Macao (KM031), page 14
part #31 of Killmaster Series
The girl screamed. The sound ripped at the AXEman’s nerves. She was pointing at a huge rat that had crept into the cage from one of the little doors. It was the biggest rat that Nick Carter had ever seen. It was larger than the average cat and a glossy black with a long grayish tail. White feral teeth glinted from the snout as the creature stopped for a moment, whiskers twitching, and glanced about it with wary evil little eyes. Nick fought down an urge to vomit.
The Princess screamed again, high and shrill, a buzz saw sound. “Shut up,” Nick told her savagely. “Shut up, damn you!”
As the huge rat hesitated the loudspeaker spoke again: “You see the size of the rat, Mr. Carter? There is quite a story behind that. The rat is a mutant. Some of our scientists made a little trip, very secret of course, to an island that you people had once used for atomic tests. There was nothing alive on the island but the rats—they had somehow survived and even thrived. I do not understand it, not being myself a scientist, but it has been explained to me that the radio-active atmosphere is somehow responsible for the giantism you now see. Most fascinating, don’t you think?”
Killmaster boiled over. He could not help himself. He knew it was exactly what the Colonel wanted, hoped for, yet he could not restrain his wild rage. He raised his head and yelled, cursing, calling out every foul name he knew. He lunged at his chains, cutting his wrists on the sharp manacles, but felt no pain.
What he did feel was the slightest give, the faintest hint of weakness, in one of the old ring bolts set into the brick pillar. From the corner of his eye he saw a trickle of mortar slide down the brick below the ring bolt. A tremendous heave might very well break the chain loose.
He covered immediately. He kept shaking his fists at the ceiling and cursing, but put no more strain on the chain. It was the first faint flicker of real hope.
There was satisfaction in Colonel Chun Li’s voice when he said, “So—you are human, Mr. Carter? You do react to normal stimuli? That was quite a tantrum. I am glad that you are not as icy and bloodless as I have been told. It will make things easier. And now I will be quiet and let you and the lady enjoy the show. Do not feel too badly about the General. He is mad and senile and really no loss. He betrayed his own country, he betrayed Prince Askari, he tried to betray me. Oh, yes, Mr. Carter. I know all about it. The next time you whisper into a deaf man’s ear—be sure his hearing aid is not bugged!” The Colonel laughed. “You were, in effect, whispering into my ear, Mr. Carter. Of course the poor old fool did not know that his hearing aid was bugged.”
Nick’s grimace was bitter, sour. So that was it. A lousy slip-up in Intelligence. He had not even known the old man was deaf, much less that he wore a hearing aid.
The big rat was crouching on the General’s chest now. The man had not yet even whimpered. Nick hoped that the old mind was too dazed to know what was happening. The old man and the rat stared at each other at close quarters. The rat’s long tail, obscenely hairless, was twitching rapidly back and forth. Still the creature did not attack.
The girl was whimpering and trying to hide her eyes with her hands. Her breasts bobbled as she moved restlessly in the chains. The smooth white body was dirty now, streaked with filth and bits of straw from the stone floor. Listening to the sounds from her throat, Nick knew that she was very near to going over the edge. He could understand that. He stood not so far from the abyss himself. He put just a little more pressure on the manacle and chain that held his right wrist The ring bolt moved.
The old man screamed. Nick watched, fighting his own nerves, forgetting everything but the one important thing— the ring bolt would come out. A chain was a weapon. But no good unless he could come to close quarters!
He made himself watch. The rat was gnawing on the old man now, its long teeth working into the flesh around the jugular. Smart rat. It knew where to strike. It wanted the meat dead, quiet, so it could feed without interference.
The General screamed once more. The sound died in a gurgle as the rat chewed into a big artery and blood spurted. The girl was screaming now, over and over and over again. Nick Carter found that he was screaming, too, but silently, the sound locked in his skull and reverberating around his brain. He screamed hate and lust for revenge and murder, but to the spying eye of the camera he was calm, composed, even sneering. The camera must not spot that loose ring bolt.
The Colonel was speaking again: “I will now send in more rats, Mr. Carter. They will finish the job quickly. Not pretty, is it? But you should not be too concerned—this thing happens every day, I am told, in your capitalistic slums. Only there the victims are helpless babies. True, Mr. Carter?”
Nick ignored him. He stared at the carnage in the cage. A dozen of the huge rats had run in now and were swarming over the red thing that had once been a man. Nick could only pray that the old man was already dead. Perhaps. He was not moving.
He heard retching sounds and glanced over at the girl. She had vomited on the floor and was lying with her eyes closed, her pale filth bespattered body twitching.
“Pass out, baby,” he told her. “Pass out. Don’t watch it.” Two of the rats were fighting over a bit of flesh now. Nick watched with horrible fascination. Finally the larger of the two quarreling rats got its teeth in the throat of the other and killed it. Immediately it pounced on its brother rat and began to eat it. Nick watched as the rat totally devoured its own kin. And remembered something he had learned long ago and forgotten—rats are cannibals! One of the very few animals that will eat its own sort.
Nick tore his eyes away from the horror in the cage. The girl was unconscious. He hoped she wasn’t dreaming.
The voice in the loud speaker came back. Nick thought he could sense disappointment in the Colonel’s voice. “It appears,” he said, “that my reports about you are correct after all, Carter. You bear up very well. I have been watching you very closely and you did not even vomit as the girl did. And you have what you Americans call an admirable poker face. Are you really so insensitive, so cold nerved, Carter? I cannot quite accept that”
A trace of anger in the voice now. And it was Carter, not Mr. Carter! Was he, just a little, beginning to get the Colonel’s Chinese goat? It was a hope. Faint as the promise of the ring bolt, but all he had. He must get close to the man or he was licked.
Nick looked bored. He glanced at the ceiling where the camera lurked. “It was pretty nasty,” he said. “But I’ve seen a lot worse, Colonel. Done worse, for that matter. The last time I was in your country—I come and go about as I please —I killed a couple of your boys, cut them open and strung them to a tree with their own guts.” A fantastic he, but one that a man like the Colonel might just believe.
“Anyway you were right about the old man,” Nick continued. “He was crazy as hell and no good to anybody. Why should I care what happens to him, or how it happens?”
There was a long silence. The chuckle was a little nervous this time. “You can be broken, Carter. You do know that? Any man born of woman can be broken.”
Killmaster shrugged. “Maybe I’m not human. Like my boss you keep talking about. Hawk, now—he’s not human! You’re wasting your time trying to bring him into a trap, Colonel.”
“Perhaps, Carter, perhaps. We shall see. I have an alternative plan, naturally. I don’t mind telling you about it. It might change your thinking.”
Killmaster made a big deal of scratching himself. Anything now to irritate the sonofabitch! He spat carefully. “Be my guest, Colonel. As they say in the movies—I’m at your mercy. You might do something about the fleas in this lousy hole, though. It stinks, too.”
Another long silence. Then: “Failing everything else, Carter, I shall have to start sending Hawk bits and pieces of you. Along with certain anguished notes which I am certain you will write when the time comes. Just how do you think your superior will react to that—receiving parts of you in the mail from time to time? A finger at first, then a toe—perhaps later a foot or a hand? Be truthful now, Carter. If Hawk thought there was even a slight chance of saving you, his best agent and a man he loves like a son, don’t you think he would make the effort? Try to make a deal? Come to see about matters in person?”
Nick Carter put his head back and laughed, a real laugh from the belly. He didn’t have to force it “Colonel,” he said, “have you ever been touted bad!”
“Touted? I do not understand that.”
“Misinformed, Colonel. Led astray. You’ve been fed bad information, gotten a bum steer, been fooled! You cut Hawk and he doesn’t even bleed. I should know. Oh, he’d be sorry to lose me, sure. I’m his best man, as you say. But I can be replaced Every AXE agent is expendable. Same as you, Colonel, same as you.”
The loud speaker snarled angrily. “Now you are misinformed, Carter. I cannot be replaced. I am not expendable.”
Nick lowered his face to conceal a smile he could not restrain. “Want to bet, Colonel? I’ll even give you a for instance —wait until Peking finds out you were duped about the phony raw diamonds. That you were going to swap twenty million dollars in gold for some glass rocks. That you goofed on having the Prince killed neatly and properly, and now you’ve killed the GeneraL You’ve fouled up any chance you had of horning in on the Angola rebellion. Which is what Peking really was after, eh, Colonel? You wanted Hawk, because you know Hawk means to get you, but that’s only minor stuff compared to the way Peking is thinking:—they are planning long range, to make a lot of trouble in Africa. Angola would have been a perfect place to start making it.”
Nick laughed harshly. “Wait until all that soaks through in the right spots in Peking, Colonel, then see if you’re expendable or not!”
The silence told him that the barbs had gone home. He almost began to hope. If only he could get the bastard mad enough to come down here to the dungeon in person. Never mind the guards he was sure to bring. He would just have to take his chances with them.
Colonel Chun Li cleared his throat. “You reason well, Carter. There may even be some truth in what you say. Things have not, er, gone as well as I had expected. I did not, for one thing, realize just how crazy the General was until too late. But I can put matters to rights—all the more reason why I need your cooperation.”
Nick Carter spat again. “Double screw you, Colonel. I won’t cooperate with you. I don’t think you can even afford to kill me now—I think you need me alive, to take to Peking, to show them something for all the time and money and dead men.”
With a hint of reluctant admiration the Colonel said: “Maybe you are right again. Maybe not. You are forgetting the lady, I think. You are a gentleman, an American gentleman, and therefore you have a very weak spot. An Achilles heel. Will you let her suffer as the General did?”
Nick’s expression did not change. “What the hell do I care about her? You must know the story there—she’s a drunk and a drug addict, a sex degenerate who poses for dirty pictures. I don’t give a damn what happens to her. I’ll level with you, Colonel. In a spot like this there are only two things I worry about—myself and AXE. I won’t do anything to hurt either one of us. But the lady you can have. With my blessings.”
“We shall see,” said the Colonel. “I shall give an order in a moment and we shall certainly see. I think you are bluffing. And remember—the rats are very intelligent. They will instinctively go for the weaker prey.” The loud speaker clicked off.
Nick glanced at the girl. She had heard. She was staring at him with huge eyes, her mouth trembling. She tried to speak, but only made gobbling sounds. She was very carefully not looking at the ravished thing in the cage. Nick did look and saw that the rats had gone now.
The Princess finally managed to get the words out. “Y-you’re going to let them d-do that to me? Y-you mean—you meant what you said just now? Oh, my God, don’t! Kill me —isn’t there some way you can kill me first!”
He did not dare speak. The mikes would pick up a whisper. The TV scanner was watching. He could give her no comfort. He stared at her and frowned, spat and looked away. He didn’t know what the hell he would do. Could do. He would just have to wait and see.
But it would have to be something and it would have to be good and it would have to be fast.
He heard a sound and looked up. A man had come into the wire cage and unlatched a small gate in it that led into the main dungeon. Then he left, dragging behind him all that was left of the General. Nick waited. He did not look at the girl. He could hear her sobbing breath across the dozen feet that separated them.
He tested the ring bolt again. It gave a little more and it was so quiet, but for the girl’s breathing, that he heard the mortar trickle down the brick pillar.
The rat poked its snout out of the little door.
Chapter 11
THE RAT SCUTTLED out of the wire cage and halted. It sat on its haunches for a moment and washed itself. It was not as big as the cannibal rat Nick had watched, but it was big enough. Nick had never hated anything more in his life than he hated this rat now. He kept very still, hardly breathing. A plan of sorts had formed in the last few minutes. But to make it work he had to get hold of that rat—with his bare hands.
The girl seemed to have gone into a coma. Her eyes were glazed and she stared at the rat and made horrible little noises in her throat. Nick longed to tell her that he wasn’t going to let the rat get her, yet he dared not speak or show his face to the camera now. He sat quietly, staring at the floor, watching the rat from the corner of his eye.
The rat knew what it was about. The woman was the weakest, the most terrified—the scent of her fear was strong in the rodent’s nostrils—and so it began to creep in her direction. It was hungry. It had not been permitted to share in the feast on the General.
The rat, since its mutation, had lost most of its fear. Its size now made it a match for most natural enemies, and it had never learned to fear man. It did not pay much attention to the big man it must pass to get to the cowering woman.
Nick Carter knew he would get only one chance. If he missed everything was over. He held his breath and watched the rat sidle closer—closer. Now? No. Not just yet. Soon— soon—
At just that instant an image from his youth intruded on his concentration. He had gone to a cheap carnival where there was a geek. It was the first geek he had ever seen, and the last. For a dollar he had watched the geek bite the heads off live rats. He could see vividly now, the blood running down the geek’s chin. Nick shuddered, a pure reflex movement, and it almost spoiled the game.
The rat stopped, turned, on the alert. It began to move away, faster now.
Killmaster lunged. He used his left hand so the ring bolt would not break away, and caught the rat just behind the head. The furry monster squealed in fear and fury and tried to bite the hand that held it. Nick twisted off the head with one wrench of his great hands. The head fell to the floor while the body still quivered and gushed blood in his hands.
The girl gave him an absolutely moronic look. She was so petrified by terror that she did not understand what went on.
Chuckle. The loud speaker said: “Bravo, Carter. It takes a brave man to handle a rat like that. And it proves my point —you are not prepared to let the girl suffer. Now perhaps we are getting somewhere, as you say in the States.”
“It proves nothing,” Nick rasped back. “And we are getting nowhere. Screw you double and triple, Colonel. I don’t care anything about the girl—I just wanted to see if I could do it. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of men with my hands, but never a rat before.”
Silence. Then: “So what have you gained, then? I have many more rats, all huge, all hungry. Will you kill them all?”
Nick looked up at the TV eye somewhere in the shadows. He thumbed his nose. “Maybe,” he said. “Send ‘em along and see.”
He reached out with his foot and pulled the rat head toward him. He was going to need it. This was a crazy stunt he was trying, but it was all he had. If it worked, a great big IF, maybe the Colonel would get mad enough to want to come down and work him over in person. Killmaster wasn’t much at praying, but he tried now. Please—please make the Colonel want to come and work me over, slap the hell out of me. Kick me. Anything! Only make him come within arm’s reach.
Two more of the big rats crept out of the wire cage and sniffed. Nick tensed. Now he would know. Would the plan work? Were rats really cannibals? Was it just a freak that the biggest rat had eaten the smaller before? Was it all just a lot of crap, something he’d read and remembered wrongly?
The two rats smelled the blood. They inched toward Nick. Gently, quietly, so as not to startle them, he tossed the rat head toward them. One of them pounced on it and began eating. The other rat, wary, circled for a moment and then charged in. They were at each other’s throats now.
Killmaster, hiding his face from the camera, smiled. One of those bastards would be killed. More food for the others coming, something else to fight over. He still held the body of the rat he had killed. He gripped it by the forepaws and tensed his muscles, ripping it apart, tearing it down the middle like a sheet of paper. Blood and guts slimed his hands, but he was content. More bait. With this, and with one dead rat out of every two that fought, he was going to be able to keep a lot of rats busy. Nick shrugged his broad shoulders. It really wasn’t much of a business, but he was pretty good at it. Damned good, in fact. Now if only it would pay off.
The loud speaker had been silent for a long time. Nick wondered what the Colonel was thinking as he watched the TV screen. Probably not happy thoughts. More rats had been pouring into the dungeon. There were a dozen frenzied, squealing fights going on. The rats paid no attention at all to Nick or the girl.
