Ник Картер - The Liquidator

“This bad stuff for rock work, but I can rappel down.” He pulled on thick gloves, wrapped a length of the secured line around a thigh and looped it over his shoulder. “Now you go back to far end of field. Little path, used by goats, takes you down. When you hear grenade go off in the cave, you go down and persuade those fellows in the airplane that they got no place to go. See?”

I thought so. Obediently I trotted back in the direction we had come. It wasn’t hard to find the path Alex had mentioned, though as I looked down it in the gray light of false dawn I wished I was a goat. Unslinging my M-l, I lay on the rim of the cliff and waited.

At first it seemed like the persistent buzzing of a fly, and I was fighting off the temptation to swat at it when I realized I had dozed off. My eyes snapped open and I was looking into a piece of burning orange sun rising out of the distant sea. In the middle of the half-disc was a dark speck that kept growing larger as it headed straight for where I lay. I felt a quick clutch at my belly, forced myself to stay where I was as the twin-engined plane came into clear view, heading for a landing at the far end of the field.

I looked along the rim of the cliff toward the place where I’d left Alex. There was no sign of him at all until the plane’s wheels touched the grass, but then I saw a bulky figure rise and fling out a long, thin line of white. It snaked through the air, dropped quickly under the sputtering weight attached to its end, and finally whipped into the cave opening.

There was a long pause, too long, and I was beginning to think. Four seconds doesn’t seem like much time, but once I had an instructor pull the pin on a grenade and then toss it to me casually. I fielded it cleanly, and fired it over the concrete parapet into the practice pit as though I were the middle man on a double play. My elbow ached for days afterward — grenades are heavy, don’t forget — but I was mostly concerned about the cackling son of a bitch who had started the whole thing and figuring what was the best way to kill the bastard. Fortunately for him, and probably for me, I never laid eyes on him again after that day.

The cave mouth erupted in a shockingly loud blast, great streams of smoke and showers of fragmented rock bursting out on to the green field. Before I could move I saw Alex hurl himself over the cliff edge, banging against the rock outcroppings as he rappelled swiftly down to the ground.

I scrambled down the steep path, clinging to scrubby bushes as I went, and hit the valley floor at a run. The twin-engined American aircraft was taxiing toward me, engines roaring, but for the moment I wasn’t worried about being spotted; that explosion behind them had to be occupying all their attention.

As the plane slowed, I flattened myself inside a little cleft in the wall of the cliff, waited for the turn to begin, then stepped out and fired a couple of quick shots close to the plane’s nose. I saw a startled, pale face through the windshield, then a scurry of movement. A side door began to open as the pilot continued his turn, already revving up his motors for a takeoff.

The orders were not to shoot up the plane if we could help it; after all, it was US Government property. So I stepped behind its tail, out of range of the probable gunman at the side door. A sudden blast from the twin props nearly knocked me down, kicking up dust and blinding me for a moment. When I could see again, the aircraft was moving rapidly away from me; I had the M-1 at my shoulder, ready to shoot as a last resort, when Alex bolted from the ruined cave right into the path of the speeding plane.

In the early light he looked like a small mountain, all in black with his arms upraised like some ancient warrior trying to stay the fury of the gods. As the plane sped toward him it looked as though a collision was inevitable, but at the last instant it swerved aside, cutting engines and jamming on the brakes. Alex dove under a spinning prop, rolling away from the wheels.

I was running down the field toward the big Greek and the plane, and I saw the gun poke out of the side door before Alex did. I stopped, knelt and raised my M-l as the aircraft came to a bumpy halt close to the edge of the drop-off. A man stuck his head out, pistol aimed at my partner.

It wasn’t much of a target, and the plane was still rocking from its violent turn and abrupt stop, but there was no time to take careful aim. I squeezed off a shot, then another. The man in the doorway looked at me, and even at that distance I could see the look of blank surprise on his face as the blood began to spout from his neck. He started to swing the pistol in my direction, but suddenly it must have become as heavy as an anvil. His arm dropped, the gun fell from his hand and he slowly toppled out of the door to the ground.

Alex stepped on the man as he jumped up and into the cabin. There was a high, muffled cry, then a guttural laugh; a few seconds later another man came flying out to land face down on the rocky ground. Alex stood behind him in the doorway, holding his nine-pound M-l as easily as a policeman’s nightstick. Then he beckoned to me, but I was already up and moving toward the plane.

“That good shooting,” he said. “You damned near got the pilot, too.”

“How do you mean?” We were both watching the man writhing on the ground; the one I’d shot wasn’t moving.

“Hah! Your bullet goes through his neck and into plane, nicks this pilot fellow’s ear and smashes the window up front. Too bad.”

“Yeah. Any other damage?”

“None I could see. I guess your other shot got him in chest. Didn’t go through, anyway.”

“Or maybe I missed completely.”

Alex shook his head. “No, you don’t miss, Nick Carter. And I never forget that, you know?” He looked down at the pilot, who was trying to sit up. “You want this fellow alive?”

“As long as he’s not badly hurt, I guess we can use him back at headquarters.” I bent over, grabbed the man. He wore an Army uniform with sergeant’s stripes, and I knew his face as well as my own after studying his file. “Ragan,” I growled. “You want to live or die right here? It’s your choice.”

“Cheesus, yes!” He wasn’t much more than a kid, I recalled, and he looked younger than his picture. He stared up at Alex and shook his head wonderingly. “Crazy!” he murmured. “This guy is crazy.”

Alex laughed and knelt beside him, the barrel of his rifle touching the side of the young sergeant’s face. “You smart boy,” he said. “You know if you hit me, your plane get busted up same as me. And down you go.” He made an eloquent gesture with his hand, looking over his shoulder toward the lip of the drop-off. “So you stay alive, eh? Good boy.” He clapped him on the back, not gently, then grabbed a shoulder and hauled the sergeant to his feet.

“What about the cave?” I asked.

“All dead.” He patted the rifle butt. “After you go I will use other grenades to seal up cave. Make nice tomb. How about this one?” He nudged the dead man with his toe.

“No. I’d better take him with me. But how are you going to get away from here?”

“This is part of my country, Nick Carter. You don’t worry about me, eh? Now I help you tie up this boy so he don’t give you no trouble during flight.”

We decided to leave the thoroughly trussed Ragan just behind the pilot’s seat, where I could keep an eye on him. The body of the other man Alex slung in the back, like so much cargo. Before I got in, he fished in his pockets and brought out a couple of smallish packages.

“You take both; you Americans, you need the evidence. Us, we don’t know nothing about dope smuggling, eh?” He clapped me on the back. “Have a good trip, Nick Carter. If you as good a pilot as you shoot, you will have no problems, eh?”