Nick Carter - The Terrible Ones

The sun was low over the sea. It was the last tour of the afternoon.

Nick stared out over the parapet. He and the girl stood slightly apart from the rest of the group, and both had changed their costumes of the night before. She wore tourist slacks and a brightly colored blouse that fitted her to perfection, and he wore a casual, elderly man’s suit borrowed for him by Paula’s friend Jacques LeClerq. His dark skin of the night before was now the mottled pink of a man accustomed to good living and his beard was grizzled and trim. He could have been an aging Latin-American touring Haiti with his niece. But he wasn’t. He was Killmaster, on an impossible mission.

“All right, let’s go over this once more,” he said quietly. In the background the guide’s voice sang on. “I don’t like it at all, but it seems to be the only thing to do so I guess we’ll have to do it.”

She turned to him in a lithe, quick movement, graceful as a cat and completely feminine in every curve and gesture.

“I don’t like it either. It was stupid to send one man! I told you in the beginning—”

“Yes, you did. Once or twice too often,” Nick said tightly. “Should I send for a company of Marines and storm the battlements?”

She clicked impatiently and turned away to gaze down into the thick mahogany grove far below beyond the outer western wall.

“And don’t stare down there as though you’re looking for something,” Nick said sharply. “You might just get someone interested. Now. You can trust Jacques to have the horses there?”

“Of course I can trust Jacques! Didn’t he give us shelter, clothes, the map?”

“Don’t bite. I’m with you, not against you. And you’re sure the guide won’t count heads as we leave?”

Paula shook her head. Her honey-colored hair swung gently in the breeze.

She’s beautiful, in her hard way, Nick thought reluctantly.

“They never bother to count,” she said. “Least of all on the last trip of the day. Jacques said so, and he knows them.”

Yes. The ever-helping Jacques, thought Nick. But he had to trust the man. Jacques and his wife Marie had been friends of Paula’s for many years. It was Jacques who had sent the message to Paula that Chinese strangers had been seen near Cap Haitien, and Jacques who had spied and seen them burrowing through the bushes near the Citadelle for several dark nights in a row, dragging odd-shaped boxes with them. Jacques would bear closer inquiry when he had time.

“Okay, if Jacques says so. Now I want this clearly understood. You will stay with the horses. You are not coming with me.”

“Let’s understand it my way,” she said coldly. “I’ve seen you in action only once — against a dog. Until I know what you’re worth I’m giving the orders. You are not I am coming with you.”

The guide’s voice sang out briskly. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will take the staircase to the lower cannon gallery. You will follow me, please, and quickly if you do not mind, for it is getting late.”

There was a flurry of sound and the party drifted away from the battlement. Nick watched the last man go downstairs out of sight, waited for a minute, and then turned to Paula.

“Paula, use your head,” he said softly. “You’ll only be in the way. It’s going to be hard enough groping around in the dark alone; it’s going to be impossible if I have to drag you with me. Do you want to force me to put you out of action?” He glanced around swiftly to make sure they were alone. They were. “It’s easy enough. Like this!”

His hands shot out in a lightning move. One caught both of hers and pinned them together at the wrists. The other went to her throat and found the sensitive pressure point. And squeezed.

He let go just as suddenly: “See how easy?”

She touched her throat and swallowed. “I see. You have made your point. But as you say you will be alone in there. You may need help. Like this!”

Her hands shot out in a move that matched his own for speed. With a swift, skillful jerk she had him off his feet and over her shoulder. He slammed against the parapet wall and bounded back like a ball, landing lightly beside her as she turned to view her handiwork.

“Shame on you for treating an old man like that,” he said reproachfully. “What if I’d gone over the parapet?”

“I would have waved goodbye,” she answered crisply. “But you land well, I’m glad to see.”

Nick stared at her. “You’re a hard case, aren’t you? Okay, you’ve made your point, too. But I think I’m kind of sorry for you. Come on, let’s go.”

He slapped her derriere briskly and propelled her toward the stone staircase. His pride was ruffled. But he was thinking that she might be useful, after all.

“Shang! You devil’s bastard! Did I not tell you that we might need her yet?” Tsing-fu Shu’s tall body quivered with rage. It had all been too quick, much too quick! “You pig, you will be punished for this!”

The hairless man-ape turned to him. Shang’s face was a study in animal bewilderment.

“I did nothing. Master. I touched her only, and she fought me. You saw — you must have seen. I did nothing to her, Master.”

Tsing-fu pulled furiously at his cigarillo and strode over to the silent figure on its bed of stone. He reached for the thin shoulders and shook them angrily. The girl’s body was limp and unresisting; she was like a rag doll with half the stuffing gone. Her head flopped back and forth as though her neck had snapped.

He felt for her pulse. It was faint, but it was beating.

“Get out, Shang,” he grated. “Get back to your place.”

Tsing-fu heard the low growl behind him as he reached into his pocket for the small case with the vials and hypodermic. His flesh crawled. He knew the brute strength of his pet monster and respected it. He knew Shang’s rages, too, far more violent than his own, and had seen the beast in action with his crushing holds and deadly karate blows. Shang was practically his own creation… but one never knew when a half-tamed beast would turn.

He made his voice gentle as he filled the needle.

“You will have your chance, my Shang,” he said. “It will be later, that is all. Now go.”

He heard Shang’s padding footsteps retreat while he sought the vein and found it.

She would be good for at least another round, this girl. And next time he would be more careful.

None of the tourists noticed Nick and Paula hanging back from the rest of the group and stealing into the grove. Jacques had been right; there was no way of reaching the heavily barred inner recesses of the castle from within, so they would have to re-enter from outside. But at least they had a good idea of the general layout, which matched the old pictures and the chart.

The horses were waiting in the grove, as Jacques had promised. In the deep shade offered by the mahogany trees Nick changed quickly into his dark green fatigues of the night before and dusted the gray powder from his beard. The thin evening air carried back to him the sounds of the tour party clattering homeward down the trail a half mile or so away. It was a long descent and the last rays of the sun would be dying by the time they reached Milot at the bottom of the slope.

Paula was still changing behind the cover of a low-hanging branch.

There was time to kill before it got dark enough to go to work; too much time for a man of Nick’s impatience. And Paula, withdrawn and angry by turns, was not the sort of woman to help him while away the twilight hours in the manner of his choice.

Nick sighed. It was a pity about her. So cold, so uncommunicative about herself, so beautiful in her lean and catlike way, so unapproachable.…