Ник Картер - The Asian Mantrap

The reception room was empty. It normally is. Very little AXE activity is carried on out in the open. Right after I entered, a familiar voice boomed out over a concealed loudspeaker. “Come right in, Nick. My door’s open.”

My presence had been detected by a body-heat sensitive electronic device hidden in the door frame. Visual identification had been made from the video picture picked up by an unseen TV camera and transmitted to a number of monitor screens strategically placed in several offices.

Hawk reclined in his high-back executive chair, his feet resting on an open bottom desk drawer. For once he wasn’t smoking or chewing on an unlit stub of one of his cheap cigars. The carcasses of four teeth-mangled butts lay soggy-ended in his hubcap-size ashtray. I can always judge Hawk’s mood by the rate his cigar butts accumulate. This wasn’t one of his better days.

“Sit down, Nick,” he invited, awarding me with a slight twist of his lips. That’s the closest hу ever came to generating a smile. He held out a humidor containing cigars. I shook my head. It takes a strong-stomached man to tolerate Hawk’s cheroots, let alone smoke them. I drew out my own pack of private-formula cigarettes.

After we lit up, he let me relax for a minute. That in itself was out of character. Hawk is a restless, dynamic man who seems to need to be constantly in motion. His chronological age, which I guessed to be around sixty, and how he was allowed to carry on his unique operations, are two of the many well-kept AXE secrets. That he exercises tremendous influence at the top levels of government is not. He worked as hard to keep AXE unknown and its select staff invisible as he did to carry out successfully the secret missions assigned to it.

“How’ve you been feeling, Nick, my boy?” Hawk asked finally.

If ever there was an indication that I wasn’t going to feel so good after Hawk told me what he had in mind, that solicitous approach telegraphed the bad news. His friendly, unexpected concern and use of a chummy salutation set off a warning signal within me. Animals and insects get the same intuitive feeling just before a disastrous earthquake takes place. When Hawk lays on the fatherly approach, the job usually turns out to be political and extremely delicate.

“Just fine, sir,” I replied to his question and left it at that. I wondered what was causing Hawk’s reticence. He wasn’t the kind to shy away from a distasteful subject.

“I’ve got something I want you to see,” he said.

A compact film viewer that resembled a portable TV set rested on the credenza opposite Hawk’s broad-topped desk. “Pull your chair around here next to mine,” he instructed. He activated the remote control that switched on the motion picture projector.

The film had no titles. The initial frames showed nothing but roiling, dark gray clouds. The sound, thunderous and constant, enabled me to identify the setting even before the smoke cleared away to reveal a battlefield scene. At first I thought I was watching a training film. A tank in front of the camera was moving down a village street under fire. Burning, shattered buildings lined the road. When the tank shuddered to a halt under the impact of the shaped charge that plowed into its side, I changed my mind. The violent orange explosion ripped off the heavy caterpillar tread. The turret hatch cover and a limp body were blown into the air. These were not special effects; I was seeing an uncensored combat film.

“There’s no commentary on the sound track!” Hawk shouted over the din. “This was taken at the height of the battle of Hue during the first Tet offensive in Vietnam. Now watch for movement on the right side of the screen.”

The cameraman swung his lens to catch a ragged line of hunched soldiers moving forward through the rubble in the street. They were trailing a man who constantly waved an arm to encourage those behind to keep up. “That’s Major Keith Martin out there in front,” Hawk told me.

Martin broke into a scrambling run toward the motionless tank. Puffs of dust caused by aimed automatic fire peppered the ground around his legs. He faltered once, but kept going. “Caught one in the fleshy part of his thigh right there,” Hawk explained. The determined major forged ahead. He reached the lee side of the smoking tank and paused just long enough to give another impatient arm wave to the lagging GIs in his wake. As Martin shelved his weapon on the treads and climbed up the tank’s side, four men in jungle fatigues surged forward. Two fell almost at once. The surviving pair made it to the protection of the tank’s hulk and huddled there.

Above them Martin had disappeared inside the disabled vehicle. Moments later an uncoordinated figure was hoisted up through the hatch. It half-slid, half-fell into the waiting arms of the two men on the ground. The camera lens zoomed in to get a close shot of the bloody, wounded crewman and the grim faces of the two soldiers reaching up with helping hands.

An ear-splitting explosion from the sound track which filled Hawk’s office was followed by complete silence. The camera jiggled just before its lens swept the sky then came to rest. The screen was filled with a blob of unfocused brown color. “Another shell!” Hawk’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Took out the sound man and all of his equipment. The cameraman was slightly wounded. Watch!”

The still-running camera was picked up and trained upon Martin. He was backing down the side of the tank, an unconscious man draped over his shoulder. He deposited the still figure on the ground gently. He then snatched up the M-16 he’d laid on the tank’s useless treads and moved to the nose of the tank. Going down on one knee, he looked ahead. From the way he jerked back as small geysers of dust marked the impact of bullets in front of him, it was clear that the rescue operation was pinned down by an unseen Viet Cong machine gun. Its task was obviously to protect an observation post directing the deadly accurate enemy artillery fire. The next incoming round was due in seconds.

Martin moved. Alone and exposed, he dashed forward. After six long strides, his right arm looped over. A hand grenade sailed out of sight. Hunched over, Martin ran another three steps, then went down. He rolled over twice and lay still. “That one went clean through his lung,” explained Hawk. “But he’s not through yet.” I wouldn’t have known that Martin had been hit a second time because he heaved himself up on his elbows and began firing the M-16 like he was in the prone position on a practice range.

The picture on the screen shook. Another shell had impacted. From the smoke and dust that enveloped Martin lying in the street, I figured he had been blown to bits. But out of the yellowish black cloud Martin plodded — moving slowly, deliberately — driven by something stronger than the pain he must be suffering. He stumbled once more, down onto his knees. Before he dropped completely, another grenade left his hand. Debris from that one showered over Martin now laying flat and unmoving in the street.

A Russian T-47 tank smashed through the one remaining wall of a corner building. It was framed just long enough for me to recognize what it was before the projector screen went blank. “The cameraman cleared out right there, but he had a record of Martin’s heroic act,” explained Hawk. “That’s when he was captured. That bit of film, plus the account given by the men who were with him, earned him the DSC. Both tank crew members recovered, though one’s in a VA hospital to this day. The platoon that Martin commandeered couldn’t give him enough praise. You only saw a half dozen GIs in that action. There were a dozen more back of the camera who were eyewitnesses, too. They helped make Martin the legend he is today.”