by Nick Carter
She shrugged out of her shoulder straps to reveal the overflowing creaminess of her breasts. Carter's thirst for them increased as she reached behind to unfasten her bra. "Wonderful," he muttered, fondling them, testing their snowy softness, lowering his head to gently kiss their pristine whiteness.
She shivered pleasurably under his touch, her eyes half closed, her pink-ringed nipples beginning to rise. "Oh, Nick, squeeze me. Squeeze me as hard as you can."
He complied, squeezing the massive breasts until he was certain he would hurt her, certain that she would cry out in pain at any second.
But her only response was a series of deep moans and little cries of pleasure. "Oh, yes, Nick. More!"
Carter gave way to the growing hunger inside his belly and fastened his mouth to her swollen nipples.
"Yes, yes, bite me. Bite me hard!" she rasped hoarsely, her hands guiding his lips from nipple to nipple, her breathing ragged.
He fed his hunger in silence as she wriggled the dress the rest of the way off her body. Then she was attacking his clothes with quick, deft hands.
Soft moans came from deep within her, and she sank further and further into the mattress, mashing his face to her breasts. After what seemed an interminable time, she emitted a long moan and shuddered, gently pushing him from her.
"Wait, honey."
Carter caught his breath and steadied his senses as she slid from the bed. He watched the pantyhose slide down her long legs. His blood quickened at the sight of her in the filmy panties that only made a gesture toward covering the wide expanse of her flaring hips.
Then, with her breasts swaying pendulously and a quick smile playing across her lips, she stripped the final garment from her sumptuous body.
The legs were heavy and powerful, the hips ample and polished with a film of perspiration. Her belly was rounded provocatively and still showed the imprint of the elastic in the panties.
"Okay?" she asked timorously.
"C'mere.
She slithered to him, and Carter rolled between her thighs.
A strangled cry erupted from her lips at the moment of possession. Almost immediately, her mouth opened and her breathing became ragged as her face flushed.
He paused for a moment, and she shuddered at the delay. When he moved again, she met him with a great surge of her massive body. Her hips moved against him hungrily and expertly. Her arms tugged him deep into the circle of her warm flesh.
It was a fiercely contested coupling. Carter knew that she was trying to prove something to him, but at that point he cared little. She had goaded him with her body to match her sensual frenzy, and he responded, finding her sudden pagan abandon contagious.
With a growl from deep within his chest, he drove her ahead of him toward the end. Her passion was reaching the stage of delirium as she redoubled her efforts, jerking and bucking, trying to consume him completely.
At last, in one monumental convulsion, her lusty body collapsed in a quaking mass of satiated flesh. Carter held to her, not stopping until, seconds later, the end came for him as well.
He waited several moments, then rolled to her side.
"Naomi…?"
Silence.
He moved back to her. The pulse was even, the breathing normal and steady.
She was out cold.
He pulled on his trousers and padded into the living room. He flipped the main lights on and off once, waited a few seconds, repeated the action, and then noticed that Gordo's big body was rubbing against his legs.
The third cabinet he opened in the kitchen gave him a handful of dog biscuits. He dropped one into the Doberman's gaping maw and returned to the living room and front door.
Al Garrett was waiting with a frown on his round face. He wore the uniform of one of New York's finest.
"Any trouble?"
"Naw, told the doorman I had to check the roof. Peeping Tom complaints from some residents of other buildings. Jesus."
"He's like a big baby," Carter said, sticking another biscuit between Gordo's gleaming teeth. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."
"Oh, yeah? Let's hope he won't hurt little fat men dressed up like cops."
"C'mon, this way!"
The master bedroom suite-cum-office was locked. It took Carter fifteen seconds flat to pick the two locks on the door, and they were inside.
"Wow," Garrett exclaimed when Carter flipped on the lights, "this ain't no home computer center."
"The lady's no hobbyist." Carter said. "Let's get to it."
A moment later, Garrett had the room humming. "Kill that telex. We don't need it, and it might wake her up."
Carter knew that nothing was going to stir Naomi Bartinelli, but he killed the clacking machine anyway.
Al Garrett went to work with a couple of screwdrivers and some black boxes on the back of the machines.
He pulled off a plate, behind which was a plastic-enclosed scrambler. "This is her security system," he explained as he worked. "I'll rig it so we can bypass it right at the source — here — and then with the additional modem I'm going to install, we can intercept as well as decode everything she sends or receives."
"What do you have to do?"
"Cut and resolder these wires, and then put in the alternate modem. Shouldn't take more than a half hour."
Carter lit a custom-blended cigarette and paced.
Twenty-five minutes later, Garrett was finished in the back of the machines and was sitting at the console, his fingers flying and his eyes darting from one screen to the other.
"I think I've got it."
"How long till you can break her system?" Carter asked.
"Three days, maybe less if she runs a lot of traffic."
"Good. Anything else?"
"That's it."
They shut the system down, resecured the room, and moved back to the front door.
"You'll call the man?"
Garrett nodded and moved away down the hall.
The man was David Hawk, head of AXE, whom Carter knew would be waiting in the Dupont Circle offices of AXE's front, Amalgamated Press and Wire Services.
Carter closed and relocked the door, then headed back to the bedroom.
In his mind he was already composing the sad story he would tell Naomi Bartinelli in the morning over breakfast.
"I shouldn't be gone more than three weeks, maybe four. I'll call you the moment I get back to New York. Perhaps we can take a little time off together somewhere."
But as he rolled wearily into bed beside her, Carter knew that the only time off Naomi Bartinelli would be taking would be spent in a federal prison for women, courtesy of the FBI.
That is, after Carter's mission was completed and AXE turned her file over to them.
Two
Ali Maumed Kashmir lived in a twenty-five-room mansion in the Great Bay area of the Jersey shore. The house was an uneasy melding of Mediterranean and Colonial American elements, and rested on thirty-two wooded acres with approximately five hundred feet of private beach fronting the property.
On that night, the small marina, the pool area, the mansion, and the long, winding gravel drive leading up to it were festooned with dozens of sparkling chandeliers, muted lanterns, and blazing torches.
A limousine announced itself at the tall wrought-iron gates. They swung open, and the big car glided noiselessly through.
In the cavernous rear seat sat a statuesque woman with dark brown eyes and raven black hair, a brown cigarette held in one black-gloved hand.
She was tall, with a proud figure. A black and yellow print dress lovingly covered her tapering curves.
Her name was Carlotta Polti. She had been born in Florence, Italy, and was now employed in Rome as a feature writer for one of the country's more leftist-leaning magazines. For the last two years, Carlotta Polti had also been a member in good standing of La Amicizia di Liberia Italiana, one of the more militant guerrilla/terrorist groups in her native country.
She had worked hard in those two years to ingratiate he
rself and rise through the ranks in the Friendship for Italian Liberty group. But being a magazine writer and a guerrilla were not her true occupations.
Her true employment was as a top undercover agent for the antiterrorist arm of Italy's internal security organization, the SID.
The car came to a halt in front of the mansion's deep veranda, and the chauffeur was immediately at the door.
Outside the car, the woman seemed even taller, with small, taut breasts, womanly hips, and miles of tapering, perfectly proportioned legs. Though she was only twenty-seven, her face had a hardness far beyond her years, and her smoldering dark eyes were as sullen as they were erotic.
"I will have your bags taken care of, signorina."
"Grazie."
Carlotta ascended the stairs, and halfway across the veranda a servant in a tuxedo opened the door and bowed her through. Inside, she announced herself to a butler, also immaculately dressed. Only a trained eye such as hers could have spotted the telltale bulges under the jackets of the doorman and the butler.
Both men were armed, as had been the chauffeur and the guard tending the gate.
She had just passed through the tall archway into a large, high-ceilinged room, when Ah' Maumed Kashmir appeared before her.
Carlotta took in his lean, powerful frame in one glance. In the year since they had last met face to face, she detected few changes other than more gray in the hair and an added inch or so in the belly.
"Ah, Carlotta, has it been a year? You are more beautiful than ever!"
Her smile, as he kissed her hand, was genuinely warm. She had been practicing it for years.
"I hope the drive down from Manhattan was pleasant?"
"Of course. It is a very comfortable car."
Kashmir shrugged, the smile on his face almost a leer. "Capitalism does have its rewards. Come, I will introduce you to the other guests."
They moved across the large room toward the bar, with Kashmir introducing Carlotta as an Italian journalist and an old friend from Rome.
Both were only half truths.
Her only prior meeting with Kashmir had been to conclude a purchase of small arms for the Liberta. Eventually, those arms — through an anonymous tip — found their way into SID hands instead of terrorist guerrilla apartments. But the contact had been made, and that had been Carlotta's real reason more than the actual arms.
The guests were an assortment of nearby neighbors, show people from New York, and business acquaintances of Kashmir. The business acquaintances were most likely legitimate. Some of the man's businesses were legitimate, such as the import and distribution of carpets and trinkets from Morocco, gems from Thailand, and fine china and glassware from Europe.
Neither these endeavors nor his inheritance, however, could account for the style of life he enjoyed, or the vast sums held for him in banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
It was the brokering of vast quantities of illegal arms that made Ali Maumed Kashmir a very wealthy man.
At last they reached the bar.
"What would you like?"
"Campari."
A glass was instantly thrust into her hand. Ali stood smiling at her, adopting the mannered, hipshot pose that seemed to be his trademark as a playboy.
Her eyes made a lazy arc around the room as she sipped her drink. "You live well, Ali."
"The fruits of my hard labor."
"And your friends seem rather… passe."
He shrugged and spoke in a lowered voice. "They are part of this aspect of my life… a very necessary part."
"They look like St. Moritz in the winter, Biarritz or the Lido in summer, yachts converted from destroyer escorts, pole…"
"All of that and more," he interrupted, letting a little sneer dance over his thin lips as he, too, surveyed the group. "I was born to it. Sometimes it bores me, sometimes it amuses me. But an outsider, like yourself, is a welcome change… particularly when so beautiful."
"I didn't come here to be an adornment to your party. Ali."
"Of course not," he sighed. "But you must admit it is an ideal environment in which to discuss our business. These idiots would never see anything beyond their own noses."
"When?"
"Soon, when everyone is fully enjoying themselves. I'll let you know. For now, excuse me. Relax and enjoy yourself, my dear. They can be quite amusing."
Carlotta watched him move through the crowd, and felt fingers of warning slither up and down her spine. Kashmir was a master at survival. If he had any idea of the real reason she was here, or the fact that, at that very moment, an American agent, Nick Carter, and several of his cohorts were lying offshore ready to storm the house on her signal, Carlotta knew her life would be worth nothing.
While she waited for some sign from Kashmir, she moved casually through the group of laughing and chattering people, carefully watching her host from the corner of her eye. He was now in a small group by the fireplace, talking to an American screen star. She, in turn, was holding court for five other men who hung on her every word.
Carlotta recognized several other faces in the room from magazines and newspapers around the world, and she let a smile curl her lip.
Most of the people were highly visible. Many of them were written about almost weekly, somewhere, and often the story was accompanied by a photograph.
Not so Kashmir. To her knowledge, he had never been photographed, and very few people he dealt with had ever met him face to face.
Carlotta knew that one of the reasons she had been so honored was the fact of Kashmir's lechery. He had tried several times during their previous meeting to lure her into his bed, without success. This time, when she had contacted him, he had been only too happy to accede to her suggestion that she come to him in the U.S.
Carlotta found herself talking to an aging Wall Street broker, while constantly shifting her eyes toward Kashmir. The man beamed at her, giving vent to his profoundest thoughts on humanity, on the direction the world was headed, and the deplorable sexual freedom among the young.
At the end of his diatribe, he gently pinched her bottom and strolled away.
"Signorina?"
It was the bull-like butler with the bulge under his left armpit.
"Yes?"
"He would like to see you in his office. It is the first door to the right at the top of the stairway."
Carlotta nodded, handed him her glass, and moved across the room. In her mind she went over the shopping list of arms she had prepared for Ali Maumed Kashmir, the merchant of death.
* * *
"Hadley, are you in place?"
"Right. I'm with Chris, about a mile out from the gate."
"Good. Barzoni?… Hal?"
"Barzoni here. I'm on the left perimeter. I can see right down into the compound."
"This is Hal. I'm in place on the right and on the hill."
"Check," Carter replied. "She's inside. Step down and rest easy. It's probably going to be a long night."
The replies squawked back at him through the small hand-held radio. Carter snapped it to "receive," belted it, and turned to the other three men in the launch.
Two of them were in black rubber wet suits like himself. The third man was dressed in dungarees, a black shirt, and a dark jacket. He was the pilot of the launch that now bobbed in the middle of Great Bay. His name was Harris, and like the launch, he had been borrowed from the Coast Guard for the operation.
"Ted, Marko… have you both got it, or do you want to go over it again?"
"Not much to it, really," replied the taller of the two men. "Marko and I take the marina and perimeter guards, while you go for the power source to shut off the fence."
Carter nodded. "Don't waste anybody unless it's an absolute necessity. We don't want a bloodbath if we can help it."
"What makes a necessity?"
"Anybody who tries to give an alarm," Carter replied, then stepped through the launch's hatch into the small cabin.
It had originally contained a gall
ey, a table, and a couple of bunks. The galley remained, but the bunks and the table had been removed and replaced with communications equipment.
One small receiver between two larger ones glowed with a pulsing green light. When Cariotta Polti had word from Kashmir that the order could be filled, and the pickup and payment was cleared, that light would shift to red.
It was their signal to go.
Carter lit a cigarette and sat down to watch and wait.
* * *
"This is a very long and involved list," Kashmir said, looking over the notes he had made in an undecipherable scrawl. "Are you planning on overthrowing the entire government this time?"
"You merely broker the arms, Ali. You and I know that you don't give a damn what we do with them once they are paid for."
"Touché."
"Can you supply?"
His attention returned to the notes. The eyes were cold now, calculating profit. Gone was the sneering, practiced smile of the playboy jet-setter.
"The sniper rifles, the L39AIs…"
"Yes?"
"They are extremely difficult to come by, especially in these quantities."
Cariotta inhaled deeply on a cigarette and let the twin spumes of smoke shoot from her nostrils before replying. "Then I suppose they will be more expensive."
"Quite," he replied with a thin-lipped smile. "Would the new British Parker-Hale .222 do, if they are available? It has the same velocity but without the overpenetration."
She seemed to think a great deal on this. Actually, the quantity and the nature of the arms made very little difference. They would only be used as bait and pawns anyway, and, like the earlier shipment from Kashmir, they would never make their way into the hands of La Amicizia di Liberia Italiana.
Of course, she did not want Kashmir to know that.
"Yes, we would prefer the AIs, but we would accept the Parker-Hales as substitutes."
"The plastique, the submachine guns, and the fitted laser sights will be no problem." Kashmir looked up, his eyes boring into hers. "Do you have your own end-use certificate, or do I supply one?"
"That would depend on the place of delivery."