The Inca Death Squad

by The Inca Death Squad (fb2)

If anything, the President looked relieved when the Russian left his side. Belkev bulled his way through the dancers to Rosa's side.

  "What are you doing with this imperialist murderer?" he demanded.

  Rosa shrugged her lovely shoulders.

  "You yourself said he was your private spy, so why shouldn't I be with him? Besides, he's very kind."

  "You stay away from her," Belkev ordered me in Russian. "That's an order."

  "I don't understand. He's an Yankee. How can you tell him what to do?" Rosa asked with all the obstinacy of someone who has had too much champagne.

  "He is nothing but a paid killer. I am a minister and I give the orders."

  "Put a gold medal on a pig and you still have a pig," I commented in Cuban Spanish.

  Rosa giggled so hard that she almost dropped her glass. Belkev grew furious and asked her what I said.

  "He's a naughty man," she teased.

  "Rosa, your thighs are a cool river and I am very thirsty," I continued.

  "Very naughty," her laughter burst out.

  People had begun to look at us and Belkev was finding it difficult to control himself.

  "You keep quiet and stay away from my woman," he ordered me again.

  "I'll leave you alone altogether if you'll just take this vest that I've been trying to give you." I lifted up the attaché case for him to see.

  "That stupid thing. Why should I worry about it?"

  "Belkev," I said with no humor in my voice, "if I weren't on a different kind of assignment right now, I could kill you." Suddenly my Luger was nudging his tubby gut, the movement hidden from the rest of the reception guests. "Kill you without a second thought and you couldn't do anything about it."

  "You're insane!"

  "You're the second person to say that today. No, I'm not crazy, I'm just fed up with playing games with you. If you don't accept this vest now, I'm walking out. I'll just tell your superiors that you refused to cooperate."

  Belkev looked down at the shaft of metal hard against his belly. He cooled off and I could almost see him thinking.

  "All right, Carter, I'll try it on. Anything to get rid of you."

  The Luger went back in its holster and we went out a side door. With a glance Belkev picked up the Russian ambassador and a pair of his bodyguards. Rosa trailed behind.

  Once we were out in the corridor, Belkev asked the ambassador if the Russians had the run of the palace.

  "Anything you want. Those are the president's wishes."

  Excellent. Where could we find a place of great privacy?"

  The ambassador was a thin, dyspeptic individual. In his tuxedo he looked like a strung-out, worried corpse.

  "I understand that our hosts might take it amiss if we invaded a government office. However, there is a large, unused basement under the palace where political prisoners used to be held."

  "I don't think we need that," I interjected.

  "But I think we do," Belkev said. "After our little transaction, you can go on your way. I won't need you anymore."

  A Chilean palace guard let us into a narrow stairway. The main areas of the Presidential Palace might have been lit and alive, but the stairway and the basement it led to were right out of a horror movie. Light bulbs in metal cages lit a stinking corridor. The sound of the orchestra was gone, the tinkle of champagne glasses was absent and all we heard were the sounds of our heels and the stealthy scurrying of rats.

  "Here," the guard said. I noticed that his collar tab carried the red insignia of the Chilean Communist Party. That meant he wasn't regular military and I couldn't expect any favors from him. He opened an iron door.

  There were no electric lights inside. Instead, a battery-powered lamp threw a dim circle. I saw on the far wall two rusty manacles hanging from the stone blocks. This wasn't a room, it was a dungeon.

  "What the hell are you up to?" I asked. As I turned, I found out. The ambassador's bodyguards were leveling their automatics at my heart.

  "Ask a stupid question…" I answered myself out loud. "By the way, killing me puts the death sentence on some of your own boys. That won't make you very popular when you get home."

  "Frankly, Mister Carter, I think we would be only too willing to swap a dozen bodies for yours. Killing you is not what I have in mind, however. Open your case."

  I have to give Belkev credit for that move. I was the only man in all of South America who knew how to open the attaché case without blowing himself up. There was no key to the lock; the device was nothing but an electric contact attached to a fragmentation explosive. I took out a plastic pin and slid it under the lid; the case popped open.

  "You see, Rosa, I do understand the Killmaster," he grunted, motioning the bodyguards forward. "He has a gun and a knife strapped to his left arm. It's all in his file."

  They took off my jacket and shirt, removed the two weapons and then dragged me to the wall. Each of them clamped one of my hands into a manacle.

  "How do you like it, Killmaster?" Belkev gloated. "Being tied up like a goat? Even dying as a member of the KGB instead of your beloved AXE?"

  "I thought you said you weren't going to kill me.

  "Oh, I'm not. You have to understand that I never liked this idea about accepting a bullet-proof vest from you Americans. I mean, what if the vest were not bullet-proof? What if I went out in a crowd thinking it was and got shot down by the first fool with a pistol? Wouldn't that be a cute trick for AXE to play? I would be dead and you would be safe in your airplane. No, I am not that naïve, Mister Carter. You are going to have to prove to me how good your vest really is."

  "How can he do that while he's chained to a wall?" Rosa asked.

  "Very simply," Belkev replied. "If he is still alive, I will take the vest. If he is not, I will send the vest back with his body."

  A cold feeling surged through my guts. What if this whole scheme were Hawk's planning? Would he have set Belkev up with a phony vest? I knew that Hawk's mind was always full of devious ideas and if this one backfired, I would be the first one to know about it.

  The bodyguards took the vest out of the case and strapped it around my chest. It felt even fighter than it did when I had held it in my hands at the airport in Delaware. I wondered if it was even sturdy enough to deflect a .22 short, let alone a hunk of lead from an automatic.

  "Consider yourself an American salesman, Killmaster. Sell me your product."

  "I couldn't interest you in a vacuum cleaner, could I?"

  The Chinean guard handed Belkev his .45. Belkev pushed the carriage back, moving the first shell into place.

  "Always a sense of humor," he commented drily.

  He aimed the bulky gun at the center of my chest. No one said a word; even the rats were suddenly quiet. I remembered that the .45 automatic had been created to kill by shock when the U.S. Marines found their regular handguns couldn't stop berserk Huk tribesmen during the Phillipine insurrection. Odd facts like that come to mind when you're looking down the barrel of a .45, and all you can do is to hold as still as you can.

  There was a flash and simultaneously a gigantic fist slammed me into the wall. My ribs felt as though they were on fire, and I had no breath. My stomach heaved up against my throat. Then there was the click of the new shell sliding into position. My head bobbed drunkenly.

  I didn't see the gun this time but I did see a black star explode on the jacket over my heart. The heart skipped a beat and my lungs ached for air. When I looked at Belkev and the others, I couldn't get them into focus. I heard Rosa's horrified scream and dimly saw Belkev's toady grin. My legs jerked like a puppet's as I tried to regain my balance.

  No blood, I told myself. Just shock and lack of air. I'm alive.

  "The vest seems to do its job," Belkev sighed. "However, there is no guarantee that someone will try to kill me with a handgun. I wish to see how the garment stands up to a machine gun."

  "Comrade, the agreement was very exact," the ambassador intervened. Belkev's taste for the grotesque was beginning to f
righten him. "The Americans made no claim about anything like a machine gun."

  "A submachine gun," Belkev corrected himself. "A little one."

  The Chilean guard was dispatched to bring the weapon. Belkev helped himself to one of my cigarettes and then slid an arm around Rosa's waist.

  "You like my taste in women; I like your taste in cigarettes."

  "What happened in Berlin, Belkev?" I spit the words out with my first gasp of air. "What did you do in the war that made them break you?"

  He wasn't surprised or upset. He was proud.

  "It was just a little game, a game much like this. But the poor fools had no bulletproof vests. There would have been no trouble if I hadn't killed a comrade by mistake. I was merely having a good time and drinking. You understand."

  "Yeah, I understand."

  "Naturally. How many men have you killed? A hundred? Two hundred?"

  "Not like this. Not the fat coward's way."

  He flushed, then regained his composure. "It's much more difficult to aim with a machine gun, you know," he said.

  The guard came back with the gun Belkev wanted. Belkev checked it over to see that the magazine was a full one and then released the safety. It would be so easy, so easy, his eyes told me. Even if the vest didn't rip apart under the unfair test, with the tiniest hitch of the shoulder, the spray of bullets would cross my face.

  "Please be careful," the ambassador pleaded.

  That goes double, I thought. I didn't say anything, though.

  Belkev ground the cigarette out under his foot and cushioned the automatic rifle against his stomach. "Against any known handgun," a voice echoed in my brain. Rosa sobbed. Belkev squeezed the trigger as if he were making love to it.

  The first slugs hit the wall to my right and beat out a pattern toward me. Too high! I thought. Stone shards sliced my arm. Then the spray was coming directly at eye level. I snapped my face away from a shot that smacked beside my ear. I waited between milliseconds for the next bullet, for the one that would spread my skull up to the ceiling.

  Instead, the vest started dancing, bucking and straining under the hot hail of the submachine gun. Again the air was kicked clear out of my lungs. My legs stiffened desperately to keep me from pitching headfirst into that deadly rain. The erratic pattern moved off to the wall on my left side, tearing apart the stone.

  Belkev's finger never left the trigger for a second and he swung the submachine gun back to me. The fabric of the vest was completely ripped from the plastic plates, plates that were now distorted and pockmarked. Dead slugs made grooves around my neck. I managed to catch Belkev's eyes. They weren't even in the dungeon. They were back in Berlin, back watching the jiggling bodies of the German prisoners he had mutilated beyond recognition. The submachine gun wasn't going to wander again. Blow after blow smashed against me, further bending the plates, threatening to penetrate them.

  I managed to keep from falling. Then I realized that he was no longer going for my face. The fine of bullets were ripping right down the center of the vest, traveling down past my chest to my stomach and parts below. Because the vest had been made for Belkev's girth, it nearly covered me to the groin. That was exactly what Belkev had noticed and that was exactly how he was going to put an end to Nick Carter; no orders from above could stop him now from reliving his greatest triumph. The slugs were already pelting against the lower edge of the battered vest. I knew there was no more protection — and no more hope.

  Belkev lowered the barrel the last significant inch, aiming it directly between my legs. His face was sweaty and gleaming. Nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger again. Then he ripped the magazine off.

  "It's empty. Get me another one!" he roared at the guard.

  The hypnotic spell that had built in the dungeon was broken. The ambassador shook his head bluntly. Even the bodyguards appeared sick from tension.

  "It will look very strange. It is one thing to borrow a gun," the guard said, "but to ask for more ammunition will make trouble."

  "Comrade, we must return to the reception," the ambassador chimed in. "We are gone too long already. It would be an insult if we are missing."

  "I'm not finished!" Belkev shouted.

  "Please, please, remember yourself, Comrade Belkev. You've proved your point. The vest works." The ambassador glanced at me and looked quickly away. I wondered what kind of a sight I made. "Now I must insist that we return. The Maoist bandits would make only too much of your absence. They are probably this moment trying to turn the president against you."

  The submachine gun fell from Belkev's hands to the stone floor. He shook himself and wiped the perspiration from his jowls with a handkerchief. Rosa started to come to me and the ambassador pushed her back into the grip of the bodyguards.

  "Come, comrade," the ambassador said soothingly. "Regain your self-control. Tell me, what did the president say to you in the reception line? Tell me all about it."

  He nodded to one of the bodyguards. The goon crossed the floor and stripped the vest off me.

  "Loathsome pig," he whispered as he left me manacled to the wall.

  If it was any consolation, I knew he wasn't talking about me.

  Chapter Five

  A pair of regular Army officers took me back to my hotel room in a curtained limousine. They fussed around me apologetically until I chased them out and attended to the job myself.

  My arms were crisscrossed with superficial cuts and there were some burns around my neck made by dying bullets. But the ugly part came when I looked at my chest and stomach. I looked as if I had been caught in a stampede. There were a hundred blackening bruises; I felt around tenderly for signs of broken ribs. I've seen a lot of badly mutilated bodies and for a fleeting moment I had an all-too-vivid picture of my own body, mutilated, had the vest failed. My stomach turned over.

  Belkev! If I could ever get my hands on him, he was going to be a dead Minister of Trade.

  A few shots of Scotch returned the circulation to my aching body. Every movement brought a new agony and a new reason for me to skin the Russian alive. I tried to sleep but without a pain killer, it was impossible and so I was wide awake when I saw the doorknob turn. Despite the protest from my bruised muscles, I slipped out of bed to the side of the door.

  A figure entered, holding a gun. My hand came down like an ax over the intruder's wrist and the gun flew across the floor. One arm went around his neck, cutting off his breath, and the other went around his torso to grab what I expected to be Comrade Belkev's corpulent chest.

  My hand had barely made contact when I knew I had the wrong man. In fact, it was not a man at all. I turned her around, my hand clamped over her mouth. It was Rosa.

  "You were supposed to finish me off?" I asked with some surprise.

  She shook her head negatively and I saw anger instead of fear. I took my hand away.

  "You are wrong about me again. I was worried about you. I slipped away from Alejandro when he got drunk and I was bringing this back to you."

  I turned the lights on and bent down to pick up the gun. It was empty. When I stood up, Rosa was pulling the long stiletto from its hiding place between her breasts. She turned it, handle out, and gave it to me.

  "Gracias."

  "Look at you, poor man. You should be in a hospital."

  Timidly she reached out to touch my chest and then drew her hand back quickly.

  "The beast!" she hissed and proceeded to further vehement appraisals of Belkev's character.

  "Well, we agree on that. Alex Belkev is not Albert Schweitzer."

  "What do you do now? Kill him?"

  She saw how much the thought tempted me. I shook my head.

  "Not this time. Tomorrow I return to the States."

  "Take me with you. Me and my sister."

  That suggestion made me blink.

  "It's not that I disagree with Fidel's revolution," she said hurriedly. "It's just that I am a dancer, not a militia woman. Remember the bandleader? I knew him from the time he used to
play at my father's place. There are hundreds of other people I know in New York. If I could just get there, I wouldn't be any trouble. I could work at night and keep house for you during the day."

  "I have a houseboy who does that right now. I think he'd resent the competition."

  "You won't take me?"

  "I can't. Maybe at another time."

  Some of the spirit seemed to leave her. I poured a fresh drink for myself and made one for her.

  "Where is Belkev right now?" I asked.

  "At a party. He thinks there is a wife of one of the ministers he can seduce. He is a lecher."

  It was spring in the United States. Here in Chile it was the start of fall. A cool breeze traveled the length of Bernardo O'Higgins Boulevard and wafted into the room. With a sigh Rosa finished her drink and put it down.

  "I have to go."

  "Don't. Stay here tonight."

  A smile broke through her melancholy.

  "I didn't think you'd be able to do anything in your present condition."

  "You forget. He ran out of bullets."

  "Yes, he did."

  Rosa was smiling broadly now. She crossed the room to the door, locked it and turned the fights out. In the gloom I heard her dress rustle to the floor and dimly saw her step out of the white haze of her panties.

  I lay back on the sheets as Rosa delicately straddled me. Her ripe breasts swayed and touched my chest soothingly as she leaned over to kiss me. Our mouths opened and we kissed deeply, our passion driving away the ugliness of the night. The discipline of dancing had given her body a unique muscular control and she was an erotic mixture of cool and warm, hard and soft.

  All the romance of Havana as it used to be was encompassed in Rosa's beauty and skill. My body felt no more pain. I had just that sort of enormous sexual hunger you have only when you're with a woman who you know can satisfy it. The entire nightmare of the Chilean mission was made worthwhile by knowing her that night.

  "Oh, señor," she shivered with delight.

  I held her satiny, olive hips as she sank down to meet me.

  "There's no Belkev now," I whispered. "No AXE, no KGB. Just us. You said you wanted to dance for me. Dance now."