Operation Moon Rocket (16 page)

"There's no time," he replied. They would be waiting for them there. Cocoa Beach was in the enemy's hands.

"I'll have to speak to the Project Director." She was beginning to look doubtful. "I'm on standby duty now that the countdown has begun."

"I wouldn't do that," he said evenly. The enemy had infiltrated NASA, too. "You'll have to trust my judgment," he added, "when I say that the fate of Phoenix One depends on what we do in the next few hours."

The fate of more than the mooncraft — but he didn't want to go into that. Peterson's message had come back to him: it involved the women and children injured in that bus crash, the ones now being held hostage in the GKI Medical Center. Peterson had checked out their husbands' jobs at NASA and found that they all worked for the same division —
electronic guidance control.

The heat was stifling in the closed room, but it was a stray image that made the sweat spring suddenly to Nick's brow. An image of the three-stage Saturn 5 lifting off, then wavering slightly as outside control took over, directing its six-million-gallon payload of highly inflammable kerosene and liquid oxygen toward a new target —
Miami.

The attendant stood by the Lamborghini's open door, waiting for a nod from the
maitre d'.

He didn't get it.

Don Lee's face had a "no reservation" look on it as Nick Carter advanced from the shadows into the circle of light beneath the Bali Hai's sidewalk canopy. Nick turned, linking his arm with Joy Sun's, letting Lee get a good look at her. The maneuver had the desired effect. Lee's eyes faltered, were momentarily uncertain.

The two of them advanced on him. N3's face was his own tonight and so were the accoutrements of death he carried on his person — Wilhelmina in a snug holster at his waist, Hugo, sheathed inches above his right wrist, and Pierre, with several of his nearest relatives, nestled in a waistband pocket.

Lee glanced at the clipboard he held. "Name, sir?" It was an unnecessary piece of business. He knew perfectly well the name wasn't on his list.

"Harmon," said Nick. "Sam Harmon."

The answer came instantly. "I don't believe I see..." Hugo snaked out of his hiding place, the tip of his vicious ice-pick blade probing Lee's belly. "Ah, yes, here it is," gasped the
maitre d',
struggling to suppress the quaver in his voice. "Mr. and Mrs. Hannon." The attendant slid behind the wheel of the Lamborghini and swung it around into the parking lot.

"Let's go to your office," rasped Nick.

"This way, sir." He led them through the foyer, past the coatroom, snapping his fingers at the assistant captain. "Lundy, take over the door."

As they moved down along the leopard-striped banquettes, Nick murmured in Lee's ear, "I know about the two-way mirrors, friend, so don't try anything. Act natural — like you're showing us to a table."

The office was all the way to the rear, near the service entrance. Lee unlocked the door and stood aside. Nick shook his head. "You first." The
maitre d'
shrugged and went in, and they followed. Nick's eyes swept the room, looking for other entrances, anything suspicious or potentially dangerous.

It was the "show" office, the one where the Bali Hai's legitimate business was conducted. There was a white broadloom carpet on the floor, a black leather sofa, a kidney-shaped desk with a Calder mobile hanging above it and a free-form glass coffee table in front of the sofa.

Nick locked the door behind him and leaned against it. His eyes moved back to the sofa. Joy Sun's eyes followed his and she blushed. It was a celebrity sofa, having played a supporting role in a now famous pornographic photo.

"What do you want?" demanded Don Lee. "Money?"

Nick crossed the room like a swift, chill wind. Before Lee could move, Nick delivered a quick left scythe-like blow to his throat with the edge of his hand. As Lee doubled up, he added two hard hooks — a left and a right — to his solar plexus. The Hawaiian fell forward and Nick brought up his knee. The man dropped like a sack of shale. "Now then," said N3. "It's answers I want and time is running out." He dragged Lee over to the sofa. "Let's assume I know all about Johnny Hung Fat, Reno Tree, and the operation you're running here. Let's start from there."

Lee shook his head, trying to clear it. Blood made dark wriggling lines down his chin. "I built this place up from nothing," he said dully. "I slaved day and night, sank every nickel I had into it. Finally I achieved what I was after — and then I lost it." His face twisted. "Gambling. I've always been a sucker for it. I got into debt. I had to bring other people in."

"The Syndicate?"

Lee nodded. "They let me stay on as nominal owner, but it's their operation. Completely. I've got no say in it. You've seen what they've done to the place."

"In that secret office in back," said Nick, "I found microdots and photographic equipment that pointed to a connection with Red China. Is there anything to it?"

Lee shook his head. "That's just some game they're playing. I don't know why — they don't tell me anything."

"What about Hung Fat? Any possibility he could be a Red agent?"

Lee laughed, then cradled his jaw in sudden pain. "Johnny's strictly a capitalist," he said. "He's a swindler, a confidence man. His specialty is Chiang Kai-shek's treasure. He must have sold five million maps to it in every big-city Chinatown."

"I want to talk to him," said Nick. "Call him back here."

"I'm already here, Mr. Carter."

Nick spun around. The flat, Oriental face was impassive, almost bored. One hand was over Joy Sun's mouth, the other one held a switchblade. The tip rested against her carotid artery. The slightest movement would send it slicing into her. "Of course we bugged Don Lee's office, too." Hung Fat's mouth smiled. "You know how wily we Orientals can be."

Reno Tree stood behind him. What had appeared to be a solid wall now had a door in it. The dark, wolf-faced gangster turned, closing it behind him. The door sat so flush with the wall that no line or break in the wallpaper could be seen from more than a foot away. Down at the baseboard, however, the joining wasn't quite so perfect Nick cursed himself for not having noticed the thin vertical line in the baseboard's white paint.

Reno Tree slowly advanced toward Nick, his eyes boring auger holes through him. "You move, we kill her," he said simply. He took a twelve-inch length of soft, pliable wire from his pocket and tossed it on the floor in front of Nick. "Pick it up," he said. "Slowly. Good. Now turn around, hands behind you. Make the thumb-tie."

Slowly Nick turned, knowing that the first hint of a false move would send the switchblade plunging into Joy Sun's throat. Behind his back, his fingers gave a twist to the wire, making a small double-bow, and waited.

Reno Tree was good. The perfect killer: the brain and sinews of a cat, the heart of a machine. He knew all the tricks of the game. Getting the victim to tie himself up, for instance. It left the gunman free, out of reach, and it kept the victim busy, off guard. It was going to be tough to get the better of this man.

"Lie on the sofa, face down," Reno Tree said flatly. Nick moved across to it and lay down, hope beginning to fade. He knew what was coming next. "The legs," said Tree. With this tie-up you could bind a man with six inches of string. It would hold him more securely than chains and handcuffs.

He bent his knees and lifted his foot, resting it in the crotch formed by the bent knee of the other leg, all the time trying to figure a way out. There was none. Tree moved in behind him, gripping his raised foot with lightning speed, forcing it down hard so that it trapped the other foot behind the back of the calf and the thigh. With his other hand, he lifted Nick's wrists, hooking them over the instep of the raised foot. Then he released the pressure on that foot and it sprang up against the thumb-tie, so that Nick's arms and legs were painfully, hopelessly locked.

Reno Tree laughed. "Don't worry about the wire, friend. The sharks will cut right through it."

"They need incentive, Reno." It was Hung Fat who said it. "A little blood, know what I mean?"

"How's this for starters?"

The blow seemed to crush Nick's skull. As he tumbled warmly into unconsciousness, he felt the blood flowing through his nasal tubes, choking him with its warm, salty, metallic taste. He tried to hold it back, to stem its flow by sheer willpower, but of course he couldn't. It came out his nose, his mouth, even his ears. This time he was done for, and he knew it.

At first he thought he was in the water, swimming. Deep water. Way out. The ocean has a swell to it, a body that the swimmer can actually feel. You rise and fall with it as you do with a woman. The motion soothes you, rests you, untangles all the knots.

That's the way he was feeling now — except that the pain in his loins was growing unbearable. And it had nothing to do with swimming.

His eyes burst open. He was no longer lying face down on the sofa. He was on his back. The room was dark. His hands were still looped together by the thumbs. He could feel them, aching, beneath him. His legs were free, though. He moved them apart. Something still held them prisoner. Two things, actually. His pants, which were down around his ankles, and something warm and soft and excruciatingly pleasurable around his midsection.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could see the silhouette of a female body moving expertly and wantonly above him, the hair swinging freely with each sinuous movement of the fluid hips and sharp-pointed breasts. The perfume that hung in the air was Candy Sweet's and the panting, whispered words that goaded his passion were, too.

It made no sense. He willed himself to stop, to somehow throw her aside. But he couldn't. He was already too far gone. Systematically, and with deliberate violence, he pi stoned his body into hers, losing himseli in the savage, loveless act of passion.

At the final movement, her nails dragged deeply across his chest. She threw herself across him, her mouth burying itself in his neck. He felt her sharp little teeth nip briefly, unendurably into him. And when she drew away, a thin trickle of blood splattered his face and chest.

"Oh, Nicholas baby, I wish it could have been different," she moaned, her breath hot and ragged in his ear. "You can't know how I felt that day after I thought I'd killed you."

"Irritable?"

"Go ahead and laugh, sweetheart. But it could have been so marvelous between us. You know," she added suddenly, "I never had anything personal against you. It's just that I'm hopelessly hung on Reno. It's not sex, it's ... I can't tell you, but I'll do anything he asks if it means I can stay with him."

"There's nothing like loyalty," said Nick. He sent his spy's sixth sense out to probe the room and its environs. It told him they were alone. The distant music was gone. And the usual restaurant sounds, too. The Bali Hai was closed for the night. "What are you doing here?" he asked, wondering suddenly if this might not be another of Reno's cruel jokes.

"I came looking for Don Lee," she said. "He's over there." She gestured toward the desk. "Throat slashed from ear to ear. That's Reno's specialty — the razor. I guess they had no more use for him."

"It was Reno who killed Pat Hammer's family, too, wasn't it? That was a razor job."

"Yes, my man did that. But Johnny Hung Fat and Red Sands were there to help."

Anxiety suddenly twisted Nick's stomach. "What about Joy Sun?" he asked. "Where is she?"

Candy moved away from him. "She's all right," she said, her voice suddenly cold. "I'll get you a towel. You're covered with blood."

When she returned, she was all softness once again. She washed his face and his chest and threw the towel aside. But she didn't stop. Her hands moved rhythmically, hypnotically over his body. "I'm going to prove what I said," she whispered softly. "I'm going to let you go. A man as beautiful as you shouldn't die — at least not the way Reno's got planned for you." She shivered. "Swing over onto your stomach." He did, and she loosened the wire loops-around his thumbs.

Nick sat up. "Where is he?" he asked as he pulled them the rest of the way off.

"There's some kind of meeting at Simian's house tonight," she said. "They're all there."

"There's nobody outside?"

"Just a couple of those GKI cops," she replied. "Well, they call them cops, but Red Sands and Reno drafted them out of the Syndicate ranks. They're just hoods and not the brightest variety at that."

"And Joy Sun?" he persisted. She said nothing. "Where is she?" he demanded sharply. "Are you keeping something from me?"

"What's the use?" she said dully. "It's like trying to change the direction water flows." She walked over and switched the light on. "Through there," she said. Nick crossed to the concealed door, glancing briefly at Don Lee's body lying in a halo of congealed blood under the desk.

"Where's this lead?"

"To the parking lot out in back," she said. "Also to that room with the two-way glass. She's in the office next to it."

He found her lying wedged between the wall and a couple of files, bound hand and foot with telephone cord. Her eyes were closed and the acrid smell of chloral hydrate clung to her. He felt her pulse. It was erratic. Her skin was hot and dry to the touch. An old-fashioned Mickey Finn — crude, but effective.

He untied her and slapped her face, but she only muttered something indistinct and turned over. "You'd better concentrate on getting her to the car," Candy said behind him. "I'll take care of the two guards. Wait here."

She was gone about five minutes. When she returned she was out of breath and her blouse was stained with blood. "I had to kill them," she panted. "They recognized me." She raised her miniskirt and slipped the wafer-flat .22 into her thigh holster. "Don't worry about noise. Their bodies muffled the shots." She lifted her hands and drew back her hair, shutting her eyes for a second to blot out the scene. "Kiss me," she said. "Then hit me — hard."