Nick Carter - Double Identity

As they hurried down the steep stairs in the cliff he was surprised to see it growing dark again. He had been more than twenty-four hours in the lamasery. So Hafed informed him. Otherwise, N3 thought grimly, it could have been twenty-four days! Even twenty-four years! He had been in a hell of a state there for a time. Someday, when he had the time and inclination, he would investigate that chaos of diseased memories.

Right now they had new trouble. Bad trouble. Chinese trouble!

The ponies, fed and rested, were being led out of the stables. Hafed grabbed Nick’s arm and pointed. “Look, sar. She not lie okay — soldiers come now! Better we make fast, I think.”

“I think you’re right,” Nick agreed. “Damn it!” He glanced to the east along the snow-choked pass. “You think the ponies can make it through that?”

Hafed, with a choice assortment of Oriental curses, said that the ponies would. They’d better or he and Nick had had it. He did not phrase it exactly so, but it was the gist He was speedily packing his pony. Nick did likewise, wasting no time. It was growing darker by the second — that might save their lives.

He took a pair of binoculars from his pack and trained them on the soldiers. There were about fifty of them in the patrol with twenty or so heavily laden ponies. Metal sparked in the dying sunlight. Several of the ponies were carrying long tubes. Mountain guns! Mortars!

Hafed saw the mortars too, with his naked eye, and swore again.

“Is very bad place we must pass — much narrow. Good for big guns. They know, too. Come, sar! Not time to waste!” He was already kicking his laden pony east into the pass.

Nick lingered for half a minute. He caught a flash of sun on lenses and saw a Chinese officer watching them through binoculars. On impulse he put his thumb to his nose and waggled his fingers. He saw the officer snap a command and soldiers were running to the ponies bearing the mortars. Nick made a rapid estimate of the distance — a little over half a mile. He smiled. They should be safe enough. The mortars could range it easily enough, but they weren’t likely to be accurate in this poor light. He kicked Kaswa and took off after Hafed, already vanished around a bend in the pass.

N3 couldn’t have been more wrong. He had forgotten that the Chinese were familiar with this country. In all probability they had the narrowest section’ of the gorge zeroed in, had firing stakes planted along the way.

It was his lagging behind that saved N3. He was three hundred yards behind Hafed when the first mortar shells came in. Sssshhhhhhss— shssssss— shsssssss— shsssssss— a clutch of four whispered into the narrow waist of the gorge and exploded with a whanging bang. Nick grabbed the pony’s bridle and led it into the shelter of an overhang. Four more mortars exploded. Rock chips whined through the air, mineral shrapnel as deadly as metal.

The trail crooked just ahead. He could not see Hafed. More mortars poured into the gorge. Nick crouched and cursed and waited for the deadly fire to cease. They must have this spot zeroed in — they were firing blind and yet pinpointing the narrow gut with devastating precision.

It grew darker. The mortars ceased to whisper in the chilling air. Nick waited ten minutes, then kicked Kaswa into life. He doubted the Chinese would come after them in the dark, but he could take no chances. And Hafed would be waiting, impatient and afraid, crouching in some hole just as Nick was.

Hafed would wait a long time on this desolate slope of the Himalayas. Nick found him lying in a great splotch of blood on the snow. The same burst had gotten both Hafed and his pony. The pony was gutted, its pink entrails smoking in the crisp air. Half the guide’s head was missing.

Kaswa nosed at the dead pony and whinnied, a plaintive sound. Nick tugged him out of the way and began heaping snow over the blood and bodies. There was no time to do more. The snow would protect Hafed’s corpse from the wolves at least until spring — then perhaps the She Devils would find him and bury him. Or the Chinese. It did not really matter.

Yang Kwei had taken her revenge after all. Part of it! She had held them just minutes too long. Nick gazed into the darkness of the pass leading east — he still had a far piece to go. He was alone now. Five days behind his quarry.

His face began to stiffen in the wind and he pulled the yaks kin cover over it and chucked to the pony. He would make it He had to make it Death was in the wind that was rising, but not for him. Not yet He had a job to do first.

He had lost the first round. But there would be a second— and it would begin in Karachi.

Karachi was blacked out!

The sprawling city on the Arabian Sea was as black as the future of Operation Deuce. Nick Carter had talked to Hawk from the airstrip at Ladakh and had learned, along with a great many other things, that his mission now had a name. DEUCE. It was a great help! N3 couldn’t see just how — his mood was exceedingly bitter at the moment — but it only proved that even in AXE red tape and bureaucracy sometimes prevailed. Right now Nick would have settled for something more practical than a mission tag — say some first class diplomatic immunity!

He was wanted for murder!

Now, in what was even for him a new low in harbor joints, he skulked in a dirty corner and buried his face in a tattered copy of The Hindi Times. It helped not at all that his own picture — blurred but fully recognizable — was on the front page of the paper.

His Hindustani was not fluent, but he could make out the gist of the caption: Nicholas Carter, murderer and suspected secret agent, wanted for murder and escape!

Nick sighed and ordered another bottle of Pakistani beer. It wasn’t good but it was cold. And he needed an excuse for hanging about the place. So far he hadn’t seen any cops — maybe the owner was paying off — and he needed a haven for the next few hours. He had to figure out his next move. Quickly! And when he had it figured he had to move just as quickly. He would have to venture out of this safe hole — defying the curfew — and he would be damned conspicuous in the deserted streets. But there was no help for that. He had to get out to the Mauripur district, where the murdered man had lived, and do a little on-the-spot investigating. It should be most interesting to know why his double, the impostor, had killed again! This time his victim was an American: Sam Shelton, confidential attaché to APDP— Arms Procurement and Distribution Program. It had been Shelton who had implemented Washington’s order to shut off the flow of arms to the Pakistanis when the war with India flared. High policy, that, and Sam Shelton only the tool! Only carrying out orders. Yet the fake Nick Carter had killed him! Why?

Nick lit a Goldflake — American cigarettes were unobtain-able in Karachi’s cheap boites —and glanced furtively around. No one was paying him any attention. Or so it seemed. You never knew.

The dirty little bar was situated in the Malir-Landhi district on the muddy Indus River near Karachi Airport where, a few hours before, Nick had said a hurried goodbye to the crew of the Hercules C-130 who had flown him in from Chushul Airstrip in Ladakh. They had been a nice gang of young Americans, bent on raising a little hell in Karachi — maybe visiting one of the infamous bath-houses where the entertainment was varied and continuous before, during, and after your bath. Nick would have liked to have accepted their invitation to join them — even though their youth and effervescence made him feel a thousand years old.

He hadn’t, of course. Mission Deuce lay heavier on him by the passing second. He was a good week behind his quarry now — or so he had thought at the time. He had a man to find and kill and he had best be getting on with it. He said goodbye and plunged into darkened Karachi, improvising now and doubtful about his next move. It had been sheer luck that he had picked up a discarded copy of The Hindi Times and found that he was wanted for murder and escape! There it was, his picture, on the front page.