Off to one side of the platform, Enoch Wilderman stood with his paunch thrusting forward, his steel-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his long, sharp nose, his gray hair as untidy as ever. The audience applauded dutifully at set intervals. They seemed restless and impatient, waiting for what each had been privately promised—an exhibition of the skill, strength and speed of the unicorn assassins.
They were there.
Two men appeared on each side of the platform. They had obviously disposed of the Secret Service guards quickly and efficiently, and in silence. Durell realized that this end of the island must have been taken over by the false crew of the substitute Coast Guard vessel. It had happened with speed and a grim, frightening accuracy. He had not heard a single shot fired. But there was the President, already a prisoner, and not knowing it.
He saw Wilderman nod to the two jumpsuited men nearest his end of the platform, and waited for no more.
He looked at Maggie, and she nodded slightly, and moved a little forward, as if to see better through the balcony curtain that Colonel Ko had parted. Ko made a sound of annoyance and with his gun thrust her back.
Durell hit him.
Colonel Ko’s head snapped back and his eyes crossed as he flailed backward, trying to keep his balance. He dropped Durell’s and Maggie’s weapons hands on it and twisted. She was a big girl, a full twelve inches in height over the Palingponese. The gun went off with a stuttering blast, but it was in Maggie’s grip, twisted about. The slugs tore through Colonel Ko’s chest and upward through his throat and under his jaw. The top of his head blew off. Maggie kept her finger on the trigger, her face transformed with vengeful rage. Durell, snatching up his gun, grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her backward.
“Enough! Hold it, Maggie—”
“He helped kill Daddy!” she gasped.
“Come on. The lid’s off.”
Down below, the audience listening to the President’s bland welcoming speech had stood up, transfixed, or dived for cover, according to their disposition. Only the President seemed to remain calm, even as the jumpsuited men leaped for him with dazzling speed and grabbed his arms, hustling him aside. Durell swore softly, saw Enoch Wilderman’s glance sweep the balcony and find him. For a moment their eyes met, clashed. Wilderman grinned, showing his big teeth.
At the same time, from various places on the island, came the dull crumping blasts of explosives.
Wolfe had gone to work.
49
DURELL raced down the stairs, his boots clattering now, making no effort to be silent. Maggie was close behind him. There was a dim hubbub and uproar from the meeting room in the hotel, but he paid no attention to it. He swung down a long, broad corridor and into the hotel’s lobby.
A jumpsuit loomed in the doorway. The man turned, the movement almost too quick to be seen, and Durell’s Magnum bucked and bellowed in his hand. The man went down, picked himself up, left arm dangling and bleeding, almost torn off at the shoulder. Durell fired again and the man was blown backward off his feet.
Maggie breathed, “Oh, good.”
“Bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”
“Where are we going?”
“I want Wilderman.”
“But what about the President?”
“He’ll be all right.” ‘
“Sam, how can you—”
“Shut up,” he said.
The meeting room was on the opposite side of the lobby. Delegates to the ISCOPP convention were spilling out in panic from between the wide double doors. They jammed the entrance in a frenzied flood of thrashing, milling bodies. No way through there. Durell spun left, glimpsed a jumpsuit, ducked through a doorway and ran through the empty kitchen.
The cooks had vanished. "Lunch was still on the stoves, half cooked, plates stacked and gleaming for the delegates, who would not be eating today. He heard shouting, angry orders, and paid no attention. Maggie panted at his heels, glancing backward to cover them.
The kitchen yielded to the long pantry, a corridor, a pair of swinging doors. He was now behind the dais in the meeting room. There was no sign of the President. Or Enoch Wilderman. Durell swung left and outside.
Fifty yards away was the helicopter pad. Durell swore softly. A small group of the unicorns guarded the pad and blocked the way. He ducked back behind the corner of the hotel. At the same time, three more explosives sounded midway across the island Maggie touched his shoulder.
“Oh, God, look!”
At least a dozen of the unicorns trotted purposefully out of the hotel behind them. Each one was armed. They headed across the tennis courts, not looking to right or left, and up the path that led to West Hill and beyond.
“They’re heading for the cottage, Sam.”
He nodded. “At least the demonstration is off. Or postponed.”
“But what about the President?”
“They’ll hold him for a time, just to show what they can do. Wolfe is probably trying to hold them off with the boobytraps we set. It will puzzle them for a time; but not long enough, I’m afraid.”
“But I haven’t heard any real shooting.”
“Not yet. They’re taking the security people that Meecham set up, one by one. Perhaps there’s to be no killing.”
“And it there is?”
“We’ll try to stop it.”
“But how—?”
“We’ll get the one who’s giving the orders.”
It began to rain.
50
THE STORM began to move.
With a sudden quixotic change of the elements, the low-pressure area off Prince Edward Island slid southward, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum. It sent rain like a vanguard of cavalry. The calm sea quickly became rippled, then lifted and fell and heaved under the swirling, twisting pressures. Along the coast, it began to rain. As the wind increased, the rain came down in horizontal sheets. Visibility quickly dropped to zero. In the harbors, coves and rivers of the Maine coast, men struggled to secure their boats first, their houses next, and then their families. The tide began to come in with exceptional force, smashing with demonic fury at the rocky shore.
But when the wind struck, all the efforts of man were in vain.
51
DURELL. followed Maggie’s solid bottom through the culvert and out into the spruce trees beyond the hotel lawns, easing through the security barrier as they had penetrated it. He ignored the hand she offered when he crawled out after her. From the vantage point among the spruces that covered the hillside, he could see‘ the hotel, and the sudden wind-whipped froth on the gray ocean beyond.
All at once, it seemed, no one was in sight. He could not begin to guess what was happening among the delegates and the invading jumpsuited unicorns. He looked at the high radio mast and hoped it was still sending out his automatic Mayday signal. The tower was swaying in the sudden blasts of erratic wind. The rain came down in heavy torrents.
“Sam, what are we waiting for?”
“He has to come to me. I’m the only one who really knows.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“This time I’ll want you to do what I tell you. Everything’s really blown up in his face now. He knows he can’t succeed in his so-called display of his drugged men. He can’t hold the President as long as he planned, unless—”
“Who? Sam?”
“Will you do exactly what I say, Maggie?”
“I don’t think—”
“Please.”
The rain hissed down into the trees around them.
“All right, Sam. If you’re that worried about me."
“I am.”
“Then I’ll do what you say.”
“Fine. Stay here. Don’t move until I come back.”
“How long will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
He moved off up the gully, along the slope of West Hill. The wind hissed in the heavy, wet boughs above his head. Now and then he heard one crack and fall. He was soaked to the skin.
He felt as if the wind were snatching the very air from his lungs.
At last he glimpsed what he wanted to see. Along the trail that led from west to east, he glimpsed a touch of gray, then another, trotting along behind a tall, rain-soaked figure that seemed to be making heavy going of it. Durell dashed the wet from his eyes, turned and moved uphill parallel to the trail. Although the trail offered easier footing, it went around below the brow of the hill, and took longer. He cut through the trees, leaping deadfalls, stumbled through a grove of small junipers, hazelnut brush that thrashed and whipped him with wet branches.
The wind was stronger. It made a steady moaning, roaring sound below the pounding of his pulse in his ear, the thunder of his heart, the whistle of his breath in his throat. He carne out in a small swale, along an old rock fence, and climbed straight up, scrambling at times on hands and knees. He was almost to the top of West Hill when he heard another explosion, dead ahead of him, and saw the gout of flame and clods of earth, leaves and branches leap high against the treeline along the crest of the hill.
Somewhere on the opposite peak, Wolfe must be watching, hooking up detonators as he saw fit. Durell turned right again, came to an outcropping of granite ledge, found better footing, crouched, and then slid to his stomach, raised himself on both elbows, and steadied the Magnum in a double grip.
His first target was the jumpsuit at the end of the short line of hurrying men.
His hand was shaking, his fingers were wet, the rain dashed into his eyes.
He took his time, squeezed the trigger.
The jumpsuit buckled, fell to his knees, tried to rise, fell. The second unicorn behind the leader reacted with a speed to which Durell was becoming accustomed. He pushed the tall, ragged-haired man down on the path, spun, started to charge for the ledge where Durell lay prone. Durell steadied his gun again, aimed for the chest, fired. The gun’s roar was all but swallowed by the howling wind. The unicorn vanished. The tall man in front spun away and raced along the path and over the brow of the hill.
Durell slid from the ledge, headed downward into the valley between Mattatuck’s two mountains. He moved at an easy lope now, watching his footing. He felt uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, not knowing whether his second shot had been a hit or not. His instinct was rewarded when he spotted the unicorn coming through the trees.
The man had been hit, but that did not stop him. Durell tried to duck away, but the unicorn bellowed something to him, raised his automatic rifle, and blazed away. Splintered branches, twigs and spruce boughs rained down on Durell’s head. Fear clutched at his stomach. He fired at a shadow in the rain-swept woods, fired again. The man kept coming on. He squeezed the Magnum’s trigger a third time.
The man leaped, coming at him, hurled him backward down the slope. They rolled over and over, locked in a death grip. The man’s chest was spurting blood, one arm was useless, he had a bullet in his thigh. Durell had not missed, but he hadn’t stopped die man, either. His armlock over Durell’s throat was like iron. His breath was cut off. He hammered at the man’s back, tried to get his knee up into his groin, clung to the gun. The man’s face looked demonic. Durell gouged at his eye, bent his elbow, squeezed the gun between their rain-drenched bodies. They came up suddenly against the bole of a spruce that towered high into the windy sky. The jolt separated them by inches—enough for Durell to dig the barrel of the gun into the man’s belly. He fired for the last time.
The grip across his throat reluctantly, slowly relaxed.
Durell rolled free.
For a long moment he lay face up to the rain and the wind, letting the cold lash of the elements revive him. There was blood on his chest, but it was not his own. The unicorn was dead. He got to his knees, peered through the tangle of hazelnut bushes that grew wild in the little valley. His heart still pounded. Slowly, now, he trotted for the main path, came out on it, and waited, listening to the ragged footsteps coming toward him.
“Enoch!” he called.
The footsteps ended abruptly.
“Drop it, Wilderman,” he said.
The man was a shadow among the other shadows of the storm-lashed forest.
Then he spotted the glint of the man’s glasses. Wilderman had stepped off the path and into the evergreens. Boughs creaked and cracked overhead. The rush of the wind was like a continuous, low roll of thunder; the rain felt icy cold on Durell’s lips.
“Is that you, Durell?”
“Come out where I can see you.”
“Thank God, they’d taken me prisoner. I don’t know what they planned to do with me.” Wilderman came out to stand on the path. He had a gun held low in his left hand. His gray hair was plastered flat to his long head, and a corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily. “What did you do with them?”
“I killed them both,” Durell said flatly.
“Ah. Yes. Good work, my boy.”
“Where is Dr. MacLeod?”
“Who?”
“Dr. MacLeod?”
“I believe he’s dead. In Scotland. One of his people—ah—turned on him.”
“So who has the drug formula now?”
“I—ah—I have it, Durell. Better for us, eh? I mean, my boy, it’s better that IS should have control of it, rather than an international predator like MacLeod, eh?”
“And where is this formula?”
“On my person,” Wilderman said flatly, and shot at Durell without warning.
Durell’s left leg was knocked out from under him with shocking abruptness. He fell, rolled over twice, grabbed at his thigh. He felt no immediate pain. He raised his head, peered through the brush, saw Enoch Wilderman moving cautiously toward him along the path.
Durell lay about ten feet to the south of the path and about fifty feet from where Wilderman proceeded toward him. The man was hunched forward a bit, his gun thrust ahead of him. Rain drummed down with a hissing sound. Now and then a sparkle of thin sleet was interspersed with the rain. The sky was a sulphurous yellow.
“Durell!”
He did not answer. He pulled at his wounded leg, bent it under him, saw the blood oozing through his slacks. At least it did not come in bright arterial spurts. He backed away on his belly, his gun raised. Too many trees intervened between them.
“Durell!”
He lay still. All at once Wilderman trotted forward, his paunch jiggling, his gray hair plastered tightly around his skull. His lips were skinned back in a grin. For the moment, Durell could not move. Then a distant roaring, like an approaching locomotive, sounded through the trees. The wind struck in a demonic gust, and a small pine cracked and toppled over in Wilderman’s path. The man was swept aside by the thrashing green branches.
“Wilderman, wait!" Durell called.
“Ah. You’re still alive?”
“You can’t make it, Enoch. I took out your radioman and set the transmitter on automatic Mayday. There will be forces here any minute to take back the island.”
Wilderman’s laugh was unnatural. “In this weather? Not for a long time, my boy. Meanwhile, we have the President.”
“But you’ll never get off Mattatuck alive if you harm him.”
“We did not intend to harm him. We merely wished to show the ISCOPP people how we have built up an elite superforce of security men. Using the drug, of course. And then we would all leave.”
“Why did you do it, Enoch?”
There was a long silence. Durell raised his head a bit. He could not see Wilderman through the tangle of branches in the fallen pine tree. The wind made a howling noise now. Everything thrashed, cracked, whipped, groaned. The sound of the sea smashing at the island’s rocky shore was everywhere. Durell got his leg under him and tried to rise. He couldn’t do it. He fell backward, arms flailing, and rolled ten feet down the slope into the valley between West and East Hill.
He heard Wilderman’s voice, shockingly nearby.
“I have spent all my life in security, Durell. I have devoted everything to my job. When the Internal Security Burea
u was formed, I was made head of it. I created it, fashioned it the way I felt it should be organized. We became an independent part of the most powerful functioning intelligence force in the world. The most efficient. The most dedicated. And it was all taken away from me.”
“When the general put Meecham in over your head?”
“He had no right to do that,” Wilderman’s voice came.
“Maybe he had his reasons.”
“It wasn’t fair! I was cheated. He took away my life. So I used Dr. MacLeod, I used his formula, I made that poor fool of a Finance officer, Strawbridge, turn his money-transfer schedules over to me, privately. I thought it would make Meecham look incompetent, perhaps have him removed.”
“But that didn’t work,” Durell observed.
“I saw another future.” Wilderman’s voice was unnatural, calling through the roaring storm. “I saw a chance to save the world, to keep it from anarchy. Fight force and terror with power and more terror.”
“That can‘t work anymore,” Durell jeered.
“It can. It will. If it weren’t for you—”
Durell saw the movement of the other man’s figure through the wildly waving brush and fired.
He missed.
Wilderman now had him spotted. Durell willed himself to his feet. The rain blinded him. He tested his leg, limped to the left, downward, toward the sound of gushing, falling water. A huge spruce that had long ago been struck by lightning still stood, a gaunt sentinel against the gray and turbulent sky.
His leg collapsed under him again. He felt the pain now, and saw that his trouser leg was soaked heavily with blood. A moment of dizziness engulfed him. The sky and the trees reeled overhead. He thought he heard the blasting of more explosives, quite close at hand. Someone was shouting in the distance.
It sounded like Maggie.
“Sam! Sam!”
He searched the wooded hillside painfully. The rain and his pain blurred his vision. He knew that Wilderman could not afford to leave him alive.
Something cracked in the dead spruce overhead. Durell scrunched around, dragging his leg after him. Wilderman was coming up behind him, still wearing the tight, senseless grin. He looked insane.
Assignment Unicorn Page 18
