Nick Carter - The Terrible Ones

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure. Do you?”

He nodded. “I think so. I’ll carry her. You stick close behind and be on guard. Evita?” He touched the girl gently. “Just hold on to me. That’s all you have to do.”

“Tired“ she whispered. “May not make it. Tell you first… Paula, listen. Listen! Padilla’s clue… The Castle of the Blacks. But he also said… it’s not far from Domingo. Chinese wrong. It’s not in Haiti. Understand? Not in Haiti. And he also said…” She gave a little sigh and fell back limp.

Paula groaned with anguish. “She’s gone!” she whispered.

“She’s not.” Nick bent swiftly and cradled Evita in his arms as though she were a child. “Passed out, and just as well. Kill that lantern out there and follow me like a leech. Don’t lose me — but if anything happens, it’s two lefts and a right, another left and a right, and run like hell. If there’s trouble, don’t wait for me. I won’t wait for you. Understand? Let’s go.”

He carried his slight burden into the anteroom, stepped over the trunklike legs of the mangled Shang, and waited briefly in the doorway while Paula doused the light. Then he padded swiftly into the corridor, probing the darkness with the eyes of his mind and keeping close to the wall. The back of his neck bristled with warnings but he had no choice of action. It was go and keep going, and that was all, until something stopped them.

Dr. Tsing-fu Shu stood in the darkness at the corner of the corridor leading to his office. He had heard something; he was sure of it. And the men were not responsible. They were working with their usual impassive silence, hammering and digging, but not talking.

Shang? Impossible. Nevertheless…

hen there was that word “Fidelistas.” It kept whispering in his mind, and echo of the girl’s cracked voice. Fidelistas…?

Now, right now, he would get the truth from her.

His thoughts were full of Fidelistas as he snapped on his flashlight and jabbed its beam into the cross-corridor ahead, the one leading to her cell. He gasped involuntarily.

Crossing the broad beam of light and disappearing into the shadows beyond was a tall, bearded man in Castro-like fatigues — carrying the girl!

A cry of outrage and alarm rose in his throat as he sprang forward and grasped the gun he so seldom had to use.

Light blazed across Nick’s face. He shifted the girl’s weight to one side and half-turned on the balls of his feet to kick out sideways at the figure behind the light. His foot connected with the hidden shin and at the same time he heard a plop! of sound and the light went out. The shriek of rage curved downward to the floor and then there was another splat of sound and a crumpling thud. Paula was busy with that little silencer, he thought with grim satisfaction, and paused to prod the dark shape with his foot. It lay still.

“C’mon!” he whispered urgently, and padded on.

Paula hesitated for a moment and then followed him.

The digging sounds had stopped. Someone was shouting. from a corridor nearby. Nick made a swift left turn, ran on, made another.

“Paula?” he hissed.

“Coming!”

He turned right. There were running footsteps after him, and they weren’t only Paula’s. They were close — too close. He made the next left and they faded, all but Paula’s. The girl was getting heavy. Nick shifted his grip and made the last right turn. The footfalls were loud again and another voice was shouting.

He ran full-tilt into the stone corner of a doorway. The girl moaned and Nick cursed. Paula brushed past him and he could hear her moving the loose trapdoor they had opened an hour or two before.

“Lower her to me!” she breathed. “Lower her— I’ll get her down the ladder.”

The trap was wide open and the girl was halfway down when the two men burst into the cellar. Nick ducked into the hole and lunged for Wilhelmina. A light shone full into his face and blinded him but he trained the Luger to the right of the reflector and above it and fired three shots in succession. Bullets slapped the stone around him and one skimmed past his ear. Wilhelmina’s answering volley splintered the bobbing flashlight and kicked the flashlight’s owner in the chest. The second man held fire. Behind him, Nick could hear Paula easing the tortured girl down the narrow ladder. A shot tore through his sleeve and he fired back at the little tongue of flame and then again and again at where he thought the head and chest must be. Something dropped heavily and he waited for a moment. Footsteps thundered dully in the passages beyond. But there was silence in the room with him. He slid quickly down the ladder and pulled the trapdoor shut above his head.

He flicked his pencil flashlight on for just long enough to see Paula struggling in the low-ceilinged passage with the girl’s dead-weight.

“I’ll take her,” he breathed. “Get going and get those nags unhitched. But fast!” He clutched Evita’s limp form as gently as he could and draped it over his crouched back. Then he crawled — crawled as fast as a man could crawl on a floor of dried moss and worn stones, with a low ceiling over his head and a half-dead woman weighing him down. In front of him he could hear Paula scrabbling over the rough floor and heading for the conduit exit. And behind him there was a blessed silence.

Tsing-fu staggered to his feet and clasped his aching head. His hand came away sticky with blood. His dazed mind could not at once grasp what had happened but he knew that it was catastrophic. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came. His hands groped about on the floor beside him and found a broken flashlight. Then a gun. He clawed at it, found a trigger, and fired. The sound rocketed against the walls. Then he sank back into unconsciousness. But before the curtain dropped over his mind he heard someone running toward him, and a voice shouting in Chinese. Hurry, you swine! he thought vaguely, and blacked into a nightmare of escaping Fidelistas.

Tom Kee dismounted in the palm grove and hastened toward the tunnel entrance. And stopped. Something was stirring in the mahogany stand. He froze where he stood, hearing leaves rustling in the windless night and the soft stomping of horses that should not have been there, and he turned toward the tall trees on his cat-burglar’s feet. For a moment he forgot all about the urgency of his message to Tsing-fu, and the doctor’s need for his help with the metal-detector. All he could think of was that there was movement in the mahogany grove, dangerously close to the castle. He flitted through the trees and pulled up short to stare into the gloom.

Two figures were helping a third one onto a horse. One of them mounted the same horse and held the limp figure in a close embrace. Then the other mounted the second horse, and the two horses started moving quietly through the trees toward the trail downhill.

There was no moon, but there was some starlight. And as the two horses moved through a narrow clearing toward the path Tom Kee caught a glimpse of the girl Evita. He also saw the two riders before the branches hid them, and though he did not recognize them he knew they were not Tsing-fu’s people.

Hooves clip-clopped lightly on the trail and picked up speed. He turned and raced back to his own mount and led it to the path. Then he followed, first at a careful distance because there were few other riders about and then more closely as he began to meet pedestrians and peasant carts further down the slope. Once in a while he held back and drew off to the side of the road so that the sound of his hoofbeats would not be so constant that the riders ahead would notice him. He thought he saw one of them turn occasionally to glance back over his shoulder, but they went on riding at a steady pace. Now they were galloping. Tom Kee slouched low on his horse with his head bent down, as he had seen the peasants do, and he began to gallop too.