"Give her back!" Kusum shouted, rushing to the edge of the platform. His sudden movement and raised voice caused the rakoshi to shift, murmur, and edge forward. "She's mine!"
"No way," Jack said softly, finding his voice again as he squeezed Vicky closer. "You're safe, Vicks."
He had her now and no one was going to take her away. No one. He began to back toward the forward hold.
"Stay where you are!" Kusum roared. Spittle flecked his lips—he was so enraged he was actually beginning to foam at the mouth. "One more step and I'll tell them where you are. As I said before, they'll tear you to pieces. Now—come up here and face me as we agreed."
Jack shook his head. "I had nothing to lose then. Now I've got Vicky." Agreement or not, he was not going to let her go.
"Have you no honor? You agreed!"
"I lied," Jack said, and pulled the trigger.
The stream of napalm hit Kusum squarely in the chest, spreading over him, engulfing him in flame. He released a long, high, hoarse scream and reached his arm out toward Jack and Vicky as his fiery body went rigid. Twisting, writhing convulsively, his features masked in flame, he stumbled forward off the platform, still reaching for them, his obsession with ending the Westphalen line driving him on even in the midst of his death agony. Jack held Vicky's face into his shoulder so she would not see, and was about to give Kusum another blast when he veered off to the side, spinning and whirling in a flaming dance, finally falling dead in front of his rakoshi horde, burning… burning…
The rakoshi went mad.
If Jack had looked upon the hold as a suburb of hell before, it became one of the inner circles upon the death of the Kaka-ji. The rakoshi exploded into frenzied movement, leaping into the air, clawing, tearing at each other. They could not find Jack and Vicky, so they turned on each other. It was as if all of hell's demons had decided to riot. All except one—
The rakosh with the scarred lip remained aloof from the carnage. It stared in their direction as if sensing their presence there, even though it could not see them.
As the struggles of the creatures brought groups of them near, Jack began retreating down the passageway through which he had come, back to the forward hold. A trio of rakoshi, locked in combat, black blood gushing from their wounds, blundered into the passage. Jack sprayed them with the flamethrower, sending them reeling away, then turned and ran.
Before entering the forward hold, he directed a tight stream of flaming napalm ahead of him—first high to drive away any rakoshi that might be lurking outside the end of the passage, then low along the floor to clear the small ones from his path. Putting his head down he charged through the hold along the flaming strip, feeling like a jet cruising along an illuminated runway. At its end he leaped up on the platform and stabbed the UP button.
As the elevator began to rise, Jack tried to put Vicky down on the planking but she wouldn't let go. Her hands were locked onto the fabric of his shirt in a death grip. He was weak and exhausted, but he would carry her the rest of the way if that was what she needed. With his free hand he reached into the crate and armed and set the rest of the bombs for three forty-five—less than twenty minutes away.
Rakoshi began to pour into the forward hold through both the port and starboard entries. When they saw the platform rising, they charged it.
"They're coming for me, Jack!" Vicky screamed. "Don't let them get me!"
"Everything's okay, Vicks," he said as soothingly as he could.
He sent out a fiery stream that caught a dozen of the creatures in the front rank, and kept the rest of them at bay with well-placed bursts of flame.
When the elevator platform was finally out of range of a rakosh leap, Jack allowed himself to relax. He dropped to his knees and waited for the platform to reach the top.
Suddenly a rakosh broke free from the crowd and hurtled forward. Startled, Jack rose up and pointed the discharge tube in its direction.
"That's the one that brought me here!" Vicky cried.
Jack recognized the rakosh: It was Scar-lip, making a last-ditch effort to get at Vicky. Jack's finger tightened on the trigger, then he saw that it was going to fall short. Its talons narrowly missed the platform but must have caught onto the undercarriage, for the elevator lurched and screeched on its tracks, then continued to rise. Jack didn't know if the rakosh was clinging to the undercarriage or whether it had fallen off into the elevator well below. He wasn't about to peer over the edge to find out—he might lose his face if the rakosh was hanging there.
He carried Vicky to the rear corner of the platform and waited there with the discharge tube trained on the edge of the platform. If the rakosh showed its face he'd burn its head off.
But it didn't appear. And when the elevator stopped at the top of its track, Jack pulled Vicky's hands free to allow her to go up the ladder ahead of him. As they separated, something fell out of the folds of her damp nightgown—Kusum's necklace.
"Here, Vicks," he said, reaching to clasp it around her neck. "Wear this. It'll—"
"No!" she cried in a shrill voice, pushing his hands away. "I don't like it."
"Please, Vicks. Look—I'm wearing one."
"No!"
She started up the ladder. Jack stuffed the necklace into his pocket and watched her go, continually glancing toward the edge of the platform. The poor kid was frightened of everything now—almost as frightened of the necklace as she was of the rakoshi. He wondered if she'd ever get over this.
Jack waited until Vicky had climbed through the little entry hatch, then he followed, keeping his eyes on the edge of the platform until he reached the top of the ladder. Quickly, almost frantically, he squeezed through into the salty night air.
Vicky grabbed his hand. "Where do we go now, Jack? I can't swim!"
"You don't have to, Vicks," he whispered. Why am I whispering? "I brought us a boat!"
He led her by the hand along the starboard gunwale to the gangway. When she saw the rubber raft below, she needed no further guidance—she let go of his hand and hurried down the steps. Jack glanced back over the deck and froze. He had caught a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye—a shadow had moved near the kingpost standing between the two holds. Or had it? His nerves were frayed to the breaking point. He was ready to see a rakosh in every shadow.
He followed Vicky down the steps. When he reached bottom, he turned and sprayed the gangway with flame from the halfway point to the top, then arced the stream over the gunwale onto the deck. He kept the flame flowing, swinging it back and forth until the discharge tube coughed and jerked in his hands. The flamed sputtered and died. The napalm tank was empty. Only carbon dioxide hissed through the tube. He finished loosening the harness, a job he had begun in the aft hold, and shrugged off the tanks and their appendages, dropping them on the last step of the burning gangway. Better to let it go up with the ship than be found floating in the bay. Then he untied the nylon hawser and pushed off.
Made it!
A wonderful feeling—he and Vicky were alive and off the freighter. And only moments ago he had been ready to give up hope. But they weren't safe yet. They had to be far from the ship, preferably on shore, when those bombs went off.
The oars were still in their locks. Jack grabbed them and began to row, watching the freighter recede into the dark. Manhattan was behind him, drawing nearer with every stroke. Gia and Abe would not be visible for a while yet. Vicky crouched in the stern of the raft, her head swiveling between the freighter and land. It was going to be so good to reunite her with Gia.
Jack rowed harder. The effort caused him pain, but surprisingly little. He should have been in agony from the deep wound behind his left shoulder, from the innumerable lacerations all over his body, and from the avulsions where the skin had simply been torn away by the teeth of the savage little rakoshi. He felt weak from fatigue and blood loss, but he should have lost more—he should have been in near shock from the blood he had lost. The necklace truly seemed to have healing powers.