Circle of Scorpions

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 suits 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.

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.