Ник Картер - Death Island

Carter kicked the gun aside, made sure the man was dead, then looked at the radio. Someone was calling. Deep in the static. It sounded like French, but Carter could not be sure.

A helicopter came in low over the house, then swung around to the east.

Carter went to the window and looked outside. He could hear the machine on the other side of the house. It sounded as if it was coming down for a landing.

He turned around. There were three Oriental men in khaki uniforms just outside the doorway. They each held a submachine gun pointed at Carter.

“You will please to put your weapon on the desk,” one of them said, his English very bad.

Carter hesitated.

“Please. We do not want to kill you just yet, Mr. Carter.”

Carter walked over to the desk and laid down his Luger, men he stepped away a few paces.

“That is very wise, Mr. Carter. Now, who is coming here in the helicopter? Is it your colleague from the spy satellite base?”

“He’s a helicopter pilot, nothing more,” Carter said. “Where is Governor Rondine?”

The man grinned. “Your submarine is a very long way from here now, Mr. Carter. You have done much damage to us, and now we will find out all about you and who you work for.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop by twenty degrees. Nevertheless Carter smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “One of your submarines has been destroyed, your base ruined, and very soon your second submarine will be rendered useless as well. I don’t suppose you’ll get a promotion for this.”

There was a commotion out in the corridor. It sounded to Carter like someone swearing in French. He glanced at his Luger on the desk, but the man who had been doing the talking raised his weapon a little higher.

“You will die if you try it.”

One of the soldiers was shoved aside, and a large, burly man barreled his way into the room. He looked at Carter.

“That’s him,” he said in French.

“What are you doing here?” the Chinese man asked in French.

“I’ve got my orders. The governor wants him,” the big man said. He turned back to Carter. He carried a large Beretta automatic. “You will come with me voluntarily, or I shall kneecap you, Monsieur Carter. Do you understand?” he asked in English.

Carter nodded. It had been he who had arrived in the helicopter, not Tieggs. Carter shrugged. “I don’t have much of a choice.”

“No,” the Frenchman said. He stepped away from the doorway and motioned Carter outside.

They went back through the dining room and living room, out onto the veranda, and down to the driveway. A large French military helicopter was parked just beyond the flagpole. Two men waited by it.

The three Chinese men had come out of the house, but they remained up on the veranda. Carter looked back at them. There was some kind of a power struggle going on here. But at the moment he could not see how he could turn it to his advantage. The Frenchman he was with was definitely a pro.

They marched across the driveway to the helicopter, and Carter was directed to climb into the rear compartment, where he was manacled to one of the seat supports after he had strapped in.

The Frenchman who had brought him down from the house went back up to the veranda to speak with the Chinese soldiers. The other two Frenchmen climbed into the helicopter, one of them at the controls, and he started the engine.

A minute later the other one came back, climbed in. and without a word they lifted off.

Almost immediately the pilot stiffened. “We have company,” he said in French. “Looks like a small helicopter.”

They swung around and headed toward town as Tieggs, in the smaller helicopter, swung past them from the left.

Carter’s captor turned back to him. “Who is in the machine?”

“It’s no one. Just a pilot from the base.”

The man turned back. “Shoot him down,” he said calmly.

“No!” Carter shouted, sitting forward.

They swung around, the pilot expertly bringing them up behind Tieggs.

“You bastards!” Carter shouted. “He’s done nothing to you!”

The Frenchman turned back with his Beretta and jammed the barrel into Carter’s face. “I will blow your head off, monsieur, if you are not quiet.”

The French pilot was doing something with what looked like a weapons tracking and locking system. Out ahead, Tieggs apparently understood he was in trouble, because he was taking evasive actions.

“Now,” the pilot said. He punched a button. A rocket streaked from their underbelly and in less than three seconds closed on Tieggs’s machine. There was a brief pause, then the explosion.

Nick Carter kept seeing the explosion that destroyed Tieggs’s helicopter. Tieggs never had a chance, although he had known what was about to happen.

Afterward they had swung out over the water to the southwest but had kept low, presumably to keep well under any radar or detection systems even though there was nothing out here but undeveloped islands.

Carter sat back. Right now there wasn’t a damned thing he could do, he thought. The governor was working for the Chinese. Evidently Rondine swung some weight, otherwise the soldiers back at the house would not have deferred so easily to his henchmen. But Carter had wanted to see the man, and he would soon be getting his chance.

The military chopper they were in was very fast. Nevertheless it took them the better part of two hours before they swung around the western side of a large, jungle-choked island, came in low over a lagoon, then slowly followed a wide river or channel several hundred yards up from the beach.

They were almost on top of the yacht before Carter spotted it, and he realized that from more than a few hundred feet in the air it would be virtually invisible despite its size, which Carter estimated to be at least 150 feet.

About a half mile beyond the yacht, they came down in a narrow clearing. As the rotors slowed, the Frenchmen got out of the machine, and the one who had brought Carter out of the house opened the rear door and unlocked his manacles.

He stepped back, his Beretta out, as one of the other men came around and quickly frisked Carter, coming up with his stiletto but not the gas bomb. He gave the blade to the man with the gun.

“As soon as you are done here, come down to the boat. I think he wants to leave at dark.”

“Oui, Claude,” the man said.

Carter’s captor motioned with the Beretta, and they started down the path. Behind them the other two men were shoving the helicopter down the slope toward some overhanging trees. When they were finished, Carter suspected there would be little or nothing to be seen from the air.

It was very hot. The weather had cleared, and there wasn’t a breath of air.

If they were leaving tonight after dark, they would probably run through the night without lights. By morning they would be far enough away from everything and not arouse the suspicion of anyone. Carter was sure he had seen a Liberian registry flag flying from the mast above the bridge deck.

He pondered his situation. Once he was aboard the boat and at sea, there would not be a lot he could do. Forget a rescue. And there would be little likelihood that he would get off the boat alive.

He stopped and turned around.

“Allons! Allons!” the big man shouted.

Carter let his eyes roll back in his head and flutter. “Christ...” he whispered, and he fell forward as if in a faint.

The Frenchman instinctively reached out. Carter fumbled with the man’s gun hand as if he were seeking support. Too late the big man understood that it was a ruse. Carter drove forward and up, butting the man’s chin with his head. At the same moment he twisted the Beretta sharply to the right, breaking the man’s wrist with a loud pop.