Ник Картер - The Liquidator

But rank had nothing to do with the way I met Alex Zenopolis and the operation we pulled off together. Briefly, our Army was being plagued by a heroin ring that was bringing the stuff into Germany and selling it to our troops. Nothing like the way it’s been in Vietnam in recent years, but still serious then. It was discovered that a handful of GIs were the suppliers, and they were getting the horse from a couple of Greek sailors who had connections in Turkey. The point of exchange was Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades.

One of the GIs, a young sergeant, had picked up one of those cushy jobs every soldier dreams of; he piloted a small twin-engined plane that carried VIPs, brass and civilians, to sunny spots in places like the Greek islands and Lebanon. It was a cinch, returning empty to Munich, to set down at a small airfield on Naxos and take on a load of the white stuff. He didn’t have any customs to clear, and a couple of mechanics at his home base were in on the deal; they took the dope away and moved it out among the small-time pushers.

I wasn’t in on the preliminaries; it was mostly a job for the CIC people of the MPs, but when it became clear there were Greek military personnel involved it got a little touchy for the military cops. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a CIC job either; the mission of the Corps is basically to stop any clandestine threat to the Army, but that’s pretty broadly interpreted. Either way, I was tapped for the job of putting the dope smugglers out of commission, and to make sure nobody in any of the governments involved made a big stink about it. Or heard about it, if I could help it.

It was a killing job; I knew it as soon as my briefing was over. And when I met Alex Zenopolis in Beirut, all I had to do was look at him to know he was a good man to have working with me. Alex was a bull of a man, a little taller than my own six feet-one and just about as wide. He was with his country’s Naval Intelligence then, but in a dark civilian suit he looked like a character out of a Humphrey Bogart movie, black hair and mustache, fierce eyes that looked as though they could pin you to the wall and leave you dangling there until he decided to let you go.

“You are Carter,” he said when we met at a noisy cafe. A Sinatra record was playing on a jukebox while an overfed belly dancer tried to compete with the music.

I admitted I was; I could still use my own name in those days.

“Very simple.” His English was good, but he didn’t waste words. “Two of our people meet two Americans at airfield. You and I, we eliminate them.”

“How do we know when the American plane will arrive?”

“There’s a place overlooking the landing site. Set up by us, a goatherder’s shack; he has gone to hospital, poor fellow.” Alex laughed, showing a large gap between his front teeth. “Little stomach problem, something in his drinking water. He is old man, but he will recover.”

“And how long do we wait?”

Alex shrugged massive shoulders. “Until they come. Are you in a hurry?”

We took a clackety old boat that seemed to stop at every island in the Cyclades, not to mention Crete, before we arrived at Naxos. Tourists we were supposed to be, and we didn’t speak to each other after we disembarked. I checked in at what passed for a hotel in the port city, then played the eccentric American who wanted to go off on a hiking trip up into the hills, a forerunner, I guess, of the present-day hippies who swarm all over the world with their knapsacks.

I found Alex at the goatherder’s cottage overlooking the landing strip. Fortunately he had a pack of worn but serviceable playing cards, and somehow had managed to lay in a tremendous store of ouzo along with the weapons we would need. The waiting, it was more than two days, wasn’t bad, but if we’d been playing pinochle for real money I would still owe Alex Zenopolis just about everything I’ve earned since then.

The field was in a long, narrow valley below us; it had been built by the Germans during the War and kept in more or less serviceable condition by the cropping of sheep and goats. At the far end from us was a steep drop-off; close to the edge was a large natural cave whose entrance we could see plainly.

“The sailors go in there,” Alex explained. “Our people, the defenders of our shores.” He spat on the dirt floor of the hut. “We Greeks have so many shores to defend; look at any map, Nick. And to think that scum like those defile their profession...” He spat again.

Alex, I realized, was an idealist. That worried me; even then I preferred to work with cynics, because they’re much more reliable.

The nights were the hardest, because we couldn’t use any lights. Alex didn’t talk much and neither did I. Occasionally I’d wander outside to marvel at the pale brightness of the ground under a dazzling moon. And it was on the third of those nights I saw figures moving at the end of the airstrip, hauling themselves up over the lip of the drop like mountain climbers reaching the peak of Mount Everest.

I ran back inside the hut and shook Alex awake. “They’re here,” I whispered. “Your boys, I’m pretty sure.”

Alex waved a hand and rolled over inside his blanket. “Okay, okay, young fellow.” He was maybe ten years older than I was. “They wait, like us. American plane don’t show up till daylight. Can’t land here at night.”

I wouldn’t swear to it, but it seemed to me that Alex was snoring as soon as he said his last word.

Maybe I got a total of half an hour’s sleep the rest of that night; I know I was awake and moving around the hut before dawn, waiting impatiently for the sun to start giving us some light. The moon was long gone, and I could barely see to the valley floor.

“We start now.” Alex’s calm voice in the silent hut was so startling I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Half hour to daylight.” He was on his feet, shrugging into a heavy, black leather jacket whose pockets were stuffed with ammunition. Under it he carried a Colt .45 automatic, but the weapon he relied most on was the M-1 rifle he had slung over one shoulder.

I had one too. I also had Wilhelmina, the Luger I’d recently acquired in Germany and which, in a sense, was becoming an intimate part of my family.

We moved cautiously along the near rim of the Valley, circling toward the heights above the cave entrance. We stayed far enough back from the edge so no one below could see us even if there had been light, and it was purely Alex’s judgment and instinct that told us where to stop.

“There,” he whispered, pointing toward the rim.

We crept over the rough ground, as much rock as foliage, until we could see the field below. We were maybe sixty feet above it, and from what I could see there was no way down.

“How do we...?” I began, but Alex put a finger to his lips, and teeth gleamed in the darkness.

From one of his many pockets he pulled out a thin length of nylon rope. Attached to one end was a grenade, and he placed a couple of others on the ground beside him.

“The airplane comes from there,” he said, pointing off to our right into the black void beyond the edge of the field. “Only way. When it touches down it must taxi to the far end and turn, yes? So at touchdown... no, they cannot get away.”

He began letting the slender line down the rocky cliff face, very slowly, until the end with the grenade attached was just above the top of the cave entrance. Then he paused, wiggling sausage fingers while he did some mental calculations, and drew the line up again. He made a mark on the nylon and slashed it with a knife. “Just right,” he announced, and took the rest of the line to secure it to a little bush a few feet back from the rim.

“Now what?” I asked. Nobody had told us who was to be in charge on this operation, but Alex seemed to know what he was doing, and I was willing to learn.