Nick Carter - The Weapon of Night

If there was one thing that could be said for Heinrich Stroebling, it was that he had not permitted twenty-odd years of stolen freedom to soften his ex-gauleiter’s body. Even as Henry Steele, Argentinian businessman with a branch office in Chicago, he had kept himself in trim at the better country clubs and gymnasiums of various nations. He had been obsessed with physical fitness, bodily perfection and muscular exercise, since his days with the Hitler Youth organization back in Nazi Germany.

He was exercising now.

Every ounce of his finely tuned strength was straining savagely against a male body as strong and agile as his own — a younger body than his, magnificent at its best, but now bruised and pulsing with pain from a beating at the hands of Stroebling’s sidekick.

The sidekick lay dead in the room where Nick had been held captive, and there was only Stroebling left between Nick and the end of a long, bloody trail. The trail began with the death of hundreds of innocents when Stroebling had worn a uniform and cracked a whip. The end of it was to be here and now, on this rooftop in Chicago on this sultry, overcast evening in late fall.

But it would only be the end if Nick could finish him off before his own strength gave out.

Nick grunted with the pain of an armlock and rolled over, kicking. He had nothing to help him, nothing but his abused and aching muscles. His usual arsenal of weapons lay hidden somewhere in that torture room. No one else knew where he was. No one knew that he had, at last, caught up with Stroebling, that with one final blow in the right place he might snuff out one of Nazi Germany’s arch war criminals.

At the moment it looked as though Nick would be the one to be snuffed out.

He kneed Stroebling’s groin and twisted free to swing a razor chop at the big German’s neck. Now it was Stroebling who grunted — twice in rapid succession — but he kept coming at him, closing in with two steely arms and his own jabbing knee.

There was silence around them but for the scuffling and grunting. Neither of them was aware of the sounds of city traffic twenty-three floors below this old building where Stroebling kept his office. Neither of them gave a thought to the density of the air, to the dark overcast that lay like a smoke-drenched blanket between city and sky. Neither of them thought of anything but the absolute necessity of killing the other.

Now they were apart and on their feet, panting heavily. The old tarred roofing — the building was one of Chicago’s oldest skyscrapers — crackled beneath them as they shuffled their feet in the dance of death. Stroebling’s hand shot out like the whip he had once carried. Nick dodged, tired almost to death, and swung his right leg high in the savate kick that glanced off the underside of Stroebling’s rock-hard chin.

Stroebling leaped, and they went down together.

Rough hands clawed at Nick’s throat.

Nick’s thumbs ground into Stroebling’s eyes.

Break and stalemate.

This time it was Nick who leaped; this time it was his feet which slammed the full weight of his body sideways against the other man and sent him sprawling. A gasping bellow of rage burst from Stroebling’s throat, and again they writhed together in a tangled, undulating heap.

The hard blade of Stroebling’s hand slammed against Nick’s face. Nick’s head jerked suddenly, painfully, but his own hands shot out to grasp at Stroebling’s throat. They tightened, squeezed.

Stroebling arched his body like a fighting tiger and thrust upward with all his strength — turning, twisting, convulsing his body to shake off the thing at his throat. Nick held on, squeezed harder.

For a moment Stroebling lay still. Nick thought he had him, hoped he had him, prayed that he had him, because his own strength seemed to be flickering out like a dying candle.

Then the man underneath him moved abruptly and the granite hardness of the heels of both hands ramrodded up into Nick’s face with piledriver force, and the big German squirmed mightily in that same moment and tore himself free. He rose to a crouch and staggered backwards, his face a twisted mask of hatred in the dim light that glowed from the higher buildings nearby, and the street lights that shone far below.

Nick snaked out both arms, locked his hands around the murderer’s ankle, and tugged. Stroebling fell heavily — but rolled and landed even more heavily to straddle Nick’s body. His legs went out in a scissors grip and his hands clamped around Nick’s throat.

This time Stroebling was the one who squeezed — savagely, inexorably, desperately. He was breathing harshly now and spitting out sibilant German words, guttural sounds of loath-ing and bloodlust — and his grip on Nick’s throat was tightening.

There was a singing in Nick’s ears and an agony in his throat, and it seemed to him that the red haze in which his eyes were swimming was flickering into darkness. He was through; he was finished; everything was going black.

But then the sensation passed, and he was still alive and Stroebling was still clamping his throat with those steely, killing, death-camp commandant’s hands — the hands that had killed so often and so horribly.

Nick could not let him get away.

He could not let him live!

Nick fought for breath and summoned up his last reserves of strength.

But it was his indomitable will rather than his strength that drove him to gouge ruthlessly into the other man’s rib cage — gouge deep and hard, to twist his clawing hand in the muscled flesh, to fasten on rib bone and to pull with a savagery born of the knowledge that this was his last chance. Then he rolled, with Stroebling’s hands still at his throat; rolled over hard, still gouging and pulling, drawing back his hands one after the other and punching them deep into the gut and gouging and twisting again and again until he could hear bone snapping.

Stroebling screamed and loosed his hold and threw himself away from Nick to roll, moaning, on the tar roof.

Nick shook his head to clear it, exulting at the promise of victory. Odds were even again, more than even; now they were on his side. Stroebling was hurt now, too; he was close to exhaustion and writhing in agony.

Now he did have him!

He gave himself a moment to gather breath.

It was the wrong moment.

Stroebling was getting slowly to his feet, backing away on his haunches and moaning. He, too, was gathering breath. Maybe for one last spring. But Nick was going to beat him to it, and it did not matter to him that Stroebling was still backing and snarling and putting distance between them. Maybe he was trying to get away. So what if he was? Where could he go? Down the inner stairs they had come up, Stroebling ahead with Nick after him? Down the rattle-trap, death trap of a fire escape, to the sidewalk twenty-three floors below?

No — Stroebling must know that Nick could still pace him, would not hesitate to jump him even at the risk of his own life. The German seemed to realize it; he had stopped backing now. He was crouching, staring at Nick, his hands curled into claws ready for the pounce and kill.

Nick’s body tensed, relaxed, then tautened for the spring. He watched Stroebling and ordered his own weary body to go in for the attack.

His feet left the roof and a sudden blackness hit him in the face like a hammerblow.

Where there had been a dim haze of light, now there was nothing.

Stroebling vanished from sight. Everything vanished. There was nothing but intense darkness, a thick and overwhelming darkness as black as a coal pit in hell. And then there was the feel of cloth as Nick landed in the black nothingness and touched Stroebling. Just touched him. And lost him in a little rustle of sound.