“How about it?” Padillo asked Burchwood and Symmes.
“Isn’t there some other way?” Symmes asked. “All that violence.”
“If you’ve got something better, lay it on.”
Symmes and Burchwood telegraphed their messages to each other. They nodded agreement. I shrugged.
“O.K., Mac, here’s the bottle.”
“No sense in waste,” I said, and took a drink and gave it back. “Hand it up to me.” I heaved myself up to the top bunk. Padillo took a drink and passed me the bottle. I poked its neck through the metal-wire mesh that covered the red light and smashed the bulb. I turned and lay lengthwise along the bunk, which was only eighteen inches or so from the ceiling. The door was to the right of the bunk and I held the bottle in my right hand.
“O.K.?” Padillo whispered.
“Ready,” I said.
“Go ahead, Symmes,” Padillo said.
I could hear but not see Symmes moving toward the door. He let out a scream, a good loud one that ranged up and down the scale. He began to pound on the door with his fists. I took a tighter grip on the bottle.
“Let us out!” Symmes yelled. He made his voice crack. “He’s vomiting blood. Let us out, for God’s sake; let us out!” He moaned and whimpered. He was very good.
“What is it — what’s going on?” It was one of the Albanians calling through the door in German.
“This man — this Padillo is sick — he’s getting blood all over everything. He’s dying.”
Some voices murmured in the other room. A key turned in the lock. The door opened and light from the other room shafted in to show Padillo bent over in a corner, his head cradled in his arms. The Albanian came through the door, gun drawn, his eyes on Padillo. I swung the bottle in a flat sidearm, backhand motion. It hit the back of his neck and shattered. The pieces tinkled as they fell to the floor. Padillo sprang from the floor and chopped the Albanian across the throat and grabbed his gun. The Albanian crumpled. I rolled out of the bunk and snatched Symmes’s left arm and bent it backward behind him until it almost touched his neck. He screamed and this time it was sheer pain. I jabbed the broken shard of the bottle against his neck with my right hand. Padillo had the Albanian’s gun up against Burchwood’s neck, just below the right ear.
“We’re coming out, Jimmy,” he called. “Just stand there. If you blink, I’ll shoot Burchwood and Mac will slice Symmes’s throat.”
Looking over Symmes’s shoulder, I could see Ku and Maas through the doorway, standing by the table. Maas’s mouth was slightly open. Ku’s hands were in his jacket pockets, his face impassive except for a slight, bemused smile. “How’d you fake the blood, Mike?” Ku asked.
We moved out into the room slowly, turned, and backed toward the stairs.
“I didn’t,” Padillo lied. “I just stuck my finger down my throat and it came up. I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs and something’s bleeding inside. Call your man down from topside, Jimmy.”
Ku called him and the other Albanian clattered down the stairs backward. Padillo clipped him hard across the back of the neck with the barrel of the gun. He fell forward on the stairs and then bumped down the steps to the floor. He didn’t move.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Ku said.
“I evened the odds,” Padillo said.
“You know I have a gun in my hand?”
“I don’t doubt it. But shooting through a coat pocket is tricky, Jimmy. You might hit me, but more likely you’d hit Burchwood here. And anyway I’d pull the trigger and he wouldn’t have any ear left or any face. As for Mac, he’d probably cut the big vein or at least make Symmes whisper for the rest of his life.”
“Shoot,” Maas whispered to Ku, his eyes bulging a little. “Shoot, you fool.”
“I would just as soon shoot you, Maas,” Padillo said, “and make my deal with Jimmy alone.”
Ku’s smile grew broader and he exposed some very good teeth or an excellent cap job. “Make your proposition, Mike.”
“We’ll leave these two on deck for you after we bolt the door from the outside.”
Ku shook his head slowly from side to side. “Not good enough. You’d spill on us, Mike, once you got off this barge. One way or the other, you’ll have to try to shoot your way out.”
I could feel Symmes’s Adam’s apple move against the broken neck of the bottle that I held pressed to his throat. I gave a small jerk to his left arm and he gave out a little cry, like a kitten’s whimper.
“Please,” he said, “please do what they say. I know they’ll kill me. I’ve already seen them kill too many people.”
“Shoot them,” Maas pleaded. Ku’s hand moved slightly in his jacket pocket.
“No more, Jimmy. I don’t have to aim, but you do.”
“Shut up, fat man,” Ku told Maas.
“Let’s go,” Padillo said to me, and started to back toward the stairs. He kept the gun pressed against Burchwood’s neck, his eyes on Ku. I watched Maas and gave Symmes’s arm a tug. We backed after Padillo and Burchwood.
The door next to the table banged open and a chunky, blond man jumped into the cabin. He held a shotgun in his hands and he was waving it around the room when Padillo shot him. I knocked Symmes to the floor and dived for the stairs. I could see Maas fumbling for his Luger. Padillo fired again, but nobody yelled. There was another shot and Padillo grunted once behind me but kept scrambling up the stairs. I was outside and Padillo stumbled through the doorway of the stairs. He fell and sprawled on the deck. I picked up his gun transferring the broken neck of the bottle to my left hand. I flattened myself against the cabin housing, and when Ku came through I chopped the wrist that held his pistol with my gun barrel. He yelled and dropped the gun, stumbled over Padillo, and sprawled into the darkness. Padillo got to his knees. His left arm hung limply by his side. He turned and looked at me. “Take care of Maas,” he said. He got painfully to his feet and Ku jumped him from the edge of the pool of light. I couldn’t get in a shot. Ku’s left hand, palm up, jabbed at the base of Padillo’s nose. Padillo blocked it with his right and kicked out with his left foot. The kick was low and caught Ku on the thigh. Ku jumped back into the darkness and Padillo dived after him. I started to move toward them, but I heard a clatter on the stairs. I flattened myself against the cabin housing. The noise on the stairs stopped. I could hear a thumping out in the darkness, and then I could make out two figures struggling tight together against the low railing that ran around the stern of the barge. There was a scream and they disappeared over the side. There was a splash, smaller than I expected. And then there was no noise at all. Nothing. I ran to the railing and the shotgun blasted behind me. The blast drilled a thousand or so burning needles into my left thigh. I stumbled and fell to the deck, twisted around, and saw Maas framed in the door of the stairway. I lifted the gun and took aim and pulled the trigger and it clicked.
Maas smiled and walked toward me carefully. I threw the gun at him and he dodged. It was no trouble. He held the shotgun casually, just aiming it enough to make sure it would blow off my head. I looked at the shotgun and then at Maas. “So, Herr McCorkle, it is only you and I.”
“That’s a bad line, Maas, even for you,” I said, dragging myself up so my shoulders rested against the stern railing. My thigh was wet and warm and covered with liquid fire.
“You are hurt,” he said, and sounded as if he were really concerned.
“Just a nick — nothing really. No need to panic.”
“I assure you, Herr McCorkle, I am far from panicking. Everything has worked out even better than we had planned.”
“What happened to Symmes and Burchwood?”
“They are comfortably asleep for the moment. A slight, carefully placed blow. Perhaps they’ll have a headache, but no more.”