The blanket was hauled back roughly and Bond tried to turn his head, eyes widening as he saw the figure above him. Nannie Norrich had her small automatic in one hand.
‘Well, well, Master James, we do have to get you out of some scrapes, don’t we?’ She turned her head. ‘Sukie, it’s okay. He’s down here, trussed up and oven-ready by the look of it.’
Sukie appeared, also armed. She grinned appealingly.
‘Bondage, they call it, I believe.’
She began to laugh as Bond let off a stream of obscenities which were completely incomprehensible from behind the gag. Nannie wrenched at the handcuffs and shackles. Sukie went aloft again, returning with keys.
‘I hope those idiots weren’t friends of yours,’ said Nannie. ‘I’m afraid we had to deal with them.’
‘What do you mean, “deal”?’ Bond spluttered as the gag came away. She looked so innocent that his blood ran cold.
‘I’m afraid they’re dead, James. All three of them. Stone dead. But you must admit, we were clever to find you.’
15
THE PRICE FOR A LIFE
Bond felt an odd sense of shock that two relatively young women had brought about the carnage he saw on the deck, yet could remain buoyant, even elated, as though killing three men was like swatting flies in a kitchen. He also realised that he was suffering from a certain amount of resentment – he had taken the initiative, he had been duped by Quinn and Kirchtum, he had fallen into their quickly devised trap. Yet he had not been able to effect his own escape. These mere women had rescued him, and he felt resentful – a peculiar reaction when he should have been grateful.
Another, almost identical powered fishing boat bearing the name Prospero lay alongside, rising, falling and gently bumping against their vessel. They were well outside the reef. In the far distance little low mounds of islands rose from the sea. The sky was turning from pearl to deep blue as the sun cleared the horizon. Quinn had been right. It was going to be a beautiful day.
‘Well?’
Nannie stood near him, looking around while Sukie appeared to be busying herself on the other boat.
‘Well what?’ Bond asked flatly.
‘Well, weren’t we clever to find you?’
‘Very.’ He sounded sharp, almost angry. ‘Was all this necessary?’
‘You mean blowing away your captors?’ The expression sounded strange coming from Nannie Norrich. She flushed with anger now. ‘Yes, very necessary. Can’t you even say thank you, James? We tried to deal with it peacefully, but they opened up with that damned Uzi. They gave us no option.’
She pointed towards their boat and the nasty jagged row of holes in the hull, abaft the high skeleton superstructure above the cabin.
Bond nodded, muttering his thanks.
‘You were, indeed, very clever to find me. I’d like to hear more about that.’
‘And so you shall,’ Nannie said waspishly, ‘but first we really have to do something about this mess.’
‘What weapons are you carrying?’
‘The two pistols from your case – your stuff’s back at the hotel in Key West. I had to force the locks, I’m afraid. I couldn’t work out the combinations, and we were fairly desperate by then.’
‘Any extra fuel around?’
She pointed past Kirchtum’s slumped corpse in the stern well. ‘A couple of cans there. We’ve got three aboard our boat.’
‘It’s got to look like a catastrophe,’ Bond said with a frown. ‘What’s more, they mustn’t find the bodies. An explosion would be best – preferably when we’re well out of the area. It’s easy enough to do, but we must have some kind of fuse, and that’s what we haven’t got.’
‘But we do have a signal pistol. We could use the flares.’
Bond nodded. ‘Good. What’s the range – about a hundred metres? You go back with Sukie and get the pistol and flares ready. I’ll do what’s necessary here.’
Nannie turned away, sprang lightly on to the guard rail, and jumped aboard their boat, calling cheerfully to Sukie.
Bond then set about his grim task, still preoccupied with the recent turn of events. How did they manage to find him? How could they have been in the right place at the right time? Until he had answers that satisfied him, he could not trust either of the young women.
He searched the boat carefully, assembling everything that might be useful on the deck – rope, wire and the strong lines used for bringing in sharks and swordfish. All the weapons he threw overboard, except for Quinn’s automatic, a prosaic Browning 9mm, and some spare clips.
Then came the grisly job of moving the bodies into the stern well. Kirchtum, already there, only needed turning over, which Bond managed to do with his feet; the captain’s body stuck in the wheelhouse door, and he had to tug hard to get it free. Quinn was the most difficult to move, for the bloody decapitated remains had to be dragged along the narrow gap separating cabin from guard rail.
He placed the corpses in a row directly over the fuel tanks and lashed them loosely together with fishing line. He then went forward again and gathered as much inflammable material as he could find – sheets and blankets off the four cabin bunks, cushions, pillows and even pieces of rag. These he piled up well forward, weighting them with life jackets and heavier equipment. One piece of coiled rope he left near the bodies.
He transferred himself to the other boat, where he found Sukie standing in the wheelhouse with Nannie close behind her on the steps leading down to the cabin. Nannie was holding the bulbous flare projector by the muzzle.
‘There it is. One flare pistol.’
‘Plenty of flares?’
She pointed to a metal box containing a dozen stumpy cartridges, each marked with its colour: red, green or illuminating. Bond picked out three of the illuminating flares.
‘These should do us.’
He rapidly gave them instructions, and Sukie started the engines while Nannie cast off all but one rope amidships.
Bond returned to the other boat to make the final preparations. He dragged the rope near the bodies to the pile of material, secured it underneath and gently played it out back to the stern wall, laying it alongside the inlets to the fuel tanks. He went forward again with one of the emergency fuel cans and saturated first the material, then, shuffling backwards towards the corpses, he ran plenty of the liquid over the rope.
He opened the second can to dowse the human remains in fuel, unscrewed the main fuel cap and lowered the saturated rope into the tank.
‘Stand by!’ he yelled.
He ran from the stern well, mounted the guard rail and was aboard the other boat just as Nannie let go of the rope amidships. Sukie slowly eased open the throttle and they pulled away, gently turning stern-on to the other boat.
Bond positioned himself aft of the superstructure, slid a flare into the pistol, checked the wind and watched the gap slowly widen between the two craft. At around eighty metres he raised the pistol high and fired an illuminating flare in a low, flat trajectory. The flare hissed right across the bows of the other boat. Bond had already reloaded and taken up another position. This time, the fizzing white flare performed a perfect arc, leaving a thick stream of white smoke behind it, to land in the bows. There was a second’s pause before the material ignited with a small whumph. The flames were carried straight along the rope fuse towards the fuel tanks, and the bodies.
‘Give her full power and weave as much as possible!’ Bond shouted to Sukie.
The engine note rose, bows lifting, almost before he had finished giving the order. Rapidly they bounced away from the blazing fishing boat.
The corpses caught alight first, the stern well sending up a crimson flame and then a dense cloud of black smoke. They were a good two kilometres away when the fuel tanks went up – a great roaring explosion with a dark red centre, ripping the boat apart in a ferocious fireball. For a few moments there was the smoke and a rising cascade of debris, then nothing. The water appeared to boil around what little remained of the powerful fishing launch, then it settled, steamed for a few seconds, and flattened. The shock waves hit the rear of their boat a second or two after the explosion. There was a slight burn on the wind, which they felt on their cheeks.