Operation Moon Rocket (10 page)

Nick turned, glancing at Joy Sun. Her mouth was shaking. There were violet shadows under her eyes. Fear crawled over her, slimy and ugly. "Are we going to make it?" she gasped.

He watched her, eyes carefully blank. Fear would give him answers that even torture wouldn't. "It doesn't look good," he said.

So far two men had died — the Air Force sergeant and a member of the NASA medical team whose spinal cord had been snapped by the impact with which he'd struck the ceiling. Another man — a pad technician — was strapped into his seat but was critically injured. Nick didn't think he would survive. The astronauts were shaken up but none was seriously hurt. They were used to emergencies, hadn't panicked. Dr. Sun's injury, a scalp wound, was superficial — but her fear wasn't. N3 now took advantage of it. "I want answers to questions," he rasped. "You won't gain anything by not answering. Your pals have double-crossed you, so apparently you're expendable. Who planted the bomb?"

Hysteria was mounting in her eyes. "Bomb? What bomb?" she gasped. "You don't think I had anything to do with this, do you? How could I? Why would I be here?"

"Then what about that pornographic snapshot?" he demanded. "What about your connection with Pat Hammer? You were seen together at the Bali Hai. Don Lee said so."

She shook her head violently. "Don Lee lied," she gasped. "I've been to the Bali Hai only once and not with Hammer. I didn't know him personally. My work never brought me in contact with the Cape Kennedy launch crews." She didn't say anything for a moment, then the words seemed torn from her mouth. "I went to the Bali Hai because Alex Simian sent me a message to meet him there."

"Simian? What's your connection with him?"

"I worked at the GKI Medical Institute in Miami," she panted. "Before I joined NASA." There was another ripping sound, this time of fabric, and the inflated life raft went squeezing through the aperture and vanished with a loud boom. The air screamed through the fuselage now, buffeting them, ripping their hair, deflating their cheeks. She clutched at him. Automatically he put his arm around her. "My God!" she sobbed brokenly. "How much longer before we can land?"

"Talk."

"All right, there was more to it than that!" she said fiercely. "We had an affair. I was in love with him — still am, I suppose. I first met him when I was just a girl. It was in Shanghai, around 1948. He came to visit my father, to interest him in a deal." She was talking fast now, trying to control her mounting panic. "Simian had spent the war years in a POW camp in the Philippines. After the war he'd gone into the ramie-fiber business there. He learned that the Communists were about to take over China. He knew that this would create a shortage of the fiber. My father had a warehouse full of ramie in Shanghai. Simian wanted to buy it. My father agreed. Later my father and he became partners and I saw a lot of him."

Her eyes glinted white with fear as another section of fuselage wrenched loose. "I had a crush on him. A schoolgirl kind of thing. I was heartbroken when he married an American woman in Manila. That was in 'fifty-three. Later I found out why he did it. He'd been involved in a number of swindles and the men he'd ruined were after him. Marrying this woman enabled him to emigrate to the U.S., to take out citizenship. As soon as he had his first papers, he divorced her."

Nick knew the rest of the story. It was a part of U.S. business legend. Simian had invested in the stock market, had made a killing, had proceeded to take over a number of failing firms. He'd pumped life into them, then had sold them at fantastically inflated prices. "He's brilliant but absolutely ruthless," Joy Sun said, her eyes staring past Nick at the widening aperture. "After he gave me a job at GKI we had an affair. It was inevitable. But after a year he grew bored and broke it off." She buried her face in her hands. "He didn't come to me and say it was over,' she whispered. "He had me fired and in the process did his best to ruin my reputation." She shook her head at the memory of it. "Still I couldn't get him out of my system and when I received that message from him — it was about two months ago — I went to the Bali Hai."

"He called you directly?"

"No, he always works through intermediaries. This time it was a man called Johnny Hung Fat. Johnny had been involved in a couple of financial scandals with him. He was ruined by it. He ended up as a waiter at the Bali Hai. It was Johnny who told me Alex wanted to meet me there. Simian never showed, though, and I got steadily drunker. Finally Johnny brought this man over. He's the manager of the discotheque there..."

"Reno Tree?"

She nodded. "He made a pass at me. My pride was hurt and I was drunk and I think they must have put something in my drink, because the next thing I knew we were on the couch in the office and... I couldn't get enough of him." She shivered slightly and turned away. "I never knew they'd taken pictures of us. It was dark. I don't see how..."

"Infrared film."

"I suppose Johnny was planning to shake me down later. At any rate I don't think Alex had anything to do with it. Johnny must have just used his name as a come-on..."

Nick decided the hell with that, if he was going to die he at least wanted to watch. The ground came rising up to meet them. Emergency vehicles, ambulances, men in aluminum fire suits went fanning past, already in motion. He felt a gentle thud as the plane touched down. Minutes later they rolled to an even gentler stop and the passengers spilled joyously down the emergency chutes to the solid, blessed earth...

They remained at Barksdale for seven hours while a team of Air Force doctors checked them over, distributed medicines and first aid to those who needed it, and hospitalized two of the more serious cases.

At 5:00 p.m., an Air Force Globemaster arrived from Patrick AFB and they boarded it for the final leg of their journey. An hour later they landed at McCoy Field in Orlando, Florida.

The place was crawling with FBI and NASA Security people. White-helmeted MP's herded them toward the restricted military area of the field where Army scout cars were waiting. "Where are we headed?" Nick asked.

"A lot of NASA brass flew down from Washington," one of the MP's replied. "Looks like it's going to be an all-night Q-&-A session."

Nick tugged at Joy Sun's sleeve. They were near the tail end of the miniature parade and gradually, step by step, they dropped farther back into the darkness. "Come on," he said suddenly. "This way." They dodged behind a petroleum truck, then doubled back toward the civilian area of the field and the taxi ramp he'd sighted earlier. "First thing we need is a drink," he said.

Any answers he had he was going to funnel straight to Hawk, not to the FBI, not to the CIA, and — above all — not to NASA Security.

In the cocktail lounge of the Cherry Plaza, overlooking Lake Eola, he and Joy Sun talked. They'd been doing a lot of talking — the kind of talking people do who've been through a devastating experience together. "Look, I've been wrong about you," Nick said. "It breaks every tooth in my head to admit it, but what else can I say? I had you pegged as the adversary."

"And now?"

He grinned. "I think you're a big, juicy red herring that someone tossed in my path."

She threw her bead back to laugh — and the color suddenly drained from her face. Nick glanced up. It was the cocktail lounge's ceiling. It was mirrored. "My God!" she gasped. "That's just how it was in the plane — upside down. It's like seeing it all over again." She began to shake, and Nick put his arm around her. "Please," she murmured, "take me home." He nodded. They both knew what would happen there.

Home was a bungalow in Cocoa Beach.

They got there by cab from Orlando and Nick didn't care that their journey would be easy to trace.

So far he had a reasonably good cover story. He and Joy Sun had been talking in low voices on the plane, walking hand in hand at McCoy Field — things incipient lovers were expected to do. Now, after a draining emotional experience, they had sneaked off to be by themselves a while. Not exactly what was expected of a true-blue astronaut perhaps but at any rate not actionable. Not immediately, anyway. He had until morning — and that would be time enough.

Until then McAlester would have to cover for him.

The bungalow was a squared-off block of stucco and cinder right on the beach. A small living room ran the entire width of it. It was pleasantly furnished with bamboo beach chairs upholstered in foam rubber. Palm leaf matting covered the floor. There were broad windows facing the Atlantic, to the right of them a door that led to a bedroom and, beyond that, another door leading out onto the beach.

"Everything's a mess," she said. "I left so suddenly for Houston after the accident that I didn't have a chance to clean up."

She bolted the door behind her and stood against it, watching him. Her face was no longer a cold and beautiful mask. The broad, high cheekbones were still there, the finely sculptured hollows. But her eyes flickered from the aftermath of shock and her voice had lost its cool certainty. For the first time she looked like a woman instead of a mechanical goddess.

Desire began to build up inside Nick. He moved to her quickly, gathering her into his arms, kissing her hard on the lips. They were firm and cold but the warmth of her struggling breasts shot through him like a current. The heat grew. He could feel a pulse beating in his thighs. He kissed her again, his mouth hard and brutal against hers. He heard a smothered "No!" She tore her lips away from his and pushed against him with her clenched fists. "Your face!"

For a second he didn't know what she meant. "Eglund," she said. "I'm kissing a mask." She shot him a shaky smile. "Do you realize that I've seen your body, but never the face that goes with it?"

"I'll go peel Eglund off." He headed toward the bathroom. It was time the astronaut was retired anyway. The interior of Poindexter's masterpiece had turned soggy in the heat. The silicone-emulsion had begun to itch intolerably. Besides, his cover value was at an end now, too. Events on the plane from Houston suggested that "Eglund's" presence was actually a danger to the other Moon Project astronauts. He took his shirt off, wrapped a towel around his neck, then carefully peeled away the pliable plastic hair mask. He fished the foam padding out from inside his cheeks, pulled the blond eyebrows off and rubbed his face vigorously, smudging and smearing the leftover makeup. Then he leaned over the sink and popped the hazel-pupiled contact lenses out of his eye sockets. He glanced up to see Joy Sun's reflection in the mirror, watching him from the doorway.

"A definite improvement," she smiled, and in the reflection of her face the eyes moved, traveling the length of his metal-smooth torso. All the muscular grace of a panther was packed into that magnificent frame and her eyes missed none of it.

He turned to face her, wiping the last of the silicone from his features. The steel-gray eyes that could smolder somberly or turn icy bright with cruelty were lit with laughter. "Do I pass the physical, Doc?"

"So many scars," she said in wonderment. "Knife. Bullet wound. Razor slash." She ticked the descriptions off as her ringer traced their jagged courses. His muscles contracted at her touch. He took a deep breath, feeling the tension knot below his stomach.

"Appendectomy, gall bladder operation," he said tightly. "Don't romanticize."

"I'm a doctor, remember? Don't try to kid me." She glanced up at him, eyes bright. "You never answered my question. Are you some kind of super-secret agent?"

He pulled her to him, propping her chin up with his hand. "You mean they didn't tell you?" he grinned. "I'm from the planet Krypton." He touched the wetness of her lips with his — softly at first, then harder. There was a nervous tautness in her body that resisted for a second, but then she softened and with a small whimper her eyes closed and her mouth became a hungry little animal searching for his, hot and wet, the tip of her tongue probing for satisfaction. He felt her fingers undoing his belt. The blood pumped within him. Desire grew like a tree. Her hands moved, trembling, over his body. She took her mouth away, buried her head against his neck a second, then drew back. "Wow!" she said shakily.

"Bedroom," he grunted, need exploding in him like a gun.

"Oh God, yes, I think you're the one I've been waiting for." Her breath came in heaving gulps. "After Simian... then that business at the Bali Hai... I was off men. I thought for good. But you could be different. I see that now. Oh lovely, dammit," she shuddered as he drew her to him, thigh to thigh, breast to breast, and in the same movement ripped open her blouse. She wore no bra — he'd known that from the way the ripe cones had moved beneath the material. Her nipples were firm points against his chest. She writhed against him, her hands exploring his body, her mouth glued to his, her tongue a darting, fleshy sword.

Without breaking contact, he half lifted, half carried her across the hall and over the palm leaf matting to the bed.

He laid her down on it and she nodded, beyond speech, as his hands moved about her body, unzipping her skirt, smoothing her thighs. He leaned over her, kissing her breasts, his lips crushing into their softness. She moaned softly and he felt her warmth spread open beneath him.

Then he wasn't thinking any more, just feeling, bursting out of the nightmare world of treachery and sudden death that was his natural habitat and into a bright, sensual flow of time that was like a great river, concentrating on the feel of the girl's perfect body, floating on the ever-quickening tempo until they hit the rapids and her hands caressed him with a growing urgency, and her fingers dug into him and her mouth melted against his in final supplication and their bodies tensed and arched and flowed together, thighs straining deliciously and mouths blending, and she sighed a long, shuddering, happy sigh and let her head fall back against the pillows as she felt the sudden quiver of him at the springing of his seed...