Nick Carter - Operation Moon Rocket

"Come on."

This time he drove. "The pilot was tied hand and foot," he said as he sent the Giulia hurtling along the highway. "So someone else had to get that chopper off the ground. That means there was a third transmitter setup. Probably in Enterprise. Let's hope we get there before they disassemble it. My friend Hugo has questions he wants to ask."

Peterson had brought N3's protective devices with him from Washington. They'd been waiting for Nick in a false-bottom suitcase at the Gemini Inn. Hugo, the stiletto, was now up his sleeve. Wilhelmina, the stripped-down Luger, hung in a snug holster at his waist, and Pierre, the lethal gas pellet, nestled with several of his nearest relatives in a waistband pocket. AXE's top operative was dressed to kill.

The gas station-grocery store was closed. There was no sign of life inside. Nor anywhere else in Enterprise, for that matter. Nick glanced at his watch. It was only ten o'clock. "Not very enterprising," he said.

Candy shrugged. "I don't get it. They were open when I was here at eight." Nick walked around to the side of the building, feeling the weight of the sun on him, sweating. He sauntered past a fruit processing shed and some oil storage tanks. Upturned boats and drying nets lay along the edge of the dirt road. The ramshackle waterfront was quiet, stifled under the pall of humid heat.

Suddenly he stopped, listened, then moved quickly into the shadowed overhang of an upturned hull, Wilhelmina in hand. The footsteps were approaching at a right angle. They reached their loudest point, then began to recede. Nick peered out. Two men were moving between the boats, carrying a heavy piece of electronic equipment. They moved out of his field of vision and a moment later he heard a car door open, then slam shut. He started out from under the boat, then froze…

They were returning. Nick melted back into the shadows. This time he got a good look at them. The one in the lead was short, thin, with a hollow, hard-eyed face that spelled hood. The shambling giant behind him had gray hair cropped short to the shape of his bullet head and a sunburned face dusted over with pale freckles.

Dexter. Pat Hammer's next-door neighbor — who'd said he worked for the Electronic Guidance Division of Connelly Aviation.

Electronic Guidance. The drone-like helicopter. The piece of equipment the two of them had just delivered to the car. It added up.

N3 gave them a good head start, then followed, careful to keep objects between them. The two men went down a flight of steps and out along a small weatherbeaten wooden jetty that reached some twenty yards on barnacled piles into the bay. A single boat was moored to the end of it. A wide-beamed, diesel-powered shrimp trawler. Cracker Boy, Enterprise, Fla., the black lettering on its stern proclaimed. The two men climbed aboard, opened a hatch and disappeared below deck.

Nick turned. Candy was a few yards behind him. "Better wait here," he warned her. "There may be fireworks."

He raced out along the jetty, hoping to reach the wheelhouse before they came back on deck. But this time his luck wasn't running. As he swung over the taffrail, Dexter's bulky shape filled the hatchway. The big man stopped in his tracks. He had a complicated electronic component in his hands. His mouth dropped open. "Hey, I know you…" He glanced over his shoulder, then started toward Nick. "Listen, buddy, they made me do it," he rasped hoarsely. "They got my wife and kids…"

Something roared, driving into Dexter with pile-driver force, spinning him completely around and throwing him halfway across the deck. He finished on his knees, the component crashing off to one side, his eyes all whites, his hands clasping his guts, trying to keep them from spilling out on the deck. Blood welled through his fingers. He folded slowly forward with a sigh.

There was another burst of orange from inside the hatchway, a chopping noise and the hollow-faced man came charging up the steps, slugs spurting wildly in all directions from the machine pistol in his hand. Wilhelmina was already out and Killmaster pumped two carefully placed bullets at him with an action so swift that the double crash sounded like a single prolonged roar. For a moment, Hollow Face stood upright, then, like a straw man, he crumpled and fell awkwardly, his legs turning to rubber beneath him.

N3 kicked the machine pistol away from his hand and knelt beside Dexter. Blood was flowing out of the big man's mouth. It was light pink and very frothy. His lips worked frantically, trying to form words."…Miami… goin' to blow it up…" he gurgled indistinctly."…kill everybody… I know… I worked on it… stop them… before… too late…" The eyes rolled back to their more important work. The face went slack.

Nick straightened up. "Okay, let's talk about that," he said to Hollow Face. His voice was calm, amiable, but the gray eyes were green, a deep sea green, and for a moment a shark swirled in their depths. Hugo came out of its hiding place. Its vicious, ice-pick blade clicked open.

Killmaster turned the gunman over with his foot, then squatted beside him. Hugo slashed down the front of his shirt, not being too careful about the bony, sallow flesh beneath. Hollow Face flinched. His eyes went wet with pain. Hugo found a place at the base of the man's bare neck and stroked it lightly. "Now," Nick smiled. "Name, please."

The man pressed his lips together. His eyes closed. Hugo bit into the knotted neck. "Aggh!" The sound forced itself out of his throat and his shoulders bunched. "Eddie Byloff," he croaked.

"Where are you from, Eddie?"

"Vegas."

"I thought you looked familiar. You're one of the Sierra Inn boys, aren't you?" Byloff closed his eyes again. Hugo cut a slow, neat zigzag down his belly. The tiny slits and pinpricks started to ooze blood. Byloff made noises that weren't quite human. "Aren't you, Eddie?" His head jerked up and down spasmodically. "Tell me, Eddie, what are you doing here in Florida? And what did Dexter mean about blowing up Miami? Talk, Eddie — or die slowly." Hugo edged its way beneath a skin flap and started exploring.

Byloff's tortured body writhed. Blood bubbled up, mixing with the sweat that sprang from every pore. His eyes burst open. "Ask her," he gasped, staring past Nick. "She's the one that set it up…"

Nick turned. Candy stood just behind him, smiling. Smoothly, gracefully, she raised her white miniskirt. She was naked underneath it except for the wafer-flat .22 that was holstered to the inside of her thigh.

"Sorry about this, chief," she smiled. The gun was in her hand now and pointed at him. Slowly her finger tightened around the trigger…

She pressed the gun against her side to cushion the recoil. "You can close your eyes if you want," she smiled.

It was an Astra Cub, a twelve-ounce miniature with a three-inch barrel, potent at short range, and by far the flattest gun N3 had ever seen. "You pulled a shrewdy when you went to Houston masquerading as Eglund," she said. "Sollitz wasn't prepared for that. Neither was I. So I wasn't able to warn him that you weren't really Eglund. The result was he panicked and planted that bomb. With that his usefulness came to an end. Now your career, Nicholas dear, must also end. You've come too far, found out too much…"

He saw her finger starting to squeeze the trigger. In the split second before the firing pin struck the cartridge, he flung himself back-wards. It was an instinctive animal process — to move away from the shot, to present as small a target as possible. Sharp pain seared his left shoulder as he went tumbling over the side. But he knew he'd been successful. The pain was localized — sign of a minor flesh wound.

He took a great heaving lungful of breath as the water closed over him.