pressed the button here to turn this house into a pile of rubble. I wanted your chopper in the air looking for the mass-killer — the maniac — who seems to be getting madder.'
'Your men…' Fondberg spoke quietly and looked up the drive to where there was a scene like the smoke of battle.
'How are they? I can call a fleet of ambulances.'
'Not necessary, but many thanks. Henderson reacted a split second too early for the killer, radioed everyone to take cover — so they dropped flat. Result — the blast-wave and the shrapnel-effect passed right over them. One or two have cuts and bruises, but nothing they can't fix up themselves. Otherwise you wouldn't see Louise back there doing her birdwatching act.'
'I think she may have found an interesting specimen,' Fondberg observed. 'I'll stay here with the chopper to cover for you if a patrol-car arrives. They do creep about on the E3.'
Beaurain turned and saw Louise beckoning him. He ran back up the drive and now the stench of charred wood was increasing. Black smoke billowed, the fire inside the smoke-filled nest was a searing, crackling inferno. As he came close to Louise who was standing where she could see behind the house, he saw the familiar figure of Henderson in the distance running towards a granite crag rearing up out of the ground.
'What is it, Louise?' Beaurain demanded.
'Norling,' 'Where?'
'I'll tell you if you'll shut up for ten seconds, for Christ's sake!'
'I'm mute,' he told her.
To the right of that large crag Henderson is heading for with some of his men.' She handed him her field glasses. 'I thought I saw movement in the grass, then I thought I was wrong — then I saw it again. The trouble is his blond hair merges with the landscape. And Stig is puzzled.'
Palme was standing a few yards away, his face smoke-blackened, his stubble of hair singed with the heat which had flared out from the house, holding his machine-pistol ready for action. Now Henderson had reached the base of the crag while Beaurain continued scanning the field of yellow rape Louise had indicated. Surely there was nowhere there a man could hide, let alone keep moving. Then Beaurain saw what she was driving at. And at almost the same moment something else happened. Palme began receiving a message on his walkie-talkie.
There was a deep gulley running across the field of rape and along it a fair-haired man was moving at a steady trot — not so fast that he could easily be picked out, but fast enough to be putting plenty of ground between himself and the house he had just annihilated.
'Why is Stig puzzled?' he asked Louise.
'Stig says the fair-haired man Oh, hell, it must be Norling is heading straight for a lake which bars his way.'
'Message from Sergeant Henderson, sir,' Palme put in, proffering his walkie-talkie.
'He says he can see a blond man running towards a lake which he will reach in about two minutes. He has a good view of the target from the top of the crag but the range is too great for opening fire. He proposes sending a cordon across country to surround the fugitive but would like a word with you.'
'Beaurain here,' the Belgian said into the instrument. 'I want that man at all costs — preferably alive, but dead rather than let him escape.'
'We're moving now, sir,' Henderson's voice confirmed. 'And at the base of this crag I found something odd — show you later.'
Palme took a firmer grip on his machine-pistol and spoke with great conviction. 'We can get him. He has kept to the gulley to make himself invisible, but that gulley winds it's marked on the map. An old stream-bed. We go straight across country. OK?'
'OK,' Beaurain agreed. He had hardly spoken when Palme was moving at a steady trot away from the blackened ruin, his weapon held diagonally across his body ready for immediate use. Behind the sturdy Swede followed Beaurain and Louise.
They soon saw that Palme knew what he was talking about. Because of their starting point and Norling's present position they had a good head start on Henderson and his circling cordon. The trio led by Palme would reach the blond-haired man first. Arriving at the deep gulley, they went down one side, crossed it, climbed the other side, and Louise gasped when she saw the view.
Without her realising it they had been climbing gently since leaving the area of the house and now they were on a low ridge with the ground ahead falling away from them. The boomerang shape of a lake spread out below, unruffled by even a whisper of breeze, the sun blazing down on the startling blue surrounded by the yellow of the rape. Norling was only a few hundred metres ahead. They had got him!
'The plane — the float-plane — concealed in those reeds!'
It was Beaurain who first grasped Norling's plan of escape and — because of the accident to Fondberg's chopper — how close he was to succeeding. Away to their left and behind them Henderson's men were spread out, in correct military fashion, in a fan-shaped cordon. It was Beaurain who detected the terrible danger.
' Get down! Drop flat for God's sake! '
The fair-haired man had turned, seen the trio and his reaction was immediate. Standing quite still he fumbled inside one of his pockets, fiddled briefly with something between both hands, hoisted his right arm up and bowled the missile overarm. His hand returned to his pocket for a second object. The first grenade was sailing though the air heading straight for where Beaurain and his companions had been standing.
They sprawled flat among the rape, hugging the ground. There was an ear-splitting explosion. Debris rained down on their reclining figures. Norling had their range. Beaurain shouted a second warning. 'Lie still, don't move, don't show him where we are.' He had just finished his warning when the second grenade burst. Again debris was scattered all round them.
Beaurain did not have to shout a third warning. Both Louise and Palme remained perfectly still. Seconds later a third grenade detonated. Then a fourth… a fifth… a sixth… The grenades were landing further and further away from where they lay. Norling was running to the lake, stopping briefly to hurl another grenade, then running again. Beaurain stood up cautiously. His caution was wasted.
Norling had already reached the float-plane and was inside the cabin, and the engine burst into action. As Louise and Palme climbed to their feet, Beaurain aimed his Smith amp; Wesson and fired twice. It was quite hopeless. Out of range. 'Use the machine-pistol!' he shouted to Palme.
Palme was already cuddling the stock against his shoulder, but as he did so the float-plane streaked out across the lake and he didn't even bother to press the trigger. As Henderson came running up followed by two of his men Beaurain shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. He watched as the float-plane lifted off and continued its flight at a low altitude, vanishing over the fold of a hill.
Fondberg's chopper,' Henderson suggested. 'If we get him in the air fast…'
'Which we can't — because in landing he lost his tail rotor.' Smoking his cigarette, Beaurain looked down towards the lake where the float-plane had been half hidden inside the belt of reeds. 'Stig, he took off in one hell of a hurry. Go down to where that float-plane was and see if you can find anything. We'll meet you back at the drive.'
When they arrived back on the highway Beaurain told Fondberg the bad news and the Sapo chief put out a call for the float-plane on his radio. 'Not that you can expect much,' he warned Beaurain. 'The trouble is we have plenty of those machines buzzing about in this part of the world — and especially further south where the country is littered with lakes. So what have we discovered?'
'You tell me,' Beaurain suggested.
'The Syndicate's explosives dump — probably stockpiled for bank robberies — and their temporary headquarters which is now a pile of smoking rubble. That's it.'
'Except look who's coming down the road.'
Ed Cottel had walked. Since the unknown gunman had shot out his two front tyres he had been walking back down the highway. And Cottel objected to walking, couldn't see the point of it when there were things called automobiles available. He gave Fondberg and Beaurain a terse account of his experiences while Louise listened; then he absorbed what Beau-rain told him about what had happened to them.
'You say there was a Volvo 245 parked behind the house?' he checked when Beaurain had completed his story. 'None of this makes much sense. One of my watchers reported Viktor Rashkin had left in a Cessna piloting himself taking off from Bromma with a flight plan for Kjula. Then he gets in a Volvo 245 and drives in this direction.
