Nick Carter: Hood of Death

Nick placed the first bullet where the Luger was aimed — just below the triangle of white handkerchief in Akito's breast pocket. His second shot caught Soong in mid-air, four feet from the muzzle. The Chinese had a blue revolver coming up in one hand when Wilhelmina's shot took him right in the heart. As he fell, his head hit Nick's leg. He rolled on his back. Nick picked up the revolver and pushed Akito away from the desk.

The older man's body fell sideways from the chair. No more threat there, Nick noted, but you stayed alive by not taking anything for granted. Ruth was screaming in a full-throated glass-crash of sound that in the small room ripped at the eardrums like a cold knife. She ran out the door, still screaming.

He grabbed the two bottles of scotch-and-explosive from the desk and followed her. She ran down the hall toward the back of the building and into a warehouse section with Nick twelve feet behind her.

"Stop," he roared. She bolted down a corridor between stacked cartons. He holstered Wilhelmina and reached to grab her when she burst into an open space. A man naked to the waist was jumping down from the rear of a trailer truck. The man yelled, "What…?" as the three collided.

It was Hans Geist, and his mind and body reacted swiftly. He pushed Ruth aside, slammed a fist into Nick's chest. The man from AXE could not avoid the smashing greeting — his momentum carried him right into it. The scotch bottles burst on the concrete in a glass and liquid shower.

"No smoking," Nick said as he swung underhand at Geist's gun and then went to the floor as the big man opened his arms and closed them around him. Nick knew what it's like to surprise a grizzly bear. He was crushed, pounded and bounced on the cement. He couldn't reach Wilhelmina or Hugo. Geist had been around. Nick twisted to fend off a knee pounding at his testicles. Banged his skull into the man's face as he felt teeth biting at his neck. This guy played for keeps.

They rolled, grinding glass and whiskey into a greasier brown substance that coated the floor. Nick pistoned his elbows, expanded his chest and shoulders, and at last got his hands clasped together and shot them up — thrusting, prying, driving with every sinew and muscle and delivering all the power of his tremendous strength.

Geist was a powerful man, but when torso and shoulder muscles ram against arm strength, there is no contest. His arms flew out as Nick's locked hands surged up. Before he could close them again Nick's lightning reflexes decided the issue. He chopped the side of one iron-hard fist on Geist's Adam's apple — a clean blow that hardly touched the man's chin. Geist collapsed.

Swiftly Nick searched the rest of the small warehouse, found it empty, and cautiously approached the office section. Ruth had vanished — he hoped she wouldn't get a gun from Akito's desk and have a try. His keen hearing detected movement beyond the corridor door. Sammy came into the large room, preceded by an automatic of moderate size and with a cigarette clipped in the corner of his mouth. Nick wondered if he was a nicotine slave or watched old gangster movies on TV. Sammy went down the carton corridor, bent over the moaning Geist amid the shattered glass and stench of whiskey.

Staying as far back in the passageway as he could Nick called gently, "Sammy. Drop it or you're dead."

Sammy didn't. Sammy fired the automatic wildly and dropped his cigarette into the brown compound on the floor and Sammy went dead. Nick went twenty feet back along the cartons, blown by the force of the explosion, holding his mouth open to protect his eardrums. The warehouse was a mass of brownish smoke.

Nick staggered for a moment as he went through the office corridor. Wooh! That Stuart! His head was ringing. He was not too stunned to carefully check each room on his way to Akito's office. He entered it cautiously, Wilhelmina focusing on Ruth who sat at the desk, both her hands in sight and empty. She was crying.

Even with shock and horror smearing her boldly drawn features, with tears streaming down her cheeks, shaking and gasping as if she might retch any instant — Nick thought, She's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

He said, "Relax, Ruth. He wasn't your father anyway. And it isn't the end of the whole world."

She choked. Her head nodded violently. She was struggling for air. "Don't care. We… You…"

Her head fell forward onto the hard wood and then tilted on its side. The beautiful body had become a rag doll made of soft cloth.

Nick leaned forward, sniffed and swore. Cyanide, most likely. He holstered Wilhelmina and put a hand on the sleek, smooth hair. And then there were none.

We are such fools. All of us.

He lifted the telephone and dialed Hawk.