The Killing Ground

One

The big 747 arriving from Phoenix, Arizona, touched down a few minutes before ten on a cold evening at Washington’s National Airport. Nick Carter, a tall, dark-haired, well-built man, limped from the first-class section, through the boarding tunnel, and out into the main terminal. As far as he was concerned, he’d been too long recovering at AXEs rest and rehabilitation facility outside Phoenix. It was time for a change of scenery.

For more years than Carter wanted to count, he had worked for AXE, which, under the guise of Amalgamated Press and Wire Services, was a highly specialized intelligence gathering and special action agency. Anything too tough or dirty for the CIA, the National Security Agency, or the individual military service intelligence establishments was taken on by AXE. And among his peers within AXE, Carter was simply the best. He carried an N3 designation, which meant that when on assignment he was licensed to kill, authorized to carry out what the Soviets called mokrie dela, or wet affairs — assassinations.

As he threaded his way through the crush of late-night passengers in the terminal, he walked with a pronounced limp. He had just come off an assignment during which he had very nearly been killed. The bullet had hit low, doing some damage to the thigh bone in his right leg. AXE doctors, who were some of the best anywhere, had taken him apart and put him back together again, as they had so many times before. It would be months before he regained complete use of his leg, but for now, at least he was ambulatory.

Carter was a man unlike other men, in that within him his sense of survival, his sense of self-preservation, was very much stronger than usual. On more than one occasion he had completed his assignment half dead from wounds or exhaustion. Where other men tried and failed, Carter never failed.

At times he was bored during the gaps between assignments. But at other times, such as this moment, he was looking forward to the next thirty days.

Enforced R&R, it was called. Coming off such an assignment as he had, it was required that he rest for a month or so. Once he was released from the hospital, however, there was no real reason for him to remain in Arizona, so he had signed himself out back to Washington, and had returned. But he wasn’t planning on staying in town very long.

He took the escalator down to incoming baggage, where a few minutes later he retrieved his two leather suitcases and then swung out to the passenger pick-up area.

His timing was just right. A brown Mercedes 450SL, its convertible top up against the chill fall air, pulled up, and the trunk popped open.

Smiling, Carter tossed his bags in the back, slammed the trunk lid, and climbed in the passenger seat, into the arms of a tall, auburn-haired beauty with large, liquid brown eyes and warm, sensuous lips. They kissed deeply for a long moment, until a cab behind them beeped.

They parted, and Sigourney Veltman looked into Carter’s dark eyes. She smiled wanly and shook her head.

“You look like hell, you know,” she said. Her voice was soft, gentle, and held an upper-class Connecticut accent.

Carter grinned. “Not exactly the first words I thought I’d hear,” he said.

“I’ll fix that.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” she said, laughing. She put the car in gear and pulled smoothly away from the curb, accelerating down the long ramp and out the main airport exit.

Carter lit one of his custom-blended cigarettes, his initials stamped in gold on the filter, and sat back in the thick, soft leather seat. He had to admit to himself that he was tired. The day before, against doctor’s orders, he had taken an exploratory run through AXE’s very difficult desert confidence course. His time was one of his slowest ever, and he had been angry with himself. The course master, however, had been amazed.

“Slow my ass, Carter,” he had shouted at the end. “An ordinary man would have been dead halfway through. What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“I just want to stay alive the next time, Roger,” Carter said.

“Won’t be a next time if you keep this up.”

Carter and Roger Caldwell went back years. The thick-necked, beefy confidence course instructor had at one time been a crack AXE agent. A particularly difficult and dirty assignment had left him with one arm missing, the bones in both of his legs shattered, and only one kidney. They had taken him off active-duty assignments, but his recovery had been nothing short of miraculous. These days he was a tough man. Carter had a great deal of respect for him.

“Get some rest, soak up some sun, drink a little, and get hold of a sweet-talking woman who won’t raise your blood pressure. Then come back in a month and we’ll see if you can challenge the course.”

“I think I’ll do just that,” Carter had said. “And I’ve got the perfect lady in mind to do it with.”

Sigourney was the divorced daughter of Karl Stearnes, a special adviser to the President on security matters. Her ex-husband was a West German. He worked as an attaché at the German embassy in Washington. They weren’t really meant for each other, and the marriage didn’t last long, but they were still friends. The man was now married to a pleasant, down-to-earth Bavarian woman, and they had two children. Sigourney had once told Carter she felt almost like the children’s aunt. It was very strange.

On occasion she did contract work for AXE. With her beauty, her poise, and her obvious intelligence she was a natural at any foreign embassy party, where she could easily gather needed information.

She and Carter had met at one of those functions — which he usually hated — and had immediately clashed. She’d be damned if any man was going to tell her what to do.

Months later they were again on an assignment, and this time the sparks flew even more. Somehow, though, by the end of the evening he had ended up at her apartment and they had made passionate, almost violent love. He always supposed she had been trying to prove something to him that night: that she wasn’t just some empty-headed, convenient woman to be used simply for adornment.

“A penny,” she said, breaking him out of his thoughts.

He looked at her. “I was just thinking back to when we first met.”

She laughed out loud. “Oh, boy, what a bastard you were. Couldn’t tell you a damned thing. You were king of the walk... at least that’s how you tried to set yourself up.”

“You know, I damned near turned you over my knee right there in front of the Belgian ambassador and spanked you.”

“If you had tried, I would have gouged your eyes out,” she shot back.

They both laughed again.

“I’m glad you could break free on such short notice,” he said softly.

She glanced at him, and reached out and touched his cheek with her fingers. “Weather’s been lousy around here lately. Where’d you say it was we were going?”

“St. Anne’s Island Resort. It’s a tiny private island in the Caribbean. In the Turks and Caicos. We’ll have it all to ourselves, and a small staff.”

“Sounds nice, Nick,” she said, and she glanced again at him, this time with a more critical eye. “You do look like hell. But we’ve got a month to make you all better.”

“Starting tonight?”

She nodded. “I’ve got most of your things packed, your apartment will be okay, and I’ve checked on your car, extending the storage contract.”

“You really are something. Thanks,” Carter said.

“Oh, yes, one last thing,” she added. “Hawk called this evening, just before I left for the airport. Said he wanted you to call as Soon as you got in.”

Carter sat up. David Hawk was the hard-bitten director of AXE. He had been a power in the old days with the OSS, and when AXE was created by special presidential order, he had been the logical choice to head it. During the years Carter had worked for the man, they had developed a relationship of mutual understanding and respect that at times bordered on a father-son intensity, although they rarely verbalized their deep affection.

When David Hawk called, Carter dropped everything and came running. He was the only man in the world who commanded such loyalty in N3.

“Did he say what it was about?”

Sigourney shook her head. “Not really. Just that it wasn’t something to worry about... for now.”

They drove the rest of the way to Carter’s new Georgetown condo near the university in silence, parked in the back, and walked upstairs.

inside, the table was set for two, white wine was chilling in a bucket, candles were ready to be lit, and the air was full of the aroma of something being kept warm in the kitchen. Carter remembered that in addition to Sigourney’s other attributes, she was an excellent cook.

She fixed him a scotch with one cube, then went into the kitchen while he went to the phone and dialed Hawk’s private number, which was answered on the first ring.

“I’m back, sir,” Carter said.

“I won’t hold you long, Nick. Sigourney tells me you two will be leaving first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. But if there’s something...”

“Nothing to hold you, really. But Caldwell called and said you were pushing yourself. How do you feel?”

Carter’s first instinct was to lie. Tell Hawk he felt fit. But no one ever lied to David Hawk. Not for very long, at any rate. And when the lie was caught, the consequences were always swift and not at all good for the liar.

“I’ve felt better, sir.”

“I’ll bet. I don’t want you pushing yourself again. When you get back, you’re going into the hospital for a complete checkup.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carter could hear Sigourney in the kitchen. She was humming some tune he couldn’t recognize.

“Something has come up, Nick, that you should know about,” Hawk began. “Nothing we can do anything about at the moment, but I suspect before too long we’re going to have some trouble on our hands. So I want you to be on your guard. Don’t back yourself into any comers.”

Carter held his silence, but he was beginning to get a gut feeling that something very bad was coming down.

“We’ve just gotten the first bits about something new in Moscow. There’s been a split, it seems, within the KGB’s hierarchy.”

“Sir?”

“Department Viktor — the assassination department within the Komitet — has apparently been shut down. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Carter muttered.

“On the surface it doesn’t. But we think they’ve started up something new, something much better. From what we can gather it’s called Komodel — short for Komitet Mokrie Dela — the State Committee for Wet Affairs — and deals with terrorism and assassination.”

Sigourney came from the kitchen and placed a large cast-iron pot on a trivet on the table. It was bouillabaisse; he could smell the seafood and the saffron.

“Who is running it, sir? Who is the brains behind it?”

“That’s just it, Nick. We can’t find out. It’s a highly secret, very closed shop. It was only pure luck that we got any information at all. But we do know one thing.”

Carter waited. Sigourney was looking at him, a concerned expression in her wide eyes.

“Arkadi Konstantinovich Ganin is apparently connected with this organization.”

Ganin, Nick thought. He was the Soviet Union’s very best operative, bar none. A very tough and elusive man. No one who could provide his description had ever lived to pass it out. His existence was known through his terrible deeds. But there were no photographs of him anywhere in the West.

“If Ganin is on the loose, there will be trouble,” Carter said.

“You could be a likely target, Nick,” Hawk said evenly. “I want you to watch yourself.”

“Perhaps I should stick around. We’re going to have to go after him.”

“No,” Hawk said sharply. “Not now. Not yet. There will be time. The first move will be theirs. When it happens, we’ll go after them.” Hawk hesitated for a moment. “In the meantime I want you to get yourself back in shape. Against Ganin, if it comes to that, you’re going to have to be whole. No, more than that — you’ll need a hundred and ten percent.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If anything comes up, I’ll be in contact,” Hawk said. “And, Nick?”

“Yes?”

“Have a good vacation.”

“Thanks,” Carter said, and he hung up. He took a sip of his scotch and stood there for a long moment, deep in thought. Ganin. It was a name to command respect. The name of a man who understood deadly force as if he had invented it.

“Bouillabaisse, anyone?” Sigourney called softly.

Carter turned, and managed a slight smile.

“Should I ask?”

He shook his head. “I’m on vacation, starting now,” he said. He tossed back the rest of his drink and came to the table. They would be fairly isolated for the next month. Nothing was going to develop that quickly, and even if it did, they’d be insulated by their distance.

The chill Washington fall seemed a century ago to Nick Carter as their Cayman Airways flight came in on its landing approach to Grand Turk Island in the British West Indies. The intense, multishaded blue water seemed speckled with green jewels of islands in every direction, except due north into the open Atlantic, for as far as the eye could see. From the air it looked like paradise.

His mind was truly at ease for the first time in as long as he could remember. Only the slightest nagging thought lingered about Komodel and Arkadi Ganin, and he suspected that even that errant worry would leave within the next twenty-four hours.

He turned and looked at Sigourney. She wore a silk blouse, a simple wraparound skirt, and sandals. She was watching out the window, as excited as a little girl going to her first party. “Oh, Nick, I’m so happy,” she kept saying, squeezing his hand.

Carter smiled. The night before, after her excellent dinner, they had taken a long, hot, leisurely bath together, and then she had literally put him to bed, he had become so weak, so limp.

“Big tough operative, huh?” she had chided him.

He remembered that he was hardly able to keep his eyes open, let alone reach up for her. The last thing he remembered was her body next to his, holding him tight, cooing in his ear to sleep, to let go, to relax and drift off. Which is what he had done.

In the morning he was still sore and bone-weary, but he felt better than he had for a long time.

Sigourney turned away from the window as the 727’s wheels hit the runway, and the big aircraft lurched as the brakes were applied.

“An entire month?” she said.

Carter had to laugh out loud. “An entire month in which neither of us has to share the other with anyone.”

She pursed her lips, her nose wrinkling. “I just hope I don’t get bored. One man?... Just one?”

“You have a round-trip ticket,” he said solemnly, his eyes twinkling.

She reached over and hugged his arm. “I may never want to go back, Nick,” she said.

Customs was simple, and within a few minutes after landing, they took a cab down to the quay and found the boat that would ferry them across to tiny St. Anne’s Island. The weather was absolutely lovely: temperature in the low eighties, a soft trade wind from the east, and puffy white clouds sailing overhead at their own leisurely pace.

St. Anne’s was seventeen miles away, down toward Salt Cay, and the run in the forty-two-foot luxury cruiser operated by the resort took less than two hours. The island was almost perfectly round, with a fifty-foot hill in the center of its ten acres. The beaches were stunningly white, the cottages quaint and spotlessly clean, and the main house was just large enough to be comfortable without losing its Caribbean ambience.

In addition to two groundsmen, the staff included two maids, a houseman, two cooks, and a maintenance man-cum-scuba instructor.

They introduced themselves, helped Carter and Sigourney unpack, and then left.

“If there is anything... anything you need, just call, we’ll be there,” Arthur, the houseman, said in his lilting Caribbean accent.

It was very late afternoon, and the sun was sinking into the western sea. Sigourney stepped out onto the patio, which was barely fifty feet from the pure white beach, and shuddered with pleasure. She turned.

“This island is ours? Exclusively?”

“Except for the staff.”

“Who are discreet.”

“Who are discreet,” Carter agreed.

“Pour the champagne,” she said, undoing her skirt and letting it fall. “I want to make up for last night.”

Carter opened the champagne chilling on the sideboard as Sigourney took off her blouse and bra, then stepped out of her bikini panties. She was a beautiful woman, her breasts proud and firm, her nipples pink. Her belly was only slightly rounded, and her legs were long, straight, and beautifully formed, beginning at a soft swatch of dark hair.

She turned suddenly and ran down to the beach, plunging into the surf as Carter got undressed, then brought the champagne down to the sand.

“Nick... oh, Nick!” she cried from the water, a wave crashing over her.

He went back up to the house, got a large beach towel, and brought it back, spreading it out on the white sand.

“Come on in!” Sigourney called, splashing. “My God, it’s great!”

Carter marched down into the surf as another wave broke over Sigourney, knocking her flat. He helped her up, and she started to say something, when she suddenly stopped.

“Nick...?” she breathed.

Carter pulled her to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her legs against his, and kissed her hard, her tongue suddenly darting into his mouth.

When they parted, her skin was flushed. She was smiling, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide, her lips moist. “I love you,” she said.

Carter picked her up, carried her back to the beach, and set her down gently on the large towel. She was limp in his arms, her eyes moist.

“I love you...” she murmured weakly as Carter kissed her left breast, and then her right, his tongue lingering on her nipples, around the areola, then encircling the entire breast.

She moaned. Her knees came up.

Carter kissed the area between her breasts, then ran his tongue down to her belly button, where he again lingered, her hips rising to meet his touch.

She was shivering now, not from the wind, because it was warm, but because of her passion. Her entire body thrummed like the plucked string of a violin.

Her thighs were wonderfully smooth as Carter worked his way up from behind her knees.

She reached down and took his head in her hands. “Nick!” she cried. “I want you now!”

He came into her deeply, slowly at first, her pelvis rising sharply to meet his, her body shuddering, her eyes closed but her mouth half open, a golden glow radiating from her skin.

Slowly, gently, purposefully he pulled away, and then thrust deeper so that it seemed as if her entire body would envelop his, so that they were one vibration together, one instrument being played in unison, singing out their passion.

Forgotten were past hurts and injuries; forgotten were Hawk’s warnings, and the previous night’s tiredness; forgotten was everything but the ecstatic moment.

“Nick... oh, Nick, I love you,” Sigourney cried softly as their lovemaking seemed to go on and on forever, and they both seemed to balance on the very peak of a tall, wonderful mountain before plunging together into sensual oblivion.

Just as Carter opened his eyes and looked down at her, she opened hers.

“I do love you,” she said.

“And I think I love you,” he replied.