Without remorse - Tom Clancy [14]
'So how was it?' English asked after the man left the room.
'That guy is shipping a lot of gear, Cap'n.' As a station commander, English was entitled to the title, all the more so that he let Portagee run his boat his way. 'Sure as hell he doesn't sleep much.'
'He's going to be with us for a while, on and off, and I want yon to handle it.'
Oreza tapped the chart with a pencil. 'I still say this would be a perfect place to keep watch from, and I know we can trust the guy.'
'The man says no.'
'The man ain't no seaman, Mr English. I don't mind when the guy tells me what to do, but he don't know enough to tell me how to do it.' Oreza circled the spot on the chart.
'I don't like this.'
'You don't have to like it,' the taller man said. He unfolded his pocket knife and slit the heavy paper to reveal a plastic container of white powder. 'A few hours' work and we turn three hundred thousand. Something wrong with that, or am I missin' something?'
'And this is just the start,' the third man said.
'What do we do with the boat?' asked the man with the scruples.
The tall one looked up from what he was doing. 'You get rid of that sail?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, we can stash the boat... but probably smarter to scuttle. Yeah, that's what we'll do.'
'And Angelo?' All three looked over to where the man was lying, unconscious still, and bleeding.
'I guess we scuttle him, too,' the tall one observed without much in the way of emotion. 'Right here ought to be fine.'
'Maybe two weeks, there won't be nothin' left. Lots of critters out there.' The third one waved outside at the tidal wetlands.
'See how easy it is? No boat, no Angelo, no risk, and three hundred thousand bucks. I mean, how much more do you expect, Eddie?'
'His friends still ain't gonna like it.' The comment came more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction.
'What friends?' Tony asked without looking. 'He ratted, didn't he? How many friends does a rat have?'
Eddie bent to the logic of the situation and walked over to Angelo's unconscious form. The blood was still pumping out of the many abrasions, and the chest was moving slowly as he tried to breathe. It was time to put an end to that. Eddie knew it; he'd merely been trying to delay the inevitable. He pulled a small .22 automatic from his pocket, placed it to the back of Angelo's skull, and fired once. The body spasmed, then went slack. Eddie set his gun aside and dragged the body outside, leaving Henry and his friend to do the important stuff. They'd brought some fish netting, which he wrapped around the body before dumping it in the water behind their small motorboat. A cautious man, Eddie looked around, but there wasn't much danger of intruders here. He motored off until he found a likely spot a few hundred yards off, then stopped and drifted while he lifted a few concrete blocks from the boat and tied them to the netting. Six were enough to sink Angelo about eight feet to the bottom. The water was pretty clear here, and that worried Eddie a little until he saw all the crabs. Angelo would be gone in less than two weeks. It was a great improvement over the way they usually did business, something to remember for the future. Disposing of the little sailboat would be harder. He'd have to find a deeper spot, but he had all day to think about it.
Kelly altered course to starboard to avoid a gaggle of sports craft. The island was visible now, about five miles ahead. Not much to look at, just a low bump on the horizon, not even a tree, but it was his and it was as private as a man could wish. About the only bad news was the miserable TV reception.
Battery Island had a long and undistinguished history. Its current name, more ironic than appropriate, had come in the early nineteenth century, when some enterprising militiaman had decided to place a small gun battery there to guard a narrow spot in the Chesapeake Bay against the British, who were sailing towards Washington, DC, to punish the new nation that had been so ill-advised as to challenge