The Death Strain (8 page)

"Listen carefully to me" I said. "I'm going to turn around and I'll have a stiletto in my hand. I'm going to put it into your hand. You hold it tight, point up, and I'll shred these wrist ropes against it. Understand?"

"Yes," I heard her say, her voice strained, hoarse. I turned, carefully, fighting to stay upright and keep my balance. Pressing my forearm against the edge of the slab, I released Hugo and felt the stiletto drop from its sheath into my hand. Maneuvering cautiously, I felt Rita's open hand and put the stiletto into it. I held on until I felt her hand close around the hilt of the blade.

"Good girl," I said. "Now hold it tight." Slowly, taking care not to dislodge Hugo from her grip, I pressed the wrist ropes against the blade, moving them up and down against it, sometimes bringing them down onto the point. I had just gotten started when it happened, all at once. I knew rather than saw what had occurred. The first thing was Rita's scream of pure pain. Her hand opened involuntarily and I felt the stiletto fall from it and heard it land on the floor.

I lost my balance and fell forward, twisting my body to avoid a bashed face. As I did so I saw that the first funnel of molten hot wax had let go and the substance lay over the girl's abdomen, still emitting little wisps of steam.

Rita's scream of pain had turned into choking sobs now. As I lay on the floor beside the stone slab, looking up, I saw a second short length of metal reach its limit, tilt and send another stream of liquid wax down on the girl. This one landed just beside the first, a little above it at the edge of her ribs and once again she screamed in anguish.

I thought of picking Hugo up with my teeth as the stiletto lay within reach, pulling myself up again and placing it back into her hands. But I knew that was no good. I'd be painfully slow and her screams would shortly be bringing the others to enjoy her anguish from ringside. And then, even if I did get the blade in her hand again, another deluge of wax would bring the same results. I was running out of time and it galvanized me in angry desperation.

I rolled this time along the length of the stone slab to where a thick candle burned in a tall holder at the far end of the altar. Pulling myself up on my knees, I threw myself forward, hitting the tall, wrought-iron holder hard. It toppled, the candle still
in
place, and lay on the stone floor. Ignoring the bruised pain of my knees and my aching muscles, I inched forward to the candle on the floor. Gritting my teeth against the searing pain, I thrust my wrists into the flame, holding them as long as I could stand the pain, and then pulling away. But only for an instant. Taking another deep breath, I plunged the wrist-ropes into the flame of the candle again. The skin of my wrists grew raw and started to blister, and my stomach was nauseous from the pain. Then I felt the ropes burn through enough. I rolled away and pulled and my hands came free. I gave myself ten seconds to lie there and then I was sitting up, reaching over for Hugo and slicing through the ropes binding my ankles.

I got up, started to slide out the panel of my belt buckle when I saw another of the metal funnels starting to tip. I cut through Rita's ankle and wrist straps and yanked the girl from the stone slab just as another deluge of the hot wax splattered down. She was in my arms, clinging to me, shivering, her body wet with perspiration. I pushed her away and slid out the small sending unit at the back of my belt buckle.

"Operation DS," I called out. "Operation DS." I gave the call letters three times more, and then asked for gunfire. I gave them the description and position of the island and told them to destroy the temple on it. Ostrov had said that four of the S.O.I. Class sub chasers would be standing by. They each carried four 50mm guns in twin mountings, plus four five-barrel rocket launchers. All together, they could bring more than enough fire power to bear. If the power pack had done its job, they should have heard my call.

I'd just finished when Tumo appeared with three other men. Seeing Rita's naked form beside me, he knew at once something had gone wrong. He reached into his robe and pulled out a gun. The sound of the shot told me it was Wilhelmina. I pushed Rita to one side and hit the floor just as Tumo got off another shot. He was running toward me, and I rolled behind the stone slab of the altar just as the temple resounded to the reverberating clang of an ancient gong.

Tumo, joined by one of the other men, was approaching the stone slab. Crouched down on the other side of it, I heard their footsteps moving cautiously. The candle I'd used to burn off my wrist ropes still burned in its tall holder only a few inches from me. I reached out and pulled it toward me slowly, making no noise. I could hear the sound of others coming on the run. As I expected, Tumo waited, hanging back on one side of the stone slab while other men moved around the end.

Holding the bottom of the tall holder, I shoved the burning candle in one of my attackers' eyes as he rounded the end of the altar stone. He screamed and fell backwards. Tumo would be scrambling up over the top of the altar stone now for a clear shot at me. I lifted the long iron holder and flung it up into the delicately balanced candles and funnels over the stone. I rolled to one side as I heard Tumo scream. The hot wax came down on him from half-a-dozen of the metal strips. He was atop the altar stone, grabbing in pain at the back of his neck, when I let Hugo fly. It went into his right temple, just above the eye, with full force, penetrating all the way to the hilt I saw the man shudder and fall forward to lay limp across the altar stone, insensible to the hot wax still splattering down upon him.

I crossed the few steps in one quick bound, pulled Hugo free, wiped the blade on Tumo's shirt and scooped Wilhelmina up. At Rita's scream, I whirled and got off two shots. The two men holding her were flung backwards by the force of the big 9mm slugs at close range. Rita ran toward me and I met her halfway, firing at the others as they came rushing into the area from the surrounding corridors.

I fired at whatever moved across my line of vision, and I fired
in
short bursts, scattering them like so many leaves in the wind. I was moving backwards, pulling Rita along with me, when the first shot from the patrol boats exploded and the ancient temple trembled. More shots followed quickly, some landing outside in the trees, others direct hits. I knew that the Russian gunners were zeroing in on their target. Some of the men and women were trying to flee, others were gathering together to huddle in small groups, waiting for death to come. A full round of shots hit, and the walls of the old temple seemed to fall away like a child's cardboard house.

I clambered over the rubble and headed for daylight, pulling Rita along, pausing only to strip the robe from an inert form and give it to her.

She wrapped it around herself. We hit the ground, tumbling over a mound of rubble, as two shells whistled over our heads. Yanking her along, I got up and ran for the trees, falling again as another pair of shells whistled past to land amid the remains of the temple. They had really sighted their target now and almost every shell was hitting the mark. Rita and I stumbled from the thin line of trees onto the beach and I lay there, pulling out the sending set from my belt buckle.

"Operation DS," I called, hoping the shots hadn't killed the little power pack. "Operation DS. Hold fire. Pick me up on beach. Repeat. Pick me up on beach. Imperative."

We flattened ourselves on the beach as a trio of shells looped overhead. The little island was shaking from the fury of the barrage the four patrol cruisers were laying down, and I knew they were using their rocket launchers, too. Then, abruptly, the firing halted, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The power pack had still worked. I put my head up and saw, across the water, the white flash of spray from the prow of a fast-moving vessel heading directly toward us. Then the low lines of the patrol craft came into view, moving in as close as she dared.

"Let's go," I said, pulling Rita with me into the surf, "We've got to catch the bus."

The patrol craft slowed, turned and cut her engines not more than a few hundred yards off shore. Rita and I were swimming already, Rita having a rough time of it with the voluminous robe that soaked up water and lay on her like a dead weight I helped her until strong hands pulled us up onto the patrol cruiser. My mind had already left behind what had happened and was racing on, thinking about Carlsbad.

"Get the girl below decks, please," I said to the captain of the cruiser, a tall, square-faced Russian with short blond hair. "Some hot tea would help, too."

"Da," he nodded.

"And get me to your radio," I said. Once more he nodded and I followed him below decks. While they got a pair of dungarees and an old shirt for Rita, I was on the radio, making relay contact first with a big W Class Russian sub and then with the special frequency set up for this operation. I reported the bad news that Carlsbad had flown the coop and was moving forward with his plans elsewhere.

I heard Ostrov's voice, and then radio contact was temporarily broken off. When it came back, the Soviet intelligence commandant was giving me instructions which had been quickly cleared and agreed upon by himself, Hawk, Chung Li and Colonel Nutashi. We were going to be picked up by a big Soviet plane and flown to one of the United States carriers off Japan. Meanwhile, I was to prepare a full report to be given via the powerful carrier transmitter, Ostrov's rough, growling delivery was more pronounced than usual, and his final parting message sent my own hackles up.

"I'd expected something better, Carter. You had the man in your hands."

"Want to change places?" I asked, and he clicked off. I turned from the transmitter and went over to where Rita sat, clothed in a loose gray seaman's shirt and dungarees. Her hands found mine as I sat down beside her, close in the cramped quarters inside the patrol cruiser.

"I'll never be able to thank you," she said quietly.

"Ill let you try," I said. "In fact, you can start now. Think hard. Try to remember
anything
you may have heard your uncle or that large Japanese buddy of his say about where they were going. They left by chopper, which means that wherever it was, it wasn't too far away."

I watched a small furrow cut into her smooth forehead as she thought. "Uncle's visit to the temple was just to bring me there," she said. "The virus strain was never there. He said that if anything got out of hand, the temple would be the safest place to be, isolated by water and with a controlled population."

"So they stashed the strain somewhere else," I said. "Think hard — give me anything you can remember."

"Mostly they talked so low I couldn't hear them as we flew to the Kuriles," Rita answered. "But I heard enough to gather that the final phase of the plan would include a jet pilot who was to meet them, a man whose wife had been killed by a radioactive explosion."

I turned her words over in my mind. I knew they'd mean a helluva lot more if we could only fit them in with the missing parts. A jet pilot could mean they needed the use of a high-speed plane with a long range. And that even narrowed things down a little. A jet pilot with a wife killed in a radioactive explosion. I was starting to itch for that flying boat to get here. I had to get on that radio with Hawk. Rita's words brought me back.

"And there was something else," she said. "I heard Kiyishi use the phrase 'the tip of the three. He said the pilot knew to meet them at the tip of the three."

Rita sat back and moved her hands helplessly. "That's all I can remember, Nick. There was nothing else."

The tip of the three.
I let the phrase roll around in my mind but it didn't trigger a damn thing, and then I heard the sound of the heavy engines of the flying boat approaching.

"Let's get topside," I said. "Every second counts." A week, Hawk had said. Now only a few days remained. I watched the big airplane taxi to a halt, and the patrol boat came up alongside the opened doorway. We transferred to the giant plane and within a few hours we were aboard the United States carrier in the misty coastal waters off northern Japan. The ship's nurses took Rita in hand and she was assigned one of the staterooms kept aside for visiting dignitaries. I got on the radio with Hawk and as always, he listened first. He didn't say anything till I'd completed a full report and then, his voice weary, he cut in.

"It's ironic, Carlsbad, calling us puppets. He isn't even master of his own plan. Maybe we're all mad, Nick, every last one of us."

He'd taken down the few things Rita had reported to me. I heard him put some crispness into his voice but it took effort. "Ill get everyone on this at once. You'll have to just stand by. It may take time, hours, if we come up with anything at all. Where's the girl now?"

"Resting in a stateroom," I answered.

"Get someone to stay with her constantly," he said. "Maybe she talks in her sleep. Maybe she's got something in her subconscious that'll come out when she's asleep."

"Roger," I said, and Hawk clicked off. I found myself smiling. After all, this was certainly nothing to entrust to just anyone. I went to the captain, told him that Rita Kenmore and I were to be disturbed only if Hawk radioed. We had vital plans to go over, I said. I think the captain may even have believed me. The boys in crew's quarters wouldn't have, showing the disadvantages of too much education.

I hurried to the stateroom, knocked and Rita opened the door. Her smile, the first real one I'd ever seen from her, lighted up the room.

"Oh, Nick, please come in," she said. She was wearing a deep red sweater and a cream skirt. She saw my eyes flick over the soft roundness of her breasts. "Thanks to the nursing staff aboard," she said, gesturing at her clothes.

"Do you talk in your sleep?" I grinned at her. "Because I'm supposed to find out."

"I don't know, I do know you've little chance of finding out. I'm exhausted but I'm too keyed-up to sleep."