Circle of Scorpions

Three

The pool was octagonal in shape and enclosed in a bubble dome. There were muted lights glowing beneath its surface. Since the patio lights and most of the lights in the rear rooms of the mansion had been extinguished, the only illumination was from the pool itself.

Kashmir was already there, standing on the low board at the far end, his tail, well-muscled body suitless.

Cariotta waved and approached the edge of the pool. Her long, black hair was braided and wrapped around her head. She wore a black silk robe that hugged her body and ended mid-thigh to reveal the astonishing length of her statuesque limbs. A small black clutch bag was in her right hand. Inside the bag was a package of cigarettes and a lighter.

Built into the base of the lighter was a tiny homing device that, when activated, would send a lone signal approximately one mile.

"It's a beautiful evening," Ali called, looking up through the dome at the dark, star-dotted sky.

"Yes. it is. Is everything settled for Friday?"

"Quite. Our business is completed."

He arced from the board and cut the water cleanly. As he swam toward her, Cariotta put a cigarette between her lips and thumbed the lighter. Just before she placed it, and the bag, on a poolside table, she twisted the lighter's base, activating the beeper.

Ali's head surfaced just beneath her. His teeth gleamed in a broad smile, and his eyes searched the robe for a telltale sign that she was wearing a bathing suit beneath it.

"Are you coming in?"

"Of course." Carlotta tugged at the belt. The robe parted, and with a shrug of her shoulders it shimmied downward to puddle at her feet.

"Beautiful," Ali sighed.

The pool lights sifting through the water created dancing shadows on the supple curves and hollows of her nude body. Her buttocks were firm and rounded, her waist slim, and her thighs sleek. She sported an all-over tan, and when she moved to toss the cigarette away, her skin in the light took on a golden glow.

"We will go slowly," Ali said. "I want to enjoy you leisurely."

"Yes, let's take a very long time, Ali."

Carlotta slipped into the water, keeping her face a bland mask as his arms went around her.

Carter bounded back up to the deck. "Ted, Marko… it's a go!"

The three men moved aft. Within seconds, they had buckled webbed belts around their middles. Attached to the belts were Fairbairn commando knives and two waterproof bags with silenced pistols and spare clips.

Hopefully, a knife and a handgun would be all they would need. Everything had to happen close and quiet.

Carter lifted the radio from his belt and barked into it. "Hadley?"

"Yo!"

"It's a go. You know the time sequence."

"Right."

"Barzoni?… Hal?"

"Here."

"On."

"Come on down to the fence line. You'll know the power's off when the lights go."

"Check."

Carter killed the radio and stored it inside the wet suit jumper before turning to the men beside him. "All right, let's go."

The three of them slipped off the fantail of the launch, one veering right, one left, and Carter heading straight into the dock.

The Ford sedan stopped just outside the gates. The headlights blinked out, leaving only the parking lights as the driver's door opened and a man in a loud sport shirt got out.

The guard slipped his hand inside his jacket and moved to the center of the gates.

"I think my buddy and I are lost. Do you know the right road to Midvail?"

"Never heard of it," the guard replied.

"It's right here on this map, but I can't find the right road running to it."

A hand holding a map was thrust through the grillwork. Instinctively, the guard reached for it. His fingers had barely folded over the paper when the other man's hand was at his throat.

He struggled for a count of three before his body went limp.

The guard had barely crumpled to the drive before the second man was out of the car and on its roof. Like a gymnast, he leaped to the hood and from there to the top of the gates. Effortlessly, he flipped upward. For a split second his body was outlined against the night sky, and then his soft-soled sneakers crunched on the gravel inside the gate.

Seconds later, the guard's body had been dragged to the side and the gates were swinging open.

Without a sound, both men faded into the trees and moved toward the house. By the time they had rejoined in a clump of trees across from the wide front veranda, two roving sentries had met the same fate as the gate guard.

Carter surfaced beneath the pier and made his way along its length to the boathouse. As he came up the ladder, he heard voices. The door was cracked against the night's humid heat, revealing two men inside. They were at a table, pushing checkers back and forth across a board.

As he moved to the door, Carter tugged Wilhelmina, his 9mm Luger, from the waterproof bag on his belt. Deftly, he checked the silencer and levered a shell into the chamber.

Both men got instant owl eyes as he kicked the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside, the Luger up and at arm's length in both hands in front of his face.

"Don't make a sound or a move or it's your last."

There was a two-second stunned pause, and then the one on the right moved. His hand flew to his belt, and then the arm came up in an arc.

He was incredibly fast. The Fairbairn in his hand was just like the one in Carter's belt, and from the way the arm was cocked, Carter knew he was accurate.

The throwing arm was just cocked, a millisecond before release, when the Killmaster pumped two slugs into his chest from the Luger. Crimson spots appeared two inches apart on his T-shirt, and his body flew backward from the impact of the 9mm slugs.

Number two was just as brave and just as quick.

He started coming in on the front side, his hamlike hands curled for a kill, and then sidestepped to Carter's right.

Carter got off one shot that bloodied his ear before impact. He felt one of the big hands chop his wrist, sending the Luger flying from his grasp to land on the floor in the comer.

A chop came up with sledgehammer power toward Carter's head. It glanced off his temple without claiming full force as the Killmaster rolled with the swing to duck away. Carter made a full swinging turn away and then brought the back of his forearm around in a wide arc, completing the circle and connecting with a thudding sound against the man's face and head.

Bone snapped in the man's cheek, and his eyes popped wide in sudden surprise. He fell back, smashing hard against the wall, his splintered jaw moving but no sound coming from his throat.

"Quit now," Carter rasped, "and you'll still be breathing tomorrow."

No way.

He came back like a bull. Carter ducked under the rush and brought a knee hard up into the other's groin. The blow was met with a gagging groan of pain, and the body bent forward to stumble in a tight circle.

Carter stepped away and chopped the side of his hand down across the back of the man's neck.

He went down like wheat under a scythe.

Carter checked the first one. He was dead, and the other one would be out for hours. Even if he did wake up sooner than that, he would have a hard time navigating. And it would be too late anyway.

Outside, Carter dropped from the pier to the beach and moved up to the low stone breaker wall. He vaulted it and, shunning the path, moved up the hill through the formal gardens that vied evenly with lawn from the rear of the house to the water.

Fifty yards up, Marko came in from his right.

"Two in the boathouse," Carter said. "You?"

"I got mine."

"Let's go."

Another twenty-five yards brought them to a small steel shed. The door was unlocked. Carter darted in, the other agent at his heels already fanning a penlight around the interior.

Carter explained in quick, staccato sentences.

"This is the main-line power box. Kill this switch, jam your shorter here, then turn the power back on. After the blackout comes, the emergency generator will kick on in about thirty seconds."

"Got it."

"You kill the emergency here. You'd better jam it, too, just in case someone gets by us."

"Roger."

Carter moved out and started the rest of the way up the hill toward the house.

By now, Hadley and Chris would be through the gate and ready in front. Marko had got the inside perimeter guard on the right and was in the power shed. Ted would hopefully have cleared the inside of the fence on the left and, like Carter, would be moving toward the house.

With any luck, Barzoni and Hal would have dropped the outside sentries, and were already setting up with sniper rifles on the high ground commanding the rear all the way to the water.

Their orders: If anybody breaks free from the house, drop them.

Carter skirted the pool with a quick glance. He saw the two dark heads bobbing on the surface near the shallow end and grinned to himself.

Good girl. Carlotta was sticking close to Kashmir.

Idly, he wondered how close.

Across from the service entrance, he dropped into a crouch and pulled a pair of night goggles over his eyes.

With any luck, it would all be over in another fifteen minutes.

The back of her neck and shoulders were out of the water. Carlotta could feel perspiration beading that part of her body.

How much longer? she wondered.

She knew she couldn't deny Kashmir's lust much more. She could feel the evidence of it straining on her thigh.

He was like an octopus, all hands and fingers, clutching at her breasts and buttocks, groping between her thighs.

"Do you tease me for pleasure, Carlotta?"

"Of course not," she replied, managing a coy smile. "I do it to heighten the anticipation."

"My anticipation is heightened enough," he hissed, pushing her hard against the edge of the pool.

He used his own knees to pry hers apart. Carlotta found his hips with her hands and managed to tug him toward her yet push him away at the last second.

"You are a bitch."

"Of course I am. It adds to the excitement."

"Damn you," he growled, then lunged forward, breaking her grip.

She tightened her muscles as she felt his attempted entrance, but she knew that it was only a matter of seconds.

And then everything went dark.

Kashmir's body tensed. For a second Carlotta thought he would leave her and climb from the pool. She curled one hand around his neck and brought the other to the light coil of her hair, just in case.

"What happened"

"A power failure," he replied.

Suddenly the lights came back on, but for only a flicker, and again the pool was plunged into darkness.

Above her, Carlotta could see Kashmir's eyes narrow in the moonlight and a tense expectation enter his features.

For the moment, he had forgotten his lust.

"The emergency generator should come on soon."

The words had barely left his lips when once again illumination filtered up through the water.

His lips curved in a leering smile. "Now, you beautiful bitch, I'll have you."

Carter watched the sweep-second hand of his watch. When fifty seconds had elapsed since the emergency generator's kick-in. he started toward the house in a crouching sprint.

Halfway there, the lights went off again for the last time.

Carter hit the door at a dead run. Just beyond it was a small alcove, and then the kitchen. A big, broad-shouldered ape in a tuxedo was standing in the middle of the room by a butcher block. He had managed to get one camp lantern lit and was working on a second one.

Carter's knee scraped a chair, and the ape whirled at the sound.

The Killmaster didn't pause a step in his run. He lowered a shoulder into the tuxedoed gut and jammed the man up against a big double-door refrigerator.

Foul breath wheezed by Carter's ear as the other man fell back toward him, his hands instinctively groping beneath his dark jacket.

Carter sliced him once across the neck with the barrel and silencer of the Luger, and then gave him another chop on the way down.

Off the kitchen was a small dining room, and off that the great room. Carter hit that door just as Hadley and Chris came through the front door, dragging the unconscious body of the chauffeur between them.

"I got one in the kitchen," Carter rasped.

"And this is two. Two to go."

Hadley and his partner dropped the man between them and moved on into the pitch-black room. Just as they passed into a stream of moonlight coming through one of the room's tall, cathedral-type windows, Carter spotted movement to his left at the top of the stairs.

He dropped to one knee and rolled his gaze up. Through the night goggles, he saw a machine pistol come up from one man's side as a second bolted down the stairs.

"Roll!" Carter barked.

Hadley and Chris dived. Carter got off two quick shots. Both were hits, but not quick enough.

The machine pistol in the man's hands began chattering, sending a spray of slugs across the floor and up the wall to shatter the huge window.

"Shit." Carter hissed. "You guys okay?"

"Chris caught one in the thigh."

"Take care of him. I'll go after the other one!"

Carter raced toward the rear of the house, hoping Carlotta was as good as be thought she was.

When the emergency generator went out, Ali Kashmir's ardor cooled with it.

"Something is wrong."

"Forget it," Carlotta said, tugging him back to her with her left hand on his neck. "You said it is only a power failure."

"No, the emergency…"

"Come to me, Ali," she cooed. "I am ready."

He started to settle back between her thighs, but she could tell from the tenseness in his body and the wariness in his eyes that any sound or movement around him would send him into flight.

He opened his lips to speak, but Carlotta silenced him by crushing her lips over his mouth. At the same time, she arched her hips, rubbing herself against him.

By the time he had pulled his lips from hers and lifted his head, the stiletto was out of sight behind his shoulder.

"I'd better go check. Someone should be…"

The night erupted. There was a loud stutter of gunfire, and suddenly one of the huge cathedral windows shattered outward, sending fragments of glass over the stone patio.

"Ali… Ali, we are overcome!"

Above her head, Carlotta saw a figure dash from the house. There was a spurt of flame from the hill to her right, and the man staggered.

"Damn!" Kashmir cried as the man pitched forward and slid nearly to the pool's edge.

Ali's eyes rolled down to meet Carlotta's, and in that instant he knew.

He was reaching for her throat when Carlotta wound her legs tightly around his back and snapped her feet together. She still clutched his neck and her left hand and, with her finger, counted the bumps of his upper vertebrae.

He managed to curl his fingers up from the back of her neck and close them over her throat.

"Bitch!" he gasped as their struggles rolled them underwater.

Carlotta could feel his fingers tightening. She found the part of his spine she wanted and placed the needlelike point of the stiletto an eighth of an inch into the flesh.

At the sharp prick of pain, his fingers instantly left her throat and reached to stop the thrust.

He was too late.

She placed both hands on the hilt of the stiletto and, with all the power in her arms, pushed the blade down, toward her own breast sliding beneath him.

It was a sure hit. The spine severed neatly, and his body went limp against her.

By the time Carter reached the edge of the pool, she was standing waist-deep in the water, her small breasts heaving.

Beside her, Ali Kashmir floated facedown, a trickle of blood seeping from around the hilt of the stiletto protruding from his neck.

"You all right?"

She rolled her head up to face him. Her eyes were clear and her lower lip quivered only slightly.

"Yes. It couldn't be helped."

Carter grasped Kashmir's body by the hair and pulled it toward the side. The stiletto was his own, the second of Nick Carter's deadly friends, nicknamed Hugo.

He pulled the blade out, swished it in the water to remove the red residue, and slipped it into his belt.

Then he picked up Carlotta's black silk wrap from the cement with his right hand and held out his left to the woman.

"He's no great loss. C'mon."

"Al?"

"Yeah," Garrett answered from a motel room approximately five miles from where Carter stood in Ali Kashmir's upstairs office.

"We're secure. Bring it on in!"

"Twenty minutes."

The phone went dead. Carter looked up as Marko entered the room.

"All secure. We'll have the garbage boys take away the stiffs. The others are padded down in the wine cellar."

"How's Chris?"

"He'll be all right. A lot of blood, but nothing severely severed."

"Good."

Marko moved around the desk. "A couple of them were only too happy to talk." He twisted the wall molding, and the panel in the wall slid open.

Carter glanced in quickly and smiled. "Al Garrett will have a ball."

"I'll set up the perimeter guards."

Carter nodded and exited the room with him. Marko went down the stairs, Carter down the hall. He stopped at the second door he came to and knocked.

"Come in."

She was seated at a vanity, a large, European-style bath towel wound around her body. Her eyes caught his in the mirror, but the hand wielding a brush through her long, glossy black tresses didn't stop.

"You still okay?"

"Of course. It's not the first time."

"I didn't think it was."

He stopped the hand and brought it to his lips. Gently, he kissed it.

"You're good."

"Thank you."

"But this is only the beginning."

"I know. Don't worry about me."

"Did you make the call to Rome?"

Carlotta nodded. "I informed Palmori that Kashmir himself would be accompanying me to Amsterdam and would help in the final delivery of the goods in Italy."

"Any static?"

"None. Palmori considers Kashmir a friend of our cause."

"And you're sure none of them will recognize me when the time comes?"

"No one. I am the only one in the Liberta who has had personal contact with Kashmir.

"Good." He checked his watch. It would be dawn in less than an hour. "You'd better get some sleep. We'll drive to Manhattan at around five in the limo. Our plane leaves Kennedy tonight at ten-fifteen."

She nodded and went back to brushing her hair. Her voice stopped Carter just as he reached the door.

"Are you sure your people can keep this place secure for as long as the operation will take?"

"I'm sure," Carter replied. "And Al Garrett will know enough about Ali Kashmir's business within a week to run the whole thing right from that computer in the office."

"What about friends… business or personal?"

"Kashmir is on a long business trip…" Carter paused, smiling. "Which is partially true."

"And when it breaks in the papers that Ali Kashmir has been imprisoned in Italy for gunrunning and terrorist activities…?"

Again Carter smiled. "We have people specially trained to mount and maintain a cover, no matter what may occur. Satisfied?"

"Satisfied, Nick…"

"Yes?"

"For what it's worth, I think I'm going to enjoy the rest of the time with you."

"That goes both ways."

He closed the door gently behind him, but not before he got a quick glimpse of Carlotta Polti standing, dropping the towel, and moving toward the bed.

She looked a lot more beautiful in the bedroom than she had in the pool with a dead body floating beside her.

Downstairs, he eyeballed the bottles behind the bar and found the most expensive scotch there. He poured three fingers into a glass and downed it. He doctored four fingers of a second one with ice and was just starting on it when Al Garrett and his entourage of technicians walked through the front door.

"Anybody left alive?"

"A few," Carter replied. "They're in the wine cellar. Marko says a couple of them are very talkative, should you need to know something."

Garrett nodded and turned to the waiting men behind him. "Okay, you guys, spread out and find rooms. As soon as you stow your gear, come on back down here. We'll get started right away. We've got a big company to run."

"How long do you guess this one will take?"

"Only Carter knows that," he said, turning back to Carter.

Carter shrugged. "A month, not more than five weeks. We think the date for the big summit between the KGB and the terrorist groups will be about then. By the way, hands off on the first two bedrooms on the left at the top of the stairs. The lady and I will need those for today."

There were several nods, and the men dispersed. Garrett moved behind the bar and took a healthy slug of sour mash.

"That stuff will kill you," Carter said.

"So will old age and not using seat belts," Garrett replied. "Where is it?"

"Upstairs."

"Let's go."

Garrett dived into the computer and the books of records alongside it as Carter eased in behind the desk. Carter lit a cigarette, took a slug from his drink, and dialed David Hawk's private Washington number.

"It's me, sir."

"How did it go?"

"Five bad guys wasted along with Kashmir himself. Three stretcher cases with sore heads. They're in the wine cellar. The cleanup boys are on their way to dispose of the deceased."

"And ours?"

"One winged, Chris. It's not serious. He's already on his way to Bethesda."

"How did the Italian lady fare?"

"Like a champ. She killed Kashmir herself."

"Excellent. Then you have no doubts she can carry the rest of it off?"

"None. What do we hear from Rome?"

"Pietro Amani's parole has been denied. We had a little bit to do with that, of course, but it's a known fact that Nicolo Palmori would try to kill him if he were released, so the parole denial is pretty plausible."

"Anything further on the meet?… time?… place?"

"Nothing. There are rumblings all over the world, so we know it's going to happen. But this operation is still the only real chance we have to find out when and where."

"Good enough," Carter said, downing the last of the scotch in the glass. "Delivery is for Amsterdam, Friday."

"I'll set up means of transportation. Anything else right now?"

"Nothing that I can think of. I'll contact you just before we hit Italy."

"Fine."

No good-byes were said. Sign-off between the head of AXE and his top agent was easily done with a tonal inflection.

Carter moved to the wall panel. Garrett was humming as his fingers flew over the keys.

"What do you think?"

"Piece of cake. Man, this guy is into everything."

"You're sure you can shoot through Bartinelli to Amsterdam without tipping us?"

"Positive. She must have been off her feed earlier tonight. She transmitted some plain-language stuff, then turned around and sent the same things in code. Helped crack it in minutes."

"I'm going to get some sleep. Roust me about two."

"You got it."

Carter moved into the hall. He paused at Carlotta Polti's door, remembering how she looked when she had dropped that towel.

His knuckles were halfway up to the door panel, when he changed his mind and moved on down the hall to the other bedroom.

Time enough for that later, he thought.