Double Identity (15 page)

So far Mike Bannion had kept his promise. He was drinking slowly. His bottle was still more than half full and it was after midnight.

Nick was checking his weapons, Wilhelmina, Hugo, and Pierre, when he heard the gurgle of the bottle in the dark smelly hold. The boat’s last cargo apparently had been fertilizer.

Mike said: “I said in for a penny, in for a pound, and I meant it—just the same I hope we don’t have to tie up with any Pathans. They’re a lot of bloodthirsty bastards!”

Nick smiled in the gloom. “I think you’re worrying about nothing. I remember my Kipling and Talbot Mundy— aren’t the mullahs always preaching a holy war? Just part of their routine—down with the infidels!”

A match flared as Bannion lit a cigarette. He was not grinning. Nick realized that the little alcoholic was really worried.

“They’re devils from Hell!” said Bannion. “They torture their prisoners. Jesus—the stories I’ve heard! I’ve seen pictures, too, of what they’ve done to patrols they’ve ambushed on the frontier. Only a couple of months ago there were some pictures in
The Hindi Times
—the tribesmen ambushed a Pakistani patrol in the Khyber Pass. They didn’t kill all of them—the survivors they impaled on bamboo stakes. Ugh! It made me sick. They take off the poor bastards’ pants and then lift them and slam them down hard on a sharp stake! There was one picture of this guy with the stake all the way through him, coming out of his neck!”

The bottle gurgled again. To soothe him Nick said, “You sure that was a Pakistani patrol? Not Indian? The Pathans are Moslems, aren’t they?”

More gurgling sounds. “That don’t make a damned bit of difference to the tribesmen,” Bannion whispered. “Especially when some mullah had got them all heated up. All they care about then is blood and loot! I don’t mind admitting it, Nick— I get the crap in my blood when I think about the Pathans!”

“Take it easy on that bottle,” Nick warned. “And let’s try to get some sleep. I don’t think we’re going to meet any tribesmen. I’m a hell of a lot more worried about Pakistani patrols than I am Pathans. Good night.”

Three days later he found out how wrong even Nick Carter could be!

The kites and vultures gave the first warning. They were soaring in great circles over a bend in the river. It was a desolate, barren stretch halfway between Kot Addu and Leiah. The boatman saw the vulturous diners first. He pointed and sniffed at the air. “Something dead there. Many, I think. Many birds—cannot all eat at once.”

Nick and Mike Bannion ran to the prow. The river was shallow here, curving in a great bend from west to northeast. There was a long sandbar in the middle of the bend. On the bar they saw the gutted, blackened, still smoking wreck of a small river steamer. An old rear-paddle wheeler. It was covered with a wriggling, flapping, obscenely moving mass of vultures. As their boat approached the wreck the cloud of birds rose in a multi-colored swarm, croaking harsh complaints. Some of them were barely able to get airborne because of sagging, heavy bellies.

Nick got the odor then. A battlefield smell. He was familiar with it. Beside him Bannion cursed and took a huge revolver from his pocket. It was an old Webley he had somehow managed to buy in Karachi.

“Put it away,” Nick told him. “There’s nothing alive there.”

Mike Bannion peered beyond the wreck to the westerly shore of the river. The barren land sloped sharply up to rounded, blunt-topped khaki hills. “Maybe they’re still up there, watching. I told you, Nick. I had a feeling. It’s those sonofabitching Pathans—they ambushed the steamer and grabbed the arms shipment. Jesus—that old mullah wasn’t kidding! They
are
starting a jehad!”

“Calm down,” Nick told him. “You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions. Anyway we’ve got to check it out—if it was the tribesmen we’ll soon know.”

They soon knew. They beached on the sand bar. The boatman would not accompany them. He was in a state of terror. Nick and Bannion made their way through the stink and the sprawled bodies to the steamer. It was a shambles. Blood and brains and decaying guts everywhere. Many of the Pakistani soldiers had been beheaded.

Mike Bannion turned a corpse over with his foot. The face had been shot away, but the turban and dirty singlet, the baggy trousers, were enough to identify it.

Bannion cursed. “Pathan, all right. Stripped, too. Took his bandoliers, rifle, knife, everything. Even his shoes. That’s Pathan for you—they never leave anything behind but stiffs! So what do we do now, Nick?”

N3 covered his nose with a handkerchief and explored the gutted steamer thoroughly. It had been a massacre, all right. The Pakistanis had somehow been caught napping and had been wiped out. The arms were gone. Where? To start a jehad? Probably, he admitted. Bannion was right. The tribesmen were off and running, screaming bloody Allah. They would have their jehad. They would have it— but who would
own
it?

Very clever, he admitted. Trick the arms out of Karachi and have your boys waiting in ambush. He ticked the list of arms through his mind again, the list he had read in the murdered Sam Shelton’s office.

Rifles—light machine guns—heavy machine guns—grenades—bazookas—anti-tank guns! Five million rounds of ammo!

Nick Carter’s smile was grim. You could have yourself quite a jehad with all that!

Mike Bannion joined him. He was carrying the giant revolver in his right hand and frowning. “They took some prisoners, Nick. I’m sure of it. At least I counted the dead Paks and they don’t make half a company. They must have taken prisoners. I don’t understand it. They never do!”

N3 glanced across the river to the western shore. Even at that distance he could see the broad trail the tribesmen had left leading up into the stubby hills. Pretty sure of themselves. Not afraid of retribution. That figured—the Pakistani Army was busy fighting India at the moment.

An idea moved in his brain. Could there be another reason for that broad trail? An invitation, perhaps?

He turned to Bannion. “Let’s get unloaded. Better hurry before our friend there loses his nerve entirely and shoves off and leaves us.”

Mike Bannion avoided Nick’s eyes. He said: “You’re going to follow them?”

“Yes. I’ve got to. No way out for me. You don’t have to go—you can go back to Karachi with the boatman. But I’ll have to take the jeep and the supplies. Well?”

Bannion took his bottle of Scotch from the deep pocket of his sheepskin coat and tilted it. He drank for a long time, then put the bottle down and wiped his mouth with his hand. “I’ll go with you. I’m a damned fool, but I’ll go. Just one thing!”

Mike’s grin was a little sheepish. “If anything happens— to me—and you get out of it okay, will you see if you can ~get a little of Uncle Sugar’s dough for my wife and kids? They got nothing.”

Nick smiled. “I’ll try. I think I can swing it. Now let’s get cracking—that character is going to shove off any minute!”

It took the Luger to persuade the boatman to put them ashore on the western side. They unloaded the jeep and supplies where the Pathan trail left the river.

Bannion nodded to the boatman and looked at Nick, the question plain in his eyes. The man would talk, of course, as soon as he got back to Karachi.

Nick hesitated a moment, then shook his head. Why kill the poor devil? By the time he got back to Karachi it would be too late for anyone to stop them. It occurred to him that by that time he might be glad, overjoyed, to see Pakistani troops.

Nick watched the craft disappear back downriver as Mike Bannion checked over the jeep. The vultures had returned to their meal.

“Come on,” Bannion told him. “If we’re going let’s go. This old heap is as ready as she’ll ever be.”

A mile inland they found the first Pakistani soldier buried in earth up to his neck. He was dead, his throat slit, and his eyelids had been cut off. Something white glimmered in the gaping dead mouth.

Mike Bannion took one look and was sick over the side of the jeep. He would not go close to the dead man. Nick walked to the grotesque bloody head sticking out of the sandy soil and studied it. He leaned down and took a bit of paper from the mouth. Something was scrawled on it— Chinese ideographs!

His Chinese was rusty but in a moment he made out the message.

Follow me. The way is plain. You will find one of these markers every few miles. I look forward to meeting you. Again!

It was signed:
Nick Carter.

Chapter 9

Khyber

A limpid warm rain was falling on Peshawar, that ancient and historic city in the narrow mouth of the bloodstained Khyber Pass. It was a weekend and many of the tribesmen, Afghans, Pathans, and Turkomans, had brought their women into town to shop in the bazaars. While the women gossiped and did their trading the men gathered in the teahouses and kept the samovars boiling. Most of the men were lean and fierce, each with a cruel knife thrust into a colorful sash. The subject of conversation, when police or strangers were not around was—jehid! Holy war! The time was coming!

It was not a monsoon rain—they were over for the year— and Nick Carter found the moisture pleasant on his face as he peered from a dark archway in the Street of the Story Tellers. It was a narrow, cobbled lane stinking of garbage and human filth, but N3 was too impatient and anxious to pay heed to the smells. Mike Bannion had been gone a long time. Too long!

Nick fidgeted. He had already been twice noticed by whores, one who hadn’t been a day over twelve, and he knew he’d better move on. The luck had been incredible so far—if it was luck—and he didn’t want to spoil it now.

To his left, at the end of the street, he could see the looming mass of Mahabat Khan mosque. Directly across from him was a well-lighted shop where leather workers were busy—Nick could see sandals and cartridge belts on display. The belts were of the old-style bandolier type, worn crossed over the shoulders, and N3 wondered, rather grimly, if Ml ammo would fit them.

He retreated back into the dark arch and lit a cigarette. He leaned against a rough stone wall and pondered, covering the cigarette with a big hand and frowning. He didn’t like the setup. Not at all. But he had to play it—play the cards the way they fell. He, and the ever more reluctant Bannion, had come boldly into Peshawar that afternoon. Four days from the Indus. The old jeep had somehow made it—and the trail had been clearly marked as promised. There had been no more notes—only the milestones, the corpses of Pakistani soldiers buried in earth to their necks. Throats cut. Eyelids gone. Noses cut off in some cases.

Nick inhaled deeply and held it. This was a real weird, kooky setup. They’d left the jeep in the camp on the outskirts of Peshawar and walked in. The rain had started about then. No one paid them much attention, which in itself was not unusual—from ancient times the Khyber Pass had served as a gateway, and invasion route, between east and west Asia. Strangers were no novelty in Peshawar. At first the only ones to pay any attention to the two men in their cocky bush hats and sheepskin coats were the beggars and the kids, and the shopkeepers—and, of course, the inevitable prostitutes.

They had been in Peshawar only half an hour when Nick Carter spotted his double. It was still light, the rain gentle, and he had seen the impostor in the Street of the Potters. There was a woman with him. An American girl. A beauty!

It was all incredible and too easy, and N3 knew it, but he took it in stride. He ducked into a spice shop and whispered a few hurried commands to Mike Bannion. Mike was to follow the couple and report back when he could do so without losing them.

Mike had come back once to say that they were now in the Street of the Coppersmiths. The girl had purchased some Benares brass and gotten into a hassle with the merchant. Nick and Bannion had left the spice shop and had walked to his present place of concealment. Then he had sent Mike back to spy some more. That had been over an hour ago.

A bullock cart creaked past the archway, its dry axles squealing like stuck pigs. Nick Carter flipped his butt away in disgust. He’d better go find Mike. It meant breaking cover and the possibility of being spotted by the man he was after, but it couldn’t be helped. Yet he was reluctant. He had a feeling about this one—they were expecting him, they knew he must come, and his double was not likely to be caught off guard. So be it. Yet this was a tactical situation at the moment, not strategic, and he thought he had a little advantage. They—his man would not be alone, this time— they did not know Mike Bannion! Nick could use the little drunk as his eyes and ears for a time—or so he had hoped. But now? Mike was running scared and admitted it. He was keeping his promise, drinking only one bottle a day, but now that the pressure was getting heavy? Nick smiled wryly and prepared to leave his shelter. Mike might have decided to toss in the towel—might be taking cover in a brothel or a hashish den.

He heard the footsteps then. A moment later Mike Bannion paused at the arch and peered in. “Nick?”

“Yeah. Where are they?”

Bannion stepped into the gloom. “At the Peshawar Hotel right now. In the bar. They looked like they were settling in for a time, so I took a chance.”

“Good man,” said Nick. “I was just doing you an injustice in my thoughts.”

He heard Bannion tug at the bottle in his coat pocket Then the gurgle. He couldn’t see the impish grin, but he knew it was there. Mike Bannion was afraid—Nick Carter knew fear when he saw it;—but so far the guy was bearing up well.

Mike said: “You think I’d taken off for the boondocks?”

“It occurred to me.”

Gurgle.

“I won’t let you down,” Bannion said. “I’ll try hard not to—but I wish the hell I knew what went on. That guy I was following—I damned near soiled myself when I got a closeup of him. That’s
you!”

“I know,” said Nick. “It’s a little confusing. Don’t try to figure it out, Mike. If we get out of this maybe I’ll tell you about it.”

“
If
we get out of it?”

Gurgle.

“I warned you it might be dangerous,” snapped Nick. “Now lay off the booze! We’ve got work to do. I think things are going to break tonight—and break fast. We mustn’t lose them, whatever happens. What do you know about the woman with him?”