He heaved mightily, like a midget Atlas trying to rid himself of a world on his back. For a moment nothing happened and he felt an almost overwhelming sense of foolishness.
“Upsadaisy, Valya,” he grunted, his body bent almost double under her impossible weight, his muscles straining. Then he heaved again — with an abrupt and twisting motion that flipped the vast body over the rail and down onto the tarmac beside the stair. He followed it in one vaulting leap and hauled the fallen blimp behind the cover of a nearby baggage truck, hearing the crisp barking of Alec’s return fire and the thud of bullets into metal. Seconds later he was on his feet again with his Luger out, dodging past the truck and wondering why the shots that had started so high to his left had seemed for a while to be coming from lowdown on his right.
He was clear of the baggage truck now and out of Alec’s line of fire. His eyes scanned the buildings and the field.
Suddenly the firing stopped and people started screaming.
There was some sort of commotion on the observation deck. Nick caught a glimpse of Castellano bending over something. Then Castellano bent down low and out of sight. But the screaming was not coming from that part of the observation deck. It was coming from his right, both from roof height and ground level. And it was not really screaming, most of it — it was shouting, and the shouters were pointing at something he could not see.
Two assassins! Of course. He should have realized it at once. One on high and one below, and Castellano had taken care of one.
Where in hell was the other?
He edged past a fuel truck toward the shouting and he saw what everybody was shouting about in the same instant that Alec called out — “More to the right, Nick! Beyond that old Icleandic crate.”
A man was crawling under the belly of the Icelandic plane, his head and gun darting about in all directions so that he was covering not only his objective but the little knot of people behind him. They were technicians, Nick noted, with a couple of officials among them, and none of them was armed.
The man was planning his maneuvers well. If Alec fired he would either hit the plane, which would be useless and potentially dangerous, or he ran a very strong risk of slamming a shot into that knot of people. The fuel truck, too, made shooting difficult. So Alec was biding his time. And the man kept on crawling inexorably toward the baggage truck that shielded Valentina.
Nick cursed himself briefly for not having shoved her upward into the plane but he had had good reason at the time and anyway it was no use cursing. He dropped down low and started crawling, himself, in a quick zigzag that took him toward the tail of the Icelandic crate. Alec loosed off a couple of cover shots that bit the dirt low in front of the gunman; he missed by feet but he served his purpose, and Nick took swift advantage to duck behind the tail.
He could see the man firing back in Alec’s direction and then swinging back to look for Nick and not finding him; he could see the airport cops breaking up the knot of people and shoveling them inside the building; and he could see the cautiously moving figure that he knew was Marty Fass snakebellying along past the nose of the plane and closing in on the killer.
So now they had him. Once in the open he would be caught in a triangle and he would not have a hope in hell.
Nick dropped behind cover and settled himself into firing position. The thing was almost over, and then all they would have to do would be to find out who and why and what, and try to explain it to an outraged Russian Government —
What happened then was the kind of thing that happens when a well-meaning amateur interferes.
The killer emerged from beneath the belly of the plane… and a mechanic in work overalls appeared suddenly from beneath a wing and slithered rapidly after him, brawny arms outstretched to grab the fellow and wrest the gun from him.
Only it did not happen quite the way the young mechanic had planned. The killer was a pro. A brilliant pro.
He turned with the controlled speed of a wildcat and triggered off two incredibly swift shots — not at the mechanic but at Marty Fass. And got him. Marty dropped like a sack of potatoes and lay, twitching slightly, on the tarmac, and by the time he had dropped, the assassin had kneed the mechanic’s groin and twisted his arm in a savage hammerlock that made the young man squeal with pain.
Nick could hear the killer’s sibilant whisper.
“One move I don’t tell you to make, and you’re dead. You understand? Now walk ahead. Walk nice.”
The young man walked, his body twisted by the hammerlock and his face distorted with frustration and pain. The killer’s gun was jammed hard against his back and its message was unmistakable. And just in case there was anyone among the watchers who did not get the picture, the gunman’s body movements made it ominously obvious. His head darted out at all angles, like a striking snake’s, and his upper body swiveled in lithe, quick motions, so that his position was changing constantly — literally from split second to split second — in relation to all the people who stood or crouched nearby and watched him. And with each swift, darting turn he swung the young mechanic tightly around to cover himself, so that his helpless human shield would be sure to take the brunt of any fire. Any fire; because that gun rammed tight against the innocent back meant You shoot me and I shoot him and I don’t give awho dies!
The killer quickened his pace. He was almost running now, ramming and swiveling and dodging his way across the tarmac toward Valentina.
Nobody fired.
Nick let his held-in breath out slowly. His stripped-down Luger followed the scuttling figures like a magnet. If a brave and foolish young man had to die in place of Valentina, then die he must. There really was no choice.
And Nick had already waited long enough for an opening that might never come.
He raised the barrel a fraction of an inch and his narrowed eyes bored into his duel target. Like Siamese twins, he thought as his finger tightened gently over the trigger. Drop one; kill both. But maybe not. It was a chance he had to take.
Then even as his finger squeezed, he froze.
A vast voice boomed across the field and a huge figure emerged, with surprising suddenness, from behind the baggage truck — a target as big as a barn, with a bellow like an outraged dinosaur.
“You put that young man down at once, but immediately!” Valentina roared. “There will be no more of this nonsense —!”
Wilhelmina, the stripped-down Luger, exploded into sound and fury, for in that one instant, the gunman had raised his gun from the mechanic’s back and aimed it over the young man’s shoulder directly at Valentina, leaving his head profiled sharply against the morning sky as he bared his teeth and squeezed the trigger.
When he dropped, his profile was gone with the shattering of his skull.
Valentina rolled over gracefully, like an elephant taking a mud bath, and landed on her feet. The young mechanic fell to his knees, pale-faced and trembling, and reached for a fallen gun. The assassin lay faceless in gore.
Nick ran to Valentina. Blood was clotting on the collar of her blue serge suit but her eyes were as bright and lively as blue seas under a summer sun.
“Good shooting, Carter!” she roared cheerfully. “But I gave you that one little moment that you needed, yes?”
“Next question,” Hawk said criply. “A small point, but I am interested.” His steely gaze roamed over the small group of people assembled in his suite at the Hotel Pierre: Valentina the vast, AXE agent Alec Greenberg of London, and Nicholas J. Huntington Carter.
“How,” said Hawk, and now his gaze was fixed on Nick, “did Madam Sichikova know your name? It was my impression that you are known to her, and always have been, as Thomas Slade. And yet she was able to address you by the name of Carter. It seems to be something of a breach in our security — and not the only instance, merely the least of them. Can you explain?”