The Day of the Guns Read Online Free PDF

I watched them for a full twenty minutes then crossed the street to another bar, dialed the number she had given me, told her I was available.
    There was nothing devious about her voice. It was quiet ... almost friendly with a peculiar touch of inquisitiveness in it. She would like to speak to me. Fine. I would like to speak to her too. Where? My hotel in an hour. Hell, she made the call, let her come to me. I hung up and went back outside.
    He didn’t take long ... just enough time to pay the check and leave. I didn’t wait for her. An hour from now she’d be there. But when he managed a cab I got in the one I had standing by and followed Burton back across town, down into Greenwich Village and waited while he told his taxi to hold while he went inside, then watched when he came back out with a tall brunette who had a million-dollar body and a walk to match. They got in the cab, drove to a restaurant on Fourteenth Street and got out.
    For a few seconds Selwick just stood there holding his stomach, then the woman said something earnestly, seemed angry for a.moment, then took his arm gently and led him inside. There was no two ways about it ... the guy was hurting. Well hell, you don’t jump from a killer to another broad without getting stomach pains. Rondine could give any guy a pain in the gut. I suffered from mine for months, only then she did it with bullets.
    I didn’t bother checking it out any further. I gave the driver my hotel and settled back to think about my date.
    Things were looking up.
    I sat there with my feet on the window sill looking out at the mist-shrouded roof of the city, thinking back twenty years, bringing her face back, the strange twist she could give to one eyebrow and the things we had said to each other in the dark.
    Thinking of what kind of a fool I had been to expose an operation because one woman could do things to my insides and make my mind go against all the things it had been trained to do.
    It had started back there, but it had ended back there too. The very thing I did made me try to prove something to myself and when Martin Grady had selected me along with several others to work in the same capacity through a civilian agency I had grabbed at the chance. There were forty when we started. Nineteen of the original group were left, but there were forty still, somebody always coming in as a replacement. The longer we lived, the better we got and the better our chances of staying alive.
    Sure, the Washington agencies knew about our existence. I.A.T.S. kept a file on all of us as best it could, but none of it was explicit or important. They knew what we did only after we did it and nothing could be said because it was professionally done for the good of the country by experts in the field. It probably galled them though. It had, too. We moved in fast and hard when it was necessary and people had fallen and governments were toppled. Had we not been there it would have happened anyway, only millions of dollars and man-lives later.
    By now Martin Grady would know I had hold of something and I’d get the word whether to process it or clear out, and, knowing how he hated any personal attitudes mixed in an operation, the word would be to get clear. He’d never take a chance on lousing up a job or losing a man to a pet hate. Only in this case he couldn’t move me.
    I wanted Rondine dead too badly.
    There was a knock on the door.
    I flicked off the light, swung around and sat there with the .45 facing the door and said, “Come in.”
    The knob turned, the door opened and there she stood, lovely, lovely Rondine. Beautiful as hell. With the same potential. Beauty and death inside the same shell. She still had that same hesitancy when she stepped inside a door and closed it, letting you have the full effect of the magnificence of her face and body, still the same habit of flipping open the coat so the impact of seeing the pressure of her breasts against a dress and the nipped-in waist and swell