Nick Carter - The Black Death

For once I said a real little prayer — that Lyda Bonaventure would have second thoughts, think it out, break a leg — anything to keep her from getting back to Sea Witch and starting a half-cocked invasion. Papa Doc would murder her.

A bomb hit a stack of cannon balls and the air was dark and filled with solid whistling death. I cringed in my hole and somehow survived it. A foundry started up in my skull. I lay and shivered and shook and cursed and the blood started running down my side again. The planes came back for another run.

Cannon and .50s pocked and chewed and ravaged the Citadel. A bomb lifted one of the old cannon and swept it toward me like a toothpick in a hurricane. I watched a couple of tons of ancient iron float toward me and I froze and told myself that at least it would be quick. The berserk cannon missed me and sheared off the top half of the arch and kept going through twelve feet of stone and mortar.

The last jet fighter made his pass and climbed away and left the quaking ruins. Namely me. I had a feeling that I was Adam, the only man alive in this devastated “paradise. I tottered to my feet and had sense enough to jam another clip into the Luger and take my last grenade from the musette bag. I was in shock and rubbery legged, and my head wanted to float away. At first, when I heard the blatting of the helicopter, I didn’t believe it. I stared at it, unable to react, as it came fluttering in and, crazy — crazy — settled down on what was left of the gun platform. I think I made a little bow and said something stupid. Like: “Welcome to my mountain top. Pull up a bomb crater and rest a spell. Don’t mind me, I am always this green, and do you happen to have a strait jacket on you?”

The rotors flapped. A man — not a thing from Mars, but a real man — leaned out and screamed at me.

“Bennett! Bennett! Get in, man. Come on — come on— come on!”

“Hank Willard! Scrawny, dirty, ginger-bearded and broken-toothed Hank. I nearly wept as I ran. I got in. He pushed something and the egg-beater lifted and tilted. The rats came out of the stone work again. You never really kill all of them in a bombing attack.

Slugs began to zip through the plexiglass. Hank ducked and said, “Now what the screwing hell? I thought the shooting was over.”

I came back from that limbo where I had been floating. I grabbed his arm and pointed down. “There. Over there! Make a pass at him. Just one pass.”

Diaz Ortega was standing on a hillock of shattered stone and firing at us with a rifle. His head was bandaged and his huge black chest was red with blood and his teeth flashed as he screamed.

Hank Willard shook his head. “No! Crazy — it only takes one slug to knock us down. I won’t—”

I put my fingers on his skinny arm and squeezed. I shoved the Luger in his face. “Make a pass at him!”

He nodded and flipped the wheel and we went slanting down toward Ortega in a long glide. I leveled the Luger, steadying it on my left forearm, and started squeezing off the clip. The black man, in a wide-legged stance, stood his ground and gave me shot for shot as we swooped at him. The cockpit was full of metallic bees. I squeezed off my last shot. Ortega dropped his rifle, clutched at his chest, fell, got up and began to run. I flung my last grenade. As we tilted and climbed I saw a red blossom grow out of the small of his

“Jesus Christ — Jesus Christ—” Sweat was streaming into Hank’s beard. I patted his arm and smiled at him. I loved him like a brother. I pointed toward the coast. “Take her away.”

Hank took her away. He eased the ‘copter over a mountain and into a valley and started tree hopping. A couple of times I didn’t think we were going to make it.

The last one scared the hell out of me and I yelled, “Pull her up, for God’s sake. I don’t want to get killed now. I just crawled out of a grave.”

Hank shook his head and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Can’t. They’ll cream us. Those bastards are knocking down everything in sight and asking no questions.”

Two of Papa Doc’s fighters were dogging us.

“Long as we stay on the deck we’re all right,” Hank said. “Those fighters can’t pull out of a dive fast enough.”

We brushed a hilltop, and I closed my eyes. I distinctly saw a bird’s nest with three brown eggs in it.

I must have groaned aloud, because Hank gave me a hurt look. “Don’t be so screwing critical, Bennett, or whatever your screwing name is. I only had two lessons on these damned things.”

I stifled my reply. Better not to upset him.

The jets turned back. They were low on fuel and running for base. I breathed a little easier and started looking for the — old U.S. Fruit dock and buildings and praying that Lyda was there and we could make a run for it before Papa Doc got his coastal patrol into action. I wasn’t kidding myself that the helicopter would go unnoticed. Papa Doc was alerted now— and how he was alerted — and the fun had just begun.

We hit the coast. I saw Tortuga lying on the horizon off shore and knew we were too far west. I gave Hank the bearing and we started east, buzzing low over the beaches and coves. Now and then a black face stared as we swished by. No one shot at us.

Aware of a great craving, I bummed a cigarette off Hani and tried to relax. With luck, a lot of luck, we might make it yet.

“Where did you get the chopper?” I asked.

“Stole it. There was a pad in P.P.’s backyard and there she was, just sitting and asking to be used. That was after I came back.”

I craned out the window. That damned dock couldn’t be far now. “Came back?”

Hank gave it to me briefly. He had passed on my instructions and Duppy, though in rage, had still agreed to the covering fire. When things got too hot they had all three cut out and started back for the coast. Then Duppy left them.

“Just vanished,” Hank said. “One minute he was there, the next he wasn’t.”

I smiled. Yes. Duppy — Ortega — had known I was about to tear down his playhouse and he had to try and stop me. He had guessed that I would get to the Citadel and had gone there to wait for me. I had forced his hand, all right.

“That left you and the girl,” I said. “What then?”

Hank gave me a sidelong glance and pulled at his beard. “We talked. She was gonna go back to your boat and get her people and start the invasion. I talked her out of it. I think.”

“You think?” He had me worried.

“I said I would go back and hang around and look for you. I said we should hear your side before she did anything fatal.”

“That was pretty good thinking, Hank.”

“She was already having second thoughts. I knew you didn’t trust that Duppy, so I didn’t, and when she had a chance to think it over I don’t think she did either. She was convinced at first, though, that you had set up this Valdez guy for murder. The guy they killed on the road. She was pretty mad and Duppy handled her pretty good. But later—”

The sun had been shining for some time. It was a bright, beautiful, clear-cool day. I remembered and glanced to my right, to where the Citadel was a massive purple blur on its mountain top.

Suddenly the blur dissolved into streamers of red and yellow. Jagged rockets of stone soared upward in curving trajectory, hung in midair, plummeted downward. Black matchsticks that could only be cannon went into brief parabola and vanished into the gaping hole in the side of the mountain. A pillar of smoke began to build and sway in the wind. Sound and blast reached us and shook the helicopter like a giant terrier killing a rat. We sank and rose and brushed the tops of a stand of tall trees.

Hank Willard fought the controls and stared in awe. “What for Christ’s sake was that?”