Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Walt Garrity’s derringer.

Jiao…

Sands’s lover obviously feared that he’d never be taken as easily as we’d thought. Scooping up the recorder, I stand without reaching for the gun. There’s no need for it.

“Kelly, let them go! I’'ve got it! Don’t risk your life!

They can’t get away!

”

Sands looks back at me and laughs, then makes another try for the hatch. Kelly drives him off with a kick, but as he does Quinn shifts in his grasp, and Kelly almost loses him.

“Danny and Carl are out there!” I shout. “It’s time to get off the boat! Carl can blow them away if they go through that hatch!”

“Sands still has the detonator!”

Kelly screams. “Call Logan! We need cops down here!”

As the significance of

detonator

hits me, Quinn smashes an elbow into Kelly’s chin, stunning him long enough for Sands to kick him away from the hatch. While Quinn engages Kelly, Sands spins the hatch wheel, then seizes the heavy metal door and throws it to the foot of the stairs with a clang. I drop to my knees, grabbing for the derringer, but too late. Kelly twists like a cat, flinging Quinn bodily over his shoulder in a judo throw. The Irishman’s legs slam the rim of the open hatch, and I hear the crack of bone. I'm running forward with the gun when Quinn snatches Kelly’s shirt from behind and yanks him backward with all his strength. Sands kicks out at the same moment, and Kelly tumbles through the open hatch, snatching Quinn after him as he falls out of the barge.

Sands and I are alone.

I stop at the foot of the stairs, aiming the derringer up at the Irishman’s back. He’s standing in the hatch, staring down at what must be Kelly and Quinn fighting in the water. Certain that Kelly can handle himself against Quinn, I'm tempted to run for the main deck, but I can’t leave Sands with a detonator in his hand—not if any unexploded charges remain aboard.

“Back away!” I yell. “Get back! We’re going up to the main deck!”

Sands looks over his shoulder and laughs again. “Look at those screens! Do you want to be trampled to death? Do you want to drown under a thousand people?”

The monitor screens are blinking erratically, but I can still see that the grand saloon is teeming with panicked gamblers who have nowhere to run. Sands is right. Trying for the main exit at this point would be crazy. And the likelihood that Logan and his squad can impose any kind of order on that mob is minuscule. Climbing the first two steps, I steady the tiny derringer in my right hand and aim between Sands’s shoulder blades.

“Look at me, damn it! Give me the detonator!”

Sands turns from the hatch and raises his right hand, turning a small metal box in the red light. “What are you going to do with that peashooter? You need to press that against a man’s belly to be sure of hitting him.”

I take another step upward, and Sands’s grin disappears. He looks out the hatch, curses, then turns back to me.

“That first charge was nothing. Primacord on the mooring cables. I can blow the bottom out of this tub anytime. You might hit me if you shoot, but that pimp gun won'’t kill me. Not before I push the button.”

Come on, Kelly,

I think, wishing the commando would catapult back through the hatch like a ninja assassin. The river can’t be more than three feet below the hatch, if that.

“They’re gone,” Sands says, reading my mind. “You got what you wanted, Cage. You threw a wrench into the works. You queered my deal with Hull and cost me my fucking casino. Jiao helped you, didn't she? She planted the recorder.”

“If you step through that hatch, a sniper’s going to blow your head off.”

Holding the detonator tight, Sands crouches and looks out over the darkening river. “I don'’t think so.”

“He’s got a night-vision scope.”

“Oh, I'm sure. But where is he?”

“Helicopter.”

“Well, then. You’re going to call him off.”

“Why would I do that?” I move one step higher.

Sands wields the detonator like a Taser. “Because if you don'’t, I'’ll send this bitch to the bottom. I’'ve got seven or eight hundred hostages in my hand.”

“You can’t destroy this boat while you’re still on it.”

Sands gives me a defiant sneer and presses the remote.

The

Magnolia Queen

shudders like a bell being pounded with a sledgehammer. When the reverberations subside, the sound of screams reaches my ringing ears. Whether they'’re coming from the speakers or from other parts of the casino I don'’t know, but I'm certain Sands has mortally wounded the barge.

“If they don'’t seal the forward hold in sixty seconds,” he says, “this tub is going to the bottom. Call off your sniper, Cage. I have two more charges left.”

The barge shifts beneath my feet, wallowing in the river.

“Okay! I'’ll do it.” I take out my cell phone and pretend to make a call, but there’s no way I can let Sands leave this hold. If he gets twenty feet from the hull, he’ll blow every charge he has left just for spite.

“Call him off,” Sands says, scanning the river from the hatch. “I'm leaving. You can stay and die with the white trash and niggers you love so dearly.”

Walt’s derringer spits flame as I pull the trigger.

Sands’s eyes register an instant of terror, but his fear fades into a smirk when the ricochet pings off against the steel wall.

“What did I tell you?” he cries, laughing. “One shot left.”

“No. I’'ve got four left, thanks to a good friend. And your old lover.”

Sands’s arrogance twists into rage before my eyes. He whistles shrilly, then spins toward the hatch as I fire again. A bloom like a red paintball round blossoms on his right shoulder blade, then he drops through the hatch.

No splash,

I'm thinking when I hear metal scrape behind me. Whirling, I see only a blur of white against the red wash of emergency lights.

I twist away, but too late.

The jaws of Sands’s Bully Kutta clamp down on my left upper arm, then hurl me bodily off the steps and slam me to the deck. Releasing my arm to go for my throat, the dog opens its maw and lunges downward, digging into my shoulder and neck. With the speed of blind reflex I whip my gun hand under its jaw and pull the derringer’s trigger. There’s a muffled pop, then the Bully Kutta lurches and topples onto its side, paws paddling the air as it voids its bladder and bowels on the deck.

The sound of a revving outboard motor echoes through the room. Scrambling up to the hatch, I look down and see Sands seated three feet below me in a gray Zodiac raft. Bright red blood covers his back and right side, but his right hand still holds the detonator, which has several buttons on its face. With his left hand, he’s struggling to unmoor the raft from a cleat mounted on the barge’s side. Bracing myself in the hatch, I point the derringer down at him.

“Turn off the motor!”

The Irishman looks up in exhausted surprise, then holds up the detonator like a cross against a vampire. “Do you really want to die here, Cage?”

“No more than you! That sniper’s an ex-marine. The same one who shot your dog on the island. He can put a round through your brainstem before you push your buttons.”

Sands looks over the darkening river, then winces in pain. “I'’ll take my chances. I’'ve still got a few lives left.”

As he struggles to free the line with his good hand, I swing Walt’s derringer to the left and fire a round through the Zodiac’s side.

Sands screams in rage at the hiss of escaping air, but the Zodiac’s line is almost free of the cleat. Though part of the raft is deflating, it still looks seaworthy. And while Carl is out there somewhere, he has no idea what’s happening in this small recess in the barge’s side. He and McDavitt are probably trying to rescue people from the deck of the sinking casino—or from the river itself.