Assignment Unicorn (23 page)

“You’re dead, though,” Marcus insisted. “We thought you‘d
drowned, or crawled into a hole somewhere to die.”

Durell said harshly, “I know Dr. MacLeod told you the drug
killed unless it was renewed. Well, you see it doesn’t kill, after all. I
managed to survive. You don’t have to hang in there as a unicorn if you don’t
want to. You’ll live, given proper care. Over there, against the wall. Maggie?”

She stared at the unicorn with surprised eyes.

“Take his gun. Over there, on the steel desk.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Cover him. He can move like blazes. Don’t take any chances,
understand? If he
bats
an eyelash, shoot his head
off.”

“Right. Is he one of the ones who killed my father?”

“Never mind. Just do as I say.”

“I’d like to kill him right now.”

“Good. Do it if he even looks like he’ll move. He may be a
superman, but he won’t get far with his head blown away.”

The unicorn named Marcus said, stunned, “But we all
thought—all of us—we had to keep getting the drug to stay alive.”

“Shut up.”

Durell sat down at the radio equipment. There was an
automatic relay for a Mayday signal, aimed at Preble Cove Station. He set it,
checked the SOS, locked it in place. The equipment hummed. The electronic tape
began to revolve, sending out the appeal for help in a repetitive signal. A
minute later, he picked up his gun again and looked at the unicorn man.

“Turn around, Marcus. Very, very slowly.”

Durell hit the back of the man’s head with the gun butt,
hard and decisively. He had to repeat the blow before the man sagged, his knees
buckling, and crashed to the floor of the radio room. Maggie yanked out a
length of telephone wire and lashed the man’s wrists and ankles, tied them
together until his body bowed painfully backward. Durell wasn’t sure it would
hold against the man’s unnatural strength when he came to. But it should keep him
immobile long enough.

Durell left the radio room first. Immediately he felt the
jab of a gun in his ribs. He stopped cold. Maggie trod on his heels, bumped
against him.

Colonel Ko stood in the outer hallway, a small smile on his
neat, round, brown face.

“You, too, Miss Donaldson. Neither of you should move.
Please. Drop your weapons.”

Durell looked into the man’s black, fathomless eyes. “Do as
he says, Maggie.”

“Very wise,” Colonel Ko murmured. “Are you surprised to see
me, Mr. Durell?”

“No. You‘re one of the ISCOPP delegates, aren’t you?”

“Naturally, but—”

“You’re with the unicorns, right?”

“The
uni
— Yes. Yes, that is
correct. They are here, you know, for their demonstration of super police force
personnel. To sell their methods. I have already agreed to the contract. Do not
do anything rash, Miss Donaldson,” the little man said suddenly. “Stand over
there.”

“Take it easy, Maggie,” Durell said. He pulled her aside.
Her eyes were metallic as she stared at Ko, Hugh Donaldson’s contact with
death. Colonel Ko looked into the radio room and saw the unconscious bound
unicorn in his gray jumpsuit. He clucked his tongue in surprise. Apparently he
did not recognize the automatic whirring of the Mayday signal for what it was.
He was too preoccupied with keeping Durell and the girl in his view.

“You haven’t Smashed the radio equipment?”

“No,” Durell said. “We didn’t have time.”

“Very well. Come with me.”

He picked up Durell’s and Maggie’s guns, held them loosely
in his left hand, and pushed them away from the radio room. He seemed to be in
a hurry.

There was a series of small balconies on the second level
above the meeting room, and Colonel Ko urged them to the curtains behind one of
them, three minutes later. Durell heard a familiar voice from the dais. It was the
President, making his welcoming speech to the ISCOPP delegates. He spoke in
platitudes, about the need for security and law and order throughout the world,
the need for international cooperation between states to discourage acts of
violence that spanned the borders of the world’s nations, the hope that
techniques developed among them would add to the security of peoples the world
over. His mellifluous voice was calm and sure. Looking down upon him, Durell
could only admire the man’s poise and political ease. For the President, it was
simply another speech, saying much and meaning little.

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.