Nick Carter - The Weapon of Night

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I brought candles. You come back. Please, Nick — come back.”

“I always come back,” he said, and then he was gone.

Julia turned on her own transistor radio and the two battery-powered lamps they had brought with them. Then she opened the curtains and let the light play out across the grounds of the motel. Already she could hear the chop of the approaching helicopter. Headlights from the cars parked outside the cabin doors began to turn on, two by two, and in the glow of their light she could see Nick racing past them toward the wide oval lawn in front of the motel.

The town of Buffalo was in total darkness. Wherever Julia turned there was darkness, a frightening, eerie blackness broken only intermittently by shafts of light from ears.

Nick ran with the radio to his car and his eyes on the sky. The winking lights were already lowering toward him.

Hawk’s voice pounded at his ear… extremely serious power drain over the same area last November, plus Washington this time. Standby crews ready, started immediate instrumentation check. Nothing definite, as yet. Parts of Canada out, most of New York, Michigan, Massachusetts. Pennsylvania, part of Texas, for the love of—! Hold it a minute.”

Nick held, positioning the radio inside his jacket as he waited and pulled the miniature flare gun from his pocket. It spewed light over the lawn and the “copter chugged down toward him with its sling ladder swinging.

“Report from Washington,” said Hawk, and now his voice held an odd kind of excitement. “Blackout there nothing to do with the rest. Device found near local power station: electronic timer. Could have been set at any time. Likely the same with Texas, too. We’re checking. That leaves the Northeastern chain, as before. State police, national guards-men, et cetera, all in operation as you suggested. Emergency systems — Wait!”

Nick used the waiting time to swing himself into the sling seat of the ladder and wave upward. The ladder rose rapidly.

“Carter!” Hawk’s voice roared in his ear. It sounded exultant. “Instrument check indicates tremendous flow of current to the north, as before. Not finely pinpointed as yet, but odds are great that the trouble started within the area of the Falls. Seems that the Green Point power plant was the first to go. Happens to be a major link in the chain and only too easily accessible from outside though proof against remote devices. It looks as though your hunch was right. Get moving!”

“I’m moving,” said Nick, swinging himself into the chopper.

“Where to, old buddy?” asked AXEman pilot AI Fisher.

Nick told him.

Al stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

“You crazy, Nick? What makes you think that’s where he’ll go? And how in the hell are we going to find him if he does?”

“Not we — just me,” said Nick. “You’ll drop me. Now get the lead out of your pants and let me see you fly this thing.”

He busied himself with a few small preparations as they gained speed and altitude. When he was through with them he looked down at the darkness below.

Already, it was less oppressive than before. The airport was awash with light. Great beams of brightness cut through the city streets, and several buildings gave off a cheerful glow. Banks of moving lights trailed solidly through the streets. And even as he watched, new patches of brightness sprang into brilliant life.

He allowed himself a momentary flash of satisfaction. At least this time they had been ready for it. Every resource in the country had been mobilized ahead of time, every available man in uniform alerted, every cop, every fireman, every guardsman, every training unit, warned to stand by and man emergency lighting systems in cities and villages and along the nation’s highways; every responsible state official briefed, every sound truck put on a standby basis, every capability of an enormously capable nation called to a state of readiness in a few short hours — except the millions of private citizens who had been living off rumors all day. They had not been warned — in case of false alarm, in case Judas had decided to postpone his curtain scene.

But apparently he had not.

Nick’s brief glow of satisfaction cooled into a cool appraisal of the situation. He had no more idea than anyone else where Judas was and where he would head. He only had a hunch, based on the flimsiest of evidence that easily could turn to dust in his hands as the night wore on.

When he had boarded the ancient cruiser at the rotting wharf he had seen a set of oilskins neatly folded on the wheelhouse shelf. Afterwards when the boat had been discovered abandoned with its dead, the oilskins no longer were there.

“Does a man need oilskins to go swimming?” he had asked himself.

No, he had decided, that isn’t what he does with them.

The sound of the falls drowned out the gentle chopping of the helicopter as Nick lowered himself to the ground and waved the ladder away. He was across the Canadian border and the Green Point power plant lay exact 2.2 miles away from him. A man could walk it. And even if the man used a car for part of that short distance he would still have to walk for a good ten to twelve minutes from there to reach the one short strip along the roaring river from which he could make his getaway.

It had been short, quick ride from Buffalo by AXE-powered helicopter.

Nick scrambled down the Slope, glad of the boots and slicker that guarded him against the cool night wind and the icy spray. It was a cold, dark November night, and the lights of Ontario were few and far between. Niagara Falls was still in total darkness, but for the dim glow of auxiliary lighting from the other side.

He reached the water’s edge and glided along the bank beside the first stretch of relatively calm water, hunting by faint starlight for the boat he was sure must be there.

But it was not there.

He knew that, after the first few moments, because there were few places where a boat could be left and he had checked all of them in the dimness along the riverbank. Maybe farther downriver…?

No! Judas would need to have the boat handy.

Nick turned upriver, back the way he had come, threading his way through bushes and boulders as sharp needlepoints of spray that stung his face and, building into showers, poured down over his body. Perhaps Judas had intended to steal the Maid of the Mist, he thought. If so, the bastard was out of luck, since she was already laid up for the season and undergoing repairs. Anyway, Judas would have known that.

Nick frowned as he peered through the flying spray. No boat, then. There could hardly be one moored under the falls — it would get completely waterlogged in minutes, supposing it was physically possible to get it there. Then what… There could be no escape through the thundering water unless Judas intended to shoot the rapids. But Judas must surely know he could never live through that. Maybe he intended to plunge over the falls in a barrel. It would be just like Judas to have devised something new in barrels; crashproof, unsinkable, insulated against shock and weather, equipped with automatic weapons to belch out instant death to all unwelcome visitors.

The wild idea was somehow a compelling one. Nick edged his way backwards out of the chilling shower of blinding spray and craned his neck to stare up at the lip of the falls. His mind picked up thoughts of water wings and personalized jet flying packs, then came back to brood on barrels. It WAS possible. It would take a little planning, of course, but —

He gaped upward, not quite believing his eyes in spite of what he just had been considering. For in the murkiness of night and spray, the thing that came tumbling down from 150-odd feet above him had neither size nor shape, but it was something alien to the water and it bounced and rolled and tumbled as if with a galvanic life of its own.