Lead whispered above me. I said to hell with it and pushed myself up and out of the hole. Ducking, crouching, I ran for the shelter of a crumbling wall to my left. It opened into a court. Someone shouted and I heard a familiar voice and lead slashed in front of me. Shards of stone nicked my face. I gave up on the court and took a headlong dive into an arched casemate. I lay with my face in stone and dust and thought about that voice. Duppy!
Gunfire kept crackling away. I wormed around and stuck my nose out the casemate’s arch. WHAM—a 32-pound cannon ball smacked the stone two inches from my face. I made like a turtle, cursing. From somewhere over me I heard Duppy laugh.
“Good morning, Carter. You stepped into it this time my friend. That casemate is blocked at the far end — no way out for you.”
I squirmed back a little. I yelled. “What happened to your accent, Duppy? Or, since we’re playing truth this morning, Diaz Ortega? My brain was running around like a mouse in a cage, trying to figure a way out.
He laughed in basso. “Yes, Carter. Looks like the masquerading is over, huh? Where are P.P. and Valdez?” I allowed myself a sneer. “Why should I tell you, Ortega?”
“Why not, man? You’ll be dead soon. Ease your conscience, maybe. That information won’t do you any good in the grave.”
He was right. “Dead. Both of them. Old P.P and the phony Valdez. The second phony Valdez — the one you planted on P.P. and Papa Doc.”
Another cannon ball creamed the stones just in front of me. A flying splinter slashed, my face. I moved back instinctively and felt a stab of pain in my side where the slug had nicked me. My tee shirt was crusty with blood under the heap-uniform coat and I was sweating. I began to twist out of the coat. I was resigning as a major general in Papa Doc’s Army.Another spate of gunfire, then silence. Ortega said “So you know about that, too. I underestimated you, Carter Careless of me. Of course I didn’t know you were Nick Carter until a few hours ago. Not that it matters now You can’t get out of your hole and as soon as my people clean up P.P.’s men, and a few of the Tonton Macoute, we’ll take care of you. All we have to do is unblock the tunnel and come into the casemate after you. You can’t run away.”
I surveyed the rain-swept gun platform with its rusty old cannon and the piles of moldering balls. Beyond, like frozen surf, the green, mist-topped hills marched away to the sea Maybe he was right, at that. I had put my head into it. He had me trapped pretty good.
I was thinking fast and getting nowhere. I believed him about the casemate being blocked behind me. If I stuck my head out, or tried to make it across the gun deck and over the parapet, I would be a sieve before I had gone six feet.
At least I could keep him talking. That way I would know where he was. I wondered how many men he had, and how he had managed to infiltrate them in with P.P.’s and Papa Doc’s men.
I cupped my hands and yelled up at him. Lyda tell you about me?” She had, of course. I took a fragmentation grenade out of the musette bag.
“She did, Carter. The lady is a little disappointed and angry with you at the moment. I’m responsible for that, I’m afraid. As you Yanks say, I sold her a bill of goods.”
“I bet you did.” I pulled the pin of the grenade and started wriggling to the mouth of the casemate.
“I convinced her that P.P.’s decoy was the real Valdez and that you and the CIA tricked her, played her for a sucker, and one of you killed him. She believed me.”
It was my turn to laugh. “You did a little sweating, didn’t you? When you thought that Lyda and your phony Valdez might have to meet face to face? That would have loused up your plans pretty good, huh, Ortega?”
I turned over on my back with my right hand extended, the grenade plump and secure in my fist.
He laughed. “I admit it. I was worried for a time. I need that invasion of hers to distract Papa Doc. But that’s all right now. Swan is on her way back to the boat, and the invasion is on again. I let her and Papa Doc knock themselves out, then I take over.”
“But without your phony Valdez as a figurehead. How do you explain that to the blacks and mulattos?”
He said a very nasty thing to me. I laughed and slid out of the embrasure on my back and tossed the grenade up in a long arcing loop. Lead spanged around me as I ducked back. Ortega screamed a curse. But the bastard had guts. He tossed the grenade back down at me. It exploded in the air six feet from my hole and the concussion rocked me and fragments sang and pocked the casemate. Nothing hit me.
His laugh was a little weak. “I admire your guts, Carter. I hate to kill you. I really do. If you give up, we might be able to work something out.”
I blinked stone dust out of my eyes. “That might be fun, 1 agreed. “What would we work out — how to run Haiti together?”
He didn’t answer. I could hear him snapping orders to someone. The firing had dwindled now and I figured that Ortega had just about made it, was in possession of the Citadel. I studied the clouds over the distant hills. They had lifted a bit. And it had stopped raining. I listened, straining my ears. Nothing. Nothing yet. I reached for another grenade.
I wanted his attention. Wanted to know where he was. I said: “You’ll have to rule without your Queen, Ortega. I killed her. Was that her real name, Bettina Smid?”
Silence. Then: “You killed Bettina?”
“You hard of hearing, Ortega. Or is it the acoustics in this place? I said I killed her. Had to break up a little pornography party with P.P. to do it. She died like a lady, Ortega, which I doubt she was.”
He had a foul mouth on him. I hadn’t known how foul. He came near to shocking me. I listened and could tell that he had moved closer to the parapet. I thought about the grenades being short fused, but I had to risk it. I let the handle spring away and I counted—1–2—3—4–5.
I reached out and lobbed it up.
It must have exploded level with the parapet up there. Ortega screamed in pain and rage. More rage than pain, for he kept yelling orders and cursing me and I hadn’t gotten him.
After that he wouldn’t talk to me, though I tried to bait him.
“Were you in love with the Smid woman, Ortega? How was she? From the little I saw she knew her way around a bed. All in the line of duty? Anything for good old KGB?”
I couldn’t draw him. No gunfire now. I heard the clink and rattle of tools at the far end of the casemate tunnel. They were opening it up. When they had it open all they had to do was stick a couple of machine guns in and hose me down. I was covered from the front.
Just to see how covered I was, I stuck a hand out and flapped it fast and grabbed it back. Lead sang into the arch from three directions. I swore and scrunched back as far as I could. No place to hide, Carter.
I heard it then. A faint mosquito buzzing. A light plane, a spotter. It came down out of the clouds and nearly scraped a mountain and came humming toward the Citadel. In an effusion of love I blessed Papa Doc and his DF stations. They were on the ball.
Over me Ortega was bellowing orders. Quiet. Stay out of sight. Don’t fire. Everything must appear normal. He promised to shoot the man that made a revealing move.
I grinned. He had already decided to kill me and I had nothing to lose. I started pulling pins and hurling grenades as fast as I could. I rolled them out on the gun deck and heard them bang and spatter just as the spotter plane swept low over me. I could see the pilot craning and speaking into his mike. I rolled out of my hole and emptied a clip at him from the Luger, being careful to miss. I dived back, cold and sweating at the same time and with mush where my spine had been. A hell of a chance but I had gotten away with it.