Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

Sagacio looked at us, mentally counting our forces against those of his master.

“We started out with a larger force,” I told him, “but things happened along the way. Now, will you help us? Are there others who will help?”

“What is it you wish from us? We will help.”

I took out the map I had drawn with Luis Pequeno’s assistance, and spread it on the ground. Sagacio took a torch from a distant wallhanger and brought it close.

“Is this an accurate map of what’s on top of the mountain?” I asked.

“As far as it goes,” he said. “Below ground here are the wine cellars which are extensive. Off that way, down that tunnel, is the central arsenal.” He pointed to a corridor cut into the stone. “Don Carlos has Russian munitions there, much TNT and dynamite. Up that way...” he pointed to a stone staircase — “is the main guard station where a dozen armed men are on duty at all times.”

“Are they from your tribe?”

“No, they are guerillas from the regular population. Some of them hate Don Carlos, but I’m not certain of which would be a friend or which would be an ally.”

“All right,” I said. “Here’s what you do. Take the wine to Don Carlos, then return to the guard station. If you recognize any guard that might be a friend, take him aside and tell him to distract the other guards in some way. Get them away from the station. We’ll go past the station, make our way to the palace and see if we can take Don Carlos hostage. If we succeed, his friends will be helpless and you can start organizing his enemies to keep his friends from rushing us. Can you do that?”

“If I have a weapon.”

I gave him the Russian rifle I’d been whittling on to make my fire down there on that ledge, when Pd set off Pierre to kill the scorpions. He grinned shrewdly and slipped the rifle up under his smock. I looked at my digital watch. It stood at 8:37.

“We’ll come up in ten minutes,” I said. “Make sure you’ve done your work then.”

“I will make sure.”

When he was gone, I went over the plan with the two warriors — Uturo and the man whose name I still couldn’t remember. It was a simple plan. We’d move past the guard station, across the main plaza to the palace, circle to a side door, kill the guard with Hugo, slip into the palace and make our way to Don Carlos’s quarters.

“And what will I do?” Elicia asked.

“Stay down here,” I said. “The three of us can do it, with help from Uturo’s uncle.”

A door slammed behind us and we all four nearly jumped out of our clothes. We heard heavy boots on stone steps, heard the coarse laughter of half-drunk men. We scattered among the shelves of wine. I stood with my back to a row of dusty bottles, hoping I wouldn’t knock one loose and give away my position.

Four guards with rifles slung over their shoulders bounded into the cellar and began to examine bottles on the nearest shelf. I could see Uturo in the aisle next to mine, but the other warrior and Elicia were out of sight. I held my breath and waited.

“This is the cheap stuff, for the neophyte monks,” one of the guards snarled. “Look around and find the bottles reserved for our esteemed leader.”

They started looking around, coming closer and closer to the aisles where Uturo and I were hiding. I kept wondering where Elicia and the other warrior were hiding, hoping the guards wouldn’t stumble across them first.

I didn’t have to worry about that. The guard who’d complained about the cheap stuff was heading directly for my aisle. I moved down a few feet, to position myself out of range from the other three guards, held Wilhelmina at the ready and waited.

He turned into the aisle and I squeezed the trigger. I saw a portion of his head blow away, saw the smile of anticipation turn to one of horror. In the quiet cellar, the boom of the luger was like a dynamite blast.

In that same instant, Uturo stepped from his aisle and began shooting at the other three guards. Another automatic rifle from the right began to chatter. Two other guards fell and I stepped out of the aisle to see the fourth guard charging up the stone steps toward the guard station. I aimed and fired, but he disappeared behind a wall. I was certain I hadn’t hit him.

“Come on,” I yelled. “Let’s go before they gather their senses.”

Knowing that we had been pressed into acting too soon, long before Sagacio could have done us any good, we went charging up the steps.

I was fully prepared for a full-scale shootout with the remaining guards at the station. As I neared the top of the stone staircase, I looked back to see that Uturo and the other warrior were right behind me. Elicia was nowhere to be seen and I had a kind of gut fear that perhaps she’d been hit by a stray bullet. There had been an awful lot of shooting down in that wine cellar.

At the top of the stairs, two doorways led off a narrow corridor. There was a torch burning in a holder at the end of the corridor and, near one of the doors was the fourth guard, crumpled up like a piece of foil.

I had hit him with that last shot as he had rounded the corner of the staircase. He had made it this far and had died before he could warn the others. And the winecellar was so deep and so well insulated with stone that the shots apparently hadn’t been heard in the guard station. I held up my hand to stop the charging Uturo and his friend.

“Time for a bit of discretion instead of foolhardy valor,” I said. “Let’s go below and set up a plan. Uturo, grab an arm and let’s take this dead guard with us.”

Quietly, we retreated, dragging the dead guard down the staircase into the cellar. Wine from broken bottles now covered the floor. I called out to Elicia, but got no answer. Time was running out for us, but still I made a quick search among the aisles. No Elicia. I was starting down the corridor toward the arsenal when footsteps sounded on the stone staircase.

The warriors and I went into a defensive stance behind the racks of wine bottles. I aimed the luger at the base of the steps and waited, my finger itching to blast away at more guards. Sagacio’s bulky frame appeared in my sights.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, gazing fearfully around at our leveled guns, at the four dead guards and at the broken wine bottles.

“What are you doing back down here?” I demanded. “You were to create a diversion among the guards.”

“The station is empty,” he said, the look of puzzlement back on his pudgy face. “I took the wine to Don Carlos and found him even more furious than ever. The storm has passed, but the whole of Alto Arete is still swathed in clouds. The wind seems to have died and the clouds aren’t moving away. The signal wouldn’t be seen. If they don’t clear soon, Don Carlos will use his radios to call for the revolution.”

“That means we don’t have any time to fool around,” I said. “We’ll put on the uniforms of the dead guards and you can lead us out of here. Do you know where the guards are — the ones from the guard station?”

“I have no idea. When I returned from the palace and found the station empty, I thought perhaps you had killed them all. These four,” he said, indicating the dead guards whose uniforms we were stripping, “aren’t on duty now. They must have found the station empty and come down to steal wine.”

That much was obvious, but I was still puzzled by the absence of guards at the station. And I was worried about Elicia. But, again, I thought, there’s no time for anything but action. We donned the uniforms of the dead guards and, with Sagacio going ahead to make certain the way was clear, we went up the steps again.

The guard station was indeed empty. I checked the cabinets of rifles, grenades and mortars, pocketed a couple of grenades, and peered out into the courtyard.