The Infiltrators by Donald Hamilton Page A

gun,
now
!”
    Shock showed on his good-looking face, as I’d known it would. He was federal government also, whatever that might mean. He arrested people; nobody arrested him. But the .38 in my left hand spoke a convincing language of its own, and I heard his firearm drop to the carpeted floor. While he was still in a state of confusion, opening his mouth to protest against this dreadful reversal of the normal and decent order of things, I stepped forward and slammed the little automatic hypo into his rump, which was still half turned toward me. The mechanism fired itself with a springy, clicking sound. Real KGB stuff.
    He’d half raised his hands out of respect for my weapon. Now he reached down and back instinctively to investigate the stinging pain of the injection. His eyes got a vague and puzzled look and his mouth went slack.
    “What the hell’s going on out here?”
    The door to the men’s room opened to reveal Number Two, practically a replica of Number One except for an inch or two more height, ten or fifteen pounds more weight, and a bushy blond mustache. His face changed as he saw the revolver in my left hand, aimed directly at him. I can shoot lefty if I have to, pretty accurately. Either he’d read that in my dossier or he was not a gambling man. He made no effort to raise the weapon at his side.
    “Drop it!” I said. “You’re under arrest for interfering with a federal officer in the performance of his duties.”
    There was a distraction, as the first one suddenly slumped to the floor with a little sigh. His partner started forward, and checked himself.
    I said to him, “You have less than three seconds left to live, amigo. If you’re still holding that sidearm when I stop talking… Ah, that’s better. Now grab your friend and haul him inside and set him on the john. He’s all right. He’ll sleep four hours and wake up frisky as a lamb. Oh, just one little detail. If either of you is packing an ankle gun or neck knife or other backup weapon and you feel compelled to use it, be my guest. Just remember, it’s been tried before and I’m still here. Now get him in there.”
    I stepped back to let him get at the inert body and gathered up the fallen firearms as I followed him into the tiled room. I locked the door behind us while he was setting his friend on the toilet. He emerged and faced me truculently.
    “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,” he said, “but I can tell you—”
    “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I know. You’re an important agent of the Office of Federal Security and I can’t do this to you. Well, I’m an important agent of the Federal… well, never mind the exact title, and you can’t do this to me. Which makes us even, and I’m holding the gun. Who’s the guy with Bennett? I ought to remember his name but it’s slipped my mind.”
    “You go straight to hell!”
    I shook my head sadly. “You try my patience, boy. That
was
Bennett, wasn’t it, who just grabbed Mrs. Ellershaw so rudely and hustled her into her room? The OFS top man, your boss. I had some dealings with him a few years back, in the Bahamas and Florida, and I couldn’t forget that Roman-emperor profile and clipped hair. What the hell are you stupid bastards trying to pull, anyway, muscling in on me like this with guns waving? The lady is under my protection.”
    “Lady, hell!” There was an ugly sneer in the blond man’s voice. “You call
that
a lady? Shit, maybe once she had a bit of class, but anybody can see that eight years in the joint have knocked it all out of her, the smart-ass bitch. She’s just another cheap jailbird now. Serves her right, too, all the fine airs she put on when she was first arrested. Hell, she was even kind of a good-looking wench back then, but you wouldn’t know it now, huh?”
    It always amazes me, the pleasure some people take in seeing other people humbled, particularly people better than they are. Looking hard at my captive, I realized that