Джон Болл - The First Team

She didn’t even pause to glance at him. “Of course. Slightly pregnant, but that’s nothing at the moment.”

The door opened without a knock and Percival was there. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hewlitt answered for them both, “but Mary isn’t here.” He remembered that he had only a few dollars in his wallet, but that could not be helped. Barbara snapped her case shut and waved help aside. “Where to?” she asked.

Downstairs the front door opened once more; Davy turned quickly, then relaxed when he heard Mary’s quick steps on the staircase. She was with them seconds later. “Two minutes,” she asked.

“No more,” Percival warned.

Davy went with her as she literally ran to her room.

“Let’s get started,” Percival said.

“The others?” Hewlitt asked.

Percival nodded quickly. “Cedric is all right, so far at least. And the rest. But we’ve got to get you out as fast as possible.” He glanced at his watch, then stood waiting for agonizing seconds to pass by. The house remained quiet, which was all that Hewlitt dared to hope for. After a half minute of eternity Percival started out the door. Barbara followed, carrying her own case; they were halfway down the back staircase when Mary came running after them, followed by Davy who had her case in his hand; apparently they had scooped everything into it in a matter of a few seconds.

When they reached the first floor Percival swung open the door to the basement staircase. Hewlitt remembered then that there was another way out of the safe house and he was desperately grateful for it. He followed Barbara down, being careful not to stumble in the semi-darkness. The feeling of being the hunted was strong in him now, and the urge to flee was fighting for possession of him.

It was victory when his feet touched the floor of the basement, even though he did not know where he was going. As he turned to follow Barbara toward the rear of the building, he heard a sudden noise from upstairs; he analyzed it instinctively and knew that the front door had been flung open. Then he heard a commanding voice and identified it as Major Barlov’s. One glance behind him told him that Davy had shut the cellar door and was more than halfway down the steps with Mary still ahead of him. He gulped in air and resolved to move as swiftly and as silently as he humanly could. It was a matter of seconds now.

Percival barely paused before the door to a small partitioned-off storeroom; it was heavily padlocked with a chain wound around two posts; even with a key it would take precious time to open. As Hewlitt watched, Percival reached to the other side of the door, touched a hidden latch, and swung it open from what had appeared to be the hinged side. Barbara passed quickly through the opening; without thinking Hewlitt stepped aside to let Mary go next. At that moment he heard the door at the top of the basement stairs yanked open and the sound of someone running down the steps.

Hewlitt did what his primitive instincts demanded; he whipped his body around to do battle, and to buy time for Barbara to get away. Then he felt the ramming force of Davy’s hand against his chest pushing him backward. As he yielded, because he could not help it, he saw the face of Major Barlov and knew that they were trapped. He stumbled backward, Davy crowding him hard, and realized that Percival was closing the trick door. For a bare moment Barlov was at the opening, then as the door came shut he heard the words, “Get going, you chaps.”

His brain told him to obey the voice, the voice of Major Barlov. But it had been a different voice, one he had only partially recognized. He lowered his head and passed through an opening protected by a metal door and into some sort of tunnel as Percival thrust him against the side in order to get past. Then the metal door closed behind him. A flashlight beam cut ahead and he could see the two girls, Percival leading them, then a tunnel intersection.

They turned at a right angle to the left and were in some sort of an underground utility passageway; overhead and on the sidewalls there were multiple pipes and conduits. After a short distance Percival halted and pulled open what appeared to be an electrical junction box. From it he quickly took out several compact handguns, passing the first to Barbara and the second to Mary. “Can you shoot?” he asked Hewlitt.

“I’ll learn damn fast.”

Percival handed him a gun. “Keep the safety on,” he directed. “Mary will show you.”

“Can she use a gun?”

“She can drop a running man at sixty yards,” he answered. “She has.” Then he slapped a gun into Davy’s free hand, took one himself, and was in the lead once more.

At a niche in the concrete sidewall there was a steel ladder going up; after the brief climb another door and they were inside a small garage. Without hesitation Davy opened the trunk of a common-place-appearing sedan and stepped onto a couch which had been prepared on the inside. Percival waved Hewlitt toward the rear seat as he shut the lid of Davy’s compartment. Obediently Hewlitt climbed in and was grateful when Barbara followed. Mary took the front seat as Percival slid behind the wheel. At the touch of a button on the dash the door began to lift open as Percival started the engine. Moments later the car came out into the sudden brightness of daylight, the door of the garage slowly closing automatically behind it. They came down a short driveway, turned into the thin traffic stream, and everything was suddenly commonplace.

Percival drove through the city with apparent unconcern. He held to a westerly direction until the last of the new housing developments finally had been passed and they were in the beginning of the open country. He turned once or twice onto semi-thoroughfares with the familiarity of a man driving from his office back to his own home and no one, so far as Hewlitt could tell, took the least notice of them. He looked up at the gas gauge and saw, as he had expected, that the tank was full. He sat back next to Barbara, holding the gun he had been given concealed inside his coat, and deliberately relaxed. When he had done that he said to Barbara, “I’m glad you’re here.”

She pressed his hand; it was eloquent enough for him and he was satisfied. They drove on, the car running smoothly, the day beautiful and clear. They continued for more than an hour and then at last Percival spoke. “We should be in the clear now,” he said. “We know all of their emergency roadblock locations and they’re behind us now as far as the city is concerned. They don’t have any description of this car and they’re still short of people; they can’t make an exhaustive search.”

Hewlitt swallowed. “What happens now?” he asked.

Percival kept his eyes on the road. “Things are all set up for us,” he answered. “If nothing goes wrong, in a day or two you’ll meet the First Team.”

As soon as the preliminary information was all in, Ed Higbee saw the admiral. He sat down and waved away the inevitable cup of coffee, refreshment was not on his mind at the moment. “Barney,” he began, “we’ve got a bear by the tail.”

“Let’s have it.”

“I’ll start with the good part first: Mark got there in time and pulled out four of our people who were in a critical position. It was touch and go, but they made it.”

“That includes Hewlitt, the interpreter.”

“Yes, sir, plus two of our best girls and the electronics man who was in charge of the safe house. The house is blown, but our people all have whole skins. Speaking of that, Hewlitt was called in to face Rostovitch and somehow he bluffed him out. God knows how he did it.”

“God knows, and I intend to find out. Go on.”

“Rostovitch is running the show, as we already knew, but there’s a new angle. He told Hewlitt that Magsaysay has been sunk. According to Hewlitt, whom Mark considers to be thoroughly creditable, he was almost triumphantly factual about it.”