Hellstrom's Hive

Clovis had assigned herself to the first van, overriding Myerlie’s objections that it was “no place for a woman.” She had told him where he could stuff that and he’d slowly smiled, a knowing look behind his eyes. “I understand, honey. It may be a bloody time at that farmhouse and you don’t want to see your little Shorty-baby get it. If he does, I’ll come back and tell you myself.”

So he knows! she thought.

And she spat in his face, brought up her left hand for a chopping blow as he made to strike her. Others intervened and DT had cried, “My God! This is no time to fight among ourselves! What’re you two doing? Come on; let’s get it moving!”

The first opportunity after they left town, they stopped the lead van and bound Kraft securely, gagged him, and dumped him on the bed in the rear. He objected that they were “going to pay for this,” but a gesture with the gun in Clovis’s hand had silenced him. He permitted himself to be bound then and lay afterward on the bed, eyes wide open, studying everything he could see.

Clovis sat beside DT, who drove. She watched the passing scenery without really seeing it. So this was how it all ended. The people at that farm would kill Eddie at the first sign of attack. She’d had time to think about it now and felt this as a certainty. It was what any good agent would do. You didn’t leave danger behind your back. She felt a red rage in front of her eyes; it actually felt as though it were outside her, beckoning her onward. She also began to see possible other motives behind the Chief’s choice of her as leader of this attack. He had wanted the leader to be in a blind, killing rage.

It was after four o’clock before they started. A light breeze brushed ripples in the tall yellow range grass beside the dirt road. She saw the grass, focused on it, looked ahead, and realized they had reached the last turn before the fence. DT was pushing the big van to its limit, roaring up the last mile of road.

“You nervous?” DT asked.

She glanced at the hard, youthful face, still dark with the tan he’d developed in Vietnam. DT’s green flight cap cast dark shadows over his eyes, accenting the small white scar at the bridge of his nose.

“That’s a helluva question,” she said, raising her voice over the motor’s roar.

“Nothing wrong with being nervous before a fight,” he said. “I remember one time in Nam—”

“I don’t want to hear about your fucking brawl!” she cut him off.

He shrugged, noticed that her face was almost gray. She was taking this hard. Helluva business for a woman. Myerlie had been right. No sense getting into that scrap, though. If she wanted to be the gung-ho Ms., that was her lookout. Just as long as she knew how to handle the satchel charge. From all reports, she did.

“What do you do when you’re not working?” he asked.

“What’s it to you, Junior?”

“Christ, you’re feisty! I was just making conversation.”

“Then make it with yourself!”

I’d rather make it with you, baby, he thought. You’ve got a nice body. And he wondered how Shorty enjoyed that. Everybody knew about those two, of course. A real thing. Bad business in the Agency, not like him and Tymiena—good clean sex. That was why Clovis was taking this so hard, naturally. Shorty was sure as hell going to get it the minute they opened up. And with Shorty dead, she’d wind up running this show!

He glanced at her once more. Did the Agency really trust her to run this sort of thing?

“They’re not expecting us,” he said. “This could be a piece of cake. We’ll walk right through the place. How many people you think they have up there? Twenty? Thirty, maybe?”

“It’s going to be a gawdawful mess,” she snarled. “Now, shut up!”

Kraft, listening from the rear of the van, felt something akin to pity for them. They were going to run into a wall of stunwands, every one set to maximum. It was going to be slaughter. He had resigned himself to dying with the pair in this van. What would they do if they knew how many workers really were in the Hive? What would they say if they came back and asked him and he told them, oh, fifty thousand or so, give or take a couple of hundred.

Clovis found herself becoming bitterly amused by DT’s spate of talk. The nervousness was in him, of course. She had gone beyond that to the killing rage the Chief obviously wanted. They were close enough to the fence now that they could see every exterior detail of the squat concrete structure beyond the gate. The afternoon light was beginning to draw its long shadows within the valley beyond. She could see no sign of human activity at the farmhouse or that portion of the barn visible from this vantage. She picked up her microphone from the radio under the dash to report this to the vans following, but the instant she hit the transmit button, the monitor telltale began to squeal. Jammed! Someone was jamming their frequency!

She glanced at DT, whose tense side glances at the transmitter told her he, too, understood.

She replaced the microphone on its hook and said, “Park the van between the farmhouse and the pillbox. You take the satchel. We’ll both get out your side. Toss the satchel along the wall to the east side of the pillbox. Get to the other side of it and cover me. I’ll set the charge. When it’s set, we run like hell for the edge of that hill beyond there.”

“The blast will wreck the van,” he objected.

“Better it than us. Start revving her up. We can get more speed than this.”

“What about our passenger?”

“He takes his own chances. I hope he gets it good!” She grabbed up the little burp gun from the floor, prepared to release her safety harness. DT wedged an elbow against the satchel charge which had been jammed between his seat and the emergency jump door. “Hit it square in the middle!” Clovis shouted. “It’s going to—”

Whatever she had been about to say was drowned in the clattering, screeching turmoil of their crash through the gate. There was no time to say anything more after that.