Nick Carter - The Black Death

Habit was too strong for the old man. Dying, tortured by pain and perversity, captive and helpless, he still thought himself the money god and that his whim was law. He ranted to Valdez. Valdez realized that bluff was hopeless and went for broke. I got caught like a sitting duck, the truth eluding me for the split second it took Valdez to reach into the drawer and come out with the machine pistol. Just too late I flopped on my belly, remembering the musette bag and grabbing for it as Thomas took a burst in the belly and folded down on me. Dying from bullets intended for me.

I rolled over frantically, trying to get behind a desk, the Luger extended at arm’s length and spitting at Valdez. He was standing now, wide legged, bracing himself against the desk as I hit him, swaying, but hosing away with the machine pistol. The old man caught a clutch of lead in the throat, drastic surgery, and spun around and fell across the black. Bright red arterial blood spurted from his mouth.

I took a slug along my ribs that made me yelp.

I cosseted the musette bag — better a slug in me than in it — and lay on the floor and blasted with the Luger until the clip ran out. The machine pistol gave a final burp and quit.

I fumbled another clip into the Luger while I watched him die. He dropped the machine pistol with a clatter of metal on stone. He clung to the desk and swayed, fighting to keep his feet. He looked at the front of his nice gray suit, where I had put four in around his heart, and then he looked at me and he tried to speak and couldn’t make it. His knees hinged and failed and he spun across the desk and then slid to the floor.

I was soaked in blood. Mine and that of Thomas and the old man. I grabbed the musette bag and leaped for the desk. I grabbed the dead man’s head and wrenched it forward and saw the scars faint behind the ears and along the jaw line.

I heard shouts and the pound of running feet. I saw the iron door ten feet from the desk, set into the wall, now slightly open and stuccoed with concrete to make it blend into the wall. Valdez’ private entrance. My way out of the trap. I darted through it like a ferret into a rabbit hole and slammed it shut and dropped an iron bar into place. I had a few seconds.

The narrow tunnel slanted upward. I ran. In dim yellow light that flickered and faded and came back and then faded again. I was running for my life but I still caught the rhythm as the yellow bulbs faded and glowed. Code! Someone was working a transmitter with power from the same generator that supplied the lights.

I rounded a corner and saw a splotch of light on the tunnel floor ahead. It came from a cave. I ran on my toes, the Luger ready, and peered in. It was a radio room. A man was sitting at a transmitter, wearing earphones, pounding on a key. In one corner, where the cave had been vented to carry off the fumes, a small generator was roaring away.

I was behind the operator before he knew I was there. I slammed his skull with the Luger butt, and he went sleepy-by, and I eased him down and sat in his chair. Carter had just come up with a very sneaky idea.

I sent it in clear, in plaintalk, so that Papa Doc’s DF stations would be sure to read it loud and clear. There was no time for subtlety and I had to hope they would believe and not look for the gimmick. I sent it with a hard fist, pounding it out into the Haitian dawn:

Red Hammer to Black Swan — have taken Citadel — Valdez and Trevelyn dead — our missiles safe — proceed at once with invasion as planned — blacks all uprising and will rendezvous you Gonaives — strike hard and long live freedom — Bennett.

I sent it twice. With what Hawk has called my fiendish grin. It would be a good ploy if it worked, and Papa Doc and his Army and Air Force, and the Tonton Macoute, were going to be one busy bunch of bastards. Gonaives was the logical town for a rendezvous. It was southwest of the Citadel; I intended to run like hell to the northwest.

It was quiet but for the hum of the generator. I had a little time yet. I got a wad of plastique from the musette bag and shaped it and decided that the transmitter console was as likely a spot as any. I didn’t have any idea what the weather was like outside, and I had to guess and take a chance. I was using a barometric fuse.

I worked fast, not wanting to think about it, and hooked the detonator into the fuse and set it for high pressure. I gave myself as much margin as I could and it wasn’t much. Nothing happened and I was still in one piece and I eased the console shut and grabbed the musette bag and legged it to hell out of there. The plastique was new stuff, super, invented by the AXE people and roughly equivalent to ten tons of TNT. I wished to be far away when it let go. Where I really wanted to be was on the bounding main, heading Stateside, but I didn’t count too much on it.

I started down the tunnel again. Gradually the throbbing of the generator faded away. I came to an iron ladder set into the stone and leading upward through the top of the tunnel. Mist coiled down on me, and cold rain touched my face, and I breathed again. I had guessed right on the weather. That pressure fuse wouldn’t trip the detonator until the weather cleared.

There had been no pursuit, no effort to take me or cut me off, and until now I had been too busy to think much about it. Now I did and I heard the sound of gunfire funneling down the shaft and I understood a little. They were fighting up there. Who was fighting whom I didn’t know, any more than I knew why they were fighting, but it made me very happy. If they kept their little intramural war going maybe I could fade quietly away into the jungle and head Tor the coast.

I sighed. Before I could do that I had to get off the Citadel. I had to presume that my tunnel was blocked at both ends. I didn’t want to go back and I didn’t think it would be much healthier forward. That left the ladder. I started climbing.

Fine rain pelted down at me as I climbed. The iron rungs were slippery. Craning up, I could see a manhole slice of gray light, a dull slab of dawn. There was a riffle of gunfire, spastic in the morning, and cracking little sonic booms slashed the air.

I stopped just below the circular opening. I listened and identified; four or five submachine guns chattering, the dullish crump-banging of grenades, a spatter of rifle fire. The ball was waxing hot. I didn’t know what it was all about, and I really didn’t want to find out, but I knew I had to. I had to run for it and now was as good a time as any.

I leaned far back on the iron ladder and craned up, an angular view,and saw a long mound of rusty cannon balls. Part of an ancient cannon muzzle with a belled flare. The main gun platform of the Citadel.

Lead whispered above me. I said to hell with it and pushed myself up and out of the hole. Ducking, crouching, I ran for the shelter of a crumbling wall to my left. It opened into a court. Someone shouted and I heard a familiar voice and lead slashed in front of me. Shards of stone nicked my face. I gave up on the court and took a headlong dive into an arched casemate. I lay with my face in stone and dust and thought about that voice. Duppy!

Gunfire kept crackling away. I wormed around and stuck my nose out the casemate’s arch. WHAM —a 32-pound cannon ball smacked the stone two inches from my face. I made like a turtle, cursing. From somewhere over me I heard Duppy laugh.

“Good morning, Carter. You stepped into it this time my friend. That casemate is blocked at the far end — no way out for you.”

I squirmed back a little. I yelled. “What happened to your accent, Duppy? Or, since we’re playing truth this morning, Diaz Ortega? My brain was running around like a mouse in a cage, trying to figure a way out.