The sun was high when at last they left the Castle of the Blacks, Nick and five of the women. Lucia had kept Inez and Juanita with her to help the abbot and his men with their grim task of cleaning up the shambles of death and ruin that was Tsing-fu’s legacy.
One by one they climbed the crude stone steps. First Nick, eyes and ears alert and Wilhelmina ready, two Chinese grenades in his pocket. Next Paula, with a Colt .45. Then three of the women, each carrying crudely woven flour sacks tied firmly at the necks and each clutching a revolver. Finally Luz, with the Chinese carbine. One after the other they reached the top and gathered in a silent group beneath the trees, waiting for Nick’s cue.
Nick held them back with a wave of the hand while he scouted ahead, eyes trying to pierce the thick foliage for anything that should not have been there. Tree trunks… bushes… low-hanging leaves… Nothing new seemed to have been added. Yet his skin prickled with its familiar warning signal. The hillside was far from being an impenetrable jungle; beyond the grove in which his partners waited there were clearings broken by scattered growth and humps of lichen-covered rock, no challenge at all for anyone who didn’t mind a little exercise. But it was perfect cover for an ambush party.
And supposing the Cuban with the radio had managed to send a message… what better way to find a treasure than to lie in wait for those who had found it first? Maybe they were expecting to pounce upon Tsing-fu to grab it, but obviously they wouldn’t care who had it as long as they could get it.
Nick went back to his waiting women.
“You three with the sacks,” he whispered. “Get them out of sight behind the bushes and stay here with them no matter what happens until I whistle for you.” He saw Alva opening her rosebud mouth to object and his face hardened into a look familiar to those who knew him as Killmaster. “We’ve been through all this before and these are orders. You women chose to leave the place instead of waiting it out; now you do as I tell you. Get busy and keep quiet.”
Alva stared at him in surprise and backed away with her sack. Two others followed mutely.
“Paula, Luz,” said Nick. “Remember what I told you. Stay behind me and use cover all you can.”
They nodded silently. Luz took a step aside and quickly checked the carbine. Nick’s eyes lingered on Paula’s face.
“Perhaps there’ll be nothing to it,” he said softly. “But don’t take chances, please.” He took her hand and squeezed it lightly, and then turned away.
They followed silently, several paces back. He wished to hell they didn’t have to be there, but if there was an ambush it would take more than himself, one man, to draw their fire. They would scarcely give away their own positions for the sake of just one scout. So he and Luz and Paula were to be the bait. Or maybe they would be flies in the spider’s trap.
He was out of the trees now and crossing a clearing at a low running crouch, scanning the hillside as he ran. Behind him came Paula and Luz, zig-zagging as they had been told to do, their feet scrunching lightly on the fallen leaves.
So far, no sign of company, and the cover was getting sparser by the minute. It was beginning to look as though they had made it — away, home and free, with only one last whistle to bring them the treasure that had killed so many people.
He was almost at the far end of another clearing when the first fusillade burst through the trees on either side of him. There was a shriek from behind him and the carbine roared. Nick raced for a clump of bush and pulled a grenade from his pocket. As he turned he saw Luz clutch her throat and fall, and Paula diving for the shelter of a tree-trunk with her gun spitting little bursts of fire. He pulled the pin, counted and threw. It soared through the air and burst explosively into a low ridge of bush that suddenly became a small inferno of flaming brush and flying, shapeless things. Two men, dressed in the familiar Cuban fatigues, burst out of the burning bushes with rifles clamped to their shoulders. Nick picked off one of them with Wilhelmina before the fellow dodged behind a tree; the other dived behind a rock and spat his fire toward Paula. Nick could hear her returning fire as he pulled the other grenade from his pocket and drew out the pin. The crossfire from the second group was zinging across the clearing, searching for him, almost finding him. Bullets slammed above his head, tearing off bark and leaves and scattering their debris upon him as he pulled back his arm and threw. For one awful moment he thought his Chinese pineapple was going to blast its way straight through Paula’s head, but she dropped in the last split fraction of a second and pumped a stream of shots across the clearing. The grenade flew past her and landed with a spitting roar.
Smoke haze swirled over the hillside and the smell of burning bodies filled the air. Heat seared Nick’s face and he ducked rapidly as hot lead twanged past him on all sides. Something struck him in the shoulder and numbed his arm; he. switched Wilhelmina to his left hand and pumped her bullets rapid-fire toward a bearded figure with a submachine gun. The fellow dropped, spraying bullets into the trees.
Paula was still firing. One nest of gunners was silent. But there was another, still active though the growth around it blazed, and now the blast of its machine gun was ripping Nick’s cover. Wilhelmina was like a popgun against the deadly stream of lead. Nick thrust her back into her holster and made a flying leap for the Cuban’s discarded machine-gun. He was running even as he scooped it up, crouching and dodging toward a boulder in the clearing. His leg buckled beneath him as something struck it with a bite like a steel-clawed hammer, but he made cover and flung himself full-length behind the rock, already firing at the gun emplacement.
He stopped only when he was out of ammunition. And then he realized that no one was firing back. For long moments he waited, and still there was no sound. At last he rose unsteadily, blood pouring down his leg and shoulder and Wilhelmina wavering in his left hand, and gazed across the clearing. Nothing moved. He chirped enquiringly. And to his overwhelming relief there was an answering chirp that told him Paula was alive.
But he knew this might not be the end of it, and he also knew that the two of them could not hold out alone against any further attack. So he drew breath and gave the piercing signal that meant Approach — Be Ready for Attack.
And then he heard a yell. Paula.
“Behind you, behind you!” she was screaming.
He pivoted painfully with Wilhelmina jabbing the air.
Two grimy, bloodstained men had risen from the bushes and were coming at him with murder in their eyes and machetes slicing the air like scythes. He fired once, missed; fired again and saw one of them drop with a yell, and then the other was upon him. Wilhelmina clicked emptily and he flung her at the fellow’s face. It gained him nothing but a second to pull Hugo from his sleeve, and Hugo was an icepick against the swinging machete.
He jabbed and dodged, cursing out loud at his helplessness, knowing that he didn’t have a hope in hell with his one useless arm, one useless leg. All he could do was duck and jab, try to get the fellow off-balance, try to twist that swinging machete from his grasp. He did not even see the other one half-rise and start to slither painfully toward him with machete raised, nor the third man who stalked out from the trees with the revolver pointing at him, nor the girl who slid silently from the cover with her automatic wavering between three deadly targets.
But he heard the shots. So did the Cuban who was slashing wildly at him with the finely honed machete, and for one heaven-sent second the man turned his head and shot a glance toward the sound of fire. Nick lowered his head like a bull and charged. His full weight caught the Cuban in the stomach and threw him backwards, and then Hugo struck into his neck again and again and again. The machete dropped from the limp fingers and Nick caught it up for one final thrust. And then he rose, the last shot still echoing in his ears. There was a taste of blood in his mouth, the sound of blood in his ears, a vision of blood clouding his eyes, but he heard the light footfalls coming closer from the grove near the rim of the ravine and he saw Paula slumping to the ground, her gun still smoking. She was clutching her chest, and there was blood all over her hand and all over her torn shirt. Only then did he see the man who must have shot her, the man who lay there dead with a revolver in his hand, and the other Cuban with the machete who was closer to him than he had thought.