Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

“The machine gunners—”“ he began, only to be again interrupted.

“Those poor, soft-hearted American men will be most loath to fire on the so-sacred Red Gross emblem, and you know it. As for the jeep patrols, well-armed assistance awaits us only a kilometer or so away.

“You know, it is too bad in a way that I really am not the woman you thought you knew, Milo, for she could have been, I think, very happy with you in America, Because of that, I won’t shoot you, although I know I should . . . unless you try to stop us or come after us, that is.

“Doh svedahnyah, sweet Milo.”

At the back of the ambulance, she waved her pistol at Judy and brusquely said to Hugo, “Get her out of the ambulance, quickly.” Stepping into the back of the vehicle, she stepped through the cargo compartment to the front and showed the driver and the medic the business end of the pistol. “If you two want to be alive to get demobilized, you’ll do exactly as I say for the next few minutes.”

Staring wide-eyed at the black hole of the muzzle, the driver gulped once, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, and said, “Yesma’am! Ah’ll sho’ly do enythin’ you says.”

Buck had been stunned by the blow from Hugo’s pistol, but not rendered really unconscious, and a whimper from the semiconscious Judy as Hugo jerked her body out of the ambulance and dropped her to the ground brought the short, wiry man into full awareness.

Standing in the doorway of the headquarters building, neither Milo nor Sergeant Stupsnasig ever could say precisely what happened then. At one moment, Hugo was turning to clamber into the back of the ambulance, and only an eyeblink of time later, he was lying thrashing in the dirt, shrieking dementedly, with blood bubbling up out of his mouth.

Betty appeared at the back doors of the ambulance, took but a single look at Hugo, then absently shot him twice in the forehead before slamming the doors shut.

Buck, blood pouring down from the lacerated side of his head, unnoticed, sat in the dust with Judy cradled in his arms, seemingly unmindful of anything else going on around him, crooning to her softly in French.

As the ambulance driver changed gears, Milo dove out of the doorway, came up with Hugo’s dropped pistol and began to rapid-fire offhand at the departing vehicle.

A deep voice spoke just behind him, saying,“ Hang on a second, major.”

He looked around just in time to see Sergeant Stupsnasig withdraw her hand from the front of her well-stuffed shirt. The hand was holding a Smith&Wesson revolver. The big woman dropped to a squat, took a two-handed grip on the snub-nosed weapon and, with five shots, blew out both of the rear tires of the ambulance.

As the big woman ejected the cases and began to stuff .38 caliber cartridges into the cylinder, the quiet of the post was suddenly broken by the whooping wails of sirens and the roars of jeep engines on the perimeters, almost drowning out the shouts of the guards. From somewhere not too far distant, around some of the twists and turns of the abominably sur-faced dirt road leading to the main post, came the un-mistakable sound of a .50 caliber machine gun firing short, controlled bursts.

Milo checked the magazine of the Colt Woodsman to find three rounds left, plus the one in the chamber. Cautiously, he began to walk over to where the ambulance had slewed to a halt just beyond the gate to the smaller compound. But before he reached it, the gates of the main compound swung wide to admit a half-track and a three-quarter-ton field car—the former mounting a .50 caliber machine gun and filled with armed troops, the latter mounting a large radio set and conveying General Barstow, who held a Thompson submachine gun and wore a field jacket over his class-A uniform.

Pulling around the half-track, the driver of the field car accelerated to halt, nose to nose, with the ambulance, turned off the engine, then drew another Thompson from a holder welded to the side of the car and, after arming it, stood up and pointed it at the windshield of the ambulance. Only then did Barstow swing down from the car and walk to the ambulance, his own Thompson leveled and ready, his forefinger not quite touching the trigger.

He opened the door and stepped back, saying, “You twosoldiers, get out, now!”

When the terrorized driver and the medic had rolled out the doors, Barstow stepped back to the rear and, careful to keep his head and body shielded, banged on the nearest door with the muzzle of his weapon. Raising his voice a notch, he said, “Betty? Tatiana? Whatever your name really is, there’s no way out now, never was, actually. So you and Hugo had better just come out quietly. Otherwise I’ll have to call my other vehicle over here and turn that ambulance into a sieve.”

Milo heard the general’s words as he approached, and just as he reached the senior officer’s side, he heard Betty’s reply: “Oh, no, General Barstow, you would not dare to do such a thing, not with these two rocket scientists here with me.”

Barstow laughed loudly, to be heard. “If Russian Intelligence is this easy to fool, we should do it more often. Tatiana, Tatiana, the two men in there with you and Hugo are not rocket scientists, they’re not even Germans . . . well, at least not anymore, not for some years. Formerly they worked for OSS; now they work for me, so you have no chips with which to bargain. I give you one minute to come out, then I’ll call over the half-truck with its heavy machine gun. Come on, Tatiana, I’m counting . ..“

Suddenly, from within, there came the phuutt-phuutting of the silenced pistol firing. The vehicle began to rock on its springs; there were several gasps and groans, punctuated by the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, solidly. Then the rear doors burst open and a tangle of three bodies rolled out onto the ground, feet, fists and a gunbutt flailing. Milo dived in and grabbed Betty’s wrist, then forcibly wrenched the weapon from her hand and tucked it into his waistband alongside the one that had been dead Hugo’s.

But even lacking the pistol, Betty seemed more than a match for the two ersatz Germans. Hizinger was already bleeding heavily from nose and mouth, and a shoe toe driven into his crotch sent him rolling out of the fight, clutching at himself and retching. Gries had finally managed to encircle Betty’s throat with his hairy hands, pinning her arms with his knees, but somehow she got her left arm free and smashed the heel of her palm upward against the tip of his nose. With a gurgling, gasping cry, the man slumped to the side and lay unmoving in a limp huddle, blood pouring out to pool under his face.

Barstow feathered the trigger of his Thompson and put three big .45 caliber slugs into the ground some inches from Betty’s head. “That’s enough, Tatiana. This is the end of the road, for you, on this operation, anyway. You should be shot or hung or, at least, thrown into a federal penitentiary for a helluva long time; but to be realistic, considering the numbers of communists and fellow travelers that Roosevelt allowed to infiltrate the government and, in particular, the Department of State, you’ll most likely just be told that you were naughty and shipped back to Russia, which is why we will have a few chats with you before we turn you over to higher authority.”

He turned his head and called, “Harrigan, grab a pair of handcuffs and come back here.”

In that short moment, Betty looked up at Milo and said, in Russian, “You know, despite everything, I think I really did love you, my love.” She closed her mouth, then crunched something between her teeth, and a split second later, her entire body stiffened spasmodically. Her spine arched, higher, higher, until only her shoulders and heels were touching the ground. Unbearable, bestial noises issued from her mouth, then her body slammed back to the hard ground, her breath came out in a long, ragged gasp, and her blue eyes began to glaze over.