by Nick Carter
"I told you, no names," he said softly. He took one arm and twisted it, his fingers bitting into her flesh, and while he twisted he slammed the heel of his free hand into her eye. She screamed and sought his flesh with her teeth.
Yi threw her back violently on the bed. Her head struck the backboard. She made a moaning sound and slumped down onto the pillows. Yi reached down with both hands and squeezed her breasts ferociously. Then he turned and vanished from Nick's sight. Elena lay on the bed with her eyes closed and her chest heaving spasmodically. She's going to have some spectacular bruises by morning, Nick thought. Then his satisfaction melted. Unless he did something to prevent it, Mark would see those bruises and leap to the obvious conclusion: Elena was being tortured on account of him. No doubt she would put up a brave show, and leave him with the certain knowledge that unless he did whatever they wanted she would die a horrible, lingering death… not to mention what would happen to the others.
Yi came back across Nick's line of vision buttoning up a fresh tunic. This time he came so close to the window that Nick ducked rapidly. Yi walked past the window to the rear of the room. There was a faint sliding noise that repeated itself once and ended with a click. Then there was no sound but the heaving of Elena's breath.
Nick waited for a few moments and then started working at the window. It was much the same as the barracks window only screen-less and somewhat larger, and after a while it yielded to his careful manipulations.
He hoisted himself up and leaned across the sill, looking and listening. No patrolling footsteps anywhere nearby. No one in the room with Elena. One door on the far side of the bed; it was not the way the Commandant had left the room. Walls crammed with incredible pictures.
"Pssst, Elena!" he whispered urgently. "Elena, sweetheart."
Her eyes fluttered open and stared blankly around the room.
Nick wormed his way through the window and dropped quietly onto the padded floor. He heard a gasp as he eased the window shut and firmly drew the heavy curtains.
"Elena, honey! What have they done to you?" he whispered, with what he hoped was a suitably horrified expression. "The filthy brutes!"
"Philip!" she gasped.
"Sshhh." He noticed the door was locked on the inside. "Anybody out there, do you know?"
"No. No, I don't know." She seemed to be almost choking.
"Elena, we've got to get out of here," he said. "Oh, baby, have they hurt you terribly?" He leaned over the bed and drew her into his arms, his eyes searching the room for a second exit.
"Oh, darling, it's been too terrible," she whimpered. "How — how did you get here?"
"Out my window. Been looking all over the place for you. Old lady at the women's barracks said you'd been taken off some place. I had to find you. Saw that swine hit you, then disappear. How did you get in here? Not through the front door. Am I right? There has to be some sort of secret passage through this whole place. How did he bring you here, Elena? Can we get out that way?" She was still badly dazed, and he was glad of it. "Get your clothes on. Oh, God, they're all torn up. Here, put them on anyway. We'll find some way out. God, what they've done to you," he whispered softly, pulling her up toward him.
"In the closet," she whispered. "There're some robes. He's a maniac, a fiend. The place is full of women's — please, Phil, get me a robe."
He bounced off the bed and strode to the closet, one hand close to Wilhelmina. But the only surprise was the contents of the closet. It was half full of tunics and half full of feminine negligees. He took one to Elena.
She was sitting on the bed clutching her aching breasts. Her eyes blazed. "That filthy swine!" she hissed. "Oh, I found out something from him. Passages? Oh, you're so right!"
"I had to find you," he said urgently. "At least we can be together, whatever happens." Hurry, bitch, he begged her silently.
She tightened the robe around her. "I know a way out," she said between clenched teeth. "He gave me the guided tour, the bastard. In fact, if you look in that bureau drawer you'll find a map of the whole damn place. I'd like to kill that sonofabitch!"
But the map yielded up by the bureau drawer was even more worthy of attention. One brief glance at it showed a maze of passages winding underneath the buildings and into the hillside behind the two houses he had speculated about. It was more like a blueprint than a map, and someone had inked in a few X-marks and some Chinese symbols. There was also a gun in the drawer. He took that too.
Elena was waiting for him. "Hurry, Philip! Here," she said, running her fingers over a paneled wall that Nick knew must be flush with the rock outside. "We came in somewhere here." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "He may be somewhere in there now. But I didn't see any guards down there."
Didn't you? Nick thought grimly. God help you if you're lying.
"What's behind that?" he asked quietly. "Just one passageway?"
"No, there's a whole mess of them. But…" And her eyes widened at the thought. "I don't know where we'll go when we get out of here. Oh, Phil, we'll have to find some place to hide!"
"We'll find some place," he said, and smiled at her reassuringly.
Something clicked beneath her probing fingers. The panel slid back a couple of inches and stopped. "I'm afraid," she whispered.
He squeezed her hand and brushed her swelling lips with his. "We've got a chance," he said softly. "Let's take it."
He slid the panel back. They stepped from the bedroom into a broad, dimly-lit passage that smelled of concrete and damp earth.
Nick slid the panel shut behind them.
The Guided Tour
They stood there listening for a moment, darting furtive glances down the wide, low tunnel that ran to either side of them and narrowed as it curved downward and out of sight. Across the space in front of them, and separated by several yards of rock face, were two elevator doors of the lattice-work accordion variety. One of the cages was in place, its door locked. The other was apparently lodged on another floor. Nick looked around and tried to transfer his glimpse of the blueprint onto the real thing.
"You came from the right?" Nick whispered. She nodded, clasping her borrowed robe to her like a frightened virgin. "Then we'll try the left," he said. "According to the map, that should eventually lead us right out somewhere near the main gate. C'mon." They began their cautious sidling along the backs of the two houses, the Commandant's and someone else's, and headed for the left-hand downward curve.
A frightened murmur came from Elena. "But what're we going to do when we get out? We can't walk home across Red China."
"Ssssh. Worry about one thing at a time. Did he tell you where those elevators go?"
"Yes. Down into some kind of machine shop. And laboratory."
"Did he tell you what they've done with Mark?"
She glanced at him sharply. "No. What have they done to Mark?"
"I don't know. He's not with the others, that's all I know."
She caught her breath and reached out her hand to Nick. "I don't want anything to happen to him," she muttered. "But how can we help unless we get ourselves out first?"
There didn't seem to be any answer. And her own attitude posed quite enough questions for the moment. Her face was beginning to look more bruised and swollen by the minute. Maybe she was so furious about the Commandant's rough treatment that she really was prepared to doublecross the Reds. But somehow it seemed a little too good to be true.
The passage sloped sharply as it curved down to the left. Another tunnel joined it from a sharp angle leading to a heavy door. Elena pulled him past the junction. "That goes deeper inside," she whispered. "It leads into that factory I was telling you about. We'll have to keep on going." They did. "See those little stairways?" she whispered after a while. He had seen them, set well back against the tunnel wall at irregularly spaced intervals. Each one led up into the rocky roof where it ended in a trapdoor.
"Yes, what are they?"
"Escape hatches," she said softly. "There's one from every one o
f the buildings upstairs leading down into the tunnel. At least, that's what he told me. He brought me down one of them. Took me next door from the women's quarters into another room, I suppose so that the other women wouldn't see. Then through a trap in the front hallway — it's not easy to see because the boards are all alike and there seems to be nothing but a little sliding button on either side. Anyway, it's there. In all of them, he said. In case of attack everyone comes down here."
"Attack?" he whispered. "When they're already so…"
He stopped suddenly. There was a little clinking sound from somewhere in the corridor up ahead. And then a distant voice. It floated back to them, a disembodied sound that could have been made by man or woman, in triumph or in pain.
Elena came to a full stop, her face a study in something like fear and pleased anticipation. "We'll have to go back," she whispered, almost soundlessly. He barely caught it, but he did catch her expression. She wanted to go on.
"No point in going back," he murmured into her ear. "Stay here if you like. I'll go on."
She shook her head emphatically. "We'll go together. You said so. I won't let you go alone."
"Then stay behind me. And don't talk any more."
They went on in silence. Sounds filtered back to them. One of them was the Commandant's voice. The other was a kind of crackling thud.
And then a sharp cry that broke off with a feminine curse in anything but feminine language.
Julie.
There was not the slightest sound of reaction from Elena. She padded along silently behind Nick and with a certain eagerness that made the back of his neck creep.
They passed a series of heavy doors and glided around a turn in the passage.
A guard stood stolidly with his back to an open door.
Nick back-pedaled hurriedly, pushing Elena back with his outstretched hand.
They heard the guard shifting position and then pacing slowly toward them. Then they swiveled and seemed to be heading away.
Nick motioned Elena to stay where she was and eased himself around the curve. The guard was tramping back along the passage toward the open door. Now, Carter, Nick told himself. Quickly, while his back is turned.
He broke into a light run from his standing position, padding soundlessly over the concrete floor. Yards… feet… the guard was almost at the door. Nick gathered speed and drew his arm up with the hand outstretched, hard and rigid and almost as lethal as the cutting edge of an axe. Only inches now… The hard edge of his palm lashed down and landed like an axe-blade biting deep into a tree trunk. As he struck he heard the whiplash crack again. The Commandant laughed musically. And the guard dropped unheard beneath Nick's killing karate blow. His machine gun scraped against the wall as Nick grabbed for it, but the entertainment in the nearby room was apparently too absorbing for such a trifle to be noticed.
Hugo flicked out at his bidding. Again, the machine gun was tempting, but again it was too risky to splay its noise throughout the eerie underground world. He heard the whip again, and a muffled sound that made his blood boil. He scarcely noticed Elena sidling up behind him.
"But why not run, my lovely?" the Commandant's voice said reasonably. "If you do not like it in here with us, you can easily make it to the door. Hah?" The whip cracked suggestively. "Or perhaps you enjoy this so very gentle removal of your clothes. Piece by piece." Crack. "Strip by strip." Lash. "Torn fragment by torn fragment." Swish and thud.
"Stop that!" It was Gerber's voice, high-pitched and strained almost beyond recognition. "Hit me instead! Why don't you hit me?"
"Oh, because we need you, my dear Gerber," the Commandant said genially. "And we do not need the lady. At least," and he chuckled, "not precisely for the same purpose."
Nick moved his head very, very slowly and very carefully, until he could see into the room. As the whip lashed through the air once more he heard Elena whisper behind him: "Kill him, Philip, kill! Think of what he did to me." And at the same time he saw the scene within. All he could think of was what the man was doing to Julie.
She stood against a wall, still fully clothed, but with her dress in tatters and a sort of collar about her neck. A chain ran from it to the floor and up the wall behind her where it linked with a solid metal fixture fitted into the stone. The Commandant stood facing her, flicking the whip. Against the far wall, directly opposite the doorway, stood three men. Only they were not so much standing as supported by manacles that fastened them directly to the wall.
"But you have room, my little tigress," chuckled the Commandant. "Run on your leash — you can reach the door. And you do not even dance for me, my pretty." The thong lashed viciously at her legs. "Is it because you like the way I tickle you? Or that you want these gentlemen to see what I shall do to you when your lovely body is free of those unnecessary clothes?" The whip curled around her waist and withdrew with a tearing sound. Julie flinched. Her eyes were closed and her anguished face was pale, sweat-gleaming marble. One of the men against the wall sucked in his breath and released it with a shuddering sigh. Julie's knees crumpled and she dropped to the floor. She reminded Nick, as he raised Hugo for the throw, of a caged and beaten puppy. Mark was struggling frantically, uselessly, against his manacles.
The Commandant moved back, looking down reproachfully at the bundle of whipped woman at his feet. Nick lowered Hugo. A fractional error, and the old man with the slightly hunched shoulders would get the knife-thrust meant for Yi. To aim around a corner was not easy.
Yi reached down and jerked the chain. The collar bit into the soft flesh of Julie's neck.
"Up, up, up," he remonstrated, as if to a naughty child, and tugged unmercifully at the chain. Julie rose like a wax doll dangling from an executioner's noose. "So. Better," said the Commandant. Then he kicked her legs out from under her and let her drop. The whip lashed at her where she lay.
"Ah, no, ah, no," the hunched man groaned. "I will not watch this. It must stop. It is a worse crime to let this happen than to work for them. Enough, Yi. I for one will do whatever you say. Only do not touch that girl again. Please — please, Yi!" His voice rose to a scream as the whip came down again.
"No, Dietz!" "He's right! This has got to stop!" The two voices came simultaneously, the first an anguished whisper from the man beside him and the second a furious bellow from Mark.
"Now that is much more reasonable," the Commandant crooned, swiveling toward them. "If you are ready to be sensible…"
"No, you goddamn well won't!" It was a strangled cry from Julie. "Don't you dare do what he says! Don't you dare!" She pulled herself up on her knees and lunged suddenly at the Commandant's legs.
He stepped back with a bark of laughter and the whip curled.
Hugo soared through the air.
But in the instant of release Nick stood revealed in the doorway and there was a telltale gasp from someone at the wall. The Commandant pivoted and half turned toward the doorway with his knees bent in a crouch. Hugo skidded lightly across his temple and clattered to the floor.
Nick leapt.
The full weight of his flying body came down on the Commandant and knocked him sprawling. His knee thrust forward and twisted into the padded gut. The man beneath him rolled with the incredible strength of a buffalo and slammed a ramrod finger-blow against Nick's throat. Nick gagged and saw red. He was aware of being thrown aside and fallen upon by a snarling beast of a man and pounded brutally against the solid stone floor. He let his body go absolutely limp for one deceptive moment. Then he jerked his knees up suddenly and heaved with all his strength. The weight flew off him. Nick jackknifed to his feet and saw Yi leaping up. He caught one outstretched arm, kicked out savagely with his right foot, and twisted Yi's trapped arm until the tunic-covered elbow bent up at a hideously unnatural angle toward the face. Yi gasped painfully and went down under the excruciating pressure. As he landed Yi lashed out with both booted feet and one ramrod arm. Nick's clutching fingers lost the full strength of their grip as he staggered from the blows. From
the corner of his eye he could see Julie trying to reach for something behind him.
The Commandant saw it too. With incredible speed he freed his twisted arm in a whirlwind roll-over and caught at Nick's legs, thrusting Nick back against Julie and sending all three of them sprawling. Nick made himself relax with the roll and clawed at the Commandant's throat. Julie moaned softly. Mark was keeping up a steady stream of curses. And then suddenly his jaw dropped open. His eyes were fixed on the door.
"Elena!" he breathed. "Dear God, your face! What have they done to you?"
The Commandant snarled and scrabbled for the thing Julie had tried to retrieve from the floor. Nick heard it tinkle. Hugo. He slammed a side-of-the-palm blow hard against the Commandant's neck, but felt it misfire as the Commandant twisted away. They clinched and rolled together.
Hugo lay out of reach. The two men, so oddly assorted but so alike in strength and technique, heaved and clawed and slugged and twisted on the floor. Julie gave a little sigh where she lay; and she lay still.
"Elena!" Mark cried out. "Oh, Elena, run! Get out of here!"
Anyone else might have suggested that she rush in and grab the knife or do something, anything, to help. Anyone else, that is, who could see through the pose of utter weariness and agony that she managed to maintain as she slumped against the doorway. Mark, of all people, was not the man to recognize the strange, mesmerized look on her face or read the expression in her half-closed eyes. Nor could he hear the words she muttered so softly that only she could hear. "Hurt him, hurt him, make the filthy bastard suffer…"
Nick was doing all he could to make the bastard suffer. He slammed a piledriver of a blow against Yi's heart and an agonizing finger stab into one of the tiny eyes. Yi replied with a karate gouge into Nick's rib cage that was momentary hell and would have killed brutally if properly completed. Nick tried the same treatment, with the same result. Yi recoiled swiftly and bounced back for more. The two of them chopped and slashed with incredible power and speed, landing blows and squirming out of holds that would have killed men less superbly trained in the killing arts.