"Undue concern for human life is a hallmark of our culture, decadent as it may be," I said. Chung Li's smile remained but it took more effort. Rita had found a chair and had dragged it beside the cot. Chung Li made no move to help me as I pulled the two dead Chinese soldiers out of the house. In a little while a Chinese staff car came down the road. Four rifle-carrying Chinese Army regulars got out and Chung Li went to meet them.
"Your plane will be waiting at Yenki airport, Carter," he said. 'This period of cooperation between our forces has been most enjoyable. Indeed, much more so than I had expected."
What the hell did that mean, I asked myself as Chung Li started to get into the car. He sounded like he'd won some sort of victory and that bothered me. Maybe he figured that beating me to Carlsbad was a prize of sorts. Or maybe he felt good about having destroyed the scientist's plans, whatever they might have been. All my logical explanations didn't do a damn thing for the way I felt. He closed the car door and they drove off. He never looked back.
Rita came outside, and we sat on a crumbled wall and waited.
"Do you think he'll live?" she asked me. "Or don't you really care beyond getting your questions answered?"
"I won't lie to you," I said. "I don't really care that much. I just want the doctors to bring him around enough to talk."
An hour passed, then another and I was beginning to grow more edgy. I walked up and down, my eyes riveted on the curving road that stretched away from the abandoned farmhouse. Rita came to me and pulled me down on the grass beside her and let her warmth, the soft cushions of her breasts, try to relax me. She wasn't doing at all badly when I heard the sound of an engine and saw the dust cloud advancing along the road. We got up and watched the canvas-topped lorry come near and halt before the farmhouse. A Chinese noncom and a soldier got out. The noncom spoke halting English and produced a stretcher from the rear of the van.
I went with them inside as they moved the comatose Carlsbad from the cot onto the stretcher and carried him to a bed bolted to the floor of the lorry. I glimpsed a small cabinet at the front end of the lorry with bandages and bottles — it obviously was used as a field ambulance of some kind. The soldier took up a position on a bench opposite the bed after strapping Carlsbad down. Rita was standing at the rear of the truck, watching, anxiety in her eyes.
"You ride up front," I said to her. "I'm staying back here with him."
"You don't think that they would…" she began, but I cut her off.
"I don't think anything. I don't take chances I don't have to, either."
Darkness was starting to fall as we started off. The road was winding, rutted and muddy. I saw why the soldier had strapped Carlsbad onto the bed. We kept nudging a small river that paralleled us, disappearing for a few moments only to return again. I stuck my head out the rear of the vehicle to see that a full moon lighted the night. The river was a placid dark ribbon glittering in the moonlight and there were trees and hills at the other side of the road.
I checked Carlsbad every little while. His breathing was regular and his heartbeat steady. Grimly I watched his unchanging face and thought of servicemen I'd seen with similar injuries of the brain. They lasted for months and months, alive but dead. I sat back and closed my eyes as the lorry bounced along. We had gone perhaps fifty miles, maybe sixty, when the night exploded, lighting up with a pink glow as the flare burst directly overhead. The lorry braked to a shuddering halt as a barrage of rifle fire followed the burst of the flare. I glanced at the soldier. His alarm was genuine as he grabbed his rifle and leaped from the back of the truck.
I saw him hit the ground, start to turn and then twist in a grotesque arabesque as three shots hit him. I grabbed the tailboard and swung down, staying close to the lorry, dropping under the rear overhang. The dead soldier's rifle was near enough to reach and I pulled it to me. I looked across the ground underneath the chassis of the truck and saw Rita with the Chinese noncom beside her.
"Mountain bandits," he said, and I gazed out at the rolling hills to see shadowy forms moving in short bursts from bush to bush. The noncom moved out around the front of the truck, fired twice at the figures heading toward us and tried to run for a large bush. He didn't make it.
A flare arched up from behind a bush off to the left. We'd never have a chance as long as they could keep the scene brightly lighted. I counted eight, perhaps ten, figures moving forward.
"Stay under the truck," I said to Rita as I crawled backwards and around the lorry, staying on my belly. The brush was only a few yards away and I crawled into it. Once inside it, I moved upwards at a crouch. I paused to see three of the figures detach themselves and head after me. I shifted direction and stayed quiet as they moved into the bushes, heading for the river, figuring that's where I'd fled. But I continued crawling upwards toward the bastard behind the bush with the flare gun. As I got near enough I saw him, waiting, watching, starting to load another flare into his gun. Hugo dropped into my palm. I took aim, threw and saw the tempered steel of the stiletto go right through his ribs up to the hilt. He fell forward, and I broke for the bush, retrieved Hugo and stuck the flare gun into my belt.
I had the rifle, Wilhelmina and the flare gun. It was as good a spot for a surprise flank attack as I could hope to find. I started with the rifle, firing first and taking them by surprise as they advanced toward the lorry. I cut down four, five, six of them. The others took cover and turned their fire on me. Shots zinged into the bush, one cutting a crease across my shoulder. The three who had taken off toward the river had come back at the first round of shots. They were running from below and to the right of me, about to get a cross fire going with me in the middle.
I moved onto my back, lying flat on the ground, pointed the rifle to the left and fired with my left hand, not trying to aim, just keeping some lead in the air. As the three others reached me and raised their rifles, I fired Wilhelmina from a prone position. The big Luger barked three times and the three figures fell.
The pink glow from the flares had completely gone, and only the moonlight played over the dark shadows of the hills. They had been pretty well decimated but there were still some left. I had to find out how many. I took the flare gun and lit the night once again with a pink, unreal glow. I saw two figures midway up the hill and then picked out a third man, crouched in the clear against the side of the hill, talking rapidly into a field radio.
I frowned. Hill bandits with a field radio? Banditry in the Chinese back country had apparently become very modern. I aimed carefully and the man's body seemed to leap into the air as he half-turned and fell back onto the ground. I swung Wilhelmina to the left and poured a series of shots into a bush. A figure rose and pitched forward to lay across the small bush. Two more figures broke cover and headed back into the hills. It was a mistake for one of them. The other one made it as the flare died out.
I lay quietly and waited. This was no time for foolish moves. To play extra safe, I edged back to where one of the bandits lay face down. Propping him up in front of me, I got up and walked from the bushes. There were no shots, I kept the Chinese in front of me for a few more feet and then dropped the lifeless body. I called to Rita and saw her in the moonlight as she emerged from beneath the lorry.
"What are you looking for?" she asked when she saw me going through the clothes of the dead Chinese.
"I don't know," I said. "Bandits with flare guns I can understand. A flare gun could be obtained easily enough. A field radio is something else."