by Nick Carter
He dressed quickly, watching Julia admiringly from the corner of his eye as she slipped into her own clothes. For a woman she was the quickest dresser he had ever seen in action.
“But what the hell!” he said suddenly. “Why should I be dragged back to New York? What’s the action there?”
“None, so far as I know.” Julia stared at him speculatively. “It’s just that Papa Hawk wants to see you and —”
Nick slammed his fist suddenly into his open palm. “Goddamn! He sent the Geiger-counter men up to Montreal, did he?”
“Sure he did,” said Julia. “Pappy always follows your advice. There’s a new radioman on duty there by this time, too, with a new transmitter — just in case.”
The plane was circling now, maintaining a steady holding pattern.
“But Canada!” said Nick. “I’m a blind fool. Just because they had their meeting place up there doesn’t mean that’s where they keep the stuff stolen from the plant. Why not in the States, where they could get at it so much easier? My God, it’s the U.S. we should be searching!”
“Well, we are,” Julia said reasonably. “I’ll bet you there isn’t a Geiger counter in the States that isn’t being used right now to track down little boxes —”
“Little boxes!” Nick snorted. “What about the source of supply? Unless, God help us, it’s all been scattered by now. Say — what about the AXE “copter?”
“AXE ‘copter?” Julia raised her eyebrows at him. “Didn’t know AXE had one. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Plenty,” said Nick shortly. “It’s equipped with the same sort of devices scientists use to measure radioactive fallout after nuclear explosions and a whole lab full of detection gadgets.”
“Well, that’s just dandy,” Julia said, “but it would take weeks to scour the whole country looking for a cache that may not even exist any more.”
“Why the whole country?” asked Nick. “It must be in a place that has some meaning; it must be in some sort of focal point.”
“Sure. Montreal,” said Julia.
“No, I don’t think so any more. Handy enough for meetings, but what about between meetings? Not practical. Damn this plane! Why doesn’t it land?”
It was still maintaining the steady holding pattern. Nick glanced automatically at his watch. “Wait here,” he said abruptly. “Got to use the pilot’s radio to get through to Hawk.”
He was talking to Hawk moments later in the AXE code that sounded like English and was English but made no sense except to those who knew the key.
“You got ten minutes at least,” the pilot had assured him, and Nick used only a couple of them. Hawk had news for him.
“Good and bad. Four down so far; prospect caught in Norfolk. Concussed, unfortunately, but will recover. Also, all other personnel at West Valley have been completely cleared. Both Hughes and Parry had vacations some three-four months ago, and that is no doubt when the substitutions were made. Clever planners, these bastards. Both fellows indisputably of Chinese origin. Bad news: radiation sickness being felt in several parts of the U.S., containers not yet discovered. We are searching. Part of Pennsylvania an New Jersey are in a state of blackout at this moment. Evidence of pollution in a Wyoming dam. No further leads. Nothing yet from Little Rock. And you? I thought your head had been blown off. Report.”
Nick reported briefly and then made his request.
There was silence for a moment. “Very well,” said Hawk, at last. “I’ll have it there. But you’ll have to go alone”
Hundreds, thousands, millions of radios and telegraphic devices were operating throughout the United States at that moment.
One of them was very different from all but its nine brothers, special units designed to communicate only with the others.
Which was why the AXEman stationed in the shattered hotel boardroom received no incoming messages.
“M.B. to H.M. M.B. to H.M. M.B. to H.M. Come in, H.M Come in, H.M. Come in, H.M.!”
Judas waited. Tried again. Still no reply. The parchment-like skin of his domed forehead wrinkled.
“M.B. to L.M. M.B. to L.M. M.B. to L.M. Come in, L.M. come in L.M . . . .”
No reply.
The skull-face beneath the thatch of transplanted human hair twisted hideously.
“M.B. to T.S. M.B. to T.S. Come in, T.S. Come in, T.S.”
“T.S. Little Rock, to M.B. Come in, M.B. Awaiting instructions. Why no answer, H.M., Montreal? Over.”
“Would like to know myself,” Judas tapped out savagely. “Leave present headquarters at once, using all possible care. Abandon equipment in concealed place, if possible. Will concentrate now on final phase. Go immediately to railroad station men’s room and await me there. Will meet you soonest. Over.”
The unease in Little Rock was almost palpable.
The tall, good-looking man with the oddly darting walk could feel it as he walked down Orval Street. It seemed to him that people were watching him as he passed the seedy shops and paused in front of doorways; it also seemed to him that there were an inordinate number of rundown hotels and boarding houses on this city-back-yard street.
It was a cool evening but Hakim Sadek was sweating beneath his flesh-toned plastic face mask. He had used all his charm and all his carefully faked papers to make his inquiries, but he had drawn a dozen blanks. No one had recognized the faces in the pictures he had shown them. Now, he could see that the residential section stretched only a couple of blocks more before deteriorating into an area of gas stations and used-car lots.
He stopped outside a bar, lit a cigarette, and thought longingly of cold Egyptian beer. The voices from the bar were loud and truculent, and he could hear the note of hysteria in them as an argument raged.
“You listen ta me! It’s the Commies right here in our own country, and don’t you believe nothin’ else. We shoulda fried the whole stinkin’ lot o’ them, all them party members an’ the whole lot —
“Yer crazy! They came from outside, boy! They got us infiltrated. You know how? Trawlers, that’s how. And sub-marines. And some of them refugees from Cuba, you betcha life. Scum, the lot o’ them. Gonna take us over, that’s what. Russians and their buddies.”
“It’s the bomb. It’s been like this since the bomb. Little boxes — who believes in them? Weather changes — heat waves here, droughts there, floods where they don’t need no more water, stinks in the air — don’t tell me it ain’t got nothing to do with all that atomic experimental stuff. You know damn well —”
“Oh, yeah, atomic bomb. Well let me tell you there’s a lot of things happening you can’t explain by bombs or Russians or any of that kind of crap. You ain’t seen them flying saucers? Well, I have. This whole thing happening here, the blackouts and the red water and those people dying, it’s from space, fella, it’s from space. Sure, we’re infiltrated. I tell you, I saw that burned-out place where that thing had landed, and that was nothing from this earth, boy —”
“Oh, you and your Martians, Billy Joe! It’s people! People right here in our midst. Maybe you. Maybe Dewey. Maybe Chuck. Maybe —” “Maybe, you, you —!”
Hakim threw away his half-finished cigarette. This will burst soon, he thought. It cannot go on. If this is what They were trying to do, They were succeeding admirably. He started to walk on in his darting stride. It was then that he saw the man coming down the steps of the shabby building and passing under the street light so that the glow fell on his face. The man turned toward Hakim. His walk was unhurried but somehow tense, and although he was still too far off for positive identification, there was a chunkiness about his body and slight curvature of the legs that augmented Hakim’s first startling impression of his face.
Hakim reeled slightly and fished out another cigarette.
The man came closer and drew level with him.
“Hey, buddy, got a match?” asked Hakim.
The man looked sideways at him and shook his head impatiently.
The bar’s light spilled across his fac
e — and Hakim knew him.
“Pity,” he said pleasantly.
His lanky right leg shot out in unison with his arm and he gave one sharp tug. The man landed heavily and rolled over like a wounded animal. Hakim was upon him instantly, his lean fingers groping expertly for the tender points of the man’s neck.
Then something stabbed Hakim sharply in the side. Not a knife, nothing so crude as that. A needle point.
He felt his senses swimming even as his hands tightened about the neck. Again the pinprick sensation. He saw the other man’s arms darting and flailing, and he knew that he himself was going under. Swift-acting drug, his brain told him coldly; and he knew that there was only one way he could win this fight. He had wanted the man alive, but now the man would have to die.
His body felt like lead and the other was squirming beneath him. Finally, he managed one swift lurch to plant a savage knee-jab in the man’s groin. Then his strong fingers squeezed inexorably.
But the man kept squirming.
So, with a great effort, Hakim lifted the thick, heavy body to a sitting position and smashed the head down hard on the concrete sidewalk.
And still the chunky body squirmed.
Groggily, Hakim groped for the fountain pen in his top pocket. Its delicate point suddenly elongated three inches at his fumbling touch. He sank it deep into the neck he was still clutching with one feeble hand.
In the growing haziness he was dimly aware of the swinging bar doors bursting open and shouting men spilling out onto the sidewalk.
“Jesus, get the cops! Christ, Curly, look — he’s killed a guy!
With a pen, by God! Willya looka that”
Hands tugged at Hakim.
“Hey, look! It’s a mask, he’s wearing a mask. Gawd, see the face? It’s one of them! Jeeze, kill the dirty bastard!”
Hakim felt the plastic mask being ripped away from his face, the rain of kicks and blows that slammed into his body. Dimly, very dimly, he heard the sound of a police whistle as his clothes tore and he felt a trickle of blood make its way wetly down his face.
“Lemme at him, Billy Joe! For Chrissake, gimme a turn, will you?”
He felt one more agonizing pain in his ribs and heard a cry of savage delight. Then he heard no more.
Mr. Judas heard about the new riot even before he reached the railroad station.
T.S. was not in the men’s room. Judas was not surprised. Savagely angry, but not surprised.
He left the station and went to the washroom of a small cafe. There, between other people’s visits to the place, he succeeded in making contact with his remaining four. He gave them new instructions.
An hour later he boarded another plane. In spite of his losses he was grimly satisfied. A few dead men were nothing to him. But the chaos he had heard about and seen made him chuckle to himself. And nothing, now — nothing — could prevent the fulfillment of his master plan.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Meeting For Murder
Five down, if Hakim had been lucky. That left four plus one to go.
Ten little, nine little, eight little Red Chinamen . . .
Going down like ninepins, but too slowly. And no sign, yet, of the Kingpin, while the precious hours passed in tedious search.
Nick watched the indicators on the panel as he guided the AXE “copter through the night. His gaze was intent, because now at last he had something to look at. The whole craft seemed to be ticking and whirring like a bomb about to burst.
He tightened his circular flight pattern and watched the sizzling green light of the main detectorscope. It narrowed briefly and broadened again as he swung north toward the lake, and the indicator needle on the panel beneath it took a sideways dive and quivered convulsively.
About time.
It had already taken much longer than he had hoped; time enough for him to hear reports of a strange occurrence in Little Rock and for Hawk to jet Julia down to check into it; time enough to begin to wonder if he had not been mistaken after all.
But now he knew he had been right.
If there was a cache somewhere it had to be in the general vicinity of the West Valley plant for the late Mr. Parry’s convenience; it had to be accessible by road for the sake of the others; and it was probably not far, in road miles, from a fair-sized airport. Or so he had figured until he had begun to doubt and punch holes into his own argument.
The holes were plugging themselves up rapidly. The broad band of the dectorscope billowed outward in a spreading, jagged pattern that told him the cache lay down below. South of Buffalo, north of West Valley, close to the shores of Erie.
He circled again until he had the location pinpointed exactly. There was nothing to be seen below him in the darkness but a sweep of breach and a glint of pale moonlight on the water that cast the faintest of glows on a shapeless mass of trees and rocks, but his whole bank of supersensitive instruments assured him that there was something down there that did not belong.
“N3 to Hawk, N3 to Hawk”
Nick gave his report as he circled again, this time slightly to the south toward a landing area.
“If they’re down there they must have heard me,” he said, hovering low over a strip of grassland bordering a sweep of lake sand. “Suggest you put a watch on Buffalo airport and all nearby roads in case they’re sneaking off.”
“I haven’t any more men,” Hawk said tensely. “I have them checking out disturbances from here to hell and back — Hell Gate to Hell’s Kitchen. My God, Carter, I wish you knew just how much trouble we have on our hands. But we did make positive identification of the man in Little Rock, and we did find his suitcase abandoned in his hotel room. Same contents as the one you found.”
“And Hakim?”
There was a pause.
“Beaten brutally,” Hawk said grimly, “Panic victim. He’s alive, but . . . but let’s get on with the job. I’ll have radiation experts standing by to follow you in when you’re sure. But, you understand, I am positively unable to send you reinforcements.”
“Don’t want any,” said Nick, as the AXE craft came to a feather-soft landing on the grass. “But the roads and the airport —
“I’ll do my best,” Hawk interrupted.
Nick signed off and strapped the AXE-designed portable Geiger counter at his waist with its single earphone against his ear.
Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre were waiting in their usual places for the action to begin.
Now for the difficult part — finding the place on foot.
He padded along the beach and through the fringes of trees, following the fluctuating hum in his ear.
Time ticked by. The sensitive instrument sang quietly to him.
He skirted the lake shore and flitted, shadowlike, through groves of trees, cursing the waste of time and urging himself on as the humming grew louder in his ear.
The line of beach and intermittent trees gave way to a stretch of rocks and then to humps of root-tangled land jutting out into the water. He picked his way silently through the bushes, over more rocks, past a great boulder and through another small grove of trees.
He came out of the grove and rounded a pile of boulders. And suddenly the sound in his ear was almost deafening.
He was standing, now, on the outer rim of a small inlet, and his view of the inner curve was blocked by a clump of bushes. It took him a moment to pick his way around them, but when he did he could see the full sweep of the cove and the ancient jetty that jutted into it from the shore. By this time the sound in his ear was so loud that it was unbearable. He turned the instrument off, he did not need it any more.
They had been lucky to find this place. Judas, no doubt, had done the scouting, and he had the expert’s nose for searching out such hidden places. There could not be many such inlets along the coasts of Erie. Someone, long ago, had built a boathouse here in this wild cove, and abandoned it. Maybe because it was so wild; maybe because the rocks here were treacherous. Maybe he had gone broke. But he had gone, and left his shack
and jetty for a Judas to make use of.
There was an old but sturdy cabin cruiser bobbing beside the sagging planks with only one dim blue light to give away its presence. Beyond it was the boathouse, sagging like the jetty and apparently unusable, but no doubt reinforced from within and quite capable of storing enough material to keep the Ten busy for many weeks. It must have been quite easy to build, say, a false flooring or wall, and give it a weathered appearance. No reason at all why anyone should ever have stumbled on their cache until it had served its purpose. Nor would the ordinary Geiger counter have picked up the message given off by its contents. However, AXE equipment was not ordinary.
Nick picked his way silently along the curve of the inlet toward the pier. The boathouse was behind it, and behind the boathouse was another grove of trees. Somewhere beyond it, Nick judged, there would be a back road leading to a main highway — one that branched off both to Buffalo and to the West Valley plant.
And the cabin cruiser itself made a useful vehicle, especially if those who used it knew a landing place on the Canadian side of the lake where they might slip off, undetected. . . .
He reviewed his mental map as he glided through the darkness. Niagara Falls was only a stretch of lake and a strip of land to the north. Very, very handy to reach from here, if one had business to attend to in that part of Canada — or any part, for that matter and a certain amount of spy’s skill to go with it.
Judas’s skill was a master of record. And there was no doubt at all that his business interests reached across the border.
Nick passed parallel to the jetty and rounded the inner curve of the inlet toward it. The boathouse was a dark and silent hulk. Only the boat alongside the pier showed any sign of life, and that was no more than a rhythmic bobbing on the water and a pale gleam of blue light.
But the boat could wait. Right now he wanted to be sure about the boathouse.
He edged around it cautiously, staring into the grove of trees for any sign of a watcher and feeling with his hands for an entrance to the rickety building. He found it easily enough, but, of course, the doors that should have been as ramshackle as the building were not only firm but securely locked and barred. The rust on the locks seemed genuine, but he was sure that it was not.
