He threw me a mock salute and grinned, then drifted off into the rain toward the car while I went back to the dunes. Two minutes later we had lost each other in the haze of rain, but up ahead in fuzzy outline was the squat shape of another weatherbeaten house that leaned a little to one side as if it were tired of it all.
I got to it, flattened against the side, and hugged my way around it looking for any indication of its having someone inside. The electric meter was silent and still, covered with fine sand, both doors partially ramped by drifts. Nobody had used the place for months.
For five minutes I scanned the area, trying to locate the thing that was wrong. Neither at the first place nor this had there been any tracks. For some reason Niger Hoppes had a definite direction in mind. Why? He had no more information than I had.
Then I saw it and cursed myself for being stupid. The poles bringing in the electric power had another service wire below them, one that hadn’t cut off to the other house yet, a phone line. Louis Agrounsky wasn’t there on a vacation. He was there for a reason and had provided for it. He was a man used to the immediate conveniences and would have installed a communication system without thinking twice about it.
I couldn’t wait for Mason to show. I lowered my head against the rain, holding the .45 in my fist, the hammer back and my finger nestled against the trigger, running in ankle-deep sand as hard as I could, picking my way through the valleys in the dunes while I watched the faint threads between the poles that marked the power lines.
A full minute before I reached the last weary looking building that sat there on spindly pile legs I heard the crack of a shot that hung heavy and muffled on the air for a full second before losing itself in the rain. I tried to place its position, but it was impossible and there was no time to waste in locating it.
Around the house the sand dunes crept in away from the sea and I crawled face down behind their cover. I went as far as I could without exposing myself to direct fire from the house, ready to pull the trigger if there was any movement at all.
That was when I saw Mason. He was belly down in the sand, head twisted to one side, blood streaming from one side of his head. Somehow in falling he had rolled into a gully the wind had etched out behind a mound of clam shells and one hand moved feebly in an unconscious gesture.
But I couldn’t go for him. Hoppes would be waiting for that. I’d be out in the open and he’d never miss. Not killing Mason was a deliberate act, designed to bring anyone else into view who might have been with him. He could afford to wait, not too long, but enough to make sure he could do what he came to do.
Niger Hoppes was thinking wrong. Sometimes you had to sacrifice somebody when the necessity was great enough. Mason was down where he wouldn’t be hit again unless you stood almost over him from the front and he’d have to stay right there until I could get to him later.
If I could.
I inched backward into the vee of the dunes. Hoppes would have picked his position carefully, commanding the area that led to the house. I could see across the four-foot-high emptiness that was between the sand and the floor of the house and no dark splotches of a hidden figure behind the pilings were visible. The couple of steps that led off the front porch facing the ocean seemed unlikely because anyone there would have had a blind side.
He had to be in the dunes.
There was little necessity for being quiet, the sand giving off no telltale sounds, the rain and the dull roar of the surf not far off obscuring any small noises completely.
How many times had he done this? How many times had I? Somewhere there was always a crossroad where you eventually met and only one would take the path leading away. No matter how good you were, there was always someone better. Both of us had beaten the leading contenders and now it was a playoff game to pick up the big prize. No factor would be left out of the winning potential.
I nearly hit the thread before seeing it and grinned at the trap. It wouldn’t lead to him. It would trigger the movement of one of the sea oats in the sand and he’d know I’d be closing in and would be ready. Without touching it, I rolled over the fine strand, crawling toward the water. It wasn’t the logical move. An approach through the dunes would have afforded greater protection, but it could put me there too fast. A man moving couldn’t get ready as fast as one entrenched watching the approaches.
I came out of the dunes to the flats that angled into the breakers, then inched along the sharply rising slopes toward the house. A dozen timid sandpipers watched me curiously, never breaking their endless run and peck as they followed the surge of the breakers that tongued at the beach.
The house was close now, looming there, a silent witness of the ominous present, glass eyes gaping at the scene expressionlessly. I stopped long enough to study the topography, trying to choose the exact spot he would have picked for the ambush.
There was only one, a peculiarly shaped dune that seemed to have a dish-shaped back that covered all fields of fire and could hide a man completely from anyone making an assault. I could feel the rain against my teeth, wetting my lips with a malicious kiss of death, wishing me luck.
I started up the incline.
Above me the low flying gull wheeled suddenly and made a startled ninety degree turn toward the water, flapping in to land beside the sandpipers.
It was enough. The gull had seen him first.
That dune was a clever trap too. It was the spot I’d look for. There was only one other left.
The waiting was over. I ran.
He was half buried in a hollow he had dug for himself, secure in the knowledge that he controlled the action. He lay there balled up, the long nose of the pistol aimed to his right and the grin gave his face the appearance of a skull. One hand held a Bezex inhaler screwed into a nostril. At any other time he could have passed for any face in any crowd, but with the kill look of pleasure tightening every muscle in his body he was like all the others I had seen before, typed down to the hard glint in his narrow eyes, the thin, bloodless mouth stretched tight in anticipation, and that strange tensed relaxation of a pure killer, highlighted by the facial scar.
He had it too, that feeling for the thing. He knew I was there when I came over the rise, and even in the fraction of time that I had to study him he had done the same and I knew he saw the same expression on my face that he wore on his own. His twisting motion was like that of a cat, swinging the gun and firing as he rolled toward the cover of a dune.
There seemed to be no separation of the two blasts. Both merged into one gigantic slam that split the air with their combined fury and I felt a tug at my side just below the rib cage, a hot dart that went right through tissue and out into the misty air over the sands.
But that damn .45 caught him beautifully. It took the Magnum out of his hand and left a bleeding stump with two fingers missing for the sand crabs to eat later and as he looked up at me with wild, unbelieving eyes, I lowered the hammer on the rod and laid it down beside me.
He knew I wanted him with my hands and didn’t wait. He came at me with a funny gait, blood streaming down his arm. I met him head on, knowing how he’d have the knife ready, grabbed his wrist when he lunged in a thrust that was intended to disembowel me and flipped him on his back with the shiny blade spinning out into the sand.
I expected him to go all the way. He should have been indoctrinated deeply enough to make the mission worth anything at all. He had been trained well and had perfected his technique through experience, always emerging the winner. The only thing he hadn’t been trained for was losing and facing it was too much for him. He broke and ran with a hoarsely mouthed yell in his mouth, going up over the dunes to the beach, legs pumping with a frenzied motion that scattered the sandpipers away from their feeding.