by Nick Carter
NICK CARTER
Assassination Brigade
Copyright Notice
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Assassination Brigade
The meeting drew to a close, and both the Soviet chairman and the US security adviser were standing to shake hands.
Then one of the men in the Soviet chairman’s own party — later I learned that he was the Russian ambassador — took a step toward the Communist chairman. He was holding a grenade that he had pulled from his pocket. The man unpinned the grenade and dropped it on the plush carpet directly at the Russian leader’s feet.
In the split second of frozen horror that followed not a sound could be heard in the room. I could see the pure terror on the face of the Soviet chairman as he gazed down in helpless fascination at the lethal activated grenade lying at the tips of his shoes.
At that moment, with every person in the room paralyzed, the Russian ambassador — the man who had dropped the unpinned grenade — flung himself on top of the explosive. There was a muffled blast; the grenade’s deadly power was smothered by the man’s body. He was blown apart, his head torn from his torso . . . .
Table of Contents
Copyright Notice
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
One
I knew when the phone rang in the gray, pre-dawn hours that it could only be one person on the other end of the line—Hawk, my boss at AXE.
The phone was on a night table on the opposite side of the bed, so I had to crawl over Maria Von Alder, asleep beside me, to reach it. Maria stirred in her sleep, drawing up one leg slightly so that her sheer pink nightie rode up above her hips, as I scooped up the receiver.
“You’re needed back here immediately,” Hawk said as soon as he had identified my voice. His words were clipped and urgent. “There’s been a new development in that deal we’re working on. Be ready to leave in thirty minutes.”
“In thirty minutes?” I asked. “How? You seem to have forgotten where I am.”
I was on Whiskey Cay, a tiny island off the Bahamas, where Hawk himself had sent me on assignment. I would have to arrange for a boat to pick me up and take me to one of the larger islands so I could catch a plane back to the States.
Hawk was impatient with my answer. “Be ready to leave in thirty minutes,” he repeated, his voice icy. “Mr. James is providing your transportation.”
I nodded without speaking. “Mr. James” was the AXE code-name for the President of the United States.
“Good,” Hawk said, as if he had seen me nod. “A boat will pick you up at the main dock of Whiskey Cay in precisely twenty-seven minutes.” He hung up. As I put down the receiver, I saw that Maria had opened her eyes and was watching me.
“That was my office in New York,” I told her. “I’m afraid I have to go back. The company’s sending a boat.”
Maria thought I was a millionaire named Tony Dawes, the cover I was using on my present AXE assignment. Even if she had heard my conversation with Hawk, she still wouldn’t have any reason to doubt my cover.
But she made a face, her ripe, red lips pouting. “Do you have to go back today?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” I said cheerfully as I started to swing out of bed. “And not just today, but right now. I’ve just about got time to dress before the boat gets here.”
But before I could get out of bed, Maria reached up and playfully tugged at my arm, pulling me toward her.
“You don’t have to be in that much of a hurry,” she said huskily.
There was no doubt about it Maria Von Alder was a beautiful creature, a long-legged, shapely blonde with a superbly molded, golden body and full, smooth breasts, their pink tips thrust hard against the bodice of her transparent gown. She was looking at my body, and she could see what the sight of her was doing to me. She slithered down the bed on her back, her hips slightly upraised, offering her silken body to me, like a loving cup waiting to be filled.
With all the willpower I could muster, I whispered, “There’ll be other times.” I brushed her cheek with my lips and took off for the shower.
I couldn’t complain that the past five days on Whiskey Cay hadn’t been enjoyable. The island was a pleasure playground for the very rich. There were luxuries everywhere you looked—the sea-going yachts, scrubbed clean, riding at anchor on the sparkling blue waters; the acres of expensive, landscaped lawns, blazing with flame-bright flowers, stretching away to the sea; the clusters of palatial villas, vividly colored, as if they had been drawn with a child’s crayons, cresting high above the Atlantic Ocean. I had been enjoying everything, including Maria Von Alder, for the past five days.
But my visit to Whiskey Cay had still been frustrating; I was there on business, and I was no closer to a solution of my current assignment than I had been the day Hawk first briefed me at AXE headquarters in Washington.
Hawk had opened the conversation with an un-characteristic monologue about the dangers of this particular mission, the impossible odds, the vital importance of success.
I had shot him a look out of the corner of my eye, thinking, so what else is new? I’d half-expected to see those wrinkle lines around his thin lips break into a smile. It wasn’t often that Hawk, a reserved New Englander, tried to be humorous. But I saw that these lines around his mouth and piercing eyes only deepened, and I knew he meant it.
He shuffled some papers on his desk and frowned. “We were just informed—it’s top secret, of course—that six hours ago the Prime Minister of England was threatened with assassination by his life-long friend, a fellow member of Parliament. The two men were at the Prime Minister’s country house when the friend suddenly produced a rifle, aimed it at the Prime Minister, and then, quite inexplicably, turned the rifle on himself and blew his own brains out. There was no one else present at the time, so we can give out a fake story to the public. But the real implications of the incident are frightful.”
I nodded. This was more bizarre than I’d expected, even after Hawk’s lead-in speech.
“The official British version is going to describe it as an accident,” Hawk continued. “A misfire while the friend was examining the rifle. Of course, it will not be mentioned that the weapon was first turned on the Prime Minister.”
“Are you planning to lend me to the English to help with the investigation?”
Hawk shook his head. “The problem is closer to home. There have been reports of similar occurrences in China, France, Japan, and Germany. In each instance the would-be assassin had the power to kill his victim but instead killed himself.
“You can imagine what effect these reports have had on the President. He could easily be the next target. And he’s not about to wait until a member of this assassination squad reaches the White House, even if the killer eventually murders only himself. Our job this time is to search out and destroy—preventive action.”
“Do we have any leads?”
“Not much,” Hawk admitted. He lit one of his cheap cigars and puffed in silence for a minute. “I have all the files of the investigations from the various i
ntelligence agencies in each of the countries and those of Interpol as well. Want to know what they’ve found?”
He ticked the facts off on his fingers. “One, all the dead assassins were overweight. Two, all were obsessive about their excess poundage and spent considerable time trying to get rid of it. Three-three of them were close to the Von Alder sisters.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Terrific. I’m looking for fat men on a diet who like pretty girls. You’re not exactly making this easy.”
“I know,” Hawk said. “I’m sorry.” From the way he said it, I almost believed him. But then he turned crisply businesslike again.
“We start with the Von Alder sisters—that is, you do. They’re the only real clue we’ve got.”
The Von Alder girls were a little bizarre themselves. Maria, Helga, and Elsa—identical blonde triplets, well known to any newspaper reader or television viewer. They were in their twenties and beautiful. They had come to the United States from Germany after World War II with their mother, Ursula. They specialized in millionaire husbands and lovers, who’d made them wealthy with gifts of homes scattered around the globe, yachts, jewels, even private jets.
Thinking it over, I decided that getting close to the Von Alders was probably one of the most pleasant ways I’d ever started on an assignment.
It had been simple enough for AXE to supply me with a cover—Tony Dawes, wealthy business-man who had inherited a prosperous export-import business with headquarters in New York. Soon, with Hawk pulling the right strings behind the scenes, I’d been invited to a number of the same parties as the Von Alder girls. Once I met the sisters, it was reasonably easy, with lavish displays of gifts and attention, to become a part of their social set.
Maria was the first Von Alder I “investigated.” I’d taken her to Whiskey Cay, where we spent five blissful days in luxury. But I had uncovered no further leads by the morning Hawk ordered me back to the United States.
Two
A little less than twenty minutes after Hawk’s call, I headed down to Whiskey Cay’s main dock. Maria Von Alder went with me, clinging to my arm. The boat was already waiting there—a forty-foot cruiser, most of its paint peeling and rusted, its twin diesel engines idling. There were four men on deck.
One of the men, who was wearing a faded baseball cap, called out, “We’re all set to shove off, Mr. Dawes.”
“Be right with you,” I answered. I turned to say goodbye to Maria, and she gave me a long, demanding kiss.
“Remember, Dumplink,” she said—all the Von Alder sisters called their men “Dumplink’’— “stay away from those sisters of mine or I scratch the eyes out.”
“Mine or theirs?” I asked.
“All the eyes,” she said.
She gave me another quick kiss, and I vaulted onto the deck of the cruiser. The man in the faded baseball cap immediately cast off. As the cruiser’s powerful twin diesels throbbed to life, I saw a second boat sweeping in toward the dock. It turned suddenly and headed toward my cruiser, which was making swiftly toward the open sea, its prow knifing through the water, its bow making a rooster-tail of spray. Soon Maria Von Alder, still standing at the end of the dock, had shrunk to the size of a doll and then disappeared completely. Within minutes the island itself had vanished from view.
Suddenly I realized that the other boat was pursuing us. The familiar chill ran down my spine. Somebody had made a bad mistake—could it have been me?
I tried to figure it out, and quickly. Either the other boat was an enemy craft, trying to get at me, or I had let myself be picked up by the wrong boat and the other vessel was the one Hawk had sent to Whiskey Cay. Before I had a chance to work on it some more, the man in the baseball cap told me what I wanted to know.
“You will please do nothing foolish, Mr. Dawes,” he said. He shoved back a length of tarpaulin on the deck and snatched up a sawed-off shotgun that had been lying beneath it. The barrel was leveled at my chest.
At least he didn’t know my real name. But I still couldn’t explain how he knew I’d be waiting at the dock on Whiskey Cay for a boat. Either someone had been listening in on Hawk’s call or Maria Von Alder had given me away.
There was a shout from the man at the wheel of the cruiser, and the boat veered to starboard with a sudden lurch that almost knocked us all off our feet. Then we saw what the trouble was— a sinister silver object streaking through the water almost directly across our bow. The boat pursuing us had fired a torpedo, but the missile just missed us and went hurtling out to sea.
But that brief moment, with all hands on board the cruiser thrown off balance, gave me the opportunity I needed to pull out Wilhelmina, my modified Luger with a three-inch barrel. While I was with Maria on Whiskey Cay, I had kept it hidden in a secret compartment in my luggage. But before I left our suite that morning, while Maria was in another room, I had prudently slipped it into my crotch holster, which I wore inside my trousers so that I could reach the gun by opening my fly.
While the man wielding the shotgun was still sprawled against the railing, I crouched, unzipped, and yanked out the Luger. I could see the bug-eyed amazement on his face when the Luger appeared out of my fly. He yelled and swung the shotguns muzzle up, his finger tightening on the trigger. We fired simultaneously. Wilhelmina’s 9mm slug closed the gap between us a scant half-second faster. The bullet blew the man’s face away and sent him crashing through the railing and into the sea, his shotgun pellet blasting into the bulk-head behind me.
I moved quickly, grabbing a life jacket with one hand and stuffing the Luger back into its holster with the other. Then I jumped the railing into the sea. I guessed that the men on the second boat had been signaling me to try to get out of the boat when they fired the torpedo and that they were watching me through binoculars.
Despite the heat of the day, the water was shockingly cold when I hit and went under. Still clutching the life jacket, I bobbed up almost at once and began paddling away from the cruiser toward the second boat, now speeding toward me. Over my shoulder I could see the cruiser start to swing around in pursuit.
The cruiser was still midway in its turn when the approaching boat fired another torpedo. The sea missile whizzed past me, only about five yards away, and this time struck the cruiser midship. There was one hell of an explosion, and I was buffeted by violent shock waves that radiated through the water like electric current skipping across an exposed live wire. The cruiser blew apart, sending up a giant geyser of water, debris, and bodies.
Seconds later, the pursuing boat had pulled alongside, and helping hands were lifting me aboard. Once on deck, I saw that this boat was an exact replica of the cruiser that had just been destroyed; even to the flaking and rusted paint and the number of men aboard. But this time one of the men flashed a card with a United States seal and the Presidents signature.
“Sorry about the inconvenience,” the man said shortly. “We were late getting to the dock at Whiskey Cay. Somebody had performed a little piece of sabotage on our generators to delay us. When we saw the other boat pull away with you, we guessed what had happened.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. “You did a nice job of recovery.”
A real professional, he didn’t bother to acknowledge. Instead, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to change into some dry clothes before we reach our destination. You’ll find an outfit below in the cabin.”
I went below and changed into fresh denims, sweat shirt, shoes, and socks. They weren’t exactly Saville Row attire, but they were clean and dry. My rescuers hadn’t asked me any questions or volunteered any information. They were probably CIA, but I still didn’t have any idea how they planned to get me back to the mainland with the speed that Hawk had in mind.
When I went above again, the same man who had spoken to me earlier told me that we should be reaching our transfer point in approximately six minutes.
I nodded, but I still didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d been out of sight of Whiskey Cay for awhile, and from what I knew about thi
s area of the Atlantic, there was no land for miles to the west except the U.S. All I could see were mountainous swells of blue sea on every side.
Exactly five minutes and fifty seconds later we came within sight of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and the man on deck with me said, “Here we are —right on the button.”
A score of jets, wings folded, were perched on the carrier like dark birds catching a brief rest before resuming flight. Some crewmen dropped a rope ladder as our boat pulled up alongside. I shook hands with my rescuers and then scrambled up the ladder. The cruiser had pulled away and was almost out of sight in the rolling sea before I had reached the deck.
The ship’s captain met me at the top of the ladder, snapped a salute, which I returned, and quickly hustled me to a jet that was waiting on the flight deck. The engines of the A-4 Skyhawk were already whining impatiently, anxious to be airborne. I shook hands with the pilot, a young redhead, put on flight clothes, and crawled into the rear cockpit. The pilot gave me a “thumbs up” signal, and we catapulted down the deck of the carrier and into the sky with breathtaking speed. When the President of the United States acted as your personal travel agent, the accommodations were strictly first class . . . .
Three
The flight back to the States was swift and uneventful. Our destination was New York’s JFK airport, and we landed there on a Special runway that had been cleared for us. After the sun and clear skies of Whiskey Cay, I wasn’t prepared for the blustery, biting January cold of New York.
Hawk was waiting at the end of the landing strip in a long, dark limousine. As soon as I had transferred from the jet to the car, the redheaded pilot waved his hand, turned his aircraft around, and took off for the carrier. There were two men in the front of the limousine—the chauffeur and, I guessed, another AXE agent. I knew we must be facing a serious crisis, since Hawk almost never revealed the identity of one agent to another. Hawk tapped on the glass partition that separated us from the men in front, and the limousine rolled across the airport.