A young man stared at him across the desk. "May I help you, sir?"
"Yes. You can." Solo's voice was testy. "Indeed, you'd better. I have been expecting a shipment of scientific equipment. I can't even preserve my priceless specimens without it. It should have been delivered to me days ago."
"I'm sorry, sir," the young man said in a voice that couldn't have cared less. "If your materials had arrived, they would have been delivered to your hotel."
Solo pounded on the desk. "They arrived on the same boat with me, young man! Don't take that tone to me! Ill report you to the head of this company."
The young man shrugged. "You do that, sir."
Solo practically danced in impatience. "See, sir, I was an instructor of the man who owns this company. A word from me and you'll be reprimanded for your incompetence. Now I shall go back and inspect the shipping in your warehouse. I have no doubt I'll find my materials rotting back there!"
Solo strode toward the rear of the huge warehouse. The young clerk ran around the desk. He shouted, "You can't go back there, sir!"
But Solo was already through the doors into the dark cavernous storage rooms. The young clerk stopped at the door. Perhaps the old fellow's goods had been misplaced by some of the native handlers. Maybe he did know the company president. And besides it was too hot to run in this weather
Solo wasted no time in pretending to look for a non-existent shipment of scientific materials. He knew what he was looking for and he searched, swiftly, diligently, and successfully.
He straightened from the feigned stoop of the naturalist and gazed at the huge crates. He walked in triumph among them. He was incredulous at the variety of articles being transferred, lab euipment, materials, and crate after crate of plants, all seemingly alike, and all of different stages of growth.
Pleased, he ran his hand across the address label. All were addressed the same: Via Air Freight from Mexico City to Helena, Montana, and reshipment by freight to Big Belt, Montana.
He heard the whisper of sound behind him. It was like the skittering of mice, and yet he went tense, instantly alert to danger.
The three men were young. They were Latin, dressed sharply. They walked shoulder to shoulder in their dark shirts and ice-cream suits and sleek new panama straw hats.
Solo was not fooled. The dark outline of shoulder holsters showed at their armpits.
They approached him steadily, their smiles fixed and unwavering. There was evil in their smiling, older than any of them.
Solo felt the hackles rising along the nape of his neck and he grinned blandly at them, retreating.
"Stand still, old fellow," one of them invited.
"What's the matter, young gentlemen?" Solo asked in the quavering voice of a teacher.
"We're going to take you apart, Uncle, and find out what's the matter," one of them said.
"There's some mistake, Solo said, retreating.
They came toward him steadily.
"We'll know after we take you apart, Uncle," one of the attackers said.
"If we are wrong, we'll apologize––"
"Yeah. To each separate part of you," the third said, laughing as if drunk.
Suddenly Solo grabbed a case and jerked it between himself and the three men. The crate landed with a crash.
Solo didn't wait to see what happened. Bent over in the manner of an old man, he raced toward the rear exit of the warehouse. He saw the sunlight out there, the open docks, the waiting ships at anchor. They looked incredibly far.
He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, drew out a friction bomb. It was no larger than a capsule.
Still running, he turned and threw the capsule with all his strength toward the packing cases.
The explosion and fire were brief but intense. Concussion drove the men back. Solo ran.
He ran out on the docks without looking back. In the brilliant sunlight, he paused. The piers stretched endlessly in the silence and the heat. Lethargic quiet lay across the waterfront and the town.
He turned toward town and the main street. He had not run more than a dozen steps when one of the attackers appeared from a wall door.
He was no longer immaculate. His ice cream suit was smudged, black and torn. His hat was gone, but he was driven now by rage.
He had drawn his gun and when he saw Napoleon Solo he fired.
Tuh. Tuh.
Solo threw himself behind a small stack of cotton. The silenced gun chattered again. Bullets splintered the dock.
Solo hung close to the cotton bale. His sweated fingers closed on his last friction bomb.
He pressed there, counting, his arm poised to throw. He heard the pound of steps as the gunman ran toward him.
Now! he thought.
He tossed the friction bomb upward, arching it over the cotton bale. The explosion was sharp, the screams of the young hoodlum wild, and at that precise instant, Solo heard the tuh, tuh of a second silenced gun behind him.
He didn't bother looking over his shoulder. He burrowed there in between the cotton and the wall of the building.
"Ho, Pedro!" The call came from farther down the wharf.
Nearer, the first gunman still yelled in agony.
The second had slowed now, made wary by what he saw happening to his partner.
They approached the cotton warily, waiting until the three of them were regrouped. They spread out slightly now and crept forward in tile sunlight, guns drawn.
From where he crouched, panting, Solo watched their shortened shadows creep toward him. The biggest part of the shadows it seemed to him were the guns in those outstretched hands.
"Ho," one of them said. "Why should we walk in on him and his friction bombs? Fire from where we are into the cotton. We drive him out, or we kill him. It's all one."
"I've a better idea," said the man who'd been blasted a second time. "Burn him out. I want to burn him out."
Crouched under the bales of tinder-dry cotton, Solo watched the wounded man, crazed with rage and pain, set flame to waste from a cigarette lighter.
Solo held his breath. It was time to move. Gripping his fist closed as if holding a friction bomb poised to hurl, he lunged out from beneath the cotton bale, directly in the path of the pain-crazed hoodlum.
The man toppled back and screamed like a woman. He had learned twice, the hard way, about friction bombs.
His terrorized screams halted his pals for a split second. The frightened man forgot to hurl the fiery waste. The flames seared his hands. He cried out again.
He released the waste and the flames flickered, falling along his arms and inside his coat.
Solo kept moving. He struck the man hard, carrying him down and along the heated planks.
He rolled over quickly, putting the yelling man between him and the other two gunmen.
Before the frightened man could recover his wits in any part, Solo drove his extended fingers into his Adam's apple. Solo's other hand was ripping the gun from the hood's relaxing grasp.
Solo fired upward, with the dead weight of the hoodlum as his shield.
A shoe caught his wrist and the gun flew from his hand. He heard it rattling along the planks. At the same instant he heard, rather than felt, a shoe driven into his face.