Ник Картер - Death Island

When they were still a couple of miles away from the base, they could see a bright glow above the tree line. Carter powered down his window, and the sound of gunfire came to them on the night breeze.

Gabrielle sped up, the big car surging forward through the night. Carter took out his Luger, made sure there was a round in the chamber, and girded himself for the fight.

They could smell the smoke just before the last curve on the paved road, and then they were around the comer as four dark-skinned men, wearing nothing more than loincloths, came running down the hill through the open main gate.

Gabrielle let out a little squeak and slammed on the brakes. Carter leaned way out the window and fired three shots, picking off two of the natives. The third disappeared into the brush alongside the road, while the fourth turned back and hurried around the comer of the guardhouse.

The front wheels of the limo bumped up over the body of one of the natives, but Gabrielle had the car well under control as they came slowly onto the base.

“Wait here!” Carter snapped, and he leaped out of the car, hurried around the front, and raced up the northwest perimeter road that led back behind the supply buildings, the A and B generator sheds, and eventually the cliffs along the northern tip of the island.

Most of the lights along the fence had been knocked out, so it was very dark along the back road with the thick jungle on one side of the tall wire mesh fence and the long, low buildings on the inside. A fire was burning somewhere toward the administration building, but the gunfire had ceased.

For just a moment Carter had the sickening feeling that everyone on the base had been killed, but then a siren kicked off, wailed for a few seconds, and shut down.

What sounded like Fenster’s voice came booming over the public address system: “Mr. Owen, Mr. Owen, report to Administration. Mr. Owen to Administration on the double. Baker team techs to Charlie dome. Baker team techs to Charlie dome.”

An arrow smacked into the side of the building Carter was just passing, missing him by less than a foot. He peeled off to the left, turning sideways as he ran to present less of himself as a target as he searched the darkness ahead for a sign of the bowman. But there was nothing.

He pulled up short in a crouch, every sense tuned for a sign, any kind of a sign that the brown-skinned native was near.

There was something! Ahead and to the left. Carter leaped left as a second arrow ricocheted off the mesh of the fence. He fired one shot in the general direction from where he thought the arrow had been fired. He had no intention of killing the man. He just wanted to keep pressing him until they came to the far northern edge of the base. From the air, Carter had seen that the base was not fenced on this side. There was no need of a fence. The cliffs down to the ocean were at least two hundred feet high and a sheer drop.

Someone shouted something on the far side of the supply buildings, and two shots were fired.

Carter raced between the buildings, but at the front corner he stopped abruptly. Base personnel would be jumpy just now, and they would most likely shoot at almost anything that moved.

He eased around the corner. A pair of white-coveralled techs stood looking down toward the generator sheds. One of them was obviously wounded. Blood was dripping on the ground from his left elbow, which he held closely against his side.

“Which way did he go?” Carter shouted.

They both spun around, one of the techs bringing up his .45, the wounded man stumbling to the left.

“It’s me... Nick Carter,” Carter shouted, still half concealed behind the corner of the building.

“Jesus,” the tech breathed in relief. He lowered his weapon.

Carter stepped away from the building.

“Jesus...” the tech said again, but then he stepped forward with a cough and fell on his face, an arrow sticking out of his back.

“Down! Get down!” Carter shouted to the other tech. He had not seen where the arrow had come from, but he fired a shot in the general vicinity of the generator sheds, the direction in which the techs had been looking.

The wounded tech looked from the direction of the generator sheds to Carter and back again as he stepped toward his fallen buddy.

“Get down, you stupid bastard!” Carter shouted again. He leaped away from the protection of the building and ran in a zigzag pattern toward the wounded man who seemed to be disoriented as he kept looking from his dead friend to the generator sheds.

The tech was less than ten feet from Carter when an arrow buried itself in his neck with a sickening sound, and the tech stumbled and fell to his knees, blood spurting everywhere as he tried to claw the arrow out of his throat.

Just beyond the second generator shed, at a distance of at least fifty yards, Carter spotted a movement, dark brown glinting dully in the red light from the burning barracks to the east.

Carter crouched in the classic shooter’s stance, both arms straight out, and he squeezed off one shot from the Luger, then a second, and finally a third, the last hitting its mark. He was certain of it.

Both techs were dead; it took him only a second to make sure there was nothing he could do for either of them. Carter raced down the inner maintenance road past the last two supply buildings, and he slowed down as he passed the first generator shed.

There was a lot of shouting back up by the administration building. A car or truck horn was beeping, and he could hear the sound of some machinery running. It sounded oddly like a jackhammer.

The fire was beginning to die down, and some of the lights were coming back on up by the radomes, but where Carter was, it was very dark.

He had spotted the brown-skinned figure just beyond the second generator shed. But standing now between the two buildings, peering into the darkness, he could not be sure of anything he was seeing.

The native had been very accurate with his arrows. At this range, if he was still lurking around the corner of the generator building, he would not miss.

Carter stepped away from the building so that when he came around the corner he would not be right on top of the man if he were crouched right there.

Then Carter spotted the body lying in the grass just off the road, in shadow, and he took a few steps closer.

Lying beside the native was a sturdy-looking bow and an animal-skin quiver that contained two arrows. As far as Carter could see, the man was not moving, but he saw no blood.

A car came around to the maintenance road, its headlights momentarily illuminating Carter’s back. He turned around to see who was coming. At that moment he felt, rather than heard, a rapid movement to his left. He turned back in time to see the native rushing at him, a machete in his right hand.

Carter stepped back and to one side, but he was too late to avoid the native’s callused foot to his right wrist, sending his Luger flying.

The native was momentarily off-balance. Carter managed a clumsy blow to the man’s chest, spinning him backward.

The brown-skinned man recovered nicely and came at Carter with the machete raised high.

Carter easily sidestepped the charge and slipped Hugo out of the chamois sheath strapped to his right forearm.

The blade glinted brightly in the headlights of the car that had come to a halt somewhere behind him. The native, spotting the stiletto, pulled up short, much more wary now mat he realized Carter was armed.

“I mean you no harm,” Carter said in French. “But you must understand why I have to arrest you.”

The native lunged, swinging the machete in a deadly underhanded sweep intended to disembowel. Carter leaped back and slashed downward, just catching the native’s forearm with the tip of the blade.