Donald Hamilton: The Devastators

As I started for the door, the Shpagin opened up with a short burst that echoed up and down the rock corridor outside. Les glanced around as I reached him.

"They're alerted, but I can hold the stairs as long as I have ammunition," he said. "Did you get that other man's gun? Give it to me."

Something had happened to him, now that he was getting to shoot at men. His load of guilt had slipped away; he looked almost happy. I gave him the extra pistol.

"Now you run along, old chap," he said. "Back the way we came. Turn right outside the observation ward. There is a passage there that leads to the cliff face, I am told. It is covered with painted papier-mвchй or canvas so it won't show to seaward, but that shouldn't be much of an obstacle. Can you swim?"

"More or less," I said. "Look, I-"

"One of us must get away to give the warning. You are not going to pick this moment to turn noble, my dear fellow? After all, I already have the symptoms; I am doomed. You still have a chance, if you get away. Cheerio."

I looked down at him, crouching there. It seemed to me

I was leaving a lot of doomed people behind. Again, there was nothing to say that didn't sound corny. I heard the Shpagin give another burst as I loped up the corridor. I almost fell when I stepped on something small and soft that squealed loudly; you wouldn't think there was that big a noise in that small a body. Obviously Madame Ling's black lever had done its work. The rats were loose.

I kept an eye out for the sentry from above, who was bound to have heard the racket. I saw him come into sight outside the observation ward, ducked back, waited until he was well silhouetted against the light, and dropped him with the last shot in my revolver. Below, the burp gun Cut loose again.

I had a momentary thought of Vadya as I passed the ward in which I'd left her, but I knew she wouldn't expect me to stop for her and I didn't. She was in no condition for a high dive and a long swim, anyway. It would kill her just as dead as Madame Ling's high explosive. The corridor leading to the cliff was cold and dark, and I had company in it. I told myself that I couldn't catch anything from a rat that I hadn't already got from a hypodermic, but the scurryings and squeakings didn't help the morale.

Then I ran into the end of the corridor, bruising my knuckles on some kind of a wooden framework. There was canvas between the timbers. I cut at it with the knife, and daylight flooded the tunnel. Madame Ling's luck would have been in if it hadn't already run out: the sunny weather of the morning had given way to rain and fog. I thought I saw the shape of a vessel of some kind, far out at sea, but I couldn't be sure. I looked down.

It wasn't an encouraging sight. I mean, out west where I grew up, water was something you used for diluting your whiskey a little when you outgrew soft drinks and didn't feel like beer. Otherwise, except for purposes of cleanliness, I've never had much truck with the stuff. Oh, I learned to swim after a fashion in a pool liberally laced with chlorine, and I got some small-boat training along with weapons, codes, ciphers, drugs, unarmed combat, and all the rest of the stuff when I joined the outfit. But water has never been my favorite element.

I can't tell you the height of the drop, exactly. It wasn't quite as impossibly high as Madame Ling's casual mention had suggested, but then nothing she'd said had turned out to be quite the way she'd said it. It was a good two stories down, maybe three. There were sharp rocks below, on which black water broke into foam. I'd have to go well out to clear them. To the right, around a shoulder of rock, was the cove; to the left was nothing but sheer cliff, with no landing place visible, and the whole thing was due to explode any minute, anyway, if Madame Ling hadn't been bluffing about her destruct circuit. I didn't think she had been, time delay or no. All I could do was swim out to sea and wait for the place to blow and then hope I had strength enough to get back ashore somehow.

Standing there, I could hear shouts and gunshots from the cove. Suddenly there were some sharp crackling noises in there, and for a moment I thought Les must have charged the stairs and carried the fight right down to the landing area, which seemed crazy. Then a small boat poked its nose around the shoulder of rock. It came into sight, driven by a racketing outboard motor and guided by a man I recognized. Basil was making his escape at full throttle. The gray box he'd been carrying lay on the seat beside him.

I didn't have time to think about it, which was just as well. There were half a dozen small animals crawling over my feet, anyway, which made it seem a desirable place to leave. I just dove, throwing myself well out from the cliff. Suicide was not part of the plan, but for a moment, as I hung in the air, I thought I'd overdone it and would plunge headfirst right through the boat, undoubtedly breaking my neck in the process. Then Basil glanced up, startled, and threw the tiller hard over, and gravity took hold of me, and I hit well short of the craft.

The impact almost fractured my skull. The solid water was like a club. Dazed, I felt myself rushing down and down, without strength enough to make the upward turn. There were a couple of moments when I didn't even know which way the surface was. By the time I got things sorted out down there in the bitter-cold water, I was running out of air. I paddled upward weakly, burst through the surface, and something glanced heavily off my shoulder as I gasped for breath. I saw Basil standing in the boat, swinging an oar for another try at my head. Apparently his panicky swerve to escape me had stalled his motor somehow, or he'd killed it to keep from capsizing.

I let myself go under again, and saw the oar blade slice through the silvery surface, grabbed it, and pulled hard. He came right to me like a good boy. He was no trouble at all. He couldn't swim any better than I could, and I paid my debt to Vadya-and maybe to Nancy Glenmore, too-with hardly any effort. He didn't seem to be even trying. When I got him back to the boat, I saw at least part of the reason. He had only one hand to use. The other wrist was chained to the gray box.

I managed to get the body half into the boat without swamping the little craft. I swam around to the other side, heaved myself in, and pulled him aboard. I took a quick look at the metal box, recognizing it now: it was one of the standard courier cases. The weight indicated something inside besides paper: it was undoubtedly booby-trapped against tampering, with a charge that would go off if the handcuff was opened with anything but the right key, if the chain was cut, or if the box itself was attacked by a jimmy or other unauthorized instrument.

I didn't have the slightest doubt what the non-explosive contents were. Tricky to the last, Madame Ling hadn't been willing to entrust the results of her experiments wholly to the vessel in which she expected to make her getaway. In fact, she'd probably intended to use herself as a decoy if things went wrong, drawing attention from the preliminary copy of her report that she was sending to some trusted agent along the coast, using Basil as her messenger.

Like Vadya, I'd been a little surprised that she'd been unwilling to stick by her agreement and sell the man out. Certainly I'd never seen a woman less likely to be troubled by considerations of personal loyalty. But now her reasoning made sense, because Basil was the ideal courier here. A braver man, carrying a secret of this value, might have been tempted to cash in on it somehow, but not Basil. He wouldn't have had the nerve to let anyone tinker with the booby-trapped case to which he was attached, no matter what the possible profit might be. Chained to a bomb, he would think of nothing but getting rid of it quickly and safely, by delivering it to the person who had the handcuff key…