Circle of Scorpions

by Nick Carter

  The needle of the rev counter was barely bobbing now as Sophia flicked the light one last time. The reply was immediate.

  "Take it straight in!" she hissed.

  "Get ready to drop anchor," Santoni said, fighting to keep the bow against the tide.

  Carter clamored to the fantail and hunched down over the anchor release. A few clouds had scudded over what moon there was, inking out even the coastline.

  "Now!" Sophia rasped from the bow.

  Carter released the anchor just as Santoni killed the single diesel. He felt the claw drag and then catch.

  The big boat yawed and men began bobbing lazily around on the anchor chain, its movement dictated by me incoming and outgoing tide.

  All was deathly still. But only for a second.

  They were good, Carter had to give them credit for that. They had slid out to the boat on a raft completely unseen. The only sound was the rubber tires on the side of the raft gently bumping the boat before they came over the side.

  The first one to hit the deck looked like a leftover from the Neanderthal period. He had long dirty hair spilling over the top of his turtleneck and spreading out over his massive shoulders.

  He faced Carter with two round, evil little eyes and a flat face.

  He grunted something unintelligible and walked toward Carter, holding out an enormous paw.

  The Killmaster forced himself to give the hulk a friendly smile and took the paw in a shake.

  Sophia was instantly at the man's side, beaming. She kissed his ugly face and introduced him as Wombo sometrung-or-other.

  Two more men spilled over the rail after the beast as he eyed the crates.

  "The raft will only take three of these at a time." His voice was like sandpaper over steel, and it sounded as though it came from deep in a well. "How many are there?"

  "Twelve," Carter replied.

  The man's face screwed into an intense mask of concentration. "That means four trips."

  Carter was amazed he had figured that out by himself.

  Wombo directed the other two to take one of the crates. They struggled with it a few feet, until Santoni and then Carter himself joined them. Finally the four of them managed to muscle it to the rail and rope it down to the remaining two men on the raft.

  When they turned, Wombo stood patiently waiting, a crate balanced easily on his shoulder.

  "My God," Carter gasped as the giant lowered it, also by himself.

  "Wombo is very strong," Sophia said at his shoulder.

  "I'd say that, yes," Carter replied, throwing her a sideways glance.

  Her eyes were still beaming as she watched the unreal man go for another crate. Beneath the night suit. Carter could swear that he saw her breasts rise and fall with each of the big man's movements.

  Now, that, Carter thought, is a very weird pair!

  Carter rode the raft in and helped unload the first three crates. In the process, he strained his eyes into the darkness around and above him, but he could see no signs of movement.

  They were about to push the raft off for the second set of crates, when Carter calmly remarked, "You do have perimeter guards around here somewhere, don't you?"

  The giant replied with something that sounded like «Ugh» and pointed to three places in the cliffs.

  Carter scanned them quickly and still saw no movement. But he wasn't worried. If Tony Santoni's team was as good as Santoni himself, the three watchmen would have already been taken out.

  Trip two was uneventful and smooth. The third set of crates had just been loaded when Sophia started to crawl over the side into the raft.

  "Where are you going?" Carter asked.

  "Ashore. There are only three crates left."

  Carter had to think fast. It was imperative that one person escape the net. Sophia was the logical person. She had to stay on the boat.

  "There isn't any room on the raft."

  "One of the others can stay."

  Carter shrugged. "I'll stay myself."

  Wombo and the girl exchanged looks. This arms dealer had his money, and there was still a small fortune in arms left on the boat in the three remaining crates.

  "I'll stay," she said, slipping the sling of the Uzi from her shoulder and cradling it in her arms.

  Carter smiled to himself and threw a quick look and a nod to Santoni in the wheelhouse. Just as he went over the side, he saw the SID man flip one of the toggle switches on the dash.

  The switch would activate the twin bow running lights, but no white beams would go shooting through the night. Instead, there would be a dull purple glow behind the lenses barely perceptible to the human eye.

  The SID men on the cliffs would be wearing night goggles. To them, the infrared beams emanating from the bow lights would be bright and clear.

  So would their message: "Take them this trip!"

  It took the five of them, plus Carter, several minutes to tug the raft far enough up on the sand to hold. Only then did big Wombo turn to scan the area around the crates already unloaded on the beach.

  Carter could read every thought taking place in the man's minuscule brain from the way his flat face contorted, smoothed into puzzlement, and contorted with deep thought again.

  Two men… were here… gone now… where the hell are they?

  Twin light bulbs went on behind the vacant pupils of his eyes as portable floods bathed the beach and most of the cove in stark white light.

  A voice boomed down at them from above, partially muted by a bull horn. "We are agents of the Italian government! You are completely surrounded! Put your hands behind your necks…"

  That was all he got out. Wombo roared and dug a huge magnum from his belt. The other four men dived for rifles that had been left near the crates but were no longer there.

  Carter unslung the Uzi, backpedaled a few steps into the water, and dropped to his belly.

  Armed, black-suited men appeared as if by magic from the rocks. They moved forward to the very fringe of the light and dropped into a firing stance.

  Behind him, Carter could hear the twin Cummins diesels fire up with a roar. At the same time, he heard the bark of Sophia's Uzi spraying rubber bullets into the rocky cliffs.

  The short, staccato bursts from the boat seemed to be a catalyst.

  All hell broke loose.

  Carter sprayed rubber bullets from his own Uzi high into the cliffs. The men there returned the fire, but high. They wouldn't know which one was Ali Maumed Kashmir, and God help them if they hit him and the whole operation were over before it really got started.

  Carter chanced a glance over his shoulder as more black-clad figures emerged from behind the crate and began to charge the Liberta members on the beach.

  The powerful Corsair was already flying out of the bay, her bow cutting a high vee through the water, white spume tracking her wake.

  Good man, Carter thought, rolling his gaze back to the fray.

  Of the five, only Wombo had evidently thought to stick a handgun in his belt. Now he was blindly firing at the figures coming toward him. Most of the slugs were going wild, since the harsh floodlights shone right down into his eyes.

  The other four were splitting off, two of them running down the beach, the other two trying to crack the oncoming line of black-clad SID men and gain the darkness and safety of the cliffs.

  The latter two were overcome by onrushing bodies. The two going down the beach looked as if they might make it.

  Carter sprayed their legs with a burst of the Uzi, and they went down like cord wood. He came up to his feet and sprinted toward Wombo.

  The big man's magnum had long ago clicked on empty. Now he was using it like a club, chopping down the SID men as fast as they got to him.

  "Wombo!"

  "Ugh?"

  "This way, follow me!"

  "Ugh."

  He cracked two more heads and lumbered after Carter. They gained the first plateau of rocks, and Carter spotted a path, the giant right behind him.

  They
got past the lights and were just climbing toward the last summit, when bodies came down on them from above like huge black raindrops.

  Carter went down under a swarm of men. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the beast do the same.

  The SID boys were making it look good. They proceeded to beat the hell out of him. Of course they didn't know which one he was, so they weren't discriminating.

  Santoni had probably told them: "Work all of them over to make it look good, but don't kill any of them if you can help it. You might kill the wrong one."

  Carter played the game until he could feel blood running down his face and knew that his eyes were swelling shut. When the feeling started to leave his back and he was sure he was about to vomit, he gave up and folded into a fetal position on the ground.

  The fists and feet gave up on him and turned their attention to Wombo.

  Nick Carter could hardly believe his eyes.

  There were at least ten men pummeling the big oaf all at the same time. Somehow he managed to mash his way through ail of them and take off.

  Carter saw his burly outline briefly on the brow of the cliffs, and then he was gone.

  Let him go, Carter was thinking. He'll prop up the story.

  But he couldn't make words through his swollen and cracked lips.

  He had just finished emptying his stomach when he was yanked to his feet. A stern-faced, jut-jawed young Italian officer's smiling features were inches from his own.

  "You are under arrest."

  "Screw you," Carter hissed.

  An iron fist in his gut put out the last light.

  Eight

  Italian justice is swift, particularly when it comes down directly from government indictments and the charge is aiding and abetting revolution and arms smuggling.

  It was even swifter in the case of Ali Maumed Kashmir aka AXE Killmaster Nick Carter. This, of course, was helped along by the mountain of evidence against him, and the very quiet interventions and urgings of the SID and the even quieter American secret agencies.

  His photograph, the face partially swathed in bandages and almost unrecognizable after the severe beating on the beach, was splashed across every newspaper in the world.

  His home in New Jersey was raided, and records of ten years of illegal arms smuggling were confiscated. Men in his employ were anxious to testify to save their own skins if Kashmir were brought back to the States to stand trial.

  But that would be a long time in the future. Italy wanted him first.

  A woman, Naomi Bartinelli, was arrested in New York City and charged with aiding Kashmir in his worldwide arms deals. Several other underground terrorist organizations and business dealings of international crime families were compromised when the woman's computer records were seized in her Manhattan apartment.

  Two days after the affair on the beach south of Livorno, Kashmir was arraigned. Three days after that, the trial took place. A week later, he was found guilty and sentenced to fifty years in the maximum security prison, Castel Montferrato.

  One piece of strange evidence leaked out during the trial. The SID men had been able to carry out this brilliant raid against the Liberta revolutionaries because of a tip. The leak — that it was an informant — of course was not made through newspapers or to the general public. It was slipped to the underworld and known terrorist cells in Rome, Florence, and Milan.

  Clothing, a bag, and papers found in a pension in San Remo clearly stated that the arms had been purchased from a man named Oakhurst in Amsterdam. Oakhurst had tried to cross Kashmir, and he had paid for it with three of his best people.

  It was all too apparent to Nicolo Palmori and his lieutenants that this man Oakhurst was the one who ripped the SID.

  Two days after the sentencing of Kashmir and the seven members of La Amicizia di Liberta Italiana to Castel Montferrato, a meeting of Liberta leaders was called in Florence.

  It was almost midnight when Cariotta Polti parked a Hat sedan in Florence's Piazza Indipendenza. In the passenger seat beside her sat Sophia Palmori, a blond wig entirely covering her raven black hair.

  Wordlessly, the two women got out of the car and crossed the piazza. They reached the Via Zanobi and turned left. The street, lined with well-renovated old houses and an occasional cafe, was barely two cars wide.

  Since it was so late, neither the street nor the cafes were overly crowded. The women turned into the second cafe they came to.

  They sat in a rear booth and ordered wine. When the carafe of harsh local red came, both women poured glasses for themselves but neither drank.

  They sat, stone-faced, barely glancing at the well-dressed young people around them.

  One by one, three young men came up with open propositions. They were rebuffed or ignored. The men left quickly, and after the third one had made his try, no others approached.

  Sophia was the first to rise. She moved through the tables and down the hall to the ladies' room. Inside, she opened the towel holder, withdrew a key from behind the roll, and unlocked a second door marked Storage. She replaced the key and moved into one of the stalls to wait.

  Three minutes later Cariotta entered, and both women went through the door, locking it behind them. The stairs were steep and narrow, and they led deep into the subbasement beneath the cafe and apartments above.

  At the bottom of the stairs was another door. Cariotta knocked, and light gleamed through a peephole.

  "Yes?"

  "It is Cariotta and Sophia."

  The door opened at once, and the women entered. It was a large, barnlike room with little furniture. Two iron beds with dirty mattresses graced one corner. A makeshift kitchen with a coffeepot on a hot plate was in another. There was no rug on the bare floor, and the rotting boards looked as if they hadn't been swept in a year.

  So went the glamorous life of a guerrilla terrorist constantly on the run.

  Above a large round table flanked by several chain, a bare, low-watt yellow bulb hung, barely illuminating anything outside the sphere of the table.

  "My baby!" Nicolo Palmori growled in a whiskey voice, and he folded his fat arms around his daughter.

  He planted a sloppy kiss on each of her cheeks and turned to Carlotta, who was forced to undergo the same welcome. Her stomach turned as, over the terrorist leader's shoulder, she saw Wombo take the young girl in his huge arms and invade her mouth with his tongue.

  There were two other men in the room besides Palmori and Wombo: Nordo Compari. and a man Carlotta knew only as Pocky.

  Both of them were homicidal maniacs and were rarely out of Nicolo Palmori's sight. Compari was almost as big as Wombo, with flat, irregular features, black, greasy hair, and rotten teeth. Pocky had boyish features and unruly blond hair. He was over thirty, but he could easily pass for twenty. His most noticeable feature, other than his vacant blue eyes, was the steel claw he wore in a black leather rig in place of his right hand.

  "Sit, sit, everyone sit," Palmori wheezed. "Nordo, pour soroe wine!"

  Carlotta accepted the glass and managed not to wince when Compari's hand caressed hers while handing it over. He had been trying for over a year to seduce her, but Carlotta had always managed to keep him at bay. Once, she had done it by slicing an eight-inch gash across his belly when he was drinking and had tried too hard.

  It didn't seem to deter him. He still tried.

  Palmori started to rant.

  "We must be avenged for this insult! Seven good men in prison because of one pig's petty greed and need for revenge!"

  "Eight men," Carlotta said. "Kashmir was almost our sole supplier of arms."

  "True, but he too is a pig! Ali Kashmir has served what purpose he had. For all we care now, be can rot in Castel Montferrato with Pietro Amani. But our seven comrades and their revenge?… Ah, that is another story"

  As Palmori spoke, his fat belly rising and falling over his belt, Carlotta let her eyes trail around the table. These, she thought, were the remnants of the Liberta leaders. If the necessity hadn't
arisen to free Pietro Amani, she would have been able to rig their self-destruction months before.

  The only one in the room with any brains, besides herself. was Sophia. And Sophia was obsessed by, of all things, the Liberta cause and sex.

  God help the next man Sophia decides to fall in love with after she tires of Wombo, Carlotta mused. The huge beast would probably kill both of them when it happened!

  "Do you agree, Cariotta?"

  "What…? I'm sorry, my mind was roving…"

  "Now that we know the identity of this Oakhurst. and where he is, don't you think we should take action?"

  "Definitely," Carlotta replied, sipping the bad wine.

  Most definitely, she thought. If one of us takes out Oakhurst, then Interpol. the SID, the Mossad, or any number of other agencies won't have to bother.

  Palmori was outlining a plan. He had nearly finished, when Cariotta realized that she was to be the instrument of ending Émile Dobruck-alias-Oakhurst's useless life.

  "But, Nicolo, you have already ordered me to set in motion a plan to liberate our comrades from Castel Montferrato. How can I do that and go to Brussels at the same rime?"

  "That is true…"

  Sophia immediately stood, a slanted, leering smile on her lips. "I will go to Brussels," she said, taking a deep breath to expand her large breasts even larger in the too-tight sweater. "It will be easier for me, a young woman, to lure this pig anyway."

  Nicolo nodded in agreement.

  Carlotta thought, You silly bitch, go!

  "I will go along with Sophia as a backup," Pocky said, lifting his right hand and smiling.

  The claw in his leather rig had been replaced by an eight-inch spike.

  * * *

  Castel Montferrato was an awesome fortress perched high above the plains of Alessandria Provence, thirty miles southeast of Turin.

  It had been passed down from family to family since the Middle Ages. Now, because of its impenetrable thousand-foot walls, its watch turrets, and its gigantic interior as big as a small city, it was a prison.

  No longer did marauding hordes try to breach its four-foot-thick walls from the outside. Now Castel Montferrato kept men inside its walls.