The Death’s Head Conspiracy

by Nick Carter

  I jerked the lid off a wooden container stencilled Life Jackets, but found only one inside. I tossed it to Rona, and she shrugged into it, pulling together the remains of her blouse as best she could.

  There were harsh shouts now and feet running toward us along the deck from both directions. Time to bail out. I made an up-and-over motion to Rona with my hand, climbed the rail, lowered myself to the narrow outside ledge, and dived.

  In the furious shoot-out to escape, I had forgotten the raw wound on my clobbered skull. I remembered it well when I hit the salt water with a massive jolt.

  Then the lights went out. But I soon came around, coughing and blowing water like a broken radiator.

  The Gaviota had steamed a couple of hundred yards, but now she was coming about, her searchlights playing over the water.

  There was a brisk wind and the sea was choppy. It would be difficult for them to spot us in that churning desert of ocean. The water was warm, but full of unfriendly types with sharp teeth—and it was lonely.

  Lonely! It came to me that I hadn’t seen Rona since we went overboard. Had she actually dived with me? I couldn’t be sure. I paddled in a wide circle, submerging when searchlights swept toward me, but I couldn’t see Rona.

  The Gaviota was ploughing slowly toward me now. She looked huge and menacing from my water-level viewpoint. Some fifty yards from me the ship churned to a stop and the lights began to sweep methodically back and forth over the water.

  Something white bobbed for a moment on the waves between me and the ship. I couldn’t risk calling out. Over the water the sound of my voice would carry easily, and the ship’s engines were now silent. I struck out in a crawl toward the object in the water, but stopped abruptly when my hand struck cloth and flesh.

  It was not Rona. With a mixture of relief and disappointment I found it was the body of the crewman who had plunged over the side after I shot him.

  In a blinding blaze, the long finger of the searchlight found us. I dived instantly, leaving the dead seaman afloat above me. Underwater, I stroked in the direction of the ship. I could hear the muffled rattle of gunfire and the choong of bullets knifing into the water.

  When I surfaced, the hull of the ship loomed before me like a white steel wall. They were still shooting up on deck, and I heard the sound of a boat being lowered. I made my way back along the hull to the stern where I tucked in as well as I could under the overhang. Here I was out of range of the searchlight and would be hard to see from a boat unless it nearly ran over me. Unfortunately there was no place to get a handhold, so I had to tread water to stay close to the hull.

  The boat splashed down amidships and the oarsmen struck out for the silver patch of water where the searchlight was holding steady. They reached the spot with a few powerful strokes and dragged the sodden body into the boat. Somebody cursed, then stood up and hailed the Gaviota through a bull horn.

  “It is not Carter or the woman! It is one of our own!”

  After a moment of steaming silence, Gorodin’s voice boomed, “Come back aboard. We will search again when it is light.”

  The boat returned obediently to the Gaviota and was hoisted aboard. Daylight was still a good seven hours away and I didn’t expect to be in the vicinity when it arrived. By a very rough guess, I figured we were somewhere in the Gulf of Honduras. I took a bearing on the stars, and as soon as the sounds up on deck diminished, I struck out with a long-non-splash stroke for the east, which I calculated was the direction of the nearest land. The water still felt warm, and the sea had calmed enough to make swimming easier. With luck, I might reach some kind of land or be spotted by a friendly boat.

  As I swam off quietly, moving slowly to conserve my energy, I again wondered what could have happened to Rona. I felt a deep pang of sadness.

  Eleven

  Daylight sneaked in, all pink and golden somewhere ahead, as I stroked, floated, stroked steadily on through the Caribbean. My body heat had been dissipated hours before and the once warm waters now felt teeth-chattering cold. When it grew light enough, I paused to survey the horizon. At first I saw no land in sight, and my muscles shrieked their protest at swimming on with no reward in sight. Then I spied a smudge of brown where the blues of sea and sky met in the east. Land. I decided it was either Honduras or, if the currents had carried me to the north, Yucatan. It didn’t much matter. Any hunk of dry, solid ground would be welcome.

  I gave myself a couple of minutes to float, then rolled over and began a long, easy crawl toward the distant shore. In a little while I had company.

  At first it was just a ripple in the smooth surface off to my right. Treading water, I watched and saw another ripple. Then another. And another. I knew what they were even before the first sickle-shaped dorsal fin broke the surface.

  Sharks.

  When I stopped moving, they changed direction, cutting across in front of me, then circling back behind me, closer now. I was able to make out three of them, though I didn’t doubt they had friends nearby. When I submerged I could see them clearly, circling me at a distance of about fifty feet. They had the slate-colored backs and white underbellies of the blue shark. Though the white shark is a more vivious man-eater, the blue is not my favorite companion for a long-distance swim.

  The three specimens circling me were from eight to ten feet long. I was a strange intruder in their waters —clumsy, slow-moving, possibly dangerous, but a potential meal. Now and then one of the trio would dart in toward me, then veer away as though testing my response. I knew that sooner or later one of them was going to come all the way in and take a slash at me with those razor teeth.

  I resumed swimming toward the ridge of land. With an effort, I kept my stroke slow and relaxed as if I were not in the least worried about the three predators. This was more for my own benefit than for theirs; you don’t psych out a shark.

  My escorts moved steadily closer as I continued my painful progress toward shore. Luckily, the blood had long ago washed away from the wound on my head and the cut along my thumb where I had sliced it with the glass from the fluorescent lighting fixture. If I had been leaking fresh blood into the water around me, the sharks would have ripped me apart without hesitation.

  With my attention riveted on the sharks, I hadn’t seen the brown sail between me and the land, a bit to the north. Since I didn’t know the size of the boat, I couldn’t determine its distance from me. But it was coming my way, and I mentally tried to reach out and speed it up. With a sail it wasn’t likely to be from the Gaviota, and even if it were, I would rather just then have taken my chances with Gorodin’s crew than with the deadly torpedo shapes that continued to close in on me.

  While I was thinking these thoughts, something rushed by just below me. It didn’t touch me, but the turbulence spun me in the water like a cork. My playmates were preparing to attack.

  I quit swimming and waved my arms frantically at the boat. I couldn’t tell if I had been seen, but the boat kept sailing in my direction, which was encouraging. When another of the sharks made a pass just six feet in front of me, I slipped Hugo out of the sheath and gripped the hilt underwater in readiness. The stiletto didn’t do much to change the odds against three killers weighing in at three hundred to four hundred pounds apiece, but it gave me a chance.

  I dove repeatedly to watch the sharks, while keeping an eye on the approaching boat. Now another of the sharks peeled away from his companions and came at me. There is a popular theory that because a shark’s mouth is located on the underside of his head, he has to roll over on his back to bite. Don’t believe it. When the lower jaw drops on its hinge, the vicious crescent mouth opens into a deadly sawtoothed cave. A shark can chew you up from almost any position.

  This one chose to come at me head-on. I flattened out below the surface to meet him the same way, presenting the smallest target possible. He was on me like a blue-black underwater missile before I could bring Hugo into a defensive position. Man’s maneuverability under water is limited at best. And there was only
time to lunge upward and let the great black shape pass under me. It was such a near miss that the sharks grainy skin scraped my shoulder.

  Having found me seemingly defenseless, the shark made an instant change of direction and rejoined the other two. Their agitated movements suggested that they might be preparing for a concerted attack. Stealing a glance at the boat, I could see now that it was a simple wooden craft with just the one sail. Small, dark-faced men stood in the bow pointing toward me. They seemed to be shouting, but I could not hear the words.

  A dorsal fin sliced the water nearby. I dove deeper this time and so did the shark. He made a hook below me and headed up, jaws wide, his malevolent eyes seeming to challenge me. I kicked into a somersault and avoided the deadly teeth by inches, but this time I had Hugo ready. I plunged the blade into the sharks upper belly. My arm was wrenched as though I had stabbed a rushing freight train, but I held on as the shark’s momentum carried us both upward, and the stiletto blade sliced through the tough white belly skin.

  Before we reached the surface, I kicked away from the wounded shark who trailed dark red blood behind him like smoke, a loop of intestine bulging out of the slit along the belly.

  I churned up and away from the stricken killer, looking back just once to see one of his recent buddies strike his middle and, with a savage jerk, tear away a great chunk of flesh and entrails. The third shark wasn’t far behind.

  I broke the surface and gulped the sweet fresh air into my lungs. In a minute my ears stopped ringing, and I heard voices. Ten feet behind me the boat bobbed on the light swell, sail reefed. There were four men in the boat. They were short and dark with fine features set symmetrically in small round heads. The words they spoke were unintelligible to me, but I recognized the language as Mayan, the ancient language of lower Mexico, now spoken in the southeastern part of Yucatan, Quintan a Roo.

  Brown hands on sinewy arms reached down to me and hauled me out of the water into the wooden boat At a sound behind me, I turned and looked at the bloody froth on the water where the two sharks tore the wounded one to bits. In a few more minutes I’d have been the next course.

  I held out my hands in a gesture of thanks to my rescuers, but their hooded eyes and impassive faces showed no response. One of them motioned for me to sit in the bow. I did so, and they reset the sail. The wind caught the canvas and the light boat seemed to lift in the water and skim toward the land.

  Twelve

  As the boat moved smoothly and soundlessly to-ward the shore, my exertions of the past sixteen hours began to catch up with me. The fight and escape from the Gaviota, the long swim, and the battle with the sharks had exhausted me. I let my head nod and closed my eyes just to rest them, and in a second—so it seemed—the bottom of the boat scraped gravel and people were running down from a cluster of huts to pull the craft up on shore.

  All activity ceased when I stepped out and stood on the beach. None of the Mayans stood any higher than my armpit. And, like my companions in the boat, they showed neither welcome nor hostility on their faces though they eyed me with some curiosity.

  These were the descendents of the tough, rebellious Mayans who never submitted to Spanish rule during the days of colonization. After the rebellion of 1847 in western Yucatan was put down by the Spaniards, those who could, escaped to the jungles of Quintana Roo, where armed resistance continued into the twentieth century. Even now, remote villages like the one where I had been brought were left strictly on their own by the federal government to rule themselves in accordance with the old tribal traditions.

  Two of the men from the fishing boat stepped up to flank me on both sides. Each placed a small brown hand on my elbow and urged me forward. I didn’t know whether I was being escorted or taken prisoner.

  They marched me through the village of some twenty dwellings between lines of silent, watchful Mayans. We stopped in front of a hut smaller than the rest at the outer perimeter of the village. The roof was thatch, and the adobe walls had no windows.

  As one of my escorts began to lead me through the door, he nudged against the metalic lump of Wilhelmina, still holstered at my hip. He raised my damp shirt, and drew out the Luger.

  “Pistola!” he snapped, in the first word of Spanish I’d heard from any of them.

  “No se funciona,” I told him. It was the truth. The gun didn’t work after a night’s immersion in salt water. “No tiene balas,” I added. Also true. I’d used all my cartridges shooting my way off the Gaviota.

  No response from the Mayans. Apparently they knew only a word or two of Spanish. Confiscating Wilhelmina, the Indian shoved me into the hut and banged the wooden door shut behind me. He spoke in Mayan to his companion. From the tone I gathered that one of them was to stay there and guard the door while the other went off on some errand. I sat down on the hard-packed dirt floor and leaned back against the wall.

  For the first time in many hours I thought about the mission that had brought me to the Caribbean. Was it only yesterday that I’d been on the verge of nailing the whole suitcase-bomb conspiracy when I had started toward Fyodor Gorodin with the Luger in my hand? Yet how far I was now from doing anything to prevent the nuclear destruction of New York in three more days.

  I tried to wrench my thoughts back to the present predicament, but a vision of Rona Volstedt flashed into my mind, greyhound slim and nordic blonde. Where was she now? Dead? Better that she be drowned than to be plucked from the sea by Gorodin.

  The door of my hut was yanked open and my two guards entered. By gestures and grunts they made it known I was to accompany them. I got up and went along with them, back into the village.

  We approached a hut larger than the rest. Once painted white, it was fading to gray. The two Mayans marched me in through the door, then came to a halt before an old man seated on a platform. He had shaggy white hair and a face as hard and wrinkled as a walnut shell.

  He raised a gnarled hand and my two guards backed out, leaving me alone with him.

  “I am Cholti,” he said in a strong deep voice that seemed incongruous to his age and tiny chest. “Here I am el jefe, the chief.”

  “I am honored,” I said, “and pleased to find someone who speaks English.”

  “In the village, only I speak English,” he said proudly. “I learned at school in Merida. I would teach my sons, but they do not wish to know the language of the yanquis.” He paused then, hands folded in his lap, waiting for me to speak.

  “My name is Nick Carter,” I said. “I am an agent of the United States. If you would take me to the nearest town with a telephone, I would be grateful. I would pay you well.”

  “I am told that you carried a pistol,” Cholti said.

  “Yes. In my work I must sometimes defend, sometimes kill.”

  “White men are not well liked in the Quintana Roo country, Carter. White men with pistols are not liked at all. My people have had very bad treatment from white men with pistols.”

  “I mean no harm to you or your people, jefe. The men I fight are evil ones who want to destroy the great cities of my country and kill a great many of my people.”

  “What should that mean to us here in Quintana Boor

  “If these evil men are allowed to win, no place in the world will be safe from them, not even your village. They have just destroyed an island in the Pacific Ocean where the people were much like your own.”

  “Tell me how you came to be floating in the sea, Nick Carter.”

  I told him the story from the time Rona and I stepped aboard the cruise ship in Antigua. Cholti listened with eyes so narrowed they were all but sealed, hands motionless in his lap. When I had finished he sat for a full minute in silence. Then his eyes opened and he studied my face.

  “I believe you, Nick Carter,” he said. “Your voice does not lie, and your eyes speak truly. The telephone you seek can be found to the north in Vigfa Chico. I would have you taken there, but. . .”

  “But what?” I prompted.

  “You are a white man. You brou
ght a pistol into our village. For these reasons my people want you to die. They will listen to me as el jefe, and perhaps I can make them believe, as I do, that you mean us no harm. But there is one who cannot be swayed.”

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “His name is Tihoc. He is my son. When I am dead, he will be chief here. I fear that will be very soon. Tihoc will never agree to let you go until you have faced him.”

  “Faced him? I thought you said no one else here spoke English.”

  “There are other languages,” the old man said. “My son awaits you now outside my house. How you conduct yourself with him will determine your fate. So it must be.”

  “I understand,” I told the old man. Cholti nodded his head toward the door of his hut. I turned and walked out.

  Before I had taken two steps into the clearing In front of the chiefs hut, something whooshed through the air and thudded into the ground at my feet. It was a six-foot spear, its narrow, double-edged point buried in the earth.

  Across the clearing from me stood a young Mayan, naked to the waist, his brown skin taut and glistening over tensed muscles. He clutched a twin to the spear at my feet, held across his body at an angle, in the traditional position of challenge. Ringed about us were the villagers, their faces impassive, but their eyes alert.

  This, then, would be Tihoc, son of the chief. This was the man I would have to face in combat if I was to leave the village alive. Yet, if I killed him, would his father give me passage to Vigia Chico? Even if the old man agreed, would his people let me live? Somehow, I had to defeat Tihoc, yet not rob him of his honor.

  Before touching the spear, I deliberately removed Hugo from the forearm sheath. I held up the stiletto for the villagers to see, then sent it spiraling to the door of the chiefs hut where it stuck fast, the handle quivering. Though there was no audible response from the watchers, I could sense an undercurrent of approval.