The Wind From Nowhere

2 From the Submarine Pens

FROM: ADMIRAL HAMILTON, CIC U.S. SIXTH FLEET,

USS EISENHOWER, TUNIS. TO COMMANDER LAN-

YON, USS TERRAPIN, GENOA: GENERAL VAN DAMM

NOW IN U.S. MILITARY HOSPITAL, NICE. MULTIPLE

SPINAL FRACTURES. COLLECT TROOP CARRIER

FROM NATO TRANSPORT POOL, GENOA. EXPECTED

WIND SPEED: 85 KNOTS.

Crouched down in the well of the conning tower, Lanyon scanned the message, then nodded to the sailor, who saluted and disappeared below.

Twenty feet above him the concrete roof of the submarine pen was slick with moisture which dripped steadily into the choppy water below. The steel gates of the pen had been closed, but the sea outside pounded against the heavy grilles. It drove high swells along the 300-foot length of the pen which rode the _Terrapin_ up and down on its moorings and then slapped against the far wall, sending clouds of spray into the air over the submarine's stern.

Lanyon waited until the last of the moorings had been completed, then waved briefly to the portmaster, a blond-haired lieutenant in the concrete control cage jutting out from the wall ten feet ahead. Lowering himself through the hatch, he climbed down the companionway into the control room, swung around the periscope well and made his way to his cabin.

He sat down on his bunk and slowly loosened his collar, adjusting himself to the rhythmic rise and fall of the submarine. After the three-day crossing of the Mediterranean, at a steady, comfortable 20 fathoms, the surface felt like a switchback. His instructions were to make one trial surfacing en route, in a sheltered cove off the west coast of Sicily. But even before the conning tower broke surface the _Terrapin_ took on a 30-degree yaw and was hit by tremendous seas that almost stood it on its stern. They had stayed down until reaching the comparatively sheltered waters of the submarine base at Genoa, but even there had a difficult job negotiating the wreckstrewn limbs of the double breakwater.

What it was like topside Lanyon hated to imagine. Tunis, where all that was left of the Sixth Fleet was bottled up, had been a complete shambles. Vast seas were breaking over the harbor area, sending two-foot waves down streets 300 yards inshore, slamming at the big 95,000 ton carrier _Eisenhower_ and the two cruisers moored against the piers. When he had last seen the _Eisenhower_ she had taken on a 25-degree list and the constant 50-foot rise and fail had begun to rip huge pieces of concrete from the sides of the pier.

Genoa, sheltered a little by the hills and the land mass of the peninsula, seemed to be quieter. With luck, Lanyon hoped, the military here would have their pants on, instead of running around like a lot of startled baboons, frightening themselves with their own noise.

Lanyon tossed his cap onto the desk and stretched out on the bunk. As a submariner he felt (irrationally, he knew) that the wind was everybody else's problem. At thirty-eight he had served in submarines for over fifteen years, ever since he left Annapolis, and the traditional self-sufficiency of the service was now part of him. A sparse, lean six-footer, to strangers he appeared withdrawn and moody, but he had long ago found that a detached viewpoint left him with more freedom to maneuver.

So Van Damm was still alive. The captain who had laid on the _Terrapin_ had told Lanyon confidentially that the general would almost certainly be dead by the time they reached Genoa, but whether this was the truth or merely an astute piece of psychology-everybody else in the crew seemed to have been fed the same story-Lanyon had no means of finding out. Certainly Van Damm had been severely injured in the plane smash at Orly Airport, but at least he was lucky enough to be alive. The five-man crew of the _Constellation_ and two of the general's aides had been killed outright.

Now Van Damm had been brought south to Nice and the _Terrapin_ would have another shot at rescuing him. Lanyon wondered whether it was worth it. Up to the time of his accident Van Damm had been expected to declare himself the Democratic candidate in the coming election, but he wouldn't be of much interest now to the party chiefs. However, presumably some debt of honor was being paid off. After three years as NATO Supreme Commander, Van Damm was due anyway for retirement, and probably the Pentagon was living up to its bargain with him when he had signed on.

There was a knock on the door and Lieutenant Matheson, Lanyon's number two, stuck his head in.

"O.K., Steve?"

Lanyon swung his legs off the bunk. "Sure, come in."

Matheson looked slightly anxious, his plump face tense and uneven.

"I hear Van Damm is still holding on? Thought he was supposed to peg out by now."

Lanyon shrugged. The _Terrapin_ was a small J-class sub, and apart from himself Matheson was the only officer aboard. What frightened him was that he might have to take on the job of driving up to Nice and collecting Van Damm.

Lanyon smiled to himself. He liked Matheson, a pleasant boy with a relaxed sense of humor that Lanyon appreciated. But Matheson was no hero.

"What's the programme now?" Matheson pressed. "It's a 250-mile run round the coast to Nice, and God knows what it might be like. Don't you think it's worth trying to get in a little closer? There's a deep anchorage at Monte Carlo."

Lanyon shook his head. "It's full of smashed-up yachts. I can't take the risk. Don't worry, wind speed's only about ninety. It'll probably start slacking off today."

Matheson snorted unhappily. "That's what they've been saying for the last three weeks. I think we'd be crazy to lose two or three men trying to rescue a stiff."

Lanyon let this pass, but in a quiet voice he said: "Van Damm isn't dead yet. He's done his job, so I think we ought to do ours."

He stood up and pulled a heavy leather windbreaker from a hook on the bulkhead over the desk, then buckled on a service.45 and glanced at himself in the mirror, straightening his uniform.

After putting on his cap, he opened the door. "Let's go and see what's happening on deck."

They made their way up to the conning tower, crossed the gangway onto the narrow jetty on the wall of the sub-pen. A stairway took them over the workshops into the control deck at the far end of the pens.

There were a dozen pens in all, each with room for four submarines, but only three ships were at their berths, fitting out for rescue missions similar to the _Terrapin's_.

All the windows they passed were bricked in, but even through three feet of concrete they could hear the steady unvarying drone of the storm wind.

A sailor guided them to one of the offices in Combined Personnel H.Q. where Major Hendrix, the liaison officer, greeted them and pulled up chairs.

The office was snug and comfortable, but something about Hendrix, the fatigue showing in his face, the two buttons missing from his uniform jacket, warned Lanyon that he could expect to find conditions less equable outside.

"Good to see you, Commander," Hendrix said hurriedly. A coupie of map wallets and a packet of currency were on his desk and he pushed them forward. "Forgive me if I come straight to the point, but the army is pulling out of Genoa today and I've got a million things to do." He glanced up at the wall clock for a moment, then flipped on the intercom. "Sergeant, what are the latest readings we've got?"

"A hundred fifteen and 265 degrees magnetic, sir."

Hendrix looked up at Lanyon. "A hundred fifteen miles an hour and virtually due east, Commander. The troop carrier is waiting for you out in the transport bay. There are a navy driver and a couple of orderlies from the sick bay here." He stood up and moved around his desk. "The coast road is still open, apparently, but watch out for collapsing buildings through the towns." He looked at Matheson. "I take it the lieutenant will be going to pick up Van Damm, Commander."

Lanyon shook his head. "No, as a matter of fact I will be, Captain."

"Wait a minute, sir," Matheson started to cut in, but Lanyon waved him back.

"It's O.K., Paul. I'd like to have a look at the scenery."

Matheson made a further token protest, then said no more.

They made their way out to the transport bay, the sounds of the wind growing steadily louder as they passed down the corridors. Revolving doors had been built into the exits, each operated by a couple of men with powerful winches.

They picked up the driver and Lanyon turned to Matheson. "I'll call you in six hours' time, when we make the border. Check with Hendrix here and let me know if anything comes in from Tunis."

Zipping his jacket, he nodded to the driver and stepped through into the entry section of the door. The men on the winch cranked it around and Lanyon stepped out into sharp daylight and a vicious tornado of air that whirled past him, jockeying him across a narrow yard between two high concrete buildings. Stinging clouds 0f grit and sand sang through the air, lashing at his face and legs. Before he could grab it, his peaked cap sailed up into the air and shot away on a tremendous updraught.

Holding tight to the map wallets, he lurched across to the troop carrier, a squat 12-wheeler with sandbags strapped to the hood and over the windshield, and heavy steel shutters welded to the window grilles.

Inside, two orderlies squatted down silently on a mattress. They were wearing one-piece plastic suits fitted with hoods roped tightly around their faces, so that only their eyes and mouths showed. Bulky goggles hung from their necks. Lanyon climbed over into the co-driver's seat and waited for the driver to bolt up the doors. It was dim and cold inside the carrier, the sole light coming from the wide periscope mirror mounted over the dashboard. The doors and control pedals were taped with cotton wadding, but a steady stream of air whistled through the clutch and brake housings, chilling Lanyon's legs.

He peered through the periscope. Directly ahead, straight into the wind, he could see down a narrow asphalt roadway past a line of high buildings, the rear walls of the sub-pens. A quarter of a mile away was what looked like the remains of a boundary fence, tilting posts from which straggled a few strands of barbed wire. Beyond the boundary was a thick gray haze, blurred and shimmering, a tremendous surface duststorm two or three hundred feet high, which headed straight toward them and then passed overhead. Look ing up, he saw that it contained thousands of miscellaneous objects-bits of paper and refuse, rooftiles, leaves, and fragments of glass-all borne aloft on a huge sweeping tide of dust.

The driver took his seat, switched on the radio and spoke to Traffic Control. Receiving his clearance, he gunned the engine and edged forward into the wind.

The carrier ground along at a steady ten miles an hour, passed the sub-pens and then turned along the boundary road. As it pivoted, the whole vehicle tilted sideways, caught and held by the tremendous power of the wind. No longer shielded by the sandbags, there was a continuous clatter and rattle as scores of hard objects bounced off the sloping sides of the carrier, each report as loud as a ricocheting bullet.

"Feels like a space ship going through a meteor shower," Lanyon commented.

The driver, a tough young Brookiyner called Goldman, nodded. "Yeah, there's some really big stuff moving now, Commander."

Lanyon looked out through the periscope. This had a 90-degree traverse and afforded a satisfactorily wide sweep of the road ahead. A quarter of a mile away were the gates into the base and a cluster of single-story guard houses, half obscured by the low-lying dust cloud. On the right were big two- and three-story blocks, fuel depots, with their underground tanks, windows sand-bagged, exposed service plant swathed in canvas.

Genoa lay behind them to the south, hidden in the haze. They swung out through the gateway and took the coast road that ran about half a mile inland, a wide concrete motorway cut into the leeward side of the low hills reaching toward the mountain shield at Alassio. All the crops in the adjacent fields had long been flattened, but the heavy stone farmhouses nestling in saddles between the hills were still intact, their roofs weighed down with tiers of flagstones.

They passed through a succession of drab villages, windows boarded up against the storm, alleyways jammed with the wrecks of old cars and farm implements. In the main square of Larghetto a bus lay on its side, and headless statues stood over the empty fountains. The roof of the 14th-century town hall had gone, but most of the buildings and houses they saw, despite their superficially decrepit appearance, were well able to withstand the hurricane-force winds. They were probably stronger than the mass-produced modem split levels and ranch homes of the big housing developments back in the States.

"Can you pick up any news on this rig?" Lanyon asked Goldman, pointing to the radio.

The driver switched on and swung the dials, avoiding the army and navy channels.

"For once the air force got nothing to say," he commented with a short laugh. "AFN Munich should still be on the air."

A rain of pebbles against the side of the carrier drowned out a newscaster's voice, but turning up the volume Lanyon heard:

"… no news available on the Pacific area, but heavy flooding and winds of hurricane force are believed to have caused thousands of casualties in islands as far apart as Okinawa and the Solomons. Indian Prime Minister Pandit Nehru has outlined full-scale relief measures, and Iraq and Persia are to collaborate in organizing essential supplies to stricken towns and villages. In the UN Assembly the Afro-Asian bloc has tabled a resolution calling on the United Nations to launch a global relief mission. Widespread flooding has brought unprecedented damage to the Middle West. Damage is estimated at four hundred million dollars, but so far few lives have been taken…"

That's one good thing, Lanyon thought. The flooding might bring the danger of typhoid and cholera, but so far, at least, even in the Pacific area, loss of life had been low. A hurricane like the one he had seen down at the base at Key West two years earlier had swooped in from the Caribbean without any warning, and just about the whole Atlantic seaboard had been caught without warning. Scores of people had been killed driving their cars home. This time, though, the gradual build-up in speed, the steady five miles an hour daily increase, had given everyone a chance to nail the roof down, dig a deep shelter in the garden or basement, lay in food stocks.

They passed through San Remo, the lines of hotels shuddering as the wind thrashed across the hundreds of shuttered balconies. Below, the sea writhed and flickered with mountainous waves, and spray dropped the visibility down to little more than a mile.

One or two vehicles passed them, crawling along under loads of sandbags. Most of them were Italian military or police trucks, patrolling the windswept empty streets.

Lanyon dozed off in the cold greasy air inside the carrier. He woke just as they crossed the main square of a small town and heard a heavy pounding on the steel plates behind his head.

The blows repeated themselves at rapid intervals, and through the thick armor plating Lanyon heard the dim sounds of someone shouting.

He sat up and peered into the periscope, but the cobbled street ahead was empty.

"What's going on?" he asked the driver.

Goldman flipped away the butt of his cigarette. "Some sort of rumpus back there, Commander. Couldn't make it out exactly."

He leaned a little harder on the accelerator, pushed the carrier's speed up to 15 miles an hour. The pounding stopped, then took up again more insistently, the voice hoarser above the wind.

Lanyon tapped the steering wheel. "Slow down for a second. I'll go back and check."

Goldman started to protest, but Lanyon straddled the back of his seat, stepped past the two orderlies sitting on the mattress, and got to the rear doors. He slipped back the shutters, peered out through the grille. A small group of people clustered around the porch of a gray-walled church on the north side of the square. There were several women among them, all wearing black shawls over their heads, backing into the recessed entranceway. A loose heap of rubble lay in the square at their feet and clouds of dust and mortar were failing around them.

The church tower was missing. A single spur of brickwork, all that was left of one corner, stood up 15 feet above the apex of the roof. The wind was tearing at the raw masonry, stripping away whole pieces of brick.

One of the orderlies crawled across the mattress and crouched next to Lanyon.

"The tower's just collapsed," Lanyon told him. He indicated the stack of cartons. "What have you got inside there?"

"Plasma, oxygen, penicillin." The orderly peered at Lanyon. "We can't use it on them, Commander. This stuff's reserved for the general."

"Don't worry, they'll have more supplies at Nice."

"But Commander, they may have run out. Casualties are probably pouring in there. It's a small hospital-just a dysentery unit for overtired weekenders on the Paris mill."

Just then a figure appeared around the end of the carrier and pressed his face to the grille, jabbering in Italian. It was a big gaunt man with bulky shoulders, and black hair low over a tough face.

The orderly backed away but Lanyon started to open the doors. Over his shoulder he shouted at Goldman.

"Reverse up toward the church! I'll see if we can lend a hand."

"Commander, once we start helping these people we'll never get to Nice. They've got their own rescue units working."

"Not right here, anyway. Come one, you heard me, back in!"

As he slipped the catch the big Italian outside wrenched the door out of his hands. He looked angry and exhausted, and pulled Lanyon out of the truck, yelling at him and pointing at the church. Goldman was reversing the carrier out of the street into the square, the orderlies jumping down and bolting the door behind them.

As they reached the church, brickwork and plaster shattered down onto the pavement around them. The Italian shouldered his way through the people in the entranceway, and led Lanyon through into the nave.

Inside the church, a bomb appeared to have exploded in the middle of a crowded congregation. A group of women and older men and children crouched around the altar while the priest and five or six younger men pulled away the mounds of masonry that had fallen through the roof when the tower had collapsed, taking with it one of the longitudinal support beams. This lay across the pews. Below it, through the piles of white dust and masonry, Lanyon could see tags of black fabric, twisted shoes, the hunched forms of crouching bodies.

Above them, the wind racing across the surface of the roof was stripping away the ragged edge of tiles around the ten-foot-wide hole, hampering the men tearing away the rubble over the pews. Lanyon joined the big Italian at one end of the roof beam, but they failed to move it.

Lanyon turned to leave the nave and the big Italian ran after him and seized his shoulder, his face contorted with anger and fatigue.

"Not go!" he bellowed. He pointed to the pile of rubble. "My wife, my wife! You stay!"

Lanyon tried to pacify him, indicated the truck that had backed into the entranceway, its doors open, one of the orderlies crouched inside. He tore himself from the Italian and ran Out to the truck, shouting: "Goldman, get the winch running. Where's the cable?"

They pulled it out of the locker under the end board, clipped it into the winch and then carried the free end through into the nave. Lanyon and the Italian lashed it to the main beam, then Goldman gunned up the great 550-hp engine and tautened the cable, slowly swinging the beam sideways off the pew into the center of the aisle. Immediately two or three people trapped below the pews began to stir. One of them, a young woman wearing the remains of a black dress that was now as white as a bridal gown, managed to stand up weakly and pulled herself out. Between her feet Lanyon could see several motionless figures, and the big Italian was digging frantically with his hands at the masonry, hurling it away with insane force.

More figures pressed into the nave behind him, and Lanyon turned to see that a squad of uniformed troops, with a couple of police carabineri, had arrived, carrying in stretchers and plasma kits.

"Every thanks, Captain," the sergeant told him. "We are all grateful to your men." He shook his head sadly, glancing around at the church. "The people were praying for the stop of the wind."

Lanyon and the orderlies climbed back into the carrier, sealed the doors and moved off.

Massaging his bruised hands and trying to regain his breath, Lanyon turned to the orderlies slumped down on the mattress. "Did either of you see whether that big fellow got his wife out?"

They shook their heads doubtfully. "Don't think so, Corn-. mander."

Goldman accelerated the engine and straightened the periscope. "Wind speed's up, Commander. One ten now. We'll have to keep moving if we're going to make Nice by dark."

Lanyon studied the driver for a few moments, watching the cigarette butt rotate nastily around his mouth. "Don't worry, sailor," he said, "I'll concentrate on the general from now on."

They crossed the border at Vintemille at 7 P.M. and cleared through by radio with Nice and Genoa. The flimsy customs sheds and wooden turnpikes had disappeared; the frontier guards on both sides were dug into sandbagged emplacements below ground surface.

They reached Nice within a couple of hours, taking the Corniche road through the hills. The hospital compound was packed with hundreds of trucks and jeeps, their drivers huddled in the entrances to the loading bays. A couple of MP's steered the carrier over to one of the rear wings, where Lanyon and the orderlies climbed out and battled their way inside.

"You're later than expected, Commander," a burly red-faced major in reception greeted Lanyon. "I gather it's really blowing up outside.

He led Lanyon into a side office where there were coffee and hot rolls on a table.

Lanyon pulled off his leather jacket and helped himself to coffee, then sat down thankfully on a teak chest resting on a low table against the wall.

Putting out his cigarette, the major hurriedly pushed across a canvas chair.

"Sorry, Commander, but perhaps you'd better sit on this. Don't want to show any disrespect to the general, do we?"

Lanyon pulled himself to his feet. "What are you talking about?" he asked, puzzled. "Which general?"

The major smiled. "Van Damm." He pointed to the teak box. "You were sitting on him."

Lanyon put down his coffee. "Do you mean that Van Damm's dead?" When the major nodded he stared down at the coffin, shaking his head slowly. It was ringed with heavy steel tape, and there was a Graves Commission seal franked with a Paris movement order.

The major began to laugh noiselessly to himself, looking Lanyon's wind-torn uniform up and down and shaking his head in dry amusement. Lanyon waited for him to finish.

"Now tell me what's really inside," he asked. "An atom bomb, or somebody's favorite spaniel?"

Still chuckling, the major took out a silver hip flask, plucked a paper cup from the water dispenser in the corner and passed them across the table to Lanyon.

"No, it's Van Damm all right. It may seem a hell of a time to take him home, but he's booked into Arlington Cemetery and if be doesn't go now there's a good chance he never will. There just won't be room."

Lanyon helped himself to a shot of whiskey. "So he _was_ dead after the crash?"

"He was dead _before_ the crash. Van Damm was killed two weeks ago in a car smash in Spain. He was on some private visit to Franco, which they had hushed up for political reasons, in case it hurt his campaign. His body was being shipped home on the plane. Nobody survived the crack-up at Orly. The Connie went straight into the deck on her back before she made 300 feet. Flipped right over like a paper dart. They fished out Van Damm's bits and pieces and decided to mail 'em collect to Nice." He replaced the flask, then went over to the coffin and patted it gently. "Well, have a quiet trip back to the States, General. You're the only one who will."

Lanyon spent the night at the Hotel Europe, a big three-story pile about five blocks back from the beach. The high clustering buildings in the hotel district made the streets just negotiable. Most of the hoteliers, with the aid of local shopkeepers, had built narrow roofed corridors of sandbags against the walls of the streets, and a maze of these dingy tunnels crisscrossed the city. A good number of bars and bistros were still open, and at the Hotel Europe 40 or 50 people sat up most of the night in the bar, listening to the news reports and speculating about possible escape routes.

Lanyon gathered that the wind showed no signs yet of abating; its rate of increase was still a steady five mph a day, by the latest estimates 117. After the initial period of inaction at last some organized attempt to preserve order was being made. Governments Were requisitioning coal mines and deep shelters, stockpiling food and medical supplies. News reports were conflicting, but apparently most of Europe and America were still little more than inconvenienced, while South America, Africa and the East had suffered complete dislocation, and the first signs of famine and epidemic were revealing themselves.

They set off back for Genoa at seven the next morning, the teak coffin, sealed into a canvas shroud, stowed in the cabin under the mattress. Goldman had mouthed some bitter cynicism and he obviously regarded Lanyon as the representative of the worst perfidies of the officer caste. Lanyon himself felt mildly disgusted with Hamilton for wasting the _Terrapin's_ potential, but the admiral might himself have been ignorant of Van Damm's death.

Five miles from Monte Carlo they passed through a small village, nestling below a cliff topped by big white hotels. The road narrowed, high walls on either side, and suddenly Goldman swore and braked the carrier. Lanyon peered into the periscope and saw two windswept figures in oilskins standing in the center of the roadway, waving their arms in wide circles. When they neared the people Lanyon noticed a stack of pastel suitcases on the pavement, the gaudy airline stickers clearly visible.

"Hold it," Lanyon snapped at Goldman. "They're Americans. Must have been stranded here."

They stopped the carrier and the orderlies unbolted the rear doors. Leaning out, Lanyon waved the two figures over, caught a glimpse of faces at the window of a house behind them.

One of the men climbed up onto the tail board and sat panting in long painful gasps.

"Thanks a million for stopping," he said, touching Lanyon's shoulder gratefully. "We'd just about given up." He was about forty-five, a slimly-built man with graying hair and small neat features.

"How many of you are there?" Lanyon asked, pulling the door shut to shield them from the savage gusts that drove into the carrier and swept out every vestige of warmth.

"Just four. My name's Charlesby, U.S. consul at Menton. There's Wilson, my deputy, his wife, and a girl from NBC. We were supposed to be covering the evacuation of American nationals to Paris, but everything's gone to hell. Our car cracked up, and we've been stuck here for a couple of days."

The other man in oilskins ran across the road to the carrier, shielding a red-haired woman in white raincoat and plastic bootees. They pulled her up into the carrier, helped her back onto the mattress. Lanyon and the orderly jumped down into the road and ran over to the suitcases, just as the other woman, wearing a tightlybelted blue coat, her blonde hair swirling around her head, ran out of the house and stepped nimbly across the pavement in long strides to the carrier. She tried to pick up one of the suitcases, but Lanyon pulled it from her hands, put his arm around her shoulders and steered her over to the open doors.

As the carrier got under way again Lanyon climbed forward and squatted down behind his seat. The two women were sitting back on the mattress, while Charlesby and Wilson crouched among the suitcases.

"We're making for Genoa," Lanyon told Charlesby. "Where are you people supposed to be heading for?"

Charlesby unbuttoned his oilskin.

" Paris, theoretically, or in an emergency the air force base near Toulon. I take it this rates as an emergency, but how that gets us to Toulon I haven't worked out yet."

"I'd take you back to the hospital at Nice," Lanyon said, "but we can't spare the time. I'm afraid you'll have to ride back to Genoa with us and then see if you can pick up something going the other way." He watched Wilson, a young man of about twenty-five, warming the chapped hands of his wife, a pale tired-looking girl who looked a few years younger. "O.K., there?" Lanyon asked. When Wilson nodded, he turned to the girl in the blue coat sitting on the mattress beside him.

"What about you? Genoa suit you?"

"Uh-huh. Thanks a lot, Commander." She pinned back her hair, looking Lanyon up and down. Her face was strong and full-lipped, with wide intelligent eyes that examined the commander with frank interest.

"Charlesby said you were with NBC. News reporter?"

She nodded, took a cigarette from the pack Lanyon offered her. As the carrier swung around a corner she rolled slightly against him, and Lanyon felt warm strong shoulders through her tightlyfitting coat.

She steadied herself with one hand on his arm, blew out a long straight stream of blue smoke.

"Patricia Olsen," she introduced herself. "On the Paris bureau. Came down here last week to get some shots for the folks back home of Monte Carlo being flattened." She tapped the tape recorder next to her with one finger. "All I've managed to get on this thing is the sound of my own screaming."

Lanyon laughed and climbed into his seat. The carrier slowed down to a crawl and Goldman stabbed a finger at the periscope. They were moving straight into the wind, up a long narrow slope. Twenty yards ahead of them, caught by its bumpers between the walls of two houses, was a long black Buick, swung up onto one side by the force of the wind. Slowly it worked itself free, then rolled onto its back and slithered down the street toward them. Goldman accelerated sharply, and the Buick locked for a moment against the heavy nose armor, then lifted sharply into the air and careened over the sandbagged hood with a tremendous clatter, rolling off the roof of the carrier. For a moment the periscope was darkened. Then it cleared and they all turned to watch through the rear-door grilles as the Buick, its body holed and dented, slithered down the street, demolishing a iow wall, from which clouds of dust took off in the air like supercharged steam.

"Bad driver," Patricia Olsen commented dryly.

They quieted, listening to the holocaust hammering past outside. They were traveling due east, straight into the wind face, and the turbulence around the rear doors exploded periodically with sharp pressure booms. The streets outside thudded with the sounds of falling masonry, the eerie piercing scream of tinplate and galvanized iron being stripped from rooftops, the explosive shatter of snapping glass.

For hours they sat bunched together silently, swaying in unison with the motion of the carrier, trying to massage a little warmth into themselves.

"How long do you think most of the buildings can stand up to this wind?" Patricia Olsen asked Lanyon quietly.

Lanyon shrugged. "If they're well built, they're probably O.K. up to about 150 mph. After that it looks as if we'll really have to hold onto our hats. How are you getting back to Paris? Most heavy transport has been requisitioned by the military."

"I don't know whether I want to get back to Paris. Too many old chimneypots there."

Lanyon glanced at his watch. It was 4:05. They had crossed the border and with luck would make Genoa in a couple of hours. Soon he'd be safely inside the _Terrapin_ and away from this madness. Oddly, though, however little he ultimately cared about the people hiding in basements in the towns through which they had passed, he found himself wondering what would happen to the girl next to him. He listened to the strong low sounds of her breathing; she looked highly adaptable and resourceful.

"Commander!" Goldman shouted, almost standing up at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the periscope. They were about ten miles from Genoa, moving down an exposed section of road that curved toward the dam at Sestra, two miles away. The broad hump of the concrete barrier was obscured by the spray whipped up from the deep torrent of water swirling down the road 50 yards away from them. Just ahead it left the roadway and spilled down into the valley, carrying with it a foam-flecked jetsam of smashed sheds and chicken coops.

"The dam's gone, Commander!" Goldman bellowed. Frantically he reversed the engine, sent the carrier backing obliquely across the road. Lanyon pressed his eyes to the periscope, then wrenched at Goldman's shoulder. High waves were cascading down into the valley, but as far as he could see the dam's outline was intact.

"Goldman, snap out of it! The dam's still O.K.!" He pounded Goldman's shoulder. "Get the engine forward again! The water's only a couple of feet deep."

Carried by the wind, the carrier was reversing rapidly. Before Goldman could pull himself together the off-side rear wheels left the road, and the vehicle swung around sharply and rolled over onto its side.

With a savage jolt the occupants were hurled off balance against the roof. Lanyon pulled himself away from Goldman, struggled painfully through the dim light past Patricia Olsen, who was rubbing her knees. Charlesby and the Wilsons were getting to their feet among the melee of suitcases and medical cartons. One of the orderlies opened the doors and kicked them outward. A whirl of dust and gravel whipped off the surface of the road and flashed past them in a white blur, while ten yards away to their left a deep stream of icy water surged past down the valley, spreading out across the vineyards.

The carrier lay immovably on its side, wheels spinning in the wind. Lanyon looked around for Goldman, trying to decide whether to clap the man under arrest, then decided the gesture would prove nothing.

Half a mile away was a group of low two-story brick buildings, grouped in a loose rectangle, a concrete tower standing above them on the far side. The remains of a rough fence ringed the compound, and there appeared to be a motor pool between two of the buildings, a collection of trucks huddled together against the storm.

"Looks like a barracks," Lanyon decided. The intervening country consisted of narrow farm strips divided by heavy hedges, ten-foothigh bocage that would provide them with enough shelter to reach the buildings.

Charlesby wearily pulled himself over to the doorway. "There's a good chance nothing will come along here for hours," Lanyon told him. "The road over the dam is probably closed by now and my guess is that they'll have radioed across to the units on this side to take another route further inland. We could be stranded here for days." He pointed to the buildings in the distance. "Just about our only hope is to head for the barracks over there."

Lanyon leading, followed by Charlesby and the Wilsons, with Patricia Olsen and then Goldman and the two orderlies bringing up the rear, they dived out of the carrier and plunged down the slope toward the hedge running parallel to the road 50 yards away.

As he left the carrier the wind caught Lanyon and gunned him along, tossing him helplessly across the lumpy soil. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the others stepping tentatively out of the carrier and being whirled away on the slipstream. Charlesby stumbled and fell onto his knees, and then was swept upright again, his legs racing madly. The Wilsons, arm in arm, were being buffeted from left to right like drunken circus clowns. Abruptly Lanyon lost his own footing, fell heavily onto his knees and was tossed sideways like a child rolling down a hill.

Regaining his balance, he reached the hedge, crawled along to a narrow gateway and slipped through it into the slightly sheltered lee of the hedge. Away in the distance Goldman was bowed down with his back to the wind, being carried along the verge of the roadway. Charlesby, oilskin ripped off his back and billowing over his head, only attached by the tapes under his armpits, followed ten yards behind.

Zigzagging along the hedges in the general direction of the barracks, Lanyon kept what lookout he could for the others. Once or twice he thought he saw one of them moving along an adjacent field, but he was unable to cross the intervening open ground.

He reached the boundary of the barracks within half an hour, and lay in a ditch on the inner side of the fence-nothing more now than a series of tilting support posts-scanning the open surface of the compound. The barracks was the airmen's quarters of a small airfield. Beyond the buildings were the control tower and two or three wide concrete runways extending off into the haze. Between the barracks he could see the upright steel skeletons of two large hangars. In the nearer hangar was the tail section of a Dakota that had been tethered by a steel hawser. It slammed and swiveled in the driving wind, its identification numerals still visible.

He was lying waiting in the ditch for any of the others to appear, when he noticed something rolling toward the boundary line about 50 yards away. It moved in sudden jerks, occasionally throwing up a narrow white limb that Lanyon recognized as an arm. Within a few seconds it reached the boundary line, crossed it and then rolled down into the ditch, a lumpy bundle of gray-and-black rags. Lanyon crawled along to it.

When he was a few feet away he recognized the tattered strips of Charlesby's oilskin, the shreds of his gray suit.

He reached Charlesby and straightened him out, then massaged his pallid face, heavily bruised and barely recognizable after being dragged across the rough farmland. For a few fruitless moments Lanyon pumped the man's lungs, trying to inject some movement into him. Finally he gave up, wrapped Charlesby's head in the skirt of the oilskin, and lashed it around his neck with his trouser belt. Soon the wind would let up and all the field rats and scavengers sheltering in their burrows would come out, searching a barren world for food. It might be some while before the body was found, and better the scavengers should start on Charlesby's hands than on his face.

As he backed away he saw someone approaching him along the ditch.

"Commander Lanyon!"

It was Patricia Olsen. She still wore the belted blue coat, scratched and muddied, and her blonde hair trailed around her head in a tangled mat.

He hurried along to her, took her arm and steadied her into a sitting position. She rolled her head weakly against his shoulder and glanced at the body.

"Charlesby?" When Lanyon nodded, she closed her eyes. "Poor devil. Where are the others?"

"You're the only one I've seen." Lanyon peered up at the sky. He felt exhausted and muscle weary, and he was sure that the wind was stronger than when they left the carrier an hour earlier. The air was full of large pieces of grit that flicked and stung at their faces like angry insects.

"We'd better get inside the barracks. Are you strong enough to make it?"

She nodded weakly. After a moment's rest they darted forward across the clipped turf to the building 50 yards away. Lanyon held her arm, and she was almost flung out of his grasp, but together they lurched over to the far end of the barracks and pulled themselves around the corner into the doorway.

At the rear of the entrance hall a stairway led below into the basement. They hurried down, tripping over the litter-strewn steps, and with luck found a more or less airtight room off the central corridor.

Patricia sat down weakly on an old bedstead and brushed her hair wearily off her face, drawing her coat over her long legs. Lanyon checked the window. Below ground level, it looked out onto the narrow well which ringed the building, but its shutters still held, though enough light filtered through for him to see around the room. There were a couple of bunks, two empty wall cupboards, and underfoot a collection of old movie magazines, discarded webbing and cigarette butts. Lanyon sat down on the bed next to her.

"Pat, I'm going upstairs in case there's anyone else here. May even be a telephone line still working."

She nodded, curling up into the corner. She looked almost dead and Lanyon wondered whether the Wilsons had survived.

The barracks was empty. Upstairs, the wind raced through the broken windows like a tornado, ripping the cupboards from the walls and piling the bedsteads into tangled heaps. He found an internal phone in one of the offices, but the line was dead. The station had obviously been abandoned days earlier.

"Any luck?" Pat asked when he went down to the basement.

He shook his head. "Looks as if we're stuck here. There are some wrecked trucks in a bay on the other side of the parade square. If the wind dies down a little tomorrow I may be able to salvage something that'll get us to Genoa."

"Do you think it _will_ die down?"

"Everybody keeps asking me that." Lanyon hung his head for a moment. "It's curious, but until I saw Charlesby lying in that ditch I didn't feel all that concerned. In a way I was almost glad. So much of life in the States-and over here for that matter-could use a strong breath of fresh air. But I realize now that a garbage-disposal job of this size rakes away too much of the good along with the bad."

He grinned at her suddenly. She smiled back, eying him with a long steady gaze, one he felt no hesitation in returning. With her blue coat and clear white skin against the drab background of the basement wall, she reminded him of the madonna in the gilt frame over the altarpiece in the wrecked church. The woman's hair had been black, but her robes had glowed with the same luminescent quality as Pat's ash-blonde hair.

Outside, the wind hurled itself across the dark swell of the land.

____________________

The hill had gone, obliterated beneath the gigantic jaws of the fleets of bulldozers, its matrix scooped out like the pulp of a fruit and carried away on the endless lines of trucks.

Below the sweeping beams of powerful spotlights, their arcs cutting through the whirling dust, huge pylons were rooted into the black earth, then braced back by hundreds of steel hawsers. In the intervals between them vast steel sheets were erected, welded together to form a continuous windshield a hundred feet high.

Even before the screen was complete the first graders were moving into the sheltered zone behind it, sinking their metal teeth into the bruised earth, leveling out a giant rectangle. Steel forms were shackled into place and scores of black-suited workers moved rapidly like frantic ants, pouring in thousands of gallons of concrete.

As each layer annealed, the forms were unshackled and replaced further up the sloping flanks of the structure. First 10 feet, then 20 and 30 feet high, it rose steadily into the dark night.