by Nick Carter
“Ah, shaking the head was naughty, my little Luz,” a pleasant baritone voice said in Spanish. “Alonzo would not approve, I know. Tch!” Then something cannoned into Nick’s gut like a battering ram and doubled him into a groaning, puking heap. He clawed out with his hands and found a trousered leg which he tugged with all his might. There was a loud curse and a heavy masculine body sprawled on top of him.
“Tch, careless, Ernesto,” the pleasant voice clucked, and again there was that swoosh and the explosion in Nick’s head. But this time the coruscating lights inside his cranium blurred into one agonizing sheet of pain and then went out altogether.
He heard a man groaning and it took him a while to realize it was himself.
Nick kept his eyes closed and peered out from beneath the shutter of his lashes. He was in a room of almost sybaritic splendor compared with anything he had seen since leaving Washington. There were rugs, chairs, drapes, pictures, book-shelves; and there were three men whose forms were still a little blurred but who were rapidly becoming clearer. They all looked very much like himself, except that they had their fatigues on and he was in his underwear. And they were sitting comfortably in chairs, while he way lying on the floor with cord around his wrists and ankles.
There was a soft chuckle and the pleasant voice spoke gently.
“You can open your eyes, amigo. You have rested long enough.”
Nick opened them and shook the mists away. He was throbbing painfully in half a dozen places but nothing seemed to be broken. Except—he grunted suddenly as he tried to sit—maybe a rib or two. His eyes slowly swiveled around the room as he tested the cords that bound him. It was pleasantly feminine rather than luxurious, but it was spoiled by the three bearded men who were sprawled in the best of chairs.
“Where are the women?” Nick demanded.
The man in the middle, he of the pleasant baritone, laughed.
“What a time to think of women,” he said with mock reproach. “But you must not worry about them. They are . . . taken care of.”
“What do you mean, taken care of?” Nick made himself look outraged and alarmed. He was both, but not as much as he seemed. What he needed was time to clear his head and size things up.
“Oh, nothing terrible,” the man said easily. “A tap on the head for each, binding and gagging, things like that.” His smile widened. “It was not at all unpleasant, I assure you. All those lovely women!”
Nick’s eyes flicked around the room. Furniture. Rugs. No windows. One heavy door. Locked? Probably. No key in it, though.,
“All?” he asked vaguely, as though still stunned.
“But of course. It would have been most imprudent not to have immoblized them all.” He laughed. “Eight silent women, all together in one room! Is that not miraculous? And they are silent, I assure you.” His merry face suddenly became serious. “Of course, the little Luz does not feel too well. We followed her, as you must realize, when she came looking for a missing comrade of ours. And then the lovely Alva at the door was somewhat difficult about letting us come in, so I’m afraid we were forced to be a little rough with her. She will get better, probably. No doubt she will make a fine addition to our camp up in the hills.” He gave his merry little laugh again and groped in his pocket for a long Churchillian cigar. “Of course Luz did not take too kindly to our questioning, so there again we had to be persuasive. I am sure she had even more to tell us, but . . . um . . . our questioning of the lovely ladies led me to believe that we did not have too much time before company arrived. And here you are. How very nice. Welcome amigo.” He chuckled hugely and applied a match to his cigar.
“Enough of that, Hector,” one of the others growled. “Let me go back to headquarters and tell them where we are. Question the fellow—don’t tell him your life story!”
The man called Hector puffed succulently on his cigar.
“All in good time, Felix,” he said genially. “The more background we can give our friend, the more intelligently he can answer us. For instance, we must make sure he understands what we are likely to do to all his lady friends if he does not cooperate. To his leading lady in particular. What was her name again? Ah, yes. Paula. Delightful name. A wildcat, too. Delicious.”
“Paula,” Nick breathed, loathing the man. “What have you done to her?” He took a deep breath, as if fearing the worst, but it was a Yoga-trained breath exercise that sparked his lethargic system back to life.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Hector. “She is a little bruised, and now she sleeps. The rest will do her good.” He chuckled. “Eight women for our camp in the hills, if they all live. And Paula of the long and lovely legs will surely be the most . . . ah . . . popular. A fate worse than death, you think? Ah, no. You would not think so if you can begin to imagine the death we will prepare for them.” His bearded face suddenly hardened into an ugly mask. “So start imagining, my friend, and tell us why the Americans sent you here. And don’t try to continue with that fiction that you are a fellow Cuban. We know better than that. Ernesto here found certain tools in the supply room, so well-equipped by the ladies of the house, and he will use them on you if you do not sing the tune we want to hear. And if you are so fortunate as to faint, then remember before you slide into forgetfulness that there are eight women for us to play with before you all die.” He smiled benignly and looked across at Ernesto.
Ernesto, brawny and pig-eyed, was toying with his tools. They were simple—a hammer and a handful of sharp nails. Nick pictured them beneath the quicks of his fingertips and did not like the thought. Ernesto put his playthings on an inlaid coffee table and in doing so moved a low bowl to reveal Wilhelmina and Hugo. But Pierre wasn’t there.
Nick’s heart missed a beat and he cursed himself for his stupidity, for his dullwittedness. And at the same time he felt a surge of almost overwhelming relief. He remembered what he had done with Pierre, and he remembered when he had done it. It was when they had stopped for a five-minute break in the long drive and he had strolled off to commune with nature—or so he’d said to Paula. He shifted his legs experimentally. Yes, Pierre was there.
“You can forget your threats,” he said harshly. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, and more than you want. And I’ll start with this. I was not sent by the Americans—”
“Oh, no, my friend,” said Hector. “That is not the way you start. Not by lying. You tell us exactly why you are here, what you have found out, and where the rest of your people are. Because we know that you are the advance man of an entire force. Now please talk nicely, or Ernesto will get itchy fingers.”
“Stop that silly babbling,” Nick said roughly. “Listen if you want to, and go fry in hell if you don’t. The Americans refused to send anyone. Why? Because they thought it was a fool’s errand, and maybe they were right. And how do I know? Because it’s my business to know things like that. That’s what the Chicoms pay me for. And they’re not too damned happy with you right now. Want to know why your pal Alonzo didn’t come back? Because they caught him spying.” His mind raced ahead of his words, remembering what Evita had said about Tsing-fu doubting the Fidelistas, putting together the little he had learned, padding it with a lot that he had guessed. He let it all pour out with a sort of sullen arrogance, as of a man who knows his own bosses are more powerful than the men who have entrapped him. “And you know what they did to him, of course, don’t you?” he went on. “Maybe now you can do a little imagining. And don’t think you’ll gain anything by killing me in return. I’m useful to them and that’s a whole lot more than you are. You’ve made enough trouble already by sending your snoop after them.”
Hector fixed him with a piercing, beetle-browed look.
“Are you trying to tell me,” he demanded, “that you are a mercenary in the pay of the Chinese? Do you think I am a fool, to believe that kind of cock-and-bull story?”
“You’re a fool if you don’t. You’d better believe it, or you’ll end up ripped to pieces like Alonzo Escobar.” Nick caught his sto
mach suddenly and groaned. “Goddamn, which of your donkeys kicked me in the gut?. I’ll screw his nuts off him, myself! Now what the hell was the idea of sending a spy after Tsing-fu?”
“We did not send him,” Hector said through his teeth, “and we are the ones who are asking you the questions.”
“Maybe you are,” said Nick, trying to sound like a gambler with a whole sleeveful of aces, “but you’d better give with some answers or you’ll find your comrades getting even less comradely. Why did you send—?”
“We did not send him! He rushed off to them without our knowledge, I tell you. The only thing he said was that the girl Luz had given him a lead. He didn’t think it was much, but he was going to follow it up. Now of course we know from her what she told him—that a force of Americans was to land at Cap St. Michel on the 13th at one a.m.” Hector glared bale-fully at Nick. His two companions looked bored; Ernesto kept glancing hopefully at the nails. “Now be good enough to explain how the girl had such specific information when, as you say, the Americans refused to send anyone at all. And how you happened to turn up at this very opportune time.”
Nick sighed tiredly and shifted his position on the floor, taking the opportunity to flex his muscles against the cords at his wrists and ankles. It seemed to him that his hands now had slightly freer play than before. He went on maneuvering them imperceptibly as he spoke.
“How stupid can you get?” he said. “Can’t you see that the girl fell for planted information? It was the same with the girl Paula. I had instructions to find out about The Terrible Ones, so naturally I made use of their approach to the Americans. Too bad your Alonzo decided to horn in. Too bad that he decided to follow Tsing-fu back to the Castle. And you’d better work pretty hard to convince them that you didn’t send him, because right now they don’t believe you. They don’t like being spied upon, and they don’t like the kind of cooperation you’re giving them. Tsing-fu’s very much concerned that you Cubans are going to endanger their Operation Blast if you go on like this. So if you know what’s good for you you’ll get this rope off me—”
“Their Operation Blast?” Hector rose from his chair and shook his fist. “Theirs! It was Fidel’s idea from the start and they were the ones who promised to help us. We got them here, we helped them organize their ammunition caches, we told him about the treasure that would finance it. They came in here as advisers and now they’re trying to run the whole show—just as if they were Americans! And then they go off to Haiti without even telling us. First thing we know about it is when they radio us to say that Escobar is dead. And they talk about cooperation? They talk about endangering Blast? I tell you, we would have been far better off to go on hunting the treasure for yourselves!”
“You!” Nick laughed, but he was cheering silently inside.
The man was a bonanza of information. “You don’t even have any of the treasure clues, do you? Do you? Or have you been holding them back?”
“Holding back!” Hector spat the words through his teeth. “Madre de Dios, if we had the clues we would have the treasure and the hell with the Chinese and their lies. Even Operation Blast, we can handle without them.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Nick said easily. “Things have changed. I don’t think Blast is any longer what you think it is.”
“Ah, is that so? What is it, then?” Hector glowered at him.
“You let me loose and I’ll tell you. You tell me your version, I’ll tell you mine. Then we can have a good laugh together.”
Hector stood absolutely still, staring down at him.
“So, laugh together, is it?” he said finally. “I am to let you loose while we chat about Blast, and I tell you all I know about it. Oh, no, my friend. It strikes me—belatedly, I must admit, but it does strike me—that you have been worming information out of me even while you lie there. Yes, and lie is the word! Now there will be no more lies, do you understand?” His advance toward Nick was slow and menacing. “Ernesto is ready with his treatment, and so am I with mine. Felix in the meantime can go and start enjoying himself with the girls unless you let us have the truth immediately. Tell me first—what was that you were saying about a castle?”
“What castle?” Nick said innocently, cursing himself for having overstepped the line too soon, and giving another twist to the cords at his wrist.
“Yes, exactly—what castle?” Hector roared, and slammed a brutal kick into Nick’s abdomen.
Nick grunted with pain and doubled up, clutching his gut with his bound hands and hiding their movement with his body. It would look a bit queer to be seen playing with himself at a time like this, he reflected as his probing fingers slid under his shorts and detached Pierre from his temporary hiding place, but to be thought peculiar was the least of his worries.
“Sit up, you!” Again the kick, but this time it was a lighter blow to prod him up.
Nick spat out a curse and sat up, still clutching at his gut. Pierre lay nestled in his hands. If he could just stall for long enough to find out about Operation Blast—
“Ernesto! Come here with the nails. You, you lying swine, stretch out your hands.”
Hell! No time to stall. Pierre would have to do his bit at once. Nick moaned and surreptitiously slid his fingers around the little pellet. Hector reached down and made a savage grab for Nick’s fumbling hands. Nick tore them from Hector’s grasp, balled them into one iron-hard double fist that still enclosed Pierre, and struck viciously upward at the Cuban’s windpipe. Hector lurched backward with an oddly high-pitched yelp and Nick scrambled to his feet. Ernesto was coming at him with the hammer poised to strike.
Nick leapt sideways and ducked the flying blow. His fingers twisted at the gas pellet’s smooth surface and a tiny mechanism clicked. He took one deep breath as Felix slammed his way between the other two and kicked his feet out from under him, and as he fell he gave one more twist to the tiny capsule and threw it straight at Hector.
It bounced off the dull green-gray fatigues and clattered to the floor.
"Ho, what is that?” roared Hector. “Felix, pick it up. Ernesto, bring more cord. We’ll truss this fellow like the pig he is!” He threw himself at Nick and caught him in a bearhug that clamped his arms tight against his body and almost squeezed the breath from him. Nick held grimly onto the life source in his lungs. He knew he could last for up to four minutes without inhaling, but the bearhug made it difficult.
“There is no more cord,” said Ernesto. “I will have to go back to the supply room.”
“Go then, and hurry!” Hector snarled.
Nick’s heart sank. If Ernesto left now he, at least, would be safe, maybe even well enough to help the others.
“Pah, this is nothing but a little metal,” said Felix holding Pierre up and sniffing at him.
One down for sure, thought Nick.
“Hurry, I said!”
“I cannot find the key. You must have it in your pocket.”
“Bah! Everything is always left for me to do.” Hector released Nick momentarily and fumbled in his pocket. “Here—”
A look of vast surprise crossed Hector’s face. “It is—very close in here.” He rocked back on his haunches and stared at his two men. They stood swaying like trees that had been axed but had yet to fall. The silent tableau lasted for seconds that seemed like aeons to Nick. He rolled away from Hector and saw the man make a clumsy move toward him. The move was useless; Hector gasped suddenly and clawed his throat. Felix gave a strangled cry and sprawled on top of him.
Nick bounced to his feet and hopped awkwardly toward the table where Hugo and Wilhelmina lay. Two minutes left, he thought. Maybe a little more. His lungs already felt uncomfortably full. Ernesto stared at him, astonished, and reached slow-motion for his shoulder holster. Then his knees melted and he dropped.
Pierre had done his job.
Nick bounded clumsily to a stop, like the winner of a sack race, and grasped his stiletto by its slender haft. Awkwardly, he brought the blade between his wrists and worke
d it back and forth in a series of swift, sawing jerks. The long seconds passed. Then a thick strand parted and Nick wrenched mightily. His body begged for breath; but his hands, at least were free. He bent swiftly and slashed at the cords binding his feet.
Less than a minute to go—much less. He was slow after the physical abuse of the last two days and his staying power wasn’t up to par, and he began to doubt whether he could make it. The hell with this! he told himself. Just get the key and go!
The cords parted suddenly. He kicked them aside and dived for Hector’s body. The key—God, where was the Key? He was almost gasping when he found it, and he could not afford to gasp. The gas was thick and heavy in the air.
He grabbed the key and ran toward the door. His clothes! He glanced frantically around, saw them, grabbed them, saw his back pack, scooped it up, suddenly remembered Wilhelmina, ran back for her, and then realized through the red, bursting haze in his head that he was acting like a maniac. He fought for control and made himself put the key into the lock with all the care of a drunk who knows his wife is waiting up for him, and to his enormous relief it clicked back easily. He tore the door open, flung himself out, and slammed it shut behind him.
An explosive rush of sound burst from his lungs as he caromed against a wall and staggered back, rubber-legged and dazed. Red haze still swam before his eyes as he drew in huge gulps of air and peered shortsightedly around him. His vision cleared a little and he saw that he was in a dimly lit passage, so dimly lit that he could see a crack of light coming from beneath the door. A crack of light! He forced his frantic breathing to slow down, and he quickly knelt to stuff his shirt and trousers into the gap to entrap Pierre’s seeping fumes. Then he rose, trotted unsteadily to the end of the passage and the head of a stairway, and really breathed.
The Chinese Dragon was closed for the night, but it was not quite empty, nor was it quite unguarded. A pencil flashlight probed into its dark corners, and a jeep stood parked in the back alley outside; its driver armed and alert.
