“Khorosho. I was born in a little log cabin. My parents died when I was three, and I was
raised in the wild by a pack of wolves. . . .”
Wham! The truncheon hit him in the diaphragm, and Jules doubled over, gasping for
breath. “One thing you’ll find,” the woman said, grabbing him by the hair and forcing him
to look directly into her face, “is that my friends and I have strange senses of humor.
Instead of laughing when we hear a joke, our reaction is to inflict pain. The funnier the
joke, the more pain we give.”
“Remind me, then, not to tell you the one about the spaceman’s daughter and the model
rocket builder,” Jules gasped.
This time the woman used the weapon to jab Jules hard in the kidneys. The DesPlainian
doubled over in pain, and another sharp blow to his back made him fall to his knees. As
he regained his breath he tilted his head to look up at the woman standing over him. “I
guess you must have heard that one before.”
There followed a series of blows beyond counting. Jules’s body was bloody and battered
by the time the woman was finished. Blood was dripping from his nose and mouth, and
he could not have done much talking even if he’d wanted to. The woman realized this,
too, for she snarled at him as she pushed him back into the bedroom; her fun was over
for a while. She looked at Vonnie, but the female agent was still unconscious from the
stun-gun beam, so Jules and his wife were left alone in their little room.
Jules gave some thought to the conditions of his bondage. Though his wrists were
handcuffed firmly behind him, there was a little bit of play between the two bracelets. His
second cousin Alphonse, the contortionist, had taught him some of the secrets of that
trade–enough so that, with some squirming about on the floor, Jules was able to work
his bound arms down below his buttocks, along his legs, and past his feet. His arms
were still handcuffed, but now his hands were in front of him, giving him far more
freedom of movement. His Uncle Marcel, the Circus’ magician, could have gotten out of
the handcuffs altogether-probably by using a picklock hidden somewhere on his body-but
Jules had never learned that stunt. This amount of freedom would have to do for now.
He was more concerned about Vonnie. His wife was still showing no sign of coming out
of the stun, and that was a bit alarming. She’d been shot by a different gun than the one
that had hit him; could it have been adjusted to a different setting, one that had a longer
or-he hated to consider the possibility-a permanent effect? The killers wouldn’t have
brought her here if she’d been dead, but a setting of eight or nine would have her
unconscious for days and perhaps leave permanent paralysis when the charge wore off.
That was too horrifying to even consider, so he turned his thoughts to more immediate
matters.
Things should be happening very shortly, he knew. He and the Bavols had established
the word “alternative” as a code phrase indicating they were to come in and rescue the
captives. He had no doubt that his sister and brother-in-law were monitoring the
conversations, and they would have set out the instant they heard him say that word to
the woman questioning him. That had been ten or fifteen minutes ago; they were
probably scouting this hideout for the best entrance. They’d be here very shortly and,
despite the pain from his beating, he wanted to be in as good a position as possible to
help them out.
Jules’s assumptions were correct. The moment Yvette and Pias heard him say to his
interrogator, “Surely there must be some alternative,” they went into action. That
signal meant Jules had decided he’d gotten all he could from the situation; now it was up
to them to disentangle him from it.
According to the directional antenna on their receiver, Jules and Yvonne were being held
captive on the fourth floor down from the top in the apartment building. It took the Bavols
just a few minutes to fly their own copter to the landing pad on the roof, after which they
had to spend some time surveying the situation.
An elevator tube led down from the roof into the building. The door to the tube was
locked-probably only residents were given keys-but that was no problem to someone
with Yvette’s skills at burglary. She had the door open in under a minute. It was the
elevator tube itself that offered unexpected difficulties.
“The plates won’t even stop on the floor we want unless we’ve got a special access
number,” she explained to Pias after examining the setup. “And the doors won’t open at
that level without the plate stopping there.”
“There must be some other way in, then,” her husband said. “We’ve got enough line with
us; we could lower ourselves over the roof and swing down into that level through the
windows.”
Yvette shook her head. “We can do it that way if there’s no other choice, but I don’t want
to be that blatant. The crashing of glass would alert everyone in the building, and the
police might get involved. Let’s see if we can figure out something else.”
After looking down the elevator tube for a little while longer, they came up with a
workable plan. There was a series of handholds down the sides of the tube, giving ready
access to maintenance personnel. They climbed down the dusty rungs into the darkness
of the tube until they reached the doors that opened onto the level where the impostors
were holding Jules and Yvonne. Now the only problem was to get the doors open.
Whatever method was used, it would have to be quick. The killers knew that no one but
them should have the access numbers for this level. If anyone else came out of the
elevator tube, they’d shoot first and ask questions later.
There was a small nodule of electrical connections beside the doorway. Yvette studied
the configuration for a moment, then reached down to a compartment in her belt and
took out a wad of explosive. After rubbing it between thumb and forefinger for a moment
to bring it to body temperature, she stuck it onto the connections and attached a short
fuse. She and Pias drew their stun-guns and braced themselves as best they could in
their awkward footholds against the naked wall of the elevator tube.
The fuse sputtered, and there was a small puff as Yvette’s charge blew the doors’
controlling circuits. The doors slid quickly into the wall and the two agents clambered
awkwardly through the opening. For an instant they were easy targets.
Their attack caught the killers completely off guard. Boros’s minions, expecting no
trouble, did not have their guns at their sides, and were not prepared to fight back
against the Bavols’ furious invading force. The SOTE team need not have worried; with
their reflexes and weapons already drawn, the battle was over in a matter of seconds.
The sound of action brought Jules stumbling out of the back bedroom just as Pias and
Yvette were finishing their work. Yvette was horrified to see how badly her brother had
been beaten, but Jules quickly reassured her. “I’m smooth. Just get these off me.” He
held up his hands to indicate the cuffs that bound his wrists.
They searched through the killers’ pockets until they found the key and freed Jules. Then,
while Pias took care of securing the prisoners before they woke up, Yvette went into the
back room with Jules to tend to Vonnie.
She was just starting to come around as they entered the room, and Jules was
immeasurably relieved. He cradled his wife while Yvette unlocked the manacles, and
Vonnie slowly regained her strength. She could see from the fact that Yvette was also
there-that the rescue operation had already been accomplished. “Looks like I missed the
fun,” she said weakly. Then, seeing Jules’s bloody face, she said, “Are you all right, mon
cher?”
“Smooth,” Jules assured her. “I’ve had massages rougher than that. I’m more worried
about you; you took far too long coming out of stun.”
“Different people come out at different speeds,” Vonnie said.
“But you’ve been stunned before and it’s never taken you this long to come out of it.”
Vonnie and Yvette exchanged knowing glances, and Vonnie looked away, embarrassed.
It was up to Yvette to give the explanation. “She’s never been pregnant before, either. ”
“Pregnant!” For a moment, Jules felt almost as though he’d been hit by another
stun-beam. His face broadened in a silly, toothy grin. “How long … oh, darling! Why didn’t
you tell me before?”
“I just found out the day you and Pias went on that training flight through the asteroids,”