"Remember, wait until they actually start digging," I said.
"Then you cover me with the crossbow while I talk to them. We don't want bloodshed if we can avoid it."
"Naive honkies," she muttered. "They never learn."
"All the same," I said. "I expect my instructors to be of good character. No unnecessary killing."
She stifled a snort of laughter. "How many people you going to hire—after you're dead?"
"As many as I need to keep the devils off my back."
"So you're going to hell!" She grimaced; I saw her teeth flash. "See you there, in about an hour. Now don't get lost."
Slowly, slowly, the boat came in, about a quarter of the way around the island from us. Excellent location: if they came this way, Ilunga could cover me without moving at all. The boat anchored about a hundred yards out. Five frogmen slipped into the water and swam to shore.
I stood carefully and stepped out on the beach, making no noise in the dark. I wanted to surprise them; if they surprised me, I surely would be dead.
I carried a sling with a supply of heavy, balanced lead pellets. I had been exposed to this in the course of my Shaolin training, and was a fair shot with it. The thing about a sling is that it is easy to carry or to hide, deadly at short or long range, silent and readily provided with replacement ammunition. The Biblical David and Goliath encounter was a mismatch, all right; Goliath never had a chance. David would have had to get within a few feet for Goliath's sword to take effect; but David could strike from hundreds of feet. In fact, the sling was one of mankind's oldest and most effective weapons, an equalizer that made any naked shepherd boy the equal of a mounted knight in armor. Provided the boy was good enough with his weapon.
The frogmen splashed out of the water, removed their fins, and walked toward me along the beach. I froze in place near a palm tree, hoping they would not shine their light in my direction.
Fortunately they stopped. "There's the rocks" one said. "It'll be ten feet south..."
Evidently one of them had a compass. In a moment they were digging, scooping the sand out with small shovels.
"Gentlemen, you're covered," I said. "Do not move." It might have worked, but it didn't. "Trap!" one of them bawled. They scattered explosively. Two of them charged me; the rest dived for the water. A gun fired.
I slung my sling. The lead caught the man nearest me in the chest, breaking at least one rib; in this light I was aiming for the broadest part of the body. He grunted and stumbled. I heaved my second pellet at the other, but this time I missed.
One of the three near the water screamed and splashed down. Ilunga had put an arrow through his back. The other two wheeled at the water's edge and started firing, but the bullets went wild, because they didn't know where the shaft had come from. They were lucky they didn't hit their own men. Which was one of several reasons Ilunga and I had elected not to use firearms; they are about as likely to hurt friend as foe. Another reason, of course, was that Fidel had allowed us none; he didn't want this to smack too much of a G-2 operation. To raid an old sifu's kwoon and steal a launch—these were acts of outlaws, not government agents. Right; Mao?
I waded into the two nearest me. Alone in the darkness, I had an advantage they lacked: I couldn't strike my own people. I carried a kama, the Okinawan sickle. I saw a glint of gunmetal; with one hand I thrust it aside as if I were deflecting a knife, and then I sliced with the kama. I had hoped to disarm and subdue him, but the anatomy I struck felt too soft. I bad cut his belly open. The other was trying to train his gun on me, but he held his fire for the obvious reason. He could see me as well as I saw him, and once he was certain I had overcome his companion, he fired. I leaped mightily, passing over the line of fire, and straight over his head. On the way I struck down with the bloody point of the kama. If I had tried to kill him under these conditions, I would surely have missed. As it was, the point of the sickle penetrated the man's skull, right through his brain.
I stood over the gory corpses. Ilunga appeared. "I took care of the wounded," she said. "They fight to the end, every one of them—that's the way the Hyena trains 'em. No surrender, no quarter."
"Damn!" I said. "It all means nothing, without the address." Quite possibly Ilunga had saved my life again, taking out gunmen who might have gotten me from behind, but I felt little gratitude. Surely she could have disabled one without killing him. Yet I had done no better.
"Got to be someone manning the boat," Ilunga said. The Hyena's ship. I nodded affirmatively. We stripped the paraphernalia from two of the frogmen, not to use, but as camouflage. There was no way to tell how many men might be aboard the ship, but even one would be more than enough, if he suspected us. We would be sitting ducks in the landing craft. But the water was no better; swimming would take longer, and alert the guard. The shots would have abolished secrecy, at any rate. Their landing craft was a Boston Whaler fiberglass boat, with a flat bottom and a silent motor. Very nice equipment.
Ilunga placed a charge in the cache, timing the plastic in the way she knew with a pencil detonator. It would blow in fifteen minutes. We'd better have things in hand at the ship by then. We started the motor and headed out the way the craft had come. We hoped the ship would show us a light.
It did not. But we were able to make out its silhouette against the horizon, for it was not far off the shore. It was a pleasure yacht, about forty feet long. Who would suspect such a craft of gun running and drug smuggling!
We guided our boat toward it. As we pulled in close, a spotlight shone on us. "Halt!"
The voice sounded familiar—but there was surely a gun behind that light. We halted, cutting the motor. A routine challenge? We had to bluff it.
"I heard gunfire" the voice said. "Three of you are missing."
I had to answer. "We were ambushed," I said, changing my voice as well as I could. I have never been adept at this sort of thing.
"By whom?" No doubt about the suspicion. I was sweating.
"That Striker fellow."
"Striker! You kill him?"
I hesitated, not liking the lie "Yes," Ilunga said for me. There was a burst of firing from a Browning automatic rifle mounted on the yacht. I plunged into the water on one side, and Ilunga on the other. It hadn't worked! Could we get away?
"Now listen, brother, before I hole you for fish bait," the voice cried. "Striker was my friend! After you I'm going to do the same to your honky boss!"
"Mustapha!" I cried.
There was a pause, while the spotlight searched. When it came across me, I chanced betrayal and waved. "Damn! It is!" Mustapha said. "The bleached judoka! I should have known."
So he had decided which side he was on at last. I was glad, and not just because it enhanced my own survival. In moments Ilunga and I were aboard.
It developed that Mustapha had learned the truth about Fidel's attitude when the G-2 took him in. But they had turned him loose and left the cache in the house so as to keep the knowledge of his changeover from the Hyena. He had become a double agent, giving his boxing exhibition and supervising the trans-shipment of the arms. "They're aboard this ship right now," he said. "We sneaked 'em out right under the noses of the naval patrol." He grinned; we all knew how that could happen. "I was just waiting for the men to pick up the rest of the cache before making my move."
Fidel had taken no chances. He had sent Mustapha by one route, and us by another, all with the same objective. We could have killed each other—but the cache would have been destroyed without Fidel's apparent involvement. In fact, if we all died, there would be no one at all to betray Fidel's interest. Slick and ruthless.
We fished out the supplies we had saved from the boat. As we worked, an explosion rent the island. Ilunga's delayed charge had gone off; the cache was no more.
"Are there any charts or anything that might show where the Hyena's estate is!" I asked "We have to reach him in a hurry, before he gets word of this interception."
"I know where it is. You mean you don't? Why did
n't you ask me before?"
I exchanged glances with Ilunga. "Never mind," I said. "Let's just get there, fast."
"Not so fast," he cautioned me. "This ship's supposed to take the arms to another port. We can't just dock at his Key Largo rendezvous and drive his truck to his Everglades estate. He'd blast the truck right off the road!"
"We can't wait, either," I said. "We have to hit him first, hard."
"Can't," he said. "That whole property's booby-trapped. No way to get in unless he lets us in."
"Unless we had an inside agent to sabotage the defenses," I said.
"Forget it. His troops are all dependent on him for their fixes. They may not like him, but they're loyal."
"What about Danny?" I asked.
Ilunga's face lighted. "Danny!"
Mustapha looked grim. "Look, sister, he was taken there for indoctrination. Brainwashing, really, the same techniques they used in Korea in the fifties. The same they use to cure teen druggies, only worse. Much worse. They can make a man eat his own steaming shit and like it, after that program. He's been there over a month, now—all the time you were there, and more. He's either a loyal Hyena honcho, or he's dead."
As he spoke, Ilunga's hand went to her hair. But she froze with an effort, knowing he spoke the truth.
I was sorry I had brought it up. I wondered what Danny was doing now.
The three stood on the lawn, knowing the end was coming, but determined to fight like cornered rats for their lives. Two were small, slinky pusher-types, but the third was big and brawny. The Hyena went after the big guy first. He moved deceptively fast, making a claw-hand swipe at the black man's face. The victim raised his hands to protect his eyes, and the Hyena delivered a snap kick to the groin. The man buckled, his head thrown back, his mouth wide open in a scream of agony. The Hyena hooked his claws in that exposed throat and tore it out, the jugular vein, larynx and carotid arteries coming loose in a bright red mass.
The two smaller men, realizing that they were next, didn't wait their turns. With the mad courage of desperation they attacked. One leaped on the Hyena's back and tried to strangle him. The other pulled out a concealed small knife and went in low, aiming for the belly.
"HYAAAA!" The Hyena snapped his head back, crushing the first man's nose, breaking his hold and sloughing him off unconscious. He then did a tai-sabaki to the side, so that the second man's knife-thrust missed. He grabbed the wrist and pulled the man forward by the arm. The razor claws of the Hyena's other hand raked across the man's face, leaving a raw pulpy mass where the eyes and nose had been.
In the space of a minute, this one white man had destroyed three black men who had tried to deceive him; and he had done it in fair combat. Tarzan he was, but he was also the Hyena, a powerful leader of men, a revolutionist. These three had plainly deserved what they had gotten.
The Hyena dispatched the unconscious man, the one with the smashed nose, by picking him up by the feet, whirling him around a couple of times, then smashing his skull against a tree. He dropped the carcass and turned to Danny. "Throw this offal to my friend," he said. His friend was the animal hyena. "What he doesn't like for today, put in the freezer for tomorrow."
Danny obeyed. He wondered whether, after this, he would be permitted to see his sister, but he knew better than to ask. The Hyena expected absolute obedience from his minions. And what would Danny say to Ilunga, who had gone over to the enemy so readily?
We anchored at a small dock in Isla Morada's beach, near Key Largo, then drove the waiting truck off. It was dawn. This was the very thing Mustapha had said we couldn't do, but we were gambling that it would be the last thing the Hyena expected. Fortunately there had been no provision for radio communication; the Hyena's fear of exposure of his part in the smuggling was greater than his fear of betrayal. A radio message could be overheard.
We did not attempt to talk to the authorities. The Hyena, in his civilian identity without the mask, was highly influential, and we had no direct proof of his involvement in this smuggling scheme. None that would stand up in court, not against the kind of defense the Hyena's money could buy, that included murder of all adverse witnesses. And the mission we contemplated could hardly have been condoned by the officials. Naturally the Hyena would kill Danny the moment the news of Ilunga's and Mustapha's defection hit the press.
We had to destroy him first; then the real evidence would pour into the light of day like pus from massively infected wound just lanced. If we were stopped before we could accomplish this, the law would crucify us, not him.
Still, we had to sleep a few hours. All three of us had been going steadily for too long, and any mistake caused by our fatigue could be fatal.
In due course we drove to Fort Lauderdale until we got to the Tamiami Trail, then entered a small dirt road with a NO TRESPASSING sign. "Forgive us our trespass," Mustapha murmured.
Now it was near dusk. We hid the car in a clump of vegetation and continued on foot. This was not the front entrance, of course; there was little sign that anyone had been this way before. The Hyena himself had a private airplane, Mustapha said.
It was a grueling trek, for the evening was hot, the footing was rough, and we had a lot to carry. But I told myself a daytime approach was best because we could not afford to wait until night, and the Hyena would least expect it. We hoped he had no secret runners to keep him informed. The lengthening shadows would help conceal our approach.
We were in the Everglades, which made for dull scenery. Saw grass, cattails, small clumps of trees, and where there was sufficient elevation, large numbers of birds. I had thought I would be excited, for I had heard of the Everglades many times, but there is only so much swamp one can endure without feeling the monotony, particularly when sweating under a load. I didn't even see an alligator. My intrigue departed like one of the flying herons. Too bad I wasn't a bird-watcher.
At last we came to the outer wall surrounding the estate. It was some ten feet tall with broken glass embedded in the top cement, and electrified wires above that, just as Ilunga had described it. A kind of dry moat was before it; in wet weather this would be brimming with water, I knew, and there would be hungry wildlife in it. But at the moment the Everglades were in drought. Fire was as great a hazard here as flooding.
"This is as far as I know the route," Mustapha said. "I've never actually been inside."
"I have," Ilunga said. "I know the whole layout. And I know how to infiltrate and sabotage this sort of place, because the Man taught me. Taught me well."
I smiled. "He taught us all—different things." But I doubted the Hyena would have shown her all his tricks; he would have saved some, just in case.
We set up the portable trampoline we had hauled so laboriously. It was essential that we scale the wall without touching a wire, and this was the way. We were all athletes, and we had practiced on this sort of thing before. We could get over, but the landing could be tricky. Especially if anyone were keeping really effective watch, or if there were some electric eye beam above the wire. Ilunga said there wasn't, but how could we sure?
"I'll go first," Mustapha said. He stood on the trampoline and bounced. In moments he was rising high-six feet, eight, ten. "Look before you leap," I cautioned him, not intending it as a pun. "If anyone's in sight—"
He bounced in place several times, his head passing well above the top. "All clear!" he said "Ground level, visibility good, turf soft. I'm going over!"
Now he made two much stronger bounces and angled himself forward. He sailed above the wall, clearing it by a good yard, and dropped out of sight. We heard the thud of his landing.
This was the test. We were gambling that the Hyena was overconfident, and had added nothing to the wall's defenses. The man who depends on insufficient protection is more vulnerable than the one who depends on none.
"Sokay!" Mustapha called back, not too loudly. "That last step's a doozy!"
Ilunga went next. Her kung fu training gave her better control, and she cleared the wire
neatly with only inches to spare, and landed almost silently. "Ready," she said.
I threw over our remaining supplies, lofting them high so that the two inside had time to catch them. We didn't want any of this stuff broken. Then I took my turn on the trampoline. As I bounced high I saw the spacious grounds, with a large neat two-story Spanish-style stucco mansion in the background. It had a sort of tower on one side, and red tiles on the roof. There was even a pleasantly winding stream. But I was doing too much sightseeing, and I miscalculated my hurdle. One foot snagged on the topmost wire.
There was no shock, for I was not grounded I maintained my balance and landed cleanly. But somewhere on the premises an alarm bell sounded.
Overconfidence? I was the one who suffered from it! Now we were in trouble, for the trampoline was outside. We could not jump back out.
"Up," the Hyena said.
Danny, logy from his daytime nap, did not react immediately. That was his mistake.
"I expect instant response," the beastman said. "Tie him." Two men entered and tied the bemused Danny by the arms and feet. They carried him outside.
Across the estate they went, and down to the edge of the marsh where the stream spread out into a damp wilderness. There were alligators there, but they had been recently fed and were not interested in the current proceedings.
"Throw him in," the Hyena said.
They threw him in. Danny landed feet-first in the muck and began to sink. Then he realized what it was. He screamed. It was quicksand!
He tried to struggle, but bound as he was, it only got him in deeper. The moist sand and water rose up around his body, sucking him down. "Help!" he cried. But they only watched.
As the quicksand came up around his neck and reached for his mouth and nose, the Hyena made a sign. Then, they threw in a rope and began hauling him out. One man reached forward and cut the rope binding his wrists, so that he could hang on.