Бретт Холлидей - Count Backwards to Zero

The sudden move had caught Shayne in the same block. When the truck bounced to a stop, its way blocked, Shayne did the only thing possible: he honked angrily, swung across the tracks on a warehouse crossing, and passed the blockade on a cinder road on the opposite side of the tracks.

“Don’t look too interested,” he told Anne. “People hijack garbage trucks all the time in Miami.”

Dessau had dismounted and was starting back. The truck driver came out on the step of his cab, a dark burly man in a T-shirt. The youth’s face shone palely through the windshield, and that brief glimpse gave Shayne the identification he needed. It was definitely the boy he had surprised in the hold of the Queen Elizabeth.

Shayne returned to the paved road at the next crossing, and continued south. Anne was all the way around, peering out the rear window.

“You’re torturing me, Mike,” she said desperately. “Turn around and go back.”

“I keep telling you there’s no hurry. Let them dig out the tank first. That’ll take time.”

The road curved to the right, following the angle of the shore. As soon as his taillights could no longer be seen from the vehicles behind him, Shayne cut back sharply onto a parallel road and began working back toward the warehouses.

A locked gate, opening inward, barred his way. He backed off, came forward hard against the gate and burst it open.

“Now that’s more like it,” Anne commented. “Mike, look. The odds aren’t bad at all. Forget the driver. He’s not part of this. Forget Cecily. That leaves two. If we surprise them we can do it without shooting.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want shooting. I’m just not planning to do any myself.”

She made an exasperated sound and hit him. “Will you stop treating it like a game?”

The phone rang as he was about to leave the car. He picked it up and snapped, “I’ll call you back in a minute.” He added after returning the phone to its clamp, “If everybody’s very lucky.”

“We’re going to be lucky,” Anne assured him. “I have that feeling. If I have to do it without you, I’ll do it without you.”

He cut his lights, hearing a vague rumbling noise from the street as the bed of the big dump truck came up.

There were no midblock street lights in this part of town, but the scene was well lighted by the two pairs of headlights. The open ground between the warehouses was weedy and rubble-strewn. Anne, in her heels, stumbled and clutched Shayne’s shoulder. She continued to hold him.

“Mike, please help,” she whispered. “We’ll pay you very well. Please. What will you do if I’m killed?”

“Call the FBI and let them mop it up.”

“I hate you. I hate you.”

Reaching the corner of the building, she stopped and looked out carefully. The truck bed was all the way up, and the rubbish container was beginning to slide. The end of the container broke open, and trash spilled out on the street. The truck driver was facing his vehicle, his hands against the cab door. Dessau stood a few feet behind him, holding a long-barreled Luger.

“Find some rope somewhere,” Dessau called. “We’ve got to tie this chap up.”

“Now,” Anne whispered. “Mike?”

He shook his head. “As I’ve been telling you, it isn’t my war.”

“You’ll feel sorry if it doesn’t work out.”

“Why should I?” he said softly.

She jerked away from him and walked into the open. Dessau didn’t notice her till she was ten feet from him, and then all he saw was an exceptionally attractive dark-haired girl in a blouse and skirt, the blouse unbuttoned part of the way down.

Following Shayne’s advice, she didn’t hurry. She held her open bag lightly in one hand.

“Something wrong?” she asked pleasantly. “Can I help?” The boy in the upraised truck bed called suddenly, “Watch out, I know her, it’s—”

Dessau’s gun started to come around. Anne fired through the bottom of her bag and the bullet struck him in the chest. She fired again after another step. Dessau fell. She continued up to him and twisted the Luger out of his hand.

The driver looked back over his shoulder, his mouth wide.

“Keep your hands where they are,” Anne said coolly. “Everybody go on with what you were doing. Now, isn’t there a girl around here somewhere?”

Cecily, who had been crouching on the far side of the Ford, broke for the shadows between the warehouses, where she collided with Shayne.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay at that motel?” Shayne said.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

“Mike, you’ll help me, won’t you,” Anne said, “now that the shooting’s over?”

“I’ll watch, thanks. You’re doing OK.” Bringing Cecily out into the light, he looked at the boy in the truck. “Do what she says, kid. She’s got all the guns and she’s a soldier.”

Taking Cecily with him, he walked up to Dessau. As the wounded man looked up from the curb, a bright red bubble broke from his mouth and dripped into the gutter.

“Can you talk?” Shayne said.

“If you say one word, Dessau,” Anne said calmly, “I’ll put a bullet in your head, but with the Luger this time, and blow it apart.”

She had taken a backward step so she could watch them all. With both guns, she looked very formidable. She gestured to the boy, but before he could respond the container resumed its slide, breaking apart as it hit the street.

“Driver,” she said curtly. “I need you. Do precisely what I say and don’t make any quick movements because I seem to be getting more and more tense. I’m working a very tricky equation. Mike, what I want you to do — and I’m not asking any more, I’m telling you — is get some of those rags from the trash and tie up the girl. Do a good job of it, hands and feet. I’ll check in a minute, and if the knot isn’t tight I’ll shoot you.”

She told the driver to join the boy and hunt for a discarded gas tank. Shayne found a rag and started tearing it into strips. Cecily, very meek, put her hands behind her and let Shayne tie her wrists.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” she complained.

“Gag her,” Anne added. “I don’t like that whine.”

The boy and the truck driver found the tank and worked it into view.

“This mother’s heavy,” the driver said, surprised.

“Put it in the Ford,” Anne said, and repeated, “in the Ford.”

They began to lift it. The boy’s grip slipped and it clanked heavily to the pavement.

Cecily squealed, “For Christ’s sake, be careful! You know what’s in it.”

They staggered past Shayne carrying the tank. He was inserting a gag in Cecily’s mouth.

Anne took two quick steps one way and then another.

“I won’t ask for advice,” she said, biting her lip. “I ought to be able to work this by myself. Nobody else will be shot,” she said as the others came back, panting, “if you all do what I tell you. Dessau is an intelligence agent, and he knew what he was letting himself in for. None of the rest of you are that involved, but you realize that I won’t hesitate to kill you if you force me to. Mike Shayne will tell you I mean what I say.”

“She means what she says,” he agreed.

She told Shayne to bind and gag the driver, then the boy, and to drag them between the warehouses. Cecily and Dessau were next. Then Shayne himself lay down and let her truss him up, using the stockings from her purse.

“Mike’s car,” Shayne heard her say under her breath.

She swung up into the cab of the truck and cut the lights. Coming down, she put a bullet into the two front tires and the radiator.

Before she left she stooped beside Shayne. “I liked what happened at the motel, Mike, but I truly hate you.”