The Detonators Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoot him to stop him. Let him run. Let the Hooligan Navy worry about the damn boat; they’re the ones who grabbed it. We’ll stay clear.”
    “Okay, but I still think somebody could have told me he might sneak off…”
    I made a note to warn Mac, in Washington, that our current man in Miami would bear watching. We’d had a very good part-timer there named Brent, but he’d quit and married the boss’s daughter; and Mac was now a grandpa. A six-pound girl, if it matters. But Jerome was obviously not of Brent’s caliber; and any agent in an escort situation who thinks more about his own feelings than about the person he’s been assigned to help and protect has to be used with caution. It occurred to me it was something I could well bear in mind myself.
    I went to bed. It seemed that the phone rang again almost immediately; but my watch said it was four-thirty in the morning.
    “Mr. Helm?” It was Amy Barnett’s voice. “Mr. Helm, I just got a telephone call from the coast guard. My father’s gone absolutely crazy; he’s stolen back his boat and put to sea!”
    “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms, Miss Barnett? If it’s his boat, how can he steal it?”
    “Oh, stop it! You know what I mean. They’re going out after him, and they want me to come along; I can’t imagine why.”
    “I can,” I said. “They want you to witness the fact that this time they picked him up very gently and legally.”
    “They want you, too. Representing your agency, I suppose.”
    “I’ll be with you in a minute. Bring a heavy sweater, if you’ve got one. The Gulf Stream is supposed to be a warm current; but I understand it can still get pretty chilly out there in the Florida Straits.”
    The moment I put the phone down it rang again. That was the U.S.C.G. with my official invitation to the hanging.

4
    The Coast Guard vessel was a sizable boat as boats go, but it was not one of the long, lean, junior-grade destroyers you sometimes see wearing that slanting orange stripe up forward on their wicked-looking white hulls. Our transportation, although it carried the same stripe, was less naval in appearance: a husky, beamy, planing-type vessel in the forty-foot bracket. It bristled with antennas and searchlights, and the deckhouse was crammed full of interesting electronics gear. At least I suppose it was interesting to somebody.
    I recognized a radar set; also a Loran, since I’d once had to master one in order to find my way home on a boat with a very dead crew I’d helped make that way—well, most of the way home; we ran into a little more trouble eventually. Fortunately, there had been an instruction book handy, and I hadn’t found the apparatus all that difficult to figure out. However, there were other black boxes here that I couldn’t identify, also with touch-type keyboards and luminous windows displaying magic numbers that undoubtedly meant something to somebody. There were also radios of various persuasions: SSB, VHF, and even a little CB stuck into a corner like an afterthought. There really wasn’t much room left for people, but I helped Amy brace herself in a neutral corner.
    She’d lost some of her prim and proper look; it’s hard for a girl to look prim in jeans. The round collar of a neat white cotton blouse showed above a light-blue sweater that emphasized the blue of her eyes and played down the gray. Her soft light-brown hair was still, or again, neatly pinned up about her head. I reminded myself that I must not be prejudiced against her because of an ancient hurt of my own, for which she had not been responsible. It shouldn’t be hard to treat her fairly, I told myself; she wasn’t bad-looking, even in pants. Then the cabin lights went out. On deck they went through the routine of casting off the lines, and finally we were off.
    “I don’t think it would be advisable to sit down, even if there were someplace to sit,” I said above the muted rumble of the engines. “I don’t know how fast this