Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

One floor down and in the west wing, Willie Garvin had an unhappy feeling that he was cornered. Somebody was stalking him, and his eyes were not yet working well enough to pick out a shape in the deceptive starlight. From where he stood a long scaffold pole extended across a corner formed by the inner side of the wing and the main span. It would take only four seconds to swing along that, he decided, and tucked under his belt the sack he carried.

Among other hobbies, Willie Garvin was part owner of a tenting circus that travelled Europe, and he would sometimes spend a few weeks with it, doing a knifethrowing act under the name of El Cazador and Conchita, who was his target. There were one or two occasions when Modesty had played Conchita, with Willie hamming outrageously in Mexican garb for the entertainment of friends in the audience. Willie had also been the standin catcher for a trapeze act, and to swing hand over hand along the scaffold pole was easy for him. He was halfway along when he saw the man appear at the end he was approaching, a tall man all in black and wearing a skimask. Where the mouth showed, the man was smiling. At the moment his arms were folded and he held no weapon.

Willie looked back and saw a duplicate figure at the end he had just left, again simply watching, seeing no cause for hurry to dispatch a helpless opponent. Willie looked down at the ground sixty feet below, then at the floor he was facing, one level down from where he hung. The man on his right spoke softly. "We are The Dark Angels. I am Belial."

The man on his left said, "I am Aruga. You will be the first of our victims ever to know who destroyed you."

Willie thought, They're psycho. I'm in with a chance. He began to swing back and forth, talking amiably. " 'Allo, I'm Willie Garvin. I've 'eard of Belial but I thought Aruga was one of those islands in the Dutch West Indies…" He went on talking as the man called Belial drew a knife from the back of his belt and flicked it over to catch it by the blade. By now Willie had increased his swing almost to the horizontal, and a glance the other way showed that the other man was also preparing to throw.

Willie made the final swing forward, putting all his strength into the move, turning in an open back somersault to land on the very edge of the floor below but with residual impetus, diving forward as two knives struck steel or concrete to either side of him. Next moment he had rolled on and come to his feet under the shelter of the floor above, out of sight of The Dark Angels.

Three floors higher, Modesty lay prone, looking down at the corner where Willie had vanished. She had heard his voice, and reached the edge of an unfinished floor just in time to see him escape the knives. Her gun was with Gus, or she could have brought down at least one of the men. Now they had gone, perhaps to follow Willie, perhaps to seek other quarry, herself or Gus. Later, if there was to be a later, she would be furiously scathing with herself for ineptness in approaching the challenge she had accepted, but this was not the moment for dwelling on it.

She edged back, slid down one floor and saw a mortar tray with a spade propped against a nearby stanchion. A length of rope was attached to the tray, perhaps for hauling it across the rough floor. She eyes the spade thoughtfully for a moment or two and decided to stay for a while.

Willie Garvin was also profoundly annoyed with himself and had decided it was high time to take some sort of initiative. To this end he was on the ground now, having slid down a succession of stanchions using the sack to protect his hands from friction. Knife in hand he moved towards the foot of the hoist, thankful that his vision was clear again. It was as he passed the heap of sacks that he heard a soft "Pssst!" and dropped to one knee, turning ready to throw.

One of the top sacks was flipped back and Gus's head and shoulders emerged from the pile with a hand holding Modesty's gun. His voice held a tinge of disappointment as he whispered. "Only you. I hoped it was one o' them parachutin' critturs. How's it goin'?"

Willie breathed, "I rate three out often so far, but I'm 'oping to improve."

"Where's Miss Modesty?"

"Up top somewhere, I think."

"Then what the hell you doin' down here? Let's git to helping her."

He started to clamber out of the pile, but Willie pushed him back and whispered fiercely, "You stay buried or I'll break your legs. You promised Modesty." He flipped a sack over Gus's scowling face and moved on to the foot of the hoist.

Several floors above, Belial moved like a shadow through a lattice of girders and stanchions to a section of concrete flooring. In one hand he held the butt of a whip. Its thong was five feet long tipped with a further foot of razorwire. There came a slight sound ahead and to his right from behind one of the broad steel stanchions. He froze, then edged forward. The lash leapt out, curling round the stanchion at head height, and in the same instant two feet smashed into Belial's back as Modesty launched a high dropkick from behind.

He was flung forward, his head hitting the face of the unforgiving steel, and he slumped unconscious. Modesty listened for any hint of sound nearby, then moved forward. A spade lay behind the stanchion. It was attached to a length of rope she had used to create the small sound that had decoyed the man into position for her attack. She searched him for weapons, was disappointed to find no gun and only an empty knife sheath, then used the rope to tie his hands behind him with feet doubled back and lashed to the hands.

When she pulled off the skimask she saw the face of a man in his middle twenties with blood welling from a cut forehead. In the fall, a medallion on a chain round his neck had emerged from under his shirt. Using a pencil torch and carefully screening it she saw that the medallion bore a winged human figure. Arched above this were the words The Dark Angels, and below it the word Belial. She switched off the torch and knelt unmoving for a moment, marvelling as she thought, My God, they're fantasy roleplayers but for real!

She had just risen to her feet when there came from below the sound of the engine that drove the hoist. She moved quickly across the girders to a point where she would be able to watch its progress, not knowing who had started the hoist or what it signified, but with an instinctive feeling that this was probably a Willie Garvin initiative, which was comforting.

On a floor below, Aruga crouched with a dartgun aimed. The hoist ran in a framework of steel scaffolding and was located so that on each floor it could be halted at a point where a section of flooring had been run in. Aruga heard the engine note change as the platform came to a halt at each of the floors before moving on. Now it was approaching the floor where he waited only eight paces away. It came into view, halting just above the level of the floor, but the platform was empty except for one or two sacks lying on it.

Aruga stood up, moving forward to investigate. As he did so a man's head and shoulders rose from the farther edge of the platform and an arm swung. Startled, Aruga jerked the gun up, but even as he began the movement a knife drove into the muscle of his gunarm. The weapon fell. Aruga staggered with shock and dropped to his knees. Making a huge effort he rose and lurched forward, reaching towards the dartgun with his sound arm, but then the man was there, a big man with fair hair he had last seen hanging helpless from a scaffold pole. Now he was holding a second knife with its point touching Aruga's throat. A voice with a Cockney accent said softly, "You'll 'ave to tell me more about The Dark Angels… but not just now." A hand with an edge like teak struck behind Aruga's ear, and he fell sideways.