The Destroyer - 54 - The Destroyer 054 - Last Drop by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
ISBN: 0-7408-0577-0
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 1983-10-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A gray-​gloved hand.

The case.

The case with the CURE tele­phone, the notes on Ar­ca­di and Has­sam and the oth­ers, the name of Hugo Don­nel­ly, Smith’s con­tact in the De­part­ment of the In­te­ri­or, the pre­lim­inary print­out re­search on the cof­fee plan­ta­tion in Pe­ruvina. By now, who­ev­er took Smith’s at­taché case knew ev­ery­thing there was to know about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the hero­in-​laced cof­fee. And more.

CURE was com­pro­mised. With­out doubt. The dis­cov­ery of the portable tele­phone with its di­rect line to the pres­ident of the Unit­ed States re­vealed more about the il­le­gal na­ture of CURE than a thou­sand doc­uments.

Smith’s head swam. He be­came dim­ly aware of his sur­round­ings, a large room sec­tioned off with pan­els of Lu­cite around small white beds. The beds were hooked up to mon­itors and all man­ner of sci­ence fic­tion-​type de­vices. Men and wom­en in white pa­trolled the room briskly, silent­ly. A hos­pi­tal. In­ten­sive care, prob­ably, Smith thought.

He him­self was at­tached to a se­ries of tubes and bot­tles sus­pend­ed above him. A con­stant beep some­where over his head an­nounced his life func­tions with ev­ery heart­beat. An un­com­fort­able ap­pa­ra­tus led in­to his nose.

Grit­ting his teeth with the pain, he pulled up his hos­pi­tal gown to see the heav­ily ban­daged wound on his side. It was a blur of white against his skin. Reach­ing care­ful­ly over to the small met­al ta­ble be­side him, he held his breath while he searched for his glass­es and put them on. It was a large ban­dage, al­ready be­gin­ning to spot with blood.

So he had been shot, af­ter all. And the at­tack­er was prob­ably the same man who had elim­inat­ed the oth­ers.

Con­scious­ness drift­ed in and out in waves. His fin­gers were cold; his vi­sion, even with his glass­es, was fuzzy. He was, he rea­soned, se­dat­ed to the hilt.

Had to stay awake. Had to think.

Us­ing an old trick he learned years be­fore in the OSS, he bit down hard on the in­side of his cheek, hard enough to send pain shoot­ing through his head. God knew, he had enough pain al­ready, but it wasn’t the sort of at­tack­ing, lo­cal­ized pain he need­ed.

The trick had worked to keep him alert when he’d been cap­tured and in­ter­ro­gat­ed at a Nazi out­post in Danzig, when the en­emy had de­prived him of sleep for five days; and he’d nev­er for­got­ten it. Pain made things re­al, kept your ideas clear. He swal­lowed the blood and con­cen­trat­ed.

There was some luck on his side. The pres­ident was out of the coun­try, so the thief wouldn’t learn of the di­rect link with the White House for a few days. But there was an­oth­er prob­lem, a much big­ger prob­lem: The phone in the stolen at­taché case was an ex­ten­sion of the tele­phone in the of­fice at Fol­croft. Who­ev­er had the portable phone had ac­cess to ev­ery call in­com­ing to CURE.

He had to get back to Fol­croft. He had to de­stroy CURE be­fore the thief fig­ured out that the U.S. gov­ern­ment op­er­at­ed a se­cret agen­cy that broke ev­ery rule of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The de­struc­tion of CURE meant Smith’s own death, of course.

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