Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

And it was more than the song and the voice and the physical touching. The girl was touching me in other places, deep in my soul. Of all the women I had known in my uncountable escapades as N3, few had strummed those deep chords. There had been some I had loved, some I had merely dallied with — even been dishonest with. They were all different. Or, to put it another way, Elicia was different.

The open honesty that I could see readily in Antonio was there in spades in Elicia. In spite of all that happened to her, she was truly the innocent, the unsullied, the pure. That was because everything that had happened to her had happened only to her flesh. Nothing had harmed her soul, her goodness. And what she wanted from me was not a mere meeting of the flesh. My flesh was ready, God knew; it had been ready since that first night on the trail when she had overcome her aversion to the rapings and had begun to touch me, subtly, in the dark. But as yet my soul wasn’t ready for that honest and pure meeting with this precious girl.

It was getting there, though.

With such thoughts in my mind, and with the torch still fizzing brightly on the wall of the thatched hut, I fell into a deep sleep. I remember glancing over at Elicia just before falling asleep. She was gazing at me, her eyes bright and clear, her lips slightly parted, her bosom heaving with passion. Whether she knew it or not, we were making passionate love in that moment. It was a good thought to sleep on.

Three hours later, to the minute, I snapped awake. I had programmed my mind to come alert in three hours. Sometimes, it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This night, it worked.

The torch was out and Antonio was snoring lightly, but Elicia was as silent as stone. Was she faking sleep? Would she follow me from the hut? I waited, then heard her deep, heavy breathing. She was sound asleep.

I made my way to Purano’s hut, having been told that the son slept to his father’s right hand. The chiefs hut was unmistakable, clearly the largest and most elaborate in the tribe. I crept in and gently shook Purano’s shoulder.

“It’s me, Nick Carter,” I said. “I have dangerous business in the valley and I don’t want to disturb your father. But I want a promise from him — from both of you.”

I’m certain he nodded there in the blackness, unwilling to speak. Finally, he muttered an almost inaudible, “what is the promise?”

“Keep the young people here,” I said. “What I must do, I must do alone. If they follow me, they’ll only endanger themselves and perhaps the whole plan. Will you keep them here, keep them safe until it’s all over?”

After a long silence, he asked: “What will you do?”

“I’m going to join Intenday, the Apalcan religious leader, on his way to meet with Don Carlos. I don’t know just how, but I’ve got to try. We don’t have time to search for that ancient sacrificial cave. I may not even have enough time to do what I’m planning.”

“You go to Alto Arete?”

“If I can.”

“And then?”

Truth to tell, I hadn’t really given that part a lot of thought. I had begun to plan ways to infiltrate the contingent of the religious leader from Apalca the minute I had heard of him going there. Somehow, some way, I would kill Don Carlos Italla once I got to Alto Arete. Just how, I didn’t know right then.

“It’s a military secret,” I said, grinning at myself in the dark hut. “Will you keep Antonio and Elicia here?”

“If I succeed,” I said, “I’ll come back for them. If I don’t succeed, I think you and everyone else on the island will know about it. Thank you — and thank your father — for all your help.”

I could tell he was nodding from the sound of his head on his rough pillow. I got up and left the hut, wondering why in thunder I was doing such a foolish and dangerous thing for these foreigners in this foreign land. If I merely walked to the ocean and stole a boat and sailed it to Florida, who could blame me? Certainly not David Hawk, who would understand that the odds were clearly against me. Not the President, who would also know that my mission had become suicidal. Not Elicia and Antonio, who would marvel at my foolish courage when they awoke and learned from Purano where I was going. Then who would blame me? Nick Carter would blame me. He always had and he always would. I would blame, myself, and that is blame that I’ve never learned to live with.

Even so, I was a lonely and slightly terrified man as I made my way down the jungle trail from the Ninca lands. Some of my thoughts remained behind with Elicia, wondering if she had awakened and found me gone. Wondering also what it might have been like if Antonio hadn’t been studying that cryptic map and had put out the torch before I fell asleep.

I knew what it would have been like. Elicia would have crept beneath my blanket. Her soft, shapely body would have molded to mine under that blanket. Flesh would have responded to flesh. Soul would have responded to soul. And then...

I started to run on the trail, knowing that it is impossible to run away from love.

From the lookout point, I could see as much as I needed to see in the Reina Valley. The campfires of the Cuban Marines had burned low, glowing like red eyes in the blanket of darkness below. But farther down the valley, perhaps four miles from the Marine encampment, was something new.

Campfires blazed there as the night grew colder. Through my binoculars, I could see the shadows of hooded monks moving about the new camp, tending the fires. In the center of the new camp, firelight dancing on its ornate walls, was the tent of Intenday, the religious leader from Apalca. There were no sentries that I could see, but they could have been hidden in the jungle around the encampment. In a ring around the encampment, almost beyond the glow of the fires, were carts and oxen. The beasts were presumably asleep, standing with heads low to the ground, but not grazing. Lucky for me the travelers were using oxen and not jeeps; otherwise, they’d already have reached the base camp of the Cuban Marines.

The timing on this was perfect so far. I had caught up with Intenday and his contingent of monks just hours before they would break camp and make the final jaunt to the base of Mount Toro. If I had succumbed to Elicia’s charms, or if my automatic mental alarm hadn’t awakened me, I would have missed them altogether. Even as it was, there was no guarantee that my plan would work — and I still had no plan as to what I would do once I was on top of the huge mountain.

I had virtually forgotten my wound on the long trek down from Ninca lands. Old Pico’s poultice of mosses and herbs had done a miraculous job and I toyed with the idea of taking his secret back to the States with me, if I ever got there. I discarded the idea, knowing the reception it would receive from the AMA. After thirty or forty years of testing, it would be discarded or shunted to the medical attic where it would never heal a single wound. Oh well.

Before leaving the lookout, I checked my personal arsenal. I had strapped four gas bombs to the insides of my thighs, to go along with the one in the lamb’s wool pouch behind my testicles. Hugo, my faithful and reliable stiletto, was in his leather sheath along my left forearm. Wilhelmina, the luger, was taped to my back and I had six extra clips taped around the bandage on my side wound.

I was as ready as I ever would be. I crushed out my cigarette and buried the butt deep, just in case someone came along and saw the NC in gold.

The binoculars hadn’t lied about the sentries. There were none. I slipped through the final section of jungle and peered at the firewatchers who were still piling on wood. Dawn was threatening to break over the top of the mountain dead ahead of us. I had to hurry.