Eighth Card Stud

by Nick Carter

* * *

  The dark hampered them more than it did me. I heard the vibrations of their feet pounding heavily as they pursued ghosts through the concrete tunnels. Finally, scared of shooting each other and deciding that, although it made them prime targets, the need for light outweighed other concerns, they began coming and going, flashlights and machine guns held out in front of their bodies. I allowed two patrols to pass by. When the third man, alone, passed my position, Hugo drank deeply of his blood.

  Only the strangling noise could be heard, then total silence. I carefully pulled the body back into the side tunnel, making sure that none of the others heard. I hefted the Heckler and Koch machine gun, admiring the lightness and versatility. I judged where the other patrol would be along the tunnel, then opened up with ear-splitting reverberations.

  One quick burst was all I took time for. I ducked back and waited. The survivors of the patrol began shooting behind them — at nothing. The bullets ricocheted down the tunnel and found targets in their own men. I smiled. Let them waste their bullets — and each other. As long as I stayed in the side tunnel, I remained relatively safe.

  I searched the body of the man I'd just killed. I lifted a small automatic from his pocket. In the dimness it appeared to be a Beretta Model 90. It added a little to my firepower when I tackled Madame Lin directly. Deciding the firefight couldn't continue much longer without more encitement, I flopped forward on my belly and worked the machine gun toward the edge and fired a few quick rounds in both directions. The immediate response from both sides was admirable.

  When the last bullet finished echoing down the tunnel, I began crawling in the direction I had come. The darkness again aided me. I fired twice, bringing death rattles from the throats of my targets both times.

  I duck-walked into the junction of the tunnels, taking the time to pick up a fallen flashlight and check in both directions. A few dead bodies littered the way to the left, but other than this grim signpost, I made out no difference in the directions. I began a cautious advance, sure that Madame Lin must have gotten her men under control by now.

  My sixth sense warned me of the presence of others a few seconds before I passed the mouth of the tunnel. I took a small piece of string, fastened it around the trigger of my machine gun, then tossed the weapon from me. As the string tightened, the gun chattered madly, spewing leaden death in all directions. The crossfire told me exactly where my would-be ambushers were.

  And that's where they both died.

  I put Wilhelmina into my holster and picked up another fallen pistol, feeling like and Wild West gunfighter. I continued straight ahead on the idea that those men were protecting this approach. My hunch paid off. A small rectangle of yellowish light appeared ahead. I moved more carefully now, sure that more guards would be posted. I was right.

  A pair stood at port arms on either side of the doorway. A problem. I could shoot them, but that would further alert the people in the room. I guessed this was Madame Lin's ultimate lair. Find her and I'd recover the laser switching device, Marta Burlison, and my pride.

  A bold approach appealed to me.

  Strutting like the cock of the walk, I shoved back my shoulders and swung my arms in exaggerated arcs until I came between the two guards. Both leveled their guns at me.

  "I want to see Madame Lin," I announced.

  "We got orders not to let nobody pass until she says," the one on the left told me.

  "Who…?" began the one on the right.

  That was as far as I let him get. My foot snapped out and crushed into his groin. I saw his eyes widen in surprise and pain before he passed out. I quickly recovered my balance and punched powerfully to the other guard's throat. I connected squarely with his Adam's apple, but pain lanced up my arm. I had forgotten the burns on the backs of my hands. Wincing with the agony, I delivered a second blow with the palm of my hand straight for the tip of his nose. Done properly, this drives the cartilege of the nose directly into the brain. Death isn't always instantaneous, but it was this time.

  I cut the first man's throat, wiping Hugo clean on his sleeve, then resheathed my knife and pulled out two of the captured automatics. Making sure that bullets rested in the chambers and both weapons were ready for action, I spun and aimed into the room.

  The level of lighting was low, but the fighting in the tunnels had been done in almost complete darkness. I squinted, one gun going to cover Edward George and the other trained squarely on Madame Lin. The scientist yelped as if he had sat on an anthill. Madame Lin's sole expression of surprise consisted of a slightly raised eyebrow.

  "So, Mr. Carter, you still live. Astonishing. It is not often I underestimate my opposition so much. You are most resourceful. My opinion of AXE increases daily."

  "Glad to hear it," I said dryly. "You know what I want."

  "Perhaps we can come to an agreement, Mr. Carter," the Oriental said. My gunsights remained centered on her torso as she moved slowly around the room. I continually glanced back and forth between her and Edward George. The scientist wasn't taking this very well. He must have thought I had nine lives like a cat.

  "Why should I barter?" I asked. "I have the upper hand."

  "Now," she agreed, her voice lilting and lyrical, almost mocking. I tried not to allow myself to become hypnotized by the woman.

  "I may lose it later," I conceded, "but that won't matter to you. I'll see to that."

  "You are so vindictive. I assure you that I bear you no personal animosity."

  "Just business as usual for you, Madame Lin," I said bitterly. "That'll come to a stop right now." My finger tightened on the automatic's trigger. She had nerves of steel. Madame Lin never changed expression although she must have read death in my face.

  Edward George distracted me at the crucial instant. He dove, his body level with the concrete floor. I felt the adrenaline pumping through my body. The scene moved in slow motion, but I couldn't force my own reactions to move even at normal speed. My right hand tracked George's progress as my finger closed on the trigger. An ear-splitting roar sounded and the heavy automatic bucked upward in my hand. The bullet creased the back of the man's head, sending a shower of blood and hair into the air. But he still lived. Dead men don't thrash and moan like that.

  "The switching device, N3," said Madame Lin levelly. She held the black box above her head, ready to smash it.

  "That won't matter," I said. "I can't let you get away."

  "Are you so sure the schematics for this device are safe? Dr. George destroyed them before stealing the switching device. Your vaunted laser cannon will be useless if I smash this prototype."

  I didn't hesitate an instant. "It doesn't matter. Even if I believed you — and I don't — I'd still have to stop you here and now." The muzzle of the pistol in my left hand rose and sighted between the woman's eyes. She still refused to show fear. I had to admire her self-control even as I felt burning hatred for her and her torturing ways.

  "Did you lie to me, doctor?" she asked of George. I should have been more wary of a trick. As my eyes went to the prone scientist, Madame Lin made her move. The woman threw the black box into my left hand, causing me to fire off-target. She vanished down one of the side corridors.

  The laser switching device lay at my feet, but the fraction of a second it look me to mentally check that off allowed Edward George to pull Marta Burlison around in front of him as a human shield. I had hardly noticed the woman was in the room, so intent had I been on Madame Lin and the laser switching device.

  "Okay, Carter, drop the guns or I'll kill her," he threatened. His arm circled her neck. His other hand pressed firmly into the back of her head. With a sudden jerk he could break her neck.

  "What do you hope to gain from this?"

  "Freedom. And the money she said she'd pay me."

  "I have the switching device," I said, nudging it with my foot but keeping my attention focused on the man. Marta's eyes widened with horror, but the gag in her mouth prevented her from crying out.

  "You just
think you do," sneered George. Something in the man's tone alerted me.

  "What do you mean?"

  "That one's a fake. Why else do you think she still has me around? I've got the switching device hidden outside."

  "Where?"

  "That'd be telling. But check out the box. It's empty."

  I stooped and picked up the box. My fingers slid back one corner of crackled black metal plate. I peered inside. The box was empty.

  "I'm leaving now," the scientist said, edging toward the same tunnel Madame Lin had taken, keeping Malta's body between his and the barrels of my guns.

  "I don't think so, doctor," I said, my words drip ping ice water. "You've been watching too many movies. The human shield routine doesn't work."

  "What do you mean by that?" he asked, his arm tightening visibly on the slender neck.

  "Think it through. If she's dead, she's no good to you. So you can't kill her while I'm standing here with a gun. The gun is what gives me the edge. I have a job to do and that's preventing the laser switching device from falling into foreign hands. It says nothing about preserving life, even hers."

  "You're in love with her. You wouldn't risk her life."

  The words stung because they were close to the truth. I leveled the gun at George's head, saying, "Goodbye, Dr. George. You should have learned the rules to this game before you got in over your head."

  I fired.

  The sound in the small chamber deafened me. I watched Marta and Edward George slump down. I went over and pulled her free of his limp grip. She had fainted or perhaps been knocked out by the close passage of the bullet along her head. A cursory examination showed a shallow furrow bleeding profusely where the slug had raced on its way through to George's right eye. The bullet's punch had been decreased enough so that it had failed to exit the back of the man's head. It had bounced around inside his skull, scrambling his brains.

  He was very dead.

  "Are you alright?" I asked, shaking the woman. She moaned but gave no other sign of regaining consciousness. I didn't have time to waste. I pinched her earlob until a tiny crescent of blood bubbled out. The pain brought her around.

  "Nick," she said weakly. "You… you shot me!"

  "I shot him. I just grazed you. You're going to be alright. Maybe a slight concussion, but nothing serious."

  "He's dead?"

  "Yes," I said solemnly. "Now, do you know where the laser switch is? This one's a fake. George hid the prototype while he was dealing with Madame Lin." I had to shake Marta to bring her attention back to the problem at hand. She kept trying to look behind her at the fallen scientist's body.

  "I… don't know," she said, her voice distant and vague. "He had the real one in his car when he brought me here. She… Madame Lin promised me to him!" Marta shrieked hysterically. "Like I was a slave or something. She gave me to him!"

  "His car," I demanded, shaking her even harder. "Where did he leave it?"

  "Down that way. A long way," she said, gesturing toward the tunnel Madame Lin had taken. I felt a coldness spreading through me. If the Oriental woman had had enough time, she could have found find the real switching device and be on her way by now. The momentary picture of the entire laser cannon project failing flashed in front of my eyes.

  War. ICBMs arching over the pole, causing megadeaths throughout the world. A holocaust unknown in history.

  I pulled Marta to her feet and started down the tunnel. Time was running out for us — and for the world.

  Chapter Twelve

  "Hurry," I cried, tugging hard at Malta's arm. "We've got to leave here. Right now!" Those proved the magical words to get her into motion. I had no idea what tortures Madame Lin had promised her — or delivered — nor did I care right now. Just getting Marta free was an added bonus, but it would be a hollow victory if I didn't recover that laser switching device.

  "Wait," she said, dragging her heels and stopping me. "She has guards down there. Lots of them. All with machine guns."

  "So we go through them," I said. I got her moving again. We went into the darkness of the tunnel. The only difference between this concrete cavern and the others I'd so recently fought in was the damp wind blowing in my face. The ocean crashed and beat against the shoreline not too far in the distance. This added energy to my flagging body. The rigors of the past few hours had begun to take a toll on my stamina.

  I had only determination to run on now.

  I heard the slide of a machine gun snicking closed and reacted before the man could fire his weapon. I emptied the automatic in my left hand in the direction of the sound. Not content with that, I fired several more times with the gun in my right. A faint sliding noise assured me I had scored a direct hit. I almost tripped over the body when I came to it in the tunnel. I dropped the pistol in my left hand and searched the body for a replacement. All he had on him was the machine gun. I stuck the automatic from my right hand into my belt, not trusting a weapon to Marta in her condition, and hefted the new gun, making sure it was cocked and ready for action.

  "Hurry up," I told her, my own pace hardly more than a stagger. I kept the machine gun trained forward. Only once did I fire. The man never had a chance. The heavy slugs ripped through his body and made him dance around like a marionette with its strings operated by a spastic. He tumbled to the ground when I eased up on the trigger of the machine gun.

  "Oh, God, Nick, that's horrible," Marta said, her face pale and a hand covering her mouth as if she might vomit.

  "It'd be even more horrible if he'd done that to us. Don't you dare upchuck, not here. We've got to get out of these tunnels. They're a deathtrap for us. We have to get clear — fast."

  Almost as if the gunman had been listening to my words, another of Madame Lin's hechmen in the mouth of the tunnel cut loose with a hail of slugs that drove us to our bellies. I inched forward, my captured machine gun ready. The man outside was a pro. He didn't reveal himself, never once silhouetting his body against the pale gray of the foggy nighttime sky. The fog had started coming in again, cloaking the world in cold, damp blankets. A mournful foghorn sounded, and I saw a red flare explode in the sky. I didn't have to be a genius to realize Madame Lin's offshore pickup was signaling the go-ahead. Whether she had the switching device or not was something I'd have to find out.

  "This is going to be messy. Just keep your head down and keep your fingers in your ears," I told the frightened woman cowering at my side. Sticking her fingers in her ears wouldn't reduce the sound level much, but it gave her something to do and to think about besides how scared she was.

  I crawled infiltration-style until I found a spot less than twenty yards from the mouth of the tunnel. The man there still fired sporadically, enough to keep me honest. I couldn't rush him as long as he kept up that deadly barrage of bullets. But he stood between me and my ultimate goal. I had botched up enough on this mission.

  No more.

  He poked his head and gun around the corner. This was all the opening I needed. I had fired expertly with a half dozen different types of weapon. All that time on the firing range paid off right now. A single burst from the machine gun sent the man reeling backward.

  The way was open.

  I stood and crossed still another of those damnable photocells. A heavy steel shutter clanged down over the end of the tunnel, sealing it. I raced forward, futilely pounding the butt of the gun against it. The ringing metal only mocked me. Again, I was trapped.

  "What happened, Nick?" Marta asked, coming up beside me. "How'd this get over the tunnel?"

  "Madame Lin had it rigged so that the doors closed automatically, sort of like in a grocery store," I said bitterly. But I didn't let my anger stop me from minutely examining the steel plate that had dropped down. I knew it would probably be faster getting through this obstacle than retracing my way through the maze of tunnels and seeking out Madame Lin aboveground.

  "What are we going to do?"

  "We are going to lift until we can't stand it anymore — and then we'
re going to lift even harder," I told her, my fingers already under the edge of the plate. "The door dropped on the butt of the guard's machine gun. That's as good a use as any since the owner isn't going to need it anymore."

  "You killed him, too?"

  "I hope so," I said fervently. "Now lift, dammit. We've got to get free. I saw a flare. Madame Lin's going to rendezvous with her ship. We've got to be out and on the beach to stop her."

  Marta pressed close by me. In other circumstances, this would have been intimate, even cozy. But neither of us looked or smelled like humans, much less lovers. My skin was charred and pockmarked from the fire, I had been sweating with exertion, and I reeked of gunpowder and drying blood. Marta was scarely in better shape. Together we grunted and strained. The door moved barely an inch. As it did, I really put my back into it. The door swung out another few inches.

  "Put the machine gun — mine — under the door. Brace it open. Hurry," I panted, my body feeling as if it would break at any instant. Marta shoved the butt end of the machine gun into the concrete floor and balanced the barrel against the steel door.

  It held.

  I relaxed and let the strength slowly return to my aching muscles. Heaving again, I succeeded in lifting the door a few more inches.

  "Get under it," I ordered.

  "What about you, Nick?"

  "Do as I say. I'll be out in a second."

  She appeared doubtful but wasn't about to stay in the dark tunnel another instant. Marta got down and wriggled out, but too slowly. I felt my grip on the heavy metal plate slipping. If she didn't hurry, I might crush her.

  "Move that fanny," I cried, using my foot to help her along. It wasn't very gallant, but these weren't times when chivalry meant much. All that counted now was staying alive. She scooted through as my strength waned again. Puffing and feeling the tension in every muscle of my body, I looked at the scant inches between the bottom of the plate and the concrete. The gun wasn't the kind of support I felt I could trust my life to in this instance.

  But I didn't have any other choice. Lying on my back, I called out to Marta, "When I start under, I want you to lift like you're the next Olympic champion. Do it, now!"