If there was anyone else on the island, anyone who was depending upon this means of escape, they would be cut off.
He turned and started back up the hill. Just at that moment, four explosions came one after the other from the other side of the island, accompanied seconds later by a lot of automatic weapons fire.
It had been a setup! he thought angrily. The action on his side of the island had been a diversion.
“Sigourney!” Carter shouted into the night, redoubling his efforts, his legs driving like pistons up over the hill and headlong down the other side.
All the staff cottages were on fire, as was the main house. Now, in the light from the flames, Carter could see several men scrambling into rubber rafts pulled up on the beach.
As he ran he snapped off several shots, downing at least one of the men. Two of the others turned and laid down a curtain of automatic weapons fire up the hill toward Carter, pinning him down.
The two rafts were off the beach and into the water, and the black-suited figures were clambering aboard, outboard motors popping to life.
Carter jumped up and snapped off another shot, then raced down the hill as the rubber boats disappeared into the dark night.
He angled away from the staff cottages directly toward the main house, the front wall of which had been blown outward by the force of an explosion.
Fifty yards away from the house, Carter had to pull up short as its roof collapsed in a wall of flames and sparks that shot a hundred feet up into the night sky.
“Sigourney!” he shouted again.
A dark figure raced around from the far side of the house, his form silhouetted in the flames. It stopped, raised something, and Carter just managed to hit the ground as the distinctive rattle of an Uzi submachine gun sounded, the slugs kicking up the sand all around Carter. Then the figure disappeared in the trees toward the other side of the island. Toward the rubber raft...
Carter leaped up and tried to get closer to the burning house, but the heat was too intense. For a long second or two he stood there, his gun held limply in his right hand. If Sigourney was inside, she was dead. There would be no saving her. It was possible, he told himself, that she had gotten out. But deep in his heart, he knew it wasn’t so.
A terrible dark rage rose up inside Carter’s breast, all but blinding him to one thought: revenge. Still on the island was one of the attackers. One man remained.
Carter thumbed the Luger’s safety to the on position, stuffed the weapon into the waistband of his shorts, and with a terrible glint in his eyes withdrew Hugo, his pencil-thin, lethal stiletto.
He turned and once again raced up the hill, dropping low at the crest.
The dark-suited figure was just coming around the tip of the island along the beach. He had not yet reached the boat dock when Carter hurried down the hill, past the still-burning generator shed, past the two bodies, and then into the water.
Holding the knife in his teeth, Carter silently swam directly across to the dock where the dive boat had been sunk and where the shreds of the rubber raft floated around the pilings.
In the darkness, his head just above the water, Carter waited patiently for the hooded figure to come up the beach to the rubber raft. The man stopped every few yards or so to look over his shoulder, then look up toward the crest of the hill as if he were expecting his friends to show up.
He was about thirty feet away from the dock when he spotted the wrecked remains of the rubber raft. He stopped, then stepped back a pace, looking around wildly, his Uzi up and at the ready.
A moment later he spotted the two other dark-suited figures lying off toward the generator shed, and he stumbled as he backed up another pace or two.
It was clear he was frightened now. He knew that he was cut off. He knew that the others had left, and he knew that Carter was somewhere on the island. Alive.
Keeping to the nearly pitch-black darkness beneath the dock, Carter moved closer in toward the beach, his eyes never leaving the man on shore. Two visions kept flashing in his mind: the first of Sigourney in the bedroom as he had left her; the second, the furiously burning main house, the flames leaping high into the night sky. It took everything within himself to maintain control.
The attacker stepped away from the water’s edge, hesitated a moment longer, then turned and trotted back along the beach.
Making absolutely no noise, Carter swam to the beach and carefully eased himself out of the water.
The Cuban, now thirty yards away, glanced over his shoulder. Carter dropped flat and froze, and a second later the black-hooded figure continued.
Carter jumped up, and keeping low, the stiletto gripped loosely in his right hand, he raced at full speed toward the retreating figure.
At the last moment, the Cuban, either hearing something or sensing Carter’s presence behind him, started to run. But it was too late. Carter leaped onto the man’s back, driving him forward and down, the air whooshing out of his lungs.
Carter ripped the Uzi out of the man’s grip, tossed it aside, then yanked the man over onto his back. Holding the Cuban’s throat with his left hand, he brought the tip of the stiletto up into the man’s left nostril.
“Move and I drive the blade into your brain,” Carter hissed in perfect Spanish.
The Cuban was well trained enough to realize that if he moved, if he struggled, he would die instantly. His body went slack, his eyes wide, his jaw tight, his lips compressed.
“Was it Ganin?” Carter snapped.
The Cuban said nothing. There was no reaction to the name in his eyes.
“Arkadi Ganin. Was he in on this operation?” Carter shouted.
“I don’t know, señor. I don’t know. I swear it.”
“Who was leading you? Whose operation was this, you bastard?”
“It was the German. Hildebrandt. Colonel Hildebrandt. He came to... Havana. He and the Russian.”
“What Russian?”
“Chaikin. Viktor Chaikin. He is the KGB in Havana. It was he and the German. They planned this operation.”
Carter had heard the name Chaikin. At one time the man had been a fairly good operative working out of East Germany. But the other one. The German. Was it Ganin operating under an alias?
“Did Chaikin and the German come with you — here — tonight?”
“Only the German. He was in charge.”
“Who did the German work for?” Carter asked.
The question, surprisingly, produced a reaction in the Cuban. Carter could read faces very well. Saw the slightest tic. The man knew something.
Carter tightened his grip on the Cuban’s throat and eased the stiletto a millimeter farther up his nose. A slight trickle of blood rolled down the man’s cheek.
“Who did this German work for?” Carter repeated the question. “Where did he get his orders?”
“I don’t know... I swear!”
“You’re lying, and you will die!”
“No... no, señor, please!”
A vision of Sigourney’s face, her smile, her laugh, rose up in Carter’s mind. He flicked the stiletto to one side, laying open the man’s nose. Blood cascaded over the man’s face, gushing into his eyes and mouth.
“No!” the Cuban screamed.
“Who did the German work for, you son of a bitch!” Carter shouted.
The Cuban was struggling wildly. With great effort Carter held the man still and placed the stiletto blade a fraction of an inch above his left eye.
“New York...” the Cuban babbled through bloody lips.
“What about New York?”
“New York... New York, the U.N... I swear to Christ... Mother of God... New York, the U.N...”
“Who at the U.N.?” Carter demanded.
“Lashkin!” the Cuban screamed. Suddenly he had a pistol in his left hand, bringing it around, the hammer cocked, his finger on the trigger, a wild look in his blood-covered eyes.