I grinned. “You won’t have trouble playing dumb, will you?”
They chuckled weakly and sent me a pair of diluted smiles.
“Now,” I continued, “from this little spy hole between the rocks, you can see the pad clearly. And I want one of you to keep an eye on it at all times. When I get down there, if all is clear, I’ll peel off these coveralls and stand waiting in the suit I’m wearing underneath. That will be your signal to come down on the double. And I do mean on the double.”
Both nodded gravely.
“If you see that I’m in trouble down there, stay put Until I give the signal its over. I could also be quite dead. If that’s obvious to you, come out and go into your innocent act. And don’t get caught with the guns. Get rid of them.”
I moved to leave, paused. I winked and gave them a small salute.
“Goodbye, Nick,” said Jerri.
“So long, and God’s luck to you, Nick,” said Terri.
I turned and ducked out
Twenty-Three
There were plenty of soldiers and a few workers groping around the slopes above the cluster of buildings behind me. But as I sneaked forward to the embankment directly over the copter pad, I encountered no one at all.
The immediate area seemed now to be deserted and silent I did not find the absence of troops especially ominous. It could well be that having combed the vicinity of the copter, the soldiers were now concentrating their efforts in the high grounds above the center of the compound where there were many more places of concealment.
On the other hand.
Dashing from cover, I raced down the embankment to the copter pad. I looked toward the chopper. It squatted empty and unprotected, ready to leap into the sky. My electric watch told me there were fourteen minutes left — still plenty of time. Behind Wilhelmina I advanced to a point near the door of the concrete guard station. The door was closed and so I edged close to one of the narrow, steel-barred windows for a peek inside.
At that moment, the door sprang open. I fell prone and lifted the Luger to fire point blank. But my target had long black hair and wore a toothy smile of welcome.
It was Pilar! But for the pistol I had left her, which was strapped about her waist, she looked utterly feminine and desirable.
I relaxed my trigger finger and stood with a grin, then reached inside the coveralls and fed the Luger to its holster.
Pilar trotted to me with open arms. She embraced and kissed me. “Nick!” she said. “I wasn’t sure, I heard shots and I thought you might be—”
I laughed. “I’m only half dead,” I told her. “From exhaustion. Where’s Ingram?”
“They took him away. To discipline him for bringing you here.”
“You can die from their ‘discipline’,” I said.
She stepped back and gave me an admiring once over. “You look none the worse for wear, Nick.” She sighed. “You’re lotta man and I’m gonna hate to lose you.” She yanked her gun from the holster and aimed it at my chest with a hand so steady it could have been a hunk of steel enclosed in a vise. “But,” she continued, “that’s how — as the saying goes — the cookie crumbles, huh?”
“So all along you were on the other team,” I said, really stalling because I suspected that at any second she was going to kill me.
“No,” she answered, “not precisely. I am a double agent, a coin with two faces. I serve Russia, in secret, while I also pretend to be the agent of your America. Both pay me well — oh, so very well. And my love of money is more than the love of any country, you see?” She smiled mockingly.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t see. Not too clearly.”
“Russia,” she explained, “the true and official government of the USSR, assigned me to uncover this base of operations so that Warnow, with General Zhizov and his independent faction, could be restrained before they triggered a nuclear war with America. So for a time I was your ally. But then, when I saw that the good general could not fail, with the help of Warnow, to bring down the mighty U.S., I was persuaded to join his forces. It is a grand strategy for Russia, and the government in power will fall into line once the coup has been accomplished.”
She paused and now her finger tightened about the trigger.
“Besides,” she added, “the general has paid me a fantastic sum. My money belt has become a thick girdle of currency. And truly, money is the only power I worship.”
I was about to tell her that Warnow was dead, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me. And the door to that room would have to be blasted off with a powerful explosive before the fact could be proven. Besides a glance at my watch told me that barely ten minutes remained.
Anyway, these tumultuous thoughts were rudely interrupted when Pilar bared her teeth in a grimace and released a loud, shrill whistle.
Instantly, from around the back corner of the guard station, rushed three soldiers carrying machine pistols. They were followed closely by General Zhizov, resplendent in his bemedaled uniform. The Doberman and the German shepherd, straining against choker; leashes, pranced before him.
When this unholy group had surrounded me, Zhizov ordered Pilar to relieve me of my weapons. And the hand which had so lovingly caressed me stole into my clothing, found both Luger and stiletto, and took them away.
“I do admire such a formidable enemy, Carter,” said the general. “But my admiration does not include mercy. Therefore, I believe that the punishment should suit the crime. And what could be so apt as to feed one animal to others of his kind. Though, of course, these are of a higher species.” He looked meaningfully down at the dogs who, staring at me with malevolent eyes, snarled and showed me their gleaming, flesh-starved teeth.
As he said this, I began to toy with the absurdly disproportionate, oversized belt buckle provided me by Stewart in Washington. With a thought for future emergencies, I had fastened the belt supporting it around the coveralls. It gave my garb a ridiculous aspect But it also attracted special attention to the buckle.
Remembering that the belt had long been immersed in salt water, I mentally applauded Stewart for making the buckle totally waterproof.
As I made an obviously sneaky move to open the buckle, the general caught the gesture.
“Drop your hand from that buckle!” he bellowed. I obeyed with a look of having been caught with my hand in a lethal cookie jar.
“Take the belt from him and bring it to me!” he commanded Pilar.
With a scornful caught-you-didn’t-we? smile, Pilar loosened the belt and passed it to Zhizov. As one of the soldiers took possession of the dogs, he began to examine it, lifting his gaze occasionally to send me a narrow-eyed glance of smug self-approval.
“The American method of concealing miniature weapons,” he said, “is not clever enough to fool any five-year-old Russian boy. What do you have inside here, eh? A single shot pistol? A switch knife? Or the traditional cyanide pill?”
Working to find the poorly hidden spring catch, he said, “How idiotically simple. Hie catch is hidden in this scrollwork and—”
He was squinting down at the dummy buckle when the booby trap exploded with a startling report, the sound bouncing off the hills and echoing briefly through the canyon below.
The hands that held the buckle vanished and the general slowly moved one bleeding stump toward a face that had been opened as if it were a rotting watermelon. He smashed to the ground.
That was when I launched myself and chopped the neck of the soldier who held the dogs’ leashes in one hand and a machine pistol in the other. Before he crumpled, I grabbed the pistol and sprayed his buddies with a short burst that slammed them down like toy ducks in a shooting gallery. Pilar was aiming her gun at my middle, so I kissed her farewell, a kiss of lead, without regrets.