Free The Hunter From the Woods by Robert McCammon Page B

the belly. And you , captain…well, I know you also. Want me to tell you about the Swede?”
    “No,” said Beauchene.
    Michael nodded. The less said about that child-molester at the helm, the better.
    Beauchene handed the pistol back to Medina. Then, moving surprisingly fast for a man his size, he slapped Michael across the mouth with his right hand so hard the blood bloomed from Michael’s lower lip and for a few seconds tears of pain fogged his vision.
    “How dare you,” said the captain, in a voice made of sharp-edged gravel. “How dare you bring this on my crew and on my ship. You British ! You self-centered prigs! Playing your spy games! Fuck you and fuck all of you!” The spittle flew from his mouth. “I hope you will be very happy with the outcome of this! Monsieur Medina!”
    “Sir!” said the Spaniard.
    “All Stop.”
    Medina moved toward the engine order telegraph.
    “Don’t touch that,” Michael said.
    “Oh, how he threatens!” Beauchene’s ugly mug twisted in an uglier grin. “And him without a gun! Go on, give the order!”
    “You stop those engines,” Michael said, “and every man on this ship is dead.”
    “Christ, this one believes in himself, doesn’t he? All right, my fine fucking fellow, how do you propose to kill every member of my crew?”
    “I won’t. You will. By stopping those engines. You let that ship take the Wesshausers, and you’ll think that’s the end of it. But then the men on that ship will bring their machine guns and grenades and whatever else they have aboard, and they will begin murdering everyone here. Why? Because the Nazis want no international incident. They don’t want the British press or the press of any other country on earth to get wind that they’ve kidnapped a weapons expert who was trying to get away from them. And taken his family, as well.” Michael paused to wipe his lip with the back of his hand. The smell of his own blood, to him, filled up the wheelhouse.
    “You know what they’ll do,” Michael continued, and now he cast his gaze around at Medina and Kpanga to draw them in. “They’ll kill everyone and then sink the Sofia . And I’m sure they didn’t come unprepared for that. The Sofia becomes another statistic. A freighter, lost in the North Sea. Who can say what happened? But I can promise you, there will be no one left alive to tell the tale. So, Captain Beauchene, you stop the engines and give the Wesshausers over, and you and I and every man on this ship are dead.”
    No one spoke.
    No one moved, but for the Sofia herself.
    The rain had strengthened, and thrashed against the glass.
    “ Madre de Dios ,” Medina whispered, his eyes huge above the black beard.
    “Captain, sir!” It was a voice from a room along the shadowed corridor. Michael recognized a Russian accent. “We’re receiving a radio message!”
    No one stopped Michael when he followed the captain, Kpanga and Medina back to the small radio room. The Russian-born radioman, a sallow long-jawed drink of brine, had his earphones resting around his neck and was tuning the dials on a slab of a radio with louvers in it that displayed the red heartbeat of its tubes.
    Over a noise of static and tones that sounded like a half-drunk Scotsman playing a bagpipe as a scorched cat howled along, a firm and clipped voice from the radio’s speaker said, “Repeat: this is the German vessel Javelin , to the Norwegian freighter Sofia . Captain Manson Konnig requests you to follow his instruction. Stop engines and prepare to be boarded. Repeat: stop engines and prepare to be boarded.”
    Then the static and tones increased in tumultuous noise and the radioman had to dial down the volume.
    “Still jamming us,” he told Beauchene. “We can’t get anything out, sir.”
    “ Merde !” The captain smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “ Merde ! Merde ! You can’t break it?”
    “No, sir.”
    Beauchene shot a glance of disgust at Michael. “You see what you’ve done?