by Джеффри Лорд
R raised his bushy gray eyebrows, and Blade had the sense that battle had been joined. When R raised his eyebrows that way, it meant he’d made his decision. General Strong now had only two choices-he could surrender, or R would try to destroy him and probably succeed.
«You do not, I assume, question the existence of the cloning processes described in the material Miss Haran has presented?»
Again Strong shook his head. «No. I do not. I can say that definitely. I can also say that I see no logical reason why these processes should have been used to create-let us be frank, to create monsters out of children’s fairy tales.» This time it was Rilla who looked as if she wanted to speak bluntly to the general-or even breathe fire all over him, like one of her own dragons.
R nodded with elaborate politeness. Blade recognized that nod as one of satisfaction. General Strong now had plenty of rope to hang himself. «Then your decision is final, with regard to action on this report?»
«It is. As long as I hold this office, His Majesty’s Armed Forces will not be diverted from action against their real enemies to guard against, still less pursue, fairy tales.»
R chose to take those words as a dismissal. He gathered up Blade and Rilla with his eyes and they passed into the outer office.
Rilla’s own bodyguards met them to escort her away. Blade took her aside into an alcove for a moment. Her arms went slowly around him, and her head rested on his shoulder.
«When they think it’s safe, would you like to come away on a private holiday with me for a few days? I imagine it could be arranged.»
Rilla straightened up and looked at Blade. She was wearing high heels, and her eyes were nearly on a level with his. She looked at him in expressionless silence for a moment, then smiled.
«I would like that very much, Richard. I like the way you asked, too. It seemed you really wanted to know what I felt, and if I had said no you would have said nothing.»
Blade smiled in his turn. «Don’t get in the habit of crediting me with virtues I may not have.»
«Ah, but that is one virtue you do have. You do not take me for granted. You are not the first man whose company I have found good, Richard. But you are the first who has not taken me for granted. I could care for you a great deal more than any of those other men, I think.»
Blade felt like telling her that he was not a good man to care for, not with his duties and with the war so close. But she must already know that. If she was setting it all aside…
«Well,» he said. «I think we can talk more of that some other time and place.»
«And more than talk,» she said, kissing him gently. She turned and walked out of the alcove to join her bodyguards.
When she’d gone, Blade and R went out to their staff car. As the car wound its way through London traffic toward the airport, R looked at Blade with a more than usually unreadable expression on his face and said quietly, «We have our evidence about Elva Thompson.»
«Conclusive?»
«Eighty percent.»
That was greater reliability than one could usually expect in intelligence matters. Whatever was about to happen to Elva would probably be well deserved.
A moment passed, and Blade realized that R seemed to be hesitating. That could hardly mean anything but bad news. Blade found himself resenting R’s apparent notion that he was weak where Elva was concerned.
«Well?» he said abruptly.
«She is the center of Red Flame penetration of our Division. Not the only person involved, probably. But the key one.»
Blade’s head jerked. «Was she responsible for the fake order about not deviating from prescribed routes?»
«She was. That is good, in a way. It means we only need to eliminate a spy, instead of also searching for some dusty-brained idiot who gave that order in perfectly good faith. It was Elva. She’d been around long enough to know all our forms and procedures. It was easy enough for her to insert a false message into the proper channels and set you and-what was his name?»
«Piedar Goron.»
«-up for that trap at the airfield. However, they set the trap for foxes. What they caught was a lion.»
«Thank you, sir.»
«Don’t thank me. I should thank you for what you’ve done on this mission. You’ve got an absolutely matchless gift for this kind of work. I’ll push it all the way up to the Minister of Defense if they don’t approve you for lieutenant colonel at least.»
«Yes, but what about Elva Thompson?»
«For the moment, she’s where she can do us no further harm and the Red Flames no good. The Norfolk shadow headquarters is still just that. We’re not proposing to give the shadow any real substance, either, not as long as she’s there. When my estimate is that she’s outlived all her usefulness, we’ll have her killed. Make it look like an accident, you know. We don’t want to tell the Red Flames any more than necessary about our internal security.»
«Quite right,» said Blade. He found it almost a relief that R-like J-could use the blunt, honest word «kill.» Too many intelligence people were committed to euphemisms like «terminate.» Both R and J had the courage to look what they were doing squarely in the face and call it by its proper name.
It was also a relief to know that Elva’s fate had been decided. He was not quite indifferent to the idea of her death, not after what there had been between them. He was much less indifferent to all the deaths her treason had caused. Elva Thompson would be no real loss to anyone except her masters in Russland.
R went on. «There’s another project I want started, and I want you on it.»
«What’s that, sir?»
«Contingency planning for action against the dragons, when they start landing in Englor.»
«When, sir?»
«I believe Miss Haran, Blade. Don’t you?»
Blade laughed. «Absolutely, sir. But-isn’t this intruding on the Plans and Operations people?»
«It is. But with General Strong’s attitude, I doubt if one single lieutenant is going to be assigned to plan how to fight off dragons. That’s going to mean trouble when they land, no matter how much planning we can do at Special Operations. But if we do something, it may cut the damage.» He smiled grimly. «Also, it will help tighten the noose around the neck of our mutual friend General Sir Morgan Strong.»
Chapter 19
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Morris, commanding officer of the Second Battalion, Duke of Pembroke’s Own Light Infantry, was bored. This was not an uncommon or unexpected situation, even in wartime and even for a field-grade officer. He still didn’t care for it.
It was waiting for orders that had become boring. The battalion was assigned to the Seventy-first Infantry Brigade, one of five brigades trained and equipped to operate out of helicopters. Three of the others already formed the First Airmobile Division, assigned to the Eighth Army in Gallia. The rumor was that one more of the airmobile brigades would be assigned to Eighth Army reserve. Would it be the Seventy-first Brigade or the Fifty-ninth, down in Cornwall?
Morris hoped it would be the Seventy-first. After thirty years in the army, it was maddening to come to the edge of war in command of a fine battalion without being sure of being able to take it into action.
He rose from his chair, buttoned up his field jacket, picked up his swagger stick, and headed for the door of the hut. A little walk would put some fresh air into his lungs and perhaps push some of the boredom out of his mind. Then a drink in the mess hall, or perhaps two-no more than that-and then to bed. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the night.
As he did, he sensed something large and dark passing low overhead, something also long and thin. He caught a glimpse of what seemed to be broad wings spreading far out on either side. That made no sense. Neither airplanes nor helicopters made so little noise when they were so low, and who would be coming down in a glider here at this time of night? Who, except-? Then Colonel Morris snatched his sidearm from its holster and broke into a run. The damned Russlanders were staging a glider rai
d!
He’d taken barely half a dozen steps when a raw orange light flared in the darkness ahead among the tents of the battalion’s rifle companies. Screams of pain and terror rose along with the light. Colonel Morris stopped dead, his eyes telling him what was moving among the tents but his mind refusing to register the message.
A dragon towered there among the tents, a dragon that might have escaped from some illustration in a book of tales for children. A fanged and scaled head rose on a long neck, with great yellow eyes glaring out on either side of the long snout. From that snout, orange flame roared like the jet from a flamethrower. Morris smelled the raw, wrenching foulness of methane and gagged as the dragon belched flame again.
The neck swept down into a massive body supported on four claw-footed legs, now spread wide. Morris found his stomach quivering as he caught sight of a soldier writhing under one of those feet, blood oozing from him as the dragon’s weight slowly crushed him into the ground.
Behind the body a long tail stretched off into the darkness, and on either side of the body spread immense wings. Morris saw one of those wings lash forward into the faces of half a dozen soldiers as they scrambled out of their tent. They stopped. The great head swung toward them, the flames gushed out, and more screams rose horribly into the night. Four of the men went down, writhing and rolling frantically. Two panicked and ran, flames streaming from hair and clothing.
They did not get far. Out of the darkness another dragon came sweeping down to land almost in front of them. It seemed disoriented for a moment. Hope leaped up in Colonel Morris that it would overlook the fleeing men, or miss them if it struck.
Then the great scaled head dipped, fanged jaws closed, and one of the men shrieked as the dragon lifted him high. A moment later he heard an echo as the dragon’s tail smashed into the other soldier. He flew twenty feet into the air, landing with the ghastly limpness of a man whose bones have all been smashed in a single blow.
A third dragon whispered overhead, and a fourth. Somewhere a machine gun sent up tracer at the last dragon. One wing folded up in midair, and the monster plunged down to the ground faster than the others. But it moved and roared and flamed just as fiercely, no more harmed by the fall than if it had been a block of solid steel.
«Sharpshooters!» roared Morris, in a voice that would have carried over the uproar made by a dozen dragons. «Sharpshooters! Turn out and open fire! Aim for the eyes!»
Yet another orange flare in the darkness, and then a far larger one as some part of the ammunition store exploded. Bits of flaming debris arched high into the sky and dropped all around Colonel Morris, trailing smoke. The glare from the explosion lit up a fifth dragon gliding in, and then a sixth.
A new kind of light flared in the darkness, and the flame trail of an antitank rocket streaked upward. It caught the sixth dragon where the long neck joined the body. The dragon doubled up in midair and fell. It did not move when it landed, its roars were feeble, and only a tiny jet of flame flickered around its jaws.
Morris let out a shout of triumph. «They can be killed, men! They can be!» He had not realized until this moment that he himself had thought the dragons invulnerable, monsters from another world where nature was not as it was in this one. «Antitank and heavy weapons men, back up the sharpshooters! Everyone else stand clear and cordon off the area!»
Colonel Morris said no more, because he had no more breath. He realized that he’d been shouting more like a sergeant major on a drill field than an officer commanding a battalion. But there’d been no other way to get his orders through or relieve his own feelings of being caught up in a nightmare.
He turned and dashed back to his hut, charging through the door so fast that he nearly took it off its hinges. He snatched the telephone off the desk and furiously punched in the numbers of Brigade Headquarters.
«Hello, Brigade? Morris of the Pembrokes. We’ve got a spot of trouble here. The camp is under attack by fire-breathing dragons. What? I am perfectly sober, and I assure you that I am not joking.
«Yes, I said dragons. Good God, man, they’ve already killed at least a dozen men out of the battalion and exploded an ammunition store! We’ve disabled one, but there are at least five left.
«This is the third time I’ve said it-dragons. D-R-A-G-O-N-S, as in ‘snapdragons.’ Eh? Well, if you think there is a more appropriate term for these-monsters-I respectfully invite you to visit our camp and examine them for yourselves. If you can come up with a more appropriate term, I will gladly use it. In the meantime, I want the brigade antitank company, a helicopter patrol with flares, and at least two sections of antiaircraft rockets, at once! No, I will not stay on the telephone for the Brigadier! Good evening to you.»
Colonel Morris hung up the telephone, holstered his sidearm, and drew his rifle out from under his desk. Then he threw a final look around the hut and went back outside to lead his battalion against the strangest enemy it had ever faced.
Blade gently closed his fingers on a handful of Rilla Haran’s long hair and drew it across his throat. It smelled fresh and clean and felt deliciously silky against his skin. His other hand was resting lightly on the upper curve of her left breast. He moved the hand over the warm roundness, felt the nipple harden, felt a quivering in Rilla’s body
— and sat upright in the bed as a scream of raw terror sounded from outside. After that came the thud of something heavy striking the ground, a tinkling crash from the inn’s greenhouse, and a second scream. There was more terror in this one, but also agonizing pain.
Now flickering orange light lit up the room, and Blade heard a peculiar faint roaring and hissing. A wave of warm, stinking air swept into the room, making the curtains dance and knocking some loose sheets of letter paper off the desk by the window.
Blade sprang out of bed, diving to the floor and rolling until he could reach under the desk. His hands closed on his rifle, an Enfield Type 7, customized and refined for sniper work. It could put its magazine of twenty rounds into a target far more precisely than any standard-issue weapon. On Rilla’s advice, Blade had chosen it as the most potent antidragon weapon he could bring along on their little vacation, without looking like a walking arsenal.
Blade peered out the window. He was not surprised to see a dragon-a rather small one, from what Rilla had said-sitting in the ruins of the greenhouse. Around its neck hung one of the aluminum frames, and around its feet was a litter of smashed pots, trampled plants, splintered trays, and gardening tools. The inn’s gardener lay on his back in the wreckage, torn open from throat to groin.
The dragon threw back its head and flame jetted out again. The flame struck the inn to Blade’s left, out of his sight. Screams sounded over the hissing roar of the flames.
Rilla crawled around from the far side of the bed and peered over Blade’s shoulder at the dragon. «There is no quick way to get it without a grenade.» She shook her head. «I knew this would come upon us soon. Why would they not believe me-?» She pressed her hands into her eyes to hide her tears and to blot out the sight of the dragon.
Blade patted her shoulder. «I’ve got to get out of here before I start shooting. Otherwise it’ll attack the inn.» He slung his rifle, heaved the window open, and scrambled out onto the sill. Then he sprang downward, before the dragon could notice him.
It was a twelve-foot drop, but he landed as lightly as a cat, sprang to his feet, and ran. He sprinted around the rear of the greenhouse, ignoring shards of glass jabbing at his bare feet, and reached the shelter of a tree. Quickly he unslung the rifle, chambered around, took rough aim, and fired. He didn’t expect to hurt the dragon with this shot, only to draw its attention away from the inn, onto himself.
The bullet smacked into the dragon somewhere along the scale-armored neck. It did no vital damage-the windpipe and spinal cord were both deep inside and sheathed in heavy cartilage. It did make the dragon swing around in the middle of breathing more fire at the inn. The last jet of flame played over the ruins of the greenhouse, setting fire
to the dead gardener’s clothing.
As it turned, the dragon gave Blade a perfect shot at its left eye. One could not kill a dragon with a bullet in the eye. The brain was too deep inside the skull. But one could hurt it.
This time Blade aimed as carefully as if he were shooting in competition on a range. He saw the great yellow eye suddenly disintegrate into pulp. The dragon roared without letting out any flame and twisted around, trying to get a sight of its tormentor with its remaining eye.
It did, but it also gave Blade the chance to fire another good shot. The dragon’s remaining eye vanished as it surged forward. Blade sprang away from the tree as the blind dragon crashed head-first into it. The tree snapped as if it had been a sapling and crashed down, just missing Blade but not missing the inn’s garage.
Now, in theory, Blade could get directly in front of the dragon and fire a shot into its mouth that would penetrate the brain. Blade hoped Rilla’s theory would hold up in practice.
The dragon seemed partly stunned by the collision with the tree. It lurched back to its feet, turned its maimed head in the general direction of the smashed garage, and let out its flaming breath again. A gasoline tank erupted in one of the cars, sending flame spurting up through the holes in the roof. The dragon lurched toward the garage, drawn by the heat and the sound of the flames crackling among the dry timber.
Blade saw his chance. He chambered another round and ran as if he wanted to set a record for the hundred-yard dash. He rounded the garage, skidded to a stop, raised his rifle, and aimed at the monstrous head looming over the flaming garage. The mouth opened to spurt out more flame, Blade’s finger squeezed the trigger, the rifle butt jarred his shoulder. The dragon’s head jerked back as if someone had tightened a noose around its neck. The creature reared, as if trying to pluck something down from the swirling smoke overhead. Then it toppled over backward and fell with a thud that jarred Blade from top to bottom and knocked out what was left of the windows in the greenhouse.