I didn’t blame him. I’d just as soon have stayed out of it myself, but after what I’d heard, I knew I couldn’t.
For a moment I was tempted to play deaf and dumb. Hell, I was supposed to be on a vacation, wasn’t I? Hawk had promised me a rest. Up to now I’d had three days of the two weeks he’d promised me. I knew that if I interfered, there’d be no more vacation for me. It would be back to Washington, back to Dupont Circle, back to AXE and an assignment to finish whatever the hell it was that was starting on this beach on the French coast.
Sometimes I like to forget that I’m not just Nick Carter, that I have a designation — N3, Killmaster — in the supersecret organization known as AXE. Known, that is, to the few that have to know about us because we do their dirty work.
If I just stayed where I was and did nothing, I could look forward to another eleven days — and nights — with Clarisse. And it was worth almost any sacrifice just to enjoy the delights of her company for even that short a time.
Hawk wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell him, would he? I asked myself the question and knew the answer immediately. The hell he wouldn’t! In spite of the stink of his cheap cigars in his nostrils, David Hawk could smell out every damn secret any one of his agents in AXE ever uncovered.
I compared the pleasures of Clarisse’s body with what Hawk would do to me if he found out It wasn’t even a toss-up.
So I gave a deep sigh and tensed myself mentally before I broke from cover, every muscle in my thighs and calves driving hard into the coarse sand, like a linebacker going in to make a low, hard tackle. I reached the collapsed body in four plunging strides, my arms reaching low.
The man was short but heavy. My fingers scraped sand. I grunted with the strain of scooping him up, one arm under his knees, the other under his broad back. Holding his body to my chest, I kept driving forward, lunging desperately for the security of the boulders just a few yards in front of us.
Around us, the sand exploded in angry spurts. The crackling bark of the Kalashnikovs echoed furiously in the confines of the small inlet. Both rifles were on “auto” now.
With one last effort, I hurled us into a crevice at the foot of two mountainous boulders resting together.
I was out of breath, panting hard. At my feet, the man I’d saved groaned and rolled painfully over onto his back. A dark bubble of froth formed and burst on his lips. I started to wipe the sweat off my chest with the palm of my hand, but the moisture felt sticky and thicker than perspiration. I was literally covered with blood.
The man whispered something. I leaned forward.
“Spasebo,” he gasped. “Thank you.”
“It’s not over yet.” I answered him in Russian.
I saw his eyes wander to the Luger in my hand.
“Make them burn in hell!” He reached out and put one hand on my arm. “Make them pay!”
“‘They’?” I asked. “Who are ‘they’?”
But I knew without his answering. “They” could only be KGB agents. No one else merited such hatred. Especially from another Russian.
“Why are they after you?”
He took a shuddering breath. “I accidentally learned more... more than was good for me.” His voice was barely reaching me. It was a cultured, slightly guttural Moscow accent. “It is supposed to... to be very secret. Most... most secret I didn’t know... how secret until too late.”
“And the boat?”
“I was trying to get away. I arranged to be smuggled out of France. Someone gave me away.” He wasn’t bitter. Slavic fatalism had been inbred in him. It was as if, all along, he had expected to be turned in, to be betrayed. “You can never trust the French,” he muttered. “They know from childhood that two payments add up to more than one.”
“You’re still alive,” I told him.
I thought I saw him smile in the dark.
“For how long?” he asked cynically. “How... long... will it take them... to reach us?”
I put my hand on his chest. My searching fingers found ripped flesh on his rib cage and a gaping hole in his shoulder, but the pulse at his neck was steady. Unless there was internal bleeding, the chances were damn good that he could pull through if I could get him medical attention in time.
That is, assuming I could get both of us out of this mess. The Kalashnikovs were silent. Yet I knew it would be mere minutes before the two of them converged on us. And when they opened up from only a few yards away — well, that would be it!
I had stood up and started to wriggle out of the back end of the crevice formed by the boulders when I heard the scream.
“Nick! Where are you?”
And then Clarisse’s second, panic-stricken scream was abruptly cut off.
I swore out loud.
At my feet, the Russian glared up at me. He, too, had heard Clarisse and my answering curse.
“Amerikanski!” he accused.
“Would you rather I were Russian?” I threw back at him. “How quickly do you want to die?”
He made no answer. I slithered quickly out into the night on my hands and knees.
They should have left Clarisse alone.
Up to now I hadn’t really felt personally involved in what was going on. Clarisse’s screams changed all that A surge of anger flooded through every part of me, but furious as I was, I still knew enough not to go charging rashly into the muzzles of a couple of Kalashnikovs. Not with just a Luger and a knife. Losing your temper is out-and-out suicide in a situation like this, and I never was the suicidal type.
I transferred Wilhelmina to my left hand and slid Hugo into my right palm. The haft of the small knife felt good to the touch. The blade was as keen as careful, deliberate honing could make it. The steel was the best. The point was razor sharp.
Hugo was made for night fighting, for battling in deadly silence in the dark, for a stealthy approach, a shadowy attack, a quick lunge that ended in death for whomever he bit in his quick, savage way.
Cautiously I circled the edges of the tiny beach. Now I was glad I hadn’t taken the time to don my slacks. They were white duck and would have turned me into an easy target. Since I had always sunbathed in the nude, my tan was not broken anywhere by a band of light skin. I blended into the shadows from head to toe.
I knew that whoever had stumbled across Clarisse was trying to use her as bait, to tempt me into making a rash move to save her.
Let him keep thinking I would do that.
I went after the other Russian first.
Ears attuned to even the smallest of sounds in the night, I finally heard the noise I had been waiting for. It came from the far end of the inlet. The careless rap of a gunstock against stone.
In a night as dark as this, it’s damn hard to move around with a gun as big as the AK-47 without banging into something unless you have the agility of a panther. The Russian was careless. The soft crack was all I needed to locate him.
I moved sideways to the base of the limestone cliffs and circled the inlet until I was as close to him as I could get without seeing him. I crouched down at an angle to the slope of the cliff. He was up there, somewhere.
Night fighting calls for patience. Assuming his combat ability is equal to his opponent’s, the man who can wait the longest usually wins. I’d been trained to wait for hours without moving a muscle or making a sound.
The Russian wasn’t as patient or hadn’t been trained as well. He came down the cliffside, heading for the crevice where he must have thought we were still in hiding.
I let him get down almost to my level. When his body loomed above me, blocking out the faint starlight, I rose to my feet and hurled myself at him. Wilhelmina, in my left hand, slashed at his grip on the AK-47. Hugo, in my right hand, stabbed upward in what should have been a deadly stroke.