The Death Strain (3 page)

"Dr. Carlsbad, please," I said. The china-blue eyes stayed the same, but in this business you learn to catch the little things, and I saw the tiny line of tension tighten in her pretty jaw. I also noted that her fist was clenched white around the doorknob.

"He's not here," she said flatly. I smiled pleasantly and moved into the house in one quick step. I flashed an identity card that she hardly had time to read. "Then I'll wait," I said. "Carter, Nick Carter."

"Dr. Carlsbad won't be back," she said nervously.

"How do you know?" I asked quickly. "Have you heard from him?"

"No, no," she said too quickly. "I don't
think
he'll be back, that's all."

Little Miss Blue-eyes was lying. Either that or she damned well knew what had happened and expected to hear from Carlsbad and didn't want me around when she did. My eyes scanned the room and its worn furniture. I stepped to a doorway and peered into an adjoining room, a bedroom. A woman's traveling bag was open on the bed.

"Going someplace, Miss Kenmore?" I asked. I saw her china-blue eyes flare and seem to grow smaller as she tried an indignant act.

"Get out of this house, whoever you represent," she cried. "You've no right to come in here and question me. I'll call the police."

"Go ahead," I told her, deciding to sail with it. "Your uncle's got no right to steal vital government material."

I saw some of the bluster go out of her eyes, and she moved away. From the side, her breasts turned up sharply in a saucy, piquant line. "I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped, not looking at me. I had to admit that there was absolute conviction in her voice. But then maybe she was merely a good actress, a natural feminine talent. She turned toward me, and the round, china-blue eyes were a mixture of defensive righteousness and worry.

"He hasn't done anything wrong," she said. "My uncle is a sincere, dedicated man. Whatever he does is done only to make the world listen. Somebody's got to make it listen."

"And Dr. Carlsbad is the one, eh?" I offered. She took a deep breath in an obvious effort to compose herself. It may have helped compose her but the way it thrust her breasts out against the blue blouse didn't help my composure. It was damned hard to imagine her in some stuffy laboratory.

She glared at me. "I told you I don't know anything about anything," she said. When she looked at me again her eyes were misty. "I wish you'd tell me what's happened," she said.

Suddenly I had the distinct feeling that she was telling me a half-truth at least, that Carlsbad had not really taken her into his confidence. But she was waiting for someone or something and packing to go some place. I decided not to enlighten her. This way her anxiety would stay high. It might trip her up into revealing something. I merely smiled at her, and she turned away and began pacing up and down the room. I casually folded myself into an overstuffed chair and pretended not to catch her furtive glances out the windows. Good. She was expecting people, not phone calls. Maybe even Carlsbad himself. It would be nice to wrap this one up so quickly, I mused.

"Are you a bacteriologist, too?" I asked casually. "Or can't you stop pacing long enough to answer."

She glared at me and forced herself to sit down on the sofa across from me.

"I'm in the field of sexual research," she said, keeping her voice frosted. My eyebrows shot upward. I could feel them go, and I grinned at her.

"Now that sounds like a fun topic."

Her eyes were as icy as her voice. "I've been doing work on the effects of stress, strain and anxiety on human sexual response."

I turned that one over in my mind as I grinned at her. It was a subject I could tell her a few things about.

"All interview stuff?" I asked.

"Interviews, detailed reports from selected subjects and observation, also of selected subjects." She was trying to sound terribly detached and scientific.

"Oh?" My grin widened. "That's a pretty large field — and an interesting one."

Her eyes flashed and she started to answer, then thought better of it. But the proud lift of her chin as she turned away said it all — she was a scientist with ideals and high purpose, and I was a government agent with a dirty mind.

I had my doubts about the scientific detachment of anybody, no matter how idealistic, who stood around taking notes and «observing» while people made love, but I wasn't about to argue the point She was too pretty to argue with. Besides, I was beginning to think that my presence was keeping her from making any moves. Maybe if I left, she would try to join Carlsbad, in which case I could tail her.

I turned and started for the door. Pausing, I took a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote on it before handing it to her. I wanted to make it look good.

"Don't leave town, and if you see or hear from Dr. Carlsbad, call this number," I said. She took the slip of paper without looking at it.

"I'll be back," I grinned at her, letting my eyes linger on the tips of her breasts. "For one reason or another."

Her china-blue eyes registered nothing, but I saw the faint tightening of her lips and I knew she was watching me through the small hall window as I walked to the car, got in and drove away. I looked back at the house as I turned the corner and again wondered why in hell Carlsbad wanted to live in such a run-down old antique.

I drove around the block and then stopped. Moving quickly and silently, I crossed to the edge of the woods behind the house where Hawk said one of the FBI boys was watching the place. He'd said he was staying in constant touch with them via walkie-talkie; contacting them would be the fastest way for me to get hold of him.

Once at the edge of the woods I moved slowly. I didn't want a bullet in my gut. Chances were the FBI boys would be cautious before shooting, but you couldn't be sure. I crawled on my hands and knees through the underbrush and cast a look at the house. I was directly behind it now.

"N3… AXE," I said in a hoarse whisper, pausing to wait. There was no answer. I moved forward and called out again in a half-whisper. I saw an arm raise from behind a cluster of brush. The arm beckoned to me. I went toward it and a man moved into view, young, even-featured, his eyes on me steady. He held a regulation.38 in one hand. I put Wilhelmina into my holster.

"Nick Carter, AXE," I said. I gave him an identifying code and mentioned Hawk. He relaxed and I halted beside him. He nodded past me and I turned to see another agent, a carbine in his hands, move toward us from behind a tree. He had had me covered too.

"Got any more around?" I grinned at my man.

"Just us two," he smiled. "That's enough." In most cases he would have been right. Nothing, as I was to learn, was enough in this one. "I need to contact Hawk on your electronic smoke-signal," I said. He handed it to me. They were both staying low, and I followed their example. With the walkie-talkie in my hand, I turned abruptly and moved down on my right elbow.

I was lucky. The first shot hit the walkie-talkie where my head had just been, exploding it in a blast of metal. I whirled, turning my face away, but not before I caught some of the metal and felt small rivulets of blood erupt on my face. It seemed as though the whole damn wooded area exploded next in a hail of automatic weapon shots combined with rifle fire.

The agent with the carbine rose up, shuddered and fell dead. I'd landed behind a cluster of shrubs and saw figures — two, four,
six
of them — coming at us through the trees, all carrying weapons. I swore. Damn them, they'd figured the house would be watched and the woods behind it was the most likely spot. So they watched the watchers, surprising the surprisers.

The agent nearest to me was firing, and the figures darted from behind trees, spreading out fan-like. If he fired at one or two, the others stepped out to pour lead in his direction and he had to keep firing and rolling, firing and rolling. It was a technique marked for doom, and the slugs from the automatic weapons were tearing up the ground at his head. I lay silent, Wilhelmina in my hand. I saw the FBI agent getting close to the clear ground at the edge of the wooded area and realized what he was going to try to do.

"You haven't a chance that way," I whispered hoarsely at him. But he was out of earshot. He avoided two more bursts of automatic weapon fire, reached the clear ground and leaped to his feet to run. He took maybe five steps before the hail of bullets caught him and he went down.

I lay still and glanced toward the house. A black Chevy sedan was at the curb in front of the place. It had pulled up as the FBI men were being cut down. Men were entering the house to get the girl while the field men took care of things out back. I caught a glimpse of Rita Kenmore's light blue blouse through the rear window of the house.

Looking back into the woods I saw the line of killers, not more than dark shapes, fanned out and moving carefully, slowly, searching for me. They'd seen me when they opened fire, and knew there had been three men. So far they'd only accounted for two. I had to be in there someplace, and they moved in wide-apart lanes to trap me. No matter how fast I fired, I couldn't get more than half of them before the others would zero in on me. And running for it would only bring the same fate as had caught the FBI agent.

I estimated the distance to the house. One step into the clearing and I was a perfect target. But the distance wasn't that great to the rear windows. Forty-five seconds might do it, running at top speed. It was time to call on Special Effects and I reached a hand into my jacket pocket.

I always made it a practice to have something of Stewart's on me. One never knew when the products of his remarkable Advanced Weapons Lab could come in handy. The AXE Special Effects branch pioneered in esoteric weaponry, its devices always specialized, always effective, frequently lifesaving. For those that used them, that
is.
Others took it differently. Stewart, who ran the place, had the physician's benign attitude toward the AXE agents he served, looking on his products like cold tablets or warm gloves, good to have around. "I always like the boys to keep something of mine on them, just in case," he was fond of saying. I usually carried his stuff only when I intended using them for specific purposes on a mission. But he'd insisted one day not so long ago and now I was thanking him for it.

The line of killers with their automatic weapons was coming closer. I opened the small and very ordinary-looking box of aspirin, clearly marked as such on the metal cover. I took out two of the «aspirin» and couldn't resist a smile. He had told me that if I had to take them for a headache they'd be of some effect and no harm. But now I was going to use them for a headache of a different land.

I squeezed hard with my fingernails on the center of each pill, holding the pressure tight for thirty seconds. I could feel the soft centers give under the pressure. Inside the innocuous little pills, a triggering mechanism was activated by the pressure and a chemical process exploded into action. I waited another fifteen seconds and then tossed the two pills into the air, one to the right and one to the left as the killers drew close.

Pressing myself flat to the ground, I waited, ticking off the seconds in my mind. In precisely ten seconds the pills exploded in a twin cascade of thick, gagging blue-black smoke-like substance. The cloud of choking smoky material mushroomed up and down but not out, forming a kind of curtain.

I leaped to my feet and streaked across the clear space toward the house, safely hidden from view by the thick curtain. The stuff was choking and delaying, but not lethal, a smoke-screen in the form of a thick curtain of a heavy chemical. Once they made their way through it they'd be all right in moments except for some tearing eyes, so I didn't slow any. A rear window loomed ahead. Putting my arms across my face, I dived for it, smashing through the glass with a shattering impact, landing on the floor and somersaulting at once.

I came up on my feet with Wilhelmina in hand, but a smallish man was holding Rita Kenmore in front of him, and I pulled my finger from the trigger a fraction of a second before it would have been too late. He was backing toward the door of the living room, and I saw that I'd landed in a ground floor bedroom. I moved toward him, half-crouched, looking for a chance for a clear shot. He kept the girl well in front of him. I watched for him to come up with a gun and start blazing away from behind her, but he had both hands holding her shoulders.

Rita was wide-eyed, but more apprehensive than frightened and moving back with him without a struggle of any sort. It was clear she didn't fear him, and I swore under my breath. She had probably expected company. She was getting help in disappearing. More help than I realized. I moved after them, stepping into the living room, and the blows came at me from two sides just as I moved past the doorway.

I caught the slight movement on my right and twisted away, but the guy on the left came down with a gun butt. It grazed my temple and I saw purple pinwheels for a moment. As I slid to the floor I yanked at his legs and he went over backwards. The other one leaped on me and I tossed him over my head. I'd managed to keep hold of Wilhelmina and I fired once, at point-blank range. The first man leaped convulsively and collapsed. The second one tried to scramble away and get his own gun up. My shot caught him in the chest, and the big 9mm slug bounced him against the wall.

I'd started to turn when the blow descended. I caught a glimpse of the huge leg coming at me and half-turned away, but the kick caught me in the back of the neck. It would have torn my neck muscles apart had I not been on my knees. I went flying across the room to land on top of the dead man against the wall. Wilhelmina skidded from my hand and under a table and through glazed eyes I saw a huge form, a mountain of a man, the giant Sumo wrestler who had figured in the theft from Cumberland. He was moving toward me, a house with legs, and my own legs were definitely unsteady.