24

Abe’s dark blue panel truck was parked outside the Isher Sports Shop. The iron gate had been rolled back. At Jack’s knock, the door opened immediately. Abe’s white shirt was wrinkled and his jowls were stubbly. For the first time in Jack’s memory, he wasn’t wearing his black tie.

“What?” he said, scrutinizing Jack. “You run into trouble since you left me at the apartment?”

“What makes you ask?”

“Bandage on your hand and you’re walking funny.”

“Had a lengthy and strenuous argument with a very disagreeable lady.” He rotated his left shoulder gingerly; it was nowhere near as stiff and painful as it had been back at the apartment.

“Lady?”

“It’s stretching the definition, but yeah—lady.”

Abe led Jack toward the rear of the darkened store. The lights were on in the basement, as was the neon sign. Abe hefted a wooden crate two feet long and a foot wide and deep. The top had already been pried open and he lifted it off.

“Here are the bombs. Twelve of them, magnesium compound, all with twenty-four-hour timers.”

Jack nodded. “Fine. But I really needed the incendiary bullets. Otherwise I may never get a chance to set these.”

Abe shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you’re going up against, but here’s the best I could do.”

He pulled a cloth off a card table to reveal a circular, donut-shaped metal tank with a second tank, canteen-sized, set in its middle; both were attached by a short hose to what looked like a two-handed raygun.

Jack was baffled. “What the hell—?”

“It’s a Number Five Mk-1 flamethrower, affectionately known as the Lifebuoy. I don’t know if it’ll suit your purposes. I mean, it hasn’t got much range and—”

“It’s great!” Jack said. He grabbed Abe’s hand and pumped it. “Abe. You’re beautiful! It’s perfect!”

Elated, Jack ran his hands over the tanks. It was perfect. Why hadn’t he thought of it? How many times had he seen Them?

“How does it work?”

“This is a World War Two model—the best I could do on such short notice. It’s got CO at two thousand pounds per square inch in the little spherical tank, and eighteen liters of napalm in the big lifebuoy-shaped one—hence the name; a discharge tube with igniters at the end and an adjustable nozzle. Range is up to ninety feet. You open the tanks, point the tube, pull the trigger in the rear grip, and foom!”

“Any helpful hints?”

“Yeah. Always check your nozzle adjustment before your first discharge. It’s like a firehose and will tend to rise during a prolonged tight stream. Otherwise, think of it as spitting: Don’t do it into the wind or where you live.”

“Sounds easy enough. Help me get into the harness.”

The tanks were heavier than Jack would have wished, but did not cause the anticipated burst of pain from the left side of his back; only a dull ache. As Jack adjusted the straps to a comfortable fit, Abe looked at his neck questioningly.

“Since when the jewelry, Jack?”

“Since tonight… for good luck.”

“Strange looking thing. Iron, isn’t it? And those stones… almost look like—”

“Two eyes? I know.”

“And the inscription looks like Sanskrit. Is it?”

Jack shrugged, uncomfortable. He didn’t like the necklace and knew nothing about its origins.

“Could be. I don’t know. A friend… lent it to me for the night. Do you know what the inscriptions say?”

Abe shook his head. “I’ve seen Sanskrit before, but if my life depended on it I couldn’t translate a single word.” He looked closer. “Come to think of it, that’s not really Sanskrit. Where was it made? “

“India.”

“Really? Then it’s probably Vedic, one of the Proto-Aryan languages that was a precursor of Sanskrit.” Abe tossed off the information in a casual tone, then turned away and busied himself with gently tapping the nails halfway back into the corners of the crate of incendiary bombs.

Jack didn’t know if he was being put on or not, but he didn’t want to rob Abe of his moment. “How the hell do you know all that?”

“You think I majored in guns in college? I have a B.A. from Columbia in Languages.”

“And this is inscribed in Vedic, huh? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It means it’s old, Jack… O-L-D.”

Jack fingered the iron links around his neck. “I figured that.”

Abe finished tapping down the crate top, then turned to Jack.

“You know I never ask, Jack, but this time I’ve got to: What are you up to? You could raze a couple of city blocks with what you’ve got here.”

Jack didn’t know what to say. How could he tell anyone, even his best friend, about the rakoshi and how the necklace he was wearing made him invisible to those rakoshi?

“Why don’t you drive me down to the docks and maybe you’ll see.”

“It’s a deal.”

Abe groaned under the weight of the case of incendiary bombs while Jack, still in harness with the flamethrower, maneuvered his way up the steps to the ground floor. After Abe had deposited the crate in the rear of the panel truck, he motioned Jack out to the street. Jack darted out from the store doorway and through the rear doors of the truck. Abe pulled the iron gate closed in front of his shop and hopped into the driver’s seat.

“Whereto?”

“Take West End down to Fifty-seventh and turn right. Find a dark spot under the highway and we’ll go on foot from there.”

As Abe put the truck into gear, Jack considered his options. Since climbing a rope with a flamethrower on his back and a crate of bombs under his arm was out of the question, he would have to go up the gangplank—his variable frequency beeper would bring it down. Events could go two ways after that: If he was able to get aboard undiscovered, he could set his bombs and run; if discovered, he would have to bring the flamethrower into service and play it by ear. If there was any chance to do it safely, he would let Abe get a look at a rakosh. Seeing would be believing—any other means of explaining what dwelled in Kusum’s ship would be futile.

Either way, he would see to it that no rakoshi were left alive in New York by sunrise. And if Kusum cared to interfere, Jack was quite willing to help his atman on its way to its next incarnation.

The truck stopped.

“We’re here,” Abe said. “What now?”

Jack gingerly lowered himself to the street through the rear door and walked up beside Abe’s window. He pointed to the darkness north of Pier 97.

“Wait here while I go aboard. I shouldn’t be long.”

Abe glanced through the window, then back at him, a puzzled expression on his round face. “Aboard what?”

“There’s a ship there. You just can’t see it from here.”

Abe shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything there but water.”

Jack squinted into the dark. It was there, wasn’t it? With a mixture of amazement, bafflement, and relief growing within him, he sprinted down to the edge of the dock—the empty dock!

“It’s gone!” he shouted as he ran back to the truck. “It’s gone!”

He realized he must have looked like a crazy man, jumping up and down and laughing with a flamethrower strapped to his back, but Jack didn’t care.

He had won! He had defeated the Mother rakosh and Kusum had sailed back to India without Vicky and without Kolabati! Triumph soared through him.