Shaw reached out to her. “Try not to worry any more, Flame,” he said. “We’ll soon have you out of—”
He broke off as he heard Alder’s shout: “Look out, there!”
He whirled about. Tucker had come out from the tunnel leading to his private apartments, Tucker with his beautifully proportioned body shiny with sweat and dressed only in a pair of white trousers, Tucker clearly shaken rigid at seeing Shaw alive. The look on his face was murderously disbelieving but he knew he wasn’t seeing ghosts and he had a heavy automatic in his hand — but he was already covered by six sub-machine-guns and Shaw’s Webley.
Shaw called urgently, “Don’t anybody shoot! We have to get this man alive.” His voice was naked steel when he turned on the Negro. “Tucker, it’s the end of the track for you. Sanderson is dead already, but believe me, I’m very much alive!” Briefly he explained how he had rolled to safety in the chasm. “I want you to give yourself up now, without us having to use guns on you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot if I have to. The whole show’s bust wide open and we’re going to get you whatever happens, so you might as well make it easy for yourself.”
Tucker laughed.
It was a crazy sound — a hideous sound, but a sound of triumph also; in spite of the shock of Shaw’s resurrection, the Negro was in full control of himself. He said, “Commander Shaw, you are talking nonsense! You will never leave this place alive — neither you nor any of your men. You know very well that the entrance is guarded—”
“Yes, but I’m going to use you as a hostage for safe passage, Tucker—”
“You do not impress me. I have only to give an order and at once my men will surround you and shoot you down. I call upon all of you to throw down your arms immediately.”
Shaw was watching the man closely; he seemed fully confident still. Shaw said, “I’ll drop you the moment you utter, but if that’s what you want, go ahead and call out those men of yours. All of us are combat trained — your men are not. It’ll be interesting to see how many of them survive.”
Tucker shrugged. “I have something more interesting for you to watch,” he said. “You see the woman over there.” He spoke softly, but there was venom and lust behind the velvet. “When she was working for me in Harlem, I was not good enough to go to bed with her, because of the colour of my skin.” His lips curled in a sneer. “She has lost some of her fastidiousness in the last two days… but now my men have had enough of her, and she is dispensable. So, my friend, what you will see is the death of the woman.” He raised his voice. “If you do not at once do as I tell you and throw down your guns, all of you, I shall shoot her — and that will act as a signal for my men to come out and take care of you all!”
Shaw sweated.
Without a doubt, Tucker meant exactly what he said, but Shaw had no right, no mandate, to consider the girl now; the world was depending on his judgement. He couldn’t take risks and so long as he and the enlisted men remained armed, Tucker knew he could die in a split-second. Whatever else Tucker wanted, he could hardly want that.
Steadily Shaw said, “Wait, Tucker. Just wait. You must know quite well I’m not going to do as you ask. You’d—”
Tucker’s gun jerked and pumped out lead; so, in the same instant, did Shaw’s Webley, aimed to wing the man. But Flame died with a line of reddening holes showing up the length of her body. She gave a series of silent jerks and then sagged in the chains that held her. Six sub-machine-guns sent bullets slamming towards the mouth of the tunnel — too late. Tucker had gone, was dodging up the tunnel towards the bend. A moment after that the square space was a battle-ground as Tucker’s mob poured out from the doors opening on to it. Shaw and the G.I.s threw themselves behind the radio truck. Adler went down coughing blood, his chest a shambles. Shaw grabbed the gun from his hands and came out from cover, firing in a swinging arc of lead. Negroes fell in twos and threes. Shaw felt a stinging pain in his left arm, and chips of rock flew above his head. Two more of the enlisted men, coming out to cover Shaw, went down, the rest kept up a concentrated and well-directed fire that easily outclassed the undisciplined, wasteful firing of the inexperienced Negroes and their largely obsolescent arms. They had never remotely expected an attack from within and the issue wasn’t in doubt for long. Black bodies lay everywhere, in the twisted attitudes of sudden, violent death. Then two of Tucker’s men ran for the tunnel entrance, dropping their guns. Three only were left to carry on the firing, and those three died fighting. Shaw came out from cover and went over towards the bodies. Finding a man still just alive he asked savagely, “Where does Tucker transmit from — to Peking? He has somewhere other than that truck. Where is it?”
The man looked back at him, rolling his eyes in fear, but he didn’t answer. Shaw lifted his gun and rammed the muzzle through the man’s teeth, hard. Pouring sweat he said, “Tell me or I’ll burst your head apart.” His eyes said he meant it beyond a doubt, and the Negro, gagging now and coughing blood, wasn’t ready to die just yet.
Shaw pulled the gun back through the blood and saliva and smashed teeth. “Talk,” he said savagely.
The Negro gave a low moan. He said with difficulty, “Up… the passage.”
“Towards Tucker’s room?”
“Yuh… third door off, right.”
Shaw stood up. “I want one engineer to come with me,” he said harshly. “Bring one of the boxes of explosives. The other two stay here and guard the entrances to both tunnels. If you have any trouble, shoot to kill first time — so long as it’s not Tucker. That bastard’s still needed alive.”
With the engineer corpsman he went ahead into the tunnel, fast. As they went along he said, “Lay the charges and run the firing lead out into the square. Have enough slack so we can take the end out with us when we leave in the radio truck. We’ll blow the charges once we’re heading clear for the exit.”
Reaching the door indicated by the dying Negro Shaw kicked it open and stood aside. There was no reaction, nothing but a hum of dynamos and the tortured whine of electrically-operated machinery. He went in, with the G.I. close behind him. At first he thought there was no one in the place; then he saw Tucker, who evidently had heard nothing; the Negro, his semi-naked body streaming sweat, was struggling violently with some mechanism in the centre of the room, something that seemed not to be working, unless it was Tucker himself who wasn’t working to capacity — one arm hung limp and his white trousers were bloodstained; at least one of those bullets had hit the target.
Shaw called out loudly, “All right, Tucker, drop that!”
Tucker whirled about.
Looking murderous he lunged towards his automatic, which was lying near the Morse key of a large transmitter. Shaw swung his gun and fired and Tucker gave a howl of pain as lead nicked his hand. The bullets, travelling on, smacked into the transmitter and there was a flash of bluish flame. Then Tucker charged, straight for Shaw, straight into his gun. Shaw stood rigid as the big Negro came for him with one hand raised ready for a vicious Karate blow. Shaw played him like a bull. At the last moment he dodged the Karate-toughened palm, moving lightly aside; and as Tucker, a shade too slow to check himself, lunged on past him he lifted his heavy weapon and brought it down in a hard crunch on the back of the Negro’s neck. Tucker collapsed into a ruinous heap.
“Right,” Shaw said crisply to the engineer corpsman. “I’ll watch this bastard. Just you get those charges placed, then we’ll all get to hell out!”