The Death Strain (10 page)

"I still want to bring Carlsbad back," I said. "I'd feel a lot better if he could be made to talk."

"By all means bring him back," Hawk agreed. "Let's let the medics have a crack at him."

I looked at Chung Li as I put down the set. "I'm to bring Dr. Carlsbad back with me." His fixed smile stayed in place. Only the glitter of his eyes brightened. "May I assume your cooperation in this?" I asked. I knew that under any other circumstances he'd have told me to go to hell. Or more likely, he'd have had me killed. But the World Leadership Conference was still waiting in the wings with his boss taking part. He didn't want to risk a wrong move at this time.

"Of course." He smiled, picking up the transmitter. "The nearest airport capable of handling a large plane is Yenki. I shall arrange to have a plane waiting there to fly you to Japan. I'll clear arrangements with Major Nutashi."

He spoke crisply and sharply into the set and the mask dropped away for a few seconds. I glimpsed the harsh, driving man I knew was under the bland exterior. Finally he turned to me.

"A car is coming for me," he said, the fixed smile in place again. "A medical lorry will also arrive for you and Carlsbad. All you need do is wait here. Of course, I believe all this completely unnecessary. The man will never recover and his plans
are
destroyed. Why all this undue concern over his life? It is foolish."

"Undue concern for human life is a hallmark of our culture, decadent as it may be," I said. Chung Li's smile remained but it took more effort. Rita had found a chair and had dragged it beside the cot. Chung Li made no move to help me as I pulled the two dead Chinese soldiers out of the house. In a little while a Chinese staff car came down the road. Four rifle-carrying Chinese Army regulars got out and Chung Li went to meet them.

"Your plane will be waiting at Yenki airport, Carter," he said. 'This period of cooperation between our forces has been most enjoyable. Indeed, much more so than I had expected."

What the hell did that mean, I asked myself as Chung Li started to get into the car. He sounded like he'd won some sort of victory and that bothered me. Maybe he figured that beating me to Carlsbad was a prize of sorts. Or maybe he felt good about having destroyed the scientist's plans, whatever they might have been. All my logical explanations didn't do a damn thing for the way I felt. He closed the car door and they drove off. He never looked back.

Rita came outside, and we sat on a crumbled wall and waited.

"Do you think he'll live?" she asked me. "Or don't you really care beyond getting your questions answered?"

"I won't lie to you," I said. "I don't really care that much. I just want the doctors to bring him around enough to talk."

An hour passed, then another and I was beginning to grow more edgy. I walked up and down, my eyes riveted on the curving road that stretched away from the abandoned farmhouse. Rita came to me and pulled me down on the grass beside her and let her warmth, the soft cushions of her breasts, try to relax me. She wasn't doing at all badly when I heard the sound of an engine and saw the dust cloud advancing along the road. We got up and watched the canvas-topped lorry come near and halt before the farmhouse. A Chinese noncom and a soldier got out. The noncom spoke halting English and produced a stretcher from the rear of the van.

I went with them inside as they moved the comatose Carlsbad from the cot onto the stretcher and carried him to a bed bolted to the floor of the lorry. I glimpsed a small cabinet at the front end of the lorry with bandages and bottles — it obviously was used as a field ambulance of some kind. The soldier took up a position on a bench opposite the bed after strapping Carlsbad down. Rita was standing at the rear of the truck, watching, anxiety in her eyes.

"You ride up front," I said to her. "I'm staying back here with him."

"You don't think that they would…" she began, but I cut her off.

"I don't think anything. I don't take chances I don't have to, either."

Darkness was starting to fall as we started off. The road was winding, rutted and muddy. I saw why the soldier had strapped Carlsbad onto the bed. We kept nudging a small river that paralleled us, disappearing for a few moments only to return again. I stuck my head out the rear of the vehicle to see that a full moon lighted the night. The river was a placid dark ribbon glittering in the moonlight and there were trees and hills at the other side of the road.

I checked Carlsbad every little while. His breathing was regular and his heartbeat steady. Grimly I watched his unchanging face and thought of servicemen I'd seen with similar injuries of the brain. They lasted for months and months, alive but dead. I sat back and closed my eyes as the lorry bounced along. We had gone perhaps fifty miles, maybe sixty, when the night exploded, lighting up with a pink glow as the flare burst directly overhead. The lorry braked to a shuddering halt as a barrage of rifle fire followed the burst of the flare. I glanced at the soldier. His alarm was genuine as he grabbed his rifle and leaped from the back of the truck.

I saw him hit the ground, start to turn and then twist in a grotesque arabesque as three shots hit him. I grabbed the tailboard and swung down, staying close to the lorry, dropping under the rear overhang. The dead soldier's rifle was near enough to reach and I pulled it to me. I looked across the ground underneath the chassis of the truck and saw Rita with the Chinese noncom beside her.

"Mountain bandits," he said, and I gazed out at the rolling hills to see shadowy forms moving in short bursts from bush to bush. The noncom moved out around the front of the truck, fired twice at the figures heading toward us and tried to run for a large bush. He didn't make it.

A flare arched up from behind a bush off to the left. We'd never have a chance as long as they could keep the scene brightly lighted. I counted eight, perhaps ten, figures moving forward.

"Stay under the truck," I said to Rita as I crawled backwards and around the lorry, staying on my belly. The brush was only a few yards away and I crawled into it. Once inside it, I moved upwards at a crouch. I paused to see three of the figures detach themselves and head after me. I shifted direction and stayed quiet as they moved into the bushes, heading for the river, figuring that's where I'd fled. But I continued crawling upwards toward the bastard behind the bush with the flare gun. As I got near enough I saw him, waiting, watching, starting to load another flare into his gun. Hugo dropped into my palm. I took aim, threw and saw the tempered steel of the stiletto go right through his ribs up to the hilt. He fell forward, and I broke for the bush, retrieved Hugo and stuck the flare gun into my belt.

I had the rifle, Wilhelmina and the flare gun. It was as good a spot for a surprise flank attack as I could hope to find. I started with the rifle, firing first and taking them by surprise as they advanced toward the lorry. I cut down four, five, six of them. The others took cover and turned their fire on me. Shots zinged into the bush, one cutting a crease across my shoulder. The three who had taken off toward the river had come back at the first round of shots. They were running from below and to the right of me, about to get a cross fire going with me in the middle.

I moved onto my back, lying flat on the ground, pointed the rifle to the left and fired with my left hand, not trying to aim, just keeping some lead in the air. As the three others reached me and raised their rifles, I fired Wilhelmina from a prone position. The big Luger barked three times and the three figures fell.

The pink glow from the flares had completely gone, and only the moonlight played over the dark shadows of the hills. They had been pretty well decimated but there were still some left. I had to find out how many. I took the flare gun and lit the night once again with a pink, unreal glow. I saw two figures midway up the hill and then picked out a third man, crouched in the clear against the side of the hill, talking rapidly into a field radio.

I frowned. Hill bandits with a field radio? Banditry in the Chinese back country had apparently become very modern. I aimed carefully and the man's body seemed to leap into the air as he half-turned and fell back onto the ground. I swung Wilhelmina to the left and poured a series of shots into a bush. A figure rose and pitched forward to lay across the small bush. Two more figures broke cover and headed back into the hills. It was a mistake for one of them. The other one made it as the flare died out.

I lay quietly and waited. This was no time for foolish moves. To play extra safe, I edged back to where one of the bandits lay face down. Propping him up in front of me, I got up and walked from the bushes. There were no shots, I kept the Chinese in front of me for a few more feet and then dropped the lifeless body. I called to Rita and saw her in the moonlight as she emerged from beneath the lorry.

"What are you looking for?" she asked when she saw me going through the clothes of the dead Chinese.

"I don't know," I said. "Bandits with flare guns I can understand. A flare gun could be obtained easily enough. A field radio is something else."

Inside the man's clothes I found a small billfold and inside the billfold an identification card.

"Major Su Han Kow of the Chinese Army," I read aloud to Rita. "I'll bet the rest are Chinese Army too, tricked out to look like bandits."

"But why?" Rita asked. "Why attack the lorry?"

"I don't know why," I answered. "But I do know he was radioing somebody for help and we'd better get the hell out of here."

"Didn't Chung Li guarantee our safety to Yenki?" Rita asked. "Maybe they really are bandits. Maybe they attacked a small group or a staff car and stole that identification card and the field radio."

"Maybe," I had to admit. But bandits don't usually go around attacking military units. Most of them wouldn't even know how to work a field radio. I had no answers once again, only suspicions. We'd reached the lorry and I rummaged around in the dash compartment. I found what I'd hoped was there, a map of the area. The little river with which we'd been playing tag wound its way right into Yenki.

"That settles it," I said. "We leave the truck and go by river." Carlsbad's stretcher, built of heavy canvas with a wood frame made a compact little raft of its own and Rita and I carried it into the water. The river was warm and not terribly deep near shore. Guiding the stretcher with Carlsbad on it, we stayed near land, walking most of the time, swimming some. As the river moved close along the road for almost a mile we swam out to midstream, holding each side of the stretcher and guiding our patient along the watery path.

I saw army trucks and motorcycle troops moving along the road. And then I saw a band of men, roughly dressed as the hill bandits had been. But they moved like soldiers with snap and precision. I was glad we hadn't tried to go on in the lorry.

We swam toward the shore again as the river left the roadside and rested for a while. Then we moved on till the sky began to lighten. I found a large clump of trees overhanging the river and screened from the road. We pulled Carlsbad and the stretcher to one of the low-hanging trees. He was breathing steadily but was otherwise unchanged. Rita and I lay down on the soft marsh grass under the,thick leaves of the tree as the sun came up.

"We'll stay here till dark and then move on" I said. "I think well make Yenki before morning."

"I'm going to let my clothes dry out, even if they get wet again," Rita said and I watched as she stripped and put her things on the grass. Her body was full-breasted, with long graceful legs and softly rounded hips. She lay back against the green of the grass and as she looked at me her blue eyes darkened.

"Come here beside me" she said. I put my clothes on the grass beside her and lay down with her. She moved into my arms, pressing her body against mine. She fell asleep that way almost instantly. I lay awake a while longer and tried to reconstruct what had taken place.

The attack on the lorry had been deliberate and planned. I had to admit that Rita's explanation was a possibility. They could have been bandits with stolen identity cards and stolen equipment. But they also could have been a Chinese Army Intelligence unit operating in disguise. I smelled Chung Li's fine oriental hand in it someplace. I looked down at the lovely girl in my arms, breathing softly against my chest, and closed my eyes. The sun filtering through the thick leaves and the heat became a lulling blanket. I fell asleep thinking what a helluva strange world this was to be naked with a gorgeous girl in your arms, under a tree in Manchuria, with somebody out to kill you.

I slept, more tired than I'd realized, and woke only when I felt Rita stir and move from my side. I looked up to see her at the river's edge, washing her face in the clear, warm water, looking like something out of a seventeenth century painting. It was late afternoon and I heard the sounds of crickets. We could have been lolling around a country river in Ohio. I sat up on one elbow and Rita turned at the sound. She got up and walked toward me and as I watched her approach I felt desire stirring, rising. Her eyes looked down at me, moving up and down my body, lingering, and suddenly she dropped to her knees. Her hands pressed into my flesh and she buried her face against my abdomen.

She looked up at me for a moment, then lowered her head once again. Her lips nibbled across my body, inflaming, arousing, and she seemed moved by an inner urgency. She toyed and caressed me and as she did her own excitement grew until she was quivering, her lovely body moist and wanting. I pulled her roughly up but she fought away from me to continue what was giving her so much pleasure. Suddenly she flung herself atop me, her hips heaving and thrusting and I turned over with her as she buried her head against my shoulder, stifling the cries that were rising from her.

I moved in her slowly, then faster, feeling the surges of her wild ecstasy that my every motion brought. Then she rose up and her teeth bit into my flesh as she cried out with abandon. I held her there, flesh into flesh. Life's physical symbol of being, welded into moments of passion. Finally she fell back onto the grass and her eyes found mine.