Bounty Hunter, page 22
“Sir, the boiler!”
“I don’t give a—” Anderson fought to remain calm. “Carry out my order, Officer Benson.”
“Yes, sir.”
The inspector looked at Langford. “What do you suppose will happen if the boiler blows?”
“I don’t think we need worry about that, sir. There will be sudden vacancies in the police department for an inspector, a sergeant and two dozen officers, that’s all.”
Chapter 41
The boat was shuddering violently by the time she reached the strait and more officers were sprawled sick on the deck. There was a hammering noise from below and Tone noticed that Benson’s face was ashen.
He read the question on Tone’s face and shook his head. “She’s shaking apart. We’re up to twenty-five knots and she was never built to sustain that speed for any length of time.”
“The boiler?”
“She’ll blow; lay to that.”
Anderson was trying to appear calm. “Full throttle and keep her steady, Benson,” he said. “We’ll come up on those murderers soon.”
But Sprague’s longboat was nowhere in sight and a rolling fog bank had reduced visibility to a few yards.
“See anything?” Anderson asked. “Anyone?”
“No.” Tone answered for the others. “We’re sailing blind.”
“Damn it,” the inspector said, peering through the wheelhouse window into the mist. “Where are they?”
“Sprague would have told his crew to keep the yacht close to the strait,” Langford said. “We’ll find them.”
“Or they’ll find us,” Tone said.
A few minutes later the fog betrayed them.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the bank shredded into curling wisps of mist and suddenly the little boat was visible and vulnerable, charging through a blue sea spangled with sunlight.
Sprague’s steam yacht lay half a mile ahead, and men were scrambling up her starboard side from the longboat.
“We’ve got them!” Anderson yelled, smashing his right fist into the palm of the other. “We can board ’em, by God! Full speed ahead, Benson.”
But as men rushed around her deck, the big yacht was already turning to port.
“She’s showing us her ass,” Anderson said, perplexed. “Damn it all, she’s running.”
“No, sir!” This from Benson, who looked sick. “They’re uncovering a chase gun on the stern.” He peered through the window. “Oh, dear Lord, help us! It’s a Hotchkiss revolving cannon.”
“Look!” Langford called out, pointing.
Now the others saw what the sergeant had seen: the terrifying flag of the pirate ship fluttering from the Spindrift’s mainmast. Against a black background, a grinning white skeleton held a cutlass in one bony hand, an hourglass in the other.
“They’ll stand and fight,” Anderson yelled, grinning, his eyes wild.
As Tone recalled it later, those were the last words the inspector ever said.
Smoke puffed from the stern of Sprague’s yacht, followed by a bang that rolled across the flat sea.
A tall column of white water suddenly erupted on the little boat’s port side, and a moment later a second, vicious exclamation point of surf exploded to starboard, this one closer.
The yacht’s third shell crashed through the wheelhouse window, neatly decapitated Anderson, then detonated against the rear bulkhead with an earsplitting roar. Tone saw a flash of crackling silver and scarlet light around him and he was thrown headlong into the shattered window in front of him.
He lay stunned for a few moments and staggered to his feet as more shells crashed into the boat. He heard men scream and over in a corner Benson was groaning.
Through a drift of acrid smoke, Tone saw Langford lying on his back. The sergeant was bloodied but alive. Stepping over Anderson’s headless corpse, he kneeled beside Benson. He could see no apparent injuries and helped the man to his feet.
Tone took time to glance outside. The boat had turned broadside to Sprague’s yacht and was taking punishment, though she still had steam pressure and the screw was turning.
“Benson,” he said, staring into the cop’s face, “can you understand me?”
A shell crashed into the side of the boat and exploded. Abruptly she listed heavily to port and the wheelhouse reeked of cordite.
“Benson!” Tone yelled, shaking the man.
It took a few moments, but finally the cop’s eyes focused. “We’ve still got steam. Ram the yacht’s stern. You understand me? Ram her stern.”
Benson nodded and grabbed the wheel, spinning it fast, turning toward the big steam yacht.
Supporting himself on a shattered timber, Langford was on his feet, his face bloodied from a deep gash on his forehead.
“Are you all right?” Tone asked.
“I’ll survive.”
“Sprague’s boat rides high in the stern and they can’t depress the big gun much lower,” Tone yelled above the roar of yet another hit, this time well behind the wheelhouse. “We can sail under her line of fire and ram her.”
He studied Langford’s face. “We’ll go forward. Get your men ready to board her.”
“Where’s Anderson?”
“Dead. Now let’s go!”
Slipping on the blood and brains of dead men, Tone made his way to the bow. He heard Langford trying to rally his surviving officers. “Use your revolvers and then go to the knife, boys. Pirate scum can’t take cold steel in the guts.”
A thin, ragged cheer went up from fewer than a dozen throats. When, and if, they managed to board the pirate yacht, they could be badly outnumbered.
Tone looked behind him, across a deck torn by shot and shell. Despite his bloody face, Langford looked eager and ready, like a mighty, unmoving rock defying a sea storm. He had only ten officers around him, and one of those was favoring a wounded right arm.
Tone knew that his guns would have to make up for their weakness in numbers, a realization that thwarted his immediate plans.
The little boat was still plowing forward, though at a much-reduced speed. Smoke was pouring from the boiler room and she was shuddering so badly that Tone heard the screech of iron plates buckling. She was also settling lower in the water, wallowing like a sow in a sty.
Fifty yards separated them from the Spindrift.
A couple of shells from the Hotchkiss exploded far to their stern. Then the shooting stopped. The cannon could no longer be brought to bear. Slowly, the yacht began a turn to port to give the gun a clear field of fire.
In the shattered wheelhouse, Benson, his blood up, was screaming obscenities like a madman.
Thirty yards . . .
One of the officers sent to tend the boiler fire scrambled on deck. There was only a ragged stump where his left hand had been. He spotted Langford and yelled, “Sarge! She’s gonna blow!”
Twenty yards . . .
Langford looked back to the wheelhouse. “Benson!” he roared. “Ram her, damn your eyes!”
In reply, the man screamed louder.
“Sergeant Langford,” Tone said. “Your revolver, if you please.”
The big cop understood instantly why Tone would not fire his own guns. He passed over his revolver.
Ten yards . . .
The Hotchkiss cannon had been abandoned, but now the boat was coming under small-arms fire from Sprague’s deck. Tone aimed at a towheaded man who was leaning over the rail aiming a rifle and fired. The towhead threw up his hands and vanished from sight. Tone kept firing and, for the moment at least, cleared the rail.
With a tremendous crash, the little boat, now a splintered wreck, hit Sprague’s yacht on her port side just forward of the stern. Her bow failed to penetrate the Spindrift’s stout iron plates, but she rose up and climbed onto her, like a stallion mounting a mare.
The bow rose higher, tumbling Tone and everyone else head over heels along the deck until they collided hard with the base of the wheelhouse. Now almost vertical, the boat hung there until her weight forced her downward again. The bow crashed onto the deck, breaking apart Spindrift’s timbers as it buried itself deep.
A smoking, shot-riddled hulk, the little craft groaned, as though completely spent by this final effort, and stuck fast.
Tone scrambled to his feet and clawed his way up the crazily slanted deck. A bullet chipped wood a few inches from his face, a second sang a whining death song past his head. Behind him, Langford was exhorting his cursing men as they sought footholds on blood-slick planking.
Tone reached the bow and clambered over, aware how dangerously exposed he was to marksmen on the deck. He jumped onto the Spindrift—and was immediately skewered by a snarling sailor wielding a wicked-looking boarding pike.
Chapter 42
The sailor had aimed for a killing belly thrust, but Tone saw the danger and turned at the last moment. The foot of razor-sharp steel missed Tone’s guts, but scraped bone, skidded and buried itself an inch deep into the flesh of his left hip, just below his belt.
Feeling as though he’d just been branded by a red-hot iron, Tone grabbed the wood shaft of the pike with his right hand and aimed a roundhouse left at the sailor’s head. His punch connected with the man’s jaw and he went down hard.
Tone let the pike fall to the deck and quickly glanced around him. Led by Sprague, a dozen men were charging toward him, armed with pikes and boarding axes.
A bullet crashed into Tone’s left shoulder and sent him reeling. His back slammed hard against the Hotchkiss cannon and he cursed wildly. They were cutting him to pieces!
“No! I want that one alive!” someone yelled. It was Sprague’s voice.
Suddenly Langford stepped to Tone’s side, huge bowie knife in hand. Guns were firing and a pirate went down, screaming. The cops were swarming onto the deck, revolvers blazing.
“Stay right there, John!” Langford yelled above the battle din. “You’re out of it!”
Tone shook his head and elbowed himself erect. His .38s were in his hands and he was firing. Even light-headed as he was from loss of blood, at a range of less than ten yards Tone’s fire was devastating. Five of Sprague’s men immediately dropped dead or wounded to the deck, and the rest turned away from the deadly hail of lead.
Langford roared and led his men in a charge after the fleeing pirates.
His revolvers shot dry, Tone indulged in a grandstand play, a showy bit of bravado that he would marvel at later. He spun his guns fast, then, in one slick motion, did a border shift, reversed the .38s and slid them into his belt. It was his way of showing the pirate riffraff that he was still alive and eager for a fight. He would assure himself afterward that it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The battle had moved forward toward the bow of the Spindrift and the deck around Tone was deserted, except for the dead and wounded, several of them wearing blue uniforms.
Suddenly Tone became aware of the trim of the yacht. The deck was tilted away from him at an odd angle, and a marlin spike rolled toward him and vanished under the chase gun.
The Spindrift must have suffered below-water damage from the collision and was settling by the stern.
A sense of urgency in him, Tone stooped, picked up the boarding pike at his feet, and got ready to move forward to rejoin the fight. He felt weak and dizzy, though neither of his wounds pained him. If he survived, the pain would come later.
Seagulls, attracted by the scent of blood in the water, wheeled and swooped, calling out to each other. From horizon to horizon, the sky was a deep azure bowl and the sun was fair up, wedding itself to the sea with bands of gold. The pirate flag, black as a crow, still flapped from the mainmast, the skeleton dancing a jig in the breeze.
Tone started to make his way across the slanting deck, then stopped in his tracks. Blind Jack, huge, intimidating and dangerous, emerged from the narrow deck passage between the main cabin and the port rail. He grasped a bloody cutlass in his hand.
But it was the three people behind Jack that gave Tone pause.
Sprague was in the lead, holding a boarding axe. Behind him, dressed in a split canvas riding skirt, black vest and white shirt, was Chastity Christian. And behind her, thin and white as a cadaver, was Luther Penman, who caught sight of Tone, reared back his head and hissed his fury like a snake.
“Jack,” Sprague said, taking the giant by the arm and pointing him in the direction of Tone, “take him. Throw him into the longboat.” He turned. “You two, get in as well, or I’ll leave you to drown like rats.”
Blind Jack had lost the black band from around his eyes, revealing empty sockets networked with scars. He shuffled toward Tone, leading with his left foot, the scarlet-stained cutlass chopping at the air in front of him.
“Come to me, little rabbit,” he whispered. “I’m a rough-and-ready man, an’ no mistake, but I won’t hurt you—lay to that. See, matey, Cap’n Sprague wants you for his own, to gut at his leisure, as you must surely understand.”
Jack was only yards away and Tone had no intention of fighting him hand to hand. That was a battle he could not win. He bounced the boarding pike in his hand, finding the balance, then drew the weapon back and hurled it with all of his waning strength at the grinning giant.
Tone’s aim was true.
The lance-shaped blade drove through Blind Jack’s chest and stuck out a span-length between his shoulder blades. The giant staggered, dropped his cutlass and tried to tear the pike free. He failed and his knees buckled, sending him crashing onto the deck. A pool of blood, as black as Blind Jack’s heart, spread around him.
Sprague had been watching from the rail. “Stand by,” he yelled to Chastity and Penman, who were already in the longboat. “I’ll be right back.”
Now he looked across the deck at Tone, the axe slanted across his chest. “I’m going to cut you into collops, you traitorous dog.”
Wearily, Tone picked up Jack’s cutlass. Suddenly he wanted it over with. He needed rest . . . a place to rest. . . .
Sprague, knowing that the last grains of sand were trickling through the hourglass, charged, the axe poised for a tremendous killing stroke.
He was counting on Tone to step back, vainly trying to parry his attack with the cutlass. But Tone stepped into him. The axe swung, too wide. But the lower edge of the blade cut deep into the thick meat of Tone’s left shoulder, staggering him.
Cursing, Sprague sprang back. He eyed Tone and readied the axe again. Circling. “I’ve got ye now, Tone,” he snarled. “By God, I’ll chop you up and feed you to the sharks.”
Tone thrust with the point of the cutlass, stepping into it. Sprague easily avoided the other man’s clumsy rush and Tone stumbled and fell facedown onto the deck, the cutlass clattering away from him. He rolled over quickly. Sprague, grinning, had the axe raised above his head, ready to drive the blade into Tone’s brain. Knowing it was over, Tone threw up his right arm in a futile attempt to ward off the blow.
Sprague tensed, the axe swung. . . .
With a thunderous roar, the abused boiler of the little boat exploded.
The gigantic blast staggered the Spindrift like a terrier shaking a rat and she immediately listed crazily to starboard. Sprague was knocked off his feet and his head struck hard on the deck.
As debris thudded and clanked around him, Tone rose, his red-rimmed eyes searching. He spotted what he’d hoped to find, a securing rope neatly coiled at the base of the Hotchkiss cannon.
As Sprague groaned and rose to a sitting position, stunned, Tone made a loop in the rope. He stepped behind Sprague, dropped the noose over the man’s head, and tightened it around his throat.
Suddenly aware of what was happening, Sprague tried to scramble erect. Tone kicked him viciously in the side of the head and the man fell on his back.
“I’ll kill you, Tone,” Sprague croaked. “As sure as my mother is roasting in hell, I’ll kill you.”
“After I hang you for a damned pirate,” Tone said.
The Spindrift was sinking fast. Tone heard Langford yelling to get boats launched and, forward, feet pounded on the deck.
“You can’t hang me, Tone.” Sprague grinned. “I’ll take you down with me.” He grabbed the rope and rose to his feet, his face a twisted mask of hate. “Damn you, we’ll feed the sharks together.”
Tone felt unsteady and sick. His head swam and the slanting deck, sea and sky reeled around him. Sprague was closer, a taut stretch of rope in his hand extended in front of him like a garrote. The man’s eyes looked as though they were made of iron—flat, pitiless, eager to kill.
Letting go of the rope, Tone dropped to one knee and picked up the axe. Sprague was almost on top of him. The man ducked behind him and dropped the rope over his head and around his neck. Immediately the hemp tightened, crushing into Tone’s throat.
Gasping, his mouth a strangled O of pain and fear, Tone summoned his last reserves of strength. As pirates had done for hundreds of years before battle, Sprague had taken off his shoes for a better grip on the slippery deck. His bare right foot was extended in front of him to Tone’s side.
As blackness threatened to envelop him, Tone raised the axe and chopped down hard on Sprague’s unprotected toes. The man screamed and the pressure on Tone’s throat immediately stopped. Sprague had left four bloody toes on the deck.
Unable to stand on the stump of his right foot, the man dropped to a sitting position. Tone rose to his feet, swung the axe in a roundhouse arc, and Sprague’s head jumped a foot into the air, then rolled like a ball on the deck.
Roaring, teeth bared in a savage snarl, Tone lifted the gory, grinning head by the hair and held it aloft, an ancient Celtic warrior ritual as old as time, a throwback to a more savage age that still ran strong in his blood.
It was Langford who took the head from him and threw it into the sea. “John,” he said gently, “you must get into a boat. We’re sinking fast.”
Tone looked at the big sergeant, but neither heard nor understood.
Then, at long last, the blackness took him.
Chapter 43
“I woke up and saw this nun bending over me, smiling,” Tone said. “I thought I’d died and had gone to heaven, and that pleased me. I always figured I’d end up in the other place.”
