Operation Moon Rocket

Chapter 11

She pressed the gun against her side to cushion the recoil. "You can close your eyes if you want," she smiled.

It was an Astra Cub, a twelve-ounce miniature with a three-inch barrel, potent at short range, and by far the flattest gun N3 had ever seen. "You pulled a shrewdy when you went to Houston masquerading as Eglund," she said. "Sollitz wasn't prepared for that. Neither was I. So I wasn't able to warn him that you weren't really Eglund. The result was he panicked and planted that bomb. With that his usefulness came to an end. Now your career, Nicholas dear, must also end. You've come too far, found out too much…"

He saw her finger starting to squeeze the trigger. In the split second before the firing pin struck the cartridge, he flung himself back-wards. It was an instinctive animal process — to move away from the shot, to present as small a target as possible. Sharp pain seared his left shoulder as he went tumbling over the side. But he knew he'd been successful. The pain was localized — sign of a minor flesh wound.

He took a great heaving lungful of breath as the water closed over him.

It was warm and smelled of rotting things, of vegetable scum and raw petroleum and mud that gave off foul, gaseous bubbles. As he sank slowly through it he felt an inner rage at being so easily duped by the girl. Get my purse, she'd told him as the helicopter had come zeroing in on target. And that phony oilcloth package — which she had buried herself only a few hours earlier. It was like all the other phony clues she'd planted, then led him to — first at the Bali Hai, then at Pat Hammer's bungalow.

It bad been a sensitive, elegant plan, pivoted on a razor's edge. She had dovetailed every part of her mission with his own, assembling a setup in which N3 took his place as obediently as if he were under her direct orders. Rage was useless but he let it sweep over him anyway, knowing that it would clear the way for the cold, calculating brainwork to come.

A heavy object struck the surface above him. He glanced up. It came floating through the murky water, black smoke stringing out of its midsection. Dexter. She had dumped him overboard. A second body hit with a splash. This time Nick saw silvery bubbles as well as black strings of blood. Arms and legs moved feebly. Eddie Byloff was still alive.

Nick snaked up toward him, his chest tight from the strain of holding his breath. He had more questions for the Las Vegas hood. But first he had to get him to a spot where he could answer them. Thanks to Yoga, Nick had another two, perhaps three minutes of air left in his lungs. Byloff would be lucky if he had three seconds' supply left.

Above them a long metallic shape hung in the water. The keel of the Cracker Boy. The hull was an indistinct shadow spreading out to both sides above it. An extension of that shadow waited, gun in hand, peering into the water. He didn't dare surface — not even under the jetty. Byloff might cry out and she would be sure to hear it.

Then he remembered the concave space between the hull and the propeller. An air pocket could usually be found there. His arm closed around Byloff's waist. He kicked his way up through the milky turbulence left by the other man's descent until his head bumped gently against the keel.

Cautiously he felt his way along it. When he reached the big copper screw, he seized the edge of it with his free hand and pulled himself upwards. His head broke the surface. He took a deep breath, choking on the foul, oil-stinking air trapped in place above it. Byloff was coughing and spluttering at his side. Nick struggled to keep the other man's mouth above the water line. There was no danger of their being heard. A couple of tons of wood and metal hung between them and the girl on deck. The only danger was that she might decide to start the engine. If that happened, the two of them could be sold by the pound — as ground duck.

Hugo was still in Nick's hand. It now went to work, dancing a little jig inside Byloff's wounds. "You're not finished, Eddie, not yet. Tell me all about it, everything you know…"

The dying gangster talked. He talked without letup for almost ten minutes. And when he had finished, N3's face was grim.

He made a knot of bone out of his middle knuckle and squeezed it into Byloff's larynx. He did not relent He was called Killmaster. That was his business — to kill. His knuckle was like the knot of a garrote. He saw a recognition of death in Byloff's eyes. He heard a faint, croaking plea for mercy.

He had no mercy.

It took half a minute to kill the man.

A series of meaningless vibrations flashed through the airwaves, emerging from the complex unscrambling machinery of the receiving set in Room 1209 of the Gemini Inn as Hawk's voice.

"No wonder Sweet asked me to keep an eye on his daughter," exclaimed the head of AXE. His voice was distilled acid. "There's no telling what that little fool has gotten herself into. I began to suspect that all was not as it should be when I got a report on that sketch of the Apollo life support system. The one you found in Hammer's basement. It was a phony, traced from a diagram that ran in practically every newspaper after the accident."

"Ouch," said Nick — not in reaction to Hawk's words but to Peterson's ministrations. The man from Editing was cleaning out his shoulder wound with a swab of cotton soaked in some stinging ointment. "At any rate, sir, I'm pretty sure I know where to find her."

"Good. I think this new approach of yours is the answer," said Hawk. "The whole case seems to be shifting in that direction." He paused. "We're automated, but you'll still have to allow a couple of hours for the records to be combed. I'll have someone get down to you by this evening, though. Your transportation will have to be arranged locally."

"Peterson's already taken care of that," replied Nick. The man from Editing was spraying something on his shoulder out of a pressurized can. The spray was freezing cold at first, but it cut through the pain and gradually numbed the shoulder like Novocain. "Trouble is, the girl's already had a couple of hours' head start on me," he added sourly. "It was all very neatly arranged. We went in her car. So I had to walk back."

"What about Dr. Sun?" said Hawk.

"Peterson fitted an electronic tracer to her car before he returned it to her this morning," said Nick. "He's been following her movements. They're normal enough. She's back at her job at the Space Center now. Frankly, I think Joy Sun is a dead end." He didn't add that he was glad she was.

"And this man… what's his name… Byloff," said Hawk. "He didn't give you any further information on the threat to Miami?"

"He told me everything he knew. I'm sure of that. But he was just a minor hireling. There's another angle to pursue, though," Nick added. "Peterson's going to work on it. He'll start with the names of the dependents in that bus accident, then work back to their husbands' occupations at the Space Center. Maybe that will give us a picture of what they have planned."

"Good. That's it for now then, N3," Hawk said crisply. "I'm going to be up to my ears in this Sollitz mess for the next few days. Heads are going to roll all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff level for having let that man rise so high."

"Have you gotten anything out of Eglund yet, sir?"

"Glad you reminded me. We have. Seems he caught Sollitz sabotaging the Space Environment Simulator. He was overpowered by him and locked in, and then the nitrogen was turned up." Hawk paused. "As to the Major's motive in sabotaging the Apollo program," he added, "the current feeling is that he was being blackmailed. We have a team going over his security record right now. They've found a number of discrepancies regarding his POW record in the Philippines. Very minor things. Never noticed before. But that's the area they're going to concentrate on, see if it leads anywhere."

Mickey "Iceman" Elgar — puffy, sallow-faced, with a brawler's flat nose — had the tough and unreliable look of a pool hall character and his clothes were flashy enough to point up the resemblance. So was his car — a red Thunderbird loaded down with tinted glass, a compass, large foam-rubber dice hanging from the rearview mirror and round, extra-large brake lights flanking a kewpie doll in the back window.

Elgar went roaring through the night on the Sunshine State Parkway, the radio tuned to a station blasting out the top forty. He wasn't listening to the music, however. A tiny, transistorized tape recorder lay on the seat beside him and a wire led up from it and into the plug in his ear.

A man's voice came through the wire, saying: "You specified a hood just out of jail who could have a lot of dough on him without looking suspicious. Elgar will fit the bill. A lot of people owe him cuts on jobs, and he's the kind who collects. He's also a nut on gambling. There's just one thing to be careful about. Elgar was in pretty thick with Reno Tree and Eddie Byloff a few years back. So there may be others around the Bali Hai who know him. We have no way of knowing — nor what their attitude toward him might be."

Another voice broke in at this point — Nick Carter's: "I'll have to take my chances on that," he said. "All I want to know is, has the Elgar cover been worked out thoroughly? I don't want anyone checking back and finding out that the real Elgar is still in Atlanta."

"No chance of that," replied the first voice. "He was released this afternoon and the snatch was made an hour later by a couple of AXEmen."

"Would I have a car and money so fast?"

"It's all been carefully worked out, N3. Let me get started on your face and we'll review the material together. Ready?"

Mickey Elgar, alias Nick Carter, joined his voice to those on the tape as he drove along: "My home turf is Jacksonville, Florida. I teamed with the Menlo brothers on a couple of jobs there. They owed me money. I'm not saying what happened to them, but the car is theirs and so is the money in my pocket. I'm loaded and I'm looking for action…"

Nick played the tape through three more times. Then, as he swung through West Palm Beach and over the Lake Worth Causeway, he detached the tiny reel with one ringer, stuffed it into the ashtray and put his Ronson lighter to it. Reel and tape both flared up instantly, leaving nothing but ashes.

He parked on Ocean Boulevard and walked the last three blocks to the Bali Hai. The amplified roar of folk-rock music came faintly through the curtained windows of the discotheque. Don Lee barred his way to the restaurant. The young Hawaiian's dimples weren't showing this time. His eyes were cold and the look they gave Nick should have stuck four inches out of his back. "Side entrance, jerk," he hissed under his breath after Nick had given him the password he'd received from Eddie Byloff's dying lips.

Nick went around the building. A figure stood just inside the metal-surfaced fire door, waiting for him. Nick recognized his flat Oriental features. It was the waiter who'd served Hawk and him that first night. Nick gave him the password. The waiter watched him, his face blank, expressionless. "I was told you know where the action is," Nick finally growled.

The waiter jerked his head over his shoulder, signaling him to enter. The door slammed shut behind them. "Stlaight ahead," said the waiter. They didn't go through the ladies' room this time but reached the secret passageway via a pantry-like storeroom opposite the kitchen. The waiter unlocked the reinforced steel door at the end of it and ushered Nick into the familiar, cramped little office.

This had to be the man Joy Sun had told him about, N3 figured. Johnny Hung Fat. And to judge by the crowded key ring he carried and the sure, authoritative way that he moved around the office, he was more than just another waiter at the Bali Hai.

Nick recalled the savage groin-kick that Candy had given him the night they'd been trapped here in the office by him. More play acting, he assumed.

"This way, prease," said Hung Fat. Nick followed him into the long, narrow room with the two-way mirror. The rows of cameras and tape recorders were silent. No film was inching down from the slots tonight. Nick stared through the infrared glass at the elaborately jeweled women and the men with the round, well-fed faces who sat smiling at each other across pools of soft light, their lips moving in silent conversation.

"Mrs. Burncastle," said Hung Fat, pointing to a middle-aged dowager wearing an ornate diamond pendant and sparkling chandelier earrings. "She have seven hundred fifty G's that kind jewelry at home. She going to visit her daughter in Rome next week. House will be empty. But you need safe man. We split proceeds."

Nick shook his head. "Not that kind of action," he growled. "I'm not interested in ice. I'm loaded. I'm looking for gambling. Top stakes." He watched them come into the restaurant through the bar. They'd obviously been in the discotheque. A waiter led them to a corner table set slightly apart from the others. He whisked the reserved sign away and bent forward, all obsequiousness, to take their order.

Nick said, "I've got a hundred G's to play, an' I don't want to violate my parole by goin' to Vegas or the Bahamas. I want action right here, in Florida."

"Hundred G's," said Hung Fat thoughtfully. "Velly big stake. I make phone call, see what I can do. You wait here, prease."

The rope burn around Reno Tree's neck had been carefully touched up with powder, but it was still visible. Particularly when he turned his head. Then it bunched up like an old sheet. His scowl, pulling a low hairline even lower, drew a sort of dramatic emphasis from his costume — black trousers, jet-black silk shirt, a spotless white sweater with belled sleeves, a gold wristwatch the size of a grapefruit slice.

Candy couldn't seem to get enough of him. She was all over him, those wide-set blue eyes of hers eating him up, her body rubbing against his like a hungry kitten's. Nick found the number that corresponded to their table and switched the sound system on."…please, baby, don't go salty on me," Candy was whining. "Hit me, shout at me, but don't get cold. Please. I can take anything but that."

Reno pulled a pack of butts from his pocket, shook one out and lit it. He forced the smoke through his nostrils in a thin, hazy cloud. "I gave you a job to do," he rasped. "You screwed up."

"Baby, I did everything you asked. I can't help it that Eddie fingered me."

Reno shook his head. "You," he said. "It was you led the guy right to Eddie. That was just plain stupid." Calmly, deliberately, he ground the lit cigarette into her arm.

She sucked her breath in sharply. Tears streamed down her face. She didn't move, though, didn't strike out at him. "I know, lover. I deserved that," she moaned. "I've really let you down. Please find it in your heart to forgive me…"

Nick's belly crawled at the repellent little scene being played out before his eyes.

"Please keep still. Very still." The voice behind him was lacking in inflection, but the gun pressed hard against his spine carried its own message, one not easily misunderstood. "Good. Take a pace forward and turn slowly around, hands extended before you."

Nick did as he was told. Johnny Hung Fat was flanked by two gorillas. Big, beefy non-Chinese gorillas, with snap-brim fedoras and fists the size of small hams. "Brace him, boys."

One snapped the cuffs on him while the other ran his hands over him professionally, flushing the Colt Cobra .38 special which — in line with Elgar's cover — was the only weapon Nick was packing. "Now, then," said Hung Fat. "Who are you? You're not Elgar, because you didn't recognize me. Elgar knows I don't talk like Charlie Chan. Besides, I owe him money. If you were really The Iceman, you would have been slapping me around for it."

"I was going to, don't worry," Nick gritted through clenched teeth. "I just wanted to feel out the setup first I couldn't figure the way you were acting, an' that phony accent…"

Hung Fat shook his head. "No good, friend. Elgar was always interested in an ice heist. Even when he had dough. He couldn't resist the itch. You just don't add up." He turned to the gorillas. "Max, Teddy, a Brownsville stomping," he snapped. "Eighty percenter for openers."

Max hit Nick in the jaw and Teddy let him have it in the stomach. As he folded forward, Max brought his knee up. On the floor, he saw them shift their weight to their left legs and braced himself for the kicks that would follow. He knew it was going to be bad. They were wearing football cleats.