Erma poked the fingers of her right hand into his eyes. She grabbed his right arm and pulled him forward and sent him crashing to the floor in a hip throw. Nick felt as though a boulder had dropped on his skull. For a moment he had doubts. God, she was tough!
But she had thrown him right on the Tommy gun. He picked it up and sighted on her — she was charging like an enraged water buffalo — and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. Nick threw it as far as he could and ducked the karate chop. He slipped and fell and she tried to kick him in the genitals. He rolled away in time, but felt his flesh rip and burn as her shoe tore along his leg. She had razor blades in the tips of her shoes.
Erma charged him again. Filth poured from the anus-like mouth. The yellow eyes were crazy with hate. Nick launched himself at her. He butted her in the stomach. She sat down, winded, but when he lunged at her again she rolled back, put up her stubby football legs, got her feet into his belly and tossed him over her head. He landed with a tearing shock that nearly finished him. This kid knew all the tricks!
She came after him. He was dazed and nearly helpless for the moment and she got behind him. He felt his head yanked back, brutally, and something ropy, sleek yet fibrous, woman smelling, slipped around his throat. His air was cut off!
Erma was strangling him with her hair. With one of the long braids she wore coiled around her head. Now she was using it like a thuggee cord. The room started to whirl and turn black. The pressure was inexorable, terrible, and he could not break the hold. His tongue was protruding between his lips, his teeth biting into it, his whole magnificent and wounded body racked and dying for lack of air.
One thing — one chance. He felt backward, his hand groping down between the thick soft-firm muscular thighs. She was kneeling behind him, legs wide apart. He reached her crotch, rammed his hand, his nails, brutally into her and began to pull her apart. As from a distance he heard her scream. The rope of hair fell away from his throat.
There was time for one breath. No more. She was rolling away from him. He swiveled, caught her in the face with his elbow. Under the fat chin with his locked double-hands. She cursed and swung at him and Nick reeled back from the blow. My God! What an Amazon.
She kicked at his groin, attempting to castrate him with the razor blades. Nick tried to catch her jaw with a right cross, missed, and the terrible blow pulped her nose. Blood gushed.
Erma rushed at him again. Nick ducked and threw a full body block at her knees. She went hurtling over him, her raw face a mask of blood. He heard a crash of breaking glass. Then he heard Erma screaming. Screaming and screaming. All the way down.
Nick Carter stood staring vacantly at the shattered window. He swayed. He was naked and covered with blood. The alarms were still going like mad, only now they all seemed to be coming from his skull. It would never have occurred to him, but an astute and knowledgeable observer might have compared him to a figure by Michelangelo that had somehow managed to return from Hell.
He staggered to the bed and flipped off the alarm. The moment the bells ceased to clamor he was aware of a different sound. Gunfire. Shouts. Screams. Grenades.
Nick wavered back to the broken window again. It was dark out. Rain was falling in black slanting sheets.
He remembered. El Tigre!
Painfully he went to the long closet and pulled out some clothes. Pants, a shirt, shoes, anything put on any old way. He had to get out of this hell-hole of a castle.
As he passed the swan bed on the way out, he cast a last look at the naked Bitch. She was on her back, eyes staring at the ceiling in fixed green contemplation. Nick flapped a hand in the direction of the bed and went out the double doors.
He fell over Harper’s body and for a moment could not get up. It would be so nice to lie there. Forever. To sleep—
“Amigo? You are alive?”
Nick opened one eye and peered up. El Tigre, wrapped in bandoleers, his sombrero tilted rakishly, was staring down at him. In one hand he carried a rifle, in the other a bottle of The Bitch’s prize scotch. Behind him, grinning at Nick, was the brother Pancho and a couple of bandits.
El Tigre repeated his question. “You live, amigo?”
“You tell me.” His voice seemed to be coming back from Echo Canyon. Nick tried to get up, failed, and settled for his hands and knees. El Tigre squatted beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. His grin was wide and white and there was a hint of awe in his eyes. “I owe you much thanks, amigo, for helping me. You did a job, but magnifico. Never have I seen such a battlefield in my life. It was very easy for my men. Again all my thanks.”
Nick held up a hand. “De nada, Señor. But you’d better take it on the lam — and fast. The Mexican cops are due any minute — and God knows who else. I don’t want to be caught here, either. Can you lend me a horse?”
El Tigre was helping him to his feet. “Anything, amigo! But of course — anything at all.” He turned to snap orders at Pancho and the other bandits, then back to Nick: “I spit in the milk of the police! But gracias”
Nick started to lurch down the corridor. El Tigre stopped him with a firm hand. “Momentito, amigo. Have you forgotten my promise to myself — this yearning I have for the raping of The Bitch! I have not. Where is she, then?”
Nick started to explain. Then he thought the hell with it. He was too tired. He jerked a thumb at the double doors. “In there. Go ahead. She’s not dangerous now.”
El Tigre patted his shoulder. “Wait for me, amigo. There is time. I have sentries who will hold off the police for a little time. This will not take long, I can assure you.” He took a long swig from the bottle and handed it to Nick. “Ahh — at last my dream is come true.”
Nick watched him disappear into the bedroom. He grinned faintly. What a fooling El Tigre was going to get.
When the bandit chief did not reappear immediately Nick went to the bedroom and glanced in. He grimaced and clung to the door for support. Slowly he shook his head. This was a first — even for Killmaster. He had seen some strange and terrible things in his line of work. Never anything like this.
El Tigre was fulfilling his promise to rape the woman. Even in death.
Chapter 13
Terminación
Nick Carter lay in Homer’s tiny sick bay and stared at the mass of pipes and ducts writhing across the low ceiling. A Navy medic had bandaged his many hurts and shot him full of dope. The stuff had induced in Killmaster a lovely euphoria. For the moment he was quite content; he was secure, in a “safe house,” and he did not have to move his weary bones.
He was a little vague about matters at the last. Pancho, by El Tigre’s orders, had poured Nick full of booze and gotten him on a horse. Then Pancho and another bandit had accompanied him to the beach where he was to meet Homer. This while El Tigre looted the castle and planned his escape.
Nick found himself hoping that El Tigre would make it. He was a weirdie, to put the kindest face on it — maybe he was loco — but he had been a friend in need. That the bandit would have killed Nick without thinking twice, had his interests so dictated it, did not signify. Matters had worked out. Yes, Nick found himself wishing El Tigre well. He would need all the luck he could get. He would probably live a very short life. With the deaths of Harper and Chung Hee and The Bitch and Erma, the CIA could no longer have need of El Tigre. They would unleash the Federal Police again, toss him to the wolves. Run fast, El Tigre. Run far.