The Terrible Ones (19 page)

And supposing the Cuban with the radio had managed to send a message . . . what better way to find a treasure than to lie in wait for those who had found it first? Maybe they were expecting to pounce upon Tsing-fu to grab it, but obviously they wouldn’t care who had it as long as they could get it.

Nick went back to his waiting women.

“You three with the sacks,” he whispered. “Get them out of sight behind the bushes and stay here with them
no matter what happens
until I whistle for you.” He saw Alva opening her rosebud mouth to object and his face hardened into a look familiar to those who knew him as Killmaster. “We’ve been through all this before and these are orders. You women chose to leave the place instead of waiting it out; now you do as I tell you. Get busy and keep quiet.”

Alva stared at him in surprise and backed away with her sack. Two others followed mutely.

“Paula, Luz,” said Nick. “Remember what I told you. Stay behind me and use cover all you can.”

They nodded silently. Luz took a step aside and quickly checked the carbine. Nick’s eyes lingered on Paula’s face.

“Perhaps there’ll be nothing to it,” he said softly. “But don’t take chances, please.” He took her hand and squeezed it lightly, and then turned away.

They followed silently, several paces back. He wished to hell they didn’t have to be there, but if there was an ambush it would take more than himself, one man, to draw their fire. They would scarcely give away their own positions for the sake of just one scout. So he and Luz and Paula were to be the bait. Or maybe they would be flies in the spider’s trap.

He was out of the trees now and crossing a clearing at a low running crouch, scanning the hillside as he ran. Behind him came Paula and Luz, zig-zagging as they had been told to do, their feet scrunching lightly on the fallen leaves.

So far, no sign of company, and the cover was getting sparser by the minute. It was beginning to look as though they had made it—away, home and free, with only one last whistle to bring them the treasure that had killed so many people.

He was almost at the far end of another clearing when the first fusillade burst through the trees on either side of him. There was a shriek from behind him and the carbine roared. Nick raced for a clump of bush and pulled a grenade from his pocket. As he turned he saw Luz clutch her throat and fall, and Paula diving for the shelter of a tree-trunk with her gun spitting little bursts of fire. He pulled the pin, counted and threw. It soared through the air and burst explosively into a low ridge of bush that suddenly became a small inferno of flaming brush and flying, shapeless things. Two men, dressed in the familiar Cuban fatigues, burst out of the burning bushes with rifles clamped to their shoulders. Nick picked off one of them with Wilhelmina before the fellow dodged behind a tree; the other dived behind a rock and spat his fire toward Paula. Nick could hear her returning fire as he pulled the other grenade from his pocket and drew out the pin. The crossfire from the second group was zinging across the clearing, searching for him, almost finding him. Bullets slammed above his head, tearing off bark and leaves and scattering their debris upon him as he pulled back his arm and threw. For one awful moment he thought his Chinese pineapple was going to blast its way straight through Paula’s head, but she dropped in the last split fraction of a second and pumped a stream of shots across the clearing. The grenade flew past her and landed with a spitting roar.

Smoke haze swirled over the hillside and the smell of burning bodies filled the air. Heat seared Nick’s face and he ducked rapidly as hot lead twanged past him on all sides. Something struck him in the shoulder and numbed his arm; he . switched Wilhelmina to his left hand and pumped her bullets rapid-fire toward a bearded figure with a submachine gun. The fellow dropped, spraying bullets into the trees.

Paula was still firing. One nest of gunners was silent. But there was another, still active though the growth around it blazed, and now the blast of its machine gun was ripping Nick’s cover. Wilhelmina was like a popgun against the deadly stream of lead. Nick thrust her back into her holster and made a flying leap for the Cuban’s discarded machine-gun. He was running even as he scooped it up, crouching and dodging toward a boulder in the clearing. His leg buckled beneath him as something struck it with a bite like a steel-clawed hammer, but he made cover and flung himself full-length behind the rock, already firing at the gun emplacement.

He stopped only when he was out of ammunition. And then he realized that no one was firing back. For long moments he waited, and still there was no sound. At last he rose unsteadily, blood pouring down his leg and shoulder and Wilhelmina wavering in his left hand, and gazed across the clearing. Nothing moved. He chirped enquiringly. And to his overwhelming relief there was an answering chirp that told him Paula was alive.

But he knew this might not be the end of it, and he also knew that the two of them could not hold out alone against any further attack. So he drew breath and gave the piercing signal that meant Approach—Be Ready for Attack.

And then he heard a yell. Paula.

“Behind you, behind you!” she was screaming.

He pivoted painfully with Wilhelmina jabbing the air.

Two grimy, bloodstained men had risen from the bushes and were coming at him with murder in their eyes and machetes slicing the air like scythes. He fired once, missed; fired again and saw one of them drop with a yell, and then the other was upon him. Wilhelmina clicked emptily and he flung her at the fellow’s face. It gained him nothing but a second to pull Hugo from his sleeve, and Hugo was an icepick against the swinging machete.

He jabbed and dodged, cursing out loud at his helplessness, knowing that he didn’t have a hope in hell with his one useless arm, one useless leg. All he could do was duck and jab, try to get the fellow off-balance, try to twist that swinging machete from his grasp. He did not even see the other one half-rise and start to slither painfully toward him with machete raised, nor the third man who stalked out from the trees with the revolver pointing at him, nor the girl who slid silently from the cover with her automatic wavering between three deadly targets.

But he heard the shots. So did the Cuban who was slashing wildly at him with the finely honed machete, and for one heaven-sent second the man turned his head and shot a glance toward the sound of fire. Nick lowered his head like a bull and charged. His full weight caught the Cuban in the stomach and threw him backwards, and then Hugo struck into his neck again and again and again. The machete dropped from the limp fingers and Nick caught it up for one final thrust. And then he rose, the last shot still echoing in his ears. There was a taste of blood in his mouth, the sound of blood in his ears, a vision of blood clouding his eyes, but he heard the light footfalls coming closer from the grove near the rim of the ravine and he saw Paula slumping to the ground, her gun still smoking. She was clutching her chest, and there was blood all over her hand and all over her torn shirt. Only then did he see the man who must have shot her, the man who lay there dead with a revolver in his hand, and the other Cuban with the machete who was closer to him than he had thought.

He stumbled toward Paula and caught her in his arms. For all he knew there might still be a dozen living Cubans around, but he no longer cared. Because Paula was dying.

Nick held her close and prayed inside himself. “Paula, Paula,” he whispered. “Oh, Paula, why . . . ? Why didn’t you save yourself instead of me?”

“I wanted you,” she said, from very far away. “Wanted you to live, wanted to give you something.” She drew a deep choking breath and gazed into his eyes. “Give you life, and all my love,” she said clearly.

“Please live,” he said, not knowing what he said. “Please live, and let me love you.” There was a gentle pressure on his arms and her lips touched his.

He rocked her in his arms and kissed her.

For a short moment she was kissing him.

And then she died.

There were no more shots. Three women looked on silently with tears upon their cheeks. He hadn’t seen them come; he didn’t want to see them. It was over.

“And it
was
over, then, I take it?” Hawk said quietly. There was a look in his ice-blue eyes that few men had ever seen. It might have been compassion.

Nick nodded. “That was it. Bodies to be buried, arrangements made to take care of that damned treasure, little details of that sort. But we’d about run out of Cubans and Chinese, so there was no one left to fight. There was a street riot in Santo Domingo when we got back so we weren’t even noticed.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was a hospital chair in a hospital room and the atmosphere depressed him. “It was a slaughter, the whole thing,” he added, staring out of the window at a blue sky many miles away from the Dominican Republic and thinking of the trail of death he’d left behind him. “I’m not sure that it was worth it.”

“Operation Blast died too,” Hawk said, eyeing the blue smoke of his cigar. “That may not mean much to you at this point, but it means a lot to us. They had a good scheme there, and I think some day they’ll try it again. I hope you’re going to be ready for them.”

“Yes, I hope so.” Nick said lifelessly.

Hawk rose to his scrawny length and looked down at him.

“You don’t,” he said. “But you will be ready. And remember one thing, Carter. They asked for help, and you gave them what they wanted. I’ll see you in Washington next week.”

He left as abruptly as he had come.

Nick unclenched his fist and looked at the ruby ring in his hand. Lucia had found it at the bottom of one of the flour sacks when the remnants of The Terrible Ones had come together for one final meeting.

“Take it,” she had said. “It was Paula’s. Think of her.”

He thought of her.

The End