by Nick Carter
I did the only thing I could. I lashed at him, “Come on, man. Move! We’re in a hurry to see Dr. Valdez.”
Reluctantly he bent over the car and extended a hand to P.P. I laced him over the ear with the butt of the Luger. He fell into the car. I looked at Thomas. “Tie him with his belt and gun sling and gag him. Hurry.”
I prodded old P.P. with the Luger. “Let’s go, pops.” I gave him a hand up. Even with his paunch he didn’t weigh over a hundred.
P.P. looked down at the unconscious guard. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Carter. Why not simply kill him?”
“I decide who I kill and who I don’t.”
“But the girl? Poor Betty? Surely—”
“Poor Betty was KGB,” I told him. “A dumb American commie who did what she was told to do.” I watched his face. “She suckered you, P.P. Betty was Kremlin all the way.” Some of it had been in Hawk’s precis. The rest—guesswork to a certain extent. But Duppy’s file, Diaz Ortega’s file, read: almost invariably works with a female partner. Usually an American or European. Usually white. Never uses black or Russian females. See file Bettina Smid, born NYC, 1939 . . . The cross reference meant they had worked together before. Duppy had signaled someone in P.P.’s mansion. It couldn’t be a coincidence. If it was, and I was wrong, I would burn a candle for her.
Trevelyn’s mouth hung open. His teeth must have cost him thousands. He gaped at me. “You mean that all this while I have been—?”
I wagged the Luger at him. “Yes. Think about it on the move. Where is Valdez?”
“Down this tunnel.”
We were under the Citadel. The tunnel was new, and some of the storerooms were new, but a lot of it was old dungeons and caves. Some were well lit, some dark. In some of the lighted rooms I saw stacks of crates and boxes and several long shiny missiles mounted on steel horses.
P.P. slogged ahead, dragging his feet. Thomas walked level with me, where I could keep an eye on him, lugging the musette bag like it contained eggs. In a way it did.
“How much farther to Valdez?”
P.P. stumbled to a wall and gasped for breath, holding on to a light bracket for support. “Not too far. Around the next bend. But I don’t think I—I can’t—”
I grinned at him. “Yes you can, P.P. Think positive. Be like the little engine.”
Before we rounded the bend we passed a brilliantly lit cave cut into the solid stone of the mountain. There was no guard on the entrance. I halted our little party and peered in, hiding the Luger behind my leg.
The cave was long and deep. Six long narrow tables stretched from end to end of the cave. On each table was a missile. Longer, thicker, fatter, than any missiles I had seen up to now. They were all painted black. Men were working around the missiles, polishing and making deft adjustments — with small shiny wrenches.
I watched P.P. He was staring with a very odd expression on his ravaged face. He began to shake. I saw him clasp his hands and squeeze them to keep his fingers still.
I jeered at him. “What’s wrong, P.P.? Something new been added—something else you didn’t know about?”
I was fishing. I didn’t know anything. Yet there was no question that the black missiles had somehow shaken the old man.
He shook his head and muttered, more to himself than to me. “There is something wrong here. Something I don’t understand at all.”
I gave him a little push. “Right. Let’s go find Valdez. Maybe he can explain.”
We trekked on down the tunnel. It took a right angle turn and ended in a large scooped-out cavern. The cavern was full of desks and filing cabinets and drawing boards. Maps and sheafs of blue prints hung from the walls. At the very end of the cavern a man sat at a desk, his face limned in the drop light. He watched us approach.
I herded Thomas a little forward so that both he and P.P. were in front of me. I whispered. “Do just as I tell you. Keep quiet. I’ll handle everything.” I screwed the Luger into P.P.’s spine a bit. “That is Dr. Romera Valdez?”
“Yes. That is Dr. Valdez.”
There were only the four of us in the cavern. A clock I showed a little’ after four. Dawn soon. From behind us, far down the corridor, came the faint tinkle of metal on metal. [ For some reason my scalp began to crawl.
The man at the desk turned easily to face us. He did not rise, but crossed one long leg over the other and lounged * against the desk, one arm resting on a half-open drawer. He wore a gray lightweight suit, white shirt and blue tie in a I meticulous knot, blue socks and well-polished black shoes. His thick hair was tinged with gray and heavily pomaded. A pencil thin bristle of moustache covered a long upper lip. His nose was long and straight, jib sharp, and heavy sallow lids I hooded dark eyes as he watched us. He wore a gold wrist I watch and the fingers of his right hand bore several gold rings. He looked exactly as Lyda Bonaventure had described I him.
We came down an aisle flanked by desks and drawing ! boards. A dozen feet from Valdez I said, “Okay. Stop right here.”
I peered between Thomas and P.P. at the man seated at the desk. He made no move to rise. Made no move at all. Just watched me with those hooded eyes. He had a certain type of Latin male beauty, aging a bit now, and I saw how Lyda could have loved him.
Something was wrong and I knew it and it bugged me. But I couldn’t place it. I tried the light touch, but I was careful to let Valdez see the Luger.
“Dr. Romera Valdez, I presume?”
He inclined his head very slightly. “I am Dr. Valdez. Who are you, sir?”
I told him who I was and why I was there. He listened, expressionless, his dark eyes examining the three of us. Behind that smooth aquiline facade a lot of thinking was going on.
I wagged the Luger at him. “We better get moving, Doctor. We’re running on a very tight schedule and the worst is still ahead of us. I’m hoping that you know a safe way out of the Citadel.”
His smile displayed perfect teeth. “I do, yes. But I have no intention of going with you, Mr. Carter. You, and Miss Bonaventure, and your superiors in the United States Government, you are all laboring under a delusion. I have no desire to be saved, as you put it. I am perfectly content here working for Mr. Trevelyn and Dr. Duvalier. I am well paid and well treated. I have, fortunately, come to see the error of my ways, of my former thinking. I am very afraid, Mr. Carter, that you have wasted your time.”
Before I could answer old P.P. broke in. He had been fidgeting and breathing hard, like he had something heavy on his mind, and now the words gushed from his diseased throat in a torrent.
“That woman, Valdez! That Betty you got for me . . . she . . . Carter here says she KGB . . . explanation . . . I can’t think . . . and those black missiles . . . I never knew of them. . . . I demand, Valdez . . . I demand . . .”
Habit was too strong for the old man. Dying, tortured by pain and perversity, captive and helpless, he still thought himself the money god and that his whim was law. He ranted to Valdez. Valdez realized that bluff was hopeless and went for broke. I got caught like a sitting duck, the truth eluding me for the split second it took Valdez to reach into the drawer and come out with the machine pistol. Just too late I flopped on my belly, remembering the musette bag and grabbing for it as Thomas took a burst in the belly and folded down on me. Dying from bullets intended for me.
I rolled over frantically, trying to get behind a desk, the Luger extended at arm’s length and spitting at Valdez. He was standing now, wide legged, bracing himself against the desk as I hit him, swaying, but hosing away with the machine pistol. The old man caught a clutch of lead in the throat, drastic surgery, and spun around and fell across the black. Bright red arterial blood spurted from his mouth.
I took a slug along my ribs that made me yelp.
I cosseted the musette bag—better a slug in me than in it—and lay on the floor and blasted with the Luger until the clip ran out. The machine pistol gave a final burp and quit.
I fumbled another clip into the Luger while I watched him die. He
dropped the machine pistol with a clatter of metal on stone. He clung to the desk and swayed, fighting to keep his feet. He looked at the front of his nice gray suit, where I had put four in around his heart, and then he looked at me and he tried to speak and couldn’t make it. His knees hinged and failed and he spun across the desk and then slid to the floor.
I was soaked in blood. Mine and that of Thomas and the old man. I grabbed the musette bag and leaped for the desk. I grabbed the dead man’s head and wrenched it forward and saw the scars faint behind the ears and along the jaw line.
I heard shouts and the pound of running feet. I saw the iron door ten feet from the desk, set into the wall, now slightly open and stuccoed with concrete to make it blend into the wall. Valdez’ private entrance. My way out of the trap. I darted through it like a ferret into a rabbit hole and slammed it shut and dropped an iron bar into place. I had a few seconds.
The narrow tunnel slanted upward. I ran. In dim yellow light that flickered and faded and came back and then faded again. I was running for my life but I still caught the rhythm as the yellow bulbs faded and glowed. Code! Someone was working a transmitter with power from the same generator that supplied the lights.
I rounded a corner and saw a splotch of light on the tunnel floor ahead. It came from a cave. I ran on my toes, the Luger ready, and peered in. It was a radio room. A man was sitting at a transmitter, wearing earphones, pounding on a key. In one corner, where the cave had been vented to carry off the fumes, a small generator was roaring away.
I was behind the operator before he knew I was there. I slammed his skull with the Luger butt, and he went sleepy-by, and I eased him down and sat in his chair. Carter had just come up with a very sneaky idea.
I sent it in clear, in plaintalk, so that Papa Doc’s DF stations would be sure to read it loud and clear. There was no time for subtlety and I had to hope they would believe and not look for the gimmick. I sent it with a hard fist, pounding it out into the Haitian dawn:
Red Hammer to Black Swan—have taken Citadel—Valdez and Trevelyn dead—our missiles safe—proceed at once with invasion as planned—blacks all uprising and will rendezvous you Gonaives—strike hard and long live freedom—Bennett.
I sent it twice. With what Hawk has called my fiendish grin. It would be a good ploy if it worked, and Papa Doc and his Army and Air Force, and the Tonton Macoute, were going to be one busy bunch of bastards. Gonaives was the logical town for a rendezvous. It was southwest of the Citadel; I intended to run like hell to the northwest.
It was quiet but for the hum of the generator. I had a little time yet. I got a wad of plastique from the musette bag and shaped it and decided that the transmitter console was as likely a spot as any. I didn’t have any idea what the weather was like outside, and I had to guess and take a chance. I was using a barometric fuse.
I worked fast, not wanting to think about it, and hooked the detonator into the fuse and set it for high pressure. I gave myself as much margin as I could and it wasn’t much. Nothing happened and I was still in one piece and I eased the console shut and grabbed the musette bag and legged it to hell out of there. The plastique was new stuff, super, invented by the AXE people and roughly equivalent to ten tons of TNT. I wished to be far away when it let go. Where I really wanted to be was on the bounding main, heading Stateside, but I didn’t count too much on it.
I started down the tunnel again. Gradually the throbbing of the generator faded away. I came to an iron ladder set into the stone and leading upward through the top of the tunnel. Mist coiled down on me, and cold rain touched my face, and I breathed again. I had guessed right on the weather. That pressure fuse wouldn’t trip the detonator until the weather cleared.
There had been no pursuit, no effort to take me or cut me off, and until now I had been too busy to think much about it. Now I did and I heard the sound of gunfire funneling down the shaft and I understood a little. They were fighting up there. Who was fighting whom I didn’t know, any more than I knew why they were fighting, but it made me very happy. If they kept their little intramural war going maybe I could fade quietly away into the jungle and head Tor the coast.
I sighed. Before I could do that I had to get off the Citadel. I had to presume that my tunnel was blocked at both ends. I didn’t want to go back and I didn’t think it would be much healthier forward. That left the ladder. I started climbing.
Chapter 14
Fine rain pelted down at me as I climbed. The iron rungs were slippery. Craning up, I could see a manhole slice of gray light, a dull slab of dawn. There was a riffle of gunfire, spastic in the morning, and cracking little sonic booms slashed the air.
I stopped just below the circular opening. I listened and identified; four or five submachine guns chattering, the dullish crump-banging of grenades, a spatter of rifle fire. The ball was waxing hot. I didn’t know what it was all about, and I really didn’t want to find out, but I knew I had to. I had to run for it and now was as good a time as any.
I leaned far back on the iron ladder and craned up, an angular view,.and saw a long mound of rusty cannon balls. Part of an ancient cannon muzzle with a belled flare. The main gun platform of the Citadel.
Lead whispered above me. I said to hell with it and pushed myself up and out of the hole. Ducking, crouching, I ran for the shelter of a crumbling wall to my left. It opened into a court. Someone shouted and I heard a familiar voice and lead slashed in front of me. Shards of stone nicked my face. I gave up on the court and took a headlong dive into an arched casemate. I lay with my face in stone and dust and thought about that voice. Duppy!
Gunfire kept crackling away. I wormed around and stuck my nose out the casemate’s arch. WHAM—a 32-pound cannon ball smacked the stone two inches from my face. I made like a turtle, cursing. From somewhere over me I heard Duppy laugh.
“Good morning, Carter. You stepped into it this time my friend. That casemate is blocked at the far end—no way out for you.”
I squirmed back a little. I yelled. “What happened to your accent, Duppy? Or, since we’re playing truth this morning, Diaz Ortega? My brain was running around like a mouse in a cage, trying to figure a way out.
He laughed in basso. “Yes, Carter. Looks like the masquerading is over, huh? Where are P.P. and Valdez?” I allowed myself a sneer. “Why should I tell you, Ortega?”
“Why not, man? You’ll be dead soon. Ease your conscience, maybe. That information won’t do you any good in the grave.”
He was right. “Dead. Both of them. Old P.P and the phony Valdez. The second phony Valdez—the one you planted on P.P. and Papa Doc.”
Another cannon ball creamed the stones just in front of me. A flying splinter slashed, my face. I moved back instinctively and felt a stab of pain in my side where the slug had nicked me. My tee shirt was crusty with blood under the heap-uniform coat and I was sweating. I began to twist out of the coat. I was resigning as a major general in Papa Doc’s Army.Another spate of gunfire, then silence. Ortega said “So you know about that, too. I underestimated you, Carter Careless of me. Of course I didn’t know you were Nick Carter until a few hours ago. Not that it matters now You can’t get out of your hole and as soon as my people clean up P.P.’s men, and a few of the Tonton Macoute, we’ll take care of you. All we have to do is unblock the tunnel and come into the casemate after you. You can’t run away.”
I surveyed the rain-swept gun platform with its rusty old cannon and the piles of moldering balls. Beyond, like frozen surf, the green, mist-topped hills marched away to the sea Maybe he was right, at that. I had put my head into it. He had me trapped pretty good.
I was thinking fast and getting nowhere. I believed him about the casemate being blocked behind me. If I stuck my head out, or tried to make it across the gun deck and over the parapet, I would be a sieve before I had gone six feet.
At least I could keep him talking. That way I would know where he was. I wondered how many men he had, and how he had managed to infiltrate them in with P.P.’s and Papa Do
c’s men.
I cupped my hands and yelled up at him. Lyda tell you about me?” She had, of course. I took a fragmentation grenade out of the musette bag.
“She did, Carter. The lady is a little disappointed and angry with you at the moment. I’m responsible for that, I’m afraid. As you Yanks say, I sold her a bill of goods.”
“I bet you did.” I pulled the pin of the grenade and started wriggling to the mouth of the casemate.
“I convinced her that P.P.’s decoy was the real Valdez and that you and the CIA tricked her, played her for a sucker, and one of you killed him. She believed me.”
It was my turn to laugh. “You did a little sweating, didn’t you? When you thought that Lyda and your phony Valdez might have to meet face to face? That would have loused up your plans pretty good, huh, Ortega?”
I turned over on my back with my right hand extended, the grenade plump and secure in my fist.
He laughed. “I admit it. I was worried for a time. I need that invasion of hers to distract Papa Doc. But that’s all right now. Swan is on her way back to the boat, and the invasion is on again. I let her and Papa Doc knock themselves out, then I take over.”
“But without your phony Valdez as a figurehead. How do you explain that to the blacks and mulattos?”
He said a very nasty thing to me. I laughed and slid out of the embrasure on my back and tossed the grenade up in a long arcing loop. Lead spanged around me as I ducked back. Ortega screamed a curse. But the bastard had guts. He tossed the grenade back down at me. It exploded in the air six feet from my hole and the concussion rocked me and fragments sang and pocked the casemate. Nothing hit me.
His laugh was a little weak. “I admire your guts, Carter. I hate to kill you. I really do. If you give up, we might be able to work something out.”
I blinked stone dust out of my eyes. “That might be fun, 1 agreed. “What would we work out—how to run Haiti together?”
