Hanoi km 015, p.14
Hanoi (KM 015), page 14
part #15 of Killmaster Series
Lin Suy. Little Johnnie-on-the-spot, as usual.
Nick thought quickly as the pattering grew louder. Let her in and let her die while he went on holding his breath? No—no reason why Pierre should get her too … littie sex-cat … Ah Choy’s stooge … but still… . Bounce out, slam the door in her face, and cheerfully pocket the key? Hardly Only one alternative.
He slid the key back into the lock and turned it silently, scissoring his fingers over it when it clicked into place and holding his palm flat against the keyhole. The doorknob rattled almost at once and he heard a little exclamation. It rattled again. Lin Suy muttered to herself and knocked.
Pause. She waited. Nick waited. Almost two minutes since he had released Pierre. That left him another two minutes before he must have air, for he could hold his breath as long as any man alive. But no longer than two minutes more.
“Open!” Lin Suy called impatiently, and rapped more loudly. “Are you all asleep, you lazy dogs? Open the door at once.” Pause.
“Open!” The rapping became a hammering. “Ho Chang, Ah Choy wants you immediately.” Knock, knock.
Nick’s heart seemed to sink a notch. Maybe he’d been wrong to play it this way. Any more of this hammering, and half the camp would be aroused. He thought quickly, beginning to feel the first strain on his lungs. He could unlock the door quietly, pounce on her as she came in, knock her out and leave her to die … all the things he hadn’t wanted to do. Absurd, to cavil at adding one more dead in this chamber of death, but a woman…. He had had to kill women before. Some were as vile as any man he’d ever known. But this one … ?
Hammer, hammer. “What is the matter with all of you? Are you dead, are you drunk? Ho Chang!”
Would she never go away? Bang, bang!
Nick fingered the key and braced himself for the inevitable.
A Vietnamese curse ripped through the angry pounding. Lin Suy knew some very nasty words indeed. Nick grinned sadly. Poor little bitch.
The doorknob ratded again and Lin Suy muttered to herself.
Nick sofdy, very softly turned the key. His hand tightened on the knob.
There was silence outside. His muscles tautened.
Little feet pattered off down the hall away from him.
He almost took a deep breath out of sheer relief.
The footsteps died away. He waited for a few seconds more and then he quietly eased open the door.
The passage was empty. He stepped outside, closed and locked the door, and let his breath out in a long, low sigh. Now if she were lurking somewhere down that passage— He would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He walked quickly away from the room he had turned into a morgue. His relief was like a draft of fresh air when he met no one in the passage. The sounds of partying still came from the mess room. They were muted, though, as if most of the celebrants had left. Ahead of him, going out of the building, he could hear Krutch’s ungainly thomp-slap thomp-slap tread. He hung back, sliding a comb through his hair as though he had just emerged from the latrines. Krutch would have to be dealt with, but other things came first.
When he left the building there was only a scattering of technicians still in the mess room, talking quietly, still waiting. The others were apparently already at their test posts or resting in their own quarters, for there was hardly anyone in the yard besides the guards. Lin Suy was talking to one of them, he noted. Krutch was thumping into the workshop. The sound of his impatient bellowing rolled over the yard—”Where’s that bloody Wiesner?” No one seemed to answer.
Nick took quick stock of the status quo as he paused to light a cigarette. His three major objectives all lay beyond the immediate gauntlet of guards, of which there were eight within view. There was the guardpost at the gate, the searchlight and anti-aircraft emplacement on a low mound a couple of hundred yards beyond the Off-Duty section of the mess room and accessible only by going around the building and past a couple of others, and a small, heavily barred building that served as the ammunition depot. These must be reached, and other areas as well, or the odds against Q-40’s mop-up squad would be murderously heavy.
So, the gaundet first. One of the guards was already walking toward him with a questioning look on his face. Nick met him halfway, already reaching for his little present. One of the ninety-second variety.
“You not go for test?” the guard said. “If not test, you back to own room or the mess hall.”
“Oh, I go for test,” Nick said cheerfully. “Still a few minutes to spare. Please, have a cigar on me, in honor of the baby.”
The guard stared uncomprehendingly. “What baby?”
Nick flashed an enthusiastic smile. “Why, the rocket, of course. Tonight’s the night. Cigars all around, to celebrate. Be my guest.” He made a small mock bow and reached the cigar out with a flourish. But he did not pinch its tip until he was sure the man would take it. “A very special cigar,” Nick added. “To be smoked when you’re off-duty.”
The guard’s face split into a gap-toothed grin. Spatulate fingers accepted the cigar. Nick pinched quickly at the tip and released his parting gift. “Smoke it in good health,” he said graciously.
“Tank you, tank you,” said the guard, sniffing it appreciatively. “Your cigars, they velly good.”
“Plenty to go around,” Nick said generously. He gave a little salute and trotted off to meet the next one.
“Cigar,” he said, with his gracious gesture and a smile. The guard’s face became slightly less inscrutable and he pocketed it gladly. Krutch was still roaring in the workshop. “Somebody go and get that Wiesner, will you? And Burgdorf too, while you’re about it.” “Tank,” said the guard.
Nick glanced back at the guard who had been talking to Lin Suy. Lin Suy was no longer with him. He wondered where she was, but it did not really matter any more. It was seven minutes to zero hour, and much less than that for some.
Lin Suy’s feet twinkled busily as she hurried to Ah Choy’s room. Her mind, too, was more than usually busy. That Burgdorf—it was saying to her—was not at the party. But he had come out from that door. Where had he been, then? In the Off Duty room, perhaps? It did not seem likely, not at all. And yet… . Ah Choy had sent her to that room before, on errands for him. Never had the door been locked. Never had the room been silent. The silence, that was it. Not even a snore. She had been angry before, but now she was worried. No, she was afraid. Ah Choy had not trusted Burgdorf, had he? He had not. And now something very strange had happened in that room. She was suddenly very sure of that.
She burst into his room. He started up from the big bed they had shared so often and stared at her.
“Ah Choy! The Off Duty room is locked, they do not answer. Arm yourself! Spread alarm! Burgdorf was in there, I am sine of that. You must find out quickly what is wrong.”
“What are you babbling about, Lin Suy?” But even as he spoke, Ah Choy was strapping on his shoulder holster and reaching for the intercom. “Tell me quickly, clearly!”
The grace with which the gift was given and the joy with which it was received must have made the grim reaper smile indeed.
“Don’t mention it,” Nick said grandly, and hurried on to the next. Three more to go. Thank God two of them were together near the workshop. They had been watching him, and they had been waiting for their gift. “Cigars,” he said, with his radiant smile and his quick pinch at the tips. His victims took them eagerly.
“Burgdorf!” It was one of the men who had worked on the triggering device. “What the hell are you dawdling about for? Krutch’s screaming for action. Where’s Wiesner, for Chrissake?”
“In the mess hall, no doubt,” Nick said over his shoulder as he hurried toward the eighth guard in the gauntlet. “I’ll be with you in a minute—less.” From one of the buildings he heard the sound of a ringing buzz. Intercom phone, he thought. It went on ringing. “Cigar,” he said pleasantly, pinching the tip. “To celebrate. But there are more of you on guard tonight, yes? Perhaps you will escort me to the others—to make sure I do not wander out of bounds?” He grinned cheerfully, but anxiety was gnawing at him. He had perhaps fifteen, twenty seconds before the first of his deadly messages made their point. The guard waved him away. “Go,” he said. “I watch from here. You not back in one minute—pow!” He grinned with hideous cheerfulness and struck his gun butt zestfully.
“Oh, absolutely,” Nick murmured, and went off with his loping stride. His sixty-second variety sat cosily in several guardsmen’s pockets.
Another phone began to ring.
“Halt!” There were two men on the far side of the mess hall. Two guns pointed unwaveringly at his stomach. “You not come this way.”
“Ah, but I have permission,” Nick said happily, and pinched two of his thirty-second grenades before handing them over. “Gentlemen—for you, very special cigars for a very special occasion.” He knew they did not understand all his words, but he knew they understood his meaning. One smiled thinly and bit the end of his cigar. The other beamed with joy, sniffed it, and thrust it into his pocket.
The telephone went on ringing.
The first recipient of the gift cigars stomped toward the telephone. His hand was reaching for the receiver in its wall slot outside the mess hall when the sound blasted the quiet night air to shreds. Then his hand was no longer reaching, for it had fallen off his body. But that did not really matter, for with the hideous, gaping hole through his shattered chest the guard would have no further use for arms … even if his head had not been rolling rapidly away from him.
There was a stunned silence, a beat of stillness before realization dawned. Then another man blew up, and others shouted as the paralysis of surprise fell away from them.
“What was that?” Nick cried, the very picture of a timid German scholar. “My God, not the rocket?”
But they were running from him, each with both hands tight around their submachine guns and rushing forward as though leading a bayonet charge. Nick took off behind them like a bullet from a gun, racing for the little group of wooden storehouses which were about the only places on the lot to be free of the constant heavy guard. Two more grenades belched thunderously as he ran and skidded to a stop between the sheds. Pounding feet seemed to come from all directions, but no one came toward him. Wilhelmina slipped cosily into his hand as he flattened himself against a wall. To his right, if he squinted cautiously between the storehouses, he could see the anti-aircraft emplacement and—beyond it—the ammunition depot. To his left he could see the radio shack and catch a glimpse of the entrance to the rocket center.
The guard outside the radio shack had swung around and was racing toward the sounds of explosion. How long is it going to take them to catch on? Nick thought, and shot the man point blank as he angled, unseeing, past him. Pretty soon the men were going to start getting rid of their gift cigars. But they’d better pitch them hard and far, for they were hell in tiny packages, monstrously lethal.
Another grenade blasted raucously, and then another. There was a great deal of shouting now, and a lot of running footsteps. Nick ducked from one storehouse wall to another, looking rapidly from left to right for any signs of movement or discovery. So far, so good. There was movement, but it all seemed to flow toward the work area where he had left his littie killers. The two guards outside the entrance to the rocket center were staring around wildly and edging away from their posts. That was wrong of them. Nick sighted and squeezed Wilhelmina lovingly.
“It is the cigars! It is the cigars!” A guard outside the workshop screamed and flung the thing away from him. It hit a running man full in the chest and roared triumphantly, showering bloody bits and pieces over the yard. Two other men stopped in their tracks, eyes bright with panic, and reached into their pockets. They disintegrated loudly where they stood. The yard was pitted with holes and strewn with mutilated shapes. Smoke and smell drifted through the air. Death, in the form of a cigar flung aside in terror, flew through the open workshop door and ate its way through a bank of complex machinery. Splinters of hot glass and searing steel sprayed across the width of the big room. A small fire started at the point of impact.
Less than five minutes to zero. Nick dodged a rain of bullets from the remaining guard at the rocket center, crouched down low, and pumped back vigorously. His target cried out and dropped in a twisted heap. But now there were loud shouts from the ack-ack battery behind Nick. He pivoted briskly and dodged around the far side of a storehouse, sliding Wilhelmina back into her holster and pulling out several other weapons.
Ah Choy’s master key turned and the door swung open at his kick. He stared into the room of death and gave a bellow of rage and fear. From outside he could hear the screams of those who were about to die, but these inside were long past screaming. Ah Choy cursed. There would be no help forthcoming from anywhere. But it could only be one man who was doing all this. One man! He slammed the door to the guardroom and slid back a panel in the wall outside it. His thin yellow fingers prodded a red button. If one man could not be searched out and destroyed like the mad dog that he was … !
The general alarm siren swelled through the bowels of the camp.
Nick heard it as he dodged around the storehouse, felt its vibrations trembling through the earth beneath his feet. He had two pursuers now. They had split up and were closing in on him in a pincer movement that would have him running full-tilt into one of them at any moment or backing up into the arms of the other. But to break away here would be to run directly toward the guardhouse at the gate. And that would be inconvenient, to say the least.
Ah Choy’s thin voice piped out over a loudspeaker.
“General alert! General alert! All personnel to be on lookout for Dr. Erich Burgdorf. Spread out and search. Shoot to kill. Maneuver B. Do not—repeat—do not accept cigars. Do not enter Off Duty room. Search and destroy.”
Nick wondered about Maneuver B as he headed rapidly for the corner of the storehouse.
But the rest of the message was clear, and so were the footsteps that were running toward him from around the corner and the ones that were gaining on him from behind.
CHAPTER 13
YOU BURN ME UP!
He was squeezing the trigger of the lone binocular tube even as he ran.
The searing beam of the disguised laser pistol pierced hody through the pale blue night, ready to eat the heart out of anything that came into its path. Nick skidded around the corner, pistol blazing at chest height. He had a fleeting vision of a thickset, helmeted man coming at him with submachine gun raised to fire, and then the man was lying sprawled out backwards with a look of shocked incredulity upon his face and a hole clean through his chest. A littie wisp of smoke curled from his seared uniform. Nick leapt over him and swung around to face the other in a low crouch, pistol raised high but beam momentarily turned off.
The man who had been behind him rounded the corner cautiously but not cautiously enough. His gun spat once and its bullet plowed a furrow along the wall beside Nick’s head. The laser poured its thin carnivorous tongue high across the fallen body, straight into the other man’s face. The face became a hideous, eroded mask of death; the man became a dead man, falling.
Nick pinched the two cigars in his other hand, pivoted, and threw them with all his might at the gun emplacement and the frond-covered barrel that pointed at the sky. Then again he turned, scooped up one man’s helmet and crammed it on his head, and took off his own pants. In a matter of seconds he had ripped the uniform from the other’s body and was buttoning it around him when the gun emplacement came apart at the seams and sent a shattering roar into the night. He grabbed a submachine gun and raced toward the explosion. And passed it on the run, his gun blazing at the two guards who had left their post outside the ammunition depot to see what was happening at the gun emplacement.
Three minutes to zero hour.
The guards fell at the savage, unexpected burst of fire, directed at them by one whose helmet-hidden face they recognized only as they died.
“Idiots! Fools! Incompetents!” Krutch’s voice bellowed across the yard as his mismatched legs thomp-slapped across the churned-up gravel. “Get back to your posts. Get back at once. Ah Choy, you bloody blind swine, rescind Maneuver B and get these fools of yours back to their places!”
“I give the orders to the men,” Ah Choy said icily. “And I want every available man searching for the criminal. Or do you expect them to wait for him to come and pick them off?”
“Pick them off!” Krutch’s bearded face was twisted with rage. “What are they, sitting ducks, or yellow-bellied cowards like you? Don’t you realize, you Chinese pig, that if they leave their posts they make things twice as easy for him? By God, with you in charge of Security it’s no wonder we’re in this filthy mess. Get them back where they belong!”
“But—”
“You give the order or I will!” Krutch’s vast and meaty hand slammed against Ah Choy’s head and sent him reeling sideways.
Ah Choy recovered his balance and went scurrying back to his command post
Nick muttered impatiently beneath his breath. “Come on you, come on,” he grumbled. The laser’s blazing beam slowly—much too slowly—chewed a path around the lock. Metal hissed and sizzled as it melted. So! It was done. Nick finished the job with a prolonged burst of fire from the machine gun and kicked in the door to the ammunition stores. He kept firing as he pinched the last two of his grenades and tossed them far back into the stacks of weapons and explosives, and when he had used up his round of fire he dropped the gun and turned the laser pistol’s 10,000-watt ray onto a pile of crates. Flames began to lick their edges. He turned and ran. The grenades went off simultaneously three seconds later.
