White Death

Twenty

A dozen White Doves poured in through the two doors that led to the hall and laboratory. They brandished their weapons at the agents, surrounding them with leers and the potential of instant death.

"Don't look so surprised, Killmaster," Skobelev said with satisfaction. "We've been tracking you since you killed our sentry. Did you think we didn't expect you back?" He laid Carter's Luger on the desk and dusted an imaginary speck from its shining barrel. "You must appreciate your reputation. If the blizzard didn't kill you, we could assume no less than your return."

"You monitored the sentries," Carter said.

"Exactly, my bright Killmaster," Skobelev said, beaming with approval. It was a pleasure killing a worthy opponent. "All the sentries were fixed with special electronic devices. When one of their hearts stopped, the appropriate light lit up on the computer next door. After that, it was easy. We knew how you'd be coming in, and could watch you."

Carter nodded thoughtfully, seemingly impressed.

"That's my Luger," Carter said, gesturing at the gun on Skobelev's desk.

"I know," the general said with satisfaction. "I have all your equipment."

"Not quite all," Carter said, his turn to be pleased.

He flexed his knee, and the pin to a small gas bomb, twin to Pierre, popped out. The bomb dropped quietly from his pant leg onto the floor as all the Silver Doves trained their attention on their leader and Nick Carter.

"Nine minutes," Mike said softly beside him. "Better speed it up."

"What?" Skobelev said, irritated. "Speak up! You're going to be dead soon anyway. This is your last chance to talk…"

The bomb hissed loudly and exploded with the deadly, odorless gas. Carter and Mike held their breaths, waiting, counting. It took only thirty seconds for a person to fall unconscious from the gas, another thirty seconds for them to die if not removed to safe air.

"Carter!" Skobelev shouted. "What's he done? Nikolai? Alexei? What's he done!?"

Skobelev stood up and leaned over his desk to see.

Confused, the Silver Doves hesitated, looking at one another. Several of them sniffed the air, unsure.

"It's a bomb!" Skobelev yelled. "Grab it!"

One of the Doves bolted for safety through the office door into the hall. Three others followed.

Two braver ones ducked to grab the bomb and throw it out after the cowards.

The rest of the Doves turned on Carter.

Unmoving, not breathing, not wanting to attract any more attention to himself, Carter watched their fingers flex on their triggers. Their adrenaline was raging. They'd be breathing harder. Then he saw their eyes flicker. Their bodies sway. They took even deeper breaths. Their eyes glazed. In unison, Carter and Mike reached up under their caps and pulled down small gas masks to cover their noses and mouths.

The scream of the alarm reverberated through the installation. The Silver Doves who'd escaped the office had turned it on.

Skobelev lifted heavy eyes to look out the door. He fell over his desk. One by one, the other Doves in the room collapsed.

Carter and Mike jumped over the bodies. They grabbed Skobelev by the arms and dragged him into the laboratory where he could breathe. They needed him.

They locked the door so no one else could enter through the office.

The lab scientists looked up. There were seven of them. Astonishment widened their eyes. They grabbed air rifles.

"Eight minutes!" Mike said. "Only eight minutes! Where the hell is Blenkochev?"

Carter swung his air rifle, knocking the closest scientist off his feet and back into a table. Glass vials and tubes smashed to the floor.

Through the only other doorway, his thick black hair a wild halo over his head. Blenkochev charged like a bull into the laboratory. He, too, locked the door.

His stout face was thick with anger. His impeccable clothing was disheveled. His hands were raw and bleeding.

"They've killed Larionov," the heavyset KGB leader said.

He grabbed a Silver Dove scientist, picked him up as if he were a rag doll, and threw him across the room at two other scientists who were frantically trying to decide who to shoot first. The three collapsed in a heap to the floor.

"Then I'll take care of the outside doors myself." Carter said.

But first the three had to secure the laboratory before the glass cage was opened or broken into and the lethal bacteria released.

Mike raised her air rifle as if it were an ax. A scientist dashed toward her on his way to attack Carter. As he passed, she smashed the rifle down onto his head. He stopped dead in his tracks, surprised. Then he crumpled to the floor.

Carter spun and kicked the sixth scientist in the nose. The nose broke, the cartilage destroyed. The scientist yelled, grabbing his flattened nose as blood poured through his fingers.

Blenkochev picked up the last scientist by the front of his lab coat, swung him back and forth like a battering ram, then sent him skidding along a lab table as if he were a stein of beer. Microscopes flew off the table in a wake of metal and glass.

Carter stripped off his white snowsuit so that he was once again in his khaki clothes. He picked up Skobelev and shook him. Skobelev groaned.

"Wake up, dammit!" Carter said.

Blenkochev and Mike were already dragging the scientists into a corner where they could he better watched.

Someone pounded on the lab door. Carter looked with dismay at his watch. Mike stripped down to her khaki suit. Blenkochev still wore his blue one.

"Four minutes," Carter said grimly. "Skobelev!" He shook the Silver Dove leader again, then slapped his checks.

Skobelev's eyes opened. He frowned. Carter stood him on his feet.

"We're going," Carter told Blenkochev and Mike. "Keep the area secure. Don't let anyone in."

He reached for the door to the office.

"You're much too impertinent, N3" Blenkochev said.

He opened the door a crack and peered in, his air rifle ready. He nodded tersely and slipped into the office.

Behind Carter, Mike lifted her air rifle to guard the pile of semiconscious scientists.

Carter pushed Skobelev into the office. As he passed the desk, the Killmaster picked up Wilhelmina and slipped her in his pocket.

At the hall door, Blenkochev once again peered out. Voices, footsteps, and confusion echoed from the corridor.

"Very bad. Too many Doves," he told Carter. "Better let me handle it."

Before Carter could protest, Blenkochev stepped into the hall and closed the door.

The feet moved, slowed, stopped. There was a din of voices, so many that no individual one stood out. Then Blenkochev s voice predominated, the strong cultured Russian voice that commanded attention. Again the din rose up, overtaking Blenkochev.

Carter balanced Wilhelmina in his hand, ready.

Suddenly there was a shout, the voices unified. Curses filled the air. Feet pounded down the hall.

The door opened. Carter backed around it, Skobelev limp beside him. He raised his Luger.

"Hurry!" Blenkochev said, his big head coming around the door. "Everyone's gone. This way now. A short cut!"

He opened a door across the hall, then ran into a new corridor Carter had never been in.

"Only two minutes!" Carter said.

Dragging Skobelev, Carter ran behind Blenkochev past more offices and conference rooms.

"What did you tell them?" Carter asked.

"That you'd broken into the lab. Let out the bacteria. They believed it."

"Jesus Christ."

"In this building, it's best to keep religion out of it," the KGB czar observed.

Panting, he stopped in front of a heavy steel door. He took a breath.

"Inside are the controls for the electronic equipment in the installation," he said.

"Including the big outside doors?"

"Exactly."

Carter and Blenkochev stared at Skobelev.

"I've never liked you," Blenkochev said to Skobelev. "You're a sniveling little pansy. No guts. No heart. And worse yet, no brains."

Skobelev drew himself up and straightened his smudged white silk three-piece suit.

"I don't have time to be tactful," Carter said, staring at Skobelev. "When we get in there, you lock those gates open. If you don't I'll kill you."

"If you kill me," Skobelev said arrogantly, "you'll never get the gates open. They close automatically when the alarm goes off. They're closed by now. Only a secret code will open them again."

Blenkochev picked Skobelev up by the back of the neck. He swung the smaller man like a pendulum.

"If you don't open them," Blenkochev said, "we're dead anyway. And I'll kill you. It's been a long time, but I remember how."

He dropped his air rifle to the floor and pulled a stiletto from a sheath inside his blue suit. He sliced down the front of Skobelev's jacket, through the silver dove on the heart. The jacket gaped open. Skobelev refused to look down, but a vein on his temple began to throb.

"I'd enjoy killing you," the KGB man said grimly. "A nice little traitor like you."

Carter looked at his watch.

"Thirty seconds."

He kicked open the door, air rifle ready.

Four dead, bloody bodies littered the floor. One of them was Lev Larionov, the former priest. The other three were Silver Dove technicians.

Carter looked at Blenkochev.

"Why I was late," Blenkochev said simply.

He shoved Skobelev into the room. The traitorous general stumbled, falling onto Larionov's corpse. He pulled himself up, his face pasty, wanting to recoil, but he refused to show any weakness. He smoothed his cut jacket and walked across the room to a computer console. For the moment, he was beaten.

Blenkochev followed while Carter watched one of the television screens that showed the giant front doors of steel. They were closed as Skobelev had said. Inside the doors in the warehouse area, Silver Dove soldiers were handing out air rifles and ammunition.

Skobelev stood silently at the console. Blenkochev jammed a gun in his back. The Soviet general slowly reached a hand forward. Slowly the fingers pressed keys on the console. The monitor read, "Are you sure?" Impatient, Blenkochev pressed in "Yes." Colored lights flashed.

"Ten seconds," Carter said.

Slowly the doors began to open.

Firing, khaki-clad antiterrorist troops slipped in the widening crack.

"There're my men," Blenkochev said, his gaze fastened to the overhead monitors. "Yuri Somolov is leading. A good man. Reliable."

The Americans, New Zealanders, and British mixed with the Russians, firing at the white-clothed Silver Doves. Some darted toward the corners. Others knelt, holding their ground, refusing to retreat as the Doves mustered themselves in a furious attack. Bodies began to litter the floor. Still the invading force moved slowly but relentlessly on toward the back of the warehouse, toward the doors that led into the rest of the compound.

Skobelev turned, his face reset from fear to self-confidence, a still dangerous man. Even though his forces appeared to be losing, he had not given up. He was already figuring out how he was going to talk the Politburo out of his responsibility for the gone-wrong Silver Doves. Even before he was free of charges, he'd form another group. A fanatic was a person who redoubled his efforts once his aims were lost. Skobelev wasn't a supremacist as much as a man who blindly pursued a nonexistent goal no matter the cost to others.

Blenkochev gazed appraisingly at the wily general. The big KGB man knew, too, what was going to happen. His face said it was too much. He pulled back a massive fist and decked the traitorous general.

As Skobelev sprawled unconscious to the floor, Blenkochev looked around the room. Carter picked up a folding chair and set it behind him. Blenkochev nodded his thanks and sat. He tilted his head to watch the television screen. Crouching and firing, David Hawk and Chester ffolkes ran into the warehouse. They separated to improve their chances of making it.

The invading units fought onward. The Silver Doves made the international forces pay with injury and death for every inch they gained.

Blenkochev sighed and put his bloody hands on his legs. The hands trembled.

"I'm sorry about Anna," Carter said.

Blenkochev watched the battle on the screen.

"You loved her?" he said.

"Yes."

"At least she had that."

Blenkochev sat squat and solid on the chair, a sixty-eight-year-old agent who'd lost his daughter. He couldn't mink about that. He'd wait to grieve until he was alone at home. Instead he watched with pleasure as the international units finally passed through the doors that led into the Silver Dove complex. Soon rifle fire echoed inside the miles of corridors.

Skobelev moaned and sat up.

"About the penicillin," Carter said. He looked at Blenkochev. "You diluted it?"

The K-GOL director was silent. He stared at the screens, tracking the battle. The hands seemed to tremble more.

"You diluted it, made money," Carter said. "Maybe you pocketed the profits yourself."

Skobelev's gaze moved from one agent to the other. He was beginning to understand.

"That's how you were able to buy off the newspaper in Düsseldorf," Carter said.

"What's past is past," Blenkochev said at last. He hadn't wanted to say even that. "I paid for the newspaper myself."

Skobelev laughed and stood. He was shaky, but he held himself together as if he weren't. There was fresh determination about him.

"Not many alive today know that story!" General Skobelev said. "I'll have to remind Chernenko."

There was sudden pounding at the door. Carter went to it.

"N3!" It was Hawk's voice. "Open up!"

When Carter opened the door, Hawk and Colonel ffolkes were standing there, eyes bright with victory.

"It's secure, old man," ffolkes cheerfully told Carter. "It's a bloody mess out there, but the damned Doves won't be able to poison the world as they'd promised."

As ffolkes talked, Hawk brushed past Carter. He glanced at Blenkochev, his gaze level with appreciation for the Russian's cooperation. Then he strode directly to General Skobelev.

"Skobelev!" Hawk growled. "So you've found a new way to cause us trouble!"

Skobelev, suddenly unsure, backed toward Blenkochev. The mighty K-GOL man stood, glowering at the Silver Dove leader.

"I'll go back to Moscow," Skobelev said. "With Blenkochev."

"You think you'll get off scot-free?" ffolkes said, appalled.

Hawk watched the cagey Soviet general with interest.

"He has something to trade," Hawk decided.

"Penicillin," Blenkochev said curtly.

Hawk, ffolkes, and Carter looked at Blenkochev.

"I was following orders," Blenkochev said. No shame or remorse showed on his face as he used the ancient soldier's excuse to avoid responsibility. "Stalin's orders. We were making a better world. We all did things we wouldn't have done otherwise. It was after the war, and my country needed the money. Later, after Stalin died and Khrushchev denounced him, the orders from higher up changed. If the penicillin situation had occurred again, it would've been because of individual decisions in the field, not orders from the top."

"So the old acts are now hidden," ffolkes said. "Against policy."

"Hidden as a substitute for forgotten," Hawk said.

"And when the past raises its ugly face, the Politburo runs screaming." Carter said.

"I'm not proud of it." Blenkochev said, raising his head to gaze around the room with his steely eyes. "I did what I had to do. My duty. My country had to survive."

"One wonders whether when the cost is so high the country deserves to survive," Carter said.

"It snot my job to decide that," Blenkochev said. "I only do what s necessary."

Skobelev laughed heartily. He hooked his thumbs inside the waist of his pants and laughed at the joke.

"I'll remember that when I talk to Chernenko!" Skobelev said.

Confidence had flooded back into the creator of the Silver Doves. Skobelev had remembered what it was to be a Soviet general. To be Chernenko's right hand. To be able to outwit most of those who would succeed Chernenko. He knew once again what it was to be so powerful that the lives of those around him were in constant jeopardy to his whim.

Hawk and Blenkochev exchanged a long look. Each knew that Skobelev accurately understood the situation. If Blenkochev's past came out. Blenkochev would have to be killed or exiled, and — more important — Skobelev would have time to build a new base of power from which he could destroy the world.

Hawk had had enough of that. He raised his air rifle and shot.

It was a good clean shot through Skobelev's heart. The dead man stared surprised at Hawk. He put a hand up to uselessly press against the gaping hole from which blood poured. Treachery was his, his stricken eyes seemed to say, and no one else had the intelligence for it.

Blenkochev watched thoughtfully, then nodded at Hawk. Hawk nodded soberly in return. They didn't like one another, but they understood their jobs.

In the Silver Dove valley, Carter stood outside the enormous double doors and smoked a cigarette. Around him, people shouted orders and engines roared into life.

The international antiterrorist troops were piling the defeated Doves into open trucks on the first leg of their return journey to Moscow and trial. The Doves were silent, their faces angry and fearful as they faced their new futures.

Into enclosed, heated trucks, the troops helped the women who'd been locked into the bowels of the mountain. They were women recruited around the world by Doves on their travels. Promised high wages and Interesting work, they instead found themselves kidnapped and then deprived of all hope. Some held their heads high, proud to have triumphed by surviving. Others clutched one another, cowed by fears that would stain their futures.

Carter smoked his cigarette and walked along the mountain. His steps crunched on the hard snow.

Into a helicopter, protected in sealed lead containers, special mop-up troops loaded the vials of bacteria. They would go to a special laboratory in Geneva where the bacteria would be studied to learn its secrets and then, if there were no beneficial possibilities to it, it would be destroyed.

The Antarctic air was crisp and clear. Carter inhaled it in deep breaths and put out his cigarette. He strode down the valley, feeling his muscles strain. It made him know he was alive.

He rounded a bend in the valley to an area where it widened. He stopped and stared.

Ahead, standing in front of a helicopter, stood David Hawk and Leon Blenkochev, the two powerful heads of adversary secret agencies. They were completely alone. The old enemies stood at arm's distance, talking in a field of white. They were dressed in their snowsuits, Blenkochev's stout figure in blue, and Hawk in khaki, a cigar jutting from his mouth. The smoke blew into the air and quickly disappeared.

Carter smiled at the momentous, well-hidden occasion.

"Nick!"

Carter turned, and Mike ran to him.

"Here you are," she said. "I've been looking for you."

Carter nodded at Hawk and Blenkochev.

"The mountain has come to Mohammed," Carter said. "But who's to say which of the two is the mountain?"

Astonished, Mike stared ahead.

The old foes maintained their distance. First one talked, then the other. It was a polite conversation, dignified.

"What's it all about?" Mike wondered.

"I don't know," Carter said, "and I doubt that we'll ever find out."

"Leslee Warner?" Mike said. "Anna Blenkochev? Precautions against future Silver Doves?"

"Maybe. Or maybe it's simply shop talk. The irritations of running a secret agency."

"How hard it is to find good spies these days, "Mike said and smiled.

"The high cost of informers," he suggested. "Dealing with superiors who don't appreciate the problems of being an agency head."

Mike laughed quietly and slipped her arm through his.

"Come on," she said, pulling him back toward the activity in the valley. "They'll never tell us a thing."

"Where to?" Carter asked.

"I have a helicopter waiting for you, too," she said. "Hawk's orders."

He looked at her suspiciously. She tugged on his beard.

"Vacation!" She laughed. "Trout! And no other women. You're very unreliable that way. No more falling in love! I'll give you your vacation," she promised, her eyes dancing, "the best damned vacation you've ever had!"

Carter laughed.

"I'll bet you will," he said.