Operation Moon Rocket (11 page)

They lay for a while in silence, her hands moving rhythmically, hypnotically over his skin. Nick drifted toward the edge of sleep. Then, because he had stopped thinking about it for the last few minutes, it suddenly came to him. The sensation was almost physical: bright light flooded into his head. He had it! The missing key!

At the same instant, terrifyingly loud in the stillness, came a hammering sound. He threw himself away from her but she came up with him, entangling him in soft and caressing curves, unwilling to relinquish him. She wound her curves about him so that even in this sudden crisis he came close to forgetting his peril.

"Anybody in there?" a voice shouted.

Nick broke free and darted to a window. He drew the Venetian blinds aside a fraction of an inch. An unmarked patrol car with a whip antenna was parked out front. Two figures wearing white crash helmets and riding breeches were shining their flashlights through the living room window. Nick gestured to the girl, directing her to throw something on and to answer the door.

She did, and he stood with his ear against the bedroom door, listening. "Howdy, Ma'am, we didn't know you were home," a male voice said. "Just checking. The outside light was off. Last four nights it's been on." A second male voice said, "You're Dr. Sun, aren't you?" He heard Joy say that she was. "You just got in from Houston, is that right?" She said it was. "Everything okay? Nothing disturbed in the house while you were away?" She said everything was as it should be and the first male voice said, "Okay, we just wanted to make sure. After some of the things that have happened around here you can't be too careful. If you need us fast, just dial zero three times. We're on a direct hookup now."

"Thank you, officers. Good night." He heard the front door close. "More of those GKI police," she said as she came back into the bedroom. "They seem to be every place." She stopped in her tracks. "You're going," she said accusingly.

"Have to," he said, buttoning his shirt. "And what's worse, I'm going to add insult to injury by asking if I can borrow your car."

"That part I like," she smiled. "It means you'll have to bring it back. First thing in the morning, too, please. I mean that..." She suddenly stopped, a stricken look on her face. "My God, I don't even know your name!"

"Nick Carter."

She laughed. "Not very imaginative, but I suppose in your business one phony name is as good as another..."

All ten lines at the NASA Administration Center were busy and he began redialing the numbers without stopping so that the moment a call ended he'd get his chance.

A single image kept flashing through his mind — Major Sollitz, chasing his hat, his left hand reaching awkwardly
across
his body for it, his right arm held rigidly against his torso. Something had bothered him about that scene out at the Texas City plant yesterday afternoon, but what it was kept eluding him — until he'd stopped thinking about it for a moment. Then it had quietly surfaced into his consciousness.

Sollitz had been
right-handed
yesterday morning!

His mind raced along the complicated ramifications spreading in all directions from this discovery as his fingers automatically dialed and his ear listened for the ringing sound of a cleared connection.

He sat on the edge of the bed in his room at the Gemini Inn, hardly noticing the neat stack of suitcases that Hank Peterson had delivered from Washington, or the keys to the Lamborghini on the night stand, or the note under them that read,
Let me know when you get in. The extension is L-32. Hank.

Sollitz was the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. Take him into account and everything else fell neatly into place. Nick remembered the Major's shock when he'd first come walking into his office and quietly he cursed himself. That should have been the tip-off. But he'd been too blinded by the sun — Dr. Sun — to notice anyone else's behavior.

Joy Sun had been surprised, too, but it was she who'd first diagnosed Eglund's condition as Amine poisoning. So her surprise was natural. She simply hadn't expected to see him back so soon.

A line cleared at the Administration Center.

"Red Room," he told them in Glenn Eglund's Kansas drawl. "This is Eagle Four. Give me the Red Room."

The wire hummed and twanged and a man's voice came on. "Security," he said. "Captain Leasor speaking."

"This is Eagle Four, top priority. Is Major Sollitz there?"

"Eagle Four, they've been looking for you. You missed the debriefing at McCoy. Where are you now?"

"Never mind that," said Nick impatiently. "Is Sollitz there?"

"No. He's not."

"Well find him. This is top priority."

"Hold on. I'll check."

Who, besides Sollitz, would have known about Phoenix One? Who, besides the Apollo Security Chief, could have had the run of the Medical Research Section of the Spacecraft Center? Who else knew every phase of the medical program, had an intimate knowledge of its dangers, could be seen anywhere without raising suspicion? Who else had the run of both the Houston and Cape Kennedy facilities?

Sollitz, N3 was now convinced, was the
Sol
who met with Pat Hammer at the Bali Hai in Palm Beach and plotted the destruction of the Apollo capsule. Sollitz tried to kill Glenn Eglund when the astronaut found out what the Major was up to. Sollitz
hadn't
been told, however, about Nick's masquerade. Only General McAlester knew about that. So when "Eglund" turned up again, Sollitz had panicked. It was he who had tried to kill him on the moonscape. The giveaway was the right- to left-hand switch, the result of the broken wrist he'd sustained in the struggle over the knife.

Now Nick understood the point of all those questions about his memory. And Eglund's reply that "bits and pieces" were slowly coming back had further panicked the Major. So he'd planted a bomb on a "stand-by" plane, then had manufactured a phony bomb scare enabling him to substitute the alternate aircraft for the original one without having it first checked out by a demolition team.

A crisp voice came on the wire. "Eagle Four, this is General McAlester. Where in hell did you and Dr. Sun disappear to after your plane landed at McCoy? You left a whole gaggle of top security brass cooling their heels there."

"General, I'll explain everything to you in a minute, but first — where's Major Sollitz? It's of the utmost importance that we find him."

"I don't know," said McAlester flatly. "And no one else seems to, either. He arrived at McCoy on the second plane. We know that much. But he disappeared somewhere in the air terminal and hasn't turned up since. Why?"

Nick asked if their conversation was being scrambled. It was. So he told him. "My God," was all the NASA Security Chief could say at the end of it.

"Sollitz isn't the boss," Nick added. "He's been doing the dirty work for someone else. The USSR maybe. Peking. At this point it's anyone's guess."

"But how in hell did he get security clearance? How did he manage to rise as far as he did?"

"I don't know," said Nick. "I hope his records will give us a clue. I'm going to have Peterson radio AXE with a full report and also request an exhaustive background check on Sollitz as well as on Alex Simian of GKI. I want to double check on what Joy Sun told me about him."

"I've just been speaking to Hawk," said McAlester. "He told me Glenn Eglund has finally recovered consciousness at Walter Reed. They hope to question him soon."

"Speaking of Eglund," said Nick. "Could you arrange for the phony one to suffer a relapse? With the Phoenix countdown under way and the astronauts tied to their stations, his cover is turning into a handicap. I've got to be free to move around."

"It can be arranged," said McAlester. He sounded happy about it. "It'll explain why you and Dr. Sun wandered off. Amnesia from hitting your head in the plane. And she went after you to try to bring you back."

Nick said that was fine and hung up. He fell across the bed. He was too tired to even get undressed. He was glad everything was working out so neatly for McAlester. He wished something convenient would happen along his way for a change. It did. He fell asleep.

He was awakened an instant later by the phone. At least it seemed an instant, but it couldn't have been because it was light out. Groggily he reached for the receiver. "Hello?"

"Finally!" exclaimed Candy Sweet. "Where have you been for the last three days? I've been trying to get you."

"Called away," he said vaguely. "What's up?"

"I've found something terrifically important out on Merritt Island," she said excitedly. "Meet me in the lobby in half an hour."

The early morning fog had begun to burn off. Ragged blue holes opened and closed in the grayness. Through them Nick caught brief glimpses of orange grove plantings swinging past like the spokes in a wheel.

Candy was driving. She had insisted that they take her car — a sporty GT model Giulia. She had also insisted that he wait and actually
see
her discovery. She couldn't — she said — tell him about it.

Still playing it like a little girl, he decided sourly. He glanced over at her. The hip-huggers had been replaced by a white miniskirt which, together with her midriff blouse and white tennis shoes and her fresh-scrubbed blonde prettiness, gave her the look of a high school cheerleader.

She felt him watching her and turned. "Not much farther," she smiled. "It's just north of the Dummitt Grove."

The Space Center's moon port occupied only a small part of Merritt Island. More than seventy thousand acres had been leased back to the farmers who had originally owned the orange groves. The road north from the Bennett Causeway ran through a wilderness of swamp and scrub woods broken up by the Indian River, Seedless Enterprise and Dummitt Groves, all of them dating back to the 1830's.

The road curved now around a small inlet and they passed a bunch of tumbledown shacks on stilts at the water's edge, a combination gas station-grocery store, and a small boatyard with a fishing dock lined with shrimp trawlers. "Enterprise," she said. "It's directly across from Port Canaveral. We're almost there."

They went another quarter of a mile and Candy put on the right-turn indicator and began to slow up. She pulled the car off onto the shoulder of the road and came to a stop. She turned to look at him. "We're here." She picked up her purse and opened the door on her side,

Nick got out on his and stood there, looking around. They were in the middle of an open, desolate area. A wide vista of salt-water fiats stretched away to the Banana River on their right. Northward the flats turned to swamp. The thickly matted growth crowded right to the water's edge. Three hundred yards to their left, the electrified fence of MILA (the moon port's Merritt Island Launching Area) began. Through the scrub woods he could make out the Phoenix One's concrete launching pad atop a gentle slope and, four miles beyond it, the bright orange girders and open-work platforms of the 56-story Vehicular Assembly Building.

A distant helicopter droned somewhere behind them. Nick turned, shading his eyes. He saw the
flash-flash-flash
of its rotor in the morning sun over Port Canaveral.

"This way," said Candy. She crossed the highway and headed into the brush. Nick followed. The heat inside the canebrake was suffocating. Mosquitoes rose in swarms, tormenting them. The girl ignored them. Her tough, stubborn side was showing once again. They came to a drainage ditch that debouched into a wide channel which had apparently been used at one time as a canal. The ditch was choked with weeds and underwater grasses and it narrowed where the embankment had washed into the water.

She dropped her purse and kicked off her tennis shoes. "I'm going to need both hands," she said and clambered down the slope into the knee-deep muck. She moved forward now, bent over, her hands searching for something in the muddy water.

Nick watched her from the top of the embankment. He shook his head. "What in hell are you looking for?" he grinned. The helicopter's clatter had gotten louder. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. It was headed in their direction, some three hundred feet above the ground, the light glinting on its whirling rotor blades.

"I've found it!" Candy shouted. He turned. She had moved about a hundred feet along the drainage ditch and was bent over, tugging at an object in the mud. He started toward her. The chopper sounded as if it was almost directly overhead now. He glanced up. The rotor blades had tilted, increasing its rate of descent. He could make out the white lettering on its red underside — SHARP'S FLYING SERVICE. It was one of the six helicopters that flew on half-hour schedules from the Cocoa Beach Amusement Pier to Port Canaveral, then followed the perimeter of the MILA fence, allowing tourists to snap photographs of the VAB building and launching platforms.

Whatever Candy had found, she now had it half out of the mud. "Get my purse, will you?" she called out. "I left it back there a little way. I need something in it."

The helicopter had banked away sharply. It now came circling back, no more than a hundred feet above the ground, the wind from its whirling blades flattening the scrubby bushes along the embankment. Nick found the purse. He leaned over, picked it up. The sudden silence brought his head up with a jerk. The chopper's motor had switched off. It came gliding in over the tops of the cane stalks, heading directly toward him!

He spun to his left and dived head first into the ditch. There was a gigantic, rumbling roar behind him. Heat rippled the air like watered silk. A jagged ball of flame billowed upwards, followed immediately by clouds of blackish, carbon-laden smoke that blotted out the sun.

Nick clambered back up the embankment and ran toward the wreckage. He could see the figure of a man inside the flaming Perspex canopy. His head was wrenched around, facing him. As Nick approached, he could make out his features. He was Chinese and the expression on his face was something out of a nightmare. There was a smell of roasting flesh and Nick saw that the lower half of his body was already in flames. He saw, also, why the man wasn't trying to get out. He was bound hand and foot to the seat with wires.