Li Chin had moved to my side.
"One of your western philosophers once remarked," she said calmly, almost conversationally, "that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Do you agree?"
"For the moment," I said, "absolutely."
"Then let us defend ourselves," she said, and her body moved into a slight crouch, the hands sliding out in front of her in what I instantly recognized as the classic Kung Fu position of readiness.
What happened next happened so fast that my eyes could barely follow it. There was a sudden movement in the group of lepers by the door, and the bright flash of a knife blade flickered through the air. I spun out of the way. Li Chin didn't move. One of her hands darted upward, twisted, made a swift parabola, and the knife was again in motion — toward the man who had thrown it. He gave a scream that ended in a choke as the blade skewered him through the neck.
The next instant the room exploded in a chaotic blur of movement. The lepers moved forward in a group and hurled themselves at us. My right foot shot out to find its mark in the belly of one attacker as I stabbed forward with rigid fingers the solar plexus of another. The lead pipe whooshed past my shoulder. Hugo was in my hand, and the man with the lead pipe dropped it as the lethal blade sliced into his neck. Blood spurted from the carotid artery like a fountain. Beside me, Li Chin's body moved in a smooth, snaking motion, her arms twisting and dropping, and a body tumbled grotesquely through the air to fall crumpled, the head at an impossible angle.
"It's no use, Carter," I heard the hoarse croak of Diaz' voice come from somewhere in the semi-dark. "The door is locked from the outside. You will never get out now. You will become a leper as we are."
I sliced Hugo through the air in front of me, forcing back two half-naked lepers with reaching hands.
"Your clothes," I snapped to Li Chin. "Don't let them rip your clothes and touch you. They're trying to infect us."
"You are going to rot away as we have, Carter," came the hoarse croak again. "You and the little chinita. Your flesh will drop from…"
The croak ended in a gasp as Li Chin crouched, spun, fell back with a grasping motion, and sent Diaz' body hurtling against the wall with the force of a catapult. His eyes went white, and then closed as he fell. At the same moment, I felt a hand clawing at my back, and heard a tearing sound. I whirled, straight-arming the leper back with one gloved hand as Hugo sliced in at an upward angle toward his solar plexus. He crumpled, blood running from his mouth. A piece of my sterile gown was still clutched in his hand. Turning, I caught sight of Li Chin twisting out of another catlike crouch, the body of a leper tumbling toward the wall. Her gown had been ripped, too. For a fraction of a second our eyes met, and the same thought must have occurred to us simultaneously.
"The door," I said.
She nodded slightly, and her body once again became that of a cat. I saw her leap onto the desk Jorge had been using, then perform an impossible flight over the heads of three attackers to land near the door. I was right behind her, using Hugo to clear the way. When we stood together at the door, we had barely seconds before the lepers would be on us again.
"Together!" T snapped. "Now!"
Our feet shot out simultaneously, like twin battering rams. There was a cracking sound, but the hinges held. Again. The cracking sound was louder. Again. The door shot from its hinges and we were sprinting over it, out into the courtyard, disfigured hands reaching out for us, brushing our gowns, the odor of dying flesh close in our nostrils.
"The door to the office!" I heard Li Chin shout. "It's open!"
I could hear the thud of running feet on the parched earth of the courtyard as the lepers pursued us in a group. We were hampered by our surgeons gowns and they were closing in on us fast. I put every last reserve of energy into a final burst of speed, saw Li Chin do the same inches behind me, and hurled myself through the open door into the office. Li Chin's figure was a blur of speed behind me as I swung the door shut, pressing brutally against the weight of oncoming bodies. For an instant I felt that the door was being forced open again. Then, suddenly, it was closed and I was shooting the bolt. On the other side of the door was a clamor of voices, then silence.
Li Chin stood beside me.
"Look," she said, pointing to one corner of the room.
The woman who had admitted me lay crumpled in a heap, motionless. It was easy to see why. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear. Beside her lay a telephone set, its wire wrenched from the wall.
"The lepers who attacked us must have been paid off by the OAS," I said. "This woman apparently wasn't paid off. She may have known nothing about it. When she heard the melee in the contagious wing, she must have tried to phone for the police, and…"
"And made the mistake of leaving the door to the courtyard open when she did," Li Chin finished for me.
I nodded.
"But there's no guarantee one of the lepers didn't use the phone to call for OAS reinforcements. And I have no intention of being here when they arrive. We're going to get out of here now. And together. You've got some explaining to do."
"Of course," said Li Chin calmly. "But what about our clothes?"
Both of our surgeons gowns had been ripped. The clothes underneath were contaminated. It was pretty obvious what had to be done.
"Strip," I ordered, suiting my actions to my words.
"Everything?" asked Li Chin, looking a little suspicious.
"Everything," I said. "Unless you'd like to wake up one day to find your fingers falling off."
"But where will we go? Without clothes…"
"There's somebody waiting for me in a car. Just a few blocks away," I reassured her.
Li Chin looked up from unstrapping her bra.
"A few blocks!" she said. "You don't mean we're going to…"
I nodded, stepping out of my shorts and moving toward the front door.
"Ready?"
Li Chin, tossing aside a wisp of panties, looked dubious, but she nodded. I grabbed her by the hand and flung open the front door.
"Go!"
I like to think we were San Juan's first streakers.
Eight
Gonzalez had been dozing. When he woke, at my rapping on the window, to find a naked Nick Carter standing hand-in-hand with a beautiful and extremely naked Chinese girl, his jaw dropped to his shoes. For a moment he did nothing but stare. And not at me. I couldn't really blame him. Li Chin was small, almost tiny, but every inch of her body was in perfect proportion. Jet black hair fell down to her small, firm breasts, with the large aureole and erect nipples. Her thighs and legs were sleek, the belly lean and curving. Her face was punctuated by a perfect little doll's nose, and when she drew aside finely defined lips, her teeth dazzled. It was hard to believe this girl was a Kung Fu master — or should I say mistress — who could take on any number of men in unarmed combat. Not that I had any intention of forgetting it.
I rapped on the window again, startling Gonzalez out of his trancelike stare.
"Gonzalez," I said, "if you don't mind interrupting your study of physical culture, I'd appreciate your unlocking the door. And I think the lady would appreciate your jacket."
Gonzalez scrambled for the door handle.
"Door," he said. "Yes. Of course. Door. Jacket. Of course. I'd be most happy to give the lady my door. I mean my jacket."
It took a few seconds of confusion, but finally the door did get opened, and Li Chin was covered from shoulders to knees by Gonzalez' jacket. I got a raincoat which, Gonzalez not being particularly tall, put up a courageous struggle to reach my thighs.
"All right," I said, settling into the back seat with Li Chin, settling Wilhelmina and Hugo temporarily into the pockets of Gonzalez' raincoat and ignoring his unspoken but obviously desperate desire to find out what had happened. "Let's get the hell out of here. But not back to the hotel yet. Just drive around for awhile. This little lady has a few things to tell me."