Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“No fucking way,” blurts Quinn.

Sands, too, is shaking his head.

“Anybody else is like no guard at all,” I say. “Sands could put down a city cop without breaking stride. I want someone who can control him.”

“Kelly it is,” says Hull. “Does he own a suit?”

“He’ll have one in fifteen minutes.”

“Then we’re done here.” Hull nods at the door, and the Green Beret steps forward and opens it. Quinn and Sands look like they'’re on the ragged edge of making a move, but Hull’s bodyguard projects the feeling that he wasn'’t party to the firearms prohibition governing this meeting.

Kelly’s hand is in the small of my back, pushing me through the hatch. He clearly doesn’'t want the two of us left in the room with Sands and Quinn. As I pass into the corridor, I'm acutely conscious that I'm leaving behind the taped evidence that will give me control of William Hull, but there’s nothing to be done about this, short of fighting the two Irishmen for it. I'’ll have to trust that Logan and his men can get down here and retrieve the recorder without trouble.

What fills my mind as we move up the passageway behind Hull is the real possibility of nailing Edward Po. I never quite believed that the billionaire would risk stepping onto U.S. soil, but maybe Hull knew his prey well, and did what was required to draw him into the net.

At the elevator we all bunch up again as we wait for Quinn to arrive and punch in the security code. The other three guards have gone, but when the elevator arrives and the doors open, it’s all we can do to fit the six of us inside the car.

Seldom have I felt more free-floating testosterone than I do in this elevator. Sands and Kelly, predictably, have gained the back wall, but I have to stand with Quinn’s chest pressing into my back. I half expect the knife he used to slice open my belt to slide between my kidneys.

“Fifteen minutes,” Hull says, as the car stops on the main deck. “You don'’t have Kelly a suit by then, we’re leaving without him.”

“He’ll have it,” I say, my mind on the recorder downstairs as the doors open.

Hull and his man are first out. When they step around the partition, Hull beckons Kelly forward. As Kelly moves past me, I feel a hand grab my shirt and pull me backward, then a man’s breath in my ear. “Remember that night on your porch?” Sands whispers. “You make all the agreements you want with Hull, mate. Just remember this. Nothing in my world gets resolved on paper.

Nothing.

”

As I pull away, he twists a piece of flesh on my side hard enough to pop blood vessels, but nothing matters at this point. Nothing but signaling Chief Logan to get the recorder from below. Kelly fades back to me with a curious look, as though sensing that something has transpired, but I shake my head and push him forward.

Rounding the partition, I look up to the head of the escalator, but Logan isn’t there. A large crowd is upstairs, and I try to pick the chief from the moving mass of bodies as Kelly takes my wrist and tugs me forward.

The ring of a cell phone behind me makes me turn. When I do, I see Seamus Quinn holding his phone close to his ear, trying to hear above the jangling noise of the casino. I'm about to turn forward again when Quinn’s eyes go wide, and he grabs the arm of Jonathan Sands, who’s two feet to his right. Sands looks annoyed, but Quinn jerks him sideways and speaks urgently into his ear.

Every instinct tells me something has gone horribly wrong. Without even sighting Logan, I raise my hand to the top of my head and pat it three times. Sands’s eyes lock onto mine from a distance of ten feet, the malice in them absolute. For a brief time we are joined by mutual hatred, then his hand darts into his pocket, my eyes scarcely able to follow the swift movement.

A burst of white lights the night outside the casino, then a staccato blast like fireworks rattles the windows. The crowd falls into a shocked hush, and then the whole casino lurches away from the shore, sending hundreds of people reeling. As a collective scream of

panic fills the saloon, Sands gives me a savage grin, then turns and races toward the stern of the barge, Quinn close behind him.

“Get off the boat!”

Kelly shouts, knocking me aside as he flies past in pursuit.

“Go, go, go! I'’ll get the tape!”

CHAPTER

69

Water cascades from the sprinkler system, and alarms ring shrilly while a recorded voice directs people to the exits with absurd calm. The bow of the barge seems to be drifting away from the riverbank, slowly but with increasing speed, like a log being pulled into a flooding river. The sensation is eerie, as though a huge hotel ballroom had begun to spin on its axis.

A scream of terror draws my gaze to the escalator. Chief Logan stands at its head, shouting for calm. Below him, a surging mass of gamblers has clogged the motorized staircase. Many have fallen, and people higher up are trampling them in their headlong flight to reach the main deck. Logan tries to stop the stampede, but the crowd swells over him like a tide, everyone with a single thought in mind—reaching the main exit.

Whirling from the mob scene, I look for Kelly, but I can’t find him in the seething mass of bodies. Then, to my right, I see his blond ponytail disappearing through a service door disguised as a section of wall. Maybe the elevator has stopped working.

I charge through the door where Kelly disappeared and immediately hear footsteps on the staircase below. Leaning over the rail, I see the top of his head as he crashes through a fire door. Taking the stairs two at a time, I follow. Are Sands and Quinn somewhere ahead? Or is Kelly only after the tape? All I know is that whatever happened to

this vessel was triggered by Jonathan Sands. Someone phoned Quinn with information, he relayed it to Sands, and Sands triggered the explosions.

Beyond the fire door, I see Kelly sprinting down a narrow passage that seems to run the length of the lower deck. It’s the same corridor we were in only a minute ago. Ten yards past Kelly, Seamus Quinn veers right and disappears, and I realize he’s back in the room we just left—the torture room nicknamed the Devil’s Punchbowl.

Could Quinn know about the tape? Did someone betray the presence of the recorder?

Kelly darts though the hatch where Quinn disappeared. Before I can follow, the boat abruptly stops drifting, and I crash to the floor. Either the barge has hit something or it’s reached the limit of any mooring cables that remain intact. Scrambling to my feet, I move through the hatch after Kelly.

The interrogation room is lit only by red emergency lights. Kelly stands thirty feet from me on the landing of the metal stairs by the far wall, his back braced against a steel hatch. One arm is locked around Quinn’s neck, the other pins one of the security chief’s arms. Jonathan Sands crouches two steps down from the landing, both hands raised, his fingers curled inward. There’s blood on the side of his face. He seems to want to get to the hatch, but when he lunges toward it, Kelly flicks out a lightning kick, driving him back.

“Where’s the recorder?” I shout. “Did they get it?”

“I don'’t know!” Kelly answers, wrenching his arm tighter around Quinn’s neck.

The cart at the center of the room looks undisturbed. Before I can reach it, the boat shifts again, and a thunderous rumble rolls through the barge. Then a vibration like thousands of running feet rattles the hull. On the monitor screens to my right, I see screaming passengers trying frantically to escape the upper deck.

As Sands rushes the hatch once more and Kelly drives him back, I snatch open the lower door of the cart and probe with my hand, unwilling to take my eyes off Kelly. Feeling several hard objects, I rake everything onto the floor. The recording device is there, amid rolls of wire and duct tape, but I have to blink before I can take in what also lies beside the recorder: a tiny, antique-looking pistol with a leather string attached to its curved butt.