Operation Moon Rocket Read online

  Chapter 3

  Her name was Candace Weatherall Sweet — Candy for short — and she completed the recognition exchange with breezy self-confidence.

  Now they sat facing each other across a table the size of a top hat in the bar area. "Daddy wouldn't be a certain General Sweet, would he?" Nick asked grimly. "Member of the Belle Glade Club, who likes his martinis extra dry?"

  She laughed. "A perfect description." She had a beautiful face, with wide-apart, deep-blue eyes under lashes paled by the sun. "They call him General, but he's really retired," she added. "He's a high muckamuck in the CIA now. He was in the OSS during the war, didn't know what to do with himself afterwards. The Sweets don't go into business, of course — just government or public service."

  "Of course." Nick was seething inside. He'd been saddled with an amateur, a debutante looking for excitement on her summer vacation. Not just any debutante, either — but Candy Sweet, who'd made headlines two summers earlier when a party she'd thrown at her parents' East Hampton home had degenerated into an orgy of drugs, sex and vandalism.

  "How old are you, anyway?" he asked.

  "Almost twenty."

  "And you're still not allowed to drink?"

  She flashed him a quick smile. "Us Sweets are kind of allergic to the stuff."

  Nick looked at her glass. It was empty, and he'd seen the bartender pour her a substantial slug. "I get the picture," he said, and added abruptly, "shall we go?"

  He didn't know where, but he wanted out. Out of the Bali Hai, out of the whole case. It stank. It was dangerous. It had no shape. Nothing you could grab it by. And here he was in the middle of it without even a decent cover — and with a flighty, cotton-headed young deb in tow.

  Outside, on the sidewalk, she said, "Let's walk." Nick told the parking attendant to hold off on the car and they started down Worth. "The beach is lovely at dusk," she said enthusiastically.

  As soon as they were past the Colony Hotel's mustard yellow awning, they both spoke at once — "The place was bugged." She laughed and said, "Do you want to see the setup?" Her eyes were shining with excitement. She looked like a kid who'd just stumbled on a secret passageway. He nodded, wondering what he was in for now.

  She turned down a cute yellow-brick alleyway lined with even cuter antique shops, then made another quick right into a patio hung with plastic grapes and bananas, picking her way through a shadowy maze of upended tables to a grillwork gate. Quietly she swung it open and pointed to a man standing in front of a short length of cyclone fence. He was facing the other way, studying his nails. "The rear of the Bali Hai's parking lot," she whispered. "He's on duty until morning."

  Without a word of warning she was off, her sandaled feet making no sound as she moved swiftly across the open stretch of palazzo tiles. It was too late to stop her. All Nick could do was follow. She moved in toward the fence, edging along it, her back flat against it. When she was six feet away the man suddenly turned, looked up.

  She moved with blurred, catlike speed, one foot hooking behind his ankle, the other driving for his knee. He went down flat on his back as if snatched backwards by a coiled spring. As the breath exploded from his lungs her sandaled foot swung with controlled force to the side of his head.

  Nick watched with awe. A perfect coup de savate. He kneeled beside the man, felt his pulse. Irregular but strong. He'd live, but he would be out for at least half an hour.

  Candy had already dodged through the fence-gate and was halfway across the parking lot. Nick followed her, She stopped in front of a metal-surfaced access door at the rear of the Bali Hai, reached into the back pocket of her hip-huggers and pulled out a plastic credit card. Gripping the door handle, she pushed it hard toward the hinges and slid the card in until it caught the curve of the spring-loaded lock. It clicked back with a sharp metallic snap. She opened the door and stepped in, grinning mischievously over her shoulder as she said, "Daddy's money will get you in anywhere."

  They were in the back hallway of the discotheque. Nick could hear the distant thunder of amplified drums and guitars. They tiptoed past an open doorway. He glanced in, saw a gleaming kitchen with a couple of undershirted Chinese sweating at the clipper. The next door they came to was marked "Little Boys." Farther back was a door marked "Little Girls." She pushed this one open and stepped in. Nick hesitated. "Come on!" she hissed. "Don't be an exhaust. It's empty."

  There was a utility door just inside. Out came the credit card. The door clicked open. They entered and he closed the door behind them, letting the lock fall quietly in place. They moved along a narrow passageway. There was only one light and that was over the door behind them, so they were a beautiful target. The passageway made a sharp left, then another. "We're behind the banquettes now," she. whispered. "In the restaurant section."

  The passageway ended abruptly in front of a reinforced steel door. She paused, listening. Out came the credit card once again. This time it took a little longer — about a minute. But the door finally sprang open.

  There were two rooms. The first was small, cramped, with gray walls. A desk was shoved against one wall, a row of filing cabinets against another, and there was a water cooler in the corner, leaving a small circle of black linoleum floorspace free in the center.

  A steady, monotonous hum came from the room beyond. The door was open. Nick sidled cautiously around it. His jaws clenched at what he saw. It was a long, narrow room and one entire wall was a two-way mirror. Through it he saw the interior of the Bali Hai restaurant — only with an interesting difference. It was clearly lit. The people sitting along the banquettes and at their individual tables were as sharply defined as if they were sitting under the neon lighting of a hamburger stand. "Infra-red coating on the glass," she whispered.

  From a dozen-odd slots above the mirror, 16mm. film was inching down in separate strips into bins. The clockwork mechanism of the hidden cameras whirred softly and spools on a dozen different tape recorders were also turning, recording conversations. Nick moved along the room to the banquette where he and Hawk had sat. The camera and tape recorder were switched off, the receiving reels already filled with the complete record of their conversation. On the other side of the mirror, their waiter was clearing away the dishes. Nick threw a switch. The clatter filled the room. Quickly he turned it off.

  "I stumbled on this yesterday afternoon," Candy whispered. "I was in the john when suddenly this man stepped out of the wall! Well, I never... I simply had to find out what was going on."

  They returned to the front room and Nick began trying the desk and file drawers. They were all locked. One central lock, he saw, served them all. It resisted his Lockpicker's Special for almost a minute. Then it gave. He opened the drawers one after the other, quickly and quietly sifting through their contents.

  "You know what I think's going on here?" Candy whispered. "There've been all kinds of robberies in Palm Beach during the last year. The thieves seem to always know exactly what they want, and when people will be away. I think our friend Don Lee has underworld connections and that he sells the information he gathers here to them."

  "He sells to more than the underworld," said Nick. He was picking his way through a file drawer filled with 35mm. film, developers, photographic papers, equipment for making microdots and bundles of newspapers from Hong Kong. "Have you told anyone about this?"

  "Only Daddy."

  Nick nodded — and Daddy told Hawk and Hawk arranged to meet his top Operative here and to talk clearly into the mike. He wanted the two of them on display apparently — and their plans, too. A sudden image of Hawk spilling his martini and picking the olive apart flashed across Nick's mind. He, too, had been searching for the outlet. That settled at least one thing Nick had been wondering about — whether or not to destroy the film and tape of their conversation. Obviously not. Hawk wanted them to have it.

  "What's this?" He'd found a snapshot lying face down on the bottom of the drawer containing the microdot equipment. It showed a man and a woman on a leathe
r, office-style couch. Both were naked and in the final convulsions of the sexual act. The man's head had been cropped out of the picture but the girl's face was clearly visible. She was Chinese, and beautiful, and her eyes were glazed over with a kind of petrified lewdness that Nick found strangely stirring even in picture form.

  "It's her!" gasped Candy. "That's Joy Sun." She stared over his shoulder at the picture, fascinated, unable to tear her eyes away. "So that's how they got her to cooperate with them — blackmail!"

  Nick quickly slipped the snapshot into his back pocket, A sudden draft told him that a door had opened somewhere along the passageway. "Is there another way out?" She shook her head, listening to the sound of approaching footsteps.

  N3 started moving into position behind the door. She beat him to it, though. "It's better if he sees someone," she hissed. "Keep your back to him," He nodded. The name of the game was don't go by first impressions. This girl might look like Vassar '68, but she had the brain and sinews of a cat. A dangerous cat.

  The footsteps paused in front of the door. A key turned in the lock. The door started to open. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him. From the corner of his eye, Nick saw Candy take one long pace and twist to bring her leg swinging in an arc. Her sandaled foot caught the man full in the groin. Nick swung around. It was their waiter. For an instant the man's unconscious body was rigid with paralysis, then it melted slowly to the ground. "Come on," whispered Candy. "Let's not pause for station identification..."

  * * *

  Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Wabasso — the lights rose in the distance and swooped by and fell away behind them with monotonous regularity. Nick kept his foot stamped well into the Lamborghini's floorboard, his thoughts slowly taking shape.

  The man in the pornographic snapshot. The edge of his neck was visible. It was badly scarred. A deep indentation, caused either by a cut or a rope burn. He also had a dragon tattoo on his right bicep. Both should be easy enough to trace. He glanced at the girl sitting beside him. "Any chance that the guy in the photo could be Pat Hammer?"

  He was surprised by her reaction. She actually blushed. "I'd have to see his face," she said stiffly.

  Strange girl. Able to kick a man in the crotch one second and blush the next. And on the job — an even stranger mixture of professionalism and amateurishness. At lockpicking and judo she was an expert. But there was a lighthearted carelessness in her approach to the whole business that could be dangerous — to both of them. The way she'd moved along that passageway with the light behind her — that was asking for it. And when they'd returned to the front of the Bali Hai to pick up the car, she had insisted on mussing her hair and clothing so that it would look like they'd been on the beach in the moonlight. That was overplaying it and therefore equally dangerous.

  "What do you expect to find in Hammer's bungalow?" he asked her. "NASA Security and the FBI have been over it with a fine-tooth comb."

  "I know, but I thought you should have a look at the place for yourself," she said. "Particularly at some of the microdots they found."

  Time to establish who's boss, thought N3. But when he asked what instructions she'd been given, she replied, "To cooperate with you fully. You're top banana."

  A few minutes later, as they sped across the Indian River Bridge outside Melbourne, she added, "You're some kind of very special agent, aren't you? Daddy said your recommendation could make or break anyone assigned to work with you, and..." She broke off abruptly.

  He glanced across at her. "And what?" But the way she was looking at him was answer enough. It was known throughout the combined security forces that when the man known to his colleagues as Killmaster was sent on a job it meant only one thing — that those who had sent him were convinced that death was the most likely solution to the problem at hand.

  "Just how seriously do you take all this?" he asked her brusquely. He hadn't liked that look. N3 had been in the game a long time. He had a nose for the smell of fear. "I mean, is this just another summer lark for you? Like that weekend at East Hampton? Because..."

  She swung toward him, blue eyes flashing angrily. "I happen to be a top reporter for a woman's magazine, and I've been on assignment at Cape Kennedy for the last month doing a profile called 'Dr. Sun and the Moon.'" She paused. "I'll admit that I got NASA clearance faster than most reporters because of Daddy's job in the CIA, but that's the only pull I've had. And if you wonder why they chose me for an agent, look at all the advantages. I was already on the spot, trailing Dr. Sun everywhere with a tape recorder, going through her papers. It was an ideal cover for some real snooping. It would take weeks of red tape to get a real CIA agent as close to her as I am. And there's no time for that. So I was drafted."

  "All the judo and the lockpicking," smiled Nick. "Did Daddy teach you all that?"

  She laughed and was suddenly an impish little girl once again. "No. My boyfriend did. He's a professional killer."

  They took A1A through Canova Beach and past the missile display at Patrick Air Force Base, arriving at Cocoa Beach at ten.

  Long-bladed palms with fraying bases lined the quiet, residential streets. Candy directed him to the Hammer bungalow which was on a street fronting the Banana River near the Merritt Island Causeway.

  They drove past it but didn't stop. "Crawling with cops," muttered Nick. He'd seen them sitting in unmarked cars on alternate sides of each block. "Green uniforms. What are they — NASA? Connelly Aviation?"

  "GKI," she said. "Everyone in Cocoa Beach was pretty nervous and there weren't enough local police to go around."

  "General Kinetics?" said Nick. "Are they in on the Apollo program?"

  "They make a component in the life support system," she replied. "They have a factory in West Palm Beach, another in Texas City. They do a lot of weapon and missile work for the government, so they have their own security force. Alex Simian loaned them out to the Kennedy Space Center. Makes for good public relations, I guess."

  A black sedan with a red blinker on the roof overtook them and one of the uniformed men inside raked them with a long, hard glance. "I think we'd better make tracks," said Nick. The sedan slotted in between them and a car ahead; then it pulled out and they lost it.

  "Take the Causeway over to Merritt," she said. "There's another way to reach the bungalow."

  It was from a boathouse at Georgiana on Route 3. There was a flat-bottom scow there that she had apparently used before. Nick poled it across a narrow neck of the waterway, steering to shore between a five-foot seawall and a row of wooden pilings. After tying up, they climbed the wall and crossed an open stretch of moonlit backyard. The Hammer bungalow was dark, silent. Light from the neighboring house lit up its right side.

  They came up against the shadowed wall on the left and flattened there, waiting. A car with a dome light drove slowly past out in front. Nick stood like a shadow among the other shadows, listening, absorbing. When it was clear he drifted to the screened kitchen doorway, tried the knob, slipped his Lockpicker's Special out and eased the single-action bolt open.

  The raw stink of gas still clung to the interior. His pencil flashlight probed the kitchen. The girl pointed to a door. "Hurricane shelter," she whispered. Her finger moved past it to a hallway. "Front room, where it happened."

  They checked that first. Nothing had been touched. The sofa and floor were still caked with dried blood. The two bedrooms were next. Then down the switchback stairs to the narrow, whitewashed workshop. The thin, strong beam of the flashlight licked around the room, illuminating neat stacks of labeled, open-lidded cartons. Candy checked one. "The stuff's gone," she whispered.

  "Naturally," said Nick dryly. "The FBI wanted it. They run tests, you know."

  "But it was here yesterday. Wait a minute!" she snapped her fingers. "I hid a sample in a drawer in the kitchen. I'll bet they missed it." She led the way upstairs.

  It wasn't a microdot, just a folded sheet of paper, transparent and stinking of gasoline. Nick unfolded it. It was a rough sketch of the Apo
llo's life support system. The ink lines were slightly blurred, and there were some terse technical instructions under it, code-signed Sol, "Sol," she whispered. "Latin for the sun. Dr. Sun..."

  The silence in the bungalow was suddenly thick with tension. Nick started to fold the paper and put it away. An angry voice spoke from the doorway: "Hold it like that."

  Chapter 4

  The man stood in the kitchen doorway, enormous, a looming silhouette against the moonlight behind him. He had a gun in his hand — a little Smith & Wesson Terrier with a two-inch barrel. He was outside the screen door, pointing the gun through it.

  Killmaster's eyes narrowed, watching him. For a moment a shark swirled in their gray depths, then it vanished and he smiled. This man was no threat He was making too many mistakes to be a professional. Nick raised his hands above his head and ambled slowly toward the door. "What's up, Doc?" he asked amiably.

  As he did, his foot suddenly flashed out, slamming into the rear edge of the screen door just below the handle. He hit it with all the weight he had and the man stumbled backwards with a howl of pain, dropping the gun.

  Nick surged after him, scooping it up. He jerked the man into the house by his shirt collar before he could sound an alarm and kicked the door shut behind him. "Who are you?" he rasped. The pencil flashlight flicked on» stabbing into the man's face.

  He was big — at least six-four — and beefy, with gray hair cropped short to the shape of his bullet head and with a sunburned face dusted over with pale freckles.

  "Next door neighbor," said Candy. "Name's Dexter. I checked on him when I was here last night."

  "Yeah, and I spotted you prowlin' around here last night, too," growled Dexter, nursing his wrist. "That's why I was on the lookout tonight."

  "What's your first name?" asked Nick.