Operation Moon Rocket (19 page)

The GKI uniform he put on got him close enough to the next set of guards to dispatch one with Hugo, the other with a karate chop to the neck. That got him inside the villa. The sound of TV and voices drew him along the deserted halls to a covered flagstone
terrazza
off the east wing.

A group of men stood in front of a portable TV set. They were wearing dark glasses and terrycloth robes and had towels looped around their necks. They seemed on the verge of heading toward a pool, visible just to the left of the
terrazza,
but something on the TV was holding them. It was a news commentator. He was saying: "We expect the announcement at any moment. Yes, here it is. It's just come in. The voice of NASA communicator Paul Jensen from Mission Control in Houston saying the Phoenix One mission has been scrubbed for twenty-four hours..."

"Dammitohell!" roared Simian. "Red, Reno!" he barked. "Get back down to Miami. We can't take any chances with that Carter guy. Johnny, get the launch out I'm heading to the yacht."

Nick's hand closed over the large metal marble in his pocket. "Hold it," he rasped. "Nobody move." Four startled faces swung toward him. At the same instant he caught a sudden motion at the edge of his vision field. A couple of GKI guards who'd been lounging against the wall came springing toward him, swinging rifle butts. N3 gave the metal marble an abrupt twist. It went rolling across the flagstones toward them, hissing out its lethal gas.

The men froze in their tracks. Only their eyes moved.

Simian staggered backwards, clutching at his face. A bullet cut Nick's right earlobe. It came from the gun Red Sands was holding as he backed off the
terrazza
and out across the lawn, moving ahead of the deadly fumes. Killmaster's wrist flicked up. Hugo soared through the air, burying itself deep in Sands' chest. He went right on over in a backward somersault, crashing feet first into the swimming pool.

"My eyes!" Simian was bellowing. "I can't see!"

Nick spun toward him. Reno Tree was supporting him by the shoulder, leading him off the
terrazza.
Nick started after them. Something hit his right shoulder like the flat of a board swung with incredible strength. The impact drove him down. He landed on his hands and knees. He felt no pain, but time slowed until everything could be seen in careful, minute detail. One of the things he saw was Johnny Hung Fat standing over him, holding a table leg. He dropped it and ran off after Reno Tree and Simian.

The three of them went hurrying down the sweeping expanse of lawn, heading toward the boat house.

Nick climbed groggily to his feet. Pain washed over him in dark waves. He started after them but his legs collapsed. They wouldn't support him. He tried again. This time he managed to stay up, but he had to move slowly.

The speedboat's engine roared to life just as N3 reached the boat house. Hung Fat swung her out, spinning the wheel as he looked astern to watch his clearance. Simian sat hunched in the front seat beside him, fingers still clawing at his eyes. Reno Tree was in the rear seat He saw Nick coming and swung around, reaching for something.

N3 sprinted the last ten yards, reaching up and swinging from a low-hanging beam overhead, flat-out on his face and stretching, kicking hard on the upswing and letting go while he was still rising. He came down on his toes on the edge of the speedboat's stern, arched, clawing frantically at the air.

He would have lost his balance if Reno Tree hadn't jabbed at him with the boat hook. Nick's hands clamped around the hook and pulled. The leverage swung him forward onto his knees and brought Tree twisting and squirming out of the rear seat like a hooked eel.

The boat burst out of darkness and into blinding sunlight, banking sharply to port, the water curving up around it on both sides in a great foam-topped wake. Reno had his gun out now, pointed at Nick. N3 brought the boat hook down. The bullet zipped harmlessly past his head and Reno screamed as his good hand dissolved into blood and bone. It was a woman's scream, so high-pitched as almost to be noiseless. Killmaster choked it off with his hands.

His thumbs sank into the arteries at either side of Reno's straining throat. The wet, glistening wolfs mouth lolled open. The dead gray eyes bulged obscenely from their sockets. A bullet slammed past Nick's ear. His head rang from the concussion. He glanced up. Hung Fat had twisted around in his seat. He was steering with one hand, shooting with the other as the speedboat pounded across the inlet, engines screaming free and over-revving as the props spun in the air, then twisted back into the water.

"Look out!" Nick yelled. Hung Fat swung around. Killmaster's thumbs finished the job that someone else had once begun. They dug into Reno Tree's purple scar, almost piercing the thick, horny skin. The whites of the man's eyes flickered up. The tongue came out and lolled from the open mouth and there came a terrible gargling from deep in his lungs.

Another bullet whined past. Nick felt the wind of it. He undamped his fingers from the dead man's throat and spun to the left. "Behind you!" he shouted. "Look out!" And this time he meant it. They were roaring between Simian's yacht and the breakwater and through the spray-flecked windshield he saw the nylon hawser tethering its bow to a piling. There was no more than a three-foot clearance and Hung Fat was out of his seat now, looming up over him for the kill.

"That's the oldest trick in the world," he grinned, and then suddenly there was a meaty thud and the Chinaman was horizontal in the air, with the boat going out from under him. Something came out of him, and Nick saw that it was his head. It splashed into the wake some twenty yards behind them and the headless body followed, sinking without a trace.

Nick swung around. He saw Simian grabbing blindly for the wheel. Too late. They were headed right into the breakwater. He dived over the side.

The blast wave hit him as he surfaced. Hot air fanned over him. Fragments of metal and plywood rained down. Something large crashed into the water near his head. Then, as his eardrums were relieved from the some pressure of the explosion, he heard the screams. Shrill, inhuman screams. A piece of flaming wreckage was climbing slowly up the jagged rocks of the breakwater. As Nick looked closer he saw that it was Simian. His arms were flapping at his sides. He was trying to beat the flames out but looked more like a huge bird trying to take off, a phoenix trying to rise from his own funeral pyre. Only he couldn't and fell back with a great, shuddering sigh and died...

"Oh, Sam, look! There it goes. Isn't it beautiful?"

Nick Carter raised his head from the soft rolling cushions of her breasts. "There goes what?" he muttered indistinctly.

The TV set was on at the foot of the bed in their Miami Beach hotel room but he hadn't really noticed. His thoughts had been elsewhere — concentrating on a lovely, sunkissed redhead with tobacco brown skin and white lipstick whose name was Cynthia something. He heard a voice now, talking rapidly, excitedly. "...an awesome orange fire roaring from the Saturn's eight nozzles as liquid oxygen and kerosene explode together. It's a perfect liftoff for the Phoenix One..."

He stared at the set through bleary eyes, watching the enormous vehicle rise majestically from Merritt Island and arch out over the Atlantic on the start of its gigantic acceleration curve. Then he turned away, burying his face once again in the dark, fragrant valley between her breasts. "Now where were we before my vacation was so rudely interrupted?" he murmured.

"Sam Harmon!" Nick's Florida girl sounded shocked. "Sam, I'm surprised at you." But the shocked note turned languorous beneath his caresses. "Aren't you even interested in our space program?" she groaned as her nails began to rake his back.

"Sure I am," he grinned. "Stop me if that rocket starts coming this way."