War From The Clouds Read online

  I wanted to let go, to just make my body and my mind go slack. I wanted to drop through space, back down the incredible chimney and join the broken warrior on the sacrificial platform far below.

  "What can we do?" Elicia asked again.

  I didn't have an answer for her. In addition to physical exhaustion and emotional shock, I felt tremendously frustrated, as though I'd been involved in a series of impossible tests and wasn't passing any of them. And the dead Indian being supported by Elicia and I was gradually slipping down the smooth wall of the chimney.

  Thoughts of just plain giving up were running rampant in my mind. Such thoughts must be amazingly close to those experienced by a person just before he commits suicide. At that moment, giving up meant committing suicide. On the other hand, my mind told me — actually screamed at me — going on was just as suicidal.

  A great deal of my past life flashed through my mind in staccato bursts, like quick images of filmed replays. I saw myself in previously «hopeless» situations, saw how I had come out of them alive and triumphant. In my many years as N3, as Killmaster for AXE, such hopeless situations were legion, but I had experienced innumerable miracles to bring me out of them.

  There was no miracle at hand this time. No light in the water ahead. No retreat. No weapon that could destroy the nest of scorpions above us without destroying us in the process.

  "Nick?" Elicia said, her voice rising in panic as she recognized the look of total defeat on my face. "We must do something. We must do it soon. I feel myself giving out. I can't hold on much longer."

  "Neither can I, Elicia," I said, looking at her sadly, helplessly. "Neither can I."

  Chapter Nine

  Years ago, when I was sitting in the anteroom of AXE's offices on DuPont Circle in Washington, waiting to report on the completion of an assignment, a secretary had inadvertently left open the intercom to David Hawks's office. I heard my old boss tell someone in there:

  "If ever AXE comes up with a truly impossible assignment, one that could not possibly be handled by a mortal with a mortal's powers and intelligence, one that could not be handled by man s most sophisticated weaponry or technology, one that could be resolved only by divine intervention or by the gods themselves, I would give that assignment to Nick Carter and fully expect him to resolve it."

  'l remember the response from Hawk's unknown visitor: "Nobody is that good."

  «True» Hawk had said. "Nobody is that good, not even Nick Carter. But he thinks he's that good and, after all, isn't that all that's necessary in any assignment, impossible or otherwise?"

  Well, perched there in that filthy hole of a chimney with my body wracked with pain, my back and knees raw, a dead warrior in my arms, a nest of impenetrable scorpions just above me, a water-filled cave entrance far below me and a virtual army of fanatics on top of the mountain, I suddenly realized that that intercom hadn't been left open accidentally. It had been done on purpose. I had been conned into thinking that, even if nobody was good enough for a particular assignment, I was fully expected to complete it successfully.

  I realized something else, I really wasn't good enough, not for this one. It had been a stacked deck against me all along. I had come this far through sheer luck and brashness and downright foolhardiness. And where had I come? To my own death trap, that's where.

  "Nick?" Elicia cried, more panic" in her voice. "Nick, I'm slipping. I can't hold on any longer."

  All right, I thought. I don't know what to do, but I'm expected to do something. David Hawk had expected it all along and had gotten the results he desired. Elicia expected it. The two warriors waiting just below expected it. Even if my next move were a wrong move, I had to make it.

  "We'll have to drop him," I said to Elicia. "It seems cruel, but the man is dead and won't feel a thing. Let him go." I looked down at the waiting warriors. "Take the body and let it fall back down the chimney."

  They were aghast at the thought, and their faces showed it, but they took their comrade as Elicia and I eased him down. They held him for a few minutes, then reluctantly let him go. We gritted our teeth and held our positions in that narrow chimney and listened to the smacking, crunching, grinding sounds as the man and his rifle dropped all the way down and slammed into the sacrificial platform two hundred feet below.

  And what next? When the warrior had first run into the scorpion nest, I had considered using one of my gas bombs to rout them. But the plan had some unpleasant ramifications.

  For one thing, in that closed area the gas would spread out in a cloud and engulf us all. I knew from experience that no man could hold his breath long enough for the gas to disperse. Secondly, the gas might linger in the tunnel above us, especially if there were level areas up there. And a third thing: gas would escape at the top of the chimney, and might be detected by forces up there, forces who would know immediately that someone was coming up the chimney.

  A plan began to hatch in my head as I rested there and felt a soft breeze waft upwards past my body. It wasn't a perfect plan, but no plan is.

  "Move back down the chimney," I said to Elicia and the two remaining warriors. "Go down about a hundred feet and wait for me."

  "But there's no time," Elicia protested.

  "I know. We're not interested in stopping Don Carlos any longer. We're interested in survival. Forget the time."

  Even as they moved back down the chimney, though, I knew that I hadn't meant that about not being interested in stopping Don Carlos. That was the main objective and my years of training wouldn't let my mind forget it, not even for the moment, for self-survival.

  When Elicia and the two warriors were out of sight, I took a smooth, sleek little Pierre from a pouch on my thigh and tied the end of the nylon rope to the pin. I worked the bomb into a niche in the rocks, tested to make sure it wouldn't come away easily, then moved back down the chimney. When I had gone fifty feet, I found a small ledge and began to load the contents of my pocket onto it. I crumpled up all the money in my billfold into a heap. I took out my passport and my identification card and a bunch of other cards I carry around for a number of reasons: my blood donor card to remind me that I am also human; my library card to remind that civilization really does have its finer side; my credit cards to remind me that civilization has another side; my health insurance card to remind me that I'm not (as Hawk's friend suggested) invincible; some receipts and notes to remind me that life has a quiet aspect to it at times. I put the wallet itself on the pile.

  I remembered that my notebook had been put in the pouch with Wilhelmina. I recovered it and tore out the page containing the map I'd drawn of Alto Arete's fortifications. I then tore out all the other pages, crumpled them up and put them on the pile. I tucked the folded map back into the pouch.

  Next, I took out Hugo and began to slice long splinters off the butt of the Russian automatic rifle. It was soft wood and I thanked the Russians for cheapening up in such a way. The wood had a fragrance to it, like cedar. It would burn well. I cut several short lengths of nylon rope and added them to the pile, then took apart a half dozen bullets and shook gunpowder over the whole thing. I found two extra books of matches and, only as a last resort when I was certain they were needed to make the fire more effective, I added my last box of goldmonogramed Turkish cigarettes.

  When I had eased below the ledge to keep the gunpowder from flashing in my face, I lit a match and flipped it up onto the pile. The flash was instant and blinding. I moved back down the chimney and watched as the flames built and set up eerie shadows in the space above me.

  It took less than a minute before I felt an increase in the wind moving up past me. The fire was creating a fine draft, as I expected it to in this narrow chimney. I watched, waiting for the flames to reach a peak, but carefully watching to see that it didn't burn the length of nylon rope that I had tied to Pierre and snaked down past the ledge holding the fire.

  When I was certain that the upward draft was at optimum force, I yanked on the nylon. I heard the familiar pop
as Pierre burst open in the closed space well above the fire. I sucked in my breath and held it, still watching the fire on the ledge a dozen feet above. There was hardly a flicker in the flames from the explosion of the gas bomb and I knew I was safe.

  The draft created by the fire, had swept all the gas upward. The draft would also clear the gas out of level tunnels and other pockets where it might otherwise collect.

  Best of all, the gas would infiltrate that nest of scorpions and, unless they were capable of holding their breaths for the next few minutes, wipe the nest clean of life.

  But I was still worried about what might happen on top of the mountain when they saw the blue cloud of gas and the white smoke. As I said, the plan wasn't perfect.

  I gave the fire another five minutes, then called down to Elicia and the warriors. Even as Elicia responded, I felt something soft and furry land on my shoulder. I started to brush it off, then realized what it was. I shone my flashlight on it and saw that it was a scorpion.

  It was deader than hell.

  "What did you do?" Elicia asked as she drew up behind me. I was putting out the fire so we could go past the ledge without being burned.

  "Made a few sacrifices of my own" I said, thinking of the lost money and library card. They represented a small loss compared to Pico's daughter and all those other victims of Don Carlos Italla's idiocy, but a sacrifice, nonetheless.

  As we moved upward, brushing aside dead scorpions from the now defunct nest, I explained to Elicia what I had done and she showered me with so many compliments that I began to wonder what David Hawk would say when he heard my report on the clearing of the scorpions. I knew what he would say, to the word:

  "Standard operating procedure, N3. Why did it take you so long to think of it?"

  It is sometimes depressing working for a man like David Hawk. But only sometimes.

  Our only obstacles now were time and a flagging of strength. As we continued to climb the chimney, knocking away more nests of dead scorpions and spiders and other denizens of the dark chimney that runs straight up through the mountain to Alto Arete, the air seemed thinner and less satisfying to breathe. But it was clean air now, thanks to the draft from the fire; and the tunnel was clear of life-threatening creatures, thanks to Pierre's lethal draft.

  We no longer could inch our way up by using our backs and knees against opposing walls. The hole had narrowed so much that my shoulders barely cleared its sides. We used tiny notches and ledges and, in some stretches, found the walls so smooth that we actually wriggled like snakes to gain upward purchase.

  We did run across several level areas where we could rest, but I kept looking at my digital watch, seeing the minutes flick away. The numbers seemed to be constantly changing. 7:45. 7:59. 8:05.

  I lost all sense of place and had no idea how far we had come from the cave. It could have been five hundred feet, or five thousand. I knew only that sundown was rushing across the island and that Don Carlos would soon step onto a balcony of his palace up there on Alto Arete and fire his flare, signalling the beginning of a bloody revolution that would rock the island from end to end, side to side. Once that started, I would not have an ally in the whole country. All the Ninca Indians would be dead, as would the guerillas who opposed Don Carlos.

  Without allies, I knew, there was no way for me to get off the island country of Nicarxa. There would be no report to David Hawk or the President because there would be no one to report.

  "What time is it?" Elicia asked as we rested in a narrow tunnel that angled upwards at about forty five degrees.

  "Almost eight o'clock," I lied. I had been lying about the time for the past two hours. Even though I'd told her earlier that we were no longer concerned with Don Carlos Italla's plans but with our own survival, I knew she didn't accept that anymore than I did. She still hoped to stop the maniac and save her country from a bloodbath. I had tried once to shatter that hope, when my own hope was at rock bottom — I wouldn't do it again. But I looked at my watch and saw that the numbers were clearly at 8:12.

  "Do you think we're near the top?" Elicia asked.

  "I'm pretty sure we are," I said.

  This time, I wasn't lying. For the past several yards, the chimney had been getting narrower and narrower. I could barely squeeze my shoulders past small outcroppings. And I noticed that a number of smaller holes ran off into different directions. I had the sickening feeling that the chimney would degenerate into a series of tiny openings through which only smoke (and poison gas) could pass.

  The feeling was justified. Just as my digital watch clicked into place at 8:15, I shone my flashlight ahead and saw that the main chimney ten feet ahead was no wider than a man's boot. Smaller chimneys led off from the channel like dark fingers, each about the size of a fist.

  I stopped and probed the area above, but could find no way for us to get through. It was possible that this series of smaller holes represented only a small section of the overall chimney, that they funneled into a main chimney up above. The question was, how did we get past this natural obstruction to the main chimney?

  What was needed now, I knew, was that divine intervention David Hawk had spoken of. I had no weapons to deal with the situation. As a matter of fact, no sophisticated weaponry or technology could solve this problem in time for us to stop Don Carlos.

  I reached the point where my shoulders would no longer let themselves be squeezed any closer together. Ahead, the main chimney narrowed like dark railroad tracks in the distance. This time, though, the narrowing was no optical illusion. It was real.

  We could go no farther.

  "Why do you stop, Nick?" Elicia said. "We still have time to stop Don Carlos, but we must not stop. Not now."

  Truth time.

  There was no way I could lie my way out of this predicament. I would have to tell her and the two warriors that we were stopped, that we could not proceed. Pierre couldn't help. Hugo couldn't help. Wilhelmina could blast away forever and make no dent at all in the obstacle ahead.

  Nick Carter had failed. Oh, sure, there might be people in the future who might say I had given it my best shot. That is, if any of us got out alive to tell the story. Even if they said I gave it my best shot, they'd still have to sigh and shake their heads and finish the statement: "Even though he gave it his best shot, he still failed."

  "Nick, are you all right? Why have we stopped?"

  I couldn't answer, couldn't tell her. I wanted to. I wanted to tell her that I expected failure all along, that I had been proceeding like a damned programmed automation, a brainless creature destined to smash itself on the rocks of total adversity, of hopelessness.

  My fingers sought a higher ledge. My mind entertained the hope of squeezing my shoulders just a bit tighter, of going on; hope that the chimney would widen in just a few more feet and we would be able to continue to the top.

  The hope, however, was faint and dim. What was really going through my mind was just how we four would spend our remaining hours alive. Would we talk among ourselves as hunger turned to starvation, as life began to seep away leaving our bones as evidence to some future archeologist that we had been here? Would that archeologist puzzle about our predicament, have any hint at all as to why we had wedged ourselves into this incredible mountain?

  Hope was still alive and my fingers kept searching for one more ledge.

  My mind, however, was still active in other areas. It was possible, I thought, that we could go back down to the cave and subsist on bats until desperation drove us to that dark pond and that impossible swim back to the well. We could eat scorpions. There were a lot of dead ones down there. We could eat the two warriors who had died in this hopeless endeavor. We…

  "We're in deep trouble, aren't we?" Elicia said, the panic coming again to her voice. "We can't go any farther, can we?"

  My fingers found a narrow depression in the rock. I didn't want to have to answer Elicia. I probed the depression and tried to get my fingertips into it. It wasn't a ledge and it wasn't dee
p enough to provide purchase. I kept trying.

  "Answer me, Nick." We're trapped and it's almost time for Don Carlos to send his signal and I can't even find a ledge to pull me higher into this damned hole and we're going to die here while all your countrymen are dying outside. I opened my mouth to tell them all the truth, but I couldn't find my voice.

  I was incapable, in that moment of frustration and failure, to admit that I was frustrated, that I had failed. My fingers worked frantically in the narrow depression. I slid my hands across the depression and found that it was a straight line, as though it had been chiseled there by man and not by nature.

  "You don't have to answer," Elicia said, a slight choking in her throat. "Your silence tells me everything."

  "I'm just thinking, Elicia," I said, lying again, although it wasn't a total lie. I was thinking. I was thinking about how bats and scorpions and human flesh would taste to a man about to perish of starvation.

  "I want to tell you," Elicia said, a braveness in her voice now, "that I cherish those moments in the Council House. I am in love with Purano and would have married him and bore his children, but I would not have forgotten my love for you, for what we had together."

  "Elicia, don't talk like that. You're giving up."

  "Haven't you given up?"

  I pushed against the rock wall just below the depression, a new hope rising. Nothing happened.

  "No, I haven't given up. There's no reason to give up."

  "Then, why won't you answer my questions? Why don't we continue on?"

  I pushed hard against the rock wall, then slid my hands down the wall close to my chest. I found another faint line there, another slight depression. I worked my fingers across it, gouging out crumpled rock. It was another straight line and the crumpling rock felt like mortar in my hands.

  Mortar? Here, near the top of a natural chimney? I worked the stone dust in my fingers and tasted it. As comparison, I licked the natural rock wall in front of me. The tastes were different.