Operation Moon Rocket (12 page)

"Help me!" the man screamed. "Get me out of here!"

Nick's skin momentarily crawled.
The voice belonged to Major Sollitz!

There was a second explosion. Nick was sent tumbling backwards by the heat. He hoped the alternate gas tank had killed Sollitz when it blew. He believed that it had. The helicopter burned to a shell, the glass fiber buckling and splitting in a machine-gun rattle of hot, exploding rivets. The flames melted the Lastotex mask and the Chinese face sagged, then began to run, revealing Major Sollitz's own features for a brief second before they, too, melted away and were replaced by a charred skull.

Candy stood a few feet away, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. "What happened?" she said, her voice shaking. "It looked like he aimed directly at you."

Nick shook his head. "On automatic pilot," he said. "He was just in there as a sacrificial offering." And the Chinese mask, he thought to himself — still another false clue in case Nick survived. He turned to her. "Let's take a look at what you found."

Wordlessly she led him along the embankment to where an oilcloth package lay. "You'll need a knife," she said. She glanced back at the burning wreckage and he saw a shadow of fear in her wide-set blue eyes. "There's one in my purse."

"Won't need it." He grasped the oilcloth in both hands and pulled. It parted like wet paper in his grip. He had a knife with him, a stiletto named Hugo, but it remained sheathed inches above his right wrist, awaiting more important tasks. "How'd you happen to come across this?" he asked.

The package contained a short-range AN/PRC-6 two-way radio set and a pair of powerful field glasses — 8 × 60 AO Jupiters. "It was sticking half out of the water the other day," she said. "Look." She took the field glasses and focused them on the launching platform, which was barely visible to him. He looked through them. The powerful lenses brought the gantry so close he could see the lips of the pad crew moving as they talked to each other over their headsets. "The radio has fifty channels," she said, "and a range of about one mile. So whoever was here had confederates nearby. I think that..."

But he was no longer listening. Confederates... radio. Why hadn't he thought of that sooner? The automatic pilot by itself couldn't have brought the chopper so unerringly toward its target. It had to operate like a drone plane. Which meant it had to be directed electronically, attracted by something they were wearing. Or carrying... "Your purse!" he said, suddenly. "Come on!"

The copter's motor had shut off as he'd lifted the purse. It had still been in his hand when he'd dived into the drainage ditch. He scrambled down the embankment and felt around in the muddy water for it. It took him about a minute to locate it. He brought the purse up dripping and opened it. There, beneath lipstick, tissues, a pair of dark glasses, a package of chewing gum and a penknife, he found a twenty-ounce Talar transmitter.

It was the type used to land small planes and helicopters in zero visibility. The transmitter sent a rotating microwave beam that was registered on panel instruments connected to the automatic pilot. In this case, the landing point happened to be on top of Nick Carter. Candy stared at the tiny device in his palm. "But... what is it?" she said. "How did it get in there?"

"You tell me. Has the purse been out of your sight today?"

"No," she said. "At least I... Wait a minute, yes!" she suddenly exclaimed. "When I phoned you this morning ... it was from a booth, in Enterprise. That grocery store we passed on the way out here. I left the purse on the counter there. When I came out of the booth, I noticed it had been moved to one side by the clerk. I didn't think anything about it at the time..."

"Come on."

This time he drove. "The pilot was tied hand and foot," he said as he sent the Giulia hurtling along the highway. "So someone else had to get that chopper off the ground. That means there was a third transmitter setup. Probably in Enterprise. Let's hope we get there before they disassemble it. My friend Hugo has questions he wants to ask."

Peterson had brought N3's protective devices with him from Washington. They'd been waiting for Nick in a false-bottom suitcase at the Gemini Inn. Hugo, the stiletto, was now up his sleeve. Wilhelmina, the stripped-down Luger, hung in a snug holster at his waist, and Pierre, the lethal gas pellet, nestled with several of his nearest relatives in a waistband pocket. AXE's top operative was dressed to kill.

The gas station-grocery store was closed. There was no sign of life inside. Nor anywhere else in Enterprise, for that matter. Nick glanced at his watch. It was only ten o'clock. "Not very enterprising," he said.

Candy shrugged. "I don't get it. They were open when I was here at eight." Nick walked around to the side of the building, feeling the weight of the sun on him, sweating. He sauntered past a fruit processing shed and some oil storage tanks. Upturned boats and drying nets lay along the edge of the dirt road. The ramshackle waterfront was quiet, stifled under the pall of humid heat.

Suddenly he stopped, listened, then moved quickly into the shadowed overhang of an upturned hull, Wilhelmina in hand. The footsteps were approaching at a right angle. They reached their loudest point, then began to recede. Nick peered out. Two men were moving between the boats, carrying a heavy piece of electronic equipment. They moved out of his field of vision and a moment later he heard a car door open, then slam shut. He started out from under the boat, then froze...

They were returning. Nick melted back into the shadows. This time he got a good look at them. The one in the lead was short, thin, with a hollow, hard-eyed face that spelled hood. The shambling giant behind him had gray hair cropped short to the shape of his bullet head and a sunburned face dusted over with pale freckles.

Dexter. Pat Hammer's next-door neighbor — who'd said he worked for the Electronic Guidance Division of Connelly Aviation.

Electronic Guidance. The drone-like helicopter. The piece of equipment the two of them had just delivered to the car. It added up.

N3 gave them a good head start, then followed, careful to keep objects between them. The two men went down a flight of steps and out along a small weatherbeaten wooden jetty that reached some twenty yards on barnacled piles into the bay. A single boat was moored to the end of it. A wide-beamed, diesel-powered shrimp trawler.
Cracker Boy, Enterprise, Fla.,
the black lettering on its stern proclaimed. The two men climbed aboard, opened a hatch and disappeared below deck.

Nick turned. Candy was a few yards behind him. "Better wait here," he warned her. "There may be fireworks."

He raced out along the jetty, hoping to reach the wheelhouse before they came back on deck. But this time his luck wasn't running. As he swung over the taffrail, Dexter's bulky shape filled the hatchway. The big man stopped in his tracks. He had a complicated electronic component in his hands. His mouth dropped open. "Hey, I know you..." He glanced over his shoulder, then started toward Nick. "Listen, buddy, they made me do it," he rasped hoarsely. "They got my wife and kids..."

Something roared, driving into Dexter with pile-driver force, spinning him completely around and throwing him halfway across the deck. He finished on his knees, the component crashing off to one side, his eyes all whites, his hands clasping his guts, trying to keep them from spilling out on the deck. Blood welled through his fingers. He folded slowly forward with a sigh.

There was another burst of orange from inside the hatchway, a chopping noise and the hollow-faced man came charging up the steps, slugs spurting wildly in all directions from the machine pistol in his hand. Wilhelmina was already out and Killmaster pumped two carefully placed bullets at him with an action so swift that the double crash sounded like a single prolonged roar. For a moment, Hollow Face stood upright, then, like a straw man, he crumpled and fell awkwardly, his legs turning to rubber beneath him.

N3 kicked the machine pistol away from his hand and knelt beside Dexter. Blood was flowing out of the big man's mouth. It was light pink and very frothy. His lips worked frantically, trying to form words. "...Miami... goin' to blow it up..." he gurgled indistinctly. "...kill everybody... I know... I worked on it... stop them... before... too late..." The eyes rolled back to their more important work. The face went slack.

Nick straightened up. "Okay, let's talk about that," he said to Hollow Face. His voice was calm, amiable, but the gray eyes were green, a deep sea green, and for a moment a shark swirled in their depths. Hugo came out of its hiding place. Its vicious, ice-pick blade clicked open.

Killmaster turned the gunman over with his foot, then squatted beside him. Hugo slashed down the front of his shirt, not being too careful about the bony, sallow flesh beneath. Hollow Face flinched. His eyes went wet with pain. Hugo found a place at the base of the man's bare neck and stroked it lightly. "Now," Nick smiled. "Name, please."

The man pressed his lips together. His eyes closed. Hugo bit into the knotted neck. "Aggh!" The sound forced itself out of his throat and his shoulders bunched. "Eddie Byloff," he croaked.

"Where are you from, Eddie?"

"Vegas."

"I thought you looked familiar. You're one of the Sierra Inn boys, aren't you?" Byloff closed his eyes again. Hugo cut a slow, neat zigzag down his belly. The tiny slits and pinpricks started to ooze blood. Byloff made noises that weren't quite human. "Aren't you, Eddie?" His head jerked up and down spasmodically. "Tell me, Eddie, what are you doing here in Florida? And what did Dexter mean about blowing up Miami? Talk, Eddie — or die slowly." Hugo edged its way beneath a skin flap and started exploring.

Byloff's tortured body writhed. Blood bubbled up, mixing with the sweat that sprang from every pore. His eyes burst open. "Ask her," he gasped, staring past Nick. "She's the one that set it up..."

Nick turned. Candy stood just behind him, smiling. Smoothly, gracefully, she raised her white miniskirt. She was naked underneath it except for the wafer-flat .22 that was holstered to the inside of her thigh.

"Sorry about this, chief," she smiled. The gun was in her hand now and pointed at him. Slowly her finger tightened around the trigger...

She pressed the gun against her side to cushion the recoil. "You can close your eyes if you want," she smiled.

It was an Astra Cub, a twelve-ounce miniature with a three-inch barrel, potent at short range, and by far the flattest gun N3 had ever seen. "You pulled a shrewdy when you went to Houston masquerading as Eglund," she said. "Sollitz wasn't prepared for that. Neither was I. So I wasn't able to warn him that you weren't really Eglund. The result was he panicked and planted that bomb. With that his usefulness came to an end. Now your career, Nicholas dear, must also end. You've come too far, found out too much..."

He saw her finger starting to squeeze the trigger. In the split second before the firing pin struck the cartridge, he flung himself back-wards. It was an instinctive animal process — to move away from the shot, to present as small a target as possible. Sharp pain seared his left shoulder as he went tumbling over the side. But he knew he'd been successful. The pain was localized — sign of a minor flesh wound.

He took a great heaving lungful of breath as the water closed over him.

It was warm and smelled of rotting things, of vegetable scum and raw petroleum and mud that gave off foul, gaseous bubbles. As he sank slowly through it he felt an inner rage at being so easily duped by the girl.
Get my purse,
she'd told him as the helicopter had come zeroing in on target. And that phony oilcloth package — which she had buried herself only a few hours earlier. It was like all the other phony clues she'd planted, then led him to — first at the Bali Hai, then at Pat Hammer's bungalow.

It bad been a sensitive, elegant plan, pivoted on a razor's edge. She had dovetailed every part of her mission with his own, assembling a setup in which N3 took his place as obediently as if he were under her direct orders. Rage was useless but he let it sweep over him anyway, knowing that it would clear the way for the cold, calculating brainwork to come.

A heavy object struck the surface above him. He glanced up. It came floating through the murky water, black smoke stringing out of its midsection. Dexter. She had dumped him overboard. A second body hit with a splash. This time Nick saw silvery bubbles as well as black strings of blood. Arms and legs moved feebly. Eddie Byloff was still alive.

Nick snaked up toward him, his chest tight from the strain of holding his breath. He had more questions for the Las Vegas hood. But first he had to get him to a spot where he could answer them. Thanks to Yoga, Nick had another two, perhaps three minutes of air left in his lungs. Byloff would be lucky if he had three seconds' supply left.

Above them a long metallic shape hung in the water. The keel of the
Cracker Boy.
The hull was an indistinct shadow spreading out to both sides above it. An extension of that shadow waited, gun in hand, peering into the water. He didn't dare surface — not even under the jetty. Byloff might cry out and she would be sure to hear it.

Then he remembered the concave space between the hull and the propeller. An air pocket could usually be found there. His arm closed around Byloff's waist. He kicked his way up through the milky turbulence left by the other man's descent until his head bumped gently against the keel.

Cautiously he felt his way along it. When he reached the big copper screw, he seized the edge of it with his free hand and pulled himself upwards. His head broke the surface. He took a deep breath, choking on the foul, oil-stinking air trapped in place above it. Byloff was coughing and spluttering at his side. Nick struggled to keep the other man's mouth above the water line. There was no danger of their being heard. A couple of tons of wood and metal hung between them and the girl on deck. The only danger was that she might decide to start the engine. If that happened, the two of them could be sold by the pound — as ground duck.