The Big Snatch, page 14
part #10 of Lady From L.U.S.T. Series
It took about half an hour, but I finally came up with a chunk of wood that might do the trick. Naturally, if Neal decided to examine his loot, he would discover he wouldn't notice a thing.
Finding a spot in the forest about fifty feet from the edge of the clearing, I knelt down and began to dig, using a sharp stick as a trowel. I did not need a big hole, I just wanted to cover the emerald and the tin can with a layer of dirt and leaves. The forest is a big place to go hunting for something so small. Only I would know where to find them.
I brushed bird and leaves over the hiding place. Then I walked back to the camp. I was beat, myself.
Maybe it was all the nervous, too, that was affecting me. I just sprawled out on the ground and began piling up the zzzzs.
When I woke the sun was in my eyes. Neal Harding was standing over me, a puzzled scowl on his face. I started to get up but he pushed me back.
“Just lie there, ducks. I want to look at you. I don't know whether you're a fool or an idealist.”
We made a little tableau, like that, while his blue eyes went all over me, curious, inquiring. He said slowly, "You could have killed me when I was asleep. Why didn't you?” His head nodded toward the river. "There's a canoe there. You could have taken the emerald and the tin can and gone. It's all downriver, all the way to the Delta."
The Englishman shook his head as his hand patted the leather sack that held the rock and the chunk of wood. Then he laughed harshly.
"You're afraid to go it alone, that's it. You need me to get you safely through to Saigon. And you were betting that I'd do it, too. You're betting I will be touched by the fact that you didn't kill me, that I won't shoot you and leave you for dead."
I asked boldly, "Well? Did my gamble work?”
I really did like Neal Harding, despite the way he had treated me for the past week and more while we were making our way off the Bolovens plateau and toward the Mekong river. Call me a sentimental nut, but I was giving him a chance to prove he had a good streak in side him.
He threw up his hands.
"All right, all right. You've made your point. Now come on, help me break camp. We'll pile this stuff in the canoe and get going.”
I helped him knock out the tent pegs and roll up the tent. We cooked breakfast together, eating what was left of the meat and finishing the last of the tea. From now on, we would have to deal with the natives along the river shore, to get what food we needed.
Side by side, we washed the pots in the river. "What a homey little scene!"
The words caught us both by surprise. I whirled, stared disbelievingly at Lady Lumm. She was standing just inside the clearing, wearing a shirt tucked up about her breasts and knotted so that her midriff and navel were exposed by the low-slung black pajama bottoms she wore.
The blue-steel Luger in her hands looked like a cannon. It was steady, unswerving at it aimed between Neal Harding and me. A fraction of an inch either way and she could have shot us both.
“Wha—what do you want?" I asked hoarsely. "The Eye of Buddha and the tin can," she said.
Neal was getting to his feet. His face was a mixture of anguish, frustration and just plain rage.
"How did you follow us?” he croaked.
Her left shoulder lifted and fell in a casual shrug. "It wasn't hard. When my soldiers never came back, after chasing Eve here, I set out to learn what happened to them. I found them, all right—face-down in that mountain stream where you murdered them."
"It was them or me," I pointed out.
"All's fair in love and war, eh? Well, could be. I'm not holding that against you, Harding. I understand that you wanted the Eye of Buddha and Eve wanted the Red Chinese invasion plans.
“You fooled me pretty good, Eve. You had me almost believing that you'd had nothing to do with what went on in Bangkok. Or—maybe I didn't want to believe you, maybe I just wanted to make love to you. Who knows?”
The Luger moved, she gestured Neal Harding to step away from me. "The contents of that little leather sack you have tied at your waist, please. Just undo the sack gently and toss it over here."
Neal cursed softly, but the muzzle of the Luger looked as big to him as it did to me, I guess. He worked at the tie-strings, loosed the sack and tossed it through the air at Lumm. It fell about five feet from her boots.
Lumm came forward and bent down, fumbling blindly for the sack, never taking her eyes off either of us. Neal was about five feet to my left, but we were both too far away from Lumm even to think of making a try for her gun.
Me, I was unarmed, but Neal still had his revolver holstered at his hip, and my Mauser in a pocket. If I could distract her attention for the moment, I knew damn well he would go for his gun and pump lead at her.
Maybe I could distract her.
I said, "Sorry about that, Lumm. There's just an old rock and a chunk of wood in the sack."
Her fingers reacted, they felt the outlines of the stone and the wood. I heard Neal gasp for a moment. Then his brain began working. His eyes flashed his under standing at me, and he gave a little nod, telling me to play it up.
"You're lying," Lumm snarled. "Am I? Neal and I have been expecting you and your men to catch up to us ever since we looted the Temple of the Thousand Deaths. What kept you?"
She smiled at me, wryly. "It's a nice try, honey—but it's no go. I can feel the jewel and the tin can. They're in here, all right.”
"Don't be too sure," I said.
She must have caught the note of truth in my voice. She hesitated, glancing down at the leather sack. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the big Englishman tense.
"Where are your bully-boys?" I asked. “You could toss the sack to them and let one of them open it for you."
She shook her head, murmuring to herself, “I'm alone. I sent them on to Vientiane in Laos.” Her smile showed her teeth. "When we came up to the temple and I saw that you'd looted it without being killed—you must tell me its secret, darling—I figured that I might as well profit from what you'd done.
"If I kept my men with me, I'd have to turn over the emerald and the tin can to my superiors. I began thinking about that. I decided that I've been through too much to go back and be a Communist all over again. With the emerald and the Red Chinese invasion plans, I could be a rich woman in the outer world. I've suffered enough for Mao Tse-tung. It's time I thought about Lumm for a change."
I nodded understandingly. “I don't blame you," I said out loud. "The only thing is, there's a rock and a piece of wood in that sack.”
She juggled the sack in her palm.
Her eyes were intent on my face and on Neal Harding as well. Maybe she read the truth in mine but she could also see that the big Englishman was poised to leap, to go for her once she took her eyes off him to empty the sack and see what it contained.
I could practically hear her thinking.
Then she grinned, and waved the Luger at me. "Off with your clothes, Eve. Come on now, strip down.”
Harding blinked, caught by surprise. His eyes went to my fingers where they began working the buttons of my khaki blouse. Then he looked at Lumm. She laughed at his expression.
"You too, lover boy. Strip!”
He may have thought Lumm was doing this for kicks. I knew better. She hated men, she didn't have any orgy in mind. What she wanted was time to examine the leather sack. The best way to do that would be to keep Neal Harding too busy to make a jump for her.
Instead, she was going to have him jump me.
I was naked to my bellybutton when Lumm said, "Go kiss her breasts for her, Harding. Work her up. Have some fun.”
I think it was then that he caught wise. He opened his mouth to protest, but Lumm hardened her voice and aimed the Luger at his kneecap.
"Go on, man. You've been balling her all the way from the wat. I can read signs, I saw evidence of what you've been doing to her. Now hurry it up or I'll put a bullet in your kneecap. You must know how painful that is.”
The big adventurer advanced on me. He bent and kissed my nipples while I slithered out of my slacks. Lumm chuckled, watching. I gathered she was in no hurry to find out what was inside the sack. Why should she be? We three were all alone, and she had the gun.
Neal Harding's clothes, including the Webley and my Mauser, made a neat little pile about ten feet away. He had stripped down as Lumm ordered, he was like a hired gigolo ready to put on a sex show.
He whispered so only I could hear, "You're just bluffing, aren't you? The emerald and the tin can are in the sack."
"No," I moaned—he was kissing downward from my breasts to my belly, and I was responding to his caresses— “I did the switch last night while you were asleep."
Surprise made him jerk his head. Lumm snarled, “Stay at it, man. I want you too busy to pay me any attention.”
She gave another order. The Englishman knelt down. I widened my thighs and stepped over his face. He went on kissing me.
Lumm laughed, “There. He's in no position now to bother me."
I could see her. Despite the thrills Harding was sending throughout my body, I watched her undo the tie strings and empty the rock and the chunk of wood into her palm. She cursed fluently in Chinese, Laotian and English.
Harding did not hear her, my soft inner thighs were clamped to his ears. Lumm lifted her eyes to stare hard at me.
"You hid them?" she asked. I nodded, quivering she laughed, “You'll tell me where they are."
"Neh—never. I won't tell unless—ohhhh!”
My bod shook all over in reaction to the langueyage Neal Harding was performing on me. I could no more have spoken than I could have jumped to the treetops. Lumm went on staring at me, scowling. She was thinking that she didn't dare kill me; she would never put hands on the jewel and the tin can if she did that. She was trying to think of a way out of her dilemma.
Neal Harding pushed me away and got to his feet. He was wildly aroused, he wanted satisfaction for his de sires, but he was also torn by the need to take care of Lumm, to disarm and kill her, if he could.
He half-turned toward her, crouched. A growl rose in his throat when he saw the rock and the bit of wood. Realization dawned on him.
He whirled, slammed a fist at my face. "Damn bitch," he rasped. Lumm fired.
The bullet hit him just as his fist met my cheek. I was falling backward, trying to ride with the punch. Alone, he might have killed me. The bullet caught him in the back, ploughed into his flesh. His naked body hit my falling body, knocked me breathless when it landed on me.
He was dead when we hit the ground. Lumm was a good marks-woman with that damned Luger. As I wriggled out from under him, she came a few feet nearer.
"Where is it?" she rasped.
“You won't kill me," I breathed defiantly. “Dead, I can't tell you a thing."
Her lips curved into a cruel smile. "No, I won't kill you—but I might put a couple of bullets in your knees, as I threatened to do to him." Her gun gestured at the dead Neal Harding.
I nodded. An idea was coming into my head. If I played along, if I led her toward where I had hidden the jewel and the tin can
"All right,” I said. “There's nothing else I can do."
I started walking toward the edge of the rain forest, with her stepping aside to give me room. She went back two steps.
The noose trap, that Neal had placed at that spot earlier, tightened as her foot touched it. The rope grabbed her ankle and the young sapling to which the noose was attached, swung upward with a vicious jerk.
Lumm screamed, yanked upside-down off her feet.
The Luger flew from her hand. I dove for it, caught it on my knees before it could touch the ground.
At first, Lumm did not know what had happened. It had been so fast, she had been upright one moment, upside-down the next, that her wits were more than mildly addled. Then she realized she was in a trap.
She tried to double up her body, to reach the noose and loosen it. I watched her frantic and futile attempts for a few moments, then I ran off into the rain forest. In moments, I was digging at the loose dirt, lifting out the emerald and the tin can.
I came back to the river clearing. Lumm hung with her head a yard from the ground, crying in frustration. She pleaded, "You aren't going to leave me here, Eve? After what we've meant to each other?"
"You bet your sweet bippy I am, love. You'd have shot me after I'd showed you where I hid these things." I held the jewel and the tin can out for her to see. “You're going to hang there while I take off for points south. If you get rescued before a leopard finds you, all to the good. If you don't—"
I shrugged and walked past her. This spy business is a dog-eat-dog affair. I was top dog at the moment and I meant to keep it that way.
I got dressed, I piled the rolled-up tent and the cooking gear into the canoe. I took all the weapons, the rifle and the Mauser and Harding's revolver, plus the Luger, with me. Lumm hung there and watched. She did not scream, she was too afraid her voice might summon a leopard.
My fingertips blew her a kiss. Then I pushed out into the river, sat down and began to paddle. I made good time, it wouldn't be too long before I would be at the Mekong Delta, where I was hoping that a Marine river boat would pick me up.
Actually, I had only one real worry.
Would David Anderjanian let me keep the emerald?
END
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