by Nick Carter
He let her out the back door. The rain had stopped but it was still misty and dank. She was again wearing the black denims and the rubber shoes. He had examined her wrist and found it was not broken, only badly bruised and strained. She was wearing the wrist strap.
As she was about to slip out into the mist she hesitated. "The girl who lives here — you are not going to kill her?"
"No, of course not. It will not be necessary. But I must protect her if I can. I plan to stage a fake robbery and leave her tied up. That will cover our tracks a little and might even fool Jim Pok."
"I doubt that."
"So do I," said Nick dryly. "But it's the best I can think of. Why do you worry about her?"
"I don't, really. But if she is innocent in all this I would not like to see her hurt."
"Nor would I. I will do my best. And Swee Lo is a type who knows how to take care of herself. Now go."
She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Her lips were as sweet as lotus buds. "Yat low sun fong."
"And your road also," said Nick. He closed the door and went back to the foyer to wait for Swee Lo.
As he waited he pondered, a bit uneasy. He was going to have to put himself into deep trance, the Yoga pratyahara which induces a semblance of death. He had never done it before. It was, as he had told the girl, a hell of a gamble. He was going to sleep and, if the luck went against him, he would never wake up.
Chapter 10
The Walking Corpse
His brain came awake before the rest of his body. He was immediately conscious of the mouth. The mouth and the bellows. A soft, red, disembodied mouth on his own. A panting bellows pumping hot sweet air into him. Crazy! He must still be in trance, though you were not supposed to dream in a Yoga trance. They were wrong, then. His old guru had been wrong. Because he was surely dreaming this hot panting mouth and this bellows.
Nick Carter opened his eyes. He felt the touch of light rain on his face. A jagged stone pressed into his back and his fingers, as the afferent nerves came slowly back to life, could feel pine needles. His mind began to catalog the stimuli: he was alive, he was in open country, it was raining, it was dark — and someone was kissing him!
It all came flooding back. He was alive! It had worked. He had come across the border in a coffin, in a freight car with a score of other coffins, all containing Chinese going back to rest in their native province. But why the kissing? It was pleasant, but why? This was a hell of a time for kissing! And the hot bellows pumping him up — was he, after all, a prisoner? Was this some new Chinese torture, subtle and devious?
Nick put up a hand and felt a softness. A woman's breast. She was lying on him, her mouth glued to his, breathing into him. He pushed her away gently and sat up. "I'm all right."
"Thank God! I was so frightened. I thought you were really dead. I didn't know what to do, so when I got you out of the village I tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I didn't really think it would work. I, oh, I don't know what I thought!" She began to laugh harshly and he heard the beginnings of hysteria.
Nick slapped her gently across the face. She recoiled, then stopped laughing and, still on her knees, regarded him. One hand nursed the cheek he had slapped. "You did look dead, you know! They opened the coffin at the border."
"Christ!"
She laughed again, still nervous but now with a sane note in her voice. "I thought I would die too! But you fooled them. You fooled everybody. You looked so dead!"
Nick got to his feet and stretched. His big muscles were stiff and sore with returning life. "That pratyahara really works," he said. "How it works. I feel like I've been dead. Where are we?"
"A few miles south of Camphor Head Junction. I could not pull you any farther, and I remembered this place." She pointed to a small cliff face behind Nick. They were in a dense thicket of bamboo and giant banyan. "There is a little cave there, and a stream nearby. But I do not think we should stay here. It is too close to the road and there are soldiers everywhere. Regulars and the militia and even tanks. I think it is now certain that one of the couriers talked before he died, and they know the general is somewhere around here. It is only a matter of time until they find the temple."
As if to prove her words Nick heard a growl of trucks from the road. He peered through bamboo and saw their fights, at least a dozen of them in convoy, heading south.
"You're right. We'd best be on our way. Where's the coffin?"
She pointed. "Over there. I couldn't lift you so I had to push it off the cart. It broke open and I hauled you out."
He patted her arm. "Good girl. You've done a swell job, Fan Su. I think we're going to make it. But we'll talk later. Right now we move!"
From a false bottom in the coffin he recovered his weapons, along with some clothing, a map, a compass, and a flat box containing a first aid kit. The false bottom had been Fan Su's idea, and Nick admitted it was a good one. Better than bringing the things over in an oxcart. If the border guards went so far as to search the coffin for a false bottom the game was blown to hell anyway.
Near the shattered coffin was the two-wheeled cart with long shafts on which she had transported him from the train station. Nick found the stream and plunged his face into the chill water, washing off the corpse paint, while she drank and told him how it had been at the station.
Fan Su was inclined to make light of it, but now and then he could detect a tremor in her voice. He wondered just how long she could hold out under the strain. Hopefully until they got the general over the border, but Nick knew he could not count on it.
"It was really very easy," she concluded now. "The papers were in order and the real search is always made at the border, so the militia are careless and lazy. I waited until just after dark, when the lights are poor. They paid hardly any attention to me. I rubbed filth on my face and in my hair, and I shambled and whined. You were on the platform with two other coffins. I had to give some young lout five Hong Kong dollars to help me load you on the cart. Then I came away. No one paid any attention. The people are all frightened and staying indoors. It has been very easy until now."
Nick was strapping the stiletto sheath on his arm and putting the Luger in its plastic holster in his belt. He had shucked off the grave clothes and now wore a quilted suit and a mangy dogskin cap. At a distance he just might pass muster for Chinese — a very big and thick Chinese — but in a close-up he was dead. Literally.
He went into a little copse of pine to relieve himself and adjust the gas bomb, Pierre, between his legs. He heard Fan Su go into the underbrush in the opposite direction. When he got back he found her washing her face in the stream. Nick had pondered well and now he made a decision. He told her who he was and who he worked for. The bare essentials, all she needed to know to understand and trust him.
The girl stared at him, her great brown eyes awe-stricken. "Y-you're really the Nick Carter! Of the AXE, of the murder organization?"
"We're much maligned," Nick replied with a grim chuckle. "By our enemies. We're not murderers, you know. Only executioners. We operate by sort of a golden rule, you might say — we do unto others before they can do unto us!"
He added, "This is strictly between us, you understand. You will call me Nick — nothing else. When this is over you will forget that you ever saw me, and I have told you nothing. Understood?"
Su had dried her face on her sleeve. Now she combed her tangled dark hair with her fingers. "Understood, Nick. But it will not be easy — to forget such a man as you. But I promise to try."
Nick pulled her into his arms and kissed her lightly. She clung to him, her arms about his neck and her slim body pliant against the massiveness of his bone and sinew. "There will be a little time for us," he whispered. "Later, when this is over, Su."
He pushed her gently away. "And now, MacDuff, lead on. I want to be within yelling distance of that temple by dawn."
It was a night to remember. Even his great strength was taxed; he was never to understand how the girl mana
ged to endure. The trek was a nightmare plotted in Hell. After the first hour neither had wind to spare for talk. Nick followed and she led, doggedly, stumbling and falling. Sometimes Nick would carry her for a mile or so, until she insisted on being put down.
They did not dare use the Hengkang road. It was alive with troops and trucks and occasionally they heard the sinister roar of tanks moving. They tried to parallel the road, a thousand yards to the west, and were soon into a morass of paddy fields, dykes, and ditches knee drop in gumbo mud. The miserable thin drizzle continued without letup. There was no hint of moon and the sky was a dank black smothering blanket. Nick marveled at Su's ability to keep her bearings.
During a brief rest stop she explained. "I was born near here," she panted. "In Waichow. I grew up in this country — until I went to live with my grandparents in the States and go to college."
Nick pulled his face out of the mud to inquire the name of her college.
"Bennington. In Vermont. Do you know of it?"
"I know it" Once, long ago, he had known a sweet little maiden from Bennington. Maiden, he remembered now, had been the operative word. The muck on his face cracked as he smiled. Odd to think of that now!
The helicopters came over just as they were about to leave the ditch. They flattened in the mire again and listened to the cycling swash-swash of the rotors as the craft passed directly over them, very low, their choppers beating the rain and mist into a pudding.
"Until now," Nick said, "I've been cussing the rain and fog. Now I hope it lasts all day. I must be slipping — I hadn't counted on 'copters."
Su was lying in his arms for warmth. She nodded against his chest. "There's a pad near the border. They'll be out again as soon as it clears."
They went on. Soon the girl led the way from the road and they began to skirt, or climb, a succession of small peaks, and scramble through a series of deep narrow ravines. Once Nick slipped on shale, nearly turned his ankle, and swore with feeling and great artistry. Su put her finger to her lips. "We must be more silent. This mist cuts two ways, Nick. We can't see them either. If we stumble on a sentry post it will be bad."
"For them," he told her grimly. But she was right. After that he cursed under his breath.
They began to climb steadily. They reached a plateau studded with pines, camphors and cedars. The sparse grass underfoot had already been winter killed. Here and there boulders clustered in grotesque formation. They halted for another breather, snuggling together in a shallow cave formed by two arching rocks.
Su was trembling with cold. He held her close. "We must be extra careful from here on," she said. "Not only of patrols. There are wolves around here, and wild boar and, from what I hear, a lot of bandits."
"Bandits?" He laughed harshly. "I thought the great government in Peking had cleared out all the bandits. But maybe that's good. Can you use them in this Undertong of yours?"
"No. They are not reliable. Most of them are not really bandits anyway, just men who can't get across the border. Or who have escaped and been sent back and then escaped again from the Chicoms. They never stop trying to get to Hong Kong."
N3 said that it was indeed a hell of a Paradise — no pun intended — when you had to build walls to keep people in instead of out.
When it was time to move on he said, "How far to the temple now? It can't be long until dawn." Neither of them had a watch. Such a luxury might easily give them away.
Fan Su got up with a little groan, arching her back and chafing her arms. "Not far now. Perhaps two miles. We will come to a steep cliff, where this plateau ends, and the temple is below in a valley." She forced a little laugh. "We will not be able to see it, though, in this — this smog! It is worse than Los Angeles." "You have lived there too?"
"I have lived many places, Nick. I will live in more — so long as I live and do this work. That will be all my life, or until China is free."
And that, Killmaster thought a little sadly, will probably be all your life. The way things were going. Chiang, little better than an ex-bandit and warlord himself, and now a burst bladder, would never make it back to the mainland without U.S. help. Washington wasn't about to get bogged down in a land war in the Land of Chin. Vietnam was trouble enough. He stroked her mudcaked hair, which somehow still smelled fresh, and gave her a hug.
Come on. The sooner we get your general out the sooner you can start planning the invasion."
She studied his face in the first faint pallor of dawn. "You are laughing at me! You think I am a hopeless amateur?"
"I don't. You've been terrific, Su. We wouldn't be here now without you. But from now on things are going to get rough. Really rough. Come on."
The weather turned perversely cruel. As they gained the rim of the plateau the rain ceased and the clouds began to move out with amazing rapidity. Nick cursed the weather gods fiercely and without regard for syntax or grammar.
"Rains and fogs all night, when we don't need it, and now it clears! Now! Those goddamned 'copters will be buzzing around like bees all day."
They had taken cover in a dense growth of wet bracken near the rim. The deep ravine below them was still filled with writhing and coiling white mist, clinging to ridges and boulders like lost ghosts. It reminded Nick of one of Dante's minor pits.
"We'll be in the temple," Fan Su said. "They can't spot us there."
"We'll also be immobile and helpless," Nick said grimly. "That won't do. We've got to stay mobile. I've got to be able to prowl and figure a way out. How far would you say it is from the temple to the border?"
"Maybe five miles."
His laugh was curt and cold. "That's liable to be the longest five miles of our fives, honey."
She tugged at his arm. "You may be right. So let's start. I can find my way down to the temple easily enough now. The path is slippery and dangerous but I know it well. Why do you wait?"
He pulled her down. "Because I want to be sure that everything is all right down there. We'll wait until the mist clears and we can see the temple. Suppose they've already found your general. You think they would broadcast it? No. They'd wait, set a trap, knowing someone would come for him. They want all they can get, those bastards. They'd love to smash your Undertong! And you would help them, sweetheart, after they'd worked on you for a time. You would tell them everything. Believe me."
She settled down in the bracken beside him He felt her shiver. "Yes," she admitted, "you are right. It could be a trap. I'm sorry, Nick. I am not a professional like you.
He squeezed her knee. "No. But you'll do until one comes along, honey.
She crept into his arms and he kissed her Gently As near to tenderness as he could come. When he felt his body beginning to conquer his mind he put her away from him. Time enough for that later, he thought.
If they made it.
Chapter 11
The General
Nick Carter cleared a little circle of earth and thrust a stick upright to make a crude sundial. Reckoning the time of year, and the latitude, it was after nine before the mist lifted sufficiently for them to see the temple. They lay burrowed deep in the bracken while Nick studied the scene. It was still cloudy and dark to the west, but in the east a weak sun was struggling through the overcast. The helicopters would be buzzing around soon.
The temple was small, built of dirt-colored brick and stone, and stood about halfway through the valley which ran from east to west. They were on the northern rim. A narrow rocky path, wide enough for oxcarts, ran through the ravine. The temple stood back from this path in a large clearing fringed by bamboo and long untended banana and tangerine trees. The rear of the temple was apparently set into the hill behind it, which was covered with upward marching conifers. There was no sign of life in the little valley or around the temple itself.
Fan Su explained that the temple had been forsaken for nearly a hundred years. "The people around here think it has been taken over by evil spirits. The priests were unable to exorcise the spirits, so the people moved away. None of
the villagers or farmers will go near the temple."
"That helps," Nick acknowledged. "We won't have to worry about snoopers. I doubt that it will stop the Chicoms, though."
A dog barked somewhere to his right, to the west, and he heard a ragged cacophony of geese disturbed. He looked askance at Fan Su.
"A little village there. A hamlet, really. About ten houses, I think. There is a tavern and a brothel also. The soldiers use them sometimes. No great danger to us. The villagers do not come near the temple."
Nick filed the information away. Where there was a tavern, and a brothel, there would be soldiers. Naturally. Might be bad. Or it might be good.
He stood up and brushed earth and twigs from his clothes. "Let's go, then. It's probably as clear as it will ever be. We'll just amble down the path to the temple. I'll use a stick and pretend to be old and crippled. You lead me. If we are observed maybe we can pass as a couple of beggars, or someone on the lam from the Chicoms."
"Lam?"
He grinned and winked at her. "They neglected your education at Bennington. Come on."
But as she started to rise he pushed her down again. His ears, incredibly acute, heard it long before she did. They burrowed in the bracken again and Nick pulled some of the stringy, still damp foliage over them. "Don't move," he warned. "Don't look up, whatever you do. Bury your face. I think our clothes are cruddy and muddy enough to get us by, but don't move!" Movement was the deadly betrayer.
The helicopter, like a whirring moth with faint sunlight burnishing its body, came chop-chopping in from the south. It was very low. Nick reckoned the altitude at about a hundred feet. Damn!
The helicopter buzzed down the little valley. Nick dared not look, but he could figure it well enough. The damned thing was hovering over the temple. If it landed, if they searched the temple now, the jig was up. He would just have to ditch the mission and try to get back to Hong Kong.
