driving.

  “Otto!” he snapped, and whacked the rail with the wrench at the same time. That did it.

  The big sailor came unglued at last, and started to wheel, and at the same time Karen jumped back out of sight around the corner. He swung down with the wrench, getting the wrist into it at the end, and it made a sound he was afraid Lind might hear on the bridge. Otto simply collapsed, two hundred pounds of bone and cabled muscle folding up and settling to the deck like a deflating pneumatic toy. There was a good chance he’d killed him, and while it might bother him later, at the moment he didn’t seem to care.

  Strangely, the gun didn’t fire at all. With his left hand he grabbed it from the other’s lifeless grasp before it had a chance to drop. He turned. The men in the well-deck were catching up now, and when they saw him with the gun, two or three started to break for the ladders. He made a savage gesture of the arm: Back! But they didn’t get it fast enough. There was a shout from the bridge, followed by the crash of a gun. He dropped the wrench, pointed the gun out toward the sea, and pulled the trigger. It was on single fire, so he shot twice more.

  He made the gesture again, and this time they all got it. Nobody had fallen at the shot from the bridge, but now he saw Barset, at his third shot, clap a hand dramatically to his chest, grimace with agony, sway, and fall forward on his face. Trust a con man to pick it up, but, God, what a ham.

  The men were shifting back now, watching him with the same fear and hatred they had Otto, so it should be safe as far as the bridge was concerned. He gave it to them in pantomime: pointing to his watch, holding up five fingers, then to himself, pointing aft, up, and then swinging the gun forward with a raking motion. There was no way they could signal they understood, but they should have it. He dropped beside Otto and fanned him for spare clips. He had two.

  He waved to the crew, and ran around the corner. Karen was waiting for him. She had the jacket on again and looked blandly innocent.

  “Now I know what they mean by overkill,” he said, as they hurried aft.

  “Well, you were taking a terrible chance. And when I guaranteed he’d freeze, I meant it”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you consider I might choke up too?”

  “Oh, come. The worldly Mr. Goddard?”

  They stopped near the after corner of the deckhouse while he told her what he was going to do. Then he thought of something else.

  “I’ve got to get Spivak out of the engine room,” he said. “They can’t start the fire pump or close the sea intakes even after they get here. And we need that gun.”

  “But if they hear any shooting down here, they’ll all come down.”

  “I think I know how we can do it.” He told her while he made a quick inspection of the gun. He knew nothing at all about automatic weapons, and it was of European manufacture. Precious seconds flew by while he found out how to change clips, and then, with the gun empty, experimented with the settings to discover which way it was on safety. Then the remaining one had to be continuous fire. He shoved in a full clip, and handed Karen the other two. “Hold these for me. I’ll be right back.”

  He ran in through the smoke in the passage, and up the inside companionway to the wireless room. Sparks had closed the transmitters, and was seated at his desk with his head in his hands. When Goddard spoke from the doorway, he turned. He looked at the gun with no expression of any kind, and said nothing.

  “The crew’ll be back here in a few minutes,” Goddard said. “If they get control of the ship again, it’s not going to be any love feast, and they won’t believe you wanted out of the mess unless I tell ’em.”

  Sparks nodded. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve got to get Spivak out of the engine room.” He indicated the telephone. “Can you call him from here?”

  “No. The only master control is on the bridge.”

  “Well, there’s another way. Come down to the grating on the crew’s deck and call out to him. Tell him Lind’s launching the boat and is going to leave him. I’ll take it from there. A deal?”

  “Let’s go,” Sparks said. They ran down the companionway. When they reached the crew’s deck, flames were now shooting up in the smoke boiling from the hatchway. The shelter deck was afire.

  “Make it fast,” Goddard said. He pulled open the steel door to the engine room casing and stood out of sight to one side. Sparks stepped in on the grating. “Spivak!” he called out. “You’d better get up here. They’re launching the boat.”

  From where he was, Godda
rd couldn’t see in. He waited. The fire continued to mount around the ladder from the shelter deck, and paint was bursting into flame above it here in the passage. Smoke was choking him. Sparks stepped back into view.

  “He’s coming,” he whispered. “On the last ladder. Gun’s in his dungarees.”

  Goddard nodded, and gestured for him to move back. Spivak lunged into view through the doorway. Goddard shoved the muzzle of the gun into his side. “Hold it, Spivak!” The oiler gasped, and stiffened. Goddard pulled the Luger from his waistband, and tossed it to Sparks. “Hang onto that for a minute.”

  Spivak shot a look of hatred at the operator. Goddard prodded him again with the muzzle of the gun and jerked his head down the passage. “Get going!” Spivak hesitated for a second, but turned and marched ahead of him. They reached the open door of the hospital. “Inside,” Goddard ordered.

  Spivak turned. His eyes were terrified as he gestured toward the flames and smoke boiling up at the end of the passage. “But—but—she’s afire.”

  “I’m glad you called that to my attention,” Goddard said. He put a hand in Spivak’s face and shoved. The oiler shot in against the bunks. “Wish us luck.”

  He pulled the door shut and dropped the padlock through the hasp, but didn’t snap it. Running back down the passage, he gestured to Sparks. They leaped out on deck and around to the port side away from the searing waves of heat from number three hatch. Karen was waiting. Goddard took the Luger from Sparks and gave it to her.

  “When they come up the ladder, give this to Mr. Svedberg,” he said swiftly. “Tell him I’ll need help up there, as fast as I can get it. Maybe they can get up through the chartroom. Spivak’s in the hospital, and if they can’t control the fire, let him out, but I don’t think he’ll be any better off when they get their hands on him. And tell them Sparks had nothing to do with leaving them here.”

  She nodded, her eyes apprehensive. She knew what he meant: it was in case he didn’t make it down from there himself.

  “I promised,” he said. “And they might get to the radio room before I have a chance to tell ’em. Let’s go, Sparks.”