Dr. Death (18 page)

The general was on his feet and across the room with remarkable speed for a man of his age. He lashed out his hand and whipped the earring from Li Chin's ear lobe. I winced. Her ears were pierced, and he had literally torn the earring from her flesh. A wide stain of blood immediately appeared on her lobe.

"Ouch," she said calmly.

"Where is the other earring?" demanded the general. The tone of affable hospitality had completely vanished from his voice.

"I loaned it to a friend of mine," said Li Chin. "A guy named Sweets. We like to keep in touch."

This time, Michelle's gasp was even sharper.

"The black man!" she said. "Hunter! He must have entered the volcano separately!"

The general shot a glance at her, then looked back down at the earring trans-ceiver.

"No matter," he said. "If he is within the crater, our television monitors will find him. And I will now destroy this fascinating little instrument, to cut off your contact with him."

"I wouldn't do that, General," I said. "Cut off our contact with him and this entire island may be blown halfway to France."

The general stared at me, then, with an obvious effort, relaxed his features into an unbelieving smile.

"I believe you are bluffing, Mr. Carter," he said.

I glanced at my watch.

"If Sweets Hunter doesn't get a signal on his trans-ceiver in exactly two minutes and thirty-one seconds, we'll all have a chance to find out," I said calmly.

"Much can happen in that time," said the general. He strode to his desk, picked up the telephone, and barked out a series of orders. General Alert. Find Hunter. Bring him here immediately.

"It's no use. General," I said. "That signal meant that Sweets has already found what he was looking for."

"Which is?" asked the general.

"One of two things," I said. "Either the armament for your weapons or their computers."

"The computers," said Fernand Duroche, before the general could silence him.

"Duroche," said the general, gritting his teeth in fury, "one more word and I will use the pistol at my hip to close your mouth forever."

"It doesn't matter, General, it had to be one or the other," I said. "I knew that you would wait until the last minute to add at least one vital element to your weapons, in order to make sure they weren't seized intact by a surprise raid on the boats. And the computers, being the most important element, are the likely choice to leave until last,"

The general said nothing, but his eyes narrowed. I knew I had hit home.

"You see, General," I said, "the 'kidnapping' of Michelle this evening happened at just a little too convenient a time. Convenient for her and you, if you were working together. If you knew we were here in Martinique, you must have known we were in Puerto Rico, and she could have been kidnapped much earlier. If she hadn't been working for you, that is. Because she was working for you, it was convenient to let her accompany us until she knew that our plans were to attack you. Then, she was conveniently 'kidnapped' in time to tell you everything."

I reached into my pocket, found my cigarettes, and lit one.

"Once I realized that," I went on, "I changed our plans. Li Chin and I came here to pay you a little visit. We knew it wouldn't come as a surprise, but we didn't want you to know that we knew. That's why we disguised our visit in the form of an attack, and then let you capture us."

Now the general's eyes were riveted to my face. He had given up all pretense of believing we were bluffing.

"You see, if we had just walked in and said we wanted to talk to you, Sweets Hunter wouldn't have been able to make his own little visit in another manner. Michelle would have wondered where he was right away and probably guessed that since it wouldn't make sense to have one man alone try to attack from outside in the crater, he must be inside. Inside in your computer storage room. Where he is right now."

"Patois!"
Michelle said suddenly. "He speaks
patois!
He could have been hired as one of the native laborers for the trucks!"

The general's eyes hardened. His hand flashed out toward the telephone. But before he could pick it up, it rang. His hand hovered for an instant, then snatched at the receiver.

"Qui?"
he said curtly. Then his knuckles went white on the instrument and he listened in silence for several moments.

"Do nothing," he said finally. "I will take charge myself."

He replaced the receiver and turned to me.

"Our guards say that a tall, thin black man has killed two of their number, taken their automatic weapons, and barricaded himself in the computer storage room. He threatens to blow up the computers if we attack."

"That," I said, "is the general idea."

"Impossible," said the general, studying my face for reactions. "Possible to disguise himself as a laborer to gain entrance, yes, but impossible to smuggle in explosives. All laborers are searched."

"What if the explosives are high-impact mini-grenades, disguised as a necklace of beads?" I asked.

"I don't believe you," the general said flatly.

"You will," I said, glancing at my watch, "in exactly three seconds."

"Countdown," said Li Chin. "Three… two… one… zero!"

The blast came exactly on schedule, as we had agreed with Sweets. It wasn't exactly a pound of TNT, or even as big as that produced by a standard grenade, but in the confines of the cement-block bunker, which held the entire force of the explosion in, it sounded gigantic. The noise was deafening. And even this far away, we could feel the shock waves. The biggest shock, however, came on the face of the general.

"Mon Dieu!"
he gasped. "This is insanity…"

"That's only the beginning, General," I said calmly. "If Sweets doesn't get a buzz from us on his trans-ceiver in another two minutes, he sets off another mini-grenade. They aren't big, but one's big enough to blow up a couple of your computers."

"You can't!" Michelle cried. Her face was white. "You mustn't! Not inside the volcano! It's…"

"It's insanity!" said the general. "Any blast in here can set off shock waves that would revive the volcano! There could be a major eruption which would destroy the whole island! Even when we dug out our headquarters in the volcanic rock we didn't use explosives, we used specially cushioned drills."

"One blast every two minutes, General, unless…"

"Unless?"

"Unless you and all your men lay down your arms, evacuate the volcano, and surrender to authorities in Fort de France. Authorities, I might add, who have been specially picked by the Deuxieme Bureau to be without OAS sympathies."

The general curled his lips in a sneer.

"Absurd!" he said. "Why should we surrender? Even if you should destroy all the computers here, how do you know that we have not equipped some of the weapons already, on the boats ready for sailing?"

"I don't know," I said. "That's why a special squadron of U.S. planes from the base on Puerto Rico is circling outside the Lorrain and Marigot harbors. If even one of the boats in that harbor tries to move to water deep enough to launch one of your weapons, those planes will blast it out of the water."

"I don't believe it!" the general said. "That would be a hostile act by the U.S. toward France."

"It would be an act approved by the president of France personally, as an emergency measure."

The general was silent. He bit his lip and chewed on it.

"You're finished, General," I said. "You and the OAS. Surrender. If you don't, there'll be one blast every two minutes until all those computers are destroyed — and maybe all of us along with them. It's a risk we're willing to take. Are you?"

"Mr. Carter?"

I turned. Fernand Duroche was looking worried.

"Mr. Carter," he said, "you must understand that one of the…"

The general was fast, but I was faster. His hand hadn't gone halfway to the holster on his hip before I had launched myself at him in a running dive. My left shoulder slammed furiously into his chest, and he hurtled over backward in the chair. As his head hit the floor my fist connected with his chin. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Michelle rise, a knife suddenly flashing in her hand. I smashed my fist against the general's chin again, felt him go limp, and fumbled for the.45 at his hip.

"Stop!" Michelle screamed. "Stop or I'll cut his throat!"

I pulled myself to one knee, the.45 in my right hand, to see that loving daughter with the knife blade pressed to the jugular vein in her father's throat. Li Chin stood a few feet away, swaying warily, looking for an opening.

"Drop it!" Michelle snarled. "Drop the gun or I'll kill your precious Dr. Death!"

And then the lights went out.

The darkness was total, absolute. In the windowless confines of the cement-block building complex no light could have filtered in from outside even at midday. Immediately, my hearing became sharper, more focused. I could detect Michelle's almost guttural panting, frightened strangling noises from her father, and a sort of half padding, half sliding noise as Li Chin moved closer to her. Then, suddenly, Li Chin's voice:

"Carter! She's going for the door!"

I wheeled around the desk, gun at the ready, and made for the door. I was almost there when my hand brushed an arm.

"Stay back!" Michelle hissed, a few inches from my ear. "Stay back, or…"

The door opened without warning, and the beam of a flashlight cut into the room.

"General!" a man's harsh voice cried out. "Are you all right? There's been…"

I squeezed the trigger of the forty-five. There was an echoing blast, and the flashlight tumbled to the floor. I scooped it up and flicked its beam toward the hallway. Michelle was already through the door and running. I raised the.45 and was sighting when a deafening rattle of automatic rifle fire broke out from the other end of the hall. Bullets smashed into the cement-block near my face. I pulled back into the room, kicked the body of the soldier I had just killed out of the way, and closed and locked the door.

"Duroche!" T snapped. "Are you there?"

"He's here," came Li Chin's voice. "He's okay. I knocked the knife out of her hand."

I swung the beam of the flashlight onto the figures of Li Chin and Duroche. Duroche was trembling; his narrow face was white, but his eyes were alert.

"Can you tell us where the computer storage room is?" I asked.

"Of course," he said. "But have you noticed that the air in here is already becoming bad? The ventilator system is off. Someone must have cut the main power switch. If we don't leave the building complex soon…"

He was right. The room was already stuffy. It was becoming close, stifling.

"Not yet," I said. "Which way to the computer storage room?"

"There is a direct passage from here to the laboratories, and beyond that, the storage rooms," Duroche said, pointing to a door at the far end of the room. "It is used only by the general and his top staff."

I bent down and took the dead soldier's.45, handing it to Li Chin.

"Let's go," I said.

Cautiously, I opened the door that Duroche had indicated. The passageway beyond it was as pitch black as the room and the outer hall. I aimed the beam of the flashlight down its length. It was deserted.

"Carter!" said Li Chin. "Listen!"

A series of loud thumps from the other hallway. They were trying to break down the door to the room. At the same time, another blast came from the direction of the computer storage room. Sweets was still at it. I motioned Li Chin and Duroche to follow me, and we set out along the passageway at a trot, flashlight in one hand, 45 in the other. I could hear shouts, gunshots, and running feet from nearby halls and rooms.

"Your friend must stop the explosions!" I heard Duroche shout behind me. "The danger is increasing with every one!"

Another blast. I thought I could feel the building tremble this time. And the air was worse: thick, close. It was harder to breathe.

"How much further?" I shouted back to Duroche.

"There! At the end of the hallway!"

Almost as he said it, a door at the end of the hallway opened and a tall figure dove through it. He had an automatic rifle, and was firing rapidly in the direction from which he had come. The.45 in my hand came up automatically, and then dropped.

"Sweets!" I shouted.

The figure's head turned briefly in our direction.

"Hey, man," I heard Sweets' shout, even as he resumed firing, "welcome to the party!"

We ran the rest of the passageway and flopped down beside Sweets. He had overturned a heavy lab table in front of him and was shooting at a group of soldiers huddled behind another table at the far end of the laboratory.

"The computers," I said, panting, struggling to breathe.

"Smashed to hell and gone," said Sweets, pausing to eject an empty clip and insert a full one. "That last blast you heard finished them off. I managed to get the main power switch with this handy little BAR I borrowed from somebody who didn't need it anymore anyway. Being dead, I mean. Then I got tired of being cooped up in that storage room and decided to split."

Duroche tugged at my shoulder, pointing to the room at the end of the passageway, the room we had come from. Two flashlight beams were slicing through the darkness. The door must have given way.

"I think," I said grimly, "it's time for all of us to split."

Sweets fired off another blast into the laboratory.

"You got any ideas as to how?" he asked, almost casually.

Flashlight beams cut down the passageway. I wrenched one of Sweets' mini-grenades from his necklace, and lobbed it directly down the hall. It rolled into the room, and, an instant later, the building was rocked by another blast, almost knocking us over. There were no more flashlight beams.