Killers of a Certain Age(17)

She pointed under the cabinet screwed to the wall. It was a combination entertainment center, desk, and chest of drawers, everything neat and compact. It was pale wood and reached nearly to the floor. Just below it, pushed right out of sight, was a sleek leather attaché case.

“You always did have good eyes,” I said as I bent to retrieve it. My back protested a little and I ignored it, stretching further to get my fingers around it. It was heavy, quality stuff. Nothing like the cheap canvas bag his alter ego had carried; this was custom-made by a specialist firm in Sweden to exact specifications. I knew the bag because I’d carried a few myself when the job called for it. The locks, six-digit combinations, were always set to the date assigned to the job.

I flicked the tumblers to tomorrow’s date and tried. No luck.

Helen was watching closely. “The day after?”

I tried it, and the following two dates, but the lock stayed tight. A truly shitty possibility occurred to me and I flipped the numbers to that day’s date. As soon as I hit the button, the metal tabs flew open.

“Today,” I said. I glanced at the digital clock on the bedside shelf. “And today is over with in about six hours.”

I looked at Helen and I swear to god something like relief flickered across her face. I would deal with Helen’s death wish later, I decided. I lifted the lid on the case. I wasn’t surprised to find a load of explosives and a cheerful little digital display showing five hours and thirty-two minutes. “It’s on a timer,” I told her. “We’ve got five and a half hours to figure this out.”

If Helen had been slightly tempted to let herself get blown up, she knew the rest of us might object. Besides, there were about two hundred innocent people on that boat who’d go with her, and that was never okay. She pulled herself up. “Then we’ll just have to throw it overboard,” she said, reaching for the case.

I put out a hand to take her wrist. I could feel the bones, slim and brittle.

“We can’t. It’s a speedball.” I pointed to the explosive. I didn’t have to say more. Helen knew as well as I did that speedballs were the special brainchild of the Museum’s munitions department. The recipe had been created to be as foolproof as possible, including lavish amounts of ammonium nitrate, ensuring the speedballs would explode even underwater. If we flung the case overboard, it would detonate anyway, regardless of the timer. I glanced at the speedball again. That big of a device would shear off the side of the Amphitrite, opening up the vessel like the cross-section of a boat in a kids’ picture book. And then it would fill with water and sink, way too fast for anyone to muster the lifeboats.

“So, we have to get everyone off,” she said.

“Unless you know how to disarm it,” I said. We had all had munitions training. Anyone with an aptitude for blowing things up got moved to Temporary Installations, the Museum’s idea of wit. The rest of us knew just enough to stay out of the way when they were working. And we knew that each device was set with a timer that had an override code known only to the operator. Any attempt to dismantle or disarm it prematurely would cause it to blow up, a sort of defense mechanism.

“We could just get the override from Fogerty,” I suggested.

“And then what?” Helen asked.

I shrugged. “Hell if I know. I’m making this up as I go along, Helen. But at least we know what we’re dealing with now. Let’s get out of here and tell the others.”

I was half turned away from the door or I would have seen him. In the time it took for me to look up, Fogerty was inside and shoving Helen out of the way with a clothesline arm. She flew back, hitting her head on the wall and crumpling to the floor in a slow slide, her legs straight out in front of her like a discarded doll.

The extra second he took to deal with Helen was enough for me to get my hand around the chair. I didn’t have time to swing it and get any proper momentum, so I held it in front of me like a lion tamer and the bastard smiled.

“Nice try, Granny,” he said, lifting the chair as easily as if it were made of balsa wood.

I kept my hold on the chair and as he raised it over my head, I lifted my legs, driving the heels of both feet into his kneecaps. He grunted and bent forward at the waist, bringing the chair down hard. But I’d seen it coming and flipped over, taking the hit squarely on my back. I let it push me down, onto all fours, diffusing the energy of the blow. He tossed the chair aside and reached down, his face set and purposeful. I grabbed his hand and twisted the thumb back, causing him to open his stance, exposing his groin. I took a breath and donkey kicked, my heel connecting squarely with his balls. I didn’t stop. I followed through, pushing as hard as I could until he choked and fell to his knees.

He would have fallen on top of me but I rolled out of the way and rebounded off the bunk to land on his back. I wrapped one leg around his waist and bent the other, driving the knee into his lower spine. I grabbed the beads out of my pocket and whipped them around his neck, taking a wrap around each palm to hold them tight.

And then I pulled. I pulled like I was trying to stop a runaway horse, fists tight against my shoulders while my knee pushed him into a backbend that made his spine crack. His hands scrabbled at his throat, tearing at the necklace.

“Don’t you dare break, goddammit,” I muttered to the beads. I tightened my hold and pulled up again and his hand came up, slapping blindly. He caught me on the temple, hard enough to blur my vision for a second, but I held on.