Macao (KM031), page 15
part #31 of Killmaster Series
The loud speaker made a sound then. It cursed. It was a multiple curse, combining Nick Carter’s ancestry with that of bitch dogs and dung turtles. Nick smiled. And waited. Maybe, now. Just maybe.
In less than two minutes came the angry slam of an iron door somewhere in the shadows beyond the pillar that held the girl. More lights went on overhead. Colonel Chun Li strode into the circle of brilliance and confronted Nick Carter, arms akimbo, a faint scowl knitting the high pale brow. There were four Chinese guards with him, all armed with M3 grease guns. They were also carrying nets and long poles with sharp spikes in the end. The Colonel, without taking his eyes off Nick, snapped an order to his men. They set about trapping the remaining rats in the nets, killing those they could not capture.
The Colonel came slowly toward Nick. He did not glance at the girl. Killmaster was not quite prepared for what he saw. He had never seen a Chinese albino before.
Colonel Chun Li was of medium height and thin build. He was hatless and his skull was closely shaven. A massive skull, a big brain cage. His skin was the color of washed out khaki. His eyes, greatest oddity of all in a Chinese, were a brilliant Nordic blue. The lashes were pale, infinitesimal.
The two men locked glances. Nick gave back arrogance for arrogance, then spat deliberately. “An albino,” he said. “Something of a mutant yourself, aren’t you?” He noted that the Colonel was wearing his Luger, his own Wilhelmina, in a holster not designed for it. Not an unusual quirk. Flaunting the spoils of victory. Come closer, Colonel. Please! Just one step closer.
Colonel Chun Li halted just outside the deadly half circle that Killmaster was etching in his mind. He had, while the Colonel was on the way down, loosened the ring bolt completely and thrust it back into the brick work. Had taken the chance that the TV scanner was unmanned.
The Colonel looked Nick up and down. Reluctant admiration showed on the pale yellow features. “Most ingenious,” he said. “Setting the rats to killing each other. I confess it never entered my mind that such a thing was possible. Too bad, from your viewpoint, that it only postpones matters. I will think of something else for the girl. And I will make you watch it until you agree to cooperate. You will, Carter, you will. You have revealed your fatal weakness, as I knew you would. You could not let the rats get her—you will not be able to stand by and see her tortured to death. You will, in the end, join me in trapping David Hawk.”
“How you carry on,” sneered Nick. “You’re a mad dreamer, Colonel. I told you before—Hawk has got more brains in his ass than you have in your skull. Hawk eats guys like you for breakfast! You may kill me and the girl and a lot of others, but Hawk will get you in the end. Your name is in his little black book, Colonel. I’ve seen it.” Nick spat on one of the Colonel’s highly polished shoes.
The Colonel’s blue eyes glittered. A slow flush began to stain his pale face. He reached for the Luger, then halted the motion. The holster, Nick noted, was too small for the Luger. It had been make for a Nambu or some smaller pistol. The butt of the Luger extended well beyond the leather, inviting.
The Colonel took another step forward and swung his fist at Nick Carter’s face. Nick did not roll, but took the blow because he wanted to get in close. He brought his right arm around in a powerful level swing. The ring bolt sailed around in a hissing arc and slammed into the Colonel’s temple. His knees buckled and he began to slump.
The AXEman moved in a blur of oiled, perfectly synchronized motion. He pulled the Colonel into the grip of his left hand, still pinioned by the other chain, and got a terrible hold around the man’s throat with his forearm and elbow. The Colonel’s body was shielding him now. Nick had the Luger out of the holster and was firing at the guards before they could understand what was going on.
He got two of them before the other two could scuttle out of sight toward the iron door. He heard it slam shut. Not so good!
The Colonel writhed in his grasp like a caught serpent. Nick felt a tearing pain in his upper right leg, near the groin. The sonofabitch had come back to life and was trying to dagger him, striking backward from an awkward position.
Nick jammed the muzzle of the Luger into the Colonel’s ear and pulled the trigger. The top of the Colonel’s head flew across the room. Nick dropped the body. He was bleeding, but there was no arterial spurt. He still had a little time.
He picked up the weapon that had pricked him. Hugo. His own stiletto!
Nick whirled, put his foot against the brick pillar, and put every bit of his great strength into it. The remaining ring bolt moved, shifted, but did not give. Hell! They would be getting on that TV up there any second now, would see that the Colonel was dead.
He gave up for the moment and turned toward the girl. She was on her knees, staring at him with a shred of hope and beginning understanding in her eyes.
“The Tommy gun,” Nick shouted. “The gun—can you reach it? Shove it over to me. Hurry, damn it!”
One of the dead guards lay near the Princess. His grease gun had skittered over the floor close to her. She gazed at Nick, then at the submachine gun, but made no move to pick it up.
Killmaster bellowed at her. “Snap out of it, you damned whore! Move! Prove that you’re good for something in this world—shove that gun over here. Hurry up!” He raved on, taunting her, trying to snap her out of it. He had to have that machine gun. He tried to yank out the ring bolt again. It still held.
There was a clatter as she pushed the grease gun over the floor to him. She was glaring now, and the light of intelligence was back in the green eyes. Nick swooped on the gun. “Good girl!”
He pointed the grease gun into the shadows clotting the brick arches and let it rave. He sprayed back and forth, up and down, hearing metal and glass break and tinkle. He grinned. That should take care of their TV camera and loud speaker. Now they were as blind as he was for the moment. It would be guess work on both sides.
He put his foot against the brick pillar again, braced, took hold of the chain with both hands and pulled. Veins popped on his forehead, his huge sinews cracked, his breathing be-came agonized. The remaining ring bolt came out and he nearly fell. He picked up the M3 and ran to the girl.
As he reached her he heard the iron door slam open. Something bounced on the stone floor. Nick dived for the girl and covered her with his big naked body. They had seen after all. They knew the Colonel was dead. So they were using grenades.
The grenade exploded with a nasty red glare and wham-bang. Nick felt the naked girl quiver beneath him. A shard of grenade casing nipped his buttocks. Purple Heart, he thought. Fill out the papers, Hawk!
He leaned around the pillar and let go a burst in the direction of the door. A man yelled in pain. Nick kept pouring the fire in until the grease gun was red hot. He ran out of ammo, scuttled to recover the other machine gun, then fired a final burst at the door. He realized that he was still half on the girl.
Suddenly it was very quiet. Beneath him the Princess said: “You are very heavy, you know.”
“Sorry,” he grunted. “But this pillar is all the cover we’ve got. We’ve got to share it”
“What happens now?”
He glanced at her. She was trying to comb her dark hair with her fingers. She had started to come back from the dead. He hoped it was permanent.
“I don’t know what happens now,” he said truthfully. “I don’t even know where we are. My guess would be one of the old Portuguese dungeons somewhere under the city— there must be dozens of them. There’s a chance that all the gunfire was heard—maybe the Portuguese cops will come looking.” That meant a long stretch in prison for him. Hawk would spring him eventually, but it would take time. And they would get the girl at last.
The girl understood. “I hope not,” she said quietly. “Not after going through all this. I couldn’t stand to be taken back to Portugal and put in an asylum.”
She would be. Nick, having heard the story from Prince Askari, knew she was right. If her uncle, the high Cabinet official, Luiz da Gama, had anything to say about it they would certainly put her in a looney bin.
The girl began to cry. She put her dirty arms about Nick Carter and clung to him. “Don’t let them take me, Nick. Please don’t.”
She pointed at the body of Colonel Chun Li. “I watched you kill him. You did it without a thought. You can do the same for me. Promise? If we can’t get away, if we’re going to be taken by either the Chinese or the Portuguese, promise that you’ll kill me. Please—it will be easy for you. I—I don’t have the courage to do it myself.”
Nick patted her bare shoulder. It was one of the strangest promises he had ever made. He didn’t know if he meant to keep it or not.
“Sure,” he comforted. “Sure, baby. I’ll kill you if things get too bad.”
The silence began to get on his nerves. He fired a short burst at the iron door, heard the whine and ricochet of the slugs down A corridor. The door was open then, or half open. Guarded? He just didn’t know. They might be wasting precious time when they should be running. Maybe the Chinese had temporarily fallen apart when the Colonel died. The man would have been operating with a small group, an elite, and they would have to go to a higher echelon for new orders.
Killmaster decided. They would take their chances and run for it. He had already tugged the girl’s chains loose from the pillar. He checked his weapons. There was half a clip left in the grease gun. The girl could carry the Luger and the stiletto and—Nick thought better of it and darted to the body of the Colonel and took off the belt and holster. He strapped it around his naked waist. He wanted the Luger with him.
He gave the girl a hand up. “Come on, honey. We’ll run for it. Depressa, as you Portuguese always say.”
They had reached the iron door when the firing began down the corridor. Nick and the girl stopped and flattened against the wall just inside the door. There followed shouting and screaming and the crump-crump of grenades. Then more silence. They heard cautious footsteps coming down the corridor toward the door.
Nick put a finger against the girl’s mouth. She nodded, her green eyes huge and startled in the smudged face. Nick poked the snout of the grease gun through the door, his hand itchy on the trigger.
There was light enough in the corridor for them to see each other. Prince Askari, his white Mozambique uniform ripped and torn and bloody, a toupee cocked sideways on his head, blinked amber eyes at them. He showed all his pointed teeth in a grin. He was carrying a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other. He carried a rucksack still half full of grenades.
They did not speak for a moment. The black man’s leonine eyes roved up and down their naked bodies, taking it all in. His glance lingered on the girl. Then he smiled again at Nick.
“Sorry I was late, old man, but I had hell’s own time getting out of that stockade. Some of my black brothers helped me and told me where this place was—I came as fast as I could. Looks like I missed most of the fun, eh?”
He was still inspecting the girl’s body. She returned his stare without flinching. Nick, watching, could see nothing lascivious in the Prince’s glance. Only approval.
The Prince turned back to Nick, the filed teeth glinting in fun. “I say, old man, what are you two made up for? Adam and Eve?”
Chapter 12
KILLMASTER lay on his bed in the Blue Mandarin Hotel and stared at the ceiling. Outside the typhoon was finally beginning to get up steam, working itself into a lather after hours of threats. It appeared that they were really in for a big devil wind.
Nick glanced at a clock. After noon. He was hungry and he could have done with a drink, but he was too lazy, too satisfied, to move. Things had gone well. Getting out of Macao had been ridiculously easy, almost anticlimactic. The Prince had swiped a little car, a beatup Renault, and the three of them had jammed into it and taken off for Penha Point, the girl wearing the Prince’s bloody coat, Nick clad only in a bandage on his thigh. It had been a wild ride—the wind blowing the tiny car about like chaff—but they had made the Point and found the life preservers where they had hidden them among the rocks.
The seas were running high, but not quite too high. Not yet. The junk was hanging around where it should have been. Nick, towing the girl—the Prince had wanted to, but he was not up to it—had fumbled the little pen flare out of a pocket in his life preserver and sent it up. Red stained the windy skies. Five minutes later the junk had picked them up.
A narrow thing. Minh, the Tangar boatman, had said: “We much by God worry, sar. Not wait after another hour, can. You not come bimeby soon we sonbitch have leave you—maybe yet not can go easy home.”
They had not come easy home, but they had come home. Dawn had been breaking, somewhere lost in the overcast, as the junk sailed into the Typhoon Shelter. Nick had been on to the SS phone and some of his men were waiting. The transition from the junk to the Blue Mandarin had been easy and painless, and if the nancy clerk on duty thought there was anything strange about the wild looking trio he had kept his own counsel. Nick and the girl had borrowed coolie clothes from the Tangars; the Prince had somehow managed to look regal in all that was left of his stolen white uniform.
Nick yawned and listened to the typhoon slither around the building. The Prince was down the hall in a room, presumably sleeping. The girl had gone into her own room, adjoining his own, and fallen on the bed, passing out immediately. Nick had covered her and left her alone.
Killmaster could do with very little sleep. Presently he got up and went to the bathroom, came back and lit a cigarette, sat on the bed thinking.
He did not really hear the sound, as keen as his hearing was. Rather the sound intruded on his consciousness. He sat very quietly and tried to identify it. Got it. A window sliding up. A window being raised by someone who did not want to be heard. Nick smiled. He shrugged his big shoulders. He had half expected it.
He went to the door of the girl’s room and knocked. Silence. He knocked again. No answer. Nick took a step back and kicked at the flimsy lock with his bare foot. The door crashed open. The room was empty.
He nodded. He had been right. He crossed the room, noting that she had taken but one bag, and peered out the open window. Wind slammed rain in his face. He blinked and looked down. The fire escape was hidden in a gray blanket of mist and rain churned by wind. Nick put the window down, sighed and turned away. He went back into the master bedroom and lit another cigarette.
For a moment he let his flesh feel the loss, then he laughed harshly and began to forget it. It was ironic, though, that the body of the Princess, possessed by so many, was not for him. So let her go. He had called off the AXE dogs. She had fulfilled her contract with Hawk, and if the old man thought he was going to use her again for other dirty work, he would just have to think again.
Nick was not really much surprised when the phone rang a few minutes later. He picked it up and said: “Hi, Aski. Where are you?”
The Prince said, “I don’t think I’ll tell you that, Nick. Better all around if I don’t. I’ve got the Princess Morgan with me. We—we’re going to be married, old man. As soon as we can. I’ve explained everything to her, about the rebellion and all, and the fact that as a Portuguese national she will be committing treason. She still wants to do it. So do I.”
“Good for both of you,” Nick said. “I wish you all the luck, Aski.”
“You don’t seem very surprised, old man.”
“I am neither blind nor stupid, Aski.”
“I know what she’s been,” the Prince said. “I’m going to change all that. I need a Princess. One thing, she hates her countrymen as much as I do.”
Nick hesitated a moment, then he said: “Are you going to use her, Aski? You know—”
“No, old man. That’s out. Forgotten.”
“Good,” said Killmaster softly. “Good, Aski. I thought you would see it that way. But what about the, er, merchandise? I did make you a sort of half promise. You want me to start the wheels—”
“No, old chap. I’ve got another contact in Singapore. I’ll stop over there on our honeymoon. I think I can dispose of all the—the merchandise I can steal.” The Prince laughed. Nick thought of the pointed teeth flashing and laughed also. “Not the ChiComs?” he asked.
“God, no! I’ve had that lot forever. Just a minute, Nick. Morgan wants to talk to you.”
She came on. She sounded very much the lady again. She might just make it, Nick thought as he listened. She just might make it back from the gutter. The Prince would see to that, he hoped.
“I’ll never see you again,” the girl said. “I want to thank you, Nick, for what you did for me.”
“I did nothing.”
“But you did—more than you know, more than you can ever understand. So—thanks.”
“De nada,” he said. “But do me one favor, Princess. Try to keep that pretty nose clean. The Prince is a good guy.”
“I know that. Oh, how I know that!” Then, with an infectious gaiety in her voice that he had never heard before, she laughed and said: “Did he tell you what I am going to make him do?”
“What?”
“I’ll let him tell you. Goodbye, Nick.”
The Prince came back on. “She is going to make me get my teeth capped,” he said in fake sorrow. “It will cost me a fortune, I assure you. I will have to double my operations.”
Nick smiled at the phone. “Come on, Aski. Cap jobs don’t cost all that much.”
“The hell they don’t,” said the Prince. “For five thousand of my soldiers? I set an example. If I’m capped they’re capped. So long, old fellow. No monkey wrenches, eh? We’re getting out as soon as this wind lets up.”
“No monkey wrenches,” said Nick Carter. “Go with God.” He hung up.
He stretched on the bed again and thought about the Princess Morgan da Gama. Seduced by her uncle at age thirteen. Not raped, but seduced. Over and over again. A very secret affair, most hush-hush. How exciting it must have been for a girl of thirteen. Then fourteen. Then fifteen. Then sixteen. Three long years the affair had lasted and nobody any the wiser. And how nervous the wicked uncle must have gotten when, at last, the girl began to show signs of revulsion and rebellion at incest Nick scowled. Luiz da Gama must have been one worried sonofabitch. As time went on he began to climb in state and diplomatic circles. He was the girl’s guardian now, as well as her uncle. He controlled her money as well as her lithe young child’s body.
