Circle of Scorpions

by Nick Carter

  * * *

  Carter watched the sweep-second hand of his watch. When fifty seconds had elapsed since the emergency generator's kick-in. he started toward the house in a crouching sprint.

  Halfway there, the lights went off again for the last time.

  Carter hit the door at a dead run. Just beyond it was a small alcove, and then the kitchen. A big, broad-shouldered ape in a tuxedo was standing in the middle of the room by a butcher block. He had managed to get one camp lantern lit and was working on a second one.

  Carter's knee scraped a chair, and the ape whirled at the sound.

  The Killmaster didn't pause a step in his run. He lowered a shoulder into the tuxedoed gut and jammed the man up against a big double-door refrigerator.

  Foul breath wheezed by Carter's ear as the other man fell back toward him, his hands instinctively groping beneath his dark jacket.

  Carter sliced him once across the neck with the barrel and silencer of the Luger, and then gave him another chop on the way down.

  Off the kitchen was a small dining room, and off that the great room. Carter hit that door just as Hadley and Chris came through the front door, dragging the unconscious body of the chauffeur between them.

  "I got one in the kitchen," Carter rasped.

  "And this is two. Two to go."

  Hadley and his partner dropped the man between them and moved on into the pitch-black room. Just as they passed into a stream of moonlight coming through one of the room's tall, cathedral-type windows, Carter spotted movement to his left at the top of the stairs.

  He dropped to one knee and rolled his gaze up. Through the night goggles, he saw a machine pistol come up from one man's side as a second bolted down the stairs.

  "Roll!" Carter barked.

  Hadley and Chris dived. Carter got off two quick shots. Both were hits, but not quick enough.

  The machine pistol in the man's hands began chattering, sending a spray of slugs across the floor and up the wall to shatter the huge window.

  "Shit." Carter hissed. "You guys okay?"

  "Chris caught one in the thigh."

  "Take care of him. I'll go after the other one!"

  Carter raced toward the rear of the house, hoping Carlotta was as good as be thought she was.

  When the emergency generator went out, Ali Kashmir's ardor cooled with it.

  "Something is wrong."

  "Forget it," Carlotta said, tugging him back to her with her left hand on his neck. "You said it is only a power failure."

  "No, the emergency…"

  "Come to me, Ali," she cooed. "I am ready."

  He started to settle back between her thighs, but she could tell from the tenseness in his body and the wariness in his eyes that any sound or movement around him would send him into flight.

  He opened his lips to speak, but Carlotta silenced him by crushing her lips over his mouth. At the same time, she arched her hips, rubbing herself against him.

  By the time he had pulled his lips from hers and lifted his head, the stiletto was out of sight behind his shoulder.

  "I'd better go check. Someone should be…"

  The night erupted. There was a loud stutter of gunfire, and suddenly one of the huge cathedral windows shattered outward, sending fragments of glass over the stone patio.

  "Ali… Ali, we are overcome!"

  Above her head, Carlotta saw a figure dash from the house. There was a spurt of flame from the hill to her right, and the man staggered.

  "Damn!" Kashmir cried as the man pitched forward and slid nearly to the pool's edge.

  Ali's eyes rolled down to meet Carlotta's, and in that instant he knew.

  He was reaching for her throat when Carlotta wound her legs tightly around his back and snapped her feet together. She still clutched his neck and her left hand and, with her finger, counted the bumps of his upper vertebrae.

  He managed to curl his fingers up from the back of her neck and close them over her throat.

  "Bitch!" he gasped as their struggles rolled them underwater.

  Carlotta could feel his fingers tightening. She found the part of his spine she wanted and placed the needlelike point of the stiletto an eighth of an inch into the flesh.

  At the sharp prick of pain, his fingers instantly left her throat and reached to stop the thrust.

  He was too late.

  She placed both hands on the hilt of the stiletto and, with all the power in her arms, pushed the blade down, toward her own breast sliding beneath him.

  It was a sure hit. The spine severed neatly, and his body went limp against her.

  By the time Carter reached the edge of the pool, she was standing waist-deep in the water, her small breasts heaving.

  Beside her, Ali Kashmir floated facedown, a trickle of blood seeping from around the hilt of the stiletto protruding from his neck.

  "You all right?"

  She rolled her head up to face him. Her eyes were clear and her lower lip quivered only slightly.

  "Yes. It couldn't be helped."

  Carter grasped Kashmir's body by the hair and pulled it toward the side. The stiletto was his own, the second of Nick Carter's deadly friends, nicknamed Hugo.

  He pulled the blade out, swished it in the water to remove the red residue, and slipped it into his belt.

  Then he picked up Carlotta's black silk wrap from the cement with his right hand and held out his left to the woman.

  "He's no great loss. C'mon."

  * * *

  "Al?"

  "Yeah," Garrett answered from a motel room approximately five miles from where Carter stood in Ali Kashmir's upstairs office.

  "We're secure. Bring it on in!"

  "Twenty minutes."

  The phone went dead. Carter looked up as Marko entered the room.

  "All secure. We'll have the garbage boys take away the stiffs. The others are padded down in the wine cellar."

  "How's Chris?"

  "He'll be all right. A lot of blood, but nothing severely severed."

  "Good."

  Marko moved around the desk. "A couple of them were only too happy to talk." He twisted the wall molding, and the panel in the wall slid open.

  Carter glanced in quickly and smiled. "Al Garrett will have a ball."

  "I'll set up the perimeter guards."

  Carter nodded and exited the room with him. Marko went down the stairs, Carter down the hall. He stopped at the second door he came to and knocked.

  "Come in."

  She was seated at a vanity, a large, European-style bath towel wound around her body. Her eyes caught his in the mirror, but the hand wielding a brush through her long, glossy black tresses didn't stop.

  "You still okay?"

  "Of course. It's not the first time."

  "I didn't think it was."

  He stopped the hand and brought it to his lips. Gently, he kissed it.

  "You're good."

  "Thank you."

  "But this is only the beginning."

  "I know. Don't worry about me."

  "Did you make the call to Rome?"

  Carlotta nodded. "I informed Palmori that Kashmir himself would be accompanying me to Amsterdam and would help in the final delivery of the goods in Italy."

  "Any static?"

  "None. Palmori considers Kashmir a friend of our cause."

  "And you're sure none of them will recognize me when the time comes?"

  "No one. I am the only one in the Liberta who has had personal contact with Kashmir.

  "Good." He checked his watch. It would be dawn in less than an hour. "You'd better get some sleep. We'll drive to Manhattan at around five in the limo. Our plane leaves Kennedy tonight at ten-fifteen."

  She nodded and went back to brushing her hair. Her voice stopped Carter just as he reached the door.

  "Are you sure your people can keep this place secure for as long as the operation will take?"

  "I'm sure," Carter replied. "And Al Garrett will know enough about Ali Kashmir's business wit
hin a week to run the whole thing right from that computer in the office."

  "What about friends… business or personal?"

  "Kashmir is on a long business trip…" Carter paused, smiling. "Which is partially true."

  "And when it breaks in the papers that Ali Kashmir has been imprisoned in Italy for gunrunning and terrorist activities…?"

  Again Carter smiled. "We have people specially trained to mount and maintain a cover, no matter what may occur. Satisfied?"

  "Satisfied, Nick…"

  "Yes?"

  "For what it's worth, I think I'm going to enjoy the rest of the time with you."

  "That goes both ways."

  He closed the door gently behind him, but not before he got a quick glimpse of Carlotta Polti standing, dropping the towel, and moving toward the bed.

  She looked a lot more beautiful in the bedroom than she had in the pool with a dead body floating beside her.

  Downstairs, he eyeballed the bottles behind the bar and found the most expensive scotch there. He poured three fingers into a glass and downed it. He doctored four fingers of a second one with ice and was just starting on it when Al Garrett and his entourage of technicians walked through the front door.

  "Anybody left alive?"

  "A few," Carter replied. "They're in the wine cellar. Marko says a couple of them are very talkative, should you need to know something."

  Garrett nodded and turned to the waiting men behind him. "Okay, you guys, spread out and find rooms. As soon as you stow your gear, come on back down here. We'll get started right away. We've got a big company to run."

  "How long do you guess this one will take?"

  "Only Carter knows that," he said, turning back to Carter.

  Carter shrugged. "A month, not more than five weeks. We think the date for the big summit between the KGB and the terrorist groups will be about then. By the way, hands off on the first two bedrooms on the left at the top of the stairs. The lady and I will need those for today."

  There were several nods, and the men dispersed. Garrett moved behind the bar and took a healthy slug of sour mash.

  "That stuff will kill you," Carter said.

  "So will old age and not using seat belts," Garrett replied. "Where is it?"

  "Upstairs."

  "Let's go."

  * * *

  Garrett dived into the computer and the books of records alongside it as Carter eased in behind the desk. Carter lit a cigarette, took a slug from his drink, and dialed David Hawk's private Washington number.

  "It's me, sir."

  "How did it go?"

  "Five bad guys wasted along with Kashmir himself. Three stretcher cases with sore heads. They're in the wine cellar. The cleanup boys are on their way to dispose of the deceased."

  "And ours?"

  "One winged, Chris. It's not serious. He's already on his way to Bethesda."

  "How did the Italian lady fare?"

  "Like a champ. She killed Kashmir herself."

  "Excellent. Then you have no doubts she can carry the rest of it off?"

  "None. What do we hear from Rome?"

  "Pietro Amani's parole has been denied. We had a little bit to do with that, of course, but it's a known fact that Nicolo Palmori would try to kill him if he were released, so the parole denial is pretty plausible."

  "Anything further on the meet?… time?… place?"

  "Nothing. There are rumblings all over the world, so we know it's going to happen. But this operation is still the only real chance we have to find out when and where."

  "Good enough," Carter said, downing the last of the scotch in the glass. "Delivery is for Amsterdam, Friday."

  "I'll set up means of transportation. Anything else right now?"

  "Nothing that I can think of. I'll contact you just before we hit Italy."

  "Fine."

  No good-byes were said. Sign-off between the head of AXE and his top agent was easily done with a tonal inflection.

  Carter moved to the wall panel. Garrett was humming as his fingers flew over the keys.

  "What do you think?"

  "Piece of cake. Man, this guy is into everything."

  "You're sure you can shoot through Bartinelli to Amsterdam without tipping us?"

  "Positive. She must have been off her feed earlier tonight. She transmitted some plain-language stuff, then turned around and sent the same things in code. Helped crack it in minutes."

  "I'm going to get some sleep. Roust me about two."

  "You got it."

  Carter moved into the hall. He paused at Carlotta Polti's door, remembering how she looked when she had dropped that towel.

  His knuckles were halfway up to the door panel, when he changed his mind and moved on down the hall to the other bedroom.

  Time enough for that later, he thought.

  Four

  Passports at Kennedy were no problem. Carlotta used her own. Carter used Ali Maumed Kashmir's. It was Lebanese, and one of Al Garrett's team had doctored it perfectly with Carter's picture and a stamp that defied proof of falsification.

  The KLM 747 lifted off at exactly ten-fifteen, and drinks were placed in front of them the moment they hit cruising altitude.

  "Where will we stay in Amsterdam? "Her eyes were clear and bright. The day's uninterrupted rest had done her a world of good.

  "The Amstel," Carter replied, "until after the contact is made and everything is set. We'll play it by ear from there."

  She sipped her drink thoughtfully. "It will be a long way from Amsterdam to Italy."

  Carter nodded. "And even longer from there to… God knows where."

  "I know." She cased her head back onto the seat, slipped the small plastic earphones of the in-flight entertainment recording to her ears, and closed her eyes as soothing music infused the tiny headset.

  Carter retreated into his own thoughts.

  His mind ticked off what had already been accomplished and what they hoped to accomplish in the next few weeks.

  For the past several months, intelligence services throughout the free world had gotten rumblings that terrorist activities were about to be stepped up. After weeks of piecing together odds and ends of information, rumors, and a few solid facts, it was theorized that the KGB was preparing to jump back into worldwide terrorism with both feet.

  Quietly, word had gone out from Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square — KGB headquarters in Moscow — that Big Daddy himself would like a meeting with terrorist leaders.

  Ostensibly, the meeting would be to plot future terrorist thrusts in their respective countries under the guidance of the KGB. It also came to light that an agreement would probably be reached as to the money and arms that Mother Russia would pour into the programs to step up terrorist activities in the West.

  When enough facts and figures had been assembled, a team had been put together and a plan formulated. Eventually, the key twist in the plan had been handed over to David Hawk and AXE.

  "The end result is fairly simple, N3," Hawk had said, chewing on his cigar and frowning at his top agent across the expanse of his cluttered desk. "We would like to know where and when this meeting will take place."

  "And from there?"

  "Disrupt it, of course. But more importantly, we'd like to get some concrete proof to hold over the KGB's head that they are indeed sponsoring worldwide terrorism."

  "It would be a coup."

  "One of the biggest," Hawk growled, flashing a rare, malevolent smile. "We've got a plan that may get you to that meeting."

  Pietro Amani was the founder of a once-powerful Italian guerrilla group called La Amicizia di Liberia Italiana. His life — and his case — was an odd one. As the scion of a wealthy Italian publishing family, it seemed impossible that Amani would become the leader of a group whose sole purpose for being was the overthrow of the very class of which he was an intrinsic member.

  But that was indeed the case.

  However, Amani was more than a left-wing millionaire. He wanted to go down in
history as Italy's Fidel Castro, the so-called liberator of his people. In so doing, Amani had spent nearly all his fortune trying to buy the place in history he coveted so much.

  His failure, to date, had probably come through the very group he had founded, the Liberta. If not the entire group, it was assumed that at least one of its members, Nicolo Palmori — one of Amani's lieutenants — had betrayed the leader.

  When Amani was arrested for murder, the supplying of arms to known terrorists, and treason, his enemies within the group — led by Palmori — took over what was left of Amani's fortune and the group.

  Amani himself was incarcerated in the maximum security prison at Castel Montferrato for a term of twenty-five years.

  It was now the eighth year of his sentence, and his former group — under the leadership of Nicolo Palmori — was in disarray.

  "It's our hunch," Hawk continued, "that if Amani were out of prison, it would be he — and not Palmori — who would be the Liberia's representative at the KGB's little party."

  Carter had groaned inwardly but kept his face an expressionless mask. He could already see what was coming.

  "And, Nick, if you gained Amani's confidence by being the one to break him out of jail, you might also be elected to accompany him as, shall we say, his protector."

  "Why would he need a protector?"

  Hawk averted his eyes, suddenly becoming very interested in a painting on the far office wall. "Well," he said at last, "obviously, when Amani is free, Palmori's people will go after him. Also, since Amani didn't always agree with the Russians when he was in power, it can be supposed that they, too, would like to discourage his attendance."

  Carter felt his hackles come up, and he let them.

  "You mean I've got to bust this guy out of a jail without letting him know I'm a plant, then keep both the KGB and his own people off his ass until I can get him to a place God-knows-where for a meeting God-knows-when?"

  "Exactly. It's right up your alley, Nick. Now, we do have a plan. There is a woman in Manhattan named Naomi Bartinelli…"

  Carter finished his drink and chuckled as he set the glass back on the tray before him.

  "Something amusing?" Carlotta asked, pulling the earphones away and flipping the switch on the control console in the armrest.