Nick Carter - The Terrible Ones

“Breathe while you have the chance,” he muttered, and slithered in on his belly. She came in close behind him with the stealth of a jungle cat.

The air was thin and stale with age but it was breathable. Nick paused and groped around. The duct was a good three feet in diameter and the floor was dead moss and rough stone. It wasn’t ideal for an innocent evening’s stroll, but it was fine for a couple of prowlers in the night.

He reckoned they had about a hundred feet to go according to the building plan in Jacque’s old book. Nick quickened his pace and moved on in the stifling darkness, hearing the girl’s soft movements following along behind him.

Slap!

Tsing-fu Shu’s lean hand drew back and struck again, this time against her other cheek.

“So you did not like my Shang, eh?” Slap! “But I see you are almost ready now for another meeting. Good!” He slapped again and watched her eyes flutter open. “Unless you would prefer to talk to me instead?”

Evita cringed away from him, eyes wide with fear and horror.

“Not… that… animal….” she whispered. “Talk. But… water….”

Her words sounded like the rustling of dry leaves through her parched lips. Tsing-fu could barely make them out, but he could see the swollen tongue working feverishly.

“A little talk first,” he said persuasively. “Then your reward. Tell me who you are working for. That will be a good beginning.”

Her mouth worked and a tiny sound came out.

Tsing-fu leaned closer.

“What?”

“Fi-fidelistas… and the sound trailed off into a strangled croak.

“What!” Tsing-fu shook her furiously. “Who? Who?”

Her mouth worked earnestly but the sounds that came out were not words. It was obvious even to Tsing-fu that she was incapable of speech.

“Shang! Shang!” he bellowed. Evita shrank away and shuddered.

There was a low growl from the anteroom. “Master?”

“Bring water!”

Evita sighed and closed her eyes.

“Your reward,” Tsing-fu told her pleasantly. “Then the full story, yes?”

She nodded, eyes still closed.

Dr. Tsing-fu prepared another needle while he waited. This time he was going to have the true story. Of course she was still going to try to lie. But he, in his turn, still had the Shang treatment in reserve. And he was not going to cheat himself of that.

Nick flicked the pencil flashlight on for long enough to see that they were in a stone cellar thick with cobwebs and dead leaves. A broken wooden bucket lay beneath a broken rope beside a flight of steps leading to a trapdoor. It was bolted from within. But the hinges were loose and rusty with age. He doused the light and put his Lock picker’s Special to work.

“I hear something up there,” Paula whispered. “Hammering. Digging.”

“So do I,” Nick murmured back. “Not near us, though. But if we walk into a roomful of people—”

“I know,” she said. “You told me. Hurry, please!”

“Hurry!” Nick muttered. “Two weeks they’ve been here, and now I have to hurry.”

He could almost see her lips tighten in the darkness.

“I only heard about this when Jacque’s message—”

“I know,” he said. “You told me. And cut out the female gabbing, if you don’t mind.”

Her silence was almost loud. Nick grinned to himself and went on working.

The ancient hinges parted from their moorings.

Tom Kee cantered up the slope on his spavined mount. It was a slow canter, more like a determined plod, but it was getting him there. He had news for Tsing-fu Shu. The Cuban Comrades had not sent Alonzo into Haiti. How could they? They had not even known that Tsing-fu and his men were there. Alonzo must have done it on his own, they said. They had no idea who might have killed him.

Tom Kee’s Oriental mind chewed things over carefully. He had believed their story; the Cubans had not sent Alonzo and they were genuinely puzzled. So — why had he come, and who had killed him? Tom Kee whacked his mount to hasten it. There was a long ride ahead, and something told him that there was a need to hurry.

“Sit up, you! Sit up!” Tsing-fu could hear the hysterical rage in his own voice but he did not care. He dashed the mugful of water into her face and shook her head from side to side but the eyelids did not open nor was there the slightest moan. She had done it again! He cursed wildly in all the languages he knew and slammed his fist against her head. For one moment, one moment only, he had turned his eyes away to take the water mug from Shang, and in that moment she had dashed her head against the wall and now she lay as silent as the grave. Now, by God, he would tie her down, and next time…!

He threw the mug down on the floor and screamed for rope. For a while she could rest, trussed like a chicken, and then he would be back. He watched Shang tie her up and then he left. Oh, yes, he would be back.

The trapdoor was a loose covering over the hole and they were in a stone room listening to distant thuds. Total darkness pressed down upon them like a coffin lid. Nick let several minutes pass while he sent his senses out like tentacles into the blackness and looked at his mental picture of the map. Then he touched Paula’s arm and moved down a corridor toward the sound.

Tom Kee whipped his tired horse. The feeling of urgency was growing in him. His every instinct told him that there was danger in the air.

He forced the clumsy beast to hurry.

At the end of a tunnel of darkness there was a muted glow of light. Nick groped towards it, ghostlike in his dark fatigues and the special boots that Editing called “creepers.” Paula followed him like a shadow in sneakers.

Under any other circumstances Nick would have avoided the light like the trap it might turn out to be. But his main purpose was to verify the presence of the Chinese and see what they were up to, so the only sense was to head for where the action was. Also, there was the girl Evita. If she was here and if she was still alive the chances were that she would be somewhere near the center of their activities rather than tucked away in some distant part of the Citadelle.

So he padded on toward the light and the sound, expecting momentarily to run headlong into trouble.

It started even sooner than he had expected.

A sudden pool of brightness splashed upon the stone floor yards ahead and angled sharply toward him, as if a man with a flashlight had turned a corner from one passage into this. Nick could hear the dull clunk of heavy feet approaching as the pool of light advanced.

He brushed Paula back with one hand and spread out his arms along the wall in the faint hope of finding a doorway. There wasn’t one within reach; not even a niche. That left him with only one thing to do. Attack.

He went on walking toward the flashlight’s beam, one hand raised to shade his eyes and face against its light and the other hand half-clenched at his side in readiness for Hugo. He peered at the shadowy shape beyond the light and made himself grunt with irritation. A startled exclamation echoed him and the flashlight’s ray played over his body.

“Lower that light, you fool!” he hissed in Chinese, hoping he’d picked the right language to hiss in. “And the noise back there with the digging! It would waken the dead.” As he spoke he let Hugo trickle down his sleeve, and he kept moving, with his eyes still shaded from the light, until he was within inches of the other. “Where is your commanding officer? I have a message of importance.”