Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

BOOM-ba-de-THUMP-ity-BOOM-ba-de—

A little louder, a little more urgent. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight out. I still couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. It was everywhere without being centered in any one spot. It seemed to be in the steel of the deck. I could feel it in the soles of my feet as much as I heard it.

BOOM-ba-de-THUMP-ity-BOOM-ba-de—

I have faced junkies with knives, cold killers with guns, drunks with broken beer bottles in their hands, and I had not felt as helpless as I did listening to those drums. For a gun or a knife there is a direct threat and a way to deal with it. You can plan a response or an attack.

None of my instructors in the Rangers or at the L.A.P.D. Academy had ever had anything to say about how to deal with voodoo drums. You can’t put a restraining hold on a sound. You can’t punch it or kick it or slap handcuffs onto it.

But it is just as aggressive, just as dangerous, as much a threat to your health and sanity as a stiff hand to the solar plexus. Because it gets inside you and tells you to do something, anything, just get up and do it and make the drums stop.

Which was exactly the wrong thing, the stupid thing, to do. When you have no idea how many enemies you’re facing or how they’re armed, or even what they intend to do, you find a secure spot with cover and elevation and stay there. A place like the wheelhouse, where I was now. I could see anybody who tried to approach me from any direction and probably shoot them before they shot me. I was fine where I was. Couldn’t be better.

No matter what the sound made me want to do, I was not going to charge down the stairs and try to find the drums, make them stop, do something stupid. I was going to stay right where I was and make them come to me. That was my best chance. No doubt about it. Forget the damn drums.

So I took a deep breath, looked carefully around the deck, and started down the stairs with the gun ready.

I moved across the deck in a crouch, as quiet and smooth and ready as I could be.

The drums were louder now. Not faster, but more persistent, overwhelming the other sounds of wind and water. I could hear three separate drums, blending together, keeping one rhythm, but playing with it around the edges. The sound pressed itself on me, blotted out everything else. I couldn’t think, could hardly swallow. The rhythm was taking over everything. I felt like I was breathing drums.

BOOM-ba-de-TRUMP-ity-BOOM-ba-de—

There were several large outdoor loudspeakers on the deck. I hadn’t noticed them before. Maybe because they hadn’t been blasting out voodoo drums before. A pair of them were bolted to the top of the wheelhouse. As I saw them the volume seemed to go up another notch, and the rhythm got more demanding.

BOOM-ba-de-THUMP-ity-BOOM-ba-de—

I slid behind a crate. Were they watching me? Trying to startle me into something? Because it might work. It was working. I scanned the deck again and moved quickly across the open space to the door.

The door below wasn’t latched. It slid open without sound. Not that I could have heard anything over the drums. I stepped into a darkened hallway and moved quickly to one side of the doorway, then dropped to a knee, closing the door behind me. A doorway makes a great frame for a target, especially when you are backlit by moonlight. I was being stupid, yes, but cautiously stupid.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. The hallway was empty. There was one faint light shining, coming from under a closed door at the far end of the hall.

They were herding me. There was no question about it. The drums had come out of the silence to make me move and there was only one place to go. Now there was only one spot of light and in the darkness of the hall it seemed to me that the drums were coming from there, from somewhere in that faint bar of light, and it pulled me forward like a candle pulls a moth.

Even knowing that, knowing that somebody wanted me to do just what I was doing, I did it anyway.

Part of it was that I couldn’t stop myself. I had to get to the drums, make them stop, get that crazy rhythm out of my head.

But the other part was what Deacon would have called Rambo pride. I wanted to face this son of a bitch and say all right. You want me? You got me. And then I wanted to get my fingers around his throat and squeeze until his evil God damned eyes popped out.

I had never met this Patrice du Sinueux, never seen him face to face. And I had never wanted so badly to kill somebody.

It looked like I was going to get my chance. The idea of sneaking quietly onto the freighter, grabbing Anna, and sneaking away, was gone. It had died when the drums started. Or earlier, when the two guys in the wheelhouse had vanished.

Now it was face to face. Step into the monster’s lair and slay the dragon, or end up as just another pile of bones outside the cave.

I straightened to a crouch and moved down the hall toward the light.

Even here in the interior of the ship the sound of the drums was overwhelming. The road company of Chorus Line could be coming up behind me wearing their tap shoes, and I wouldn’t have heard them.

BOOM-ba-de-THUMP-ity-BOOM-ba-de—

I took my time moving along the hall. I paused carefully at each door, watching for any kind of set-up. But the hallway was empty, except for me and my invisible herdsman.

I could feel the sweat on my palm around the pistol’s grip. I stood still for a moment, just two steps away from the lighted door, and wiped my hands on my pants. I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate.

This was it. Behind that door was the big spider, and I had come here to squash him. I?