The Terrorizers (18 page)

That was the idea now, to make it look good. Somebody once called it the death run. The theory is very simple. When the odds are overwhelming and retreat is cut off, when there’s no place left to go or you just don’t care to go there, that’s the time you let the word get around once more that none of us comes cheap. They can have us any time, but they’ve got to pay the price. The tariff is more than a lot of people can afford. It makes things a little safer for those left behind. Just like the opportunity file, it instills a little respect for the outfit that may save another agent’s life at a later date. Not that I was worrying about respect, or safety, with Kitty Davidson dead in the next room.

I dove for the submachinegun on the floor. With that, I could hose them out of the doorway and off the stairs like dirt. I might even be able to shoot my way clear if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I was doing fine right there, or would be if I could just get my hands on the goddamned chopper, and if they’d just keep coming to me like good little terrorists. I had a grip on the weapon, I was turning it around to fire, when a gun crashed in the doorway and the room kind of exploded and went dark. I went away, but not all the way away. I could hear them arguing above me.

A man wanted to kill me, or finish killing me. It seemed like a very intelligent idea, from his point of view. I’d heard his voice before but I couldn’t remember where. A woman said no. I didn’t recognize her voice. She used some very unladylike words. As she stood over me protectively, her long skirt brushed my face. I was all for the man. He was only showing good common sense. I’d have killed me, if I’d been in his place. I’d got five of them so far and I was proud of it. I’d damned well get some more if they let me live, all of them if I could, down to the women and children, the dogs and cats and pet parakeets, and he knew it.

I felt very objective about it. I was entirely on his side, he had all the best and most professional arguments, but the woman won.

I woke up remembering, but it wasn’t all that great. Of course I had a tremendous, thundering headache that prevented me from enjoying my newfound memories in full. However, the fact was that except for a few scraps of information of current interest, I hadn’t really missed any of the stuff badly while it was gone.

The psychiatrist at the hospital, Lilienthal, had told me that would be the case, when he was trying to reassure me about my amnesia shortly after I’d been delivered to his doorstep by helicopter express. He’d explained that, as a rule, the condition bothers other people more than it does the patient. They tend to consider him a weird medical curiosity; he just thinks of himself as a perfectly normal guy who’s got a slight gap in his recollections, which he soon learns to live with…

“Matt.”

It was a girl’s voice, slightly and intriguingly accented. For a moment I knew a surge of incredulous hope; then I knew it wasn’t
that
girl’s voice, I’d never hear that again. This was a different accent, not Canadian but very faintly oriental.

“Matt, or Paul, or whatever you’re calling yourself now, wake up, damn you! Eric? Come on, snap out of it. I’m going nuts cooped up in here with a lousy corpse.
Please
wake up!”

It wasn’t exactly Far East verbiage; but the face I saw, and recognized, when I opened my eyes, was Asiatic enough although it was liberally streaked with occidental dirt. At least I didn’t think I’d been transplanted halfway around the world while I was out. I licked my dry lips. I wanted to ask what the hell she was doing here, wherever here was, but the question didn’t come out that way, maybe because in spite of my shiny and efficient new memory I had a moment’s difficulty recalling her name.

“Who… what corpse?”

“Well, when they dumped you in here, I was sure you were dead!”

“In where?”

My eyes were starting to pick up details beyond her, but there wasn’t much to see. At first glance, it seemed to be a dim, cold, empty void of a place, like a cellar, illuminated only by a round skylight forming part of a trapdoor giving access from above. An iron ladder led up to the trapdoor. There were certain rippling watery sounds, however, and some uneasy hints of movement, that cast doubt upon the cellar theory.

“I don’t know where,” said the girl leaning over me. “I was on the floor of the car with somebody’s feet on me all the time we were driving. Some kind of crummy barge tied to a falling-down dock on a very muddy river. Close to flood stage with all the rain, I think. A couple of other boats tied up at a nearby float; very funny-looking, beat-up old boats. A boom to hold some logs. Lots of current farther out, if it matters. There seemed to be all kinds of stuff drifting by out there, everything from beer cans to telephone poles. A high rocky shore. A little rocky island to shelter this half-ass harbor or whatever you want to call it. The moon peeked out for a moment just as they were bringing me aboard in the dark. We’re up front, in the cargo hold or whatever you call it. The barge has a goodsized house or cabin at the back, but it looks like a do-it-yourself project. Not a real pilot-house, if you know what I mean. I saw only three men but there could be more. I saw one woman—that unwashed Market bitch with her symbolic Afro and her so-casual horseblanket and her long, frayed denim skirt. Firearms galore, including some very nasty little full-automatic numbers, straight magazines, skeleton stocks.” She stopped briefly to catch her breath. “End of situation report, sir. At your service, sir. Questions, sir?”

I grinned painfully. “Hello, Wong,” I said.

“Wrong Chinese girl, sah,” she said, burlesquing the accent. “Me not Lo Wong, me Sally Wong. Lo Wong my sister… Ouch, that’s pretty corny, isn’t it? I must be scared or something. And talking about unwashed bitches, I wonder what they used this hold for before it became a detention cell. Or maybe I’d rather not know.” She grimaced, pushing her short black hair back from her dirty face. “Darling, we simply must stop meeting like this. A hospital room, a rusty barge… I thought that was a pretty good act I put on for you at that hospital. Poignant. Touching. Remember?”

Her voice was a little breathless. It obviously meant a great deal to her to have somebody to talk to at last. It couldn’t have been fun, being locked up in the dark for hours with a man she thought dead.

“I remember,” I said. “What’s a Blossom?”

“What?”

“Operation Blossom,” I said. “According to our mutual friend, Herbert Walters, that great frontier aviator—bush pilot to you—it’s the next explosive project scheduled by the PPP. Does the name mean anything to you?”

She frowned at me for a moment in the dim light. “Oh. You mean it’s all come back to you? You
do
remember… How come?”

“Easy,” I said. “Next time you meet a poor amnesiac, just shoot the girl he’s planning to marry, right through the heart. If you use another bullet to crease his cranium lightly, it helps. Everything will came back to him. I guarantee it.”

Well, at least I could talk about it now. I no longer wanted to kill the whole world because of it. I guess it was a step in the right direction.

Sally Wong was staring at me in surprise. “You mean the Davidson? Were you actually planning to marry that cold snow maiden mourning chastely for her… Oh, damn, I’m sorry, Paul. It just popped out. You know I didn’t like her, but I didn’t mean…”

“Hush your mouth, Wong,” I said. “The lady is dead, dead, dead.”

“I said I was sorry.”

I said maliciously, “You weren’t such a hot snow maiden yourself, as I recall. I can’t remember anything about you and me worth remembering, sweetheart, except several months of gentlemanly self-control, an exercise at which I do not normally excel. At least I don’t like excelling at it. It was a hell of a frustrating mission all around for a virile gent like me, particularly since I’m not dimensioned for sleeping on people’s living room sofas. That was where I seemed to get parked wherever I went, the past six months, with the frigid dame snoring peacefully in the next room.”

“I don’t snore,” Sally said calmly, “and I’m not frigid, but… well, you can’t expect me to get serious about a man who just won’t take my work seriously.”

“Okay, and I can’t be expected to get serious about a girl who takes my work too seriously.”

She laughed. “Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with your memory now, Paul. We’re right back where we left off, fighting again.”

“Make it Matt,” I said. “That cover has served its purpose, and this is no place for a peaceful cameraman named Madden. Helm’s the name, ma’am. And the subject is still Blossom. Operation Blossom.” I tried to sit up. She helped me. I winced and said, “Oops, don’t tip it or the brains will all run out through the crack. I think it’s time for somebody to kick me in the tailbone for a change and give my poor headbone a rest.”

It took me a moment to catch my breath from the effort and to let the throbbing pain subside. I could see her clearly now, kneeling beside me, small and pretty in her offbeat Chinese way—well, I don’t suppose the Chinese consider it offbeat—but I was remembering that, as I’d indicated, we really hadn’t got along too well in spite of the lovey-dovey act we’d put on in public as long as the mission required it. She’d had the attitude common to a lot of people with high moral principles; for the good of mankind they’re sometimes willing to strangle their finer feelings and make reluctant use of a nasty specialist like me, but that doesn’t mean they have to approve of him or respect his talents. And, on the other hand, I’ve never been able to appreciate the sublime arrogance of folks who feel they were put on earth just to save other folks from themselves, which seemed to be her main goal in life.

Fortunately for her, she was no longer wearing anything as expensive and vulnerable as the neat suit, blouse, and nylons in which she’d visited the hospital, it seemed a hell of a long time ago. She had on sturdy blue jeans and a blue quilted ski parka. Both were fairly well coated with greasy rust-brown goop from the walls and floors of our prison. In spite of her basically durable costume, she managed to project a bruised-flower image that reminded me painfully of another female I’d once liberated in moderately dilapidated condition—but of course this one wasn’t liberated yet.

“Blossom,” I said. “Concentrate on Blossom, Wong.”

She thought a moment, and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It means absolutely nothing to me.”

“How much time do you figure we’ve got for talking? How often do they check us?”

“There seems to be no set watch schedule,” she said. “I’ve been in here since early last night. They grabbed me when I ran over to the grocery after work—I’m still marking time on that North-Air job, waiting for the final word on Walters. It was well after dark when we got here after about an hour and a half of driving. Every so often during the night somebody would shine a flashlight down, but the timing was completely irregular. I got the impression they consider themselves something of a paramilitary outfit, but the discipline leaves a lot to be desired. Around midnight, I guess it was, they lowered you down to me. They laughed when they told me I was getting company.” She shivered. “At first I thought it was a horrible practical joke; I was sure you were dead. In the dark I couldn’t even see who you were. I could just feel the blood. But the skull seemed to be intact, and then you moved a little and I could hear you breathing, but I had to wait until daylight before I could recognize… I haven’t heard anybody out on deck for a couple of hours.”

I hesitated. “What the hell do they want you for, anyway? Did they tell you?”

“Brace yourself,” she said. “I’m wanted for crimes against the people. Somebody’s apparently figured out that it wasn’t just Herb Walters’ manly charm that kept me at North-Air. I’m charged with luring said antiestablishment hero to his doom, meaning you. We’ll both be brought to trial before a people’s tribunal, properly constituted. Honest. That’s what the woman said, with flourishes.”

I said, wryly, “Looks like they’re gaining confidence, and not just blowing up folks at random any longer. Now it’s summary justice, PPP style; Kitty dead and you and I soon to be punished for our counter-revolutionary crimes. At least I suppose the firing squad comes right after the fair trial. Escape possibilities?”

Sally shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not without a cutting torch or a great big wrench. It’s a steel or iron hull, and there’s a heavy partition back in the dark there. Some kind of an opening I could feel, but it’s closed by a metal cover that’s bolted on, and the bolts are very rusty. It would take a lot of leverage to budge them, if they can be budged. I’ve checked every inch of the place for some kind of a tool—that’s how I got so filthy—but there’s absolutely nothing. A big loading hatch above us, but it clamps from outside, just like the little manhole cover or whatever you call it. Otherwise it’s just a big, empty iron coffin. Sorry.”

I said, “You’re pretty good, Wong. You make nice reports.”

It took her by surprise. Then she said stiffly, “It’s kind of you to concede, at last, that you’re not the only one with adequate training around here, Mr. Helm.”

I grinned. “Don’t bite my head off, doll. But I guess it did sound kind of patronizing. From now on I’ll stick to insults and let the compliments go, okay?”

She laughed quickly. “Tell me about Walters. Do you
know
that he’s dead?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He’s dead, but it didn’t work out quite the way we planned it. The original idea, remember, approved by you and your superiors, was for me to get him to land on a fairly distant lake where I’d secretly cached some supplies on one of my previous bird watching expeditions As soon as we were down, I’d dispose of him, sink the plane and body very deep—they’ve got some fairly bottomless ponds up there—and hike out. On the last day, of course, I’d ditch any supplies I had left and come crawling into civilization on hands and knees, a battered, emaciated survivor of a terrible wilderness crash, unable to say just what mountain it was we’d piled up against in the overcast. Very simple. With a bit of cooperation from the authorities, discreetly coached by your drug-busting superiors and their Canadian counterparts, it should have worked. Only Christofferson was wise. He knew I was after him. He didn’t wait for us to land. Actually, I think it was that switch they had me make from one girl to another that had tipped him off about me; that wasn’t really a very bright maneuver.”