The Avenger 30 - Black Chariots (6 page)

Silently, covered by the spills of afternoon shadow between the boulders, the Avenger was working his way toward their attackers.

He reached the bare stretch of ground between the two clusters of huge rocks. Three tall cactus trees grew across the empty space, about ten feet apart.

The machine gunner—it was the man we met as Moron—bobbed up once again to send another chain of slugs smashing toward what he believed to be the position of the three Justice, Inc., teammates.

Benson, unseen in the shadows, waited until Moron had hunched down out of sight again. Then he sprinted for the nearest tall cactus.

It was man-high, looking like an abstract sculpture constructed from prickly plumbing. The Avenger got to it undetected. He stood there, back against stickers, eyes narrow and watchful.

There were two other men with the gunner. He could see parts of them now as they crouched behind the boulders. A fat, profusely perspiring man clutching a .38 revolver, and a sad-faced middle-aged man with a rifle on the rocks before him.

The Avenger darted again, to the second cactus.

“Down there!” shouted fat Heinz. “I saw something, Moron. Quick!”

The Avenger’s hand made a looping arc.

A pellet flashed through the bright air.

“Look out!” warned Trumbull, feet rasping on the stones as he tried to scurry back.

Too late. The pellet smashed, and blackness engulfed the three men.

The Avenger charged into the blackness.

“Would you care to change your guess and bet on twins?” asked Cole.

“You apparently,” replied Nellie, “can make a joke about anything.”

“That’s not a joke, princess, it is merely a sporting proposition.” He had an elbow resting on the open window of their rented car and was guiding the machine through the desert with one hand on the wheel. “But, yes, I imagine I could come up with a suitable quip for almost any occasion. Life, being noted for its unfortunate brevity, isn’t worth being too sober-sided about.”

“I’m not sober-sided,” said the pretty little blonde, folding her arms. “I just think when one of our friends is having a baby you ought to—”

“This is very illuminating, Little Nell,” grinned Cole. “You have a sentimental side, I never would have guessed.”

“I don’t have . . . Oh, nerts! There’s no use arguing with you.”

In the ensuing silence Cole commenced whistling a medley of the number one, two, and three songs from that week’s Hit Parade list.

After a moment Nellie said, “Must you do that?”

“Would you rather I gathered grain for the hard winter ahead?”

Nellie took a deep breath and slapped her hands flat on her thighs. “I’m . . . not . . . going to . . . get angry with you,” she said. “No, I am going to remain calm. After all, as you point out, life is short. Now and then fate throws one into the company of someone who is basically loathsome. The answer is, grin and bear it.”

“That’s the spirit, pixie. Learn to endure and . . . ah, there’s a likely looking spot. The Oasis.” He nodded at the resort that loomed up ahead of them.

“Looks expensive.”

“You forget that I’m an executive, a tycoon, practically, and you’re my highly efficient private secretary,” said Cole. “We can afford the poshest of digs.”

“If I’m so efficient, why didn’t I make us advance reservations?”

“Haste. I’m the sort of tycoon who does things with head-spinning swiftness. There was no time to make advance reservations,” Cole said. Making a lazy arm signal, he turned off the road and into the resort parking lot.

The attendant was talking to a waiter at the far side of the parking area. The waiter was a thin, gray-haired man, holding a round tray with two highballs on it.

Cole frowned. “Something deucedly familiar about the lad with the portable drinks.” He turned off the engine.

“Hey, no!” called the attendant. He left his conversation to come running in their direction.

“Something amiss?” Cole eased out of the car.

“We’re full up here at the Oasis, sir,” the thickset attendant told him. “Sorry, this is our busy time. No use you parking. Sorry.”

“Surely there’s something,” said Cole. “I’m Cole Wilson, III, of East Coast Aviation and I—”

“Nothing,” said the attendant. “Sorry.”

Cole was watching the waiter, who still stood at the far side of the parking lot. “Well, then, Miss Gray and I will have to try elsewhere,” he said, climbing back behind the wheel.

“I’m sorry.”

“So you said.” Cole started the machine, backed out, and resumed the road.

“We picked too popular a place,” said Nellie. “Why that scrunched-up expression on your face?”

“It signifies cogitation, my dear Watson,” said Cole. “That waiter . . . I’ve encountered him somewhere before.”

“So?”

“Not as a waiter, and not at a hotel or restaurant. It was someplace much more unsavory.”

“You’ve probably been to a good many of those.”

“Exactly, princess,” said Cole, grinning. “Now I have to narrow it down.”

“Uncle Val,” repeated Jennifer, “why . . . ?”

A man held her right arm tightly; another stood at her left with a pistol pressed to her side. The third man, whom the girl recognized as the thin dark man who had appeared in the background when she checked into the Oasis, stood to one side watching her.

“Uncle Val, tell them to let me go.”

Her uncle turned his back on her and left the room by way of a rear door. He said nothing.

“Now, then, Miss Hamblin,” said the thin dark man.

Her eyes were still on the door her uncle had left by. “What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he—”

“What brought you here?”

“I . . . came to the desert to look for my uncle.”

“To this particular place, to the Oasis. Why did you select this resort?”

“I didn’t know Uncle Val was here, if that’s what you mean,” Jennifer said. “The travel agency I used in Boston told me it was . . . a nice place.”

The thin, dark man watched her face for a full minute. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “And why are you in southern California at all, Miss Hamblin?”

“I told you, to look for my uncle.”

“The United States is a vast country. Why select this one particular area?”

“Because of the black chariots, obviously,” she answered.

The man who was holding her arm relaxed his grip for a few seconds.

“You associate your unde with those?” asked the thin dark man.

“He was working on something very similar before he . . . vanished,” the girl said. “I assume you must know something about that, too.”

“Yes, we do.” He watched her, silent, for another minute. “It is most unfortunate for you, Miss Hamblin, that you have knowledge of the observation ships. I’m afraid you will have to stay with us for a while.”

“As a prisoner.”

“Let us say as a guest with some restrictions placed upon her.”

“I don’t see how you can keep me here,” said Jennifer. “After all, people back in Boston know I’m out in California. The travel agency knows I was booked here.”

“We can arrange things so that no one will miss you for quite some time, Miss Hamblin.”

“Oh, really?”

“In fact, if it becomes necessary we can even arrange your . . . death.”

Cole sat up on his still-made bed. “Eureka!” He tugged his shoes back on and hurried across the room and into the hall.

He and Nellie had taken adjoining rooms in a desert resort calling itself the Seven Dunes.

Cole knocked on the girl’s door.

In a moment Nellie looked out. “Was that you bellowing next door?”

“Yes, pixie, I always tend to bellow when I have a momentous insight.”

“You’ve had one?”

“I remembered who that waiter I spied at the Oasis is,” he told her. “Let’s get over there.”

“Now?” It was after 10
P.M.

“The chap happens to be a suspected foreign agent,” explained Cole. “I saw his mug in a collection of dossiers an FBI chum of mine let me peruse a couple months back. His name is Franz Bernhardt, age 59.”

Nellie asked, “You’re sure?”

Tapping his forefinger beneath his left eye, Cole said, “They don’t call me Hawkeye for nothing. Of course I’m sure. Let’s go.”

Backing away from the door and collecting her purse, Nellie said, “You planning to walk right into the place and drop a net over Franz?”

“I don’t have my entire strategy worked out. Right now, we can simply pop into the Oasis cocktail lounge and see how the land lies.”

“They didn’t give me the impression,” she said as she joined him in the corridor, “that they took too kindly to strangers.”

“I’m not looking for acceptance and affection. I only want to have a little chat with Herr Bernhardt.”

“Maybe the Oasis people don’t know who he is.” They started for the stairs. “But on the other hand, maybe they do.”

Earlier that day, at the tag end of the hot afternoon, the area sheriff was sitting in a wicker chair in front of his white-washed adobe Manzana office. He was attempting, once again, to roll his own cigarette.

“Now, darn!” muttered Sheriff Brown. “I ought to be able to do this. It would sure come in handy, too, what with ready-mades so hard to get. Darn.” Half the tobacco slid out of the cigarette paper and down his sleeve.

A car came to a stop in front of the office. A huge man got out on the sidewalk side, wiped his forehead with the back of his fist, and said, “How you doing, sheriff?”

Brown, a chunky weatherbeaten man of fifty, stood up, spilling the rest of the tobacco out of his uncompleted smoke.

“Pretty fair, Mr. Smith. Help you any?”

Smitty held up a hand in a wait-a-minute gesture. “We got some bozos for you.” He went around to the rear of the car, unlocked the trunk, and hauled out the unconscious Moron. Depositing him on the sidewalk, Smitty shut the trunk and moved to the back door of the car. From the back seat and floor he dragged two more unconscious men, Heinz and Trumbull. “These are the guys who tried to kill me the other day.”

Flinging away the now empty cigarette paper, the sheriff hustled down to the curb. “How’d you happen to run across them?”

“They tried it again,” explained Smitty.

Sheriff Brown noticed two men sitting in the front seat. He touched the brim of his cowboy-style hat. “Afternoon, gents,” he said. “Would you mind coming inside and making some kind of statement?”

“Not at all,” said Benson. He and Mac got out of the machine. “I’m Richard Henry Benson.”

The name the sheriff recognized. He’d made a check on Smitty when the giant had brought in the dead ambusher. “Well, sir, the Avenger.” He held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“This is my associate, Fergus MacMurdie.”

“Where shall I dump these guys, sheriff?” Smitty inquired.

“They’re all alive, aren’t they?”

“They’ve been rendered unconscious by an otherwise harmless gas,” said Benson, not adding that the gas had also enabled him to question each of the men.

“Guess we better stick them into cells.”

“Here, mon,” Mac said to the giant, “I’ll lend ye a hand.”

“Take the little one,” suggested Smitty as he picked up the other two, one under each arm.