Kiai! & Mistress of Death

  I took a deep breath. "Pedro, I have two pieces of news, and you may not like either one."

  "The drug and my wife," he said.

  I didn't try to conceal my dismay. "You know?"

  "Jason, I am a wealthy man. I can afford to know. But I have a confession."

  "You have a confession!"

  "Amalita was never mine. I bought her with my money. I kept her secluded, but I was a cripple, and she was passionate. When you came, it might have been any man, but it was you. At least she had good taste. You at least were honest; you did not know her status. In my anger I misjudged you. For that I am sorry; I apologize."

  "There was another time," I said grimly. "Save your apologies."

  "Let me finish, amigo! After I could walk, I married her, but still she was not mine. The baby—"

  "The baby," I echoed sickly.

  "—was mine. Did you think I would not have that verified? The blood tests exonerated you, Mr. Striker."

  "I'm glad!" I said with feeling. "Still—"

  "Still she was not mine. She wanted your type of body, not mine. Only my wealth she wanted from me. I was shamed; I thought of having her put away."

  That meant death or a mental institution. He wasn't fooling. These Latin magnates played hard ball.

  "But I gave her leeway, still hoping. A caged tigress is no cat at all. Jason, she is a beautiful woman."

  "Yes," I agreed. He, too, looked for more than surface qualities. What he meant was that Amalita was fiery, ruthless and cunning, like himself, and young and pretty. A sleek tigress. The proper internal and external mate for him.

  "You sent her back to me broken in body, wounded in spirit. There is no hate in the world, Jason, like that she feels for you now. When you struck her, you knocked out of her those illusions, all those notions that her type could ever make it with your type. When I strike her, she understands, and it makes no difference. But you—you meant it. You tamed that animal."

  "Not quite," I said bitterly.

  He smiled expansively, and did a little swerve with the plane that made my stomach jump. "Now she is mine. In spirit as well as word. And I thank you. Any other man who beat up my wife, I would kill." He paused. "But just to be sure, I will help you to recover your Chinese girl."

  "Thank you," I said, somewhat inanely. "Amalita said you were sick."

  "So I was," he agreed. "Sick with despair and fury. Over her. She thought I had become impotent, but it was her attitude, not my body, that did it. That is changed now."

  A load was off my conscience. "What do you know about Kill-Thirteen?"

  "No more than you. I have dabbled." He paused delicately. He had more than dabbled; he must have made millions in assorted illicit enterprises, drugs included. "But never in that particular commodity. Because I have not been able to make contact. They will not deal with anyone who is not an addict."

  "Well, my information is that their source is in an old Mayan temple, somewhere in the Honduras jungle."

  "A-ha!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting. "I have connections in that country. Perhaps I shall take over that lucrative trade after all."

  "I wouldn't," I said. "One sniff and you're addicted. You'd be taking a hell of a chance." And I certainly didn't want a commercial genius like him running the demon show.

  He pondered. "A single dose addicts?"

  "So it is reported. And it is gaseous. So someone might pipe it into your room, or just open a cupful in your face. A demon assassin, maybe. They take their cult seriously."

  He nodded. "Then I would be marked. My associates would note my red eyes. Business would suffer. You are right. It is too dangerous to play with. Better to remain with the conventional drugs." He sighed. "All right, Jason—we shall burn their depot."

  "Uh-uh," I said, relieved. "That could pollute the whole neighborhood with addictive smoke. Better to bury it."

  "What is there to addict, there in the jungle? Burning is certain, and it will be far too diffuse to have much effect. Certainly we must burn their fields, and destroy their equipment. And their formula."

  "Yes!" Then I thought of something else. "Amalita—is she at your estate?"

  "I am not so trusting, Jason," he said, laughing. "She would kill you or seduce you, perhaps both, simultaneously. I have hidden her away for the duration, elsewhere."

  That was good to know.

  CHAPTER 12

  PYRAMID

  We rode jeeps along small dirt roads to the Honduras border: Pedro, I, and twenty armed men. We crossed the broad boundary river, the Coco, and proceeded on foot into the prairie and swamp of the Mosquita section of the country. The going was rough, advancing into jungle terrain. Quite a contrast to the dry, pinewoods hills and short grasses of Pedro's region. It reminded me unhappily of Cambodia and my adventures there, before being rescued by the monks. I hoped there were not leeches. But to my grief there were. Plus plenty of black-green giant horseflies with considerable sting, and clouds of jejenes, somewhat like no-see-ems, crawling up the nostrils and other orifices. And at night, mosquitoes. Praise God for Pedro's repellent.

  We had guns but were under orders not to shoot, lest our quarry be alerted. There were wild animals: tapirs, monkeys, deer, snakes of all kinds, a few jaguars. Many multicolored birds: parrots, hummingbirds, vultures, hawks, falcons and ducks and other waterbirds in the rivers. But we stuck to our "C" and "K" rations and our white cheese, salted ham, dried salt codfish and Spanish hard crackers. Even cans of sardines and Vienna sausages. And such wild fruit as we came across, avocados, juicy mangos, guavas, papayas, bananas, plantains, sour oranges, and something called pitayas on vines. We did not go hungry.

  Pedro located a couple of Indian guides, and they questioned the villagers in the vicinity.

  Just like that, success.

  The locals knew about the demon operation; nobody had inquired before. The Indians didn't like the foreigners, who refused to mix or hire or share any profits, and had strange orange eyes, like creatures of hell. The natives were afraid the army would intervene, making the innocent villagers suffer. Such things had happened in the past.

  Yes, the Indians would help us by pointing the way and giving information. Especially since Pedro was reasonably generous with money. They had personal reasons, too. It seemed that a demon had come across an Indian hunting party, and beaten the hell out of them, just for practice or sport. When the Indians gathered in the town to get up their courage to attack the demons, the demons had attacked instead and routed them, killing several. So the Indians hated the demons, but were deathly afraid of them. No, they would not go near the Mayan city itself. That was taboo, and besides, it was well guarded by the demons.

  So the black mistress's information had been valid, and soon we might have word of the real black goddess. Ilunga really had helped me. Yet it made little sense, because if we destroyed the Kill-13 source, Ilunga herself would be deprived. There would be no demon empire for her to scale. So I knew there was a vital missing element, some side to this I had not been shown. We trekked for three days. It was not that we had far to go, it was that progress through the intensifying jungle was slow. We did not even dare chop away obstructing growth, because the sound of the machete could give away our presence. Surprise was of the essence.

  We arrived. The city itself was so overgrown as to be nothing; it would take a team of archaeologists years to expose its secrets. But the temple was a massive structure whose gaunt stone terraces rose right out of the tangle and into the sky. The thing looked as huge as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and there was a certain family resemblance.

  Nearby were fields of growing plants. Poppy bushes with their yellow flowers; slightly larger coca plants, for their harvest of leaves and sap; and, in dark sheds, the sinister mushrooms.

  Our Indian informants had told us there were fifty demons in the city. Few were evident here; no doubt they had exaggerated. Still, we had to be careful. These demons had modern firearms. Anything premature, and they would gun us down w
holesale from the cover of their emplacements.

  We observed the complex from hiding, using powerful binoculars. Apparently they were overconfident and careless, taking inadequate precautions against the possibility of just such a foray as ours. Did they think that cowing the local Indians was all that needed to be done?

  "It has to be within that pyramid, the secret of the drug," Pedro said. "The sheds are merely for storage and packing."

  "That's some edifice," I said. "How did the Maya build all that, without motors or even the wheel?" Rhetorical question. They must have worked hard.

  "Classic period," Pedro murmured, still gazing. "Beautiful."

  "Classic?"

  "The ancient Maya rose to greatness in the south, here," he explained. "They had a calendar more accurate than any other devised by man; they had mathematical knowledge never recovered. For perhaps a thousand years they flourished, then suddenly their cities closed down and they moved out to other places, the Yucatan, Mexico, leaving only these peasant farmers. No one knows why. It is a great mystery, but what structures they left behind!"

  "Maybe Kill-Thirteen wiped out their civilization," I suggested, half facetiously.

  "More likely soil depletion," he said. "More likely yet, rebellions of the lower classes."

  We continued to watch as the afternoon advanced. The temple pyramid was huge, perhaps 150 feet high, formed in great terraces, each layer smaller than the one below. Near the bottom the jungle overgrew the stonework, but it rose above with only slightly-daunted splendor. A massive staircase led up one face of it to the top. There were bare standing columns projecting near the base, evidently the ruins of collapsed palaces.

  We could see the demons going in and out of one of the smaller buildings near the pyramid. Evidently they had renovated it for their purposes, and made it into a barracks. We counted twenty entering as dusk came. Naturally they were not active in the dark, because of their poor night vision, and they would hardly illuminate the area and attract attention to themselves. They deployed two sentinels; then all was silent.

  "Living quarters in the building, laboratory in the pyramid," Pedro said. "Eliminate the building, and the rest will be simple."

  I hoped so, but I didn't trust it. "Suppose Chiyako is in there?"

  "With all those men? Hardly! They'd isolate her, for security."

  "Demons aren't much for sex," I said. "But they would kill her, if—"

  "Very well, we shall look first," he said, humoring me.

  We moved in at night, naturally. We wore nightsight goggles and carried infrared projectors: the demons would not be able to see this light.

  We were not dealing with timid people, and I knew that a mistake could cost Chiyako her life. Still, Pedro's method was uncomfortably direct.

  He crept up on one sentinel, jumped to cover the man's mouth with one hand, and plunged a knife into his kidney region. But I couldn't protest; I had my own sentinel to subdue. I went rapidly into a hadaka-jime, a naked strangle, my forearm around his throat and my shoulder against his head so he could not cry out. I intended to ease up as soon as he was unconscious; he could be tied and gagged.

  But there was a third guard. He rose from the brush silently, a sword gleaming. Clever; he must have been set to watch the sentinels. He was of the conservative demon school, not deigning to use a gun. Therefore especially dangerous.

  I had to act, or I was done. I threw myself to the ground. I still had my strangle on the other demon. His neck snapped instantly. But the advancing sentinel didn't care; he stepped by the body, concentrating on me. I knew he would not miss his thrust. Then a thrown shuriken, a star-shaped blade, caught him in the throat, and he dropped. Pedro had acted, again, with good aim.

  We inspected the building. The demons were grouped about one of their sniff-cups, waiting to renew their fit. It seemed that a tight rein was kept on the drug, even here. A number of them were, by the signs, beginning to suffer from withdrawal pangs. It was all one room inside, without even a bathroom. There was no place to hide a prisoner. Chiyako was not there. "You see?" Pedro whispered. "These are peons. Slaves to the drug. But make no mistake; they will fight like fiends to protect their source."

  I nodded. "They seem to be all here."

  "All except maybe a priest or two. We will never have a better chance."

  "You're right," I said, still not liking it.

  He brought forth a phosphorus grenade, primed it, and flung it in through the window. Then we ran for it as the explosion rocked the old stone building.

  Some few demons emerged through the door; Pedro's men gunned them down mercilessly. Again I felt a qualm, and again I reminded myself of the unjustified killing the demons had done themselves. My karate students...

  "Fire the poppy fields," Pedro ordered. "Burn the warehouses." Two of his men went out with thermite grenades.

  The rest of us closed in on the pyramid. But starlike lights fell from the sky, swinging from little parachutes and giving off brilliant illumination. We were met with a hail of bullets, dropping our men with uncanny accuracy. Pedro and I hit the ground together and scrambled for cover behind a low stone barricade.

  "A .30 caliber machine gun, aircooled," Pedro muttered. "And magnesium flares. I should have known."

  "We pulled a boner, all right," I agreed. We had underestimated the strength of the enemy, and alerted the demons by our first attack.

  We waited, pinned down by that gun. The blaze went up in the fields and warehouse, sending smoke toward us. Another mistake: the fields were upwind from the pyramid, so that we got the odor. And now we were silhouetted against that light, so that the demons could see us even better.

  Pedro's men were battle hardened. I wondered how he had recruited this elite little army. They kept up a steady fire from cover, seeking out the demon troops. But as the smoke passed over them, something happened. They jumped up from their cover, screaming like crazy men. Then they charged up the steps of the pyramid, heaving grenades.

  "The fools!" Pedro cried. "I gave no order!"

  "The smoke!" I said, catching a whiff myself. "It must be dilute Kill-Thirteen. They're intoxicated with it!"

  We put handkerchiefs to our faces as filters. "And the damned demons wouldn't be affected," Pedro said, his voice muffled. "They're already on it. What a blundering idiot I am! You warned me about burning it."

  "There must have been a hell of a lot more drug in the warehouse than we figured," I said.

  Now a new danger developed. Demons on the surrounding roofs of the old city and in the trees, with automatic rifles. They gunned down Pedro's men from the back and sides, leaving the dead sprawled all along the steep steps.

  The wind shifted slightly, bearing the poisonous smoke away, but the damage had been done, compounded by our miscalculations.

  "We eliminated only the field workers," I exclaimed, such a brilliant strategist by hindsight. "There must be just as many soldiers, and now most of ours are gone."

  "Bad situation," Pedro agreed. "But I always come prepared." He led the way with a rapid crawl back to our supplies. He brought forth a kyudo bow.

  Actually, kyudo is not so much a weapon as an art, a philosophy, "The Way of the Bow and Arrow," sometimes called Zen Archery. Practice is similar to that of the Shaolin weapons. The point is not to excel in marksmanship or win contests, but to cultivate proper grace and manner and serenity. Thus kyudo is a way of life, with the archer's ability to become one with all things, reflected by how close his arrow comes to the target.

  I doubted that Pedro possessed the true kyudo spirit. But I kept my mouth shut. Upon occasion, a weapon is used for actual fighting.

  For me he produced a set of metal tiger's claws, shukos, and a kusarigama, the chained sickle. "You know what we have to do now," he said soberly.

  "But my weapon is the nunchaku," I protested. "I'm not too skilled in this."

  "Necessity is an excellent teacher."

  True. I hefted the kusarigama. The sickle was a curved,
sharp blade, with a perpendicular wooden handle, much like the, tool for harvesting, from which it derived. Set in the wood was a metal handhold. The chain was anchored to the corner of the L, and extended for some six feet, terminating in a steel ball about an inch and a half in diameter.

  I had practiced with this weapon at the monastery a little. I was not expert, but I could use it if I had to, and it was a hell of a dangerous device. It was not intended for subduing foes; it was for cutting them to pieces.

  Pedro set himself up behind suitable cover, and took careful aim with his long bow at the nearest rooftop demon. He let fly. Nothing happened.

  "Now I have the range," he said, undismayed. He aimed an other arrow. This time the automatic rifle clattered to the ground. "Silent, effective," Pedro said with satisfaction. "No noise, no flash. They cannot tell where I am. One by one, I shall bring them all down." He was actually enjoying this.

  "But you can't reach the emplacement on top of the pyramid," I said.

  "You know how to climb?"

  "If I don't, I'll soon learn!" I said grimly. I put on the tiger's claws, fitting the metal bands over my hands so that the sharp curved spikes projected from my palms.

  "I will lob some arrows up there, to occupy their attention," he said.

  I did not use the stairs, of course. I crawled to the side of the pyramid and put my hands against the base of the first terrace. I was able to reach its surface; the claws dug into the old stone and anchored me as I swung my legs up. From a distance the individual terraces looked small, but from here each was like a cliff. Now if only no demon were watching this flank. There was a moon, but I was in its shadow. And Pedro was giving the demon snipers reason to look out for themselves. They could not know that only two of us were now making the attack.

  Had they killed Chiyako already, or were they holding her hostage against the unexpected? The latter; I had to believe that. And I was the unexpected.

  Tier by tier, I climbed. Four levels up, the pyramid narrowed, and there was a broad platform. This was even worse, because here the moonlight shone. I had to run through it, gambling that I would not be observed and picked off in that moment. But I made it to the inner wall of the next tier.