Dr. Death

Twelve

Something, somewhere, was nagging me with an idea. It wasn't a clear idea, but I knew it was a very unpleasant one. I tried to avoid it as long as possible. But it kept on nagging. Finally, I had to admit I knew what it was.

Eyes, it said. You have to open your eyes.

I did. I didn't want to, but I did.

Familiar double-lidded eyes, in a familiar Oriental face, stared down at me. They blinked, then the mouth curved upward in a wholly scrutable smile of relief. Another face, this one black, and just as familiar, came into vision. Also smiling.

"Hey, Carter," the Oriental face said, "do you always go to sleep this early in the evening? I mean, we didn't even eat dinner yet."

I raised my head and groaned. Pains shot through my skull until I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out. Gingerly, tentatively, I reached hand to skull. It encountered a large bandage.

"I feel," I said, with difficulty, "like a man who's had his scalp parted by a bullet from a Sten gun."

"Probably because you're a man who's just had his scalp parted by a bullet from a Sten gun," suggested Li Chin.

"Hey, man," said Sweets mildly, "didn't anybody ever tell you that charging a man firing an automatic weapon can get you shot?"

"They were taking Michelle into the helicopter," I said, squirming to a sitting position. "I had to try to stop them."

"Well, it was a nice try," said Li Chin. "I mean, I've never seen one man try to charge an army before. Especially an army dressed up as pigs and roosters and fish. And firing a Sten gun. When Sweets and I saw that helicopter coming in to land, and came up on this roof here and got a glimpse of you pulling your Charge of the Light Brigade number, I couldn't believe my eyes at first."

"Once she did believe her eyes," said Sweets, "she was a pretty fast chick with a bandage."

"It's just a nick, Nick," said Li Chin. "You'll be okay, aside from a headache the size of the Great Wall."

"Meanwhile," I said, "they got Michelle. And they got away."

"Inconvenient," sighed Sweets. "A real inconvenient time for that to happen."

"The worst," I agreed. And it was the worst. In fact…

Somewhere in the back of my mind, wheels began to turn.

"You're not still thinking of trying to attack the boats and the volcano simultaneously, are you?" asked Li Chin. "Because, all things considered, I'd like to live a little longer. And, if…"

I motioned for her to be silent. Propping myself up on one elbow, I reached into my shirt pocket for cigarettes, dug out a crumpled one, and lit it. I smoked in silence for awhile. And thought. And the longer I thought, the more convinced I was that I was seeing things clearly for the first tune.

I didn't like the way they looked.

But I had one advantage. I was fairly certain the opposition didn't know that I knew.

I was going to play that advantage for all it was worth.

I turned back to Li Chin and Sweets, simultaneously plucking out Wilhelmina for reloading.

"The plan," I told them, "has changed. We all hit the volcano."

Sweets nodded.

"That's their headquarters," he said. "Seems to me that's where they'd take Michelle."

"It seems to me that's also the way they'd figure we'd figure," put in Li Chin.

"Exactly," I said. "And I certainly wouldn't want to disappoint them. But just as an extra bonus, we're going to throw in a little ingredient they won't be expecting."

Sweets' and Li Chin's eyebrows rose at the same time. I reholstered Wilhelmina, trying to ignore the thundering ache in my head, and began to talk. When I had finished, both of them looked at me in silence for a moment. Then Sweets gave a slow grin. He fished a chocolate caramel from his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.

"I dig it," he said. "It's got real, live drama. And I always did want to be a performer."

"Yeah, but did you always want to end up in little bitty pieces?" asked Li Chin. Then, to me: "Listen, Carter, I'm all for daring action and drama, but I think there might be a few objections if we ended up blowing this whole island sky-high. And there's a pretty good probability we'll do just that. To say nothing of the fact we'd go sky-high with it."

"It's a gamble, of course," I said. "But we only have a few hours left, and it's our only chance."

Li Chin considered in silence.

"Oh well," she said finally, "I always wondered what it would be like to play Mah Jong with TNT. And I don't have anything else to do tonight anyway. Count me in."

"Right," I said. "Let's go. There's no time to waste."

Back on the street, threading our way through riotous crowds of carnival merrymakers, we found a public cab running the route from Fort de France, through St. Pierre, and on to Morne Rouge, the town nearest the volcano. With a heavy tip I persuaded the driver to start for Morne Rouge with only the three of us for passengers. We made the trip in silence, each of us engrossed in private thought.

At Morne Rouge, we got out. Li Chin and I shook hands in silence with Sweets, our eyes meeting and locking. Then we started up the road toward where the Lady Day was hidden. He took another road. Toward Mont Pelee.

Now Li Chin had only one earring.

Sweets was wearing the other.

In the radio room of the Lady Day I contacted Gonzalez and gave him my instructions, emphasizing their urgency. Then, for two hours, we waited. It was the hardest two hours of the whole operation. But we had to give Sweets time to work. And I had to hear from Gonzalez. When I did and heard what he said, the adrenalin flooded through my body. I flipped the radio switch to off and turned to Li Chin.

"Zero hour," I said. "Let's go."

Half an hour later we were on our bellies, snaking through the short scrub vegetation that lined the approaches to the crater of Mont Pelee. Aside from my usual family of Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre, I was carrying an Israeli MKR Sten. It's one of the most remarkable automatic weapons yet made for it's high accuracy, low rate of breakdown, and, most remarkable of all, its silencer that doesn't impair accuracy or rate of fire to any appreciable degree. Li Chin carried its twin, both of them from Sweets' impressive weapon case.

"Hold it," I whispered suddenly, gesturing to Li Chin.

Less than a hundred yards away, the rim of Mont Pelee's crater was outlined against the night sky. I raised a pair of Sweets' binoculars to my eyes and scanned it. I already knew, from our field trip that afternoon, that a ring of electrified wire, seven feet high, ran the entire diameter of the ring. What I was looking for now was something else. When I found it, I handed the binoculars to Li Chin and gestured for her to look.

"Floodlights," I said tersely. "Mounted in twins, facing opposite directions, on each supporting pole of the fence."

"Unh hunh," said Li Chin, binoculars to her eyes, "and if anything touches the fence, they go on."

"Right," I said. "Now let's find out a little more."

I groped in the scrub and found a heavy stick, then crawled another fifty yards, Li Chin behind me. Then I threw the stick. There was a ponging sound as it hit the wire, a crackle of electricity as current flowed through the dew-moisture on it, and two floodlights went on. Only two.

"Unh hunh," said Li Chin. "The floodlights not only illuminate but also pinpoint the source of the disturbance on the fence."

"Followed," I said, flattening myself as Li Chin did the same, "by the appearance of armed guards."

As if on cue, two guards carrying rifles appeared, silhouetted against the sky. We watched, heads down, as they shone flashlights down the incline, and around the fence, and then, apparently deciding the disturbance had been created by an animal, disappeared.

I turned to Li Chin.

"How's your acrobatics tonight?"

She looked at me questioningly. I told her exactly what we were going to do. She nodded without hesitation, and we spent another five minutes crawling along parallel to the fence, to get away from the section the guards might now be keeping an eye on, before we turned and crawled directly toward it. When we were a few feet away, I turned and nodded to her. We stood up swiftly and simultaneously.

"Hoop-la!" I whispered sharply.

Her right foot was in my linked fingers, her body was springing up from them, and she was somersaulting through the air and over the fence, like a swift, almost unseen shadow. Just as quickly, she was rolling to the ground on the inside, as I went on my belly on the other side. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than three seconds. In the fourth, I was already groping at my side for another stick. When I found it I glanced at my watch and waited the rest of the thirty seconds we'd agreed on. Then I threw it.

The floodlights snapped on.

I raised the Sten to my shoulder, switched it to single action, and pulled the trigger twice.

There were two faint cracks as the glass went, then a sputtering crackle, and darkness again.

When the silhouetted figures of the guards appeared they paused, shining flashlights toward the floodlights which had just so inexplicably gone on, then off.

Again, I squeezed the trigger of the Sten.

The left guard fell, shot through the head. And, because I had used single rather than continuous fire, he pitched forward, onto the fence. Almost — in the lack of any sound from my weapon — as if he had suddenly bent over to inspect it. But the guard on the right knew better, and his rifle was already rising to his shoulder, swiveling to pinpoint the source of the bullet, when Li Chin's sharp whisper came out of the darkness at him.

"Hold it!" she snapped in French. "Don't move! I'm in back of you and there's a man in front of you. We both have automatic weapons. If you want to live, do what I say."

Even in the dim light, I could see the terror on the man's face. He lowered his rifle and stood waiting, visibly trembling.

"Call out to the man in the control unit," said Li Chin. "Tell him your partner has fallen onto the fence. Tell him to shut off the current. And sound convincingly upset!"

The man complied immediately.

"Armand!" he cried, turning and shouting down into the crater. "For the love of God, shut off the current on the fence! Marcel has fallen!"

His tone of terror was convincing even to me, probably because he was genuinely terrified. Within seconds, the faint hum which had arisen from the electrified wire ceased. The night was silent except for the trilling of insects, and then, a distant shout from within the crater.

"The current is off," said the guard. He was still trembling.

"For your sake, T hope it is," I heard Li Chin whisper. "Because you're now going to touch it. The bottom strand first. Hold it with your whole hand, right next to the pole."

"No!" the man said. "Please! There could be a mistake…"

"Do it!" snapped Li Chin.

Trembling uncontrollably, his breathing so labored I could hear it plainly, the man advanced to the fence. I kept my gun trained on him, but even though he was now only feet away he hardly noticed as, slowly, his face contorted into a twisted agony of fear, he reached his hand down toward the lowest strand of wire.

"Take it!" came Li Chin's threatening command.

The man hesitated another instant, then, like a swimmer diving into cold water, grabbed the wire.

Nothing happened. The guard's face relaxed slightly. I could see sweat dripping from his chin!

"Keep on holding it until I tell you to stop," I commanded him.

He nodded, his expression that of numbness. I snaked another few feet, until I could reach the wire, and withdrew a pair of wire cutters from my back pocket. Then, a few inches further along from the guard's hand, so that if the current were turned back on while I was working, he would ground it with his body — and with his life — I cut the bottom strand.

"Now put your hand around the next strand," I ordered him.

He obeyed. I cut the next strand, and told him to move his hand to the next. I repeated the procedure until all the strands were cut, then told the guard to stand back, and stepped through onto the other side of the fence, using the guard's body to shield me from the sight of anyone looking up from tie crater.

"No one in sight down there," I heard Li Chin say softly.

I peered cautiously over the guard's shoulder, down into the crater. It was, to put it mildly, a fortress. A labyrinth of cement-block buildings, whose walls looked to be at least four feet thick, and without windows anywhere. As strong as the notorious Furhrerbunker, in which Adolf Hitler had spent the last days before his much unlamented suicide. At two points the buildings were set into the crater of the volcano itself. There were three exits, two of them man-sized doors leading to opposite sides of the outside crater, one of them a door large enough for a truck. To this door ran a large road, coming from over the rim of the crater.

Li Chin was right. There was no one in sight.

I poked the guard in his belly with my gun.

"Where are the rest of the guards?" I demanded harshly.

"Inside," he said, pointing to the two wings with man-sized exits. "Closed circuit television scans the whole crater."

"How could it reach the rim, where we are?" I demanded.

"Up here, it's a different circuit," he said, convincing me he was telling the truth by the terror in his eyes. "The scanners are m the floodlights, and are activated when the floodlights go on."

So for the moment, we were out of sight. But once we started to descend into the crater we would be very much in sight. I thought for a moment, then turned and whispered a few curt words to Li Chin, who was lying on her belly nearby. A few minutes later I had stripped the dead guard of his cap and jacket, and put them on myself.

"Call out to the man in the control house," T told the guard. "Tell him your partner's hurt and you're bringing him in."

The guard turned and shouted down into the crater. Now I could see one of the exit doors open and a figure appear, framed by the light from within. He waved, and shouted something in assent.

"All right, buddy," I told the guard. "You are now going to carry me down to that control room. And slowly. There'll be a gun trained at your back from a few feet away the entire trip."

I could hear the guard swallow. Then, wiping the sweat from his eyes, he dropped his rifle, bent down, and picked me up in his arms. I twisted so that my Israeli silent Sten was gripped at the ready, finger still on the trigger. But this time, I flicked it to automatic fire.

"All right, lifesaver," I told the guard. "Let's go. And when I tell you to drop me, do it fast."

Slowly, he started down the incline inside the crater. I could hear Li Chin snaking along on her belly behind us. Below, through the open door, I could see figures moving about in the control room. I counted at least a dozen. I also saw something else interesting. There appeared to be only one door leading from the control room to the interior of the building complex.

"Carter! Look! The road!"

I glanced in the direction Li Chin was indicating. Over the rim of the volcano, on the road leading to the massive steel garage doors, came a heavy truck, gears grinding as it downshifted on the incline. It rolled to a stop at the doors. An instant later the doors swung soundlessly back, and the truck entered. As it did, I caught a glimpse of the open back. Two armed guards, both white, both carrying automatic weapons, and two native laborers, undoubtedly recruited to carry machinery.

No. One native laborer.

And one Sweets Hunter, dressed in what were probably the shabbiest clothes he'd ever worn in his life. Talking and laughing in fluent patois with the Martiniquais next to him, looking for all the world like a man delighted to have just landed a good-paying job.

Plan proceeding according to schedule.

Next step.

We were now less than a hundred yards from the open door of the control room. The guard carrying me was panting heavily, starting to stumble with fatigue. Good.

"Ready, Li Chin?" I asked, my hands tightening on the Sten.

"Ready," came her curt whisper.

"Guard, call out to your friends for help in carrying me," I told him. "Then get ready to drop me. And no tricks. Remember the gun aimed at your back."

He nodded imperceptibly and swallowed hard again.

"Hey, pals, how about a little help here?" he bellowed impressively. "Marcel's been hurt!"

Three or four figures came through the doorway and started toward us. Several others grouped behind the doorway, peering out in curiosity. Behind me, I could hear the slight click, as Li Chin switched her weapon to automatic fire. My muscles tensed with readiness. I waited. The figures advanced. Now they were only thirty yards away. Twenty. Ten.

Now!

"Drop me!" I snapped to the guard. And instants later I was rolling on the ground, out of the line of Li Chin's fire, the Sten's stock tucking under my chin, its sights zeroing in on the group of men in front of me as they began to fall under Li Chin's fire. More fell, spinning with the force of the bullets, as my own gun began to spit fire. It was instant carnage, skulls erupting into bloody masses of brains and bone, faces ripped away, limbs exploded from torsos and sent tumbling into the air. And, because of the silencers on the Stens, it was all happening in an eerie quiet, like a music-less ballet of mutilation and death, with the victims being hit too quickly and too thoroughly for them even to be able to scream or cry out.

"The door!" I shouted suddenly. "Get the door!"

I swung my gun over the bodies of the men in front of us, and sprayed fire at the door. It was closing. Then I cursed. The Sten was empty. I ejected the empty clip and yanked another full one from my pocket, ramming it into the gun as behind me Li Chin continued to fire. For a moment the door stopped moving, and then, slowly, it started to close again, as if someone behind it was wounded, but trying desperately to close the line of defense. I fired off another round, then sprang to my feet.

"Cover me!" I shouted to Li Chin, simultaneously ripping a line of bullets into one of the men just in front of me who was trying to rise.

Then I was running, crouched, the Sten spitting its silent but deadly fire in front of me. I hit the door with my shoulder at full running force, then spun, spraying the room. There was a deafening explosion of shattering glass, as an entire wall of TV screens splintered into nothingness; then, to my left, a single non-silenced shot from a handgun. I spun again, the Sten blasting silently. From behind the door a single figure jerked upward with the force of bullets hitting his chest, then slowly slumped forward.

"Carter!" I heard Li Chin cry from outside. "The other door! More guards!"

I jumped for the door, over the lifeless bodies who were the room's only other occupants. My hand found and flipped the light switch, pitching the room into darkness. Around the corner of the building complex, from the door on the other side of the crater, came a massed group of guards, their automatic weapons already chattering. The TV monitors had told them all they had to know — attack on the volcano!

"Inside!" I cried to Li Chin, returning the guards' fire. "Hurry!"

Bullets spattered on the cement-block alongside the door, puffed up a deadly trail of dust at Li Chin's heels as she dashed furiously toward me. I felt a slicing pain through my shoulder and staggered back a step, then saw Li Chin leap through the doorway, pivot, and slam the steel door shut behind her, throwing home the heavy bolts. Wincing from the pain in my shoulder, I fumbled for the light switch. An instant later I found it and the room was flooded with light. Li Chin stood, her gun smoking, regarding me with concern.

"You'd better let me see that wound, Carter," she said.

But I'd already seen it myself. The bullet had just grazed the flesh of my upper bicep. It was painful, but I could still use the arm, and there was little blood.

"No time," I snapped. "Come on!"

I moved toward the door to the inside of the complex, at the same time ejecting the three-quarter empty clip from the Sten and ramming in another full one. The barrel of the gun was red-hot, smoking, and I only hoped it would continue to function.

"Which way do we go?" I heard Li Chin say behind me.

"Both wings with exits into the crater joined at one central wing, where it was built directly into the body of volcanic rock. That's where they'd store the most valuable weapons and have their workshops."

"And that's where they'd be expecting us to go," reminded Li Chin.

"Right," I said, turning to her and grinning. "And we don't want to disappoint them, do we?"

"Oh, no," said Li Chin, shaking her head solemnly. "Heavens to Betsy, no."

I opened the interior door slowly with my left hand, the Sten at the ready in my right. It led into a long, narrow corridor, bare except for fluorescent tubing along the ceiling. The thick cement-block walls muffled all sound from the outside, but on sounds from inside the complex it acted like a gigantic echo chamber. And the sounds I heard then were exactly the ones I had been expecting. In the distance, the sound of running feet in heavy combat boots. A lot of feet, and coming from two directions.

I turned and my eyes met Li Chin's. This was going to be the trickiest part of the whole operation.

"Now!" I said.

We went down the corridor side by side, at a run. The rattle of running feet was louder, nearer. It was coming both from the stairs at the end of the corridor and the corridor which led off to the left. We were less than twenty feet from the stairs when two heads appeared, coming fast up the stairs.

"Down!" I shouted.

We hit the floor at the same time, our Stens coming to our shoulders at the same time, and a deadly line of bullets spit from their mouths. The two bodies were smashed backward as if hit with gigantic fists, blood spurting upward as they disappeared down the stairs below them. The men below must have gotten the idea. No other heads made an appearance. But I could hear voices coming from the stairs, out of sight. A lot of voices.

I could also hear voices coming from the corridor off to the left.

"Let's have a little fishing expedition," I said to Li Chin.

She nodded. Side by side we snaked down the corridor on our bellies, fingers still on the triggers of the Stens. When we reached the turn in the corridor, only a few feet away from the stairs ahead of us, I took off the hat I'd taken away from the dead guard and slid it out in front of me, beyond the turn.

The blast of gunfire was deafening. The hat was torn to ribbons.

"Gee," said Li Chin. "Troops to the left of us. Troops in front of us. Troops in back of us. I'm beginning to feel downright claustrophobic."

"It won't be long now," I said. "They know they've got us trapped."

And it wasn't long. When the voice came it was angry, furious. We'd killed at least 20 OAS soldiers. But the voice was also controlled.

"Carter!" it shouted, the sound echoing in the cement block corridor. "Can you hear me?"

"No!" I shouted back. "I'm a lip reader. You'll have to come out where I can see you."

Li Chin grinned beside me.

"Stop the foolishness!" bellowed the voice, echoing more than ever. "We have you surrounded! Any way you try to go, we can blast you to pieces! I'm calling on you and the girl to surrender! Now!"

"You mean, if we move you'll blast us to pieces, but if we surrender you'll only boil us alive in oil?" I shouted back.

From the half-stifled growl that came next, I was sure that was what he would have liked to have done. And more. But again, the speaker controlled himself.

"No," he shouted. "You and the girl are guaranteed your safety. But only if you surrender now. You are wasting our time."

"Wasting their time?" Li Chin murmured.

I called out again: "How can I believe you?"

"I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman!" the voice came back. "Also, let me remind you, you have little choice."

"Well, Li Chin," I said softly, "shall we take his word as an officer and a gentleman?"

"Well, Carter," said Li Chin, "I've got a sneaking suspicion he's an enlisted man and a cad. But what the heck. I've always wondered what it would be like to be boiled alive in oil."

"What the heck," I agreed. Then, shouting: "All right, I'll take your word. We're sliding our automatic weapons out into the corridor."

We did it. Not happily, but we did it.

"Très bien," the voice came. "Now come out where we can see you. Slowly. Hands clasped over your heads."

We weren't happy about that, either. But we did it. The moment when we moved, defenseless, into full view and range, passed like an eternity, an eternity in which we waited to learn whether we would be torn apart by bullets, or allowed to live a little longer.

Then the moment was over and we were still alive, surrounded by men in the uniform of the French Paratroops. These men, however, had bands around their sleeves with the initials OAS. And deadly automatic BARs, trained at our bodies from a few feet away. Two of them swiftly and brutally frisked each of us, getting Li Chin's derringer, and Wilhelmina and Hugo, but not, thanks to his hiding place, Pierre.

"Bon," said the man who was obviously their leader, and whose voice had conducted the negotiations. "I am Lieutenant Rene Dorson, and I am not pleased to make your acquaintance at all. But I have my orders. You will come with me."

He gestured down the stairs in front of us with the.45 in his hand. Rifle barrels prodded us from behind, and we started down the steps, the lieutenant preceding us. At the bottom there was another bare corridor, with the fluorescent lighting along the ceiling. We marched along in dead silence, broken only by the scuffling of combat boots on cement. At the end of the corridor there were two doors. Dorson gestured to the one on the left.

"Enter," he said. "And remember, there will be automatic weapons trained on you at all times."

We entered. It was a large room, with polished walnut paneling over the cement-block walls. Thick Iranian carpets covered the floor. The furniture was authentic Louis Quatorze. The goblets set out on small tables in front of the couches were crystal with gold rims. Subdued lighting came from lamps on the tables, and set into the paneling. Sitting behind an elaborate seventeenth-century desk was another man in the OAS uniform. He was older than Dorson, with white hair, a pencil-thin white moustache, and lean, aristocratic features. As Li Chin and I came into the room, he looked up calmly, then rose.

"Ah," he said. "Mr. Carter. Miss Chin. Delighted to make your acquaintance."

But I hardly heard him or saw him. My eyes were riveted to the other figure in the room, sitting on a couch and sipping from a crystal snifter of brandy.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said the man behind the desk. "I am General Raoul Destin, Commanding Officer of the Western Forces, Organisation Armee Secret. As for my charming companion, I believe you are already acquainted."

My eyes never left the woman on the couch.

"Yes," I said slowly. "I believe we are. Hello, Michelle."

She smiled, and took a sip of brandy.

"Bon soir, Nick," she said softly. "Welcome to our headquarters."