Assignment to Disaster (21 page)

Franz and John Padgett came out of the cabin. Both were armed. They looked his way and Franz fired and Durell threw himself flat, picked himself up, ran for the cover of the swamp. The rain slashed coldly at his face. Looking back, he saw Franz coming fast, too fast, head lowered, gun ready. John Padgett limped along to the rear. Durell sprinted for the protective screen of a hazelnut bush. A bullet whined past his head, another slapped angrily into the ground inches away. Gasping, Durell flung himself forward toward some cedars. Then for the space of several racking breaths he could not move.

The rain hissed all around him. In every direction there was nothing but wilderness, no house to which he could run for help. The gray daylight filled him with incalculable dismay. He ached in every bone and muscle. Through the wet leaves he saw that Franz had halted and was talking to John Padgett, who leaned on his cane. Both men faced him, but they could not see him until he chose to move.

He sprawled as he was and did not stir.

The two men were quarreling.

As he watched, he heard their angry voices, bitter with recrimination, rise and fall above the sound of the rain. The swamp made a green wet curtain all around him. The daylight seemed brighter and stronger. Then he saw John Padgett lift his cane and strike at the other man. Franz took the blow on his face and struck back with a massive fist, just once. Padgett fell, his crippled leg twisted under him. Franz stood over him, hulking, powerful, shouting something. Then the giant's head jerked up and he started purposefully toward the clump of cedars and brush where Durell was hidden.

Panic picked him up and flung him through the swamp. A gun cracked. As he ran, the wind whistling in his throat, he thought the swamp was endless. He glimpsed the gray Chesapeake, dimpled by the rain. His thoughts blurred. Then he found a trail and jogged along, gasping. Franz was behind him. A hawk screamed thinly in the overcast and he saw its dim shape floating above the trees. The rain was only a drizzle. The road was endless. It went nowhere. His heart hammered, his throat was raw.

He halted. He could go no farther.

He was through running.

He saw that Franz had halted, too, and for the space of a few breaths they stared at each other. And Durell thought of Lew Osbourn and Sidonie and the house in Alexandria; he thought of Calvin Padgett, dead in a desert barn; of Feener, dead in the bayous.

Anger rose in him. He felt no fear. He pushed fear away from him.

"Durell!" Franz called.

A bird twittered in the leafy branches overhead.

The voice echoed. "Come, Durell. We will go back."

Durell walked toward him. The dirt road was puddled and muddy. A thin glimmer of watery sunshine slanted down through the swamp. Franz kept the gun pointed at him. He stood hulking, ominous, in the fine rain. Durell was within jumping distance of the gun. Not now. Not yet. His deep anger was linked with his decision not to run any more. This was the enemy.

He no longer felt tired.

"Stop," Franz said thickly. "This is as far as you go. You held us up long enough."

"Did you kill John Padgett?"

"I do not know. Shut up. Start walking ahead of me."

Durell walked heavily through the mud on the path. "It's too late for you to get away from Cyclops now, Franz. You're caught in it along with all the rest of us."

"Shut up!" Franz yelled. "Walk!"

Sweat mingled with the rain on the giant's face. His wide mouth shook. They entered a small leafy clearing, and a thin wind came with the end of the rain and it rustled and whispered through the foliage and Durell felt its summer warmth against his face. Franz looked ill. There was something wrong with him. Durell felt a quick lift of strength as he recognized what it was. Franz was afraid. His thrust about the danger from Cyclops had gone home.

Durell jumped for him then. There was eight feet between them, and he knew he couldn't hope to make it. He heard the gun roar and saw the convulsive spasm on Franz's face and something hit his left shoulder like the flat of a board swung with incredible strength. The impact drove him twisting down; and he landed on his hands and knees. He felt no pain, but time slowed until everything could be seen in careful, minute detail, and one of the things he saw was that Franz had not moved. And he saw that as Franz stood there, gun in hand, legs spread a little in the soft, wet mud, Franz was going to fire again. Durell came up with a stone in his hand and threw it, all in one movement as he twisted aside. The stone hit Franz in the face and the man screamed. The gun crashed again, but the bullet went into the gray sky, and a few leaves came flickering down after its passage and a crow cawed in fright. Durell got his legs under him and lunged forward again.

There was blood on Franz's face and there was something wrong with his right eye, where the stone had hit him. Durell swung at the gun and knocked it aside and drove Franz back with his charge. Franz took his rush on one hip and slammed against a young swamp maple, but the gun was jolted from his hand and spun to the ground. Instinctively Franz dropped to reach for it and Durell chopped at his thick neck with all the strength left in him, and chopped again. Franz fell to his knees with his eyes glazed, mouth open, face twisted by surprise.

Durell hit him again and tried to use his left, but he had no control over his left arm. It hung uselessly, without pain or feeling in it. Blood welled from his left shoulder, where the bullet had gone in, and dripped from his fingers. Then Franz came up with a shout and slammed into Durell and drove him across the clearing, across the dirt road, and into the swamp beyond. Durell broke free and rolled over in the muddy water, and Franz, on his knees, hit him with a fist like a hammer.

The gun was forgotten. Neither had any use for it. It would not have provided a satisfactory victory for either man. Only flesh against flesh, bone against bone, would answer the hatred between them. Durell tried to rise but his left hand went out from under him and his face hit the swampy water and he rolled aside. Panic spurted in him. Franz stood over him. Before he could escape, Franz kicked him and then jumped as if to land on him with his knees, but Durell kicked upward and Franz screamed and doubled up.

Slowly Durell climbed to his feet. Pain went through him in dark waves. He looked at Franz and saw the hatred in him and he looked for the gun. He couldn't find it. Franz got up, his mouth open, and came at him with a splashing rush. Durell went down under his weight, dragged deep into the mire. The tall reeds closed over him. Franz pushed his head under the surface. Durell rolled with the other's weight, held his breath, and arched convulsively. Franz slid aside and Durell was on top.

There was a roaring in his ears and a dimness all around him. His strength ran out with the slow drip of blood from his wounded shoulder. The water was stained a bright red. He felt Franz's weakened movements, his last effort to break free. The man's face came up, mouth straining for air, and Durell hit him and he went under again. The wind swayed the tall marsh reeds. Somewhere a squirrel scolded.

Durell stood up. He swayed, spread-legged. He was shaking, and his teeth chattered. He pulled free of the clinging ooze and reached down for Franz's collar and hauled the man's head out of the water. Something came in a quick gush over Franz's lips. Stumbling, Durell fought his way back to the dirt road, dragging the unconscious man with him. Once out of the water, he let Franz sprawl as he was and searched about until he found the gun. When he picked it up, he saw the sun shining in bright shafts of gold through the swamp trees.

Franz was breathing again. Franz sat up. He looked at the gun in Durell's hand. And Durell felt an overpowering impulse to squeeze the trigger.

"Get up," he gasped.

Franz stood up.

"Now we'll go back," Durell said.

There was a smell of smoke and charred, wet wood when they returned to the shack. The tumbledown structure had not burned completely. Apparently the rain had quenched the fire before more than half of it was consumed by the flames.

John Padgett still sprawled on the beach where Franz had hit him. Durell needed only one look at him. The man was dead. Franz made a soft sound and stood a little aside, head sunk in his massive shoulders. Now and then he looked apprehensively at the sky.

"You hit him too hard," Durell said.

"It makes no difference," Franz said dully. "Maybe he is the lucky one."

"It may not be too late."

"Our plane has already left. He waited too long. I argued and argued with him. But he waited because of you. And because he was uncertain about his sister."

Durell gestured with the gun. "Let's go inside."

Franz moved with sodden steps. In the other room of the shack, which Durell had not seen before, were two leather suitcases and a diplomat's dispatch case. Durell broke open the case and looked quickly through the neatly clipped folders of blueprints and diagrams and mathematical formulae. It was Cyclops, the new star in the heavens, neatly documented and diagramed for reproduction elsewhere in the world.

"Where is the car we came in?" Durell asked.

"Not far. In the bushes near the highway."

Durell took the dispatch case with him when they left the shack. The car was not difficult to find. Durell paused. "What time is it?"

Franz had a watch.

"It is two o'clock," he said.

"Let's get to a telephone."

Dickinson McFee's office at 20 Annapolis Street was crowded, thick with smoke, disturbed by the press of people who came and went. Durell sat in a leather armchair in the corner. A doctor worked over his face. He was stripped to the waist, and white bandages covered the wound in his shoulder. He listened to the incessant ringing of the telephones, the crisp orders McFee handed out, the quick patter of feet, the heavy breathing of the doctor. The antiseptic burned, stung, soothed. Someone put a cigarette in his mouth and he dragged at it gratefully.

Hazel was tearful. "Oh, Sam. Are you all right?"

McFee answered for him, shortly. "He'll live."

"But he ought to be in a hospital!"

"We'll ship him there soon."

"He ought to be there this
minute!"

"Hazel, get out of here."

Telephones jangled. Swayney came in, looked helpless, went out. Art Greenwald stood by soberly. Durell had talked steadily for an hour, after the police car had picked him up at the service station on the highway to Washington. He smoked his cigarette. He let the doctor work on him. Nobody had mentioned Deirdre's name.

Padgett's dispatch case was on McFee's desk. Franz was being questioned in one of the rooms upstairs. Franz had collapsed completely with his fear of Cyclops. Durell felt as if he were suspended in a glimmering drop of liquid, waiting for that drop to fall and burst and destroy him.

McFee came over. "This place is a madhouse. Sam, can you hear me?"

Durell nodded. "Where is Cyclops?"

McFee nodded toward the window and the dark sky. Durell realized with a shock that it was night. "Up there somewhere, Sam. The telescopes are on her."

"Then Cyclops is
orbiting?"

"Right on schedule."

"Then Calvin Padgett was wrong. I was wrong. I…"

"Take it easy. The boy's figures were right. Those you left on my desk, I mean. You've had a hard time, Sam, and I'm afraid I didn't make it any easier for you. Lucky I had sense enough to have the equations run through a calculator at the Pentagon. After that, it was a matter of calling Las Tiengas and taking the hex out of the brain that John Padgett put into it. Cyclops was launched on schedule, but the fact that she's orbiting now is only due to you. Considering the state of the world, the State Department lads now have a sure position of strength from which to talk for us, for a change."

Durell nodded. He asked about his grandfather. Jonathan was in New Orleans, at a fine hotel, having the time of his life. Compliments of the FBI.

He felt himself going out on a deep tide of darkness then. He struggled back to where he could see Dickinson McFee once more.

"The girl," he said. "Deirdre Padgett. Where is she?"

McFee was silent.

Durell struggled up. "Go on. Tell me."

The doctor pushed him back into the chair. "Sit down, pal. I've got work to do."

McFee said gently, "We don't know, Sam. We've looked everywhere. We're still looking. But it doesn't seem good."

"You've got to find her!"

"We'll try, Sam. We'll do our best."

He slept the clock around in the Naval Hospital room, and it was late afternoon again when he awoke. He felt better. His head was clear. There was little or no pain. There was a nurse in the room, cool, efficient, and he asked her for his clothes. When she refused, Durell got out of bed and the nurse called the floor intern, the intern called the resident physician, the resident came hurrying in to speak to Durell. By that time Durell was dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed, using the telephone.

He called Hazel. "Have they found Deirdre yet?*

"Oh, Sam, I don't think so."

"Get me Swayney."

To Swayney: '"Where is the girl?"

"Sam, look, I'm sorry for everything…"

"You were doing your job and I don't want apologies, Burritt. All I want is the girl."

"We can't find her, Sam… Sam?"

"Get me Dickinson McFee."

To McFee: "Padgett didn't have her, Franz didn't have her, you don't have her. Where in hell is she?"

"We don't know, Sam."

"She didn't just run away for the hell of it!"

"Are you sure of that, Sam?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Didn't you quarrel with her, or something like that?"