White Death

Nine

The ground shook and rolled. The roar of the explosion rocked their eardrums. Dust and debris clotted the air, and the two men huddled next to the stone foundation and coughed.

The bomb had been set on a split-second delay switch to be sure that anyone entering would be inside when the explosives blasted the shack apart. That had been the soft click that Nick Carter's acute hearing had picked up. Just like all experts, bomb professionals tried to think of every contingency.

As Carter picked up Charlie Smith-deal and held him by a wobbly shoulder, he thought about it. Too much of anything was often not a good idea… even too much efficiency.

Smith-deal gazed at the stone foundation of his shack, now filled like a volcano crater with wood splinters useful only to a toothpick factory. Dust settled slowly toward the ground.

"Shit," he said mournfully.

"Sorry about that," Carter said. "Looks like somebody doesn't like you. You'll need a new house."

"Never mind the bloody house!" Smith-deal cried in outrage. "Me bottle was in it!"

"I am sorry." Carter grinned. "You don't have an emergency bottle, maybe? Hidden somewhere?"

Smith-deal looked blankly at Carter. Slowly memory brightened his eyes. He snapped his fingers.

"Dammee, you're right!"

Carter followed Smith-deal across the jumbled yard to the back. The drunk went straight to a well with a low stone wall. The overhead arch that had held a bucket was long gone. The bucket was nearby, upside down, with a tattered rope tied to the handle. Smith-deal ignored it. Instead, he pulled up a second rope that was fixed lo a deeply embedded hook inside the well's wall. The bucket was left outside the well so that the puller wouldn't get the ropes confused in the night.

Carter looked over the well's edge into darkness. Slowly the jug appeared. It was home-brew in a plastic bleach bottle, not an encouraging container. It had been there so long that algae covered it in a slimy green.

Smith-deal crowed with pleasure. He sank next to the well, his back supported by the wall, lifted the bottle, and drank.

Carter squatted next to him.

"Looks like you've been having a good time," he observed. "A long celebration of something."

"Can't figure it," Smith-deal said, wiping a fist across his mouth "Who'd want to blow the old shack? I don't even own it."

"They were after you, not the shack."

"Doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense."

Smith-deal drank again, long and deep. At last he sighed, and set the jug next to nun. He kept a proprietary arm around it.

"You don't want any, do you?" he inquired.

"Wouldn't dream of depriving you," Carter said.

Smith-deal beamed and rotated his baseball cap so that the brim was again over his eyes, sheltering his face from the afternoon sun. He was in his early forties, a slender man in need of a shave. What flesh he had was pulpy, almost without substance. He'd been drinking for years and not bothering to eat when he did. He appreciated those who didn't take the liquor that he substituted for proper nourishment.

"It's not all that great," the New Zealander admitted and drank again. "But you can have some. Sure. You saved my life. I think. Didn't you?"

Carter laughed.

"Probably, but you keep your booze. Instead, maybe you'd answer some questions. Know anything about airplanes?"

Smith-deal blinked slowly, digesting Carter's words.

"Mechanic," he replied, still puzzled.

"Know a flyer by the name of Rocky Diamond?"

Smith-deal hooted and slapped his thigh.

"Oh, he's a hard case, he is!" he said. "One of the hardest cases around!"

"Did you see him last week?"

The mechanic's eyebrows knitted in thought. His forehead creased with suspicion.

"Why d'you want to know?"

"If I wanted to hurt him, I wouldn't be bothering to talk to you now. I'd have you down, your arm locked back, and your neck stretched from here to Auckland. You'd tell me anything I wanted."

Smith-deal blanched.

"Diamond's missing," Carter continued. "Maybe he's dead. Maybe he's hurt somewhere and needs help. If he's your friend, you'll want to tell me what you know."

Smith-deal drank, then looked at Carter with bleary eyes.

"He flew out of Christchurch?" Carter prodded.

"That's it," the mechanic said. "Don't know whether he'd want me to tell you or not. But then, if the poor boy's missing…" He shrugged. "Ah, well. He should be there by now, and no damage done. He was doing a bet. Someone hired him to make a stunt flight from Christchurch to the South Pole. He was supposed to stay overnight there and then fly on to the Falklands. When he took off, he gave me a wad of money for helping him and to keep my mouth shut. I went off to celebrate. Haven't been home since." He stared mournfully across the yard to the remains of the shack.

"It saved your life," Carter reminded him. "If you'd come back sooner, you wouldn't have heard the click and you'd be dead."

"Don't know why anybody'd want to kill me." The mechanic shook his head sadly. Thinking about it was upset-tag, so he drank again.

"Did he file a flight plan?" Carter went on.

"Sure. Had to. Everyone does."

"And he had plenty of supplies?"

"Everything. Snow equipment mostly. Just in case. Food, too, and survival gear. No frills. And the gas tanks were full, Saw to it myself."

"There's no record of him at either Christchurch International Airport or Wigram Aerodrome."

"Well, we were quiet about it all. Rocky called himself something else — Philip something — but there should be records. The flight plan."

Carter stood and dusted his hands.

"Come on," he said. "There's someone you need to talk to."

He lifted Charlie Smith-deal by the armpits and steadied him on his feet. The mechanic clasped the algae-covered jug to his chest.

Smith-deal was the only witness Carter had to Rocky Diamond's presence in New Zealand Smith-deal believed what Diamond had told him, hut somewhere in the man's unconscious there might he clues about what Diamond had really been up to. Carter would get Smith-deal to Colonel ffolkes and let the New Zealand intelligence head's expert psychologists take over.

"Not sure I like this," Smith-deal muttered as Carter propelled him around the house.

"Can't be helped," Carter said, aiming him at the Ford Laser 1.3 he d rented in downtown Christchurch. "No one's going to hurt you. Just help you remember better. Might actually be fun for you. Interesting."

"Don't like this at all!"

Smith-deal wouldn't be convinced easily. Alcoholics didn't like change. The most important constant in their lives was threatened — liquor.

Still, Carter urged him toward the Ford. And Smith-deal, whose will had long ago evaporated in an alcoholic haze, went.

The bullet streaked through the sunlight.

Instantly the AXE agent dived. He yanked Smith-deal down and pulled out Wilhelmina.

The bullet bit into the ground five inches from Carter.

Carter dragged Smith-deal with him to shelter behind the rented car.

Smith-deal quaked. His teeth chattered as he gripped the plastic bottle of booze to his chest.

The whining of two more bullets split the air. They were high-pitched screamers from a long-range rifle. The sharpshooter — or sharpshooters — were trying to draw Carter and Smith-deal out from the car.

"W-what's going on now?" Smith-deal yelled.

"You got a gun in your jeep?" Carter asked.

"An old hunting rifle, but…"

"Back seat? Front seat?"

"Under the front seat, but…"

"Don't move," Carter ordered, "or you're dead!"

Smith-deal nodded solemnly, his ashen face registering that once more he'd had a foot in the grave.

Carter looked across at the battered, muddy jeep. It was twenty feet away. The air was silent, the rifleman or riflemen saving bullets, waiting for targets.

As Smith-deal unscrewed his bottle, Carter dashed for the jeep.

A bullet ripped through the jeep's hood.

"Hey!" Smith-deal yelled. "That's my jeep!"

It was dirty and banged up, but — unlike the shack — it was his. Ownership was more important than safety.

"Smith-deal! Get down!" Carter shouted.

Confused, the mechanic ducked as another bullet whistled over the Ford where Smith-deal's head had been a moment before.

Because of the time between shots, Carter knew it was one rifleman. Before the sharpshooter could resight, Carter vaulted into the jeep's front seat. He pulled out the old rifle and a cardboard box of bullets. Now he had to get out again.

"Smith-deal!" Carter called. "You still got that jug?"

"Yeah!"

"Take a drink and hold it high so I can see it!"

Obediently, the mechanic swigged deeply and lifted the big white bottle above his head, above the hood of the Ford. "Steady!" Carter urged.

"How come?"

The answer came in the whine of a well placed bullet.

It burst the big plastic bottle. Liquor sprayed into the air, dousing the lord and Smith-deal's face. Pieces of plastic fell to the ground.

"No!" cried Smith-deal.

He pulled the handle down and stared at it as if by his needs he could reassemble the bottle. Tears ran down his checks, and he licked the inside of the handle.

Again using the brief time before resighting, Carter leaped over the jeep's door and sprinted to the Ford.

"Why'd you have me do that?" Smith-deal complained. "I oughta knock your head off!"

Angry, the drunk wiped his arm across his eyes. Anger was what Carter needed, not submersion in the immobility of self-pity. An angry Smith-deal was useful, perhaps useful enough to save his own life and help Carter capture the sharpshooter.

"Here," Carter said, and he shoved the rifle and ammunition at Smith-deal. "There's only one over there. Behind the trees on that knoll. Keep him occupied, but don't gel yourself shot."

Smith-deal frowned. His eyes narrowed. He was beginning to get the idea.

"Can you handle it?" Carter said, checking Wilhelmina's chambers.

"You're going after him?"

"You have a better idea?"

"We could just drive out of here."

"He'd get the tires, the gas tank."

"It'd be safer."

Carter laughed. "You mean it might get you closer to another drink."

Smith-deal drew himself up where he squatted in the dirt. "Nothing wrong with a man having a drink now and then."

"Nothing wrong at all," Carter agreed. "Afterward, I'll buy you one myself. Whatever you want."

"I want a bottle. The best Irish."

"You can count on it."

Carter slapped Smith-deal on the back and crawled to the end of the car. "It'd been a long time since the last shot.

"He may move," Carter warned Smith-deal over his shoulder. "Be careful."

Smith-deal raised his baseball cap, scratched his scalp, and flopped the cap back onto his head.

"Got it," he said, and lifted the barrel of the rifle over the hood of the car.

Instantly another shot rang out, landing in a blast of dust a few feet behind the car.

"Guess he's watching me," the drunk said worriedly.

"Good," Carter said, and ran.

Slowly Carter made his way around the gently rolling, sparsely settled plain. In a country where hunting was one way a family kept from starving, there wasn't any noticeable excitement about the rifleman on the low knoll who kept Smith-deal pinned down and tried to stop Carter in his speedy dashes from one shelter to the next.

The rifleman had lost the advantage that came with surprise. He was a good shot, though, and persistent. Eventually, if he wasn't caught or didn't give up or didn't run out of ammunition, he'd get one or both of his targets.

But he wasn't a professional killer.

A professional would have disappeared after the first miss. He would have escaped — unnamed — to succeed the next time.

Carter needed to get in range for his 9mm Luger. He would wing the rifleman, rush him, and capture him. He hoped.

Once again Carter scrambled to his feet and tore across the hard plain.

Two bullets sang past.

He dived into a scrubby stand of oaks. Dry leaf dust puffed into the air.

He raised Wilhelmina. He was on the edge of being in range. He studied the hillock where the rifleman was hidden.

There a variety of trees presided over dry grass and downed logs. In the winter, the logs would be dragged away for firewood. But now they provided good shields for the rifleman.

Between Carter and the rifleman were no more shelters for Carter. Only the sun and the dirt of the open plain waited. If Carter couldn't get a good shot here, he'd have a long, dangerous run ahead. A run long enough to give the rifleman time to aim accurately for a kill.

Again Carter observed the knoll. The last place the man had fired from was to the left of a big maple, just above a thick log.

Carter lay still, watching.

Suddenly there was a shot from the Ford.

Charlie Smith-deal had remembered to use his hunting rifle. The bullet thudded harmlessly between two trees on the low hill.

A rifle barrel appeared on the hillock, in the place where Carter expected it. Quickly he aimed and fired.

The bullet was short, the distance still too great.

Carter ducked.

Immediately a bullet streaked past him.

Smith-deal fired again, his whiskey-riddled mind fixed on the promised bottle.

Again the rifleman shot at Smith-deal behind the Ford, and Carter raced away from the stand of trees into the open plain, shelterless and dangerous.

The voice was hollow, almost like a cough. It seemed to be calling Carter's name.

The bullets blasted from the hillock, one at a time, steady, now ignoring Smith-deal behind the Ford.

Carter weaved. The voice coughed again.

The sharpshooter's shots were closing in. Carter zigzagged.

The bullet ripped through Carter's sleeve, burning his skin.

The next one might kill him, and yet he was almost at the knoll.

"Carter!" the voice said.

As the rifle on the hillock barked again, Carter rolled.

The bullet sang into the dirt.

"Over here, Carter!"

Carter rolled again, this time into a narrow trench, invisible from any distance on the gently rolling plain.

"Colonel ffolkes," Carter said and grinned. "I was just on my way to call you."

"You're a damned hard man to follow," ffolkes said, his ruddy face pressed against the side of the dry irrigation trench. His gold-capped teeth shone in the sunlight.

"You're the one I lost in Wellington and then Christ-church."

"A couple of my men. You didn't think we'd let you run around without being watched, did you?"

"Considering the present situation, I can hardly complain."

The two agents shook hands.

"You have any more men here?" Carter said.

"A few," he said modestly.

The operation was simple. Carter, Colonel ffolkes, and the three New Zealand agents who were stationed nearby rushed the hillock from different directions.

The sharpshooter fired quickly.

The men pressed on, themselves firing on the lone rifleman, racing at him. A converging juggernaut.

Until there was silence.

An unnatural silence.

Carter put on a burst of speed, ffolkes close behind. Even though ffolkes was in his sixties, he was in excellent shape. His wiry frame ate the ground in long strides.

They found the sharpshooter crumpled behind the log that had sheltered him. Half his face was gone. The powder burns were unmistakable. Suicide.

Despite the years of experience, both Carter and ffolkes hesitated. Suicide was somehow more a tragedy than even murder. It made each man question his own pain.

Then, as the other agents arrived, ffolkes went through the dead man's pockets, but he found nothing.

Carter watched until ffolkes was finished. Then he unzipped the mans trousers and pulled them down. The White Dove tattoo was on the corpse's left thigh.