Night Probe! - Clive Cussler

Shaw was at a loss. None of this was going in the direction he intended. He flat out didn't know what Gly was talking about. He had no option but to string along. Very carefully he removed the message from his finger with his free hand and flipped it on the table in front of Gly and studied his eyes. There was a fractional glance downward, no more than a second. But it was enough.

"What puzzles me is why you're risking your life for a government and a man who wants you dead."

"Maybe I like the company benefits."

"Wit doesn't become you, Mr. Bogus Inspector Gly."

"How much did Villon tell you about me?"

"He didn't elaborate," said Shaw, mashing out his cigarette in an ashtray and noting that Gly's eyes followed the movement. "He only suggested that I would be doing Canada a favor by removing you. Frankly, I wasn't keen to play the role of a hired assassin, especially without knowing why you deserved to die."

"What changed your mind?"

"You did." Shaw had Gly's interest at a peak, but he still had no idea where it was taking him. "I began to study you. Your French-Canadian tongue is letter perfect. But your English: now there hangs another tale. Not the accent, mind you, but the terminology. Words like 'booze' and 'gizmo,' expressions such as 'What's the scam?' Pure Americanese. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked London to run a check on you. The answer is there on the table. You do deserve to die, Mr. Gly. No man deserves it more."

Gly's face turned menacing and his grinning teeth glistened yellow under the cabin light. "Do you think you're man enough to take me, dad?"

Shaw clutched the edge of the table with his hands and wondered how Gly intended to kill him. Gly would have to use a gun with a silencer or perhaps a knife. A loud report would bring Coli and the crew of the tug rushing into the cabin. Gly sat with his arms crossed casually in front of him. He looked relaxed, too relaxed.

"I don't have to bother. Mr. Villon had a change of heart. He's decided to turn you over to the Mounties."

Shaw had taken a wrong turn. He could read the mistake on Gly's face.

"Nice try, dad, but you blew it. Villon can't afford to keep me alive. I could put him behind bars until the next ice age."

"Just testing the water," said Shaw with feigned indifference. "The report is on Villon, not you." He nodded at the tabletop. "Read it yourself." Gly's eyes flicked downward.

Shaw threw every ounce of his strength against the table in a twisting motion and rammed the corner edge into the sweater just above the beltline.

A sharp grunt was the only reaction. Gly absorbed the momentum and scarcely recoiled. It would have knocked any other man across the room in agony. He clamped a great ham of a fist around a table leg and effortlessly lifted the heavy oak fixture to the ceiling.

Shaw was stunned. The thing must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.

Gly slowly lowered the table, and set it aside as easily as a child laying a doll in a baby carriage and, rose to his feet. Shaw picked up his chair and brought it down in a violent arc, but Gly simply grabbed it in midair, wrenched it away and placed it neatly under the table.

There was no anger, no savage glare in Gly's eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Shaw's only three feet away.

"I have a gun," said Shaw, fighting to keep his voice controlled.

"Yes, I know," replied Gly, grinning satanically. "A quaint, old-fashioned twenty-five-caliber Beretta. I found it stashed in a boot beside your bunk. In fact, it's still there. I made sure before I came in here."

Shaw realized he wasn't going to feel the hammer impact of a bullet or the cut of a knife. Gly was going to do the job with his bare hands.

Shaw fought off a wave of mental nausea and lashed out with a vicious judo kick. He might just as well have stubbed his toe on a tree. Gly spun sideways and neutralized the thrust to his groin, taking the blow on his hip. He moved forward, taking no precaution to cover himself. He had the blank look of a butcher approaching a side of beef.

Retreating until his back met a bulkhead, Shaw glanced wildly around for a weapon, a lamp, or a book he could hurl, anything to slow two hundred pounds of muscle. But tugboat cabins are conceived for austere living; except for a picture screwed into a panel, there was nothing in reach.

Shaw pressed the flats of his hands together and whipped them in a scything chop to the side of Gly's neck. It was, he knew with sickening certainty, his last act of defiance. The result was the same as striking concrete, and he gasped in shock and pain. It felt as if both his palm bones had cracked.

Gly, showing no ill effects, reached around the small of Shaw's back with one massive arm and pulled, while the other forearm pressed into Shaw's chest. Then Gly slowly increased the opposing pressures and Shaw's spine began to bend. "So long, you limey twit."

Shaw gnashed his teeth together as the agony suddenly mushroomed inside him. The air was squeezed from his lungs and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his head as the cabin began to dim and waver before his eyes. A final scream tried to force its way through clenched teeth, but died. There was nothing left now but the gruesome snap of his back. Death was the only release.

Somewhere in the distance, it seemed miles off, came the sound of a loud crack, and Shaw thought it was all over. The relentless pressure fell away and the agony dropped by several degrees. He went limp and crumpled to the deck.

Shaw wondered what would happen next. A long walk down a dark tunnel before reaching a blinding light? He was vaguely disappointed that there was no music. He began to itemize his sensations. It struck him as odd that he could still feel pain. His ribs ached and his spine felt as though it was on fire. Apprehensively he opened his eyes. It took them a few moments to focus properly.

The first objects he distinguished were a pair of cowboy boots.

He blinked, but they were still there. Calfskin with stitched design on the sides, high heel and modified pointed toe. He turned his head and looked up into a craggy face with eyes that seemed to smile. "Who are you?" he mumbled. "Pitt. Dirk Pitt."

"Strange, you don't look like the devil." Shaw had never doubted where he would eventually wind up.

Now the lips smiled. "There are some who would disagree." He knelt and hooked his hands under Shaw's arms. "Here, let me help you up, dad."

"God, how I wish," Shaw murmured irritably, "that people would stop calling me dad."

Gly lay like a dead man. His arms were loosely outflung, his legs twisted and slightly bent. He looked like a deflated rubber balloon.

"How did you manage that?" asked a dazed Shaw.

Pitt held up a very large wrench. "Equally good for turning bolts and denting skulls."

"Is he dead?"

"I doubt it. Nothing less than a cannon could wipe him out."

Shaw took several deep breaths and massaged his aching hands. "I'm grateful for your timely intervention, Mr…... er…..."

"The name is Pitt, Mr. Shaw. And you can cut the charade. We both know all about each other."

Shaw shifted his mind from first gear into second. Through luck he had barely survived one opponent, and now he was facing another.

"You're taking quite a chance, Mr. Pitt. My crew could come marching through the door any second."

"If anybody comes marching in here," Pitt said nonchalantly, "it'll be my crew. While you were waltzing with that walking muscle on the floor, your crew got securely stowed away in the engine room."

"My compliments," replied Shaw. "You walk softly and carry a big wrench."

Pitt shoved the tool into the side pocket of his windbreaker and sat down. "They were very cooperative. But I guess that happens to men when they stare into the business end of an automatic rifle."