Chou cursed softly. “Why did he have to turn out the light!”
Wang-wei felt a little superior. “It is necessary, Comrade. So if the outer light is tripped on he will be at an advantage in the dark.”
Mao shushed them again. They sat and listened to the varied sounds coming from a loud-speaker in the wall of the room.
A gentle twanging of bed springs. A muffled cry from the woman. A sudden high panting sound from the woman, then her long groan of pleasure…
The lamp in the living room went on. Four Chinese, all wearing blue coolie suits, stood for a moment blinking in surprise. Above them Wang-wei felt his own heart give a great leap. This was the real test!
Not a tenth of a second passed before the coolies, recovering from the sudden shock of light, went into action. They all carried long cruel knives. Two of them had revolvers. One, in addition to his knife, wielded a deadly little hatchet.
They scattered about the room, calling softly to each other, and began to converge on the dark bedroom. The watchers above saw only a faint shadow of movement in the room. The woman’s scream was abruptly stifled. The Luger spat flame at the coolies from the protection of shadow, the slapping reports loud in the speaker. One of the coolies who had a revolver stumbled and fell sprawling, his blood soaking the carpet. The revolver spun from a dead hand across the floor. A coolie leaped for it. The Luger snapped again and the man fell.
The remaining armed coolie crouched behind a sofa and sent a fusillade of lead into the bedroom. The coolie with the hatchet dropped to his hands and knees and, under his companion’s covering fire, began to crawl around the walls toward the bedroom door. These were desperate men, with their lives doubly in the balance, and they were not giving up easily.
The Luger snapped again and again from the bedroom. Tufts and chunks of the sofa flew through the air but the man with the revolver was not hit. He kept firing into the bedroom. The crawling man with the hatchet was near the door now. He glanced up, saw a light switch, and shouted to his companion as he stood to click it on. The lights flared on in the bedroom.
Wang-wei’s Turtle Nine came through the bedroom door like a naked bolt of lightning. In his right hand was the stiletto, in his left the flaming Luger. The coolie with the hatchet gave a little cry of rage and triumph and flung his weapon. It glinted in the bright light, spinning end over end. The thrower was an accomplished tong killer — for which he was to die — and had never been known to miss.
He did not actually miss now! Turtle Nine ducked swiftly and the spinning hatchet passed over him. The girl, her soft mouth wide open in a scream, took the little axe squarely between the eyes. She sank back on the bed, the hatchet embedded in her lovely face.
Turtle Nine was thinking like the automaton he was. He ignored the hatchet man for the moment and leaped toward the sofa, weaving and ducking. He fired twice and the Luger went dry. The coolie behind the sofa fired once and missed and his gun also clicked empty. He stood up and leaped to one side, thinking to avoid the rushing Turtle Nine.
But Turtle Nine did not rush. His arm went up and back and something sang through the air. The coolie stood by the sofa, gazing stupidly down at the stiletto pinned to his heart like an ornament. Slowly he toppled, clutching with both hands at the stiletto in his flesh, caressing the shiny hilt with bloody fingers.
The remaining coolie had had enough. He leaped for the door with a cry of terror. Turtle Nine smiled and threw the empty Luger. It clipped the man at the base of the skull and he fell stunned.
Turtle Nine walked slowly toward the writhing figure. He stood over the man for a moment, contemplating him, then raised a bare foot and delivered a deliberate and vicious kick to the side of the man’s neck. The watchers above heard the spine break.
For a little time there was silence in the glass-floored room. Then Mao said: “I think your Turtle is ready, Wang-wei. Even for Nick Carter, Killmaster. You will put Segment One of Dragon Plan into operation tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 2
Seek Out And Destroy
They had left the foothills and were climbing steadily into a gorge that would, eventually, funnel them into Karakoram Pass and then down a long tortuous glissade into Kashmir. Nick Carter paused to catch his breath and comb particles of ice from his three-day growth of stubble. He hadn’t had a chance to shave since leaving Washing ton. Now he tried to breathe the thin air and gazed back of him, to the west and south, where the snow-covered tips of the Himalayas were beginning to gather and reflect the sunset in a fan of superb color.
N3, senior ranking KILLMASTER for AXE, was not in the mood for aesthetic appreciation. He was pretty damned miserable. There had been no time to acclimate himself to the altitude and he carried no oxygen. His lungs were paining him. His feet were clods of ice. Everything but his thermal underwear — his chief, Hawk, had graciously given him time to collect that—stank of yak. He wore yakskin boots and a yakskin cap and face-hood and, over a padded suit which some Chinese soldier must have inhabited for years, a greatcoat of yakskin.
Nick swore fervently and kicked the shaggy little pack pony, Kaswa, in its shaggy little rear. The impact stung his half-frozen foot and served only to annoy Kaswa. The pony cast a reproving look at Nick and continued to amble at his own pace. Nick Carter swore again. Even Kaswa was some kind of a nut! Kaswa was really a camel’s name, or so the guide Hafed had informed him with a gap-toothed grin.
Nick kicked the hardy little beast again and glanced up the broad defile leading into the pass. He was falling farther behind all the time. Hafed, who was trekking point, was a good quarter of a mile ahead and well into the shadows of the pass. Behind him, strung out at intervals, were the five Sherpas, each with a shaggy pony akin to Kaswa.
“But faster,” Nick told his pony now. “Much faster! Get a move on — you slab-sided, wall-eyed, hairy little monster!”
Kaswa whinnied and actually increased his pace. Not because of the foreign devil’s kicks but because it was near feeding time.
The guide Hafed called a halt where the trail narrowed between two towering cliffs. A frozen waterfall, an intricate frieze of cold lace, dangled from an overhang and they made camp behind it. By the time Nick came trudging up, the other ponies had been fed and the Sherpas were consuming bowls of hot yak-buttered tea prepared over carefully shielded Coleman stoves. Hafed, a jack of all mountain trades and, seemingly, all languages, had been uneasy all day. He was afraid of encountering a Chinese patrol.
Nick and Hafed shared a Blanchard tent. Nick found it already pitched behind the frozen waterfall. He got his pack off Kaswa and sent the beast on its way to fodder, then spread his sleeping bag in the tent and fell on it with a long sigh. He was beat, utterly beat. He itched intolerably all over. Along with the dead Chinese soldier’s uniform he had also inherited a few fleas.
It had grown dark now. There would be no moon or stars. It was growing colder by the minute, a misty chill that was bitter to the bones, and wind was beginning to move in the pass. Nick opened his eyes and saw a few snow-flakes drift past the tent opening. Fine, he thought wearily. That’s all I need — a blizzard!
Nick nearly dozed off as he listened with half an ear to Hafed getting the men and ponies bedded down for the night. Hafed was a jewel, no doubt of that. He looked like a bandit and he smelled bad, but he kept things going. He seemed to have a smattering of every language in this part of the world — Chinese, Tibetan, Bengali, Marathi, Gujerati — even some very fractured English. N3 suspected that Hafed was employed by the CIA, though nothing had been said. But Nick knew that when the Chinese had invaded Tibet the CIA had also moved in as best it could, considering the formidable language and physical barriers.