Ник Картер - Death Island

Gabrielle jumped up and looked wildly from Carter to her husband.

“Albert,” she said.

Carter could feel a scream building in his chest and rising up his throat.

Rondine laughed. He held out his champagne glass.

“Albert!” Gabrielle screamed.

A moan escaped Carter’s lips.

Gabrielle turned, raced to Carter, and kicked the alcohol burner away, then spun back and grabbed the champagne glass from her husband’s hand.

The governor was laughing out loud now. “Touching,” he said, choking. “Very touching.”

Gabrielle broke the champagne glass on the edge of the coffee table, then leaped forward, plunging the ragged glass edge into Rondine’s throat, opening a jagged wound that spurted blood. Someone screamed as she viciously jabbed again, this time using the glass as a saw, severing the artery on the left side of his neck before one of the crewmen pulled her off and shoved her aside.

“Mon Dieu!” one of the crewmen cried.

“The doctor!” another one shouted.

Through a haze of pain, Carter watched as Rondine thrashed and kicked, his blood pumping everywhere as he tore at his throat with his hands, a terrible, choking sound coming from his mouth.

The guests had all jumped up and moved toward the doorway to the aft deck. One of the men was vomiting. The women were screaming and crying.

Gabrielle had scooped up a large .357 magnum pistol from where it evidently had been stuffed beneath one of the cushions beside the governor, and she waved it around.

“Everyone out of here!” she screamed.

The governor gave one final gasp, looked up at his wife, then rolled over and lay still in a huge puddle of his own blood.

“Everyone out of here!” she screamed again. “He is dead! It is all over!”

She fired a shot, high. It smacked into the doorframe above the guests’ heads.

The women screamed again, and everyone crowded through the door.

“Have the captain make the boat ready!” she cried after them. “You are leaving here.”

She came to Carter’s side, the tears welling in her eyes as she untied him.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

Carter’s stomach was heaving, and the pain below was unspeakable, but his head was clear, and he managed to stand.

He took the .357 from her. “We’ll stay aboard. Radio for help.” Talking was an effort.

She shook her head wildly. “There is a bomb,” she whispered. “I put a bomb in the engine room. This boat will explode tonight at midnight. Everyone aboard will be killed.”

“How...” Carter began.

“It was meant for you in the hotel or at the base. The colonel gave it to me.”

Carter tried to make his mind work. They would be stranded here on this island. The little motor launches wouldn’t get them very far. But then he remembered the helicopter. He had flown one before when absolutely necessary, and there would be a radio aboard so that they could signal for help.

He stumbled across the salon to the door as the ship’s diesels came to life. Several crewmen were working to bring both motor launches aboard.

Carter stepped out on deck. “Stand back,” he shouted. They looked around.

Someone came out of the bridge above. Carter looked up at him. He had a rifle.

“We’ll cause you no trouble,” Carter said. “We want to get off here. You can take this boat anywhere you want. It’ll be days before we’ll be found. It’ll give you plenty of time.”

For a long second or two no one moved or said a thing. Finally the man on the bridge deck put up his rifle.

“Let them go,” he said.

“No!” the big Frenchman with the broken wrist suddenly shouted from the starboard deck.

Carter spun around, bringing up the .357 as the man charged. He fired one shot, catching Claude in the chest and sending him backward, his body flipping over the rail and into the river.

Gabrielle emerged from the salon. She carried a first aid kit, some clothing, and a duffle bag with something heavy in it.

Carefully they made their way across the aft deck, then down the boarding ladder into the second motor launch.

Gabrielle undid the line as Carter started the motor, and they were off. Soon the Mariposa’s anchor began to come up.

They heard the explosion far to the northwest at around midnight from where they were camped near the helicopter.

Carter’s burns were more painful than they were serious. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before he would feel completely normal. But Gabrielle assured him that nothing had been permanently damaged.

They had switched on the emergency locator beacon transmitter in the chopper. Sooner or later a high-flying commercial airliner or a ship passing near these islands would pick up the signal and would come to investigate. But in the meantime there were rations aboard the helicopter, more aboard the launch, and there were a dozen varieties of fruit on the island. In the duffle bag Gabrielle had brought from the ship were a half-dozen bottles of excellent champagne.

Carter had slept for several hours, and when he awoke late in the night, they had eaten and talked.

The French police had come out to the islands a few years ago looking for Gabrielle... or so Rondine had convinced her.

She had been hidden, and when the investigator left, Rondine had told her that more than ever before her life belonged to him.

“It was Albert or prison in France,” she said.

Carter slept again, the pain subsiding somewhat, although he still did not wear trousers.

He was dreaming about the pain and about another sensation that was a cross between pain and pleasure when he awoke in the morning.

Gabrielle looked up, a smile on her lips. “Does it hurt, Nick?” she asked.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, wondering if it would break the mood for him to ask her to turn off the emergency transmitter in the helicopter...