White Death

Three

The second explosion occurred almost instantly. It shattered the wall of the cell across from Nick Carter. Carter dropped to the floor. Shouts and curses filled the air. Gunfire streaked through the night. It was the two policemen, villagers… and who else?

The office door burst open. Hair flying, Mike Strange hit the light switch and ran down the short hall in the gloom. The young policeman, his pocked face contorted with fear and worry, ran with her.

"It's about time," Carter said.

"What the hell's happening around here?" she demanded.

"Don't really know." He smiled. "I'm on vacation, remember?"

"Vacation! Ha!" Mike said, handing him a.45. "Get in there!" she ordered the policeman.

As she unlocked Carter's cell, the young man unlocked and slipped into Harry's cell. The drunk lay outside, bloody, spread out like a rag doll. The bright light of a full moon glowed on his corpse.

Bullets sang through the hole in the drunk's cell wall. Carter and Mike dropped to the floor. The policeman fell flat, his forehead grazed by a bullet. Determined, shaking, he aimed and fired into the night.

"I can't see anything!" the young man said, shooting again.

Bullets ricocheted in the enclosure and bounced off the bars.

"Watch for their fire!" Carter told him from the floor. "You'll sec the streaks of light."

Carter and Mike crawled to the cell opposite the drunk's where the second wall had been blasted open.

This thing work?" Carter asked, pulling the trigger. It kicked in his hand, the bullet going harmlessly into the ground. It was a good gun, but not as good as Wilhelmina, his 9mm Luger.

"It'd better." Mike said." Watch for the whites of their eyes!"

"You've been seeing too much television," Carter chuckled, then he concentrated on one of the darting shadows that weaved among the pines.

He squeezed the trigger. The figure's arms flew up, and the body keeled over backward.

Gunfire spattered from the side of the building, aimed at the shadowy movements in the trees.

"Chief Merritt?" Carter asked.

Mike nodded and fired. The figure in the distance doubled over and limped off.

"The chief's around the corner with a deputized friend," she said.

"Looks like about a dozen out there," Carter mused, watching for a target.

"We're outnumbered. We got a few, though,"

Quietly the two agents concentrated on their work as the hot stench of gunfire slowly filled the jailhouse. They waited for the movements or telltale streaks of gunfire that would give them targets. Bullets occasionally whistled over their heads. They shot in return, often missing as the attackers disappeared behind trees and deep into shadows. The pine branches sang in a growing breeze, the eerie sound whining between the cracks of gunfire. Each pause between bullets lengthened. Tension thickened the air.

"It's too quiet," Mike whispered at last. "They're planning something."

Suddenly a burst of gunfire came from the young policeman behind them.

They're coming!" he yelled, firing again and again.

Mike bolted.

"Come on!" she shouted at Carter.

Carter started to rise but thought better of it and dropped flat again.

"You go!"

She ran through the jail and flattened herself down next to the policeman. Carefully choosing her shots, she fired. It didn't sound like a major attack.

Carter slid to the side of the hole, his body hidden behind the ragged remains of the cell wall. He counted the seconds. If it was going to happen, it would be soon.

His sharp eyes studied the wavering darkness. Nothing. They were a gutsy group, the attackers. And they'd come prepared in dark clothing that blended with the night. They had accurate weapons, and there was something — or someone — in the jail that they wanted. Dead. They weren't fools. Carter couldn't believe that they would be so stupid as to…

Then he saw them. Four, spread out. Creeping toward what they hoped was an abandoned entrance. Then, with no bullets coming at them, they ran, confident, a coalescing juggernaut. The group on the other side of the jail that Mike and the young policeman fired at were a diversion. This small group before Carter was the one that expected to conquer the jail.

With the remarkably rapid reflexes mat the Killmaster was legendary for — and that he hoped would keep him from getting killed — he leaned out beyond the ragged edge of the wall.

He aimed at the figure coming from his blind spot, and fired.

The body flew back into nothingness.

Carter ducked back.

Three bullets bit into the wall around Carter's head. Splinters flew. He jumped up and came out from a new spot. Bullets pummeled the spot where he'd been.

Quickly he aimed and fired twice.

Two more fell, as dark as coal against the black ground shadows.

A bullet sang into the wall, then another. Wood dust stung his eyes and he closed them, waiting for the soothing tears.

"What's going on?" Mike shouted from behind.

Carter knelt. He heard the feet pounding, light, but a heavy body that couldn't disguise its mass.

"Slay where you are!" Carter called back to Mike.

"They're hidden!" Mike said. "We can't get any of them. It's like shooting at ghosts'"

The attacker lunged through the door.

Carter's eyes flew open, his vision blurry. His eyes burned like fire.

The gun was a wavering black stick in the attacker s hand.

Carter rolled into the legs.

The gun came down, slicing the air.

Carter leaped up.

Armed for the belly, kicked.

Missed, smashed the gun across the cell.

"Get out of the way, Nick!" Mike yelled, worried. "I can't get a clear shot!"

The big hands slashed toward Carter's neck. He saw the hands clearly. Thick hands with broad fingers accustomed to heavy work.

Carter reared back and smashed his elbow into the attacker's chest.

Ribs cracked. The attacker grunted and stepped aside.

Carter pulled back a fist that had power enough to flatten a gorilla. This man he'd take alive, then question.

The shot rang out.

"No!" Mike shouted. "Nick had him!"

The attacker's belly erupted. A volcano of blood spewed out. The blackened face of the attacker looked down at himself, stunned. Suddenly the jail and surroundings were quiet. He seemed to listen to the silence, then he pitched forward onto his knees, wobbled, and lifted a foot to stand. Helplessly Carter watched. The man was already dead. At last he acknowledged his end. He sank onto the floor in a sea of blood.

"Dammit, Perry," Mike complained sadly to the young policeman. "We could've questioned him."

Behind Mike the full moon hung fat and low on the horizon, illuminating an irregular patch inside the jail where she stood glaring at the young man.

The policeman named Perry looked at her blankly. He wiped the palm of one hand on his pant leg, over and over, while the other nervously tapped the barrel of his gun against the other leg. It had been his first gun battle. He'd be jumpy for days.

Mike sighed, then patted his back.

"It's too late now," she said. "Forget it."

Carter walked to her. Perry stared at him, miserable.

"The others disappear?" Carter asked.

She nodded. "Just stopped. They didn't get what they wanted."

"I'd better check outside," he said. "Come on. Perry. Let's see what we can find."

The young man stared at him, the pocks deep on his face in the gloom.

"When you're scared, it's better to do something," Carter said kindly. "You've got a bullet burn on your forehead. You've already been wounded. The worst is over. Don't you want to know where your chief is?"

The youth's eyebrows suddenly shot up. He crossed the room in long strides and exited through the hole in the jail wall where Carter had been.

Carter smiled briefly.

I'll be back," he told Mike, leaving her to check the dead attacker on the jail floor.

He slipped past poor Harry and into the fresh night. The smell of gun smoke tainted the mountain air. Slowly the birds began to sing again. The tall firs swayed overhead with the sinning wind.

Silently padding, gun safely in his hand, Carter moved around the perimeter of cleared land behind the rough jailhouse. Pine needles brushed his cheek. Dried duff softened the ground beneath his feet. He quickly found where the attackers had hidden during the last diversion. A thick log was piled high with branches. Behind it, grass was matted, duff kicked into piles where bodies had sprawled to fire at Mike and Perry.

He walked on, listening for human sounds in the forest. Altogether he found seven dead bodies, some close to the woods, others near the jail. They were dressed in black jump suits. Caucasians, their laces blackened for camouflage. All carried new Soviet 5 45mm AK-74 Kalashnikov assault rifles, smaller caliber versions of the traditional 7.62mm AK-47 model. The new models were light, tough, and easy to shoot, ideal for the Russian style of fighting that called for bursts of sustained fire rather than carefully aimed shots.

He returned to the jail. The lights were on once more. Villagers moved quietly toward the building, hesitant, not talking. Some earned hunting rifles.

Inside, Chief Merritt sat on a stool while a doctor tended a bullet wound on his arm His leathery face was pasty, drawn. Villagers examined the blasted walls and conferred softly. Perry leaned against cell bars, his body stiff and wooden. A pall hung in the violated jail.

Mike had stripped the attacker that Perry had killed. He lay naked, pale as bleached bones, on the floor. He, too, had a Soviet gun. He also had a tattoo on the top of his left thigh. It was a small bird in flight. Beneath it were the Russian words Serebryanyi Golub, Silver Dove.

Mike looked up at Carter. He gestured for her to follow him. They went out, carrying a flashlight.

Each of the bodies had the same tattoo on the left thigh.

"A conspiracy," Mike said softly, her face worried as they trudged to her car.

"It doesn't look good," Carter agreed solemnly.

Mike's car was an Australian-made Holden Camira 1600, a small car specially equipped with an outsize motor. She drove it easily along the winding mountain road, past boulders and pines and cabins that were only small distant lights. She banked the curves expertly. Overhead, stars twinkled among narrow moving clouds.

"Arc you sure you're not here for AXE?" she asked at last.

"Only a vacation," he said. "I was hoping to get a good night's sleep and be out fishing tomorrow before dawn."

She took him in with an appraising gaze.

"Hard to believe you ever take a vacation," she said.

He rubbed his new beard and thought briefly of the trout he would miss in the morning.

"Hard for me to believe, too." He smiled ruefully. "Maybe it's time you told me what's going on."

"What about the American flyer?" she asked.

"You know as much as I do. Nothing."

She drove silently, thinking.

"It's been a long time since we were on the same assignment," he said helpfully. "But our governments are allies, remember?"

She nodded slowly.

"It's quite a stink," she admitted. "Wellington's in an uproar. I don't even know where to begin." She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, then gripped it to round a curve. "And I don't know that it has anything to do with your American flyer. But it does involve the Russians and that tattoo."

"Serebryanyi Golub. The Silver Dove."

"That's it." She looked at him. "As always, your Russian is impeccable."

He laughed.

She allowed herself a smile but kept her gaze on the dark road.

"It started at the Soviet embassy," she continued. "A week ago the embassy called to ask for medical assistance. That in itself was remarkable. They have their own doctors, not as advanced as ours, but they art a stubborn people. Can't admit ever that someone else's technology is better. So there we are, being asked to help. We ask them what kind of doctor do they need. Internist? Surgeon? Cancer specialist? Maybe obstetrics? They hem and haw. One bureaucrat after another talks to our people, finally the head of the embassy himself comes on the line, very calm, of course. Bland is maybe a better word. Anyway, he says he needs someone who is a specialist in tropical diseases and poisons. Well, that's not one doctor, that's two."

"Tropical disease in New Zealand?" Carter murmured. "Interesting."

"Not exactly the night climate here, is it? We're moist and temperate. Marine," Mike agreed. "So I'm sent over as the medical assistant of these two doctors that afternoon. No one questioned my credentials. The stuff just whisked us up to this private bedroom. All the Soviets' faces are extremely grim. The kind of grim that comes when you're so scared you can't even spit. We find a man in a coma. An attaché is how they described him. They said he'd been on a business trip and had returned ill. When I asked where, they stared right through me. Obviously the wrong question to ask. So our doctors confer with their doctor. He tells them he can't identify the disease… looks like a poison, maybe… he's not sure, never seen anything like it. Apparently, the attaché had arrived at the embassy that morning at daybreak, sat down with a cup of coffee, and passed out. So I stay there while our boys run all kinds of tests. The attaché has an incredibly high fever, and he's still in the coma. Our doctors work on him, and I watch. What I see is a very sick man, and he has a tattoo on his thigh, just like our friends who attacked the jail. And underneath is written in Russian 'Silver Dove. »

"The man died?"

"How did you know?"

"An educated guess. If he hadn't, you'd have wangled a way to stay with him, and you'd know a lot more than you do now. Probably be working on the case instead of coming after me."

Mike nodded soberly.

"Right. He was sick only that one day, in the coma the whole time. Never came out of it."

"And the medical tests?"

"The Soviets ran them in their own lab and kept the results. Our doctors saw some of them, but the information was inconclusive. Pointed to any number of diseases, all of them fatal. They did rule out poisons."

"So the Russian with the tattoo died of an unknown disease," Carter said reflectively. "And the ones at the jail were probably also Russians, considering the tattoos and Soviet-made weapons. You came to find me, and instead you find a Russian invasion. It's not an accident. What do you know that you're not telling me?"

"You're the accident," she said and grinned. "I couldn't let you get out of New Zealand without seeing you." She squeezed his leg. "Sorry?"

"Only sorry I didn't call you first."

"That's what I like to hear." She grinned happily. "Now, the big news is that the embassy sent back to Moscow for their own medical experts to do an autopsy and check the lab results. Bet you can't guess who the Kremlin sent."

"I don't know anything about their medical community," Carter admitted.

"You don't have to. Look at this."

With one hand, Mike dug into her purse, unzipped an inner pocket, and pulled out a photograph of two men and a beautiful young blond woman.

Carter tipped it at his window to catch the moon's light.

"Blenkochev!"

"You've got it," Mike said, pleased. "The head of the great K-GOL, the most secret and feared agency in the KGB. The agency that runs all the KGB public operations, and the secret ones that even the Politburo will never know anything about."

Carter held the photo.

"How'd you get it?" he asked quietly.

"It was taken secretly at the Wellington airport when they arrived," she said proudly. "Their security is good, but it's our airport."

Carter studied the photo. The only pictures AXE had of Blenkochev were five years old and hazy, taken by a mole at Blenkochev's dacha outside Moscow. This photo was good and showed a clear likeness Blenkochev was a stout man, about five-nine, with thick black hair greased back slick and neat. He'd be sixty-eight now, but he looked a good ten years younger. Desk work agreed with him. His features were coarse. Slavic, bumpy. The hooded eyes looked over the shoulder of his companion as if he could see straight back to Moscow. There was something fierce and aggressive about his thickness, as if he were an old bull, a survivor seasoned by the ring. No mere mortal could ever touch him. And no photograph could do him justice. It couldn't show the immense power he wielded. The men and women he'd condemned to death. Those he'd needed and saved for the moment. The network of highly trained spies for whom he was an earthly god in a godless land.

"I've never known him to leave Russia," Carter said thoughtfully.

"Me neither," Mike said.

They drove in silence, thinking of the powerful, deadly Blenkochev. What had been so important to get him out of the motherland where he'd be a target for any number of international agents who'd lost friends due to his orders? The New Zealand road wound down the side of the mountain toward the sparkling lights of a small town. The car purred, well tuned. They watched the lights grow larger and brighter.

"What were they after?" Mike said, suddenly worried.

"The men at the jail? You, maybe."

"But…" She turned to him, her eyes wide.

"They've probably been following you since the embassy. This was the first time you did something different, unusual to your routine."

"That's right. There's been a car that could have been following me… But I've mostly been pushing papers lately. Didn't think anything of it. Waiting for a development, orders, you know."

"And then there was the killing of Mackenzie. You go, apparently to investigate."

"You think Mackenzie is connected to the Silver Dove business?"

"It might be wise to find out."