I looked down. Directly underneath us, just thirty feet below the surface, was the long metal cigar of the Chinese sub.
I let all the air out of the ring and the shield started to sink. Carefully we guided it down to the aft deck and walked it along the top of the sub, making sure it didn't touch the sub's skin and give us away with a telltale ring. I pointed to a large hatch. It was designed to take a missile, not a man. Delicately we lowered the shield down onto the hatch. It fit perfectly — chalk up one more point for Navy Intelligence. A trail of bubbles drifted upward as the vacuum lock self-sealed. One third of the job was done. We went up for another shield, swimming past the other pair of frogmen as they walked their shield to a hatch.
They were finished when we drifted down with the last shield. One of them waved to us as we approached. I thought the gesture meant to signify a job well done until the waving became frantic and I turned and looked behind us. There were four more frogmen in the water and they weren't from the U. S. Navy.
There is no way in which two men walking underwater with a heavy load can move faster than four men who are swimming. While we continued on our way carrying the shield, our buddies swam past us to meet the four head-on pulling their knives as they went.
Under the wet suit I was sweating. I couldn't turn around to see whether or not one of the Chinese frogmen had slipped through and was about to cut my back open. As gently and as slowly as we had done before, we set the shield down over the missile hatch and waited for the bubble to tell us it was locked. As soon as I saw it coming, I pushed off the deck of the sub, grazing past an arm whose hand held a knife. I ripped his air hose apart as he missed me and then swam over to help the two frogmen who had taken on uneven odds.
One of them was losing a red mist from his back while a Chinese frogman neatly sliced his hose at the tank. There was the length of the sub's aft deck between us and no way that I could reach the pair before the knife made its last fatal stab. I didn't have to. The wounded frogman caught the other man's knife hand and spun him around. His flippered foot smashed into his opponent's chest, knocking the mouthpiece from the Chinese frogman's face. Then he used the loose hose for a hangman's noose, wrapping it around the throat of the man until the knife slowly dropped to the bottom of the sea. The Chinese frogman's body followed the knife even more slowly.
Our helicopter was right on time, dropping a basket for us to scramble into and lifting us clear of the sea. The wounded frogman was exhilarated.
"They won't be able to get those shields off until they get back to Shanghai," he yelled over the sound of the copter's rotors. "I just hope they try to fire those missiles."
"How do you feel?" I yelled back. "I would have helped you if I could."
"The hell with that," he shouted. "That's the trouble with you cloak-and-dagger boys, you don't want anybody else to have any fun."
Chapter Fourteen
The fun, if you could call it that, was over. I was back in my hotel room in Santiago, packing my bag for the return trip home. Allende's government was making headlines about the MIRista plot it had uncovered and smashed through its own brilliant detective work.
If that was the way they wanted it, it was okay with me. I set the bomb on my overnight bag and left a tip on the bureau for the maid. I planned to collect Rosa and Bonita and somehow con the Air Force into taking me and my interpreters back to the States together.
There was a knock at the door. Out of pure habit I hesitated before going to answer it. After all, the Garcia boys were out of the way, there was no reason to be overly suspicious.
"Who is it?"
It was a submachine gun. The center panel of the door was shot away in less than five seconds. At the far end of the room windows and pictures were smashing and falling. I pulled out my Luger as I dove behind the bed.
A second spray of machine-gun bullets blew apart the lock and a heavy foot kicked the door open. I started to move in the direction of the adjoining room but a pattern of bullets etched along the floor and discouraged that notion.
Who the hell can this be, I wondered. Lilya? She might be an angry woman but she was a professional. She killed only on KGB orders. A remaining MIRista? If there were any of those left, they would be much too busy going into hiding to think about me.
"Get up, Killmaster!"
Belkev!
"Get up. I am at last going to kill you, what I've wanted to do ever since I first saw you. Humiliating me whenever you got the chance, making fun of me, making love to my women. Stand up!"
A waist-high spray of bullets around the room told me he meant it.
"You're crazy, Belkev."
"I'm crazy? I'm going to get a hundred thousand dollars for killing you, and you say I'm crazy? This is the moment I've waited for, the moment to show who is the better man."
"Get out of here while you're still alive."
The words seemed to amuse him. I heard him chuckle nastily and step inside the room. He approached the bed.
"No tricks will save you now, Carter. Throw out your gun and your knife. And don't forget that little bomb taped to your foot. I know all about those things."
I took the Luger out of its holster and threw it on the floor where he could see it.
"Good. Now the others."
I shook the stiletto into my hand and tossed it beside the gun. Finally I undid the gas bomb from inside my shoe and flipped that out too.
"Excellent. Now you will stand up."
I did as he said, even stepping away from the bed so that he could have a clear range.
"You know when you are beaten," his toad face gloated.
"I know when I finally have the opportunity and the excuse to do what I've wanted to do ever since I met you, Belkev."
"What's that?" he asked confidently.
"Take you apart with my bare hands."
I kicked the barrel of the machine gun up and pulled the magazine out. Then I handed the empty weapon back to him. He stood there like a statue, in shock.
"It's called reaction time, comrade. Anyway, you have a good club now. Use it."
The confidence dripped from him like wax from a melting candle. In a daze, he took my advice and cocked the machine gun back like a butcher's ax.
"I think you'll like this, Belkev, since you like traveling so much. It's called an around-the-world. An instructor at Parris Island showed it to me once. We start off with aikido."
He swung the club down with all his might. I ducked under his gut. We'd hardly touched but he was spread out over the floor.
"You see, the whole point of aikido is to avoid contact and yet turn your enemy's strength against him. As opposed to jujitsu."
He got up and swung again. I seized his lapels and fell backward. Belkev ended up against the wall upside down. He got up a little groggily — until he noticed my Luger within his reach.
"Thai foot boxing, on the other hand, uses one's own strength," I explained.
My shoe deflected his gun hand and shot into his chest. He dropped as if he'd been shot. I replaced the gun in its holster. Belkev reached for my knife.
"While karate employs the hands along with the feet."
I chopped the point of his shoulder and heard a gratifying crack. I picked up the stiletto and put it back in its sheath. Just in case Belkev planned to sleep through the rest of the lecture, I propped him into a standing position against the bureau. Then I slipped the gas bomb into a pocket.
"As the sun sets on the Orient, we come to the United States of America. Perhaps you've heard of the place. Any number of arts have been developed there, including modern boxing."
I accentuated the point with a hook in the gut. As Belkev crumpled over, I smashed into the side of his face with a right cross.
"That's called a 'one-two.' And of course there's always that good old American stand-by, free-for-all fighting."
I took him by both arms and sailed him over the bed and into the room's full-length mirror. The falling glass made a lacy pattern aroun
d him.
"And," I added, pulling him back to the center of the room, "U.S. Marine hand-to-hand combat."
I snapped his sternum in half with an elbow that went on up to his chin and chipped a tooth. My other elbow left his squat nose squatting over his right cheek. He gagged for air as a knee drove through his lard almost to his backbone and I finished the job by heaving him into the bureau mirror. He rolled off the top of the bureau and hit the floor like a sack of water-logged potatoes.
"You've probably guessed by now that hand-to-hand stems from the free-for-all, no? Any questions? I could do it again if you liked."
A mournful grunt served as his answer. He was flat on his face. His clothes were torn apart. He had — by an educated guess — half a dozen broken bones. But he'd five. And that's more than he would have done for me.
"Pardon me," I said politely. "I did forget one thing. A KGB trick, of all things."
I leaned over him. He didn't resist.
When I was through, I added some bills to the tip and then climbed the stairs to the top floor of the hotel. Rosa and Bonita were waiting for me in their room, packed and ready to go.
I went over to the bar and poured three drinks.
"We heard a terrible racket going on downstairs. What happened?" Rosa asked. "See, you cut a knuckle." She took my hand.
"It's nothing much."
"Was Belkev there?"
"Yes, but he's not going to bother us."
The KGB pressure point — that simple little trick that cuts off blood to the brain — would keep Belkev unconscious for hours.
"How do you know he won't?" Bonita asked as she picked up her drink.
"I very simply explained to him that you two wanted to go to the States with me and that a citizenship exam was required. I said that the exam had to be held in complete privacy. No one else would be allowed in."
"And he agreed to that?" they exclaimed.
"Girls, if there's one thing I've learned in this business, it's not what you do but the way you do it."
Half an hour later, our private exam concluded, they agreed that I was right.
As we were going out the door, the phone rang. Oh no, I thought, what now? It was my AXE contact. "I just thought you might like to know," he said airily, "the Russians have returned the captured satellite information tube. Your mission has been accomplished and…"
"That's very interesting," I said. "You know I'm partial to missions that get accomplished. It's the ones that don't…"
"…and peace and goodwill reign among all men."
I smiled, broke off the connection, put an arm around each girl and went out the door.
The Inca Death Squad Page 12