Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

Willie said incredulously, "They can't expect us to fall for that. It's phoney as a glass eye."

Gus nodded. "Sure. And he knew dang well he warn't foolin' me. Talked funny, kinda insulting." He looked at Modesty. "Know what I figure? They can see we know the score and they got tired of pussyfooting around. They reckon maybe we got tired too, so they're sayin' come out an' get it settled."

Willie said, "For all they know we could set up a cordon of fuzz round the place, Princess. Or you and I could go and leave Gus 'ere. But they don't reckon we'll do that."

"No. They'll have eyes on the job, Willie, and if we don't play it their way they won't be there." She thought for a moment, gazing at the chessboard. "And if we just sit tight they can wait till Gus goes back to the States and try to nail him there. They don't fancy a longhaul job so they're offering a showdown."

There was a silence. Gus looked from Modesty to Willie and back again. "Then let's go get 'em," he said quietly.

It was an hour before midnight when a Cessna Skymaster moved steadily through the darkness at ten thousand feet over Surrey. Within, The Dark Angels sat in silence, ramair parachutes strapped in position, focusing their minds on the task that lay before them. Performanceenhancing drugs were at work in each bloodstream.

The aircraft banked gently, skirting the pool of light from a town below. Two miles to the west the darkness was pierced only by a red lamp on top of a tall structure, the iron skeleton of a partly built carpark.

The pilot spoke, and without a word the three blackclad figures in their skimasks rose and moved to the door, Asmodeus first, followed by Belial and Aruga, each deep in the role he was playing, each with surging confidence in his more than human powers. Seconds later they were gone, dropping in free fall and moving laterally as they fell in echelon at a speed increasing to a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

The carpark was in the shape of a capital E with the middle stroke missinga long centre span with two wings. As The Dark Angels came to within two thousand feet of the red lamp they diverged from one another and pulled the ripcords. Black ramair 'chutes blossomed into curving rectangles, easily distinguished against the starlit sky and the almost full moon, but they were in view for no more than a few seconds. The Angels had reconnoitred the site in daylight, and Asmodeus touched down beside the western wing, exactly where he intended. On the far side of the structure Belial landed gently beside a mobile crane. Aruga, to his anger, missed his chosen spot by several feet as he touched down midway between the two wings of the structure.

On a partly finished floor near the top of the building Modesty and Willie stood near the middle of the main span with Gus. Both wore black slacks and shirts, camouflage paint on their faces. Willie wore twin knives strapped on his chest, two small weighted clubs in loops on his belt. Modesty carried the kongo in a pocket near one shoulder and wore a holstered Colt.32 at her hip.

There had been some argument as to what part Gus should play. After Willie had checked carefully to make sure they were first in the field, he and Modesty had proposed finding a hideyhole for Gus until the action was over. Gus had protested vigorously, pointing out that as bodyguards they were supposed to guard his body, which they couldn't do if he wasn't around. In the end they had taken him up with them on the platform of the powerdriven hoist that rose on the outer side of the central span.

They had hardly heard the sound of the aircraft passing a mile away, but it was enough to alert them to a possibility, and they were watching when the 'chutes opened briefly on the final approach. Gus whispered, "Three of 'em. By air. Jeesus!"

Willie said softly, "Fancy stuff, Princess. But they're good."

"Yes. I wish now we'd slipped Gus a mickey and tucked him away safe somewhere."

Gus sniffed in disapproval. "I'd be real put out if you had, Miss Modesty. What we gonna do? Wait for 'em to come at us?"

"Better them on the move than us. Easier to spot." She looked about her at the network of girders and stanchions forming the skeleton of the structure. "These stanchions throw shadows. Stand close against one, Gus, and don't move unless I tell you to."

Several floors below, Asmodeus was climbing a rope he had cast with a grapnel tipped with solid rubber, now caught over a higher girder. It had been agreed between the Dark Angels that there could be no preplanned combination moves such as those they had devised for the Kaltchas contract. They would be engaged with opponents of high reputation who were expecting attack, and in this chosen arena of the halfbuilt carpark all action would have to be improvised with each man acting on his own initiative according to the way the combat developed.

This was new for the Angels, and intensely exciting. It also introduced an element of competition, for each was eager to claim either Modesty Blaise or Willie Garvin as a victim, or better still both. One thing the novelty of the coming confrontation had not done was to diminish their confidence in the slightest degree, for it was established in their psyches that they were superior beings to whom defeat and death could not come.

One floor below where his quarry waited, Asmodeus stood by a stanchion rising from a nineinch Igirder and put miniature nightglasses to his eyes for the fourth time. After a few seconds he smiled, lowered the glasses, pulled goggles down over his eyes and took a small CS gas bomb from a pouch at his hip. It was a long throw across the angle between the east wing and the main span to the floor above, but Asmodeus felt no shred of selfdoubt as his arm swung.

The missile landed on the concrete platform a few paces from Gus and began vomiting gas. Within two seconds Willie was there, kicking it out over the edge. Gus was coughing, hands clutched over his eyes as Modesty reached him, holding her breath but with her own eyes streaming. Gripping his arm she hauled him across to the hoist platform, pushed him so that he sprawled on to it, then drew her Colt and knelt to press it into his hand as she whispered, choking a little, "When you get below find a hole and stay there, Gus, shoot anyone who gets in your way."

She groped for the switchbox, found the start button, and felt the hoist sink away from her as the engine below came to life. When she turned away from the edge Willie was beside her, crouching, knuckling an eye, a knife held by the blade. She said. "Split. On the run till we can see straight."

They had both seen the canister hit the concrete and bounce, and could judge the direction from which it had been thrown. Together they moved the opposite way, diverging. Each carried an empty sack picked up from a pile at the foot of the hoist. Using her folded sack as protection for her hands, Modesty slid down two stanchions to a lower floor, gripping the flange on each side of the stanchion to control the speed of her descent.

At the back of her mind she was very conscious that she and Willie had been prodded into action with no time for serious preparation, while their three opponents had taken whatever time they needed to choose the arena and equip themselves for the occasion. She had seen them only as dark figures at a distance when they landed, but knew they were very special operators, highly skilled and organised.

She sought to get closer to their minds, recalling that whoever had thrown the CS bomb must have located one of them, probably Gus himself judging by where the canister had landed, yet there had been no shot, no attempt to kill. Did this mean they carried no weapon to kill beyond arm's length? Or were they hoping to maintain their practice of faking an accident? Or were these men so sure of themselves that they felt able to play cat and mouse with their victims?