Nick Carter - The Omega Terror

I sat up slowly, and the throbbing in my head had subsided somewhat. I grimaced in pain from several sources.

“Are you all right, Nick?”

“I think so,” I said. I noticed for the first time that the double vision had gone. I tried to get up and fell against Gabrielle.

“Come on, I will help you to the car,” she said.

I found it hard to believe that I was still alive. I let Gabrielle lead me to the car, and I slumped heavily into the front seat.

We drove slowly along the road, moving past the place where Zeno had driven into the desert and I had followed. Then, several hundred yards beyond that point, I saw the tracks. The Land Rover heading back out onto the dirt track. And turning away from Mhamid again, toward the desert and Tagounite.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Okay, we head for Tagounite.”

“Are you quite sure?” she looked worried.

I glanced over at her and grinned, feeling my cracked lips try to bend. “Zeno took my favorite playthings,” I said. “I think it’s only right that I should make him give them back.”

She returned the smile. “Whatever you say, Nick.”

We arrived at Tagounite just after dark. It was Mhamid all over again, but somehow it looked even dustier and drier. As soon as we drove into town, I sensed that Zeno either was there or had been there recently. No physical evidence, just a gut feeling, one I had learned to pay attention to on other occasions. We came to a small square just after entering town, and a gasoline pump, painted red, stood outside a place that looked like an inn. It was one of those Spanish pumps that you put a coin into and get your own gas, but this one had been converted to exclude the automatic exchange of coin and fuel.

“Just a minute,” I said to Gabrielle. “I want to ask some questions here.”

She stopped the car, and in a moment an Arab came out, a young, thin fellow wearing a desert kaffiyeh on his head. He grinned a big, toothy grin, and we asked him to fill the Citrõen’s tank. While he did, I got out of the car and went around to speak with him.

“Have you serviced a Land Rover tonight?” I asked in Arabic.

“Land Rover?” he repeated squinting at me as he pumped the gas. “There was a desert car here an hour or more ago, sir. An open top, it had.”

“Was a man driving it, a man with gray hair, a tall man?”

“Why, yes,” the Arab said, studying my face.

“Did he speak to you?”

The Arab looked at me and a small grin came onto his face. “It seems I remember something…”

I took a wad of dirhams from my pocket and handed them to him. His smile broadened. “It comes to me now, sir. He mentioned getting a good rest tonight.”

“Did he say where?”

“He did not.”

I studied his face and decided he was telling the truth. I paid him for the gas. “Thanks.”

Back in the Citrõen, I told Gabrielle what I had learned.

“If Zeno is here now, he will be here tomorrow morning,” she said. “If you find him tonight, Nick, he will probably kill you. You look terrible. You’re in no shape to go after him.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Well get a hotel room. But I want you to wake me at dawn tomorrow.”

“All right. But until then, you will rest”

The hotel room was cleaner than the one in Mhamid, and the bed just a little softer. Gabrielle slept with me, but I did not even notice when she climbed beside me in a short, filmy nightgown. I was asleep almost as soon as I hit the bed.

At midnight I sat bolt upright, yelling obscenities at the vultures and waving my arms at them. It was all very real for a moment. I could even feel the hot sand under my thighs and smell the stink of the birds.

“Nick!” Gabrielle spoke sharply to me.

I was really awake then. “Sorry,” I mumbled. I leaned against the head of the bed and realized that I felt a hundred percent better. The pains were going away, and I had some strength.

“It is all right,” Gabrielle said softly as I fit a cigarette. I inhaled, and the red coal glowed in the room. “Are you cold?” She moved her body against me. She was soft and warm and I responded in spite of myself.

“Just right now,” I told her.

She noticed my response to her body. “I had better stay on my side,” she said. She started to move away.

My hand stopped her. “It’s all right.”

“But Nick, you need your rest.”

“I won’t go back to sleep for a while anyway.”

She settled back down against me. “All right. But you just relax and let me handle tilings.”

I smiled as she kissed my mouth, caressing me all the while. She was taking care of me, and I loved it. Soon she kissed me again, and there was real fire in it, and she knew the time had come.

Gabrielle made gentle love to me, and it was unforgettable. From that moment on my strength flowed back quickly. When she had fallen asleep beside me later, I dozed off quickly and woke at dawn feeling refreshed and renewed.

I still hurt when I moved. But the wound at the base of my skull was healing, the gash under my left eye had formed a small, thin scab, and Gabrielle had patched up the cuts on my back. She also changed the bandage on my side, where General Djenina had inflicted the flesh wound. We had coffee sent to the room while we were dressing, and after I had the thick, dark stuff inside me, I felt like a different man from the one who had stumbled into that Citrõen the previous afternoon.

Out in the car again that morning, with the sun just coming up over the flat, white rooftops of the village, we headed for the other two hotels in town. I was looking for the Land Rover. Of course, if Zeno really wanted to hide, there were probably private homes where he could have gotten a room. But he had little reason to think I was still after him. I figured he would be at one of the hotels. And I also figured he would not get out before dawn.

We scoured the parking areas around the first small hotel, but there was no sign of the Land Rover. He could have changed vehicles, too, but again there seemed to be little point.

As we approached the second hotel, Gabrielle and I spotted the Land Rover at the same time. It was parked just across the cobblestone street from the entrance, and a tall man was leaning into it over its topless door.

“It’s Zeno!” I said to Gabrielle. “Stop the car!”

She followed orders. “Nick, watch out. You don’t even have a gun.”

I climbed from the Citrõen carefully. Zeno was still arranging something on the seat of the vehicle. With some luck, I might be able to move up behind him. He had not noticed our car yet.

“Don’t turn the engine off,” I said softly to Gabrielle. “Just sit here. Quietly. And keep out of the way.”

“All right.”

I had taken three steps toward the Land Rover when Zeno looked up quite suddenly and spotted me. He didn’t recognize me at first, but then he took a second look. He seemed not to believe his eyes.

I had despised Damon Zeno before I had ever met the man, but since the horrible hours in the desert, I had developed an overwhelming hatred for him. I knew that my feelings were dangerous because emotion almost always gets in the way of efficiency. But I couldn’t help myself.

“This is the end of the line, Zeno,” I said to him.

But he didn’t think so. He pulled Wilhelmina from a hip pocket, aimed at me and squeezed off a round. I ducked down and the slug zinged over my head and ricocheted off the paving stones behind me. I ran to a parked Fiat nearby, and the Luger roared again, denting the roof of the small car. Then Zeno was in the Land Rover, starting the engine.

I went for him but stopped halfway when I saw the car lurch forward and screech away down the street, toward the edge of town. I turned quickly and motioned toward Gabrielle and the Citrõen. She stripped gears, and the car charged forward, pulling up beside me.