Jack Higgins: Drink With The Devil

“Come on, let’s get moving.”

Dillon dragged on the suit awkwardly and the cowl over his head. He pulled on the socks, then picked up the other weight belt and fastened it around his waist with the velcro tabs. Then he reached for the diver’s knife in the sheath.

Sollazo said, “Leave it. You’re the last man in the world I want to see with a lethal weapon.”

“Suit yourself.”

Dillon picked up his inflatable, then took the other Orca computer and went up on deck to where the others waited, sheltering from the rain under the deck awning. Sollazo followed him.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We’ve got to husband ourselves. We can only spend so much time down there, you know that, even less if it’s lying at a hundred and twenty. You go first, Dillon, and see what you find.”

It made sense and Dillon smiled. “My pleasure.”

With a skill born of long practice he lifted the inflatable and tank over his head, inserted his arms, and strapped the velcro tabs across his chest. He sat down to put his fins on and took the Halogen lamp Mori passed to him looping its cord round his left wrist. He leaned over the rail to swill out his mask, then pulled it down and turned, sitting on the rail.

He raised a thumb. “We who are about to die salute you and all that old Roman rubbish,” he said, put his mouthpiece in, checked that the air was flowing, and went over backwards.

HE PASSED UNDER the keel, found the anchor line and started down, pausing at fifteen feet to equalize the pressure in his ears. The water was extraordinarily clear yet strangely dark, and he pulled himself down the anchor line checking his Orca computer. Thirty, forty, then sixty feet and there it was looming out of the gloom, tilted to one side, quite visible even without the lamp being turned on.

He was at ninety feet and the ship lay on a smooth sandy bottom that sloped downwards. Here and there great fronds of seaweed undulated backwards and forwards in the current.

Dillon closed in on the prow and switched on his Halogen lamp, and there it was clearly visible in spite of being encrusted in barnacles, the ship’s name Irish Rose , and this was special because he’d been part of what had happened here.

He moved towards the stern, torn apart by the force of the explosion, and there was the truck to one side of the ship. Obviously the explosion had torn it free from the deck clamps and, incredibly, it had settled upright on all six wheels.

Dillon moved to the rear, raised the door clamp, and pulled. It refused to budge. He tried again, but got the same result. No point in wasting precious time at that depth so he made for the surface.

HE WENT UP the small side ladder to the deck, pushed up his mask, and spat out his mouthpiece. They all stood waiting.

“For Christ’s sake, Sean, tell us the worst,” Barry pleaded.

“Oh, it’s there,” Dillon said, “and at ninety feet, which is useful. Gives more bottom time.”

“And the truck?” Sollazo demanded.

“That’s there, too. It obviously became detached from the deck in the explosion, and it’s standing upright beside the ship.”

“Marvelous,” Sollazo said.

“Only one thing I don’t understand. When we grabbed the truck we used an electronic device called a Howler that screwed up the security system so everything unlocked.”

“So?” Sollazo said.

“I couldn’t open the rear door.”

“So the electronics got shook up in the explosion,” Sollazo told him, “or maybe the door jammed. We’ve got Semtex and pencil timers. Go down and blow it.”

“Yes, oh master,” Dillon said. “Just get me the necessary.”

Barry crouched beside him with a Semtex block. “Here you go, Sean, and a three-minute pencil timer.”

“Czechoslovakia’s contribution to world culture,” Dillon said.

“Can you manage?”

“Can a fish fly?”

Hannah called, “Take care, Sean.”

“Don’t I always?” He pulled down his mask, sat on the rail, and went over.

HE HAULED HIMSELF down the anchor line again, the quickest route, made for the truck and floated there, working the plastic block of Semtex around the door clamp. Then he broke the timer pencil. There was a gentle fizzing and he turned and made for the surface. Barry reached a hand down to help him up the ladder. Dillon sat down and the others moved to the rail. After a while, the sea boiled, turning over angrily, and a number of dead fish surfaced. Soon it was still again.

Dillon grinned up at Sollazo. “Don’t tell me, down I go again.”

THE TRUCK HAD moved to one side but was still upright and the rear doors had been blasted apart, one hanging on the hinges, the other lying some distance away where it had been thrown. Sand hovered in clouds. Dillon approached and switched on the Halogen light and experienced a considerable shock, for the truck was empty.

HE HUNG AT the bottom of the ladder, took out his mouthpiece, and looked up as they all leaned over the rail.

“You’re not going to like this one little bit, Jack,” Dillon said. “But there’s nothing there.”

“What do you mean there’s nothing there?” Barry demanded.

“I mean, the truck’s empty.”

“It can’t be empty,” Barry said. “You told me you looked in the back when you knocked it off on that road. It was there then.”

“Yes, it was,” Dillon said. “But it isn’t now.”

Kathleen Ryan’s face was burning, her eyes dark holes. “Someone must have been here before.”

“Not possible,” Dillon said. “The door was fast and no sign of blasting.”

“Mori, help me,” Sollazo said and reached for his inflatable and tank. “You’re going down again, Dillon, and I’m going with you. I think you’re lying.”

“Suit yourself,” Dillon told him and went under again, starting down the anchor line.

He hovered beside the wreckage of the stern of the Irish Rose hanging on to a rail, and Sollazo drifted down to join him. He poised there, then swam toward the truck. Dillon went after him.

Sollazo hung on the edge of the door and peered inside. He turned once to glance at Dillon, his face clear, then turned to the dark interior again. Dillon came up behind him, pulled the diver’s knife from Sollazo’s leg sheath, reached over and sliced open his air hose.

Bubbles spiraled at once, Sollazo swung round, eyes staring. His hands went to his throat and he started to rise. Dillon grabbed for an ankle and pulled him down. The kicking stopped surprisingly quickly, and finally, he hung there, arms outstretched. Dillon pulled off the mask and Sollazo stared right through him straight to eternity. The Irishman took him by the hand and started up.

IT WAS KATHLEEN Ryan who saw Sollazo’s body first as he surfaced to starboard. “Would you look at that,” she said.

Hannah joined her at the rail. “Oh, my God.”

Barry and Mori hurried over. The Sicilian, without hesitation, pulled off his jacket and shoes, jumped over the rail, and swam to Sollazo. He got an arm around him, paused, and turned and looked up.

“He’s dead.”

DILLON HAD RELEASED the body at ten feet and swam under the rail to the port side. He surfaced, unfastened his inflatable and tank and let them go, pulled off his mask and fins and peered cautiously on deck. Barry, Kathleen, and Hannah were at the rail and he could hear Mori calling. “Throw me a line.”

Dillon hauled himself over the rail and slipped down the companionway to the saloon. He got the Emergency Flares cupboard open, found the Walther, and went back up.

Barry was standing at one side of Hannah and Kathleen engaged in unfastening a lifebelt. As he threw it over, Dillon said, “Easy does it, Jack.”

He stood in the entrance to the companionway, a supremely menacing figure in the black diving suit, the Walther in his right hand.