by Nick Carter
Bonard was waiting in the jeep outside the door of The Ruddy Jug as I appeared. "Get in," he said. "It's quite a drive."
I sat beside him, not talking much, as we headed for the ranch. I smiled inwardly as we passed the place I'd stopped to ask directions. This time, as we approached the Circle Three, the yard was floodlighted and the place was active. I felt the tenseness of my muscles as we wheeled into the yard and I took a deep breath. This is no time to get stage fright, old boy, I told myself. I got out and Bonard led me into the ranch, past the parlor until I was, once again, inside the study with the big cases of marine objects lining the walls. Behind the big desk, green eyes looked out at me from under auburn hair — cool eyes, that took in every detail of the man that stood before her. Mona Star got up.
"None of the others who've worked with us has ever met me," she said coolly. "You expected a man, of course."
I didn't have to fake the amazement in my eyes. Not because it was Mona, but because of her role. I was primed to see her, or Lynn or Judy, but in their womanly roles, not as top man. And I couldn't fit her basic feminine sensuality with The Executioners.
"I guess I am surprised, ma'am," I said sheepishly.
"Now that you've met me," Mona said crisply, "let's get the details worked out at once." She was eyeing me with a very penetrating stare and I was tensed, ready to make a break for it if the whole bit came unglued. But it stayed together as I passed her inspection. The somewhat oafish, slouching brute standing before her would not be her cup of tea, I knew.
"You wanted a woman to celebrate with," she said to me, coldly. "Business before pleasure, Mr. Anderson. You can do your celebrating after the job is done. Who knows, I might even celebrate with you."
She threw me a fast smile. The gorgeous bitch. She was tossing a little added incentive to the poor, dumb bastard before her so he'd do his damnedest to get the job done right I smiled back eagerly, and let my tongue roll across my lips. I let my eyes devour her big, deep breasts hungrily. It was a good act, and that part of it wasn't hard.
"Now here are the details of your job, Mr. Anderson," she said. "We know that they've begun to pour the dam. Today, they did the whole bottom section. Tomorrow they'll pour the center section, going horizontally across from left to right. Now, of course, the cement is held in place by the wooden molds until it hardens, which will take days yet. There's no night shift at the dam, except perhaps one or two watchmen. You'll be driven there at once and a half hour after you're there, a truck will drive up. The truck will be carrying bags of clay and limestone, exactly like those they're using to make the cement for the dam. But the mixture in these bags is very special. When it's poured into the cement mixture it will look like what they are using and act like what they are using. But it contains a powerful disintegrating agent When the cement is set, with this material in it, it will begin to disintegrate from inside. Our calculations are that within two weeks after the dam is scheduled to be opened, a major section will collapse and cause a tremendous flood."
"And you want me to see to it that these special bags are mixed in with the regular mixture of ordinary clay and limestone," I finished for her.
"Exactly," she said. "You will take the bags from the truck and intermingle them with those other sacks waiting to be made into cement. It's as simple as that, Mr. Anderson. Twenty-five thousand dollars for a night's work is pretty good pay, don't you think?"
"Yes, madam," I said humbly. "Yes, indeed."
"Now please go with Mr. Bonard," she said. "This must work like clockwork. We want the bags in your hands so you can mix them in with the others."
I nodded to her and started after Bonard who led me to the jeep. I sat quietly during the ride to dam. The whole operation was so simple and so neat it was foolproof. But I was making plans of my own as the jeep roared through the night. I had two things to do and I couldn't fail at any or I'd fail in all. I had to stop the operation and nab some of them as proof in order to nail Mona. I didn't dare try to grab Bonard and pump more information from him. It would be only one more piecemeal victory and I needed a total victory now.
As I rode two very disparate thoughts crossed my mind. One, that the tall Chinese I'd seen during my first visit to the ranch had stayed out of sight, although he was very much around, I felt sure. Second, that I was glad the eyes I'd seen when I entered the study at the ranch had not been smoke-gray. Nobody, but nobody, had ever called me a sentimentalist, yet I was glad. Damn her smoke-gray eyes and young-wise face, I said to myself. They got to you — to me.
The jeep had crested the top of a hill and I found myself looking at the tall outlines of the scaffolding of the dam. Bonard drove through the litter of construction work — pipe and boards and steel plates and small hand trucks. Finally he halted before a tall scaffolding that extended from the wooden molds into which the concrete would be poured.
"You can wait here," he said. "You know what to do when the truck gets here." I wished to hell I did know what to do, I said to myself as I nodded and he drove away. The network of scaffolding loomed up above me and I made a fast survey of the area in the little time I had. Sledge hammers, saws, shovels and boards lay around the place. At the end of the dam scaffolding, two huge machines stood on top of double rails. They were moveable cement mixers and I saw the conveyer belt stacked with bags leading up to the machine. On the top, where the belt turned back on itself, there was a platform large enough for two men to stand on, open the bags as they came up and pour their contents into the huge mixer. The conveyer belt was where I was to intermingle the identically marked bags with the special mixture.
But I couldn't let those bags get near that conveyer belt. It would be a grim joke indeed if I cracked the operation, but they had their disaster anyway, as their disintegrating mixture found its way in with the regular mix. I examined the huge mixers and saw the rollers they were on led left and right along the dam. Moreover, I found the set of levers that controlled their operation electrically. One moved the machines along the double tracks, the other controlled the direction of the long, funnel-like opening out of which the cement poured. An idea formed in my mind as I saw the headlights approaching. A small open-side truck emerged from behind the headlights and I stayed beside the levers. Stepping into the beam of the headlights, I waved them to stop under the huge cement mixer at the right.
The driver stuck his head out of the truck window. "Want them unloaded right here?" he asked gruffly.
"In a minute," I said. I stepped back into the shadows and yanked the first lever marked "Release." The grinding noise of the cement mixer as it turned over inside the huge framework split the night and I said a quick prayer. I was counting on the mixer having a fair amount of unpoured cement still inside it. I pulled the other lever and swung the long funnel over the truck and in relief I saw the rush of thick, heavy, gray substance pour down the funnel, looking like some giant's morning porridge. It began to cascade over the truck and its bags of the special mixture. With a bellow, the driver leaped out of the cab, getting a load of wet cement on his head. I stepped forward, Wilhelmina in hand.
"Hold it right there," I said. But then, too late, I saw he was wearing a walkie-talkie. Then I heard the other two who had leaped from the other side of the truck. They were also equipped with walkie-talkies and I heard them shouting into their sets.
"Its your man, Anderson," the one shouted. "He's a ringer."
I heard the sound of two car engines roar into life. One pulled away in a fast take-off with screaming tires, the other moved forward and I saw its headlights bouncing as it raced into the dam area. The driver of the truck tried to get tricky. He whirled and dove for the undercarriage, figuring to get under and out the other side. I fired once, through the splashing gobs of cement, and he lay still. In a few minutes he'd be the truck, a mass of sliding, gray cement covering it and running down on all sides. But the car doors were opening and I heard Bonard's voice yelling orders. I stood still to listen. I counted four sets of footsteps o
n the run, besides Bonard. That made the two from the truck, four others and Bonard, seven altogether. And they were spreading out to move toward me on both sides of the truck. I started to run, down along the lower edge of the dam, past the tall scaffolding. I heard them meet around the truck and come after me. Suddenly I paused, picked up a big sledge hammer lying on the ground, and looked up at the tall array of scaffolding. Bonard and the others were racing toward me. I swung, with all my might, smashing the heavy hammer against the joint of the scaffold. It gave way with a splintering noise and I leaped to one side as one entire section of the scaffolding came down. I heard one man's cry of gasping pain, but most of them managed to fall back in time to avoid the lengths of wood and steel that cascaded down on them. But the curtain of debris had given me another moment's jump on them. I saw a ladder leading up and I leaped for it and started to climb. It led up into the scaffolding and on further, all the way to the top of the dam where a wooden ledge simulated the gentle curve that the concrete would take when it was finished.
Suddenly I felt the ladder tremble and I saw them coming up after me. Looking beyond, I saw others moving up another ladder, some hundred feet away but paralleling the one I was on. I had no way to go but up, so I kept climbing, to the very top of the dam, or what would someday be the top of the dam. Then I glanced to my left. Two others were moving up another of the long, scaffold ladders which I realized now were placed every hundred feet or so apart for the workmen. I was nearly at the top, but so were they, on my left and on my right and just behind me on the same ladder. I was trapped, with no place to hide and nowhere to run. As you can't shoot in two directions at once, blasting my way out was also impossible. I stopped, poised at the top of the curving wood ledge. Bonard was on the ledge already, walking toward me, gun in hand. One of his men was coming in from the other direction.
"Give me your gun," he said. "Slowly and carefully. One false move and you're dead."
I wasn't in any position to argue. I needed to play for time. I handed Wilhelmina to him, slowly and carefully, just the way he wanted it done.
"Now start back down, slowly," he said. "We'll be on either side of you, watching."
I began the long, slow climb down, with guns from three sides trained on me — from the left, the right, and underneath. They were waiting for me when I reached the ground and they hustled me toward Bonard's car. We were just passing the spot where I'd hit the scaffold joint with the sledge hammer. Pieces of that section hung loosely and I saw that one of the adjoining sections was buckled at the bottom joint. It wouldn't take much to snap it. Bonard, in his anger and frustration, had forgotten about Hugo. I tensed my muscles, bulged them out against the leather sheath and the stiletto dropped into my palm.
The man to the right of me was walking a half step behind, his gun held loosely in his hand, pointed at the ground. I waited, calculating every second's move and then, as we passed the buckled scaffolding joint, I whirled, slashing out with Hugo. The man's cry was cut short as the stiletto severed his jugular in one swipe. The others, startled for a moment, grabbed for me but I was already leaping to the side, slamming my shoulder into the scaffolding joint. It snapped — and the second section of scaffolding came down onto their heads. Only this time I was under it, too.
A length of wood caught me in the back and knocked the wind out of me for a second. I flattened myself against the wooden molds of the newly poured concrete base of the dam as more aluminum rods and wood hurtled down. I ran along the edge of the dam, hurdling the scaffolding, and shots cracked around my ears as they recovered from their second rain of scaffolding.
I changed course and streaked across a work area with piles of steel girders and rolls of wire cable lying along the ground. A big tractor stood in the midst of all the construction materials and; clusters of hydraulic gas in tall cylinders dotted the area. I dove behind one cluster of the tall tanks. An acetylene torch lay on the ground. I picked it up as a prospector picks up a gold nugget.
"Spread out," I heard Bonard say. "The bastard's in here someplace."
I stayed huddled behind the tanks, peering out through the opening where their nozzles didn't meet at the top. The men had moved out and were picking their way amid the litter of girders and cables. Two of them were circling the big tractor, one from each side. Then I heard footsteps nearby and saw the figure moving toward the tanks. I waited. The torch would go on with a whooshing sound and I had to time it just right or he'd be forewarned.
I crouched low. As be peered carefully around the tanks, I turned on die torch and shoved it in his face. He let out a scream that split the night apart, falling backwards with both hands to his face. His gun was on the ground where he'd dropped it. I scooped it up, fired one shot at the others who were coming on the run, and took off. They were professionals. They left the man screaming and writhing on the ground and kept on after me. I was leaping girders and coils of cable like a hundred-yard hurdler. I saw the small shack painted bright red with the one word emblazoned in white across its sides: "Explosives."
I yanked the door of the shack open, pretty certain of what I'd find. The sticks of dynamite were packed in cartons. One box on top had been made up six in a cluster, already fused. I grabbed one cluster and ran out as Bonard, leading the others, came running up. I ducked around the side of the shack and streaked for a straight passageway between six-foot-high stacks of steel girders. They came pounding after me. Not breaking my pace, I fished my cigarette lighter from my pocket, lit the fuse on the dynamite and then whirled and tossed it at them. Bonard, in the lead, saw the object hurtling through the air. As I ran I saw him skid to a halt, falling as he did so, get to his feet and dive toward one of the rows of steel girders. It was too late for the others, following just far enough behind him. The dynamite exploded right in their faces with a gargantuan blast.
I was knocked forward, maybe ten yards, I guessed, hitting the ground in a rolling, spinning cartwheel. But I'd been prepared for it and I let myself go, falling loosely onto the shaking ground. I stayed there quietly, until the earth stopped trembling. Then I got up.
Two were already accounted for, the one I'd knifed at the- scaffold and the one who got the acetylene torch. I was moving forward through the acrid haze of smoke, stepping over one of the bodies with enough life in it to moan, when the shot rang out at close range. I felt the sharp pain as it tore through my shoulder and out the other side, ripping muscle and tendon as it went.
I dropped instantly and Bonard's body flew over me in a headlong tackle from the right. I took his shoe in the jaw and saw pinwheels. My gun had fallen from my hand — I saw him, hazily, starting to raise his gnn arm again. As 1 kicked out and knocked his arm up, the shot went wild. But my head had cleared, I kicked out again, getting one foot behind his leg. He went down, another shot going wild I was on him, wrestling for the gun, when I heard the hammer click on the empty chamber. I smashed a blow at his face but he was quick and wiry. He rolled just enough to make it a grazing blow and then kicked free of my grip. Hulling across the ground, he came up on his feet with something in his hand. It was a length of wire cable and he sent it snapping, whiplike, through the air. I turned away from it, but it landed on my back and I felt it cut in like a knife. It was almost as bad as the burning, searing pain in my shoulder when the bullet had torn into me.
He sent the wire cable zinging through the air again but 1 half fell, half leaned backwards, hitting the ground hard. My hand, outstretched, felt something cold and metal, it was a saw — a big, heavy-duty saw. Bonard was coming in with the slashing cable again. I winked the saw over and, using it as a shield, deflected the blow that whipped down at me. Scrambling to my feet, I held the saw before me and moved in on him. He struck with the cable again, and once more I took it on the flat of the saw.
Then he got smart. Dropping low, he lashed out with the cable and I felt it curl around my leg with searing pain. But before he could pull the vicious weapon free, I brought the heavy saw around in a long arc. The
jagged metal teeth caught him on the side of the neck and blood gushed from him like a fountain. He staggered back, clutching at his neck. I dived and tackled him, bringing him down hard. His sallow face now white, he was a dying rat still fighting furiously. His hands clawed at my face and I put my head down and butted him with it. I heard his head fall backwards and hit the ground with a dull thud. I got an elbow up and smashed it against his neck, holding him still. The blood flowed from the severed arteries of his neck in a steady, red flow.
"That was Mona who got away in the other car," I yelled at him. "Mona and the Chinese Commie. Where did she go?"
His eyes were beginning to turn glassy and his face was ghastly white, but still strained in hate and fury.
"You'll never find them," he gasped. "Never."
"Do something good in your last goddamn minutes," I yelled at him. "Where did she go?"
"Never find them… never," he gasped again, his lips pulled back in the snarl of death. "She's too smart… too smart. She's put a great barrier between you… too smart."
I shook him again but I was shaking a dead man. I lay there atop him for a minute, gathering myself and fighting the pain in my shoulder. And then slowly, painfully, I pulled myself up. I readied down and took Wilhelmina from his pocket. Kneeling down, I searched him, but he had nothing on him that would tell me anything I wanted to know. I got up again and walked slowly back to where the panel truck stood, a hardly recognizable shape with a thick covering of wet cement almost obliterating it. I stumbled into Bollard's car, a black Mercedes. My shoulder was paining me like the tortures of hell. The bullet must have hit a nerve. And Mona was gone, off and running. I had to find her.