Текст книги "Gangway!"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

Соавторы: Donald E. Westlake
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

    "Fog's thinning out," Captain Flagway said. He was watching the taut anchor chain that extended into the fog ahead of them. He was beginning to make out the shape of the steamship just ahead.

    Somewhere in the vague foggy distance behind them there were bells and sirens and gunshot-signals. It was all unhappily reminiscent of various chases and battles Flagway had drunk his way through along the South American coast. Here he was in motion for the first time in three years, on the deck of a ship slicing through the water, and he hated it.

    Flagway hated the sea. He always had. All he wanted was a railroad ticket to Baltimore.

    It was definitely lifting. The fog. He saw the vague shape of a man striding into the stern of the steamer.

    That must be the captain, he thought. He almost waved to the man. After all they were colleagues.

    Yes, it was definitely the steamer's captain. You could tell by the way he started screaming, shaking his fist, and throwing his gold-braided hat on the deck and jumping up and down on it.

    Finally the fellow went away for a few minutes. When he returned he had two sailors with him, and they both carried crowbars. They started prying at the anchor hooked into their stern rail.

    All at once the steamship leaped forward, the anchor flew into the air, and the captain and two sailors and two crowbars all fell bloop into a scrambling mass of arms and legs.

    And Daniel Webster steamed off into the mist, quickly absorbing herself from view.

    He smelled Roscoe's approach. "Got a little breeze up out here," Roscoe said. "I'll get the boys to run up the canvas. You want to go steer?"

    Flagway edged away from him. "Why shur… shut… shertainly."

    "Due north after we bust out the Golden Gate. That's where m'brother's got the other ship."

    On the way to the tiller Flagway noticed Gabe, still draped over the rail like a suit waiting to be sent to the cleaner's.

    Beyond Gabe he noticed the gold wagon again. Well after all it was only the Government's money. Governments did all sorts of things with money, but Flagway couldn't think of any government that had ever done him any good personally. All he really wanted out of life was to get home and go back to helping Daddy in the apothecary shop. Was that so much to ask? Yet the governments of sixteen countries had prevented him from achieving that simple goal for more years than he could count.

    Manning the tiller and peering glazedly into the thinning mist, Captain Flagway watched Roscoe's toughs swarm up into the rigging and loose the sails to the wind. He aimed the lumbering ship north into the Pacific Ocean.

    Slowly, Gabe lifted his head. The horizon was doing seesaw things.

    Vangie said, "Feeling any better?"

    "I'm either cured or dead. I think."

    "You mean it's all over?"

    "I mean, I think the teething ring I lost when I was eight months old has just turned up."

    Weakly he turned around and leaned his back against the rail to survey the ship. Roscoe was marching about giving orders to his crew in a voice like a bassoon. Captain Flagway was at the tiller making drunken gestures, flanked by Francis and Ittzy. The gold wagon crouched under its tarp with the broken mainmast across it.

    "We made it," Gabe said slowly. "How about that. We made it."

    "So far," Vangie said.

    "Boy, you are something," he said. "You are really something. You just never give up. Now just what the hell do you mean, 'so far'?"

    "We're in the middle of the ocean. So what happens when we land again? Don't you think the police will be waiting to arrest you?"

    "No."

    "Well, you're probably right about that. Because we'll never get that far. Roscoe and his brother will probably feed us to the fishes first."

    "I'm glad the sea air makes you so cheerful."

    "When Roscoe throws your dead body overboard, don't say I didn't warn you."

    "I probably won't say a word."

    "And there's another thing. Isn't the ship wallowing kind of low in the water?"

    He shrugged. "Probably the gold."

    "We'll never get away with it," she said. "Not in a million years."

    "Yeah."

    "Did you see the headline in that paper last week when they hanged those murderers? JERKED TO JESUS. That's what they're going to do to us."

    He closed her in the circle of his arms. "Yeah."

    "Don't think you're going to shut me up by romancing me, Gabe Beauchamps." Then she gave a strangled little cry and stiffened in his arms.

    Gabe leaned back a bit to look at her and saw her staring forward. He turned his head, and here came Roscoe and his crew, fanned out across the deck, a little less menacing than the armies of Attila the Hun.

    Roscoe was armed with his two enormous pistols, and his men brandished huge knives and belaying pins.

    Gabe knew the answer to the question, but he asked it anyway: "What's up, Roscoe?"

    "Your time, buster," Roscoe said. He gestured with the guns. "We're taking over."

    Vangie, anger and frustration in her voice, said, "I told you!"

    "Easy," Gabe told her.

    Francis, coming up next to Gabe, frowned at the tough guys and said, "Roscoe, whatever is the meaning of this?"

    For once, Roscoe had no trouble meeting Francis' eye. "It means you're shark bait, pretty boy," he said. "You and all the rest of them."

    Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Vangie drifting away to the right. Did she have something in mind, or was she just moving aimlessly, out of fear? To keep Roscoe's attention, just in case there was something afoot in Vangie's agile brain, Gabe said, "You can't run things without me, Roscoe, you ought to know that."

    Roscoe grinned, sure of himself. "You don't think so, huh?"

    "Not a chance," Gabe said, and made himself grin just as easily and self-confidently as Roscoe. "You couldn't find your nose with your hand if you didn't have help."

    Roscoe's grin faded. The pistols in his hands leveled themselves more specifically at Gabe. His voice grating with meanness, Roscoe said, "You talk pretty tough, New York boy. But I'm the one with the guns in my hands."

    "Oh, Roscoe," Francis said. "Do stop playing at being a big boy."

    "We'll see about that," Roscoe said. "You people just move yourselves over by that rail there."

    Francis was looking pale but clearly determined not to show any fear. "Why?" he asked.

    "We're about to find out," Roscoe said, "just how good you folks can swim."

    "Listen," Gabe said, but he never got to finish the sentence, because all at once Vangie made her play.

    The movement was just a blur; her years of pocket-picking experience came in very handy when it was her own pocket she was picking. Out came Gabe's knuckle-duster, moving so fast he could hardly make out himself what she had in her hand, and she fired the one bullet it contained.

    It was either a brilliant shot or a lucky one. It knocked one of Roscoe's guns right out of his hand.

    Gabe whipped the whisky flask from his hip pocket and leveled it at Roscoe. "Drop it, Roscoe," he said, "and don't make a move."

    Roscoe was already bending over his numbed hand. Now he dropped his second gun and clutched at his injury.

    His crew started to move forward, raising their clubs and knives, closing in on Gabe and Vangie and Francis, with Captain Flagway at the wheel just behind them.

    "No!" Roscoe cried, waving his men back with his good hand. "That thing's a…"

    "… gun," Gabe finished, and fired one shot into the air.

    The crew hesitated.

    Francis grabbed a handy marlin spike, and pointed it at the tough guys. "Yes," he said. "And this is a gun."

    Ittzy took the explosives book from his pocket. "And this is a gun."

    Captain Flagway unscrewed a spoke from the wheel and brandished it, not too steadily. "Yes, and this is a gun," he said.

    The tough guys looked at one another, at Roscoe, and at the array of objects being pointed at them. More bewildered than anything else, they dropped their arsenal of weapons and raised their hands into the air.

    "That's smart," Gabe told them. "Francis, get around behind and disarm them."

    "That'll be a pleasure," Francis said.

    "Then we'll tie them up and stow them below."

    Roscoe snarled. "Okay, okay," he said. "But you wait'll my brother gets his hands on you."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

    In the Pacific Ocean just outside the Golden Gate two San Francisco Police launches sliced through the water toward a distant fast-moving smudge of smoke. In the bow of the leading launch stood McCorkle, shading his eyes to scan the horizons. He pointed toward the smoke and the launches picked up speed to go charging after it. McCorkle took out his notebook and made a note.

    Elsewhere in the Pacific, Francis stood in the bow of the San Andreas and pointed toward a distant motionless smudge of smoke. "That's probably the Sea Wolf."

    Gabe said, "Okay, everybody knows what to do."

    "Get killed," Vangie said.

    Down in the hold Roscoe and his gang sat roped and gagged on the floor. Water was starting to slosh around on the floorboards.

    Roscoe grunted. His eyes went wide with alarm as he watched the water run across the decking. He began to thump his heels on the boards. The rest of the gang followed suit, and they got a pretty good drum chorus going, accompanied by strangled grunts. But it didn't seem to be doing any good. There was no sign anyone up on deck could hear them.

    Miles to the south, the police launches closed slowly with the fast-moving smudge of smoke.

    The motionless smudge of smoke to the north was coming into view of the San Andreas, close enough now to reveal the ship beneath it: Sea Wolf-rough, scaly, rusty, dark, grim, ominous.

    Vangie, watching it loom ahead of them, closed her eyes and leaned faintly against the foremast, shaking her head dismally.

    Slowly the two ships converged.

    Captain Flagway uttered slurred suggestions having to do with the placement of ropelines. Francis and Ittzy waited by the rails while Flagway guided the ship, lurching and heeling, into a position approximately broadside to Sea Wolf. Lines flew across to lash the ships together.

    Gabe had reloaded everything that passed for a gun and distributed them all among his crew. He stood now with one of Roscoe's huge revolvers in his belt and watched cautiously while mangy-looking sailors moved forward to Sea Wolf's rusty rail and tossed several planks across to make a bridge between the two ships' decks.

    There was a moment of silence, then, when nothing at all happened. Gabe could feel the tension in his own unlikely crew; Francis trying to look mean, Vangie trying to look tough, Captain Flagway trying to look sober, and Ittzy

    Gabe glanced around. Ittzy was just sort of standing there, unconcerned. Gabe wondered how the little man would get out of this one, and whether or not any of the rest of them would ride out of it all on his coattails.

    There was somebody coming. Gabe faced Sea Wolf again.

    A heavy-set gent with an eyepatch and a hook for a hand had appeared. A marlin spike was stuck in the thick rope holding up his trousers, and what looked like a rope burn circled his neck. He came thumping across to the San Andreas on one of the planks, jumped down onto the deck, and stood glaring around, sizing everybody up.

    "He is meaner-looking than Roscoe," Vangie whispered.

    Captain Flagway sighed. "I wish I was in Baltimore."

    The big man with the eyepatch and the hook and the Marlin spike gradually narrowed in on Gabe, fixed him with his eye, and said, "Where's Roscoe?"

    Gabe moved forward, mostly because he so much wanted to move back. "Roscoe's below," he said. "You his brother?"

    "Me?" Chuckling, the big man shook his head and said, "I ain't that tough. I'm First Mate Crung."

    Gabe said, "Well, where's Percival?"

    "You shouldn't call him that," First Mate Crung said softly. "He mought hear you. Captain Arafoot is who he prefers to be."

    "Well, where is he?"

    "Captain Arafoot never leaves his cabin at sea."

    Gabe started to grin. "Seasick, huh."

    "Naw. It's just that every time he comes out he kills two or three guys, and we can't afford to lose crew that fast."

    Vangie uttered a faint moan.

    Well, it was no time to turn back. And the San Andreas had gone just about as far as she could. She was settling in the water-even a landlubber could see that much. Gabe said bleakly, "Well, I'll go over to him then. Meanwhile why don't you get your crew to start moving that wagon over to your ship? We're a little short-handed over here."

    Crung frowned around at the deck. Ittzy, Francis, Flagway, Gabe, Vangie. Nobody else around. "So I see."

    Vangie grabbed Gabe's sleeve. "Don't go."

    "Vangie, when you're caught in a rising flood you don't just sit down and pray for drought. I got to." And he stepped past Crung, walked across the planks onto the rusty deck of the steamship, and stepped aside to let the half-dozen crewmen past who'd been summoned by Crung. They were a slinking, cowering lot, scurrying across and ducking away from him and from everybody else who stood upright. Something, he judged, had scared the guts out of all of them. It wasn't hard to guess what it was.

    Vangie watched Gabe walk on board Sea Wolf as if it were a tightrope. She wanted to cry. It was such a shame. So much ingenuity and courage, devoted to a doomed mission.

    She watched Gabe climb across coiled hawsers and reach the door of the captain's cabin. He knocked briskly and waited.

    Even from here she could hear the sudden roar that boomed from the cabin. She shrank back and felt herself wanting to cower just like Captain Arafoot's crew.

    Gabe pulled the door open and strode into the cabin. She watched with one eye. He'd left the door ajar behind him, but she couldn't see into the darkness within.

    The roar increased to a ROAR.

    Meanwhile, the Arafoot crew pushed and shoved, sweating and whining. They were trying to maneuver the gold wagon toward the planks that bridged the two ships, but the wagon weighed close to three tons and wasn't very helpful. When they finally got it away from the stack of hay bales, it began to roll in the wrong direction-toward the windward rail.

    Ittzy leaped onto the wagon and grabbed the brake handle.

    After that Ittzy stayed on top of the wagon to steer with the wagon-tongue and stay close to the brake. The crewmen hustled and groaned and heaved and sweated, and slowly the wagon moved toward the planks.

    Vangie saw the activity out of the corner of her eye while she watched the dark doorway of Captain Percival Arafoot's cabin. Her hand was to her mouth. What could be going on in there?

    Suddenly Gabe came pelting backwards out of the cabin as if he'd been nudged in the chest by a railroad engine doing ninety miles an hour. He tumbled head over heels across the deck.

    But at once he scrambled back to his feet, rushed to the cabin door, slammed it shut and jammed a bar down across it.

    It didn't make the ROAR recede to a roar. It remained a ROAR, growing louder if anything. The door began to rattle and shake against the bar.

    Vangie saw Gabe brush sweat from his brow and lean shaking against a rusty ventilator hood.

    The gold wagon was up on the planks now, with Sea Wolf's crew cringing under Crung's shouts, trying to manhandle it across to their ship.

    But the two vessels were riding up and down on the water, not in unison, and the planks kept tilting back and forth, so that the wagon rolled forward and back, forward and back, never quite making it all the way to the deck of either ship and never quite falling into the sea between them.

    Vangie saw Gabe react to the sight of all that gold out there swinging precariously above the frothy sea. His face filled with pale alarm; he moved forward with arms outstretched, calling something. It was as if he wanted to gather the wagon into his arms and bring it gently and safely to the deck of Sea Wolf all by himself through sheer strength of will.

    And then the tilt of the ships sharpened. The wagon careened forward onto Sea Wolf's deck, scattering sailors like birdshot.

    The wagon made a sweeping curve around the deck with Ittzy steering madly on top. It teetered near the far rail, and Gabe was running after it like a crazed jilted lover, waving his hands in the air. It began to topple over the side. Gabe jumped up and down, yelling.

    The sea lifted. Sea Wolf tolled a few degrees. The wagon was returned to the deck by that motion; it kept on moving, and Vangie suddenly realized it was juggernauting directly toward Captain Arafoot's cabin. With Gabe still in hot pursuit.

    The wagon swept past a tangle of ropes and barreled with a tremendous crash into the cabin.

    It demolished the outer wall. Dense dust and debris flew in all directions. Everybody stopped to stare.

    In the sudden silence the ROAR climbed to a ROAR that vibrated through both ships, shaking them to their keels.

    Vangie blinked. She tried to stare through the pall of dust and flying objects. What was happening?

    From the cloud emerged a giant figure draped in the tarp that had been covering the gold.

    The tarp walked on legs. It was tied around with ropes, and with every ROAR, it shimmered and vibrated like the asbestos curtain at the finale of a cancan show.

    Behind the canvas-wrapped giant there emerged from the dust a sword. After the sword came Ittzy.

    The point of the sword was lightly prodding the rear of the ROAR.

    As the two figures progressed out of the cloud, Gabe stepped in front of the ROAR, stopped it with a hand in the middle of the canvas, then bopped it on the top with a belaying pin.

    The ROAR modulated through ROAR to roar to roar to a kind of clogged silence. The tarped figure swayed on its feet.

    Gabe yelled across to the San Andreas: "Crung. Hey, Crung!"

    "Yeah?"

    "Get all your crew over there with you on Captain Flagway's ship. Every man-jack."

    "Yeah? What for?"

    "Just do what I say."

    Crung walked out onto the planks between the ships and stood there steady as a rock. Vangie shuddered. Crung said softly, with menace, "And if I don't?"

    "Maybe," Gabe told him, "I'll release Captain Arafoot here and let you explain to him why you wouldn't obey orders when I was holding him hostage. Or maybe I'll just throw him over the side and feed him to the sharks. I haven't quite made up my mind yet."

    Crung nodded thoughtfully. It wasn't that he was giving in. It was just that he was thinking, and with Crung that was obviously a slow process.

    His one eye blinked. His one hand toyed with the marlin spike. He turned slowly and surveyed the deck of San Andreas. His eye flicked from Francis to Vangie to Captain Flagway. "Well now," he said slowly, "if it don't look like I've got me some hostages, too. How about that now?"

    Vangie whipped out the knuckle-duster. "Forget it, buster."

    Captain Flagway staggered out from the tiller, braced his feet and addressed himself to Crung. "Now, look here. I'm a peash-peace-loving man. I have never disemboweled anyone in my life. I'm a bit long in the tooth to start gouching-gouging men's eyes out and chopping their heads off, and crashing-cracking their skulls with clubs. I just don't think I could stand to do things like that."

    "Yeah?"

    "So I wish you would just pay attention to what Mr. Beauchampsh tells you, and do what he says, and not make any fuss."

    Crung blinked at Captain Flagway. He blinked at the knuckle-duster wavering in Vangie's hand. He turned his head and blinked at Ittzy and the sword. He blinked at Gabe, and saw him holding the flask. In a tone of exasperated despair, he cried, "And what's that supposed to be?"

    "It's supposed to be a flask," Gabe said, and fired a shot in the air. "But it's a gun."

    Crung turned his head back and forth, looking from one of them to another. "You're all crazy people," he said. "All of you. All except that fruity-looking one there."

    Francis stiffened. "Anyone who dresses himself in that overmasculine way," he said coolly, "and chooses to spend utterly months at a time at sea without women, nothing but men for companionship, is hardly in any position to cast aspersions. I've met a goodly number of you sailor types, believe you me, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that…"

    "Alright! Alright!" Crung turned very quickly toward Sea Wolf and bellowed: "All hands!"

    "Fruity indeed," Francis said.

    Vangie said, "Never mind, Francis, just consider the source."

    "Oh, I do."

    "Get over here onto this miserable hulk," Crung yelled at his crew, and at once they slunk and slouched across onto the San Andreas, never meeting anyone's eyes.

    After the Sea Wolf had been emptied of all its original personnel except for Captain Percival Arafoot, Gabe cried, "Vangie, come on over! Francis, Captain Flagway!"

    Vangie had been propping the knuckle-duster on the tiller. "Francis," she said, "would you mind terribly holding this for me?"

    "Oh, my dear, of course not. How remiss of me. Here, I'll carry it."

    The knuckle-duster looked, if anything, less appropriate in Francis' hand than in Vangie's; still, he wore it with a certain dash.

    The three of them skirted the muttering crew and crossed the planks to Sea Wolf. Midway, Vangie looked down at the water heaving between the two ships and for the first time truly understood Gabe's reaction to the sea. But she forced herself to keep moving, following the weaving, perilous Captain Flagway, and once aboard the solid Sea Wolf, she felt better again.

    "Okay, Percival," Gabe said. "Time for you to walk the plank."

    "ROAR."

    "Move, now," Gabe insisted. "You can take your teeth with you, or you can leave them behind. Which is it?"

    "Roar."

    Ittzy pricked the tarp with the point of his sword, and the tarp-wrapped figure felt its way out onto the planks, guiding on the sound of Crung's voice: "Keep that son of a bitch off here, damn it! He'll kill all of us. Can't you have a little goddamn decency and shove him overboard?"

    Ittzy and Francis were fumbling with knots in the ropes that held the two ships together. Captain Flagway was making his way to the controls on the bridge.

    The ships began to draw apart. Gabe said, "Hey Crung."

    "Yeah?"

    "Keep him tied up, he won't do any damage."

    "You don't know him."

    "Well, he's your problem now, I guess. But you've got some help. You'll find Roscoe and his gang down below in the hold. And listen-one more thing. The Olivers are looking for that ship you're on. You better move on out of here fast. I'd head north along the coast if I were you."

    Vangie saw the look of satisfaction on Gabe's face as he turned away. She felt proud and sad, both at once: all that brilliance in a doomed enterprise.

    He said, "Well, what do you think now? Are we going to get away with it?"

    "Not in a million years." She smiled sadly, fondly. "But nobody else could have come as close."