Dr. Death (14 page)

We all sat in silence for a moment. The waiter came and put down baskets of bread and rolls. From outside in the main square, there was a sound of music and laughter, cries of native voices. Crowds. It had begun some time ago, and been increasing imperceptibly as we sat over our drinks. I saw Sweets' eye flick toward the windows.

"What's going on out there?" he asked the waiter idly. To my surprise, he spoke not in French or English, but in fluent Creole
patois,
the native language of the French Antilles.

"Carnival,
M'sieur,"
said the waiter, smiling broadly. "It is the Mardi Gras, the last day of feasting before Lent. We have the parades, the costumes, the dancing. There is much gaiety."

"Sounds like fun," said Sweets. "Too bad we…"

"Nothing is fun for me with my father where he is," Michelle broke in sharply. She turned to me. "Nick, what are we going to do?"

I took a sip of my drink. The noise of crowds was getting louder, closer. I could hear the liquid bobble of a steel drum band, probably imported from Trinidad, and the catchy rhythm of the native Martiniquais
beguine,
played on horns.

"The basic setup is obvious," I said slowly. "The OAS have some sort of headquarters inside the crater of Mont Pelee. It would be easy to carve a network of tunnels and chambers out of the volcanic rock — as long as you disregarded the danger of setting off the volcano again. And I think the OAS are willing to take even that kind of chance with the deal they have going for them."

"And you think my father is being held there?" Michelle asked anxiously.

I nodded.

"I think that whatever kind of underwater explosive device the OAS is producing is being made there. Then trucked down to the two ports to be loaded aboard boats."

"Small boats?" said Sweets with mild incredulity. "Tiny boats? Regular fishing boats?"

"That's what I don't understand yet," I admitted. I found that I had to talk louder, to be heard above the street sounds of the carnival. The parade must be very close to the restaurant now. "How could any propelled underwater device be launched from a small boat? And if it isn't propelled, how can even an innocent-looking fishing boat get inside the sea-installed security cordon which by now will have been set up around the Curaçao refinery? But we know that the OAS is loading something onto those boats, and we have to assume it's the explosive devices. Which brings us to our problem."

A raucous blare of horns sounded directly outside the window. I caught a glimpse of grinning, shouting, singing faces marching past, holding some kind of a banner.

"The problem," I continued, "is that if we hit the fishing boats, and manage to disable the explosive devices, the headquarters inside the crater will be warned in time to evacuate. Even if not all the machinery, at least the personnel needed to build it again at some other time and in some other place. And that includes Michelle's father, who is the key to the whole operation."

The noise from outside had risen to a roar now. The streets on the other side of the window were jammed. I saw a flash of color, and then another. Enormous papier-mache masks of birds, fish, weird creatures from Caribbean legends, caricatures of humans, all vividly colorful and with exaggerated characteristics, were marching past, swaying from side to side. Some of the figures were life-sized, with the people inside them completely hidden from view. And when they didn't march, they danced, to the insinuating beat of the
beguine.

"On the other hand," I continued, leaning across the table to make myself audible to the others, "if we hit the volcano first, the headquarters may be able to get word to the boats to set sail. Once they're out of the harbor, those fishing boats will be lost among the tens of thousands of others in the Caribbean. With the explosive devices already aboard them."

"And I'd give a pretty good guess," said Li Chin, "at this close to countdown for the Curaçao attack, they're probably already armed."

"We have to assume they are," I agreed. "So there's only one thing for us to do. It's not much of a chance, but it's our only chance."

There was an even louder outburst of music outside. One of the window panes in the front door shattered. I heard the waiter swear with annoyance and rush to the front door. He flung it open and began to remonstrate with the paraders. Laughter and more shouts came from the street.

"If I dig you right, man," said Sweets slowly, "we're gonna have to attack the boats and the volcano simultaneously."

"Impossible!" Michelle hissed.

"Improbable," I said dryly, "but not impossible. And, as I just said, our only chance. Sweets and Li Chin will handle the boats. Michelle, you and I will pay a little visit to Mont Pelee."

There was a sudden burst of color at the door. One of the paraders, his entire body covered by a brilliant green and red fish costume, had brushed aside the waiter and now stood inside the door. He was waving one fin-covered hand to his friends on the street, beckoning them, in spite of the now-outraged waiter's protests.

"Hey, man," said Sweets. "I've got another little idea. Why don't…"

"Look!" said Li Chin. "They're coming in! Wow! What a crazy scene!"

The paraders had suddenly swept over the waiter like a tidal wave, the green and red fish at their head. There were giant parrots, sharks with grinning mouths and shining teeth, a giant coal-black grotesque figure of half-man half-bird, out of Caribbean Voodoo legend, a vividly pink pig with an oversized snout, and dozens, it seemed, of foil-covered shining fish-heads. They were dancing wildly through the restaurant now, shouting, swaying from side to side. Where before the room had been quiet and calm, it was now a crowded chaos of bodies and movement and raucous noise.

"You know something. Carter," Li Chin said to me as the dancers came toward our table, "this could just be a lot of fun. And maybe that's all it is. But for some reason, 1 don't like it."

I didn't either. And I couldn't have said why, any more than Li Chin could. It was just that sixth sense that warns any good agent of danger where nothing else can. What I wanted was to get the four of us out of that room and away from that crowd immediately. But it was impossible. The papier-mache figures had surrounded our table now, dancing madly around us to the music from the streets.

"Dansez!"
they started to cry.
"Dansez!"

Suddenly, arms reached out, and Li Chin and Michelle were being tugged to their feet, as voices urged them to join the dance. I saw Li Chin begin to twist her arm and adjust her weight in an instinctive Kung Fu reaction, then, like lightning, Sweets' hand darted out to restrain her.

"Cool it!" he commanded. "These folks are gentle and polite and friendly by nature, but offend their hospitality — and that includes an invitation to dance — and they could turn ugly!"

Michelle, still resisting the hands that reached for her, tugged at her, shot a frightened glance at me.

"Sweets is right." I said. "There's a lot more of them than us, and the last thing we want is a brawl that will bring in the police."

An instant later the two women had been pulled to their feet and were being jogged madly about.

"Stick to Li Chin," I snapped to Sweets. "Don't let her out of your sight. I'll take Michelle."

We both sprang to our feet and edged into the crowd which was rapidly bearing the two women away from the table. I slipped between a couple of foil fish and elbowed aside a black, white, and red rooster, flapping its wings wildly in time to the music, to come behind Michelle. She was being whirled in dizzy circles by the pink pig, its oversized snout bumping against her face.

"Buvez!"
a voice suddenly cried. Drink! And the cry was caught up all over the room.
"Buvez! Buvez!"

Jostling determinedly to keep near Michelle, I saw money being flung down on the bar, and bottles snatched up. They were flung in the air across the room, the corks pulled, and passed from hand to hand.

"Buvez!"
a voice shouted in my ear, half deafening me.
"Voici! Buvez!"

Before I knew it, a bottle was thrust into my hand, and pushed toward my mouth. To get it over with, I raised it to my lips, and took a fast swallow. It was the clear new rum of the cane fields, greasy and sweet, and it burned down my throat like sulphuric acid. Suppressing the urge to gag, I managed a grin, and passed the bottle back to its owner, a silver-gray seagull with a long pointed hook for a beak. He pressed it back into my hands. I raised it to my mouth, pretended to take another swallow, and passed it on to the eager hands of a grinning, toothy shark.

Then I glanced back in Michelle's direction, and she was gone.

I pushed furiously into the crowd, using my shoulders and elbows, digging a path through a nightmarish assortment of animal, bird and fish figures.

"Michelle!" I called. "Michelle! Answer me!"

"Here!" I heard her faint voice. "Over here!"

Suddenly, I caught sight of her. She was near the door, this time in the embrace of the giant rooster. And he was dancing her out the door. Then, just as suddenly, I felt myself being forced toward the door. The entire direction of the crowd had changed. Just as they had swept into the restaurant like a tidal wave, now they were sweeping back out. I let myself be borne along among jostling bodies, smelling thick odors of sweat, my ears deafened with hoarse cries, screams of laughter, and the bellowing brass of horns. Up ahead, I could see Michelle's long black hair as she was being swayed from side to side by her partner, now an animal, now a bird, now a fish.

"Buvez!"
a voice cried in my ear.
"Buvez!"

This time 1 thrust the bottle aside. We were in the street now, and I couldn't risk losing sight of Michelle even for an instant. Sweets and Li Chin were nowhere to be seen.

A sudden volley of explosions shattered its way through the music. I tensed. Then the sky lit up with flashes and streamers of light. Red, white, green, blue — fountains of light, waterfalls of color. Fireworks. On a grand scale. They blinded me for a moment. Then my vision cleared, and a jangle of alarm sounded throughout my whole body.

The crowd had split up. The greater part had continued straight ahead, but an off-shoot had turned the corner into a side street. And Michelle was among that offshoot.

I plowed through the crowd like a bull through tall grass. When I got around the corner I found myself in a street
so
narrow it was little better than an alley. Michelle was in the center of a group at the end of it, and as I watched, cursing, I saw her borne around another corner. I elbowed and shouldered my way through knots of revelers, many of them drinking from bottles, then? smashing the bottles to the paving stones. The street got darker and narrower as I went along, until finally the only illumination came from the shattering explosions of light high above in the black sky. They cast eerie shadows on the stucco walls of buildings, the wrought-iron grills of windows. I reached the corner and turned, only to find myself in still another dark alley-like street.

With a shock, I realized it was empty.

There was no sign of Michelle.

Then, suddenly, it was no longer empty. There was a rush of bodies, of weird-looking masks, and I was surrounded by a circle of foil fish heads.

A moment of absolute silence ended abruptly with the explosion of a wheel of sparks in the sky above.

In the hands of the figures around me I could see the dull gleam of machete blades, sharpened to a razor edge.

"Ah,
M'sieur,"
said one of the figures, "it seems the fish have caught the fisherman."

"The fish," I said, slow and hard, "are going to be eaten for dinner, if they don't stand away from the fisherman."

"The fish," snarled the figure, "are going to gut the fisherman."

The machete blade flashed in his hand, as his arm slashed forward. But he was slower than my hand, with Wilhelmina in it. The crack of the bullet echoed in the alley almost as soon as he had moved, and he fell, blood spurting through the hole in his foil-wrapped chest, seeping out of his mouth. The two men behind him moved in on either side of me. A second bullet from Wilhelmina caught the one on my left in his guts, and he screamed in pain and horror, as my right leg shot out in a
Kensai
kick to the other's groin, making him collapse instantly into a fetal position.

I turned barely in time to see, by the grotesque light of a Roman Candle exploding above, the bright flicker of a machete blade hissing through the air. I twisted and side-stepped, and it clanged harmlessly to the paving stones in back of me. Wilhelmina spat once again and another of the fish figures fell, his skull an instant eruption of red blood, gray brain matter, and white chips of bone.

But my twisting had revealed something else. At the other end of the alley, another group of fish figures was slowly advancing toward me. I was being attacked from both sides, and every path of escape was blocked.

Except, I suddenly realized as another Roman Candle exploded in the sky and lit the alley, one way. Up.

Three fish figures were detaching themselves from the crowd in front of me, moving warily toward me, spaced as far apart as the alley would allow. A glance over my shoulder showed me that three figures behind me were doing the same. They moved slowly, in a sort of rhythm, as if performing some kind of deadly ritualistic dance. From the crowds behind them, a humming chant began to rise. It had the deep, spine-chilling tone of murder.

Kill… Kill… Kill… Kill…

I waited, moving forward and slightly to the side, gauging their advance. They were close enough now so I could see eyes gleaming in back of the foil fish heads. Unnaturally wide eyes, rolling, fevered. Hot to kill. Still, I waited.