Operation Moon Rocket (2 page)

Suddenly the telephone rang. He jumped. He'd been expecting it all night. "I'll get it," he said. The commentator was saying, "Nine hours after the tragic event, investigators are still sifting through the charred debris..."

It was Hammer's boss, Pete Rand, the launching crew supervisor. "Better come in, Pat," he said. His voice sounded funny. "There are a couple of questions..."

Hammer nodded, closing his eyes. It had only been a matter of time. Colonel Liscombe had yelled, "Pipe's been cut."
Cut,
not
broken,
and Hammer knew why, could see the case containing his polaroid glasses lying there next to the solder dust and the Teflon shavings.

He had been a good American, a loyal employee of Connelly Aviation for fifteen years. He had worked hard, risen from the ranks, taken pride in his work. He had hero-worshipped the astronauts who had ridden his handiwork into space. And then — because he loved his family — he had joined the commonwealth of the vulnerable, the exposed.

"Yes, all right." Hammer said it quietly, his hand shielding the mouthpiece. "I want to talk about it. But I need help. I need police protection."

The voice at the other end sounded surprised. "Okay, Pat, sure. That can be arranged."

"I want them to guard my wife and kids," said Hammer. "I'm not leaving the house until they get here."

He put the receiver down and stood there, his hand shaking. Sudden fear twisted his stomach. He had committed himself — but there was no other way. He glanced at his wife. Timmy had fallen asleep in her lap. He could see the boy's tousled blond hair wedged between the couch and her elbow. "They want me at work," he said vaguely. "I'll have to go in."

The front doorbell's muted chimes rang. "At this hour?" she said. "Who could it be?"

"I asked the police to stop by."

"Police?"

Strange how fear telescoped time. It seemed less than a minute ago that he'd been on the phone. He walked over to the window, cautiously parted the Venetian blinds. The dark sedan at the curb had a dome light on the roof, a whip antenna on the side. The three men on the front stoop were in uniform, with holstered weapons on their hips. He opened the door.

The one in the lead was big, browned from the sun, with light carrot-colored hair brushed straight back and an affable grin on his face. He wore a blue shirt, bow tie and riding breeches and carried a white crash helmet under his arm. "Howdy," he drawled. "Your name Hammer?" Hammer was staring at the uniform. He didn't recognize it. "We're county officers," the redhead explained. "The NASA people gave us a call..."

"Oh, okay, fine." Hammer stepped aside to let them in.

The man directly behind the redhead was short, lean, dark, with dead gray eyes. A deep scar encircled his neck. He had a towel wrapped around his right hand. Hammer glanced at him with sudden alarm. Then he saw the five-gallon drum of gasoline the third policeman was holding. His eyes darted to the man's face. His mouth wrenched open. He knew at that moment that he had begun to die. The features beneath the white crash helmet were flat, with high cheekbones and slanting eyes.

The syringe in the redhead's hand spat out a long needle with a tiny sigh of escaping air. Hammer gave a grunt of pain and surprise. His left hand flew to his arm, fingers clawing at the sharp agony embedded in the tortured muscle. Then he slowly toppled forward.

His wife screamed, tried to rise from the couch. The man with the scarred neck came through the room like a wolf, his mouth wet and gleaming. An ugly straight-edge razor protruded from the towel. As the blade flashed down, she threw herself across the children. Blood sprang from the savage red gash that he drew across her larynx, choking off her scream. The children weren't fully awake. Their eyes were open, but still blurred with sleep. They died quickly, silently, without a struggle.

The third man had gone straight to the kitchen. He opened the oven, turned on the gas, then disappeared down the steps into the hurricane shelter. When he returned the gasoline drum was empty.

The redhead had removed the needle from Hammer's arm and had slipped it into his pocket. Now he dragged him over to the couch, dipped Hammer's lifeless right index finger in the pool of blood rapidly forming under it and guided the finger across the bungalow's whitewashed wall.

He paused every few letters to dip the finger in fresh blood. When the message was complete, the other two men looked at it and nodded. The one with the scarred neck pressed the handle of the blood-soaked razor into Hammer's right hand and all three helped carry him into the kitchen. They placed his head in the open oven, took a last look around, then filed out the front door, the last man triggering the tumbler of the snap lock so that the house was locked from inside.

The whole operation had taken less than three minutes.

Nicholas J. Huntington Carter, N3 for AXE, leaned on one elbow and looked down at the lovely, sunkissed redhead who lay on the sand beside him.

Her skin was tobacco brown and she wore a pale yellow bikini. Her lipstick was pink. Her legs were long, shapely, her hips round and firm, and the mounded V of her bikini looked up at him and the proud breasts in the tight cups were two more eyes.

Her name was Cynthia something and she was a native Floridian, the girl in all the travelogues. Nick called her Cindy, and she knew Nick as "Sam Harmon," an admiralty lawyer from Chevy Chase, Maryland. Whenever "Sam" was on vacation down Miami Beach way, they made a point of getting together.

There was a dew of sweat from the hot sun beneath her closed eyes and at her temples. She sensed him looking at her and the wet eyelashes parted; the tawny eyes, big and far-away, looked up with remote curiosity into his.

"What do you say we flee this vulgar display of half-cooked flesh?" he grinned, showing enviably white teeth.

"What do you have in mind?" she countered. A faint smile lurked in the corners of her mouth.

"The two of us, alone, back in suite twelve-eight."

Excitement began to grow in her eyes. "Again?" she murmured. Her eyes trailed warmly over his brown, muscular body. "All right, yes, that
is
a nice idea..."

A shadow suddenly fell across them. A voice said, "Mr. Harmon?"

Nick swung onto his back. A funereal man in black, in silhouette, bent over him, blotting out part of the sky. "You are wanted on the telephone, sir. By the blue entrance, phone number six."

Nick nodded and the assistant bell captain went away, treading slowly, cautiously through the sand to preserve the shine on his black oxfords, looking like a dark omen of death amid the riot of colors on the beach. Nick climbed to his feet. "I'll only be a minute," he said, but he didn't believe it.

"Sam Harmon" had no friends, no relations, no life of his own. Only one man knew of his existence, knew that he was in Miami Beach at this moment, at this particular hotel, on the second week of his first vacation in over two years. A tough old man in Washington.

Nick walked through the sand toward the Surfway Hotel's entrance. He was a big man, slim-hipped and wide at the shoulders, with the calm eyes of a top athlete who has dedicated his life to challenge. Feminine eyes swiveled behind sunglasses, taking stock. Thick, slightly unruly dark hair. An almost perfect profile. Laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Feminine eyes liked what they saw and followed him, openly interested. There was a promise of excitement in the sinewy, tapering body, and of danger, too.

"Sam Harmon" fell away from Nick with every step he took. Eight days of love, laughter and idleness vanished stride by stride, and by the time he reached the hotel's cool, dark interior he was his usual working self — special agent Nick Carter, top operative of AXE, America's super-secret counterintelligence agency.

The telephones were to the left of the blue entrance, a row of ten mounted on the wall, with soundproof barriers between them. Nick went to number six and picked up the receiver. "Harmon here."

"Hello, my boy, just passing through. Thought I'd see how you were getting on."

Nick's dark eyebrows rose. Hawk — on an open line. Surprise number one. Here in Florida. Surprise number two. "Everything's fine, sir. First vacation I've had in some time," he added pointedly.

"Splendid, splendid." The head of AXE said it with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. "Are you free for dinner?" Nick glanced at his watch. At 4:00 p.m.? The tough old bird seemed to read his thoughts. "It will be the dinner hour by the time you reach Palm Beach," he added. "The Bali Hai, Worth Avenue. The cuisine is Polynesian-Chinese, the
maitre d
's name is Don Lee. Just tell him you're dining with Mr. Byrd. Fivish is fine. We'll have time for a drink."

Surprise number three. Hawk was strictly a steak and potatoes man. He hated Oriental food. "Fine," said Nick. "But I'll need time to get organized. Your call was rather... unexpected."

"The young lady's already been notified." Hawk's voice was suddenly crisp and businesslike. "She was told that you were called away on business unexpectedly. Your suitcase is packed and in the car, your street clothes are on the front seat. You've already checked out at the desk."

Nick fumed at the highhandedness of it all. "I left my cigarettes and sunglasses out on the beach," he snapped. "Mind if I get them?"

"You'll find them in the glove compartment. I take it you haven't been reading the papers?"

"No." Nick let it go at that. His idea of a vacation was to sweat the poisons of everyday life out of his system. Those poisons included newspapers, radios, TV, anything that carried news of the outside world.

"Then I suggest you switch the car radio on," said Hawk, and N3 knew from his voice that something big was up.

He moved the Lamborghini 350 GT through the gearbox. The heavy traffic was pointed toward Miami and he had his half of U.S. 1 largely to himself. North through Surfside, Hollywood and Boca Raton he sped, past the endless procession of motels, gas stations and fruit juice stands.

There was nothing else on the radio. It was as if war had been declared, as if the President had died. All regular programs had been canceled as the nation honored its fallen astronauts.

Nick swung onto the Kennedy Causeway in West Palm Beach, made a left into Ocean Boulevard and headed north toward Worth Avenue, main drag of the town society columnists called the "platinum watering hole."

He couldn't figure it out. Why had the head of AXE chosen Palm Beach for their meeting? And why the Bali Hai? Nick reviewed what he knew about the place. It was said to be the most exclusive restaurant in the United States. If your name wasn't in the Social Register, or if you weren't fabulously rich, a foreign dignitary, a senator or a high State Department official, you could forget about it. You wouldn't get in,

Nick made a right into the street of expensive dreams, swinging past the local branches of Carder's and Van Cleef & Arpels with their small vitrines displaying rocks the size of the Kohinoor Diamond. The Bali Hai was situated between the elegant old Colony Hotel and the ocean front, and was painted to look like a pineapple rind.

An attendant swept his car away and the
maitre d'
bowed obsequiously at the mention of "Mr. Byrd." "Ah yes, Mr. Harmon, you were expected," he murmured. "If you will follow me, please."

He was led along a leopard-striped banquette to where the leathery old man with the rustic appearance and gimlet eyes sat at a table. Hawk rose as Nick approached, holding out his hand. "My boy, glad you could make it" He seemed rather unsteady. "Sit down, sit down." The captain pulled the table out and Nick did. "A vodka martini?" said Hawk. "Our friend here, Don Lee, makes the very best." He patted the
maitre d
's arm.

Lee beamed. "Always a pleasure to serve you, Mr. Byrd." He was a young, dimpled Hawaiian Chinese, wearing a tuxedo with a colorful lei draped around his neck. He chuckled, adding, "But General Sweet accused me last week of being an agent of the Vermouth industry."

Hawk chuckled. "Dick's always been a grouser."

"I'll have a straight scotch," said Nick. "On the rocks." He glanced around the restaurant. It was paneled in bamboo to table level, with wall-to-wall mirroring above that and wrought-iron pineapples on each table. A horseshoe-shaped bar was at one end and beyond it, enclosed in glass, the discotheque — at present the "in" spot for the Golden Youth of the Rolls-Royce set. Elaborately jeweled women and men with smooth, well-fed faces sat at tables here and there, picking at their food in the vague half-light.

A waiter arrived with their drinks. He wore a colorful
aloha
shirt over black trousers. His flat Oriental features were expressionless as Hawk upset the martini that had just been placed in front of him. "I take it you've caught up with the news," said Hawk, watching the liquid disappear into the damp tablecloth. "A national tragedy of the gravest dimensions," he added, pulling the toothpick out of the olive that had spilled from the drink and beginning to jab at it absent-mindedly. "It will delay the moon program at least two years. Perhaps longer, considering the mood the public is in at present. And their representatives have caught the mood." He glanced up. "That Senator what's-his-name, the chairman of the subcommittee on space," he said. "He wants the program delayed at least
five
years to make certain no more lives are lost."

The waiter returned with a fresh tablecloth and Hawk abruptly changed the subject. "Of course I don't get down too often," he said, popping the remains of the olive into his mouth. "Once a year the Belle Glade Club has a pre-duck-hunting banquet here. I try always to make that."

Still another surprise. The Belle Glade Club, Palm Beach's most exclusive. Money wouldn't get you in; and if you were in, you might suddenly find yourself out for some obscure reason. Nick peered at the man who sat across from him. Hawk looked like a farmer or perhaps the editor of a small-town newspaper. Nick had known him a long time. Intimately, he'd thought. Their relationship had been very near to that of father and son. Yet this was the first inkling he'd had that Hawk's background was a social one.