The Devastators

by Donald Hamilton

  We’d come through Ullapool, a picturesque but tourist-infested fishing village on an inlet called Loch Broom, where we’d had our first glimpse of salt water on this rugged western shore of Scotland. Beyond, the main road had swung inland again, and presently we’d seen the sign pointing to Kinnochrue and made our left turn, followed faithfully by the squatty tan Austin-Cooper.

  Now I was ramming the Spitfire hard along the twisting black track through the coastal hills. I was kind of testing the skill of the guy behind and the capabilities of his chunky little sedan. I had to admit that while my streamlined red roadster looked a lot faster, I didn’t really have much if any edge, mechanically speaking, and Basil seemed to be a pretty good driver. Well, they’re all pretty good until the chips are down; then some get suddenly better and a few get suddenly worse.

  I put my foot down harder. The exhaust began to sound raucous and impatient, the wind started buffeting us in the open cockpit, and the tires whimpered in the curves. Basil began to fall back. Of course, there was no real need for him to take chances. He couldn’t lose us on that road; there was no place for us to go. Still, it looked as if he just didn’t have the urge. I could see why he’d had another man to handle the car in London. He could drive, but he wasn’t a driver, if you know what I mean. His machinery could catch me, but he never would.

  Vadya said tartly, “I hope you are enjoying yourself, darling.” She had to speak loudly to make herself heard over the noise.

  I glanced at her and grinned. “What’s the matter, are you scared?”

  “Of course I am scared,” she shouted. “You are driving like a fool, and I have no particular desire to die.”

  “Neither does he,” I said, jerking my head backwards. “Which is what I wanted to find out… Ooops!”

  I hit the brakes and swerved into a providential passing place barely in time to miss a big Morris sedan that had appeared out of nowhere—at least it looked big on that skinny little road. Then we were off again, while Basil had to wait at a passing place up the line for the larger car to go by. That gave us an additional lead as we charged the next rise hard enough to feel the car kind of lift as the road dropped away beyond the crest—and there they were.

  They must have had somebody on a height to give the signal we were coming; they were already busy setting a Volkswagen Microbus crosswise down there. It was plenty big enough to block the road completely. On either side, the shoulders dropped off into rank, soggy-looking grass and brush studded with occasional nice big boulders.

  In a jeep, or maybe even a rugged American pickup truck with plenty of clearance and low-gear pulling power, I might have considered an end run nevertheless. In a fragile, low-slung sports job with high-speed gearing, it was out of the question. Even if I got it down from the road intact and right side up, I’d never get it back to the pavement again beyond the roadblock. It would either sink belly-deep in the peat bog or disembowel itself on a rock.

  They’d seen us now. The driver of the bus had set his brake and was running for cover, and there were a couple of men on either side of the road, waiting to close in on us when we came to a halt. But between them and us was a white diamond on a post, marking a rather skimpy passing place.

  I said, “Hang on, doll. This may work. If it doesn’t, it will still look as if I’d given it the old college try.”

  She said something that I didn’t catch. We were really flying down the narrow strip of pavement now. All you could hear was the scream of the exhaust and the howl of the wind. The passing place was coming up fast. At the last moment I stood on the brake and rammed the gearshift lever into low. As we came sliding up to the wide spot, while we still had momentum, I got off the brake, cranked the wheel all the way over, and hit the accelerator hard.

  It’s a trick we used to play long ago, in our folks’ flivvers, on snowy roads back home. If you swung the heap hard and really goosed it, you could skid it around in its own length. If you chickened out, you wouldn’t spin far enough, and you’d jump a curb or clobber a couple of parked vehicles. If you hit it too hard, you’d do a complete three-sixty, and go sliding on down the street, spinning end for end. But if you did it just right, you’d have made a neat U-turn using hardly any street at all.

  This wasn’t snow, of course, but I saw a little gravel in the turnout that might help, and the Spitfire had a much smaller turning circle, and a much faster steering ratio, than the cars I used to play with. After all, I’d picked it for its spectacular maneuverability; now was the time for it to show its stuff.

  For a moment, however, it seemed as if we’d go flying off the bank and out into the rocky field: I couldn’t break the rear wheels loose. The car simply tracked around tightly, shuddering and protesting, in a circle that, small as it was, was several feet too wide for the space we had. Then the straining rear tires hit the gravel and went sideways with a jerk and we were spinning nicely. The tail of the car whipped completely around. I caught it at a hundred and eighty, overcorrected and almost lost it, and fishtailed wildly before getting it back under control. Then we were heading back up the slope.

  Basil was not yet in sight. We came over the crest again, turning about five thousand in third gear—about fifty m.p.h.—and saw him just approaching the passing place that we’d used to avoid the Morris. I suppose I should have let him reach it, but I remembered a girl who’d died of poison, probably at his orders, and I saw no good reason to be nice to Mr. Basil. Besides, sitting in an open car, a perfect target, I had to keep him too busy to use a gun until we were out of range. He might shoot better than he drove.

  I raced him for the white diamond, therefore, taking the revs clear up to six thousand before I grabbed high gear. He wasn’t a real driver, as I’ve said. He couldn’t see that if he slowed down, he was lost. He had to reach the wide place first, if he wanted to avoid a real sudden-death showdown, but still he tried to hedge his bets and make the crash a little less terrifying if it should come.

  “Chicken!” I heard myself shout like a crazy kid. “Get off my road, chicken!”

  I was aware of Vadya glancing at me, presumably contemptuous of this childishness. Basil couldn’t hear me, of course, but he eased off irresolutely nevertheless; and the passing place flashed by us. He’d lost the race, and now the red Spitfire was hurtling at him downhill at seventy-five, crowding eighty, wide open, and there was no room for him to dodge on that one-track road, and nothing left for him to do but ditch or die. He ditched.

  I had a glimpse of the Austin going over the edge as we roared past. I drew a long breath and carefully let the roadster slow down, and I looked at the steering wheel to see if I’d actually squeezed fingermarks in the hard plastic. I hadn’t.

  I said, “Some bottle, with a coward for a cork. Did he crack up hard, I hope?”

  Vadya said calmly, “Unfortunately, not too hard. He was not going very fast. The car bounced a couple of times and hit a big stone and fell over on its side. I think it is seriously damaged. But he was getting out when we turned the corner.” She glanced at me. “What would you have done if he had not got out of our way, Matthew?”

  “Hit him head on,” I said, “and he knew it.”

  We drove in silence for a little, and then she said softly, “You are a surprising man in many ways, darling. Or are you just a reckless boy? And do you not care at all whether you live or die?”

  I said, “Hell, everything indicated that he’d weaken if I came at him hard enough. Look at his record. The only real risk was that he might panic completely and freeze at the controls. I wouldn’t have tried it on you. You’re too stubborn. You’d have hung on and got us all killed, out of pure meanness.”

  She laughed, and pulled her scarf off her hair, and used it to pat her forehead. “I do not know, darling. I am not so sure. You were bluffing in London, but you were not bluffing here.” She sighed. “Well, what do we do now?”

  I shook my head ruefully. “That wasn’t much of a trap. I couldn’t let them get away with it. Madam
e Ling either has a very low opinion of me, or she was testing me to see if, perhaps, I really wanted to get caught. It looks as if you’re going to have to call that emergency number. Bawl her out. Tell her I don’t really suspect anything yet, but she’d better make her next setup good.” I looked around, seeing no landmarks, nothing but rocky hills, and a few sheep. The sheep over here had white faces, I noticed. They didn’t have the sturdy, independent, go-to-hell look of the black-faced ones. I said, “Well, we’d better hunt up a phone. I don’t see any booths around here.”

  Vadya had the map out. “Kinnochrue should be the closest place from which to call. There’s another road we can use. Turn left up ahead.”

  I followed her directions mechanically. I was feeling a little drained, I guess, as the adrenalin wore off; you get yourself all keyed up to put your life on the line and there’s bound to be a reaction afterwards. Presently I found myself negotiating a small dirt road on which the Spitfire scraped bottom no matter how hard I tried to maneuver around the high spots. It got progressively worse. At last I pulled off to the side and turned off the engine.

  “As a navigator,” I said, “you make a swell secret agent. Let me see that map. Where the hell are we? I mean, where the hell do you think we are?”

  She put her finger on the map. “I think we are here, darling.”

  “Nuts,” I said. “We haven’t crossed the main highway, have we? I’d have noticed that.”

  I got out to stretch and spread the map on the hood of the car—the bonnet, in the local parlance. There was a rustling of waxed paper in the car; I looked up to see Vadya munching a sandwich.

  “Want one?” she asked.

  “No, but I could use a cup of coffee.”

  She brought it to me, and reached up to pat my cheek lightly. “You’re a funny man, Matthew. Chicken, you shouted, get out of my road, chicken. Your road! What arrogance!”

  I said, rather abashed, “I got a little carried away, I guess. I—” I looked beyond her. “My God, what’s that?”

  She whirled, putting her hand to her bosom where her little gun, apparently, still reposed. Then she let her hand fall, and we stood looking at the fantastic creature that had appeared on the ridge to the west of the road. It was big as an ox—in fact it was an ox, but like no ox you ever saw. It had long, shaggy, ragged, yellow-orange hair, and great, spreading horns like an old-time trail steer. It looked at us calmly for several seconds before it turned and moved deliberately out of sight.

  I glanced at Vadya, and we scrambled up there like two kids at a zoo, rather than two ruthless secret operatives on a mission upon which might depend the fate of the Western world. We stood watching the great beast walk slowly away from us, hairy and prehistoric-looking. Far beyond it, I saw, was the ocean, and at the edge of the coastal cliffs were some piles of rock that looked as if man might have had a hand in getting them there. I looked at the yellow Highland ox again, and gulped my coffee, and turned to Vadya, grinning.

  “Well, all I can say is that if it gives milk, somebody else can have the job of—”

  I stopped. Her expression was very odd, and suddenly I remembered something. A very old castle, crumbling into the sea, she’d said, only a few stones left at the edge of the cliff… the ancient home of the Clan McRue. We’d found Brossach, and I didn’t for a moment think we’d stumbled on it by accident. She’d been instructed to bring me here, somehow, if I should escape the picayune trap on the Kinnochrue road, as I’d been expected to do. But there had been more to her instructions, I knew. I glanced at the plastic cup in my hand, and at the husky girl in the black leather jacket, waiting. I remembered that she’d always been a fast girl with a Mickey.

  I’d already drunk plenty. I knew I had only a few seconds left. Whether I would then die, or merely be unconscious for an interval, depended on the arrangement she’d made with Madame Ling—the real arrangement, not the one she’d told me about. This didn’t really shock me. I’d expected a double-cross somewhere along the line. It was the way she’d gone about the betrayal that took my breath away. Because she’d left me no choice, absolutely no choice at all.

  I mean, the standing orders are quite explicit on the subject of several standard situations. There is the one where you’re holding a man at gunpoint, for instance, and some misguided moron who’s seen too many movies and wants to help his friend comes up behind you and sticks a pistol in your back. The standard, mandatory response is very simple: you instantly shoot the guy in front of you dead—the guy your gun is already aimed at, who else? It is presumed that you wouldn’t be pointing a firearm at him if you weren’t prepared to kill him; and you can do it without losing more than a small fraction of a second before you pivot and take care of the guy behind you by one of several prescribed methods.

  Similarly, if you realize you’ve been drugged, you are required to get the person who fed you the dope before you pass out, if it is at all feasible—meaning if the guy’s foolish enough to stick around and watch the show. The theory here is that people who go to the trouble to feed poison or knock-out drops to agents like us are obviously up to no good. They should be stopped and the practice should be discouraged.

  As I say, I had no choice. I couldn’t kid myself this was part of the trick we were supposed to be playing on Madame Ling. If Vadya had still been on my team, she’d have told me where we were going; she’d also have told me what was in the cup when she handed it to me.

  She could probably have talked me into drinking it, ostensibly to make our act look good, if she’d wanted to take the trouble, but she’d preferred to do it this way, avoiding the risk of argument. She’d felt that it was surer and safer, and I thought I knew why. She was counting on the fact that I’d once let her go when I probably shouldn’t have, and that we’d just spent a night together. Just as I’d counted on Basil’s weakness, she was counting on mine: on that well-known sentimentality I’d been known to display where women were concerned.

  It was too bad. I wanted to tell her that it was too bad, and that she shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t have that much time. I felt the stuff she’d given me starting to take hold, and I drew the .38 and fired and saw her go to her knees, with a look of shock and surprise on her face. I didn’t shoot again. I knew it had been a pretty good shot—not perfect, but pretty good—and things were starting to blur out, and I don’t believe in just blasting holes in the landscape at random…

  18

  “Tell them to find the woman,” an oddly accented, liquid-sounding female voice was saying, somewhere outside the circle of darkness in which I seemed to lie. “Tell them to find her quickly. A shot was heard and there is blood on the ground, see? She did not take the car. She cannot be far away.” A deep male voice asked a question I didn’t catch. The smooth female voice replied: “No, if she has been foolish enough to get herself shot, no bargains apply now, even if I had intended to be bound by them, which I hadn’t. Just get rid of her.” Another question was asked, and the female voice said impatiently: “No, no, this one we will take inside for the scientists—we need all the data we can get—but a wounded one is of no value to them. Tell the men to take her down to the boat and dispose of her at sea, as usual. Tell them to make quite sure she does not come to the surface. We want no questions from our great friends and allies, the Russians. Then have them hide the boat again and wait. The ship should arrive shortly before low tide. We must get the cages on board immediately. Where is that Basil? What has delayed him now?”

  There was an interval while that Basil was being located. I was aware that I was lying in the sun, probably in the spot where I’d fallen, and that a rock was gouging my thigh and an insect crawling up my neck, but everything seemed very pleasant and peaceful. I wasn’t really playing possum. I had no urge whatever to open my eyes. I was happy just to lie there and listen.

  “Where have you been?” the feminine voice said abruptly, quite close.

  A man’s voice replied, higher in pitch than the one I’d heard pre
viously: “I have been carrying out orders, Madame. The British agent who was tailing them has been, er, removed. His car has been hidden where it will not be found.”

  This was a voice I recognized. I had heard it once before, in a London office belonging to a man who was dead—two men who were dead, to be exact.

  “You did not let him frighten you?” Madame Ling asked. “You are only afraid of tall Americans in little red automobiles?”

  Basil said sullenly, “I fail to see what I could have achieved by letting myself be killed in a collision with a crazy man. And I suggest we all get off this open heath before that British colonel realizes that he has lost contact not only with you but with the American, and starts an open search, perhaps with an airplane or helicopter. There is no real cover here, and I presume we still do not want to call attention to this place, even if we are leaving soon.”

  “There seems to be cover enough for a wounded girl to conceal herself effectively.”

  “The men will find her, Madame.”

  “See that they do. And take the red car away and hide it well. And then I think you had better drive up the coast with the mobile transmitter and signal the ship again. It must come with the next tide. Use the imperative code. I do not dare make any further transmission from here. They may have electronic equipment near enough by now to give them a bearing. They are getting very close. We have not much time left, due to the stupidity of those who permitted letters to be posted and prisoners to escape.”

  “Madame, I—”

  She cut him short, apparently with a gesture. “Well, the place has served, although with more time we might have achieved better results.” Something nudged me delicately in the side, apparently a toe. “Now, this one. Can you make him capable of walking, or must we carry him?”

  “If the woman used the customary drug, I believe I have something that will counteract it.”

  “Well, give it to him.” Madame Ling waited, and spoke again, impatiently: “Well, what is it?”