Death Island Read online

  Tom LaMotta, one of AXE's staff drivers, was waiting for him just ahead of the taxi stands. There was a lot of traffic from the late-night Paris arrival.

  "Mr. Carter," a familiar voice called out, and Carter looked around tiredly as the round, cheerful driver came across and plucked both suitcases out of his hands.

  "Didn't expect to see you here, Tom," Carter said, following the driver back to the nondescript Chevy.

  "We knew you were coming in on the midnight TWA."

  "Just get me home. I'm beat."

  LaMotta opened the trunk and tossed Carter's bags inside. "Sorry about that, sir, but the brass is waiting for you."

  Carter was instantly awake, the adrenaline suddenly pumping. "Is Smitty there?" he asked. Rupert Smith was AXE's new head of Operations. If he was waiting, something immediate was happening.

  "Yes, sir," LaMotta said.

  They drove north past the Pentagon to the Key Bridge, and once across the river they cut back on M Street to New Hampshire, which they took up to Dupont Circle where AXE maintained its headquarters under the cover of Amalgamated Press and Wire Services.

  LaMotta parked in the basement garage and took care of the luggage while Carter signed in and went directly up to Operations on the fourth floor. He had to be signed in again by security there, then had to punch the six-digit code for the access door.

  LaMotta had called ahead. Rupert Smith was waiting for him, a thick bundle of file folders before him. He did not look pleased.

  "Sorry to have to cut your vacation short like this, Carter," Smith said. He was very tall and very thin, almost skeletal-looking. He had served in various capacities in the Central Intelligence Agency for the past fifteen years, but when the Company had become too tame for him, he had transferred to AXE. He was very good at his job.

  One of his people stuck his head in the door. "He's ready, sir. Will you be needing Karsten?"

  "Is he ready?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Very good. I want you down in Archives. We may have some more cross-referencing to tidy up the loose ends yet tonight."

  "Yes, sir."

  Smith, who had been seated behind his desk, got up and came around. Carter got to his feet.

  "No rest for the wicked, I'm afraid," Smith said. "But David wants to see you."

  "Hawk is here? Tonight?"

  Smith nodded. "I don't know the source, but he's taken this as one of his pet projects. It's why you were called, of course."

  They went out into the corridor and started toward the private elevator, which was the only access up to executive territory on the fifth floor.

  "Something's happened somewhere?" Carter asked. When he had left for vacation with Pamela, everything here had seemed to be on a fairly even keel. No trouble spots had been developing as far as he knew. He said as much to Smith.

  "This has been hatching for the past year or two, from what I gather," Smith said. "But NASA was handling it until two months ago, until the Navy took over security."

  Carter was about to ask "Security for what?" when Herb Karsten, the major domo of facts, figures, and instant references for AXE, stepped out of his office and joined them.

  "Nick," he said, extending his hand. "Trust you had a good vacation?"

  "Not bad. Been here long?"

  "All night."

  They took the elevator up, their passes were checked, and they strode down the corridor into Hawk's outer office. His secretary, Ginger Bateman, was gone, but the inner door was open, and Smith led them through.

  David Hawk was a short, very stocky man with a thick shock of white hair and a short bulldoglike neck. He was smoking a dreadful cigar as usual, and he took it out of his mouth and looked up as they came in.

  "Are you fit, Nick?" he grumbled without preamble.

  Smith closed the door behind them.

  "Yes, sir," Carter said.

  "You were scheduled for retraining and testing this quarter. Are you ready for an assignment without it?"

  "I think I can manage, sir," Carter said. He, no less than anyone else in AXE, had a very deep and abiding respect for David Hawk, the chief. What Hawk said, went. He was hardly ever wrong. And no one, absolutely no one, ever lied to him, or over- or underestimated any situation. When he asked a question, he expected an absolutely honest, totally straight answer.

  "Have a seat, then, gentlemen. We have a lot of ground to cover tonight," Hawk said.

  They all took seats across from Hawk. Smith opened his top file folder and thumbed through the papers it contained. Karsten sat back.

  "What do you know about the Caroline Islands?" Hawk began.

  "A group in the Pacific… north of the equator, I think. South of Japan. U.S. trust territory. Truk is there and Hall Island and maybe Bikini."

  "Correct on all but Bikini… it's in the Marshall Islands. Nearby. But you understand that not much happens out there these days."

  "Satellite tracking and receiving stations?" Carter asked.

  "That's the extent of it," Hawk said, glancing at Smith. "Which is exactly our problem."

  Smith took up the briefing. The Faui Faui island group within the Carolines," he began. "Have you heard of them?"

  Carter admitted he had not.

  "Five inhabited islands, plus numerous other coral atolls. Faui Faui itself — which is one of the smaller islands — then Tamau Faui, Akau Faui, Natu Faui — where the biggest native population lives — and then Hiva Faui. Hiva Faui is the main island and on it is the capital city of the same name."

  "In the Carolines?"

  "Yes. Just east of Hall, northeast of Truk, and almost directly north of Oroluk. Lots of white sand beaches, hot days and warm evenings, volcanoes, natives, all that sort of thing."

  "But curiously enough, the French actually own it all," Karsten put in.

  Carter looked toward him. "I thought it was all a U.S. trust."

  "All but the Faui Faui group. Much of that area was French before the war, and then after we liberated it all from the Japanese we took it over. All but the Faui Faui group. There were apparently a number of French families who sacrificed a lot during the war. De Gaulle insisted, and the group remained in French control."

  "But with a rather important treaty, as it turns out," Smith added.

  "French cooperation," Carter said.

  "Yes. Much like Guantanamo Bay. Despite the French histrionics of the sixties and seventies, we managed to hang on to our bit of land on Hiva Faui."

  "Satellite tracking?" Carter asked.

  "Yes," Smith replied.

  "Spy-in-the-Sky satellite," Hawk said. "Interagency. Big stuff."

  "I see," Carter said. "How long have we had this operation running?"

  "In one form or another since the mid-sixties," Smith said. "Actually, it was one of our first. We watch the Far East from there. Before that it was routine electronic surveillance. Radio and cryptography, and things like that."

  "I get the picture," Carter said. "So what's happening out there now that has us worried? Sabotage? A mole?"

  "That's just it," Smith said. "We really don't know."

  "But it has to stop." Karsten added.

  Smith thumbed deeper into the files he held on his lap. He looked up at Hawk, who nodded for him to go on, then cleared his throat.

  "In January 1969, Tom Hawkins, a technician at what was then called Number 17HF Site, apparently committed suicide. They found him hanging in the forest," Smith said. He paused just a moment and went on. "August 1971, Stew Scharaga, Donald Deutsch, and Wally Hoggins died when the truck they were driving apparently went out of control and crashed over a cliff just down from the station. May 74, and again in July of 75, 76, and 78, there were major fires at the station. A total of fourteen people killed, twenty-seven injured."

  "The list goes on?" Carter asked. He had a funny feeling about what he was being told, although he had no idea where it was going.

  "Indeed," Smith said. "The troubles out there increased. Suicides, fires, acc
idents, landslides, and even several murders."

  "What else?" There was something more; Carter could feel it now.

  "Headhunters. Cannibals. Natives hostile, for some reason, to our being on the island."

  Carter looked at him, then turned to Hawk who nodded. "We're not serious, are we?"

  "Perfectly," Smith said. "In the last five and a half years there have been seventeen technicians killed, another thirty or so wounded. And that's not counting the various cases of physical and mental exhaustion reporting back from Hiva Faui."

  "What have we done about it?" Carter asked. He could not believe he was hearing what he was.

  "As far as the accidents, suicides, and fights among the staff go, not a lot," Smith said. "As far as the attacks go, we've cleaned out Natu Faui and Akau Faui at least three times. Or at least the Navy has."

  "To no effect?"

  "Apparently not," Hawk said, sitting forward. "It's technically a French protectorate. There isn't a whole lot we can do about it."

  "Surely security is…"

  "Security is and always has been very good at the Hiva Faui site," Hawk said. "Somehow, though, the natives always find a way of getting through."

  Carter sat back and lit one of his cigarettes that were specially made for him in a small shop in Washington. The paper was black, and his initials were stamped in gold near the tip. The tobacco was very strong.

  "I'm to go out there and see what the trouble is."

  "Something like that, Nick," Hawk said. "You're to see a Justin Owen — he's the station manager — and a Handley Duvall who witnessed a part of the last native attack."

  "I see, sir," Carter said. "Who's in charge of the island? I mean, who is the French governor, or isn't there such a position?"

  "Indeed there is," Smith said. "Albert Remi Rondine. He and his family own an enormous amount of stock in French manufacturing… especially steel and oil."

  "Yet he chooses to be governor of a tiny Pacific island group?" Carter asked.

  "He is quite a colorful character, actually," Karsten said. "He was born in Hong Kong in 1930 or 31, and when the war broke out he was taken prisoner by the Japanese."

  "How'd he end up on Hiva Faui?"

  "We don't know. But he is autocratic. He hates Americans. And he has a wife and at least half a dozen mistresses. It's his little kingdom."

  "You want me to find out what or who is killing our people and put a stop to it on Hiva Faui."

  "Exactly," Hawk said.

  "Our people at the tracking station call it Death Island," Karsten added.

  Two

  Heading west, San Francisco was very nice for a night's stay, and Honolulu was expensive and very cosmopolitan. But after that things began to get a bit primitive by comparison. At Wake Island, the local BOQ — which the soldiers stationed there jokingly called the Holiday Inn — was a two-story barracks that had been built during World War II and had seen very few improvements since then, but there was hot water, and every room had its own shower and sink. At Agaña, on Guam, no one had the guts to call the accommodations anything but the "crash pad." And by the time the Faui Faui group showed up as a number of thick clouds on the horizon from the cockpit of an ancient but still serviceable DC-3, Carter had to wonder if he hadn't slipped backward in time.

  They were bringing supplies down from Hall Island for the Hiva Faui Satellite Tracking and Receiving Station, and Tim Torrence, the sardonic civilian pilot, had nothing good to say about the place.

  "The French may own it, and the Americans may work there, but the Chinese run the joint," the man said.

  They had already begun their long descent, and the copilot, a little man from New Zealand, was just waking up. The cockpit smelled like a cross between lubricating oil and body odor. It was not very pleasant.

  "What do you mean?" Carter asked. "I would have thought the Japanese would be here, if there were any Orientals."

  Torrence laughed out loud. "You've got a lot to learn if you think anything like that. pal. The Japanese may have been here for the duration of the war, but right afterward they were either all killed or they hotfooted it back to their home islands."

  "The Japanese aren't very well liked here? Still?"

  "Still. But neither are the Chinese, for that matter, although the bastards are a fact of life."

  They broke out of the intense cloud cover over the main island a few miles north of the end of the runway. Carter sat forward as they came in, and he got a good view of the sprawling satellite receiving station and the radar domes, four of them stark white in contrast to the dark green of the surrounding jungle. But even from here Carter could see where repairs were being made to a long, low brick building, and he could see that a number of the barrackslike structures were blackened by fire.

  He swiveled around in his seat and looked toward the south, in the direction of a paved highway. "Where does the road lead?" he asked.

  Odets, the copilot, glanced sleepily that way. "Town," he mumbled, and he turned back to the landing.

  Torrence was very good. The DC-3 greased in for a landing on the paved runway, and soon they were pulling up and swinging around in front of a long, low building. The engines were cut, and Torrence looked around and grinned. "Here we are, pal, home sweet home. For you, that is."

  Carter unstrapped from his seat and worked his way back to the cargo bay. Odets came back a moment later, undogged the main hatch, and shoved it open. The furnacelike heat hit them in a big rush at the same moment as a canvas-covered truck backed up to the open hatch. There were several men, all dressed in khaki, waiting below.

  Carter jumped down, and Odets tossed down his two leather bags. A short, slightly built Chinese man scurried around the truck and scooped up Carter's bags, then hurried over to a jeep with them as a tall, rugged-looking man with red hair came over. Just behind him was an even taller, more heavyset man.

  "Nick Carter?" the first man asked, extending his hand. Carter took it.

  "Justin Owen?"

  "That's right," the red-haired man replied. "I'm station manager out here, although these days that's nothing to brag about." He half turned as the other man came up. It seemed as if he were in pain. "I'd like you to meet my chief engineer, Handley Duvall."

  Carter shook hands with him. "How are you feeling, Mr. Duvall? I understand you were wounded in the latest attack."

  "No, sir. It was in town… one of our civilian workers," Duvall said. It seemed as if he were at his wit's end.

  "One of the subcontractors," Owen put in.

  "That little s.o.b.," Duvall began, but he became silent at a glance from Owen.

  "We have a room set up for you," the station manager said, leading Carter around the truck and over to a second jeep. The Chinese man who had taken Carter's luggage was already gone. Several other Orientals, all dressed in white shorts, white long-sleeved shirts, and straw hats, had begun to unload the aircraft.

  Carter looked back. Odets and Torrence stood in the cargo hatch, and the pilot waved. "See you next month," he shouted.

  Carter waved back. "Only one plane a month?" he asked Owen.

  " 'Fraid so, Mr. Carter. But even at that, I wouldn't be too optimistic about my chances of being on it. This is a tougher problem than you might think."

  "There've been other investigators out here?"

  "Investigators, committees, platoons, submarines. The entire gamut. But I'll tell you all about it later. I imagine you'll want to freshen up first, and I'll have the cook rustle you up something to eat."

  "Sounds good," Carter said. As he climbed into the jeep with Owen and Duvall, he glanced again back at the plane. Several of the Orientals who were unloading the cargo were looking back. It struck Carter as odd, but then so did Owen and Duvall strike him as odd.

  * * *

  Carter was shown to a room on the second floor of a long wooden building that apparently served as a combination VIP quarters and administrative center. It was across a narrow road from one of the receiving
equipment units and just next door to the dining hall. It was small but pleasantly furnished, and most importantly, it was air conditioned. He had his own private bathroom.

  His suitcases had already been brought up, and most of his clothing had been unpacked and was hanging in the small closet.

  Carter got undressed, took a quick, cool shower, and then got dressed in a pair of lightweight slacks, a military-cut shirt-jacket, and soft slip-on boots. He lit a cigarette as he strapped on Wilhelmina, his Luger, at his belt beneath his shirt, and made sure Hugo, his razor-sharp stiletto, was secure in its chamois sheath at his left ankle. He normally carried it on his forearm, but his shirt was short-sleeved. He also carried a very small gas bomb attached high on his inner thigh, much like a third testicle.

  For a time he stared out the window at the activity down in the compound. Duvall had been the one who had been wounded in town by one of the Chinese from the station. From what Carter understood, there was not much love lost between the civilian employees — most of them Oriental — and the station engineers and technicians. But as far as he knew, Duvall's was the first incident stemming from that animosity.

  From everything he had been briefed on, there was no connection between what had happened to Duvall and the attacks on the camp. And yet now that he was here, he had to wonder…

  Someone knocked at his door, and he turned around as a young Chinese man came in and smiled. "It is time, Mr. Carter. Mr. Owen say your dinner is ready across the way at the club."

  "Where is that?" Carter asked, looking closely at the man. It was hard to tell his age or his specific nationality. Taiwanese, possibly, he thought.

  "Behind the dining hall, venerable sir."

  "Thanks," Carter said, smiling. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, then left the room.

  After being in the air conditioning, even for just a short time, the temperature and humidity outside were nearly unbearable. He was sweating heavily by the time he made it across to the dining hall. A young man in white coveralls directed him around back to the club. Inside, Owen, Duvall, and a third, thin, sullen-looking man with a military crewcut were waiting for him at a large round table.