Operation Moon Rocket (17 page)

He kissed her, but he said, "Don't be a fool, Candy. Come with us."

"No, it's no good," she smiled brokenly. "I need what Reno's got to give me."

Nick pointed to the cigarette burn on her arm. "That?"

She nodded. "That's the kind of girl I am — the human ashtray. Anyway, I've tried running away before. I always come back. So just hit me good and hard, knock me out. That way I'll have an alibi."

He hit her the way she'd asked to be hit, pulling the punch only slightly. His knuckles cracked on the point of her rigid jaw and she fell, arms flailing, to crash the full length of the office. He walked over and looked down at her. Her face was in repose now, calm like that of a sleeping child, and there was a shadow of a smile around her mouth. She was contented. At last.

The Lamborghini glided silently between the high-rent buildings on North Miami Avenue. It was 4:00 a.m. The major intersections were quiet, with few moving cars and only an occasional pedestrian.

Nick glanced at Joy Sun. She sat deep in the red-leather bucket seat, her head back on the folded tonneau, eyes closed. The wind made persistent little snatches at her ebony-black hair. She had stirred only once on the trip south from Palm Beach — outside Fort Lauderdale — to murmur, "What time is it?"

It would be another two or three hours before she could be relied on to function normally. Until then Nick had to find some place to park her while he reconnoitered the GKI Medical Center.

He turned west on Flagler, passing the Dade County Courthouse, then north on N.W. Seventh toward the string of fleabag motel apartments surrounding the Seaboard Railroad Terminal. A jiffy "convenience" hotel was about the only place where he could hope to get an unconscious girl past the front desk at four in the morning.

He worked the side streets around the Terminal, back and forth, until he found a likely looking one — the Rex Apartments, bedding changed ten times nightly to judge from the couple who came out together but walked off in opposite directions without a backward glance.

Above the hutch marked "Office," a single ragged palm tree leaned against the light. Nick opened the screen door and walked in. "I got my girl outside," he told the sullen-faced Cuban behind the counter. "She's had too much to drink. Okay if she sleeps it off here?"

The Cuban barely glanced up from the girlie magazine he was studying. "You dumpin' her or stayin'?"

"I'll be here," Nick said. It would look less suspicious if he made a show of staying.

"That's twenty." The man extended his hand, palm up. "In advance. And on your way in, stop here. I want to make sure it's no stiff you got with you."

Nick returned with Joy Sun in his arms and this time the desk clerk's eyes swiveled up. They touched the girl's face, then Nick's, and suddenly the pupils were very bright. His breath made a soft hissing sound. He dropped the girlie magazine and stood up, reaching across the counter to squeeze the smooth, soft flesh of her forearm.

Nick slapped his hand away. "Look, but don't touch," he warned.

"I only want to see she's alive," he growled. He tossed the key across the counter. "Two-o-five. Second floor, end of the hall."

The room's bare concrete walls were painted the same unnatural green as the outside of the building. Through a crack in the drawn blind, light slashed at the hollow bed, the threadbare carpet. Nick put Joy Sun down on the bed and went back to the door and locked it. Then he crossed to the window and pulled the blind aside. The room fronted on a short alleyway. The light came from a bulb hanging over a sign on the building opposite that read: REX RESIDENTS ONLY — FREE PARKING.

He slid the window open and leaned out. It was no more than twelve feet to the ground and there were plenty of crevices he could get a toe hold in on the way back. He took a last look at the girl, then swung himself out onto the ledge and dropped silently, catlike, to the concrete below. He landed on his hands and feet, going down to his knees, then getting up again and moving forward, a shadow among other shadows.

Seconds later he was behind the wheel of the Lamborghini, speeding through the shiny gas-station-cluttered glitter of predawn Greater Miami, heading down N.W. Twentieth to Biscayne Boulevard.

The GKI Medical Center was a huge, pretentious glass cliff that reflected the smaller buildings of the downtown business district as though they were trapped inside it. A sprawling free-form sculpture of wrought iron stood out in front. Foot-high letters, stenciled out of solid steel, stretched across the front of the building, spelling out the message: DEDICATED TO THE HEALING ARTS — ALEXANDER SIMIAN, 1966.

Nick sped past it on Biscayne Boulevard, one eye on the building itself, the other on its various entrances. The main one was dark, guarded by two green-uniformed figures. The emergency entrance was on the Twenty-first Street side. It was brilliantly lit and an ambulance was parked out in front. A green-uniformed policeman stood under the steel canopy, talking to its crew.

Nick swung south on N.E. Second Avenue. An ambulance, he thought. That must have been how he'd been brought there from the airport. That was one of the advantages of owning a hospital. It was your own private world, immune to outside interference. You could do just about anything inside a hospital and still have no questions asked. The most terrible tortures could be inflicted in the name of "medical research." Your enemies could be placed in straitjackets and be locked away in the psychiatric ward for their own protection. You could even kill — doctors were always losing patients in the operating theatre. No one thought twice about it.

A black GKI patrol car swung into Nick's driving mirror. He slowed and put on the right-turn indicator. The patrol car overtook him and the crew raked him with a long, hard glance as he turned off into Twentieth Street From the corner of his eye Nick caught a glimpse of their bumper sticker:
Your safety; our business.
He chuckled, and the chuckle turned into a shiver in the damp, predawn air.

There were other advantages to owning a hospital. The Senate Committee had touched on a couple while investigating Simian's affairs. If you watched the tax angles and played things just right, owning a hospital allowed you to extract a maximum amount of cash from an operation with a minimum tax liability. It also provided you with a place where you could meet with top underworld figures in complete privacy. At the same time it provided status and allowed a man like Simian to step up another rung on the ladder of social acceptability.

Nick spent ten minutes in the growing traffic of the downtown business district with both eyes on the mirror, jabbing the Lamborghini heel-and-toe around the corners to shake off any possible tags. Then he circled cautiously back toward the Medical Center and parked at a point on Biscayne Boulevard from which he had a good vantage point of the building's main, emergency and clinic entrances. He rolled up all the windows, slid down in the seat and proceeded to wait.

At ten to six the day shift arrived. A steady flow of hospital workers, nurses and doctors entered the building and, minutes later, the night shift came streaming out, heading for the parking lot and nearby bus stops. At seven a.m. the three GKI guards were changed. But that wasn't what claimed Nick's attention.

Subtly, unmistakably, the presence of another, more dangerous, line of defense had registered itself on N3's delicately tuned sixth sense. Unmarked cars with plainclothes crews had been slowly circling the area. Others were parked in side streets. A third line of defense watched from the windows of nearby buildings. The place was a heavily guarded fortress.

Nick switched on the motor, put the Lamborghini into gear and eased his way out into the first lane of traffic, his eyes on the mirror. A duotone Chevrolet pulled out a dozen cars behind him. Nick began square turns, block after block, playing the lights on amber and using his speed through Bay Front Park. The duotone Chevy disappeared, and Nick made a bee-line for the Rex Hotel.

He glanced at his watch as he stretched his flexible, Yoga-trained body toward the first of the hand-and-toe holds in the alleyway. Seven-thirty. Joy Sun had had five and a half hours to recuperate. A cup of coffee and she should be ready to go to work. To help him find a way into the impregnable Medical Center.

He crouched on the window ledge and peered through a raised slat in the blind. The light was on near the bed, he saw, and the girl was now under the covers. She must have gotten cold, pulled them up over her. He pushed the blind aside and slid into the room. "Joy," he said quietly. "Time to get going. How do you feel?" She was almost invisible under the bedding. Only one hand showed.

He crossed over to the bed. The hand — palm up, fingers clenched — was holding something that looked like a dark red thread. He bent over it, taking a closer look. It was a dribble of dried blood.

Slowly he drew back the covers.

Lying there, very horribly dead, was the face and figure that had so recently clung to him in naked passion, covering his face and body with kisses. In the bed, come out of the predawn darkness, was the body of Candy Sweet.

The lovely wide-set blue eyes bulged now like glass marbles. The tongue that had so eagerly sought out his own protruded through blue, grimacing lips. The trim, full-figured body was smeared over with dried blood and scored by dozens of dark, savage razor slashes.

He felt a taste of acid in the back of his throat. His stomach lurched and heaved. He swallowed, trying to choke back the sickness that welled up in his throat. At moments like this Nick wanted to be out of the game for good, retired, a gentleman farmer in Maryland. But even as he thought it, his mind was moving with computer-like speed. They had Joy Sun now. That meant...

He swung away from the bed. Too late. Johnny Hung Fat and Reno Tree were standing in the open doorway, smiling. Their guns had sausage-shaped silencers on them. "She's waiting for you at the Medical Center," said Hung Fat. "We all are."

Reno Tree's cruel, wolf-shaped mouth said, "You seem to want to get into the Medical Center pretty bad, friend. So here's your chance."

Nick was out in the hall now, being hustled along in their strong, compelling grip. He was still in a state of shock. No strength, no will. The Cuban desk clerk danced along in front of them, saying the same thing over and over. "You tell Bronco how I helped, huh? You tell him please, hokay?"

"Yeah, friend, sure. We'll tell him."

"Funny, isn't it?" Hung Fat said to Nick. "Here we thought we'd lost you for good, thanks to that bitch Candy..."

"Then whataya know?" chuckled Reno Tree on the other side of him. "You check right into a Syndicate hotel, an' with the word already out to report a guy in a Lamborghini with a pretty Chinese doll. Now that's what I call cooperation..."

They were on the sidewalk now. A slow-moving Lincoln sedan came toward them. The chauffeur leaned out, holding up the phone that rested on the car dashboard. "Simian," he said. "He wants to know where the hell you guys are. We're runnin' late."

Nick was hustled into it. It was a seven-seater executive-style transport, flat-sided, massive in black and steel fittings, with leopard-skin seats. A small TV screen nestled above the glass barrier separating the chauffeur from the other occupants. Simian's face loomed out of it "Finally," his voice crackled over the intercom. "It's about time. Welcome aboard, Mr. Carter." Closed-circuit TV. Two-way reception. Pretty smooth. The bald eagle's head turned to Reno Tree. "Come straight here," he snapped. "You're cutting it too close. The count is already at T-minus-two-seventeen." The screen went dark.

Tree leaned forward, switching on the intercom. "The Med Center. Step on it."

The Lincoln pulled smoothly, silently away from the curb, joining the fast moving morning traffic on N.W. Seventh. Nick was cold and deadly calm now. The shock had worn off. The reminder that Phoenix One was due to blast off in only two hours and seventeen minutes brought his nerves to optimum, humming pitch.

He waited until they were turning, then took a deep breath and kicked hard at the front seat, jackknifing himself back out of Hung Fat's gun range as he brought his right hand down in a strong chop on Reno Tree's wrist He felt the bones shatter beneath the impact. The gunman screamed with pain. But he was fast and still deadly. The gun was in his other hand already and covering him once again. "Chloroform, for chrissake," wailed Tree, hugging the injured member against his midsection.

Nick felt a wet cloth slapped across his nose and mouth. He could see Hung Fat hovering above it His face was the size of a house and the features were beginning to swim in a weird way. Nick wanted to hit it but he couldn't move very well. "That was foolish," said Hung Fat. At least Nick thought it was the Chinaman who said it But it might have been Nick himself.

A black tide of panic swept over him.
Why was it dark?

He tried to sit up, but was jerked backwards by a rope knotted tightly around his neck. He could hear his watch ticking on his wrist, but his wrist was tied to something behind his back. He twisted around, trying to see it. It took a few minutes but he finally caught a glimpse of the phosphorescent numbers on the dial. Three minutes past ten.

Morning or night? If morning, there were only seventeen minutes left. If night — it was all over. His head jerked from side to side, trying to find a clue in the infinite starry darkness that surrounded him.

He wasn't outdoors, couldn't be. The air was cool, neutral-smelling. He was in a vast room of some kind. He opened his mouth and shouted at the top of his lungs. His voice rebounded from a dozen corners, breaking up into a confused jumble of echoes. Breathing easier, he looked around once again. Maybe there was daylight beyond this night. What he'd first thought were stars seemed to be the winking lights of hundreds of dials. He was in a control center of some kind...