Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island (25 page)

They formed a circle around Tim and double-timed it back along the wall.

Eric followed along, keeping hidden in the brush. The animals wouldn’t attack them now. Too many.

When they arrived back at the place where they’d climbed in, General Bao Nhu was waiting with a few other men. They must have scaled the wall after Fallows’ men split up.

“Where’s the colonel,” Nhu asked.

Essex shrugged. “We left him here.”

“Maybe we should send out a patrol,” Garvey said.

“You volunteering, Garvey?” Essex grinned.

“Are you?”

“I’ve had enough of this place. Fucking animals everywhere. I don’t even like vegetables, let alone all this shit.”

“I’ll go look for him,” Tim offered. “I know my way around.”

Eric moved closer. He couldn’t tell if Tim’s offer was a ploy to escape them, or if he was really concerned for Fallows. Either way, once he was out of their sight, Eric could try to grab him again.

“I think not, Tim,” Nhu said. “We will wait three more minutes, then leave. Colonel Fallows is quite capable of taking care of himself.”

“Another testimonial, General,” Fallows said, stepping out of the brush. A smear of blood spread across his forehead. He limped slightly. He put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “And you, thanks for offering to look for me.”

Eric raised his eyebrows. The distance would be tricky, but possible.

But Fallows pulled Tim in front of him, slapping the boy fraternally on the back. Now Tim was positioned between Eric’s arrow and Fallows. Fallows glanced out into the woods while he spoke to the others, as if he knew Eric was there taking aim.

“Let’s get out of here,” Fallows said. “Last one in, General, is last one out. You and Essex keep us covered.”

Nhu stiffed at Fallows’ insulting orders, but he turned and aimed his gun in Eric’s general direction. Essex did the same.

“Ready? Now!”

As Fallows and Tim climbed the wall, Essex and Nhu sprayed bullets randomly around them.

Eric heard a few chew the leaves next to him and he ducked lower, unable to get off a shot. The shooting and climbing continued as Fallows men scaled the wall under the cover of Nhu and Essex’s arc of bullets. Eric was frustrated, anxious to at least return fire, but any movement now could be fatal.

Finally only Nhu and Essex were left. Nhu pulled rank and started up the wall. Essex opened fire.

With only one of them shooting, Eric waited for his chance, popped up, and fired a bolt into Essex’s chest. Nhu was hanging from his hands on the edge of the wall, pulling himself up. When he looked over his shoulder and saw Essex collapse, he scrambled up the wall.

Eric ran forward a few more yards, dropped to one knee, cocked and loaded the bow, aimed, and fired. The bolt zipped through the night and pinned Nhu’s left shoulder to the wall. Nhu’s left hand immediately lost grip of the wall and he dangled from one hand. One of Fallows’ soldiers who was in the process of gingerly stepping over the barbed wire, turned, saw Nhu, and opened fire on Eric’s running body.

Eric dove behind an exotic tree as the soldier’s bullets battered the tree trunk into flying chips. Eric loaded his bow, rolled over to the other side of the tree, and sent an arrow fast as a bird blink into the man’s stomach. The soldier fell over, his leg tangled in barbed wire. He flopped hard against the wall, dangling there by one twisted leg.

Nhu couldn’t climb or hold on any more. His hand started to open and he dropped to the ground. His weight pulled the bolt from the wall, but a bloody splotch still dotted where it had carved a hole.

Eric waited to see if anyone would come back for Nhu. He wasn’t surprised that no one did.

After a few minutes, he walked over to the former general. Nhu had broken the bolt and pulled the point the rest of the way through his shoulder. He was packing patches of cloth he’d torn from his shirt against the wound when Eric arrived. Eric bent over and picked up Nhu’s SMG that lay less than ten feet from him.

“No point in going for it, was there, Eric?”

“Not much.”

“You would have only put another arrow in my other shoulder, am.I right?”

Eric shrugged. “Or leg. I hadn’t decided.”

“The point is, you want something from me or you would have killed me on the first shot. Correct?” The general winced from pain as he pressed his bandage to his wound.

Eric looked around. Where was D.B.? Now that the shooting was over, she should be coming out, talking away or singing some appropriate snatch of lyric. “D.B.?” he shouted.

No response.

Just the clattering of animals, screeching of birds. No D.B.

He resisted the temptation to run and look for her. If she was dead there was nothing he could do. If she was hiding out of earshot, she’d come out sooner or later. But right now he had General Bao Nhu and he needed information.

“Fallows was in a hurry to leave,” Eric said. “That’s not like him, especially knowing I was here.”

Nhu coughed, grasped his chest. “I think the fall hurt me more than your arrow.”

“Are you going to give me trouble?” Eric said.

“Me? Eric, you know me better than that. I know that sooner or later every man talks. It is simply a matter of finding out not only how much pain he will endure, but what kind of pain. Some men can take physical pain for days — whippings, beatings, broken bones — but take this same man and threaten to cut off his nose, or balls, and he will talk immediately. Each man is different, yet in the end we are all the same. We surrender. Me, I’ve decided to cut out the middle man. What do you want to know?”

“Why Fallows left.”

“Admiral Jones, whose real name by the way is Buddenov, gave him only six hours to be prepared to leave on the submarine. Naturally his men knew nothing of our plans. Well, his plans now. Doesn’t look like I’ll be making the departure, does it?”

“No.”

He sighed. “I thought not. I imagine you’ll try to stop Fallows from departing with your son.”

“Why is the sub leaving now?”

“They have finished their little base. It was nothing all that complicated. The hard part was keeping the local scavengers away who would have swarmed down from the hills with their rakes and spears and killed the Russians and tried to steal the submarine, even though none could operate it. These are troubled times, Eric.”

“So they’re waiting for the right time to sneak through the barricade outside.”

“Very good, Eric. Yes, there will be some distraction outside that will pull the ships out of formation, a burning trawler or something, and Admiral Jones and his American clones will slip through unnoticed. With Fallows and Tim aboard. However, if Fallows is not there at departure time with the gold, he does not go.”

“Once the sub is gone, what’s to prevent us from going in and destroying the missile?”

“They’ve installed an explosive very similar to a neutron bomb. If the base is tampered with, the whole thing goes up and the radiation will kill everyone around for miles. But it leaves the buildings standing, therefore the U.S. will get the blame. After all, as far as anyone investigating could tell, it’s a U.S. missile base.”

Eric thought that over. “Naturally, the bomb is harmless until the security system is activated.”

“Naturally. They wouldn’t want any accidents blowing it too soon.”

“And they wouldn’t activate it until their sub was out of range of the bomb’s effects. They’ll wait until they’re underwater and have cleared the Halo.”

Nhu nodded. “They expect the conventional mine field will keep the curious away until then.”

“How much time is left?” Eric said, pointing his bow at Nhu.

Nhu looked at his watch. “Two hours and sixteen minutes. After that the sub will be gone and so will Fallows and your son.”

Eric stared at Nhu. Nhu’s discussion of torture was not merely philosophical. It was the result of years of practical experience. Eric had even heard that in recent years Nhu had freelanced to certain South American countries, teaching them the intricacies of torture, offering demonstrations on political prisoners.

“What now, Eric?” Nhu asked.

Eric grabbed him by the back of the collar and dragged him away from the wall.

“What are you doing?” Nhu pleaded, fear starting to tinge his voice.

Eric leaned him against a tree.

Nhu held up his hand. “Eric, I can tell you more. Where the gold is. If you beat Fallows to it, you could buy your way home. You and your son off this horrible island.”

Eric jammed the crossbow up against Nhu’s good shoulder and pulled the trigger. The bolt punched through the shoulder, nailing Nhu to the tree. He screamed in pain.

“I’m cutting out the middle man,” Eric said.

Nhu tried to pull the bolt out of his shoulder, but his free hand was too weak from the wound in that shoulder. He couldn’t even dislodge the arrow from the tree. He slumped. “Why this foolishness, Eric?”

“I pay for information. I’m giving you a chance. You get free and climb the wall, you live. If you make it, I wouldn’t advise going to Fallows to warn him. I only pay once.”

Eric ran off in search of D.B.

When he found her, he cried out, “
No
!” and ran faster than he had ever run before.

D.B.’s body was sprawled half in a bush. Eric could see drops of blood on the tiny green leaves, as perfectly round and wet as globes of dew.

“D.B.,” he said, carefully easing her out of the brush. He laid her out on the ground. Blood soaked the side of her neck. Her hair on one side of her head was sticky and matted with blood. He pulled the hair away from her face and saw that part of her ear was gone. He lifted her head onto his knee. Her eyes fluttered, opened.

“Shit, that hurts.” Her voice was crusty, as if she were using it for the first time after sleeping for a hundred years. “I guess I’m alive, huh?”

“Looks it.”

She laughed, coughed, then sang weakly. “ ‘Uh, uh, uh, stayin’ alive.’ Better than the Bee Gees, right?”

Eric tore a piece of cloth from his shirt, spit on the end, and dabbed it against the wound in her neck. “Looks like a bullet put some skid marks on your neck.”

“Yeah, that hurts. But my damn ear. The lobe feels like it’s on fire.”

“It’s not,” Eric said. “Those are phantom pains.”

“Phantom my ass. The pain is real.”

“I don’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Just that your lobe doesn’t hurt. It’s not there. Another bullet.”

“My ear’s gone?” she croaked. “My goddamn ear’s gone!”

“Just the lobe.” He smiled.

D.B. closed her eyes. Eric could feel her body quake with silent sobs as she fought for control. He was impressed with how quickly she won. She opened her eyes. “Guess I can always get my good ear pierced again. Won’t break up a pair of earrings that way.” She started to get up.

“Hey, don’t rush it.”

“You kidding? Now that I’ve lost part of my ear, all I gotta do is lose an eye and you’ll go nuts for me.”

Eric laughed as he helped her to her feet.

“Where is everybody?” she asked.

“Wendy’s wounded, nothing too serious. Fallows and the others have taken off.”

“Tim?”

“They got him.”

She looked around. “Where’s Spock?”