“Don’t!” Bobby shouted, and he came off the packing crate to run toward Marvin who was lifting the second bottle over his head, ready to throw it. He caught Marvin’s wrist in both his hands, struggling to loosen the second bottle of thinner from his grip. Marvin, like a quarterback trying to get off a pass against strong opposition, backed away from Bobby and collided with the wall and then rolled away from him and realized he could not get past him; this damn alcoholic fool was going to spoil everything! Costigan was on his feet and shouting, Marvin couldn’t understand what. He saw his father rising, saw his father standing up, saw his father coming across the room to pull at Bobby’s arm, to try to yank Bobby away from him so he could throw the bottle. The three men struggled grotesquely and silently for perhaps thirty seconds, with Costigan shouting and Marvin not understanding him, knowing only that he wanted to throw the bottle across the shop, but being unable to do so because Bobby was clinging to his wrist even though his father was trying to break the grip. He realized all at once what it was that Costigan was shouting to him, and he let the bottle drop into Costigan’s hands where they were outstretched and waiting, entreating patiently for the bottle while Bobby and his father struggled. A shot rang out. He saw his father stumbling backward clutching his chest, and wondered if he had been hit with a bullet, and then realized the bullet had hit not his father but himself, and it was only then that he felt pain. Costigan threw the bottle. The bottle crashed into the flames on the other side of the room near the open packing crate brimming with excelsior. Liquid fire went up and onto the crate and into the excelsior, ignited the gasoline in the cans near the wall. There was an explosion, and suddenly the entire shop was ablaze.
Marvin dropped to his knees, clutching his bleeding chest.
There was another shot.
And another.
Sondra saw the flames from the bedroom window of the Westerfield house. For a moment she did not know what to do. She felt only panic because she knew that Rog had said he was going to take a look around, and now there was a fire someplace in the town.
She stood at the window motionless for several seconds, her breath coming fast, and then she bit her lip and moved swiftly to the telephone. She was about to pick up the receiver and dial the operator when she saw the list of numbers Myron Westerfield had left beside the phone. The second number on the list was for the fire department on Big Pine Key.
Quickly, she began dialing.
The moment Luke threw open the overhead doors, the ocean wind fanned the flames across the shop floor, sent them rushing up the tool-hung pegboard wall to lick at the ceiling timbers. Harry was running to the fire extinguisher on the wall near the bathroom door. Clyde was backing away from the flames, firing his rifle in panic, as though he could stop the blaze that way. Luke grabbed Samantha’s hand and pulled her through the opening, fairly yanking her off her feet. Behind him he heard two more shots as Clyde fired again. His feet dug into the sand.
“Luke...”
“Run!” he shouted.
He had made his bid for escape, and now he lay on the floor of the shop with a bullet in his chest and a searing pain flaring across his shoulders and down his arms. Harry was shouting something to Clyde. There was the sound of running feet now, men arriving. “Give me a hand here!” Harry was yelling. “We need some water, some more extinguishers!”
“Marvin,” she said. She was leaning over him. He could not see her face clearly because his glasses had dropped from his nose when he fell. He looked up at her and winced again at the pain in his chest, and he thought, I almost made it, I almost escaped.
“Marvin,” she said, “are you all right?”
“Leave me alone,” he said.
“Marvin...”
“For God’s sake, leave me alone!” he shouted. “Can’t you even let me the in peace?”
“I love you,” she said. “Marvin, I love you.”
That’s fine, he thought. She loves me. That makes everything just fine and dandy. Love will conquer all. Love will take away this burning pain in my chest, love will foil the plot of Jason Trench, love will save the world and the human race.
I’ve got news for you, he thought, and then his head fell back and his eyes rolled up into his forehead sightlessly.
“He’s dead,” Selma said to no one.
She felt almost relieved.
Jason’s men were running up from the dock, and Luke’s first instinct was to drag Samantha in the opposite direction, toward the Tannenbaum house at the western end of S-811. He remembered then that these men were armed and that anyone running away from the shop would be immediately suspect and would probably draw fire. For a reckless moment he considered running directly into the midst of the advancing men, shouting orders at them, telling them what was needed at the burning shop, giving force and direction to a mindless moving body of men who were responding only to the immediate threat and presence of fire. Samantha, he thought. They might accept me as one of their band, but if they see a woman, no. The beach. “This way,” he whispered, and his hand tightened on hers as he turned and ran onto the coral leading to the oceanfront. He had no clear idea of what he would do next. The important thing for the moment was to escape being seen by the men who were running up from the dock toward the paint shop. It seemed to him that the best way to do this was to get over the coral to where it dropped down to the beach, and then double back toward the dock. He had no plan beyond that, no scheme, not even a very clear idea of what might happen to them if they were caught. He had a vague notion that they would be killed, yes, but death seemed unreal in the same way Jason’s invasion of the town seemed unreal, in the same way Jason’s proposed suicide mission seemed unreal, in the same way everything that had happened since sunrise this morning seemed unreal. He could not muster fear, he could not allow himself the luxury of an emotional involvement, because the basic thread of Jason’s plan seemed intellectual in concept, reducing even the fear of death to an abstract idea rather than a reality that might overcome them within the next few minutes. His hand holding Samantha’s was not sweating. His heart pounded only with the exertion of their wild scramble over the coral and onto the sand; he felt no fear. He knew they had to get away, had to get out of town to warn the authorities, but he didn’t know which authorities he should warn — the police, the Coast Guard, the Army, who? He felt almost dismally certain that they would never get out of town alive, but he felt no fear. Jason’s men were in the diner at the eastern end of the road, and the diner commanded a view of the entrance to U.S. 1 as well as the thicket across S-811, so that was out. But if he and Sam ran up the beach toward the Tannenbaum house, they might possibly be spotted by the men fighting the fire at the paint shop, where the coral shelf was lower and the beach clearly visible. And even if they got past the shop, there were Jason’s men in houses all along the beach; any one of them was a potential danger. No, the dock was the place to go, and he headed for it only as a refuge at first, seeing the long empty wooden length of it, and the white Chris-Craft sitting at the pier’s end, Joel Dodge’s boat, and then realizing that the boat was a means of escape, and suddenly conceiving a plan.