The sounds of the Thrushes on the beach floated dimly into his hiding place. He scrunched down and crawled deeper into the maze of crossbars, and suddenly the way opened. There was a runway of sorts, and he rose, proceeding as quietly as possible to put some distance between himself and the Thrushes.
I’ve got a fair idea where they were taking me, he thought. That amusement pier looks like a cover for some sort of Thrush operation. If I can only get in touch with
Illya, we might be able to snatch the whole covey. Then he remembered the tracer pinned under his lapel. The weights of gun and communicator were gone, but if he was still a gold blip on that computer display, Illya would be following him closely. There was no way to tell without freeing his hands.
The blackness of night underneath the boardwalk kept him from seeing the turn until too late. He clipped his head and shoulder on a piling, spun, and ended flat on his back. The giant he*d nicknamed Big Stoop yelled from ahead, “Hey! Under the walk! I heard something-bring the light down here!”
Napoleon was beginning to believe that this wasn’t to be his night. He rolled into a sitting position, hunched forward, and managed to get to his knees. It was then he found the wine bottle.
Somebody up there likes spies, he decided, getting to his feet. Bracing himself, he stomped down on the bottle, breaking it with none of the classic glass-breaking sounds. A dull pop, and his foot made a hundred fine fragments of it, leaving the neck and a portion of the side. He kicked the large glass dagger away from the rest quickly, and knelt with his back toward it.
He finally had to stretch out full length and roll his hands over on the shard. He forced numb fingers to grip and pick it up by the neck. Repeating his earlier twist, he regained his feet, and started on down the runway away from the voices.
Two Thrushes with a flashlight were working their way under the boardwalk. Napoleon heard them stumbling and cursing-even with a light, the way wasn’t easy. Plodding as fast as he could, he forced the glass splinter between his wrists, concentrating on the cord and hoping no major veins would get opened in the process.
Gingerly, he flexed his hands and fingers until sweat started running down his face from fear that he couldn’t get through the bonds before they caught up with him. When the twine gave and he could feel warmth flowing back into his hands, he almost fell headlong against a post.
His first thought was for the tracer, which was still pinned under his lapel. Its presence, and the needles of pain from his reviving fingers, wrought a subtle change on him. His ears pricked at sounds behind; his eyes peered more deeply into the dark. When he moved, he didn’t feel as though both feet were encased in lead. His step was more stealthy, his movements controlled. The hunted had become the hunter.
“Two behind, and only one ahead. I can take him by surprise, and probably double back on the other two with his weapon, and take them from behind. Illya should get here by then, and without these lads to give the alarm we could wind this whole thing up.” He flitted silently away from the stumbling Thrushes.
Renewed strength and initiative naturally led to ideas. Napoleon chinned himself on a crosspiece and swung up into rafters, finding the passage much clearer up near the floor of the boardwalk. He stepped from rafter to crosspiece, rapidly working towards the single Thrush, staying near the outer edge of his catwalk, until a rotten plank cracked under him. He twisted like a lizard and caught a piling with arms and legs while the loosened board gave way and fell, clattering as it struck posts and beams.
A light broke into his hideaway, pinpointing the falling board. A quiet spitting noise followed, and Napoleon knew Thrush was taking their game of hide-and-seek seriously. Another bullet followed the first into the shadows below him, and Napoleon shinnied up his piling away from the action.
“Apis, put that thing away!” screamed the little radio operator, Arnold. “Mr. Porpoise wants Solo alive. You shoot him, and I’ll shoot you.”
“Sorry, Arnold,” answered a bull-like bellow from much too close. “I won’t do it again, honest.”
So his target was spotted, and Napoleon had the good news that they didn’t intend to shoot him down. He swung himself back over the outside of the walk, up over the railing in an acrobatic pullover. The big Thrush was standing on the beach, not two dozen feet away, his whole attention on the fallen board where he was sure Napoleon was still hiding.
“Come to papa,” Napoleon murmured to himself, willing Big Stoop in closer. Standing out on the sand, there was no way to get at him; if he’d just move in, intent on attacking that rotten board-and then the Thrush threw his head back and roared.
“He’s on the boardwalk again. Hey, Arnold, he’s back up there on the boardwalk!”
“So much for plan A,” Napoleon thought, rolling back out of sight. “Now to execute plan B: run!” He sprinted down the deserted beachfront. Behind, he heard the tromp of an elephant; his big friend was topside again, too, and the other two were probably right behind him.
He wiped sweat from his face on one sleeve and then the other. His breath was coming in burning gasps again, and the thundering steps were getting closer.
Napoleon burst into extra speed, spying a street and buildings ahead. He rounded the comer and ran full tilt across the opening, halting in the blackness of an alcove. Not yet in sight, the giant roared, “He’s stopped again!”
The trio charged into the street. Arnold quickly spread all three into a pattern Napoleon couldn’t pierce, and started them slowly walking toward him, searching every cranny. Arnold drew his own silenced pistol. “Mr. Porpoise wants him alive, but if we can’t stop him any other way, shoot! Try not to make it fatal.” Napoleon silently seconded the motion.
Waiting until they were almost on top of him, he spun the remains of his bottle far down toward the boardwalk. It hit the railing and bounced, breaking as it hit below. The reaction to the sound was all he could have hoped for: the three Thrushes took off in hot pursuit, leaving him free to take an alternate path … but with the street so well lighted and all doors shuttered, the problem seemed to be in finding any alternate at all. Coney Island in winter seemed to get rather suburban and respectable; he wished he knew how far away and in what direction he could find the coffee houses and bars that would still be operating for local patrons.
He turned and debated running through the mass of girders and beams making a deep, twisted lattice behind his hiding place. Then he looked up, and his face loosened into a huge grin as he realized where he was. He was face to face with the framework supporting the Cyclone Racer, and was about to take his first free trip on a roller coaster.
He leaped for the lowest crosspiece, and had to make do with embracing an I-beam instead. The chase had used up some of his strength, but he had plenty to shinny up the beam until he could reach the bar, almost twice his own height above the ground. His fingers grabbed, he chinned himself, and threw one leg up over it. Skeletal shadows crisscrossed and merged in the framework above, but he reached up and leaped, caught the next bar, and swung himself up again.
The climbing fell into a pattern of leap, grab, lift and swing, rapidly carrying him skyward. Above, the girders held shining rails out over the boardwalk and back into the amusement park inland. By working his way across the roller coaster, Napoleon would flank his pursuers, giving himself a second chance to pick them off singly. His wrists and arms started complaining under the strain of carrying him up level after level, and he had just enough wind for the exercise. But there wasn’t much call for yodeling demonstrations on Coney anyway, not with three gunmen out after him.
He mounted to the rails, and discovered he could move freely by stepping from tie to tie. He paused momentarily to scout the opposition, feeling something like a sparrow on top of The Happy Prince as he looked out and down at the beach. Two Thrushes were stalking an imaginary quarry in the sand, while the third stood guard over the boardwalk, in front of the customer’s entrance to the Cyclone Racer.