Ник Картер - The Liquidator

Monica was racing ahead now, eyes scanning the ground; suddenly she dropped to her knees like an Indian scout. “Look!” she squealed. “Hoofprints!”

“What did you expect?” I asked, shuffling through the hot sand toward her. “Tire tracks?”

“No, silly.” She stood up and gazed down the long, straight strip of beach. “But we could follow them.”

“Sure. From now until next winter. And how much chance do you think we’d have of catching up with them?”

“Well...” She swung her head around, China-blue eyes narrowed. “They must have gone in behind the dunes somewhere.” She grabbed my hand and started to tug. “Come on, Nick.”

I let her haul me along. She headed down the beach, walking where the sand was firm and damp from the mini-wave action of the Sound. She kept a close watch on the jumble of hoofprints, then suddenly stopped and pointed inland.

“Look! They turned in there.” She started to run, and — oh, what the hell — I trotted along with her. Enthusiasm like that can be contagious.

When the tracks disappeared in the dense growth behind the dunes, I managed to keep from telling her “I told you so,” partly because I hadn’t, except in my head. Monica stopped abruptly, put a finger to her lips, then sighed.

“I wonder which way...” she started.

“It’s anybody’s guess.”

She nodded. “You’re probably right.” And then she brightened. “But look! We can climb up to the top of that monster dune and at least take a look around. Maybe we can spot them again!”

It was my turn to sigh, but since I’d come this far with her, there was no point in resisting now. She churned up the steep side of that dune like a fullback getting his legs in shape for the season, and if I’d been a few years younger, I would have felt compelled to show her I could do it too. Instead, I climbed at a more sensible pace; there are enough physical demands in my line of business without my having to show off. And besides, I didn’t have to prove anything to Monica.

She stood on tiptoe, the light breeze ruffling her blonde hair, and slowly turned to scan the stretch of ground below. I didn’t see a thing in the endless tangle of bushes and stunted trees between the two lines of dunes. A Panzer division could have been concealed down there, not to mention a dozen ponies.

“I guess we’ve lost them for sure,” I said.

Monica nodded. “Looks like it Damn! I just wanted to see them up close.”

“Well, next time.” I looked beyond her, over her head to the blacktop road in the distance. I could see the yellow Mustang parked where I had left it, but there wasn’t another vehicle or person in sight, not even a stray seagull. Behind us, out on the sound that stretched endlessly toward the invisible mainland maybe twenty miles away, a couple of toy-sized boats crawled across the water, but they had nothing to do with this remote and isolated spot.

I looked back at Monica, who was regarding me with that look I knew so well. She yawned, stretched, fluffed her hair with her hands. Her full breasts lifted under her shirt, nipples outlined starkly. She smiled sleepily, and I buttoned up the leather camera case so the sand wouldn’t get in it.

The top of the dune was hollowed out, a dish of soft sand that was at first hot against bare flesh. But then, as those hips began their rhythmic movement under me, I forgot all about the heat and everything else except what we were doing. She was a passionate, lusty girl, totally involved; she brought her legs up and wrapped them around my waist, pressing me to her with amazing strength, and then she started to buck violently, trying to pull all of me inside her. Then she gave a long, low howl of agony and delight, then slowly started to come down as I spent myself.

“That was good,” she murmured.

“Terrific,” I agreed, now aware of the sun burning down on me.

“I wish we could stay here all day.” Her arms were still around my neck, and her eyes were at half-mast as she smiled up at me.

“There are other places.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stay, but there was a curious kind of urgency in me that I couldn’t understand myself. Until I heard a distant sound drawing closer.

I looked off to my left, toward the end of the island where the ferry landing was. Up in the air, no more than a hundred feet above the ground, a helicopter was moving slowly in our general direction. It swayed gently back and forth, evidently scanning the two-lane blacktop. When it came to my yellow Mustang, it slowed even more, hovered, then dropped a little bit as if for a closer look.

Without ceremony I extricated myself from Monica’s embrace and scrambled to my feet; I was dragging on my pants when the chopper suddenly made a sidewise swoop and headed straight for our dune.

“What is it?” Monica asked, only half-alarmed as she raised herself up on one elbow.

“Yellow Mustang,” I gritted, cursing the rental agency for not supplying me with a less conspicuous car.

“What are you talking about, Nick?” The girl turned over, gazing up at the sky as the helicopter approached. I swear, naked and all, she was about to wave when I yanked her up and toppled her over the steep side of the dune. It wasn’t exactly the way to treat a lady you’ve just made love to, but as I dove after her, that was the last thing on my mind. When a strange aircraft comes looking for me, I don’t wave — I duck.

For all the cover a short distance away, the place where we were didn’t have enough to hide a rabbit. This time it was my turn to do the running, dragging Monica in my wake; somehow she had managed to grab her clothes as I shoved her over the dune, and the knit shirt was streaming out behind her like a flag. Not that it made any difference; the guy in the chopper couldn’t have missed us, anyway.

He made a low pass over us, the wind from the rotors blasting sand up in our faces. Monica stumbled as she tried to cover her eyes; I stopped to help her, looking back, and at that moment the helicopter dropped to the ground a couple of dozen feet ahead of us.

It was time to quit running. I squinted against the sunlight reflected off the swishing blades, moving instinctively to put myself between the girl and the chopper; and it wasn’t just to conceal her nakedness. The near door of the round plastic bubble opened, and a man got out slowly. He was only a silhouette, but as soon as he started to walk toward me, I relaxed.

“Climb into your things, honey,” I muttered to the girl, and waited while David Hawk made a discreet approach. Fortunately for him, Monica was the kind of girl who needed about a second and a half to get dressed, so he didn’t have to avert his eyes any longer than that.

“Well,” he said at last, not quite harrumphing. The chief of AXE not only looks as though he should be preaching hellfire and brimstone to his congregation in a New England village, but he sometimes acts that way too — understandably in the presence of a naked female.

In the pause that followed I put on my own shirt. “What brings you to glorious Ocracoke?” I asked.

“You,” he said bluntly. “Why didn’t you leave word where you were staying here?”

“Because when I left Washington I didn’t know.”

“And when you did find out?”

“For only a couple of days it hardly seemed to matter.”

His flinty eyes flicked from mine to Monica’s, then back to me again. “You know better than that, Carter.”

There wasn’t any arguing with him. My only excuse was that I’d had too many of my brief vacations interrupted like this, but that was no excuse at all. We’re a small organization, as those things go, and when I’m needed I’m needed. Period.