Nick Carter - The Istanbul Decision

When she finished cleaning the area, she snipped off several lengths of gauze and tenderly pressed them into place. Then she taped him. When she was done she told Carter to roll onto his stomach.

For several minutes her strong fingers kneaded the muscles of his shoulder and neck in a slow steady rhythm, then Carter lost track of the individual movements and gave himself over to the overall sensation of pleasure. The effect was miraculous. Pain and tension seemed to melt away. He relaxed completely and was soon fast asleep.

He awoke the second time in darkness. There was no light at the window or at the threshold of the door. At first he thought he was alone, then he heard a movement. Shoes shuffled across the wooden floor. Something heavy landed on the foot of the bed. Pulling himself up, he reached down to feel what it was. Wilhelmina.

"Milos?"

In answer, something else fell, this time lighter and more flexible. He ran his hand down and felt the rough shirt and trousers Schwetzler had lent him what now seemed like years ago.

"Good work, Milos, my boy!"

Carter got up and hastily began to dress. He was a bit shaky but too excited to care. He pulled on the trousers as best he could and was tucking in the shirttail when the boy struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp. When he had it flickering, he sat down in a chair and began to examine the stiletto, lovingly running his fingers up and down the blade.

"That's right. She's all yours, Milos," Carter whispered, checking the Luger's cartridge clip, then stuffing it into the waistband of his trousers. "Here, let me show you something." He came over, picked up Hugo's special sheath, and fastened it to the boy's forearm. Then he loaded the stiletto into the spring mechanism. "Now flex the muscle," he said. The boy flexed, and the knife shot out and skidded across the floor. The boy started to retrieve it when Carter caught him by the arm and spun him around until they were looking directly into one another's eyes.

"This is no toy, son. It's a weapon used to kill men. More than one has left his blood on it. Think about that and treat it accordingly." The boy nodded solemnly.

While Milos was on the other side of the room, Carter bent down and blew out the lantern. The boy seemed to sense what was happening and stopped moving.

Carter drew back the window curtain. The helicopter's long blades glistened in the moonlight. To the left, in the shadow of a low, oblong shed, the flames of a small fire danced in the wind. He started for the door, but the boy grabbed his arm. "So long," Carter said in English, squeezing the boy's shoulder. "You'd better hide that knife for a while, or they 're going to know who helped me out of here."

For a moment the boy just held him as though he wanted to say something but was having trouble finding the words. Then he said, "Koszonom."

"You're welcome," said Carter, ruffling the boy's hair. Then he pushed open the wooden door as noiselessly as he could and descended into the barnyard.

The helicopter stood on a grassy plot between the house and the shed, a Soviet production model, the kind the NATO boys called a "hound." It was easy to see why the doctor had been reluctant to have him moved in it. In this particular version the passenger capsule had been removed and the after-cabin left open. It would be cold and breezy at five thousand feet.

He crept along the stock fence to the far side of the shed, to the end opposite the glowing fire, then through the thick grass along the shed's outer wall until he was close enough to see the long shadows the men cast and hear their voices.

Silently he flipped off the Luger's safety, then crouched down to wait. Bits of conversation came to him on the wind, but nothing coherent. Then he heard the dry weeds crackle a few yards off, and he knew it wouldn't be long.

A dark figure appeared around the corner of the building, unzipped his pants and spread his legs slightly. A soft hissing followed as Carter stole up from behind.

"Not a movement, not a sound," he whispered as he placed the Luger's barrel to the back of the man's head. The man stiffened, and his stream abruptly terminated. "You're through here. Turn around and walk back to your friends."

As they entered the firelight, the conversation suddenly stopped, the others turning toward them.

"Throw your guns down," Carter shouted. The men obeyed. There were two AK-47 machine guns and several small arms.

When they were disarmed. Carter motioned for them to stand, then waved them away from the helicopter. "Turn around and start walking away. Now! Move it."

For a moment or two it seemed as if the soldiers would not obey his commands. He raised his weapon a little higher, and they turned and hurried away.

He let them get at least a hundred yards away before he scrambled aboard the chopper.

The machine started easily, and in a moment or two the oil pressure had come up, and the engine steadied. The soldiers were running toward the house. Probably more weapons.

Carefully Carter eased the pitch and speed controls forward, and the machine slowly lifted off the ground, the pain from his wound making him nauseated. But he was on his way, the thought of Kobelev blanking out all other considerations.

Budapest with its geometric grid of lights and black Danubian abyss in its center came and went, as did the local air traffic control, whom Carter managed to convince he was on an important military exercise. Word had evidently not caught up with him yet.

From the charts aboard, Carter figured Kobelev and the kidnapped train had passed Budapest hours ago. By now it would be nearly to the Rumanian border to the south.

South of the city he picked up the mainline tracks, dipped in low, and cranked the throttle full.

The land flattened, and the tracks ran like knife edges toward the horizon. He kept his altitude low, rising only for bridges and overhead wires.

Within half an hour he had reached Szolnok on the Tisza River. He skirted the town and continued south, the steady beat of the rotors almost lulling him to sleep. It seemed as if he had been flying forever, toward a goal he would never reach…out of touch with the world and with his own past, Kobelev the only thought that mattered any longer.

Carter crossed into Rumania in the twilight just before dawn. The ground elevation had risen sharply in the last hour and a half, and as the first shafts of light struck the terrain, it wasn't sand and grass that turned pink, it was snow. This was mountain country. To the east and south stood the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps, floating on the horizon like huge ships. Towering in the center, old Moldoveanu herself, rising to a height of over eight thousand feet, was visible even though the peak was more than seventy miles away.

The track began to rise, too, winding in and out of valleys, hugging the mountainsides, a speckled band of black dirt and gleaming steel against the whitened rock. Carter followed it relentlessly. His arm ached terribly, and he estimated he'd come almost two hundred miles, but there was still no sign of the kidnapped train.

Worried thoughts began to haunt him: maybe he'd taken the wrong set of tracks; maybe they'd stopped somewhere along the way and he'd missed them; or maybe they'd gone south from Budapest to Belgrade instead.

His fuel was getting low. If he went much further, he'd crash out here and be stranded in the snow and wind.

He'd almost convinced himself to give up and turn around when he saw a telltale plume of black smoke hanging in the air opposite a curve. He rounded the breast of land and there she was, steaming for all she was worth, engine black as night, pushrods pumping, billows of coal smoke streaming out of her stack. Behind her followed the fifteen antique cars, each painted slightly differently, making her look at first glance like some sort of a show train.