The Removers (20 page)

I said, “Beth, really! What did you expect me to do—”

“Do,” she breathed, taking another step forward.
“Do?
I expected you to do something, anything! Larry would have done it, if he could!”

I said angrily, drawing back a step, “Larry’s already had a leg shot from under him because of you! I suppose he would have been fool enough to get himself killed because of you!”

“Yes,” she hissed, “yes, you would think that was foolish, wouldn’t you, darling?”

I showed my teeth in something that was supposed to be a ratty grin. I said viciously, “What the hell are you squawking about, darling? There’s Larry with a smashed leg. Here am I after a four-hour beating, and just what the hell, may I ask, is wrong with you? Nothing that, at the worst, can’t be fixed by a small routine operation and a few shots of penicillin! Oh, and a visit to a good psychiatrist, if you’re going to take it that big! I mean, just what the hell gives you the right to—”

It worked. I wasn’t proud of it, I wouldn’t want to have to do it again, but it worked. This was Beth, the girl you couldn’t quarrel with, but I guess everybody’s got a breaking point somewhere. She came for me then, clawing and scratching, spitting and snarling and kicking, calling me names I hadn’t suspected her of knowing.

I covered up and backed away, hearing Martell laughing heartily behind me. I heard his laughter stop, but he’d made his mistake. He’d forgotten I was supposed to be dangerous. I’d worked hard for that forgetting, I’d paid high for it, but it was worth the price. When he realized his error, he was too late, I was too close. I was right there.

I dumped the table on top of Joey. The big Jaguar wheel helped. Sliding off, it took him right in the chest. I turned, and my timing was perfect. The gun was just coming out from under Martell’s coat. I gave it to him right in the solar plexus; the dagger-thrust with the stiffened fingers that’s worse than the blow of a fist. He doubled up, paralyzed, and I had the gun.

I shot him with it once and threw myself down, and Joey’s first shot went over me. It was all he was entitled to. It was close range and I could aim for the head. The first bullet just punched a neat round hole, but the second kind of blew things apart a little. Scratch Joey, who’d had one good impulse in his life, if it was that. Well, many of them don’t even have one.

I got up. Martell seemed to be still breathing, and I kind of kept an eye on him, but I was more worried about Joey’s single wild shot, at the moment. Beth was sitting on the floor nearby. I went over and lifted her. She was making small, mindless, whimpering noises.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hit?”

The funny thing was, my worry was quite genuine. A minute or two ago, I wouldn’t have given a nickel for her, with or without shirt, but now that it was over, more or less, I didn’t want her to have been hurt. She didn’t answer. She just kept on sobbing in a disconnected way.

Logan’s voice spoke calmly: “The stray bullet struck the wall over here. Elizabeth is merely a bit hysterical, don’t you know?”

I knew, all right. I’d be wearing the scratches to prove it for days to come. I helped her across the room. She sat down on the cot beside Logan and buried her face in her hands.

“And you?” I asked him.

“Feeling quite fit,” he said. He glanced at his wife. “You were a bit hard on her, old boy. It’s not something women take in their stride, you know.”

“It would be difficult to do,” I said. “But no doubt it’s been tried.”

He looked a little baffled; then he said, “Ah, yes. Quite.” Then he said, calmly, “You’d better attend to our friend over there. I believe he is reaching for another weapon. At least he is still alive.”

“I can’t see any necessity for that,” I said, and I went over and shot Martell through the back of the head. I mean, it was the only thing to do. We weren’t completely out of the woods yet, as I saw it; there was work left to be done. With his wound, Logan could pass out any time, and I couldn’t trust Beth to look after a tame rabbit.

I heard her gasp, behind me. Apparently she’d come out of it enough to witness my brutal act. Even Logan seemed disturbed.

“I say, old boy—”

I turned Martell over with my foot. He’d been curled up on the floor like a baby, but he straightened out as he rolled over limply, and his hand swung outward, holding the little .38 revolver he’d taken from me earlier in the day. You had to hand it to the guy. He’d had the old team spirit. They’d slapped his face and sent him to Siberia— or America—but he’d still been right in there trying, to the end.

I reached down and took the revolver from his fingers, stuck his gun into my pocket, and got out spare shells to reload the two fired chambers of my own—the ones he’d used on young Logan. That was something I was going to have to break to the Duke, or somebody was, but this didn’t seem like just the time. I looked down at the dead face with the thick sexy lips without any particular satisfaction.

It had been a personal matter, and it was settled. Paul was avenged, and so was a guy named Francis I’d never met. Come to that, you couldn’t really say that Paul had been a very close friend of mine. However, Mac could relax and Smitty could transfer the card to the closed file. But I was still going to miss that little knife.

I sighed, and went to the tire on the floor, got out one of the shiny cans, found the screw-driver, and pried off the lid. I poked around in the white stuff, and drew out, cautiously, a small dull metal cylinder. It was quite heavy, and I could scratch the metal with my thumb-nail, which seemed to make it lead. Two small wires, neatly coiled, were attached to one end of the cylinder.

Beth had got up to look. “What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I don’t think it would be a good idea to touch the ends of those wires together, at least not with a battery in the circuit.”

“But I don’t understand—”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

Logan’s voice was lazy: “I say, old boy—”

I was getting very tired of that accent, phony or genuine. “What is it, old boy?”

“There seems to be a car coming down the canyon. Can’t be sure it’s headed here, of course, but nevertheless—”

“Oh, Lord!” I said reverently.

We weren’t out of the woods, but at least I was beginning to see daylight through the trees ahead. I tucked the little lead cylinder back into its heroin nest, and put the lid back on the can. This gave me something to do while I figured my tactics. You don’t ever want to let anyone know you haven’t got the answers right at your fingertips.

Then I went over and dropped Martell’s automatic on Logan’s cot and went out of the cabin without giving any stupid instructions. If he was as good as he was supposed to be—which we’d seen no signs of yet—he’d think of something intelligent to do. If he couldn’t think of it himself, he probably wouldn’t do it right if I told him.

They came in beautifully, like ducks to the decoys. I was up above them on the hillside, behind a bush, as they bounced into range in their long, air-conditioned Cadillac. There was Fredericks and a driver, the man I’d once seen guarding the door of Fredericks’ office at the hotel. They drove right up below me and got out and looked around.

“Both cars are here,” I heard Fredericks say. “I wonder what the hell—”

From inside the cabin came the shrill, outraged scream of a woman. Logan had thought of something, and Beth had done it. I’d have to pin medals on both of them, later.

The driver laughed. “No wonder they were too busy to hear us coming.”

Fredericks said angrily, “Damn it, they can do their womanizing on their own time! I’ll teach them to keep me waiting.”

I had the driver covered, figuring him to be more dangerous. Fredericks wouldn’t have been doing his own shooting for years. It should have been an easy touch, but I had to go and remember Mac’s words:
at least a semblance of legality, to keep our brother agencies happy.
I stood up behind my bush.

“Put your hands up!” I said. “You’re both under arrest!”

It was a stupid damn business. There must be some good way of doing it—cops do it all the time, I hear— but obviously that wasn’t it. They both dove in different directions, going for their guns.

I got the driver all right, leading him nicely, so that he lunged right into the path of the bullet. Then I swung for Fredericks, and something hit me a hard and paralyzing blow in the right side of the chest.

I tried for the gun with my left hand. There’s a stunt known as the Border Shift whereby you transfer a weapon from one hand to the other—a kind of juggling trick. The only trouble is, it doesn’t work too damn well when your right arm’s out of commission, and when else do you need it? The last time it was actually tried in action, on the record, as far as I know, was when some drunk’s wild shot clipped the gun hand of an old-time gambler named Luke Short, a real tough one. Luke tried the Shift, too, but he didn’t make it, either. The other guy shot him dead.

I felt the revolver drop, and I threw myself on top of it, still trying to find it left-handed. I didn’t have much time. I could feel the gun trained on me and I wondered where this one would hit.

There was a shot all right, and another, but no bullets came near me. I picked up the .38 and looked up. Fredericks was standing there with an odd, slack look on his face, doing nothing whatever. He dropped the gun he was holding. Then he started to fall.

I looked towards the cabin. Well, he had to be good for something, the reputation he had around that place. It was the shoulder-holster man, the great white hunter, old Bwana Simba himself coming out of retirement, a beautiful sight. How he’d made it to the door on a shattered leg, even with Beth to help him, I didn’t know. I didn’t intend to ask. He’d just give me some of that stiff-upper-lip, British guff.

He was shooting very carefully, making target practice of it, body as relaxed as his wound allowed, arm extended but not locked. He put two more into The Man as he fell, with deliberate accuracy, making quite sure. He’d been in the business once, himself.

I got up. My chest didn’t seem to hurt much. That would come later. I went over and checked the Duke’s work, and my own. I made my way to where he still leaned in the doorway. Beth was beside him, steadying him. I looked at the two of them, and spoke to him.

“That was pretty fair country shooting, old chap,” I said. “While we still have some privacy, you might let me know how much of this you want credit for, on the books.”

He looked me straight in the eye. “None, if it can be arranged,” he said.

I thought of various things, and said, “We could probably get you a small medal or some nice words from Uncle or something.”

He glanced at Beth. “We would rather not figure in it at all, if it’s possible,” he said, and she nodded. He smiled faintly. “I would certainly prefer not to be remembered as the man who smuggled a certain number of pounds of heroin, not to mention that other material, across the Mexican border. If it’s all the same to you, old man.”

It wasn’t the same to me, not quite, but the guy had saved my life—at least I thought so at the time. There were occasions during the next couple of weeks when I wasn’t quite so sure...

The young man from the AEC said, “Of course, Mr. Helm, you understand all this is highly confidential.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “What was in those cans, anyway? Their new pocket model atomic bomb?”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “not quite. It was. a very ingenious sabotage device consisting of radioactive wastes enclosed in a shielded container with a small bursting charge. The explosive wasn’t sufficient to do much damage, but it would distribute the radioactive material over a fairly wide area, with unfortunate results to anyone who happened to be standing nearby, particularly if he didn’t realize the danger and undergo decontamination immediately. We’ve had a few cases.”

“I know,” I said. “I read the papers.”

“There have been others, less fatal, that didn’t reach the papers,” he said. “In many cases, with prompt action, the injury was relatively slight—the physical injury that is. But the injury to morale has been serious.” He frowned. “You must understand, Mr. Helm, that people who work around nuclear reactions tend to be, well, let’s say, a bit sensitive about anything pertaining to radioactivity. Just like people working around high explosives tend to jump unnecessarily at loud noises. When things start to burst that shouldn’t, if you know what I mean, and when people find themselves receiving heavy contamination in places that are supposed to be relatively safe... Well, it cuts down the efficiency, to say the least. One installation, just the other day, couldn’t even get the trash removed until the workers were permitted to don full protective clothing. Things like that. It was a fiendishly clever device, psychologically speaking. If they’d got enough of them...”

I looked at the bright window, through which, since I was on the second floor of the hospital, I could see only the blue and cloudless Nevada sky.

“Shielded, you say,” I said. “How much shielding do you get from that little bit of lead?”

He laughed. “You don’t have to worry, Mr. Helm. You’ve been checked, very thoroughly. Although you handled one of the bombs, you apparently didn’t get enough exposure to do any damage. It was only when the contents were actually splashed on someone that the situation was urgent and dangerous. However, if some gentleman down in Mexico slept with the entire supply under his bed, he might be feeling a little unwell by now. And I don’t know as I’d care to shoot that heroin into my veins, even if I was addicted to the stuff. Of course, that was their difficulty. Any normally sensitive instrument would have detected the hot material through the relatively inadequate lead shield, which is why they brought it in by such roundabout channels.”

I said, “Silly question, but why didn’t they just make up the nasty little things right here in the country?”

“Where would they get the critical ingredient? We don’t sell it over the counter, you know. It would have had to be imported, anyway; and the device is not one anybody could put together in a cellar from a gas pipe and a few sticks of dynamite.” He rose. “Their experiment was a success; let’s say the first shipment, with which we’re still dealing, went over big. If they’d got hold of the second shipment and got it planted before we understood what we were up against, we’d have been in real trouble. As it is, of course, we can take precautions against further sabotage of this nature—although I think it’s probably the first time we’ve had to worry about anybody bringing radioactive materials
onto
an atomic installation. Coals to Newcastle, eh? Well, goodbye, Mr. Helm. Your chief wanted me to let you know the background, as soon as you were well enough. I hope I haven’t tired you too much.”