This was it. The end of the arms trail.
One of the sentries laughed harshly and slapped down a card. “Rona, fool! Weep! I win! And is it not time for our relief? Where is that misbegotten son of a sick camel? My belly gapes!”
The other man flung his cards away with a curse. “You have the luck of Shaitan himself! Wait, Omar — wait! Smell that? Is it not—”
Nick Carter cursed softly and fumbled with his trouser. Pierre, the terrible little gas pellet, slipped from his fingers and tinkled on the brick floor. Blood had made his fingers slippery. And blood had given him away to the Pathans. They could smell blood a mile away!
Both men leaped for their rifles. Nick scooped up the gas pellet, twisted the dial, and flung it into the casemate all in one fluid motion. He threw his weight against the great iron doors and strained with every muscle in his powerful body. God — they were heavy! Immense! But they were moving. Slowly. Very slowly.
The guards had time for one shot apiece before they died. The slugs flattened themselves against the iron doors and whined back around the chamber. N3 stood with his back to the massive doors and breathed a silent little prayer — if those shots had been heard—
Five nervous minutes passed and no one came to investigate. Nick breathed a little easier, but not much. A relief was due soon. And soon enough the body of the other guard would be found. There was not a minute to lose. He had made his move now, launched his attack, and he was off and running for his life. Hesitation, a single mistake, a goof of any kind, and he was a dead man. If he was lucky he would die quickly. If not — well, he remembered the buried Pakistanis. N3 shrugged his big shoulders and pried the doors open again. Karma — Kismet — Inshallah! You name it. It all added up to Fate and luck and it never did any good to worry once the battle had started.
He took a deep breath and plunged into the casemate. From that moment on he was too busy to worry.
The Pathans lay on the brick floor, mouths open and eyes staring. Both had ripped at the clothing about their throats as they died. Pierre was not a kindly death.
Nick, still holding his breath, picked up the lantern and went rapidly around the huge brick chamber. Stacks of boxes and crates reached to the ceiling, each one neatly stenciled. It was the arms shipment that his double had tricked out of Karachi. No doubt of that.
Nick dared to breathe now. The fumes of the gas pellet had dissipated, gone. And with them one of his chief weapons. He had no spare. He had only the Luger and the stiletto — and his wits. Nick gazed around at the room crammed with deadly weapons and grinned. They wouldn’t do him any good. Brute force wasn’t going to win for him against half the Khyber tribes. And a couple of shrewd operators like the woman and the impostor. He had to out-think them or he was finished — this little romp was just beginning.
In a corner of the chamber he found open boxes of uniforms. He pulled a couple out onto the floor and part of the puzzle fell into place. Became clear as sunlight. Indian uniforms! And Pakistani uniforms! Both sides. Change at will. Raid into India and then raid into Pakistan. Keep the pot boiling and the war going.
Clever, these Chinese!
Nick picked up one of the old Krag rifles and smashed open a box of grenades. As he worked his lean face was as taut and grim as a death’s head. Nasty folk he was dealing with! His double and the woman were arranging a jehad — once it got started the Indians would retaliate with their own version of a holy war—dharmayudha. Anyone who had ever cracked a history book knew about religious wars — the most bestial of all. And the Chinese were ready to unloose that on the world to gain their ends.
N3 worked now with fury and frenzy. The relief was due any minute. He tore a dozen uniforms to shreds and twisted them into a long thick fuse leading from the doors back into the center of the chamber. He cursed softly as he sweated. Usually AXE agents were the best equipped in the world. He had nothing. It was improvise and hope.
He wiped his hands on a uniform to get the blood and sweat off and took the detonators from a dozen grenades. His fingers were rock steady but sweat streamed down into his eyes. One mistake here and—
Nick emptied the explosive from the grenades around the end of the fuse that led into a packing case of Ml ammunition Along the edges of the fuse he laid more uniforms, ripped and torn so they would burn more readily. He wanted a good hot fire in here — and maybe even then it wouldn’t work. Might not explode. It was not as easy to set off properly packed ammo as some TV writers depicted.
By the end of the fuse near the doors he placed the oil lantern. It was, he thanked God, a fairly modern version. An old railroad lantern. He placed it solidly on a box and turned up the wick as far as it would go. There was only about half an inch remaining. It would have to do.
Now for the really dangerous part. Nick Carter twisted the pin from a grenade and held it tightly. If he released it now the lever would fly off and the place would go skyward. He gripped the grenade in one big hand and fished for his shoe lace with the other. He had already loosened it and it came out readily. He wrapped it twice around the grenade to hold the firing lever in place and knotted it with his teeth and the fingers of one hand. He was breathing hard when, satisfied it would hold, he put the grenade gingerly down a foot from the lantern. He admitted, grudgingly and for the first time, some respect for generals who went around with taped grenades all over them.
He twisted a small, thin fuse out of a coat lining and tied it cautiously to the string around the grenade. Then, very carefully, he laid the free end of the cloth fuse across the base of the lantern, against the wick and little more than a quarter of an inch below the flame. He weighted the fuse in place with a coin and stepped back.
It was done! When the lantern wick burned down to the fuse it would fire it and the flame would travel along the fuse to the string holding down the arming lever on the grenade. The string would burn through and release the lever and whammo—
He hoped. There was no way of really knowing. Along the way something might fizzle out. But if things worked out he was going to have himself one hell of an explosion.
His time had run out. As he left the chamber and sweated the huge doors together he heard footsteps and voices coming from the far end of the passage. Damn! Another few seconds and he’d have been out of there!
Nick called himself a fool. The relief guards had to go too — otherwise they would spread the alarm. Damn again! He had better start thinking straighter than this.
He had time to get the doors together and chain them and snap a huge padlock into place. He found a chink in the brick wall and pushed the key deep into it. He could hope there was draught enough in the casemate to keep the lantern burning.
They were nearly on him now. Nick Carter ran on tiptoe down the passage toward the turning. They would be around the corner in a second. As he ran he writhed out of his heavy sheepskin coat and wrapped the garment around the Luger. A silencer!
As the two relief guards rounded the corner he shot them both at close range, firing at the face and head so they would die quickly and without sound.
The sheepskin silencer worked better than he had expected. The clatter of heavily armed men falling on bricks made far more noise than Wilhelmina. Both died as quickly as he had wished.
N3 hovered over the bodies for a moment, then saw a shallow niche in the wall across the passage and toward the blank end. It would have to do. He dragged the bodies there and left them. On his way back he took the torch from the sconce and stamped it out on the floor. He felt his way in blackness back toward the postern.