Circle of Scorpions

by Nick Carter

  Santoni scratched his stubbled chin with the rim of the wineglass. "We had best leave right after nightfall. Even then we will have to push it."

  "But we can make it?"

  "Yes. Where do we deliver?"

  "A fishing village called Torta, here, between Cecina and Livorno."

  "I know it."

  "Figuring a half hour for the unloading, can we make it by five o'clock in the morning?"

  "You can bet on it." Santoni said with a wide smile. "This little bambino will fairly fly."

  "What if this storm gets worse?"

  "It won't. It is already moving north. An hour out and we will probably have calm seas."

  "Good. Do we need any crew?"

  "Not if you are as good a sailor as you used to be."

  Carter grinned. "I think I am." He folded the paper and tucked it into the other man's jacket. "I'll pick up our treasurer as soon as I leave here. Where do I meet you?"

  "There is a cove just this side of the frontier. You know Ristorante Roma, on the coast highway?"

  "I know it."

  "It is just east of there. As close after dark as possible."

  Carter squeezed the other man's wrist and slid from the boom. "I left Kashmir's things and the papers in the Pension Garibaldi, up on the hill."

  "I'll inform the locals that it is our business."

  And there will be eight of them, three probably on the perimeters and well armed.

  "I'll tell our people down there to take them out first."

  "Ciao," Carter said with a nod and strolled from the café.

  * * *

  Carter took the coast road and walked nearly a mile before turning up a narrow path into the hills. The rain had picked up. and a few thunderclouds had moved in.

  He almost missed the smaller hut among the rocks and would have if he hadn't seen the smoke curling up into the sky.

  The door was in two parts, with a tiny, glazed pane at eye level. The latch wouldn't give, so he tried the key.

  It was one large, sparsely furnished room with an open kitchen in the rear and a small hallway to his right. He was halfway toward the hallway when a young woman stepped from it into the room.

  She had a round, intense face, a deep olive complexion, and black hair that hung wetly down below her shoulders.

  When she saw Carter, she stopped abruptly, the towel in her hands halfway to her hair. If possible, her youthful features hardened even more.

  "Who are you?"

  "Who the hell are you?"

  She started edging back toward the hallway. The sash that held her lightweight housecoat together loosened slightly, revealing a lot of her shapely figure and heavy breasts that didn't fit her little-girl face.

  "If you'll notice," Carter said. "I let myself in with a key."

  He extended his left hand, palm up, with the key in its center. That stopped her movement, and some of the animal tenseness seemed to fade from her eyes and body.

  She reached for the key, but just before her fingers touched it, Carter tilted his hand away. When she grabbed for it, he grabbed her. locking both of her wrists in a steely grip with his left hand. At the same time, he squeezed Hugo into his right hand and brought the tip of the stiletto up against her throat as he slammed her against the wall.

  "Don't play twenty questions with me, little girl. I'm supposed to meet a man here. Where is he?"

  "I… I'm the only one here."

  "Then who are you?"

  "Palmori. I am Sophia Palmori."

  Carter dropped her and resheathed Hugo. "You should have said so. Nicolo's daughter?"

  "Yes. I was frightened. You are Ali Kashmir?"

  Carter nodded. "Why you?"

  "There has been a great deal of internal strife within our organization. I was the only one my father could trust with such a great amount of money."

  She tightened the housecoat around her and stepped back. Her eyes, as the panic and fear faded from them, were already hardening up again.

  "How old are you?"

  "Eighteen," she replied, jutting her chin forward defiantly. "But I am a seasoned soldier. I have been fighting our cause against the warmongers and imperialists since I was twelve."

  Christ, Carter thought. Sick, sick, sick.

  "Where is it?"

  "The money?"

  "What else? That's all I'm interested in." She hesitated, her full lower lip floating between her even, white teeth. "No money, no deal. I'm not moving from San Remo until I lay eyes on it."

  She moved down the narrow hall. Carter right behind her. From behind two loose boards in the rear of a closet, she withdrew a learner briefcase. On the bed, she flipped the catches and lifted the lid.

  "Swiss francs and dollars."

  They were in neat stacks, large bills still bound in bank wrappers.

  Carter selected two of them at random and ruffled them beside his ear.

  "Don't you want to count it?"

  "I already have," he replied. "Lock it back up. Do you have anything to eat in this place?"

  * * *

  Carter moved down the narrow, almost invisible steps that had been cut by hand into the side of the cliff. Far above them and to the side, the lights of Ristorante Roma blinked against the clear night sky.

  True to Tony Santoni's weather report, the storm had about blown itself out and was now headed on north toward France.

  The girl, dressed in a dark sweater, blue jeans, and sneakers, trailed right at his heels.

  "Hold it."

  He stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into his backside. They were only a few feet from the water, with a pale moon glinting off its surface but revealing nothing of the shoreline except black, jutting rocks.

  Carter flipped the switch on his penlight twice, then motioned the girl forward.

  "What was that for?"

  "To let my man know we're coming. He doesn't like to be surprised."

  They dipped into a deep hollow, and there, completely hidden from the sea and the cliffs, was the long, sleek Corsair gently bobbing against a makeshift pier.

  Lounging against its gleaming rails was Tony Santoni, a Uzi submachine gun cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby.

  "This is Tony. Tony, Sophia Palmori."

  "A girl?"

  "A woman, bastard," she hissed.

  Santoni smiled, his eyes sweeping her front where her breasts seemed ready to burst through the sweater.

  "Not much doubt of that," he quipped. "Come aboard!"

  Santoni cast off the bow and aft lines as Carter and Sophia moved into the wheelhouse.

  "This is beautiful." she gasped. "Do you own this?"

  "We lease… very short-term. Through that hatch is the main cabin. Somewhere down there is a bar. Fix yourself something and open a beer for me. I'll be down in a minute."

  From the scowl on her face Carter knew she didn't like taking orders, but she went, banging the briefcase on the hatchway as she went through.

  He cranked up the dual Cummins diesels and felt a ripple pass over his skin as the power plant's low. guttural roar vibrated through the boat. He adjusted the twin throttles to idle and snapped on a portable radar that had been mounted on the dash just beneath the windshield.

  The set hummed, the screen flashed white, and then it settled down to its normal green color with the yellow circling wand.

  Santoni crawled over the low bulkhead and dropped to the wheelhouse deck.

  "All lines clear?" Carter asked.

  "All clear."

  The big boat responded like a finely turned race car as Carter pushed the throttles forward and the bow lifted. In no time they were beyond the bay doing a little over forty knots, and Carter was setting the course as Santoni called out the coordinates.

  "Take it!" Carter said over the roaring engines.

  He moved from the wheel, and the Italian look his place. They skimmed the water for about a mile before Santoni lit a cigarette and threw a sideways glance at Carter.

 
"Why did old man Palmori send her?"

  Carter shrugged. "Didn't trust anybody else, I guess."

  "Or didn't trust you… or Cariotta."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because I know him," Santoni replied. "Sophia's file is as thick as her father's. She is the best he has."

  "How so?"

  "Five kills that we know about, two of them on the streets of Rome in broad daylight."

  "That's sick."

  "Sure it's sick, but they are all sick. It is part of the game…brainwash them right from the cradle. Watch yourself, Nick."

  "I will."

  Carter went below. An open beer was resting in a roll-cradle on the bar. The girl was behind it, a glass of wine in her hand, staring out the porthole.

  The moon bathed her features in soft light and dark tones. It was the first time he had noticed that, in a hard way, she was quite beautiful.

  "Where's the key?" Carter asked, taking a long swallow from the beer.

  "What for?"

  "So I can divide up the money… their price, and my commission."

  Haughtily, Sophia slid the key across the bar. "You are a privateer."

  "I sure am," Carter said, opening the briefcase and starting his count.

  "We need people like you now." she said softly, "to supply the revolution. But one day…"

  "One day, little girl, we'll all be dead and not one damned soul will remember who sold or who shot what we buy and sell."

  "Death means nothing to me. I am a revolutionary."

  "Good. Because if my supplier tries to cross me again, we'll probably have a fire fight on our hands before we pull away from that freighter. Can you use an Uzi?"

  "I can handle any gun that has ever been made."

  "I'll just bet you can."

  And he meant it.

  It was in her eyes: the joy of killing. Now he was glad he had surprised her in the cottage unarmed. If she then had had the little Beretta he knew now was in the waistband of her jeans, he might have been forced to kill her.

  All guts for the cause and very little hard reasoning, he thought, that's how they're trained.

  Jesus, using his own daughter.

  Carter hoped that one day he would cross Palmori before this was all over.

  And he had a sneaking hunch that he would.

  Seven

  "I have them on the radar."

  Santoni's voice at the hatchway brought Carter into instant wakefulness. He rolled from the bunk and checked his watch as he went up the ladder. It was 11:45.

  "Right there, about eight miles to starboard. We should spot them in about five minutes."

  Carter found the little clear blip on the radar screen. "I'll mount the twenty on the roof. Sophia…?"

  "Yes?"

  "Get the other Uzi from below and set up shop in the bow."

  This time she nodded and moved without question. Carter narrowed his eyes and watched the blip move slowly toward their position on the grid.

  "You're sure it's the Alamein?"

  "Almost positive," Santoni replied. "There's not much out here tonight, and nothing that big so close to land."

  Carter took his word for it and opened a bulkhead chest set against the port rail of the wheelhouse. From the chest he hoisted an 8mm Fiat Model 35 heavy machine gun to his shoulder. The Fiat's portable mount had been replaced with special cotter-key interlocks that fit the disguised stationary mounts on the wheelhouse roof.

  There were four three-hundred-round, nondisintegrating belts laid out on the floor of the chest. Carter slung only one over his shoulder.

  If three hundred rounds from the Fiat and damage from the two Uzis wouldn't squelch any double cross by Oakhurst, then nothing would.

  On the roof he matched the runners, slid the bolts home, and snapped the keys into place. He fed four shells through, rammed one home, and left the weapon cocked.

  The Fiat was a vintage gun with a lot of drawbacks, but it would more than do for the night's work. Just a look at its ugly snout and trailing ammo belt by the men on the freighter would probably be enough.

  "There, on the horizon!"

  Carter followed the line of Santoni's arm and saw the tiny dot of the freighter's superstructure growing in the moonlight.

  He was just finishing the beamlight's rigging when Sophia came back on deck and passed below him, headed for the bow. She had donned a rain slicker and pulled the hood up until it covered her head and most of her face.

  Carter wondered if she was worried about being recognized or if she though the Uzi in her hands would have more clout if its wielder's sex was unknown.

  "Send them a couple of quick ones!" Santoni shouted, idling back on the throttles about ten knots.

  Carter blinked the beamlight twice and narrowed his eyes at the freighter. There was no response. He waited a full two minutes, then repeated the signal.

  This time there was a two-blink answer, and Carter could detect a slight alteration in course.

  Santoni laid forward on the throttles again, and the Corsair leaped forward like a scalded cat.

  Five minutes later they slid under the bow on the port side, and the Italian goosed the powerful boat into a 360. He laid up directly under the huge loading doors and idled back to about five knots, matching the freighter's speed.

  "Ahoy, Alamein!" Carter shouted between cupped hands.

  A tall, graying man in a long black greatcoat and a visored cap appeared at the rail. "Aye, we're the Alamein out of Marseille."

  "And are you Captain Rhinemeye?"

  "I am. And you?"

  "Jasmine."

  "May I come aboard?"

  "You may."

  A rope ladder slid out of the loading bay as Carter moved away from the machine gun and dropped into the wheelhouse. Minutes later, the tall captain came down the ladder and joined him.

  "You look as if you are expecting trouble."

  "We are," Carter intoned, unsmiling. "Your employer and my supplier tried to test me a few nights ago in Amsterdam»

  The captain shrugged. "I know none of this. I only deliver and take my commission."

  "Below," Carter said, and led the way.

  It took Rhinemeyer only ten minutes to count and transfer the money from one briefcase to the other.

  He's very practiced at it, Carter thought, leading him back on deck.

  "Unload."

  The arms of twin cranes rolled out almost before the word was out of the captain's mouth. Pallets, each holding two crates, were rigged on each of them.

  There were twelve crates in all, and the complete operation was accomplished in another twenty minutes.

  When the last two pallets were unloaded, the captain stepped up on one of them. He gestured, and without a word he was hauled up.

  "I hope you get this done quickly," Santoni muttered. "I'd like Interpol to nail that bastard in Caracas."

  "Our fish is much, much bigger than this guy," Carter growled. "Cut back your engines."

  Santoni did, and the freighter glided on by.

  When it was clear and picking up knots, he whirled the wheel and jammed the throttles.

  "Think the added weight will make any difference on our ETA?"

  Santoni shook his head. "This baby was built for this kind of hauling."

  Carter nodded and went below. He stripped to his shorts and was just crawling into a night suit when Sophia dropped through the hatch. Carter was glad to note that Santoni had lifted the Uzi when she passed him.

  "It went well?"

  "Yes, it did," he replied. "There's a set of these for you on the bunk. They might be a little big. I thought you would be a man."

  "They'll work."

  Without turning her back, she pulled the sweater over her head and slipped out of the jeans. She wore no bra, and her panties were transparent and barely there.

  Carter took one look and turned away.

  * * *

  Nick Carter stood by Tony Santoni at the wheel. Both wore night sui
ts with skintight black gloves, and their faces had been darkened with midnight grease.

  Sophia Palmori lay flat out on her belly in the bow. Like the men she had darkened her features, and now her black-gloved hands nervously fingered die action on the Uzi.

  It was her show from here on. She knew who was waiting, where they were, and what they expected to see and hear.

  One of the beamlights from the wheelhouse roof had been remounted on the bow deck right beside her. It had been fitted with an adjustable aperture snood that would take its powerful beam down to a sliver of light less than an inch in diameter.

  She had already signaled once and had received a quick flash in response.

  That had been from about four miles out. Now, with one of the Cummins diesels shut down, they were making their way in at less than five knots.

  At that speed, the bow was doing a lot of pitching and yawing the closer they got to the beach. Though both Carter and Santoni knew the scenario of what had already occurred on the beach — and what was about to occur — they played it by the book, outwardly cautious, following Sophia Palmori's every barked command.

  Santoni steered in, jerking and swerving like a slow-moving ruptured hare, sometimes easing back on the throttle and cutting his speed, but never once holding the wheel steady for more than a few seconds.

  No words passed between the two men. They had already said everything that needed to be said.

  Both Uzis — the one in Carter's hands and the one Sophia now cradled in the bow — held doctored magazines with soft rubber bullets. Santoni had seen to that.

  Carter's fast friends — the Luger, Wilhelmina, and the stiletto, Hugo — were wrapped in an oilskin bag and secreted beneath the bar.

  "I'll miss them. Take care of them and make sure I get them back after the break."

  "Will do."

  Carter's cut was back in Sophia's suitcase. If all went well, it would find its way back to the Liberia.

  That, Carter thought, would be good for public relations.

  "To the right… ten degrees." Sophia said in a hoarse whisper.

  Santoni moved the wheel just a touch, and the bow responded.

  The bright lights of Livorno to their left, and the smaller and dimmer cluster of Marina di Cecina to their right, were all but obscured now by the coastline.