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  FRENCH OIL EQUIPMENT PUMPING
  SALESMAN. REQUEST SUPPORTING
  DOCUMENTS, SPECIFICATION, BOOKS,
  AND ORDER FORMS DELIVERED TO ME AT
  ATHENS HELLENIKON AIRPORT NLT . . .
  Carter hesitated. "What is our ETA Athens, Admiral?"
  It was after four in the morning.
  "We can have you there
  by helicopter at the airport before midnight."
  Carter turned back to the teletype.
  ... 2300 HOURS THIS DATE. ALSO
  REQUESTING 9MM AMMUNITION,
  CLOTHING, AND LUGGAGE. FINALLY,
  REQUESTING MY WEAPONS BE
  IMMEDIATELY SENT WITH OIL EQUIPMENT
  SPECIFICATION BOOKS AND MATERIALS
  VIA DIPLOMATIC POUCH TO FRENCH
  EMBASSY TEHRAN.
  The admiral had been watching the monitor, and he whis-
  tled. Carter looked up.
  "This is all O-category top secret, Admiral, " Carter said,
  a hard edge to his voice. It was the admiral's ship, so Carter
  could hardly have asked him to leave. But he could damned
  well make the man understand the importance of what was
  happening here.
  "Aye-aye," the man said.
  WORKING.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  FRENCH OIL EQUIPMENT PUMPING
  SALESMAN. REQUEST SUPPORTING
  DOCUMENTS, SPECIFICATION, BOOKS,
  AND ORDER FORMS DELIVERED TO ME AT
  ATHENS HELLENIKON AIRPORT NLT . . .
  Carter hesitated. "What is our ETA Athens, Admiral?"
  It was after four in the morning.
  "We can have you there
  by helicopter at the airport before midnight."
  Carter turned back to the teletype.
  ... 2300 HOURS THIS DATE. ALSO
  REQUESTING 9MM AMMUNITION,
  CLOTHING, AND LUGGAGE. FINALLY,
  REQUESTING MY WEAPONS BE
  IMMEDIATELY SENT WITH OIL EQUIPMENT
  SPECIFICATION BOOKS AND MATERIALS
  VIA DIPLOMATIC POUCH TO FRENCH
  EMBASSY TEHRAN.
  The admiral had been watching the monitor, and he whis-
  tled. Carter looked up.
  "This is all O-category top secret, Admiral, " Carter said,
  a hard edge to his voice. It was the admiral's ship, so Carter
  could hardly have asked him to leave. But he could damned
  well make the man understand the importance of what was
  happening here.
  "Aye-aye," the man said.
  WORKING.
  
  
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  114 NICK CARTER Hawk had teletyped the single word to let Carter know that his requests were being arranged and to stand by "How long will this take?" the admiral asked. Carter shrugged. "No way of telling. An hour, maybe
  The admiral got to his feet. "I don't know about you, Commander, but I'm going to get myself a drink. Can I bring you anything?" "Yes, sir," Carter said. "A bottle of cognac and a pack of cigarettes." "I think that can be arranged." "Listen, Admiral, I want to thank you for helping us. We were in a bit of a tight spot with those Libyan jets back there." The admiral chuckled. "We can't let the Nirnitk have all the fun," he said as he left. Carter sat back and reread everything he had sent to Hawk. Zero-hour Strike Force. The words had an ominous ring to them and seemed even more deadly by being in print in a place like this. But what the hell had Waddam heard that made him send his top spy to Muscat, and Abu Dhabi, and Tehran, and finally Riyadh among the other oil capitals? He said he had heard rumors. What son of minors? That an oil field would be attacked? It would explain why Kehl, had visited each capital. But if that were the case, Caner's going to Tehran would accomplish nothing. The attack had been on Saudi Arabia. There were other possibilities though, Carter thought. It was possible that Saudi Arabia was only the first target. Other attacks could come. But by whom? The Zero-hour Strike Force was apparently some sort of commando group. The men that had swooped down on the Saudi desert in Israeli planes and with Israeli equipment ... Strike that
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE 115
  
  
  
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  He sat forward. The aircraft had been reported as Hercules
  C-130s. American-built. Our forces used such equipment.
  We had sold many of the planes to Israel and to other
  countries as well. But there hadn't been hundreds of
  thousands of those planes built and sold; the number was
  relatively small. It would not be outside the realm of possibil-
  ity to find out where every C-130 ever built was located and
  to find out exactly where they were on that morning that the
  bombs were delivered
  They wouldn't be able to find out about all the planes, of
  course, but they'd be able to narrow the field down consider-
  ably.
  He turned back to the teletype and sent out his request,
  outlining exactly what he wanted done and the reasons he
  wanted the information.
  When he was finished, the admiral was back with a bottle
  of Martel cognac, a couple of snifters, and a pack of ciga-
  rettes. Before the officer could get a look at the monitor or the
  prime set on which Carter had been working, Carter jumped
  up and tore out the last message, then burned it in a waste-
  paper can.
  The admiral watched him. "That sensitive?"
  "Yes, sir, " Carter said. He didn't really know why he had
  destroyed that part of the message before the admiral could
  see it, but something deep inside his gut, or way at the back of
  his brain, was beginning to nag at him, was beginning to
  worry him.
  The teletype came alive a half hour later:
  ALL TERMS ARRANGED. KIMITRI
  MOUDHROS WILL MEET YOU AT
  2300 HOURS THIS DATE HELLENIKON
  AIRPORT. THANKS TO MISS ARLEMONT.
  GOOD LUCK TO YOU.
  /signed/ HAWK
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  NICK CARTER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  116
  NICK CARTER
  Carter knew Móudhros; he was the Amalgamated Press
  and Wire Services chief of station for Athens, which in-
  cluded operations in the Balkan countries. He was a good
  man, if a little overemotional. And he looked a lot like Telly
  Savalas. He was a real ladies' man. Carter liked him.
  Carter took the teletype paper from both machines and
  destroyed it, then finished his drink and stubbed out his
  cigarette.
  The admiral got up. "I imagine you must be tired. I'll walk
  back down with you and show you to your quarters. "
  "Thanks, but I think I'll stay up a while longer, " Carter
  said. 'Why don't you just point me in the direction of Miss
  Arlemont's quarters?" He grabbed the bottle of cognac on
  his way out.
  It was just a little before 11:00 P.M. when Carter and Marie
  touched down at the business aviation terminal of Athens's
  Hellenikon Airport in the Dessault helicopter. The Forres-
  tal's maintenance crew had made sure the machine was in
  good working order and had gassed her up.
  Just northwest of Crete, about 150 air miles south of
  Athens, they had lifted off for the uneventful night flight over
  the Mirtoön Sea.
  They had made love slowly, gently, and with much feeling
  in the early morning hours aboard the aircraft carrier, and
  then had fallen asleep in each other's arms.
  Carter had awoken around noon, had gone down to the
  officers' mess, and spent the afternoon on the bridge until
  dinner, when he and Marie were guests at the admiral's table.
  That evening they made sure the helicopter was ready, and
  just before ten they lifted off.
  Marie made arrangements with the terminal manager to
  put the chopper into short-term storage. Someone would
  come for it soon, she said. Then she and Carter were
  ZEROHOUR STRIKE CODGE
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  processed through customs, and outside—she waiting for a
  cab to go into the city and he getting set to climb aboard the
  shuttle over to the main terminal they kissed.
  "Take care of yourself," she said.
  "I'll try."
  "Maybe I should tag along .
  "I'll see you in Monaco, " Carter said firmly. He kissed
  her again, then climbed onto the shuttle. She waved sadly as
  the little bus left the curb.
  Kimi Móudhros was waiting at the newsstand inside the
  main terminal, his back against a support column, his nose
  buried in the Paris edition of the Herald-Tribune.
  "Ah-ha, Marcel," he boomed, tossing the paper in a
  trashcan. "How good to see you again. " He gripped Carter
  in a bear hug, making no attempt to make their meeting
  covert. "I think we are being watched," he whispered in
  English into Carter's ear.
  "It's good to see you too, mon ami," Carter said loudly in
  French.
  Móudhros grabbed Carter by the arm, and together they
  got on an elevator and went up to the parking ramp. They
  stepped into the shadows and waited for a full five minutes.
  "I think I may have picked up a tail from town, " Móud-
  hros said softly.
  "Are you working on anything important?"
  "Not a thing. It is very curious; the moment I get the call
  about you, I acquire a tail."
  "They're probably waiting at the exit," Carter said.
  "Could be,
  " Móudhros said. "Let's get you ready so you
  can be on your way."
  They went back to where the Greek had parked his Volks-
  wagen minibus. Curtains covered the windows. Inside, in the
  back, he opened a battered leather suitcase and showed
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  NICK CARTER
  Carter the clothing that had been picked out for him.
  "This you take with you. You're booked on the overnight
  flight into Tehran which leaves in a little more than an hour.
  I'm to meet the courier with the French diplomatic pouch in
  half an hour just outside the airport with your package. It goes
  out on the same flight. You'll be met in Tehran, and you will
  be given a briefcase. Your papers and your weapons will be
  in it."
  Carter quickly pulled off his Luger and stiletto, and handed
  them over to Moudhros, who placed them in a brown leather
  attaché case that matched the suitcase.
  "This will be the case waiting for you."
  Carter felt naked without his weapons.
  Móudhros handed over Carter's tickets, about a thousand
  dollars' worth of Iranian rials, and then stamped his French
  passport with the proper visa.
  When he was finished, he hugged Carter and kissed him on
  both cheeks. "I wish you very much luck, my friend. I think I
  know what you are after, and I know that it is very dangerous
  now for an American to be anywhere within the Arab world.
  So be especially careful. And may Allah be with you." He
  laughed.
  'Thanks," Carter said. He checked outside, but no one
  was there, so he grabbed the suitcase, shook Móudhros's
  hand, and hopped out of the minibus. He headed directly
  across the parking ramp and entered the terminal from a
  different doorway than the one through which they had left.
  Immediately he went to the Olympic Airways counter,
  where he checked in and was given a boarding pass. Then he
  sat in the lounge, in a corner, until it was time for him to
  board.
  They lost an hour flying east, so they landed in Tehran at
  4:45 in the morning. A gigantic picture of Khoumeni hung
  from the side of the terminal building. It fluttered in the light
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  morning breeze as they taxied to the parking ramp and turned
  inward toward the terminal building as the engines wound
  down.
  Inside, once the baggage had come up, Carter's was
  searched thoroughly by a very efficient customs agent. Even
  the lining of the luggage was searched, and afterward he was
  frisked by hand as well as having to walk through a metal
  detector. He would never have gotten into the country with
  his weapons or his spare passports, he realized.
  'Your name?" the customs agent asked in French.
  "Marcel Mentoir. "
  "Nationality?"
  "French.
  "Reason for coming to Iran?"
  "Business."
  The customs agent looked up from Carter's passport.
  "What sort of business, Monsieur Mentoir?"
  "I represent a firm that manufactures oil pumping equip-
  ment. I am here hoping to make some sales now that you have
  decided to begin pumping oil again. "
  "We have never stopped pumping oil, monsieur. What
  you may have heard were nothing more than ugly rumors, "
  the customs agent snapped. He handed Carter's passport
  back after stamping the date and time in it, then motioned
  Carter on.
  Carter went through the customs barrier and hesitated
  inside the terminal proper, looking for someone carrying the
  attaché case that matched his luggage. The diplomatic
  pouches would be the first items off the plane, and they
  would be on their way into the city by now. Whoever was to
  meet him here with the attach case would have had plenty of
  time. But there were very few people in the terminal at this
  hour, and no one carried anything even remotely similar to
  the attaché case.
  He crossed through the terminal, hesitated again by the
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  main doors, and looked back, but still no one had appeared.
  There could have been a mix-up, he decided. If it came to
  that, he'd stop by the French embassy in a couple of hours
  and pick up his things.
  Yet he felt vulnerable and very much exposed as he
  stepped outside and across the wide sidewalk to the curb
  where a half-dozen taxis and two buses were taking on
  passengers from the Greek airliner that had just landed.
  Again, as he had twice inside, Carter stopped and surveyed
  the people and the luggage they carried. But still there was no
  sign of any Frenchman with a brown leather case that
  matched the single piece Carter carried.
  He held back, lighting a cigarette as he waited for the rest
  of the passengers to come out.
  A half hour later, the buses had gone and only two of the
  cabs remained. The driver in the lead taxi leaned out of his
  window and looked at Carter."'
  "Cheap, I will take you into town if your ride has not
  shown up," he said. He spoke in English.
  "I think so," Carter said, his English heavily accented. He
  came across to the cab and got in, tossing his suitcase beside
  him on the seat.
  "Where do you wish to go, monsieur?" the driver asked,
  switching into very bad French as he put the cab in gear and
  they headed into town.
  Carter looked back as they slid away from the terminal, but
  no one was coming out after them. The other cab the only
  other vehicle in sight-remained where it was.
  "Monsieur?"
  Carter turned back. "The French embassy. "
  "Oui, monsieur."
  Carter sat back and lit a cigarette as they hurried onto the
  main highway past the burned-out remains of what appeared
  to have been a gas station, then turned toward the capital city
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
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  of a dying country. Khoumeni was ill, and there was more
  corruption, more graft, and certainly more political execu-
  tions under this government than there had been under the
  repressive Shah's regime. Over the past eighteen months or
  so, there had been a steady stream of reports about the
  breakdown of order within the country. The war with Iraq
  seemed never-ending, and there were so many splinter
  groups—armed splinter groupsroaming the cities as well
  as the countryside, that much of the day-to-day business of
  the country would soon be grinding to a standstill. Oil exports
  had decreased to a trickle, which of course was blamed on
  faulty equipment left behind by the Americans. At the mo-
  ment, the French were about the only ones left in general
  favor here.
  They passed the broken-down hulk of an army truck turned
  over at the side of the road, and past the sports stadium,
  closed now, a farmers' market was being set up as the sun
  was just appearing over the horizon.
  The French embassy was housed in a two-story
  white
  stucco building that had at one time been the home of some
  wealthy family. Tall iron gates opened into a front courtyard
  that led up to the main entrance of leaded glass doors with
  bars over them. A few trees grew in the courtyard, and the
  overall effect was one of peace and quiet.
  The cabby dropped Carter off at the front gate, and when
  he was gone, Carter approached it. A button was set in the
  wall just below a speaker grille. A brass plaque said in
  French: Ring for Service.
  Carter pushed the button, then looked over his shoulder
  down the street. A black Mercedes sedan had come around
  the corner and parked half a block away. There were two men
  inside, but he couldn't tell much more. The car had Iranian
  plates.
  "Oui," a voice came from the speaker.
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  Carter turned back. "Ici Monsieur Marcel Mentoir."
  "Oui?"
  'There is a package here for me," Carter said.
  "I know of no package for a Monsieur Mentoir," the
  impersonal voice droned.
  "It came this morning on the Olympic flight from Athens.
  In the diplomatic pouch."
  "Diplomatic pouch? From Athens? Non, monsieur. There
  was no diplomatic pouch from Athens."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TEN
  No diplomatic pouch. Móudhros could not be a traitor. It
  was impossible to believe that he could set something up like
  this.
  "Please check with the ambassador, " Carter insisted
  "I am telling you, monsieur, there is no diplomatic pouch
  from Athens, not this morning.
  "Later today?"
  "Non, monsieur. Not until next week at the earliest. "
  How could Kimitri have gotten it so wrong? But Móud-
  hros had said he was being followed. Damn. They had set
  him up!
  "A phone!" Carter shouted into the speaker. "I need to
  use the telephone. We must get through to Athens."
  But there was no answer. Whoever he had been speaking
  with either had shut off the intercom or was refusing to
  respond.
  "Please! It is urgent. … " Carter tried again, when out of
  the corner of his eye he detected a movement.
  He spun around just in time to avoid being hit by a shot
  fired by one of the men from the Mercedes. The bullet
  ricocheted off the concrete wall, inches from his side.
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  NICK CARTER
  The second man in the car was getting out from behind the
  wheel as Carter dodged to the right.
  Two more shots were fired, whining off the pavement
  behind him as he ducked around the corner and raced head-
  long down the narrow street.
  It wouldn't take them very long to get back in their car and
  come after him. He was going to have to find a hiding place,
  and fast.
  At the end of the block he turned left, and the street
  suddenly opened onto a wide, traffic-filled square. Cars,
  trucks, buses, and pedestrians were everywhere. He pulled
  up short. He did not want to be arrested by the Iranian police.
  If they locked him up, he'd end up like a goldfish in a
  bowl—anyone who wanted to take a potshot at him would
  have no problem.
  Head down, a determined look on his face as if he were
  hurrying off to a business meeting, Carter walked around the
  square as the black Mercedes came out from the side street,
  paused a moment, and then turned left behind him.
  He had thought that coming here to Tehran would probably
  prove nothing, but he had been wrong. Something very big
  was going on. They had apparently known that he would be
  contacting Moudhros. And they had arranged the diplomatic
  pouch thing. But how? And even more importantly, who?
  Certainly not the Israelis. The KGB might be able to pull
  something like this off, but Carter had his doubts. No, he
  thought, this had all the earmarks of being an American
  operation. But that was totally impossible. We would never
  have dropped nuclear weapons on Saudi Arabia. There was
  no reason for it.
  A cop was directing traffic, and at the first corner Carter
  held back until there were several other people crossing the
  intersection with him, then he went.
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  A moment later the black Mercedes came through the
  intersection, sped up, and fifty yards ahead, the passenger
  door popped open and a tall, almost cadaverously thin man
  jumped out. His right hand was in his coat pocket.
  The car shot ahead, and the tall man skipped between the
  parked cars, coming toward Carter. The driver would circle
  the block, coming up behind Carter and stopping any escape
  that way. But for a minute or so the two men would be out of
  sight of each other.
  The street was fronted by a long row of shops. At that
  moment Carter stood in front of a small lending library,
  several books arranged in a display in the window. Inside, he
  could see an old man doing something behind a counter.
  He stepped into the doorway and tried the door. It was
  locked, but the old man looked up and shook his head. Too
  early.
  Carter banged on the door. The man with the gun was
  nearly on top of him.
  The old man, exasperated now, came to the door and
  unlocked it. Before he could say anything, Carter pushed past
  him, leaped over the counter, and slipped through a narrow
  opening between two of the book racks.
  The old man shouted something behind him, but he was
  cut off in mid-sentence.
  Carter hurried around a stack of books and listened as the
  front door was closed and locked. Something was being
  dragged across the floor.
  He reached down and slipped off his shoes,
  then
  noiselessly ducked down and moved toward the front of the
  shop.
  The thin man had come over the counter and was coming
  down the same aisle Carter had used. He could see the man's
  head through gaps in the books.
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  NICK CARTER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  NICK CARTER
  Carefully Carter crept in front of a tall bookcase and peered
  around it. The armed man stood ten feet away, his back
  turned to him.
  Without hesitation Carter straightened up, and in a couple
  of long strides was on top of him.
  The man had started to turn around when Carter kicked his
  left leg out from under him, then smashed his fist into the side
  of the man's head as he was going down.
  The pistol clattered to the floor, and Carter quickly
  scooped it up. It was a big .357 magnum with a short barrel to
  which was attached a silencer. A very effective killing
  machine within twenty-five or thirty yards.
  The tall, thin man was dazed and was trying to get to his
  knees. Carter checked to make sure the pistol was loaded,
  then vaulted over the counter to make sure the door was
  locked. It was. He didn't want someone wandering in at this
  moment.
  The elderly shopkeeper lay out of sight in the corner, his
  head turned at an unnatural angle, his eyes open. He was
  dead. The son of a bitch had killed him.
  Carter went back to where the tall man was pulling himself
  up. His eyes were still glazed, although he was coming
  around. Carter was mad. It would have been so easy just to
  pull the trigger and get it over with, but he held himself in
  check by sheer will power. The other man had recovered
  enough to understand that. He backed away.
  "Why did you have to kill the old man?" Carter hissed.
  "You could have just knocked him out. You didn't have to
  do that to him, you bastard. " Carter spoke in English.
  'You don't understand," the tall man said, also in En-
  glish. He had a drawl. Texas? Maybe Arizona or New
  Mexico. Definitely an American.
  Oh, hell, Carter thought, speak anything but English. Even
  Hebrew, but not American English. 'Who are you and what
  the hell is going on?"
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
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  The man said nothing.
  "Why did you try to kill me?"
  "You're messing with something that's none of your con-
  cern."
  'Zero-hour Strike Force?"
  The tall man lunged, but Carter had seen it coming from
  his eyes and easily sidestepped the rush, laying open the
  man's cheek with the lip of the silencer.
  He cocked the big pistol, and when the tall man turned
  back he was looking directly into the barrel. He stopped
  short.
  "I'd just as soon blow your head off here and now for what
  you did to the old man up front. But first we'll talk."
  The tall man's eyes glazed over as he did something with
  his tongue. Too late Carter realized that the man had a
  cyanide capsule or some other poison in a tooth. He grabbed
  for the man just as he collapsed.
  Carter checked his pulse, but there was nothing. He was
  dead. He quickly went through the man's pockets, coming up
  with a couple of hundred dollars in Iranian rials, a penknife, a
  key for the Tehran Sheraton, and his wallet, which con-
  tained, among other things, a U.S. State Department iden-
  tification card.
  Carter stared at it for a very long time. Something seemed
  terribly wrong here. The card was very possibly a forgery. Or
  at least Carter hoped so. It identified the man as Leslie Lowell
  Lassiter II of Beaumont, Texas. His position was listed as
  special assistant to the secretary of state himself.
  It has to be a forgery, Carter thought. He did not want to
  contemplate the consequences if it wasn't.
  He pocketed Lassiter's wallet and the hotel key, then put
  his shoes back on and went to the front of the shop.
  The black Mercedes was just passing, the driver intently
  looking the other way.
  Carter slipped outside, locking the door behind him. He
  128
  
  
  
  
  
  128
  NICK CARTER
  had stuffed the .357 in his belt beneath his jacket and started
  up the block in the direction the Mercedes had gone.
  The sun was fully up now, and with it came the heat.
  Pedestrian and
  vehicular
  traffic was everywhere. A
  cacophony of noise seemed to hover over the square.
  Carter spotted the Mercedes pulled up at the curb in the
  next block. He quickly ducked through traffic to the other
  side of the street and hurried up to a spot across from the car.
  The driver, a short, squat man, leaned against the hood of the
  car watching the pedestrian traffic in the direction Carter had
  come from. He was clearly nervous.
  There was a break in the traffic, and Carter dashed across
  the street. He put his right hand inside his coat, his fingers
  curling around the .357, and with his left he carefully opened
  the rear door and quickly got in.
  The short man, feeling the motion of the car, spun around
  and looked inside at the same moment Carter pulled out the
  magnum and pointed it at his head.
  "You'd better get in and get us out of here before I kill
  you," Carter said.
  The man's eyes were wide. He opened the door on the
  passenger side, got in, and slid over behind the wheel.
  'Where's Les?"
  "Dead," Carter said, and the man started to turn around
  ""And I'll kill you as well unless you do exactly as I tell you!"
  The man stopped.
  "The Sheraton," Carter said. "And so help me God, if
  you give me any trouble, any trouble whatsoever, you won't
  have to use your cyanide tablet. "
  The man started the car, and when there was a break in
  traffic, he pulled smoothly away from the curb and headed
  across town.
  It took nearly a half hour to make it to the Sheraton, a tall
  edifice of glass and steel that had, from what Carter remem-
  
  
  
  
  
  
  129
  bered, seen better days. Carter directed the little man to park
  in the rear parking lot very close to one of the exits. After
  relieving the other man of his .38 Police Special, which he
  shoved under the seat, he pocketed the magnum, and they got
  out of the car.
  'What are we doing here?" the little man asked.
  "We're going up to eight-oh-seven," Carter said
  The little man stepped back a pace. "You don't know what
  the hell you're doing.
  "I intend on finding out," Carter said, and he motioned
  for the man to head up to the hotel.
  "No."
  "T'll kill you.
  "For what? What have I done to you?"
  "I'm talking about nuclear war.
  "What?"
  'Zero-hour Strike Force."
  The little man's eyes went wide, and he paled. "Jesus,"
  he said softly. "Oh, Jesus Christ."
  Carter stepped forward and was about to demand an expla-
  nation, when the little man pulled out a small .32-caliber
  automatic and fired twice, the first shot hitting Carter in the
  shoulder, driving him backward, and the second just grazing
  his side.
  The little man turned, dropped the gun and the car keys,
  and scurried off across the parking lot. Carter dropped down
  into the classic shooter's stance, following the retreating
  figure, the .357 cocked, his finger on the trigger. . . but he
  could not shoot the man. He was still an American. Some-
  thing very bad was happening here-had happened, was
  about to happen —and yet he could not pull the trigger.
  He lowered the pistol and straightened up as the little man
  rounded the corner of the hotel and disappeared from sight.
  A woman and her two children were looking his way from
  
  
  
  
  
  
  130
  NICK CARTER
  the opposite side of the parking lot, and a man in the back
  doorway of the hotel hurriedly shut the door when Carter
  turned his way.
  He leaped forward, scooped up the car keys and the other
  weapon, then hurried back to the Mercedes. He got behind
  the wheel, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot
  and headed away from the hotel, a wave of dizziness and
  nausea coming over him from his wounds.
  It wouldn't be very long before the Iranian police were
  called about the shooting. Someone had almost certainly seen
  him getting into the Mercedes and drive off, which meant the
  city would no longer be safe for him.
  He turned down a quiet back street, getting away from the
  heavier downtown traffic, and pulled up.
  behind a
  tumbledown building.
  The wound in his side hurt like hell, but it was only a graze
  and would cause him no trouble. But his shoulder was worse.
  The bullet had evidently lodged just below the collarbone.
  There wasn't much blood, and it didn't hurt, but his entire
  side was numb. Later, he knew, the pain would come.
  He stuffed his handkerchief over the wound and rebut-
  toned his shirt. Then he opened the glove compartment and
  looked inside. He found the car maintenance books as well as
  a small package that contained several thousand rials, a map
  of Tehran, and a road map of the entire country. A spot in
  Khuzistan, one of the southern provinces bordering on the
  Persian Gulf, was circled. Directly to the west was Iraq, but
  to the southwest was Kuwait, and beyond that, Saudi Arabia.
  Carter stared at the circled spot on the map for several long
  seconds. Access to the Gulf. And certainly easy air access to
  Saudi Arabia.
  He looked up. It made him sick at heart to think that his
  own government was involved with this thing. But more and
  more it looked as if that were the case.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  131
  
  
  
  
  
  131
  But if that were so, why had he been sent out here? That did
  not make a lot of sense.
  He looked at the map again. It was more than four hundred
  miles overland to Bandar Ma'Shur, the tiny village circled.
  The powerful automobile would make it if he could find the
  diesel fuel, but he did not know if he could stand up to it.
  He spread the map out on the seat next to him, replaced the
  package with the money in the glove compartment, and
  pulled out of the narrow street onto the busier boulevard.
  Within twenty minutes he was headed southwest out of the
  city on a wide, well-maintained paved highway.
  It was still early morning, and the full heat of the day had
  not built up. There was quite a bit of traffic on the highway
  for the first few miles out of Tehran, but gradually it thinned
  out, so that about fifty miles south, there was only an occa-
  sional truck.
  The big car did well-—at times he was doing eighty on the
  straight, empty stretches --so that by nine o'clock, when the
  pain from his shoulder wound began coming at him in waves,
  he was more than a hundred miles south of Tehran.
  The country here was mountainous, and up from the valley
  the air was cool, although the driving was more difficult on
  the winding roads.
  He skirted the city of Kashan. With its population of fifty
  or sixty thousand people, it maintained a vigorous police
  force. If the search had expanded from Tehran, no major city
  would be safe for him.
  The road kept climbing, some of the mountain peaks
  around him towering to twelve and thirteen thousand feet.
  At around ten o'clock the road dipped down into a small
  mountain town nestled in a narrow valley. Carter stopped in
  the main square across from a small inn and cranked down the
  window. A young boy of twelve or thirteen stood near the inn
  staring at him, his eyes very wide and dark.
  132
  
  
  
  
  132
  NICK CARTER
  Carter motioned for him to come over, and he did, eagerly,
  almost like a puppy. There were three other cars and two
  trucks parked around the main street, but there were only a
  few people. A couple of old men, seated at the inn, looked up
  and were watching.
  "Do you understand French?" Carter asked the boy, but
  there was no response. He tried English and then German,
  but the boy just stared at him. Smiling.
  "Fuel, " Carter said. "Petrol."
  Still the boy did not understand.
  Moving carefully now, because he was in so much pain,
  Carter eased out of the car. The boy stepped back.
  "Diesel fuel," Carter said, stumbling back to the gas
  filler. He opened the little door and pointed. "Fuel."
  The boy stopped smiling, nodded, then turned and ran off
  down the main street. Carter watched him for a moment, then
  looked over at the inn. Once he had the fuel situation taken
  care of, he would risk going into the restaurant for something
  to eat. But if there was going to be any trouble here, he
  wanted the car fueled and ready to go first.
  He went back to the front of the car and sat down in the
  driver's seat, but he left the door open. He lit a cigarette, and
  as he smoked he tried to make some sense of what he had
  learned so far. But it was frustrating. Everything pointed to
  American government involvement in the nuclear strike, yet
  he could not bring himself to accept it.
  It was nearly fifteen minutes later when the young boy
  came around the corner. With him were three men, two of
  them each carrying a pair of jerry cans, and the third, an older
  man, carrying what appeared to be a black doctor's bag
  Carter got painfully out of the car as they approached.
  'The boy says he thinks you are French,
  " the doctor said
  in French.
  "Oui," Carter said. "Is that diesel fuel?"
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  133
  
  
  
  
  133
  «Yes, it is, and it has been well filtered, I assure you, " the
  doctor said. He said something to the other two men, who
  went to the back of the car and busied themselves filling the
  tank.
  "You are a doctor?"
  "Yes, 1 am, and I can see you are hurt. The boy is very
  worried."
  "It is a gunshot wound
  .. two of them, actually, "
  Carter said. "I was set on out on the highway about fifty
  miles from here."
  "Barbarians, all of them," the doctor said. He led Carter
  into the inn, where the old man who ran the place had already
  set out a couple of bowls of very hot water and a bottle of
  rough red wine.
  "How did he know?" Carter asked.
  "News travels very fast in this town, monsieur. We have a
  telephone. I called ahead. "
  Carter took off his jacket, then laid the .357 on the table.
  No one even appeared to notice it. He peeled off his shirt, and
  the innkeeper took it away from him and disappeared with it
  into the back.
  "You are in pain?" the doctor asked, gently probing the
  shoulder wound
  "Considerable pain," Carter said
  "I will give you something to make you sleep for a few
  hours"
  "Just a local anesthetic, " Carter interrupted
  The doctor looked into his eyes, then nodded. "As you
  wish. "
  Several people had wandered in from the square, and they
  sat around respectfully, drinking tea and watching wide-eyed
  as their local doctor repaired the wounded Frenchman who
  drove the very large German car.
  It took nearly a half hour for the local to take effect, and
  134
  
  
  
  
  134
  NICK CARTER
  even then, the doctor warned in his soft French, there would
  be a lot of deep pain. The bullet, he found by probing, was
  lodged just beneath the collarbone.
  Carter took some of the wine, then nodded up at the doctor.
  "I have a very important appointment soon. I must not be
  late."
  The doctor seemed amused. "I don't think you will be in
  any shape to travel when I have finished."
  "I must," Carter said, gripping the doctor's arm with his
  good hand.
  The doctor said nothing as his disengaged himself and
  began the operation.
  At first there was no pain, only some dull probing and
  cutting sensations, but then it was as if a dentist had just
  drilled deeply into a raw nerve without Novocain; pain
  thrummed through his body making him feel like a plucked
  guitar string. Sweat instantly popped out over his body, and
  the room began to spin lazily around overhead.
  The doctor was speaking to a woman who was doing
  something to Carter's chest with large bundles of gauze. But
  his voice and her ministrations seemed to be happening far
  away and in a different time.
  At one point the doctor said something and held a dark
  object up in front of Carter's nose. It was held in tweezers and
  was easy to see, yet it took him a long time to realize it was
  the bullet from his shoulder.
  Time seemed to accelerate then, until the room began to
  come into focus from where he was lying on a long table, a
  pillow beneath his head. It was dark outside.
  He sat up, the room spinning for a moment, but then his
  head began to clear. He swung his feet over the edge of the
  table and stepped down.
  It was well after ten at night according to his watch. He had
  been out the entire day.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  He nodded in cooling foot
  135
  
  
  
  
  
  135
  He padded in stocking feet across the inn to the front
  windows and looked outside. The Mercedes was parked in
  front, its paint and chrome shining. While he had been out,
  the townspeople had evidently washed and shined the car.
  He looked down at his shoulder and side, which were well
  bandaged. There was very little pain in comparison to what
  he had felt when he had come here. The ache was centered
  deep in his shoulder, but there was no longer the dull sickness
  from the piece of lead in his shoulder.
  Laid out neatly on the chair were his jacket and shirt, both
  cleaned and mended, and the .357 magnum, also freshly
  cleaned and oiled.
  He checked the weapon. It was still loaded.
  Quickly he got dressed, stuffing the magnum in his belt. At
  the door he hesitated a moment, then came back to the
  counter and pulled out nearly a thousand dollars in rials,
  which he laid out in a neat stack.
  The doctor or one of the townsmen would know best how
  the money should be divided.
  Outside, he looked around, but the town seemed deserted.
  There was a full moon casting its pale glow over everything.
  There were no other lights. There was no one.
  He got into the car, turned the key, and started the engine.
  The fuel gauge climbed past the full mark. Clean, well-
  filtered fuel, the doctor had promised.
  He pulled away from the curb and headed out of town. A
  block or so away from the inn, he was certain he had caught a
  glimpse of a small boy's face in the window of one of the
  houses, but then he was past and he wasn't sure he had seen
  anything at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ELEVEN
  Carter was a dozen miles south of the small town when he
  discovered that the villagers had packed him some food and a
  couple of bottles of mineral water. The bundle was in the
  back seat, and he noticed it in the rearview mirror as he
  adjusted it.
  He drove rapidly, feeling so much better now that the
  bullet had been removed. At times, in straight stretches of the
  road, he exceeded a hundred miles per hour.
  Sometime in the early morning hours he crossed the Zag-
  ros Mountains, coming down toward the vast, fertile valley
  that, to the west, in Iraq, was fed by the Tigris and Euphrates
  rivers.
  He made the last 250 miles in something under four hours,
  coming to the Persian Gulf at around 2:00 A.M., the town of
  Bandar Ma'Shur a couple of miles to the east, a very few
  lights reflecting out into the water.
  At the side of the road he drank some of the water and
  flipped on the overhead light so that he could read the map.
  A small area to the east of Bandar Ma'Shur had been
  circled. Looking closer, Carter could see that what appeared
  to be a road had been penciled in on the map
  He looked up, then back at the map as he oriented himself.
  137
  138
  
  
  
  
  138
  NICK CARTER
  The road would lead off this highway, perhaps ten miles
  farther to the east. It ran north from there at least fifteen miles
  inland, maybe as much as twenty. It was hard to tell from the
  map. But nothing else had been penciled in. The road inland
  ran to nothing. It was as if a stray pencil mark had been made
  on the map. But Carter was certain it wasn't a stray mark.
  Whatever had brought Lassiter and the short, squat man to
  Iran was there at the end of the pencil mark.
  Zero-hour Strike Force?
  He put the car in gear, made a U-turn on the highway, and
  headed east, driving slowly, watching for the turnoff as he
  neared the ten-mile mark.
  There were a lot of oil rigs dotting the horizon inland, and
  not too far to the west was the major port city of Abadan. But
  here on the highway, with the Gulf to one side and the desert
  to the other, Carter could think for the time that he was utterly
  alone.
  If it proved that his own government were involved with
  the nuclear strike on the Saudi oil fields, he wondered what
  his position would become. It would be impossible for him to
  continue. He was not one to shout "No nukes. " If it came to
  war-necessary war for defense he'd be the first in line to
  push the button. But a senseless nuclear strike against a
  friendly nation? The strike had served no other purpose than
  to embroil an already tense region of the world into a spiral of
  diplomatic threats and counterthreats and war preparations.
  A little more than eleven miles from Bandar Ma'Shur he
  came to a turnoff prominently marked by a large billboard lit
  by bright lights. BANDAR MA'SHUR OIL RESEARCH
  COMPANY REGION SEVEN STATION. OIL RE.
  SEARCH TODAY FOR AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT TO-
  MORROW.
  He turned off the main road, then doused his lights as he
  headed out into the desert. What exactly was it he was
  expecting to find?
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  Banned hot le
  139
  
  
  
  
  
  139
  (151 of 212)
  一十
  110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  139
  He clamped that thought off in his mind as he continued
  into the desert.
  Soon what few lights he had seen to the west atop the oil
  pumping stations disappeared from view, and finally there
  was only the desert and the soft green glow of the car's dash
  lights.
  As he drove, he thought for a while about Joy Makepiece
  back in Riyadh. He hoped that everything had turned out all
  right for the American peace delegation, but he had his
  doubts. With men like Lassiter and the short one running
  around so openly, it was a wonder this entire business hadn't
  been broken wide open by now. Had the Saudis gotten wind
  that the nuclear strike had possibly been an American action?
  God only knew what would happen if that ever came out. He
  shuddered even thinking about it.
  There would be war. Of that he was certain.
  The Region Seven oil research station turned out to consist
  of a number of huge corrugated metal Quonset huts dotted
  across a wide, flat section of the desert. There was a tall
  wire-mesh fence surrounding the entire area, but the gates
  were open, and there were no lights anywhere.
  Carter slowly drove through the gates and along what had
  apparently served as the installation's main road. It was
  obvious that the dirt road had carried some very heavy traffic.
  In front of one of the larger buildings he could even pick out
  the marks of a half-track vehicle. Very likely more than one
  of them.
  He pulled up and parked in front of one of the smaller huts,
  and got out of the car. He walked up the road for about fifty
  yards, then stopped and held his breath, listening. But there
  was nothing. Absolutely no sound. This far from the car there
  wasn't even the sound of the engine cooling. He turned
  siowly in a full circle. Only the buildings were there, silent
  and mute, except to the northwest where there was a curious
  flat openness.
  140
  
  
  
  
  
  140
  NICK CARTER
  He walked back to where the car was parked, but instead of
  getting into it, he went over to the hut and tried the door. It
  was open. Inside, he tried the light switch, but there was no
  electricity, which is what he suspected
  The building was empty. There was nothing here. No
  desks, no file cabinets, nothing. Not even a scrap of paper
  littering the floor.
  Whoever had cleaned the place out had done an efficient
  job of it. Yet the building did not have the smell or the look of
  a place that had been long deserted. It had been occupied
  recently. There was that faint smell—or rather the combina-
  tion of faint odors--that bespoke human habitation recently:
  food, office equipment, cleaning fluid, starch.
  He turned and went back outside. He crossed the road and
  walked the hundred feet or so to the larger building, letting
  himself in through the wide service doors —wide enough, he
  supposed, to admit a large truck or tank.
  This building was just as empty as the other, except at the
  far end he found a long, wide workbench, and on the floor, in
  four distinct areas, there were oil and grease stains. Some-
  thing had been parked in here. Some four machines had been
  stored in here, and they had leaked their oil and had sweat
  grease on hot days.
  Here the odors of recent occupation were much stronger;
  here Carter could smell the oil and the grease, and he could
  smell diesel fuel and even the faint odor of exhaust.
  How long ago had it been since they had been here? he
  wondered. Certainly not months. Perhaps only days.
  He returned to the car, drove down the road a hundred
  yards, jumped out, and hurried into one of the other build-
  ings.
  This one apparently had been a barracks. He could still see
  the marks the feet of the bunks had made on the floor, and
  spaced at regular intervals between each of the windows on
  T »
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  hoth cidac of the buildina man liul
  141
  
  
  
  
  141
  both sides of the building were little alcoves with shelves for
  equipment and short bars on which to hang clothing.
  Back outside, he jumped in the car again and quickly made
  a wide circuit of the camp, stopping in front of the various
  buildings and going in. But there was nothing. The camp had
  been cleaned out with the efficiency of a mother cleaning out
  a son's room after he had left for school.
  What was this place? he asked himself back at the car. As
  before, he held his breath and listened to the eerie silence.
  Except this time he heard a faraway, deep-throated roar,
  which confused him for just a moment until he looked up. Far
  to the southwest probably over the Gulf—were two tiny red
  dots, winking slowly on and off, moving toward the east. He
  connected the sound and the moving dots; they were a couple
  of high-flying jets. Probably military fighters on routine
  patrol over the Gulf. Possibly they were Iranian, perhaps
  even Iraqi. It was even possible, he had to concede, that they
  were American, although he didn't know if any of our car-
  riers were based in the Gulf.
  He slipped in behind the wheel and, with the window
  down, carefully drove out of the camp toward the open area
  to the northwest.
  Beyond the last Quonset hut Carter suddenly bumped up
  onto a long, very wide slab of concrete.
  The paved area had to be more than a hundred feet wide
  and possibly a mile long. Painted lines ran the length of the
  slab, right down the middle. A runway.
  He lined the Mercedes up with the center marker and
  flipped on the headlights.
  There were skid marks, long and black on the light con-
  crete. Planes had taken off and landed here. Big planes.
  C-130s?
  In the distance, near the far end of the runway, Carter
  could make out the darker outline of a long, low building. He
  142
  
  
  
  
  
  142
  NICK CARTER
  put the car in gear and headed that way.
  There was nothing here. At least nothing that he could use
  for proof or even a lead. This had obviously been some sort of
  a hastily built base-hasty, that is, except for the runway.
  that had been used for a time and had been recently aban-
  doned.
  The long, low building turned out to be a makeshift hangar
  with corrugated metal walls against the prevailing winds but
  only camouflage netting over the top. The netting was draped
  like a series of huge circus tents: four huge circus tents.
  Carter drove off the runway, down a wide taxiway, and
  into the crude shelter. Slowly he made his way, by car, from
  one section of the flapping structure to the next, coming at
  last into the rear section where in a far corner was a pile of
  debris.
  He headed directly for it, the headlights of the car shining
  on the pile of newspapers, magazines, hunks of metal, wood,
  and other junk.
  A few feet away he stopped the car, and leaving the engine
  running and the lights on, he got out and approached the pile.
  The first newspaper page he pulled out of the heap was
  from the English-language Paris edition of the Herald-
  Tribune, but the second was from a newspaper printed in Tel
  Aviv. In Hebrew.
  He began digging through the pile in earnest, and all he
  found was junk: pieces of metal, twisted and bent beyond
  recognition; sections of the camouflage netting; bits of nylon
  rope, wire, and twine; and ordinary dirt and cement dust.
  But then he found the automatic weapon clip.
  At first he did not know what he had found. He felt the long
  smooth object beneath a piece of cardboard. But when he
  brought it out into the bright illumination of the headlights he
  recognized it immediately.
  Stamped on the lower left-hand corner of the case was the
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  143
  
  
  
  
  
  143 155 of 212)
  = +
  110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  143
  word Uzi. It was an empty clip for the Israeli-built Uzi
  submachine gun.
  For a long time he stood there looking at the clip. Uzi. The
  planes that had apparently delivered the nuclear weapons to
  the Saudi oil field had been marked with the Star of David.
  There was a connection, albeit tenuous, between that event
  and what he had found here. But it was a connection
  nevertheless.
  He turned and looked back down the long, angled column
  of shelters. The concrete floor was thick, as thick as the
  runway. These four shelter areas could easily have held
  Hercules aircraft.
  He went back to the car and got in, his mind seething. He
  tossed the Uzi ammunition clip on the passenger seat, swung
  the car around in a wide looping arc, and slowly headed
  toward the front exit. Only this time he kept his eyes search-
  ing the concrete floor.
  Off to the right side of the front building he found what he
  was afraid he might.
  He stopped the car and got out again, approaching the far
  edge of the concrete floor. In several spots on the floor there
  were faint traces of blue and white paint.
  He stared at the paint mists; overspraying. Blue for the Star
  of David, white for the trim.
  It was clear. But if they had painted the Star of David on
  the aircraft here, what markings had the planes come in with?
  He took out his handkerchief and laid it on the floor next to
  a particularly thick section of paint mist. Then he pulled out
  his penknife and scraped a bit of the blue and some of the
  white off the floor, depositing the tiny chips in his handker-
  chief, which he folded and put in his pocket.
  He went back to the car, got in, and drove out onto the
  runway and headed back to the camp.
  Everything pointed to the likelihood that American C-130
  144
  
  
  
  
  144
  NICK CARTER
  Hercules aircraft had somehow been brought here to this base
  in Iran. That in itself was an amazing accomplishment con-
  sidering the strained relationship between the two countries.
  Then the Israeli markings had been painted on the airplanes,
  which took off from the long airstrip and delivered the bombs
  to the Saudi oil fields.
  Carter had to admit that it was all circumstantial evidence.
  Very strong evidence, but circumstantial nevertheless.
  At the end of the runway, he turned down the dirt road that
  led through the camp and headed toward the front gate. He
  glanced over at the Uzi ammunition clip and shook his head.
  He lit a cigarette.
  Somehow he was going to have to get down to Al Kuwait.
  From there he could take a commercial flight back to ...
  He stopped cold. Back to where? Washington, where he'd
  present the ammunition clip and the paint chips to Hawk?
  Afterward would he tender his resignation?
  "So what do you make of this, Nick?" Hawk would ask.
  "Sir?"
  "You've brought me back paint chips and a clip that I
  could have bought within five minutes of this office. So
  what? What have you found? That's what I'm asking you!"
  What the hell had he found? Nothing.
  The doorways and windows of the Quonset huts he passed
  seemed like malevolent eyes, accusing and staring. There
  was nothing here. Or at least nothing conclusive.
  As far as he could see, the evidence pointed two ways. The
  first, and most obvious to him, was toward his own country.
  Toward his own government. But the other was toward
  Israel. The surface evidence was toward Jerusalem.
  He slowed down at the main gate and looked in the rear-
  view mirror at the silhouettes of the dark buildings. What had
  happened here? Certainly this had been more than an oil
  research station.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  145
  
  
  
  
  
  145
  It was well after 4:00 A.m. by the time Carter made it back
  to the main road. Al Kuwait was about 150 miles to the
  southwest. Over the water it was a straight shot, but by land it
  was an impossible trip. A twenty-five-mile-wide strip of Iraq
  lay between Iran and the relative safety of Kuwait.
  By land or by sea? By sea it would probably be safe. But
  supposing he could find a boat, even a fast boat that might do
  twelve or fifteen knots —it would still take him eight to ten
  hours for the trip. Eight to ten precious hours. Overland there
  would be trouble: first from the Iranians; then from the Iraqis;
  and finally from the Kuwaitis, who did not take kindly to
  people crashing their borders. But it would be a very fast trip.
  At the inside he might make it in as little as a couple of hours.
  At the outside, with luck, three or four hours.
  He looked at his watch; it was 4:30. Unless he was
  detained-or worse-he could conceivably make it to Al
  Kuwait by 6:30 or 7:30. At the latest, he would be in plenty of
  time for the early morning flights to.
  Where? he had to ask himself again. Washington, D.C., or
  ...Tel Aviv?
  He knew the answer. He would not return from the Middle
  East until he had the answer or until he knew that he could
  not, under any circumstances, find the answer here.
  There was nothing out on the highway. Absolutely nothing
  as he turned west, skirting Bandar Ma'Shur, then speeding
  up, the big Mercedes flying down the highway.
  At times, driving, Carter felt as if he were running away
  from a demon back at the base. But the faster and more
  recklessly he drove, mindless now of his wounds, which
  were once again beginning to bother him, the closer the
  demon seemed to come.
  He had spent most of his adult life in service to his country.
  146
  
  
  
  
  
  146
  NICK CARTER
  And now he was faced with a huge personal crisis. What
  would he do if it proved that the U.S. had attacked Saudi
  Arabia with nuclear weapons? What in God's name would he
  do?
  He burst through the town of Shahdegan, thirty-five miles
  west of Bandar Ma'Shur, doing just under ninety. There were
  a few buildings on the outskirts of the town of six thousand,
  then a concentration of buildings and a couple of trucks, all
  moving past in a blur, then the heart of the oil town, and once
  again he was out on the open highway, a flashing blue light
  dropping well back behind him.
  On both sides of the highway the land had flattened out,
  and a thick, lush, junglelike forest grew toward the interior.
  The Biblical land of Eden.
  He stopped about twenty-five miles southwest of Shahde-
  gan and switched on the interior light so he could read the
  map.
  Abadan was a few miles to the west and the north now, and
  the border with Iraq was just a few miles almost due west. At
  this point he would have to cross the border, then race
  through twenty-five miles of the countryside to the border
  town of Umm Qasr. From there it was less than two miles to
  the Kuwaiti frontier and then the long run to Al Kuwait itself.
  He took out the .357 and checked to make sure it was ready
  to fire. He cranked up the passenger side window and
  cranked down his window, then slipped the car in gear and
  accelerated down the highway toward whatever....
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TWELVE
  The highway dipped down and down closer to the Persian
  Gulf as it approached the delta bridge over the combined
  Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which was the border between
  Iran and Iraq.
  There had not been much fighting here; most of it was
  confined to the desert areas of the far north. But there were
  military emplacements on either side of the road, far off the
  highway, the antiaircraft guns and rocket platforms silhouet-
  ted in the early morning darkness.
  Carter was certain that by now his movement toward the
  border had been noted. It wouldn't be long before he'd be
  challenged and then, ultimately, fired upon. He only hoped
  that his sudden intrusion, the fact that he was driving a
  civilian vehicle, and his high rate of speed would serve to
  shock the Iranian forces into inaction long enough for him to
  cross the border into Iraq. What the Iraqis might do was an
  entirely different story.
  Carter happened to look up and to the west in time to see
  several intense flashes of light. For a long time afterward
  there was nothing, but then the dull explosions came in on the
  night air.
  147
  148
  
  
  
  
  148
  NICK CARTER
  They were Iranian or Iraqi interceptor-fighters battling in
  the night sky.
  He heard the distant roar of the jets, and then there was
  another series of intensely bright flashes, these much closer,
  the thunder coming much faster.
  A pair of high-performance military jets screamed over-
  head from east to west-Iranian releasing four rocket
  trails. They were air-to-air missiles, Carter realized. At that
  moment a bright flash came just above him, followed almost
  simultaneously by the roar of a tremendous explosion that lit
  up the countryside and rolled across the hills. Debris began
  falling out of the sky to the northwest like shooting stars
  Another flash lit up the sky far to the west as another of the
  Iranian air-to-air rockets found its mark.
  Suddenly Carter saw the bridge approach down a long
  stretch of highway. Sandbags lined both sides of the road.
  and at one point he was able to pick out four soldiers manning
  a mobile radar installation on the back of a large truck.
  But then he flashed by them doing in excess of a hundred
  miles per hour.
  He had to concentrate on his driving. The road at this poin
  was not very good. Debris littered the surface, and once he
  had to swerve to avoid a very large bomb crater.
  They began shooting at him from the Iranian side when he
  was less than a mile from the bridge. A large steel barrier was
  lowered across the road, and as he pressed harder on the
  accelerator, heavy-caliber bullets penetrated the body of the
  car. He looked on both sides of the road for a way around the
  obstacle, but there was nothing. To the inland side were
  sandbags piled very high, and on the seaward side was :
  ten-foot drop to the Gulf.
  He had started to brake when the barrier slowly began tr
  rise. For just a moment he could not believe what he wai
  seeing. The steel border-crossing barrier was actually com
  ing up.
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  149
  (161 of 212)
  一十 110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  149
  He could see the Iraqi soldiers at the border post by the
  flashes of their automatic weapons. At first he thought they
  were shooting at him, but when he was just about on top of
  the post he understood that they were answering the fire from
  the Iranians that had been directed at Carter.
  But then he was on the bridge, accelerating again, well
  past the hundred-sixty-kilometers-per-hour mark
  on the
  speedometer, up to the center span, a lurch when he hit the
  top, then down the other side, the road curving ever so gently
  to the south as it looped through farm fields intermingled with
  oil rigs.
  He looked in his rearview mirror. There were a lot of
  flashes from behind, from the other side of the bridge. There
  would be fighting probably until dawn. Maybe longer. But
  by some unspoken, unwritten agreement, the bridge itself
  had never been seriously damaged. Both sides realized that
  the war would be over sooner or later. And when it was,
  they'd need the bridge. The oil companies would need the
  bridge. No one was willing to knock it down.
  There were no towns or villages between the border with
  Iran and the border with Kuwait, except for Umm Qasr,
  which was right on the narrow bay that separated Iraq from
  her neighbor to the south. He made very good time, crossing
  the twenty-five-mile stretch of land in just over fifteen min-
  utes.
  He slowed down as he approached the town, passed
  through it, and on the other side slipped the magnum beneath
  his seat and stopped at the border crossing.
  The Iragi border guard came out of his post, yawning.
  There was no trouble here. Kuwait and Iraq were on friendly
  terms. But the man's eyes widened when he saw the bullet
  holes in the Mercedes. The Kuwaiti border guard had come
  out of his post, and he ducked beneath the barrier pole and
  walked across.
  Carter got out of the car shaking his head. He pulled out his
  150
  
  
  
  
  
  150
  NICK CARTER
  French passport and handed it to the Iraqi. "Marcel Men-
  toir, " he said.
  "What has happened here, Monsieur Mentoir?" the
  Kuwaiti asked.
  "I was in Abadan, and those crazy bastard Iranians tried to
  kill me."
  The Iraqi guard stiffened at the mention of the Iranian city
  'What were you doing there, monsieur, in an enemy coun-
  try?" He had his hand on the butt of his pistol.
  "Trying to sell those fools oil pumping equipment."
  ""And did you?"
  Again Carter shook his head and shrugged. "I. .."He
  hesitated, appealing to the two men with his gestures.
  "It was
  an affair of the heart, I am afraid. "
  ・The heart.・・
  " the Iraqi started, not understanding, but
  then he realized what Carter meant. "And they shot at you?"
  'They came after me, so I felt the safest place for me
  would be here. When I was coming across the border, the
  fools really opened up. But your border people opened the
  barrier for me.
  The Iraqi looked at him for a long moment, then turned to
  the Kuwaiti. They conferred for a moment or two in Arabic,
  and then they turned back to Carter.
  'What is it you wish to do here, Monsieur Mentoir?" the
  Iraqi asked.
  "Cross into Kuwait."
  The Kuwaiti spoke up.
  "And in my country?"
  "I wish only to drive to Al Kuwait, where I will drop this
  automobile off for repair and then take the first flight to
  Cairo. "
  'I see," the Kuwaiti said. 'Then you will offer no objec-
  tions if I search your car?"
  "None," Carter said, 'but I will tell you now I have a
  weapon. It is a pistol beneath the front seat. " He didn't tell
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  151
  
  
  
  
  
  151
  them about the other gun, the .38 Police Special he had gotten
  from the short man in the Sheraton parking lot. He hoped that
  if the border guards found one, they might search no further.
  Although, he told himself, it didn't really matter if he were
  armed or not from this point on. He would not be able to take
  the weapons with him aboard the commercial flight to Cairo.
  The Kuwaiti stepped back while the Iraqi guard walked
  past Carter and fished under the seat for the gun, coming up
  with the magnum. He brought out the gun with a lot of respect.
  on his face.
  "This is a very large gun, monsieur, " he said.
  "One I have not used. In fact it is not mine. I took it from
  the man who tried to kill me with it."
  "Then you will have no objections to us keeping this
  here," the Iragi said.
  "None."
  'We have no wish for such a weapon to enter our coun-
  try, " the Kuwaiti guard said
  "I understand."
  The Kuwaiti took Carter's passport and went back across
  the border into his post. He was gone only a moment or two,
  and when he came back he returned Carter's passport. "I
  have stamped this only for passage. You must be out of
  Kuwait within twenty-four hours. Do you understand, mon-
  sieur?"
  "I understand. Merci."
  He climbed into the Mercedes, started it, and headed
  across the border as the barrier post was raised.
  "Au revoir," he said, accelerating.
  It was just a minute or two after 7:00 when Carter came
  into the city of Al Kuwait. He parked his car in the long-term
  parking area at the airport and went into the terminal. The
  next flight to Cairo was loading at that moment.
  152
  
  
  
  
  
  152
  NICK CARTER
  His passport was in order and he had no luggage, so he was
  able to purchase his ticket and board the aircraft with no
  trouble at all.
  They were airborne fifteen minutes later. The flight atten-
  dants served coffee, and Carter sat back with his and lit a
  cigarette.
  From Cairo he planned on flying to Cyprus and taking the
  shuttle from there to Tel Aviv. While in Cyprus, however,
  he'd telephone Hawk to find out about Kimi Moudhros and
  about his weapons. He had a bad feeling about that, but there
  was absolutely nothing he could do until he contacted Hawk.
  He hoped that something could be set up for him in Tel
  Aviv. If not, his only option, he figured, would be to find out
  if there were any active American bases within Israel. Local
  CIA operations would have come up with something like that
  if it were the case.
  Once again Carter had a tough time forcing himself to
  think this out, to think that the Zero-hour Strike Force was an
  American-sponsored nuclear unit.
  They landed in Cairo at 9:30 A.M. local time, and Carter
  wasn't able to get a flight out to Cyprus until 11:00, landing
  in Nicosia an hour and a half later. He booked himself on the
  4:00 flight to Tel Aviv, then took a cab into town to the
  telephone exchange.
  It was a pleasant, warm, sunny day, and even if this respite
  was only temporary, it felt good for the moment. His call to
  David Hawk at AXE headquarters on Dupont Circle went
  through without delay. It was very early in the morning in
  Washington, but Hawk was already at his desk.
  "Nicholas, " Hawk said. "We were happy to hear that you
  are in Nicosia. We've been worried since you left Athens."
  "What about Kimi, sir?" Carter asked.
  "Dead, " Hawk said guardedly.
  "One of the people re-
  sponsible died in the escape attempt, but your package has
  been secured. "
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  153
  
  
  
  
  153
  Kimi dead! Christ, they had been on him from the start.
  "Where shall we send your things?"
  "Tel Aviv."
  "The embassy—" Hawk started, but Carter cut him off.
  "No, sir. Not there."
  "Are you trying to tell me something, N3?"
  "Yes, sir, " Carter said. He pulled Lassiter's ID out, and
  read the name, address, and ID number to Hawk. The details
  were being recorded. "Send my things to the chief of station
  for the Company in Tel Aviv. For-your-eyes-only designa-
  tion for me."
  "I see," Hawk said. "Do you need anything else?"
  "Clothing, a suitcase, that sort of stuff, sir. My replace-
  ments were left on the doorstep of the French embassy in
  Tehran. " In very guarded terms, Carter told Hawk every-
  thing that had happened to him since he had left Kimitri
  Móudhros. "I'm leaving for Tel Aviv in a couple of hours.
  I'll stay at the Dan Hotel until my things catch up with me."
  "We can have everything over to you within a few hours.
  It'll be there very soon after you, " Hawk assured him. "And
  I have a pleasant surprise for you."
  "Sir?"
  "Our people were released, unharmed, from the hotel in
  Riyadh. "
  "Do you know if a woman by the name of Joy Makepiece
  was included in those released?"
  "No," Hawk said. "But I can find out for you."
  "You might check into it, sir. If she wasn't released,
  perhaps we should make some waves.
  'Will do. We're also checking into this other thing that
  was referred to in our files, but then removed."
  "Anything yet, sir?"
  "I'm afraid not. But we're working on it. Take care,
  Nicholas. "
  "Yes, sir."
  154
  
  
  
  
  154
  NICK CARTER
  Carter hung up, then went to the counter and paid for the
  call. Back outside he stopped at a small restaurant for lunch,
  finally making it back to the airport around three, where he
  bought a Paris Herald-Tribune and a pack of cigarettes. He
  missed his own brand, which were made up specially for him
  by a small shop in Washington.
  He checked in with El Al, got his boarding pass, then went
  into the waiting area where he sat back.
  Front-page headlines screamed about the war threats over
  the Middle East oil fields. Israel, the newspaper reported,
  had become an armed camp.
  There had been a fresh wave of fighting all across the
  Iran-Iraq border.
  The government of Saudi Arabia apologized to the Swiss
  Red Cross for kicking them out of the country. The Saudis
  also apologized profusely to the American peace talks dele-
  gation and to the staff of the embassy in Riyadh for the recent
  misunderstanding.
  War hysteria was building across the Middle East.
  And in the U.S. the slogan Save Our Oil was on everyone's
  lips.
  His flight was announced. He laid the newspaper aside,
  stubbed out his cigarette, and boarded with the other passen-
  gers who were waiting.
  No one seemed happy. No one
  seemed expectant. These were difficult times.
  It was only 250 miles southwest to Tel Aviv, so it was just
  a little before five when they set down at Lod Airport. The
  airfield was bristling with military activity. Jets screamed
  down the parallel runway for takeoffs; armored vehicles,
  jeeps, troop trucks, and even tanks seemed to be parked
  everywhere. Israel was a nation ready for war.
  Carter's papers were scrutinized with special care, and it
  wasn't until six before he was cleared through and was able to
  catch a cab for the long drive into the city.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  155
  
  
  
  
  
  155
  The cabby was a taciturn older man who either didn't like
  Carter because he was a foreigner or because as an able-
  bodied man he wasn't in uniform. Either way it was a quiet
  ride into the city. Carter would have liked it otherwise.
  Often, on assignments like this, he could pick up the flavor of
  the city he was coming into pick up a feel for the mood of
  the people and of the government-from a talkative taxi
  driver.
  Just as in Saudi Arabia, and in Iran and Iraq, the roadsides
  in many spots were used for mobile radar units, antiaircraft
  rocket installations, and other gun emplacements.
  At the Dan, a nice hotel right on the Mediterranean just off
  the downtown section of the city, Carter was given a pleasant
  room overlooking the sea. The people here, like those
  throughout the city, were distant and preoccupied. At any
  moment war could erupt, and this time it would most likely
  escalate into a full-fledged nuclear confrontation.
  From room service he ordered a light supper, a bottle of
  cognac, and the local English-language newspaper. While he
  was waiting for his meal to come up, he stripped off his
  clothes and climbed into a steaming hot shower. Later, he
  turned off the hot water and forced himself to remain under
  the cold spray for a full five minutes.
  His bandages were soaked through. When he stepped out
  of the shower he was leaking blood. He pressed a towel
  against his shoulder wound and wrapped another around his
  waist, then padded into his room where he dialed the front
  desk and asked for the house doctor to be sent up.
  "I was injured several days ago, and I'm afraid I've
  opened the wound. It's not too serious, but I'd like it attended
  to."
  "Of course, Monsieur Mentoir," the desk clerk said
  solicitously.
  Five minutes later his dinner—corned beef, rye bread, and
  156
  
  
  
  
  
  
  156
  NICK CARTER
  a selection of cheeses and pickles——and the cognac arrived. A
  few minutes after that the doctor showed up.
  He was a very old man with wild white hair, reminding
  Carter of Einstein. He made Carter sit on a chair in the
  bathroom, and he disinfected the wound and put a couple of
  stitches in it.
  "When were you shot, monsieur?" the doctor asked in
  French.
  "A couple of days ago in Tehran, " Carter replied. "They
  are all crazy over there."
  The doctor looked at him, an indulgent smile on his lips.
  "Indeed, " he said. "And what were you doing in Tehran?"
  "Selling oil pumping equipment . . . trying to sell my
  products, that is. And without much success, I might add. "
  "I can see that."
  Someone knocked at the door.
  "Could you see to that, Doctor?" Carter asked
  The doctor went across the bedroom and opened the door.
  Joy Makepiece stood there, a large brown suitcase in her
  hand
  "Oh," she said, stepping back and looking at the room
  number.
  Carter had gotten up. "Ma chérie!" he said. "It is I,
  Marcel!"
  She picked up on it immediately. "Marcel, " she cried,
  hurrying into the room. She dropped the suitcase in the
  middle of the room and raced across to him, clucking like a
  mother hen. "And what now, you have gone and had another
  accident?"
  "I'm afraid it is more than that, mon petit chon," he said
  "Some fool tried to kill me."
  "No."
  she said. "Don't tell mera jealous husband?
  Marcel!"
  The doctor laughed. "If you will just wait, young lady, I
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  157
  
  
  
  
  
  157
  will have your young man as good as new... or nearly so.
  It will just be a few minutes.
  Back in the bathroom, the doctor finished attending to
  Carter's wounds. then winked at him. 'She is lovely. You
  are a very lucky man, monsieur.
  "Thank you, Doctor," Carter said. "And yes, I believe
  you are correctam a very lucky man."
  When the doctor left, Joy practically leaped on him.
  "What the hell happened to you?"
  "What are you doing here?"
  Not fair,
  " she said. "I asked first. What happened to
  you, and how did you get here?"
  Carter had put the suitcase on the stand beside the dresser.
  He opened it. Inside were clothes as well as a new Pierre,
  Hugo, and Wilhelmina. He picked up the Luger and tested its
  action. It was perfect. He loaded it, then quickly checked the
  stiletto and gas bomb.
  Joy got a couple of glasses from the bathroom and poured
  them each a drink. She handed Carter his, then perched on the
  edge of the writing desk. "Now, would you please tell me
  how you got out of Riyadh? Sutherland was very worried
  about you. And so was I. Not bad considering neither of us
  knows who the hell you are."
  Carter sipped at his drink, then lit a cigarette. Quickly he
  told her nearly everything that had happened to him from the
  moment they had entered the hotel in Riyadh. He only left out
  his calls to David Hawk.
  When he was finished, she just stared at him for a few long
  moments. Then she got up, poured them both another drink,
  and shook her head.
  "A nifty story, Nick, but it doesn't add up. At just the
  crucial times, someone evidently tells you something. You
  have someone at your beck and call who evidently has a lot of
  pull. I mean one minute I'm dressed as a man and I'm
  158
  
  
  
  
  
  158
  NICK CARTER
  sneaking out of the hotel in Rivadh, then I'm in Paris getting
  debriefed. Before I know it I'm aboard an American military
  jet with a brown suitcase in my hand, screaming at sixty
  thousand feet across the Med for this hotel. Lordy. You've
  got a lot of pull."
  Carter smiled. "And you must be the best. I asked for the
  chief of station to meet me here."
  She got an odd look. "You haven't heard?" she asked.
  He shook his head, a cold feeling coming over him.
  •The chief of station for Central Intelligence Agency
  activities for the entire Middle East, including Israel, was
  assassinated this afternoon."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THIRTEEN
  "I was told the moment I landed, " Joy said. "The assis-
  tant chief of station, Don Prescott, will be over here at ten
  o'clock tonight to brief you. He said he was waiting for some
  information to come in that he was to pass on to you."
  Carter said nothing. They had expected him in Athens, and
  Tehran, and now here in Tel Aviv.
  She looked at the weapons.
  "I was told to bring these
  things to you immediately.
  Carter turned and went over to the window that looked out
  across the Mediterranean. There were times, such as this
  moment, when he wondered if anything he had ever done had
  accomplished a thing. Or had he been batting his head against
  the proverbial wall? Was it all some vast game in which the
  outcome never really mattered, and the only significant thing
  that ever happened was the death of one or more of the
  participants?
  Many years ago one of his trainers at AXE had advised him
  that in this business there was always the risk of turning
  cynical.
  Was that what was finally happening to him? After a
  hundred different operations? After hundreds of killings? His
  designation was N3 Killmaster. A license to kill. Not like in
  159
  160
  
  
  
  
  160
  NICK CARTER
  espionage adventure novels, but for real. Real guns. Real
  bullets. Real blood and screams and pleas for mercy.
  Joy had come up behind him, and she gently placed a hand
  on his bare shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin. But he
  held back from turning around for just a moment. For the first
  time in his long, intense career, he was being challenged on a
  front he never dreamed he'd be forced to deal with: his own
  loyalty. America-love her or leave her. America-right or
  wrong.
  Goddamnit, he thought. Was he being used to cover up his
  country's participation in some insane nuclear escapade?
  One way or the other—and it really did matter which way it
  fell—he would pursue this to its end. And if he had been
  crossed, if he had been lied to, used, manipulated... so
  help him God, there would be hell to pay.
  He turned around to Joy, whose lips were parted and
  whose eyes were wide. She came easily into his arms, her lips
  warm and pliant, her eager body molding easily against his,
  her full breasts crushed against his chest.
  He stroked her neck and she shivered. "I was worried
  about you," she said.
  "You're not supposed to worry in this business."
  They parted and she looked up into his eyes.
  "No, I mean
  it, Nick. In Riyadh you were like some kind of a masked man
  coming in on a white charger. I didn't know what was
  happening sometimes. One minute you were there, and the
  next minute all hell was breaking loose in the soccer stadium
  across from us, and then you were pulling me out of the
  hole."
  'You came up with Kebir. He has been the key so far. "
  He could still see the young man lying there in the sewer,
  could still hear those four words. Zero-hour Strike Force.
  "Without your diversion, and your pulling me out of
  there, it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference what
  we had learned. "
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  161
  
  
  
  
  
  
  161
  She disengaged herself from his arms and went over to the
  bed where she stood a moment, then she pulled down the
  spread. She turned toward Carter and took off her clothes,
  item by item, until she stood there nude. He dropped the
  towel around his waist and came to her. Together they eased
  themselves onto the cool sheets.
  Carter was in a very tender mood, and he treated her with a
  great gentleness, stroking her breasts, and her stomach, and
  her thighs for a long time. Kissing her neck, and her ears, and
  her full, sensuous lips.
  She too was gentle, partially because she was concerned
  about his wounds, so obvious with the new bandages around
  his side and at his shoulder, and partially because she was
  frightened.
  From what she had learned so far, and from what he had
  told her he had found, she had come to nearly the same
  conclusions he had. She was worried that her own country
  had done such a despicable act that she would never be able to
  live with it. Could she continue to work in defense of the U.S.
  if her wildest fears were true?
  At one point she whimpered, and he propped himself up on
  one elbow and looked down at her. She opened her eyes, her
  lips parted, her breath coming in short gasps.
  "What is it?" he asked softly.
  She shook her head, her long blond hair fanning out over
  the pillow. Tears came to the corners of her eyes and leaked
  down the sides of her face.
  "What is it?" he asked again.
  "Nothing," she said. "Just love me, Nick..
  • please,
  just love me.
  She drew him closer, her legs spreading, and soon he
  entered her, and she responded in sync with his rhythm as if
  they had lived together for years.
  She clung tightly to him, her arms around his neck, her
  legs around his waist, coming, coming with him, until she
  162
  
  
  
  
  
  162
  pleasure.
  NICK CARTER
  cried out sharply, her entire body shuddering, then arching in
  Don Prescott, the assistant chief of operations for the
  Middle East, turned out to be a bland-looking banker type,
  showing up at the stroke of ten in a natty three-piece suit and
  carrying a briefcase.
  Carter and Joy had slept a little, had taken a shower
  together, shared the food Carter had ordered but hadn't had a
  chance to eat, and had a couple of drinks. When Prescott
  showed up they were ready for him.
  "Mr. Carter, " Prescott said, his voice pinched. He was a
  slight man in his mid-fifties with curly gray hair.
  "I was told that your boss was assassinated this after-
  noon."
  "Yes, sir," the man said. "It was a bomb. Plastique, we
  think, beneath the driver's seat of his car, and again beneath
  the gasoline tank. There was no possibility of survival."
  "What kind of a fuse?"
  "Almost certainly radio controlled."
  'Then it was someone new to the scene. Someone who
  hadn't the time to establish his routine. They took the risk of
  detection so that they would be certain to get to him."
  "Yes, sir, " Prescott said. He was not enjoying this.
  "Why?" Carter asked.
  "Sir?"
  "Why kill him now? Was he on to something?"
  "Well," Prescott said, suddenly very businesslike.
  "Well. I've come for the matter of briefing you. The DCA
  himself messaged us."
  "But he didn't mention being totally honest and open with
  me."
  "Presumably you have queried U.S. involvement in Is-
  raeli defense installations__"
  T »
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  163
  
  
  
  
  
  163
  "Listen, Don, all I want to know is if there are any
  American military bases presently maintained on Israeli soil.
  Not too difficult a request to comprehend."
  Prescott ignored the sarcasm. "There was one base that
  was out near the Dead Sea. Forty or forty-five miles south-
  west of here, near the very small town of Mar Saba. It's an
  ancient village, there are certain religious ruins that-"
  "A base was out there? Past tense?" Carter asked impa-
  tiently.
  "That's right. We believe there was a training center.
  Army Airborne. Green Berets. That sort of thing.
  "But it has been closed?"
  "We think so, but we're not a hundred percent sure."
  "How long ago do your people suspect it may have
  closed?" Carter asked.
  "I don't know for sure."
  "Years, months, weeks?"
  "Certainly not years or even months."
  "Weeks?"
  Prescott shrugged. 'Perhaps days. We're just not sure."
  'Perhaps days,' " Carter repeated, looking incredu-
  lously at the man. There had been a nuclear strike on a
  friendly nation, and within days of that event, a secret Amer-
  ican military installation on Israeli soil had perhaps, or
  perhaps not, been closed down. He glanced over at Joy, and
  she too was flabbergasted.
  "Prescott, your days here in the Middle East have just
  come to a close, " Carter said. 'I want you to get your ass out
  of here and pack. Within a few days you'll be receiving
  orders, reassigning you home. Now get the hell out of my
  sight."
  Prescott looked from Joy to Carter and back to Joy again.
  "All right then, " he said. "Ms. Makepiece, you will come
  with me."
  164
  
  
  
  
  164
  NICK CARTER
  "No, sir," Joy said firmly. "T'll stay with Mr. Carter.
  There is a lot of work to do.
  "You're fired, " he said.
  Joy laughed, and Prescott turned and left the room. Carter
  whistled long and low. "What about him? Have you heard
  anything about the man?"
  "Not a thing,
  " she said. "What an asshole."
  Carter had to laugh. "I couldn't have picked a better word
  myself. How did he get this far...?" He thought for a
  moment, then looked into her eyes. "I'd advise you to cut out
  now, for your own good."
  "No," she said instantly.
  "I was hoping you'd say that. Well, we'd better get to
  work. I want you to find us a car. The sturdier the better. And
  get us some detailed maps of the country.
  'Will do," she said. "One hour, in the lobby?"
  "Let's make it the back entrance.
  Joy started to leave, but Carter stopped her. "Once you get
  the car, don't leave it. Not even for a moment or two.
  She nodded grimly and then was gone.
  Carter waited five minutes, then he too left the room and
  took the elevator to the first floor. From there he found the
  rear stairwell, which he took to the ground floor. He skirted
  the lobby, entered the dining room, and left the hotel by the
  side exit. He walked around to the front and got a cab.
  "The American trade mission," Carter told the driver.
  The man turned around. "Never heard of it."
  "It's off Sderot David Hamelech, near the WIZO-Child
  Center. "
  "Yes, sir," he said, and they took off.
  It took only five minutes to drive into the downtown
  section of the city, where Carter got out at a squat, red brick
  building that looked more like it belonged off the Boston
  Common than here in Israel.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  He naid the cah and want into the
  165
  
  
  
  
  
  165
  He paid the cab and went into the narrow entryway, then
  down a dark corridor to a Dutch door, the top half of which
  was open. Beyond was a desk at which sat a young man of
  about twenty-five. He jumped up when Carter appeared.
  "May I help you, sir?"
  "I want to speak with the OD, " Carter said softly. 'Yel-
  low six-six-six.
  "Yellow, six..." the young man started, but then his
  mouth opened and no sound came out for a moment. "Oh
  ...my... gosh, " he managed to stammer, and he went
  back to his desk and got on the phone. "George," he said,
  "we have a triple sixesa yellow!"
  He put the phone down, and literally a second or two later
  an older, gray-haired man came out. "Mr. Carter?" he
  asked.
  "You were told I'd be coming?"
  "Of course, sir, " the man said, and he let Carter inside
  They went down a corridor to a small office furnished only
  with a desk, a couple of file cabinets, and a map of Israel. The
  American trade mission in any country is usually used as the
  clearinghouse for intelligence activities in that country, espe-
  cially if it's a friendly country. Most field agents are unaware
  of this. Usually only one or two top people in each intelli-
  gence unit know the extent of the collation and coordination
  work the trade missions do. But that was all the trade mission
  did. It never fielded agents, it made no analysis or judgment
  of anything fed to it. It merely collated and assembled what-
  ever data came its way, digested it, and made sure it got to the
  proper end users by an alternate channel from that used by the
  intelligence units it supplemented.
  "What can I do for you, Mr. Carter?"
  "Don Prescott?"
  "Not a nice man, but harmless. He's advanced as far as
  he'll ever advance.
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  NICK CARTER
  "Joy Makepiece?"
  "Not familiar with the name. Should I be?"
  'An American military advisory installation near the town
  of Mar Saba?"
  The OD looked oddly at him. "I'm sorry, Mr. Carter,
  that's one bit of gossip I'm afraid I don't know a thing
  about."
  Carter got up from where he had been sitting. "Any
  American installations here in Israel?"
  "Weather stations, consulates, trade missions, and the
  like?"
  "Military."
  The man shook his head. "Sorry, sir. And I mean that in
  all honesty."
  "Sure," Carter said, sick at heart. He turned and left the
  office, letting himself out.
  Two blocks later he caught a cab back to the Dan. All the
  way there he kept watching out the back window, expecting
  at any moment to pick up a tail. But he remained clean,
  pulling into the front driveway of the hotel a couple of
  minutes before eleven.
  He paid the cabby and went up to his room, where he set up
  several intrusion indicators. Then he called down to the desk,
  leaving a wakeup call for 8:00 A.M.
  When he was finished, he let himself out of the room—
  leaving the door unbugged to give whoever might try to get in
  a false sense of security—and took the back stairs all the way
  down to the ground floor, where he slipped out the back exit
  onto the hotel's loading dock.
  Joy hadn't shown up yet, but it was still a few minutes
  early. He lit a cigarette and, cupping the lit end with his hand,
  stepped back into the shadows to wait.
  Prescott had known of the Mar Saba American base, but
  the trade mission had not. One of them had lied or was lying.
  T »
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  167
  
  
  
  
  
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  167
  Either Prescott and the CIA installation here in Tel Aviv had
  not told the entire truth to the trade mission, or the mission
  specialist had lied tonight to Carter. It didn't really matter
  which, although either way it was disturbing.
  Headlights flashed from around the corner at the far end of
  the parking lot. A moment later a Land-Rover pulled up at the
  loading dock, and Joy Makepiece got out.
  "Nick?" she called softly.
  Carter remained standing in the shadows, watching the
  direction she had come from, scanning the cars and trucks in
  the lot. But there was nothing. No one had followed her; no
  one was watching her.
  He stepped out of the shadows. "Oh, there you are, " she
  said. "I didn't think you had come down yet."
  Carter jumped down off the loading dock and got in on the .
  passenger side. Joy climbed back in behind the wheel
  "I did some checking, " he told her. 'No one has heard of
  any American military base in Israel."
  "Why would Prescott make up such a story?"
  "I don't think he did."
  'Then . . . whoever you spoke with was either not very
  well informed-—or not telling the truth. "
  He nodded. "Did you get a map?"
  "Yes. Let's go. " She pulled out of the parking lot, drove
  around to the front of the hotel, then across town to Ramat
  Hatayasim where she picked up the main highway that ran
  southwest past Lod Airport and eventually to Jerusalem,
  where they could pick up the road that led out into the desert
  to the town of Mar Sabā.
  It was after midnight before they cleared the city and she
  was able to speed up, but then they made good time. The road
  twisted through the ancient hills, the cedar trees silhouetted
  against the horizon, but there was little traffic.
  Out here at night, Carter could feel the sense of history.
  168
  
  
  
  
  168
  NICK CARTER
  This had been among the first places where civilization
  flourished. It very well could be, he thought morosely, where
  civilization ended.
  They made the thirty miles to the Israeli capital city in
  about forty-five minutes. They skirted the downtown area
  and within fifteen minutes were bumping along a narrow
  secondary road toward Mär Saba.
  This was suddenly very reminiscent of his experience
  earlier that day in southern Iran, tracking down another base.
  He wondered if he'd find this one, and if it too would be as
  cleaned out as the other one.
  A half hour later they came to the village of Mar Saba,
  which consisted only of a tiny, ancient church and a half-
  dozen crude buildings. There were no lights and no move-
  ment as they drove down its single street and out the other
  side.
  The road only ran another few miles before it finally
  petered out. But Carter could see where half-track vehicles
  had come this way before.
  Joy slipped the Land-Rover into four-wheel drive, and
  they pushed on, Carter scanning the horizon in every direc-
  tion.
  But it wasn't necessary; the tracks led a few miles farther to
  a fenced-in area that contained a dozen Quonset huts, some of
  them quite large, and in the distance they could see a long
  runway. This base was almost the exact duplicate of the one
  in Iran.
  The front gate was open, so they drove through and down a
  row of long buildings, pulling up in front of one of the larger
  structures. Joy killed the Land-Rover's engine.
  "We're going to take the buildings one by one, " Carter
  said. "Look for anything, anything at all, that might tell us
  something."
  "They're abandoned."
  "That's right, but something might have been left be-
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  - +
  110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  169
  hind, " Carter said, and he hopped out of the car. 'You take
  the one across the street. I'll try the big one.
  Joy hurried across the dirt road and disappeared into one of
  the buildings. Carter turned and slipped inside the larger
  building, whose large service doors had probably admitted
  some kind of vehicles. He left the doors open so that he could
  use what little starlight there was.
  They had been in more of a hurry clearing out this base.
  There were a lot of tools and equipment lying around. A file
  cabinet sat in one corner, all its drawers open. It was cleaned
  out, as was a tall cabinet that had once held books.
  He turned around slowly, studying the maintenance shed.
  Books, he thought. Maintenance manuals. There would be
  several of them for the half-track vehicles. But they would
  need stacks of them for the C-130 Hercules aircraft.
  He hurried back out to the car and beeped the horn a couple
  of times. Joy came out of the building in a dead run.
  "What happened?" she shouted
  'Get in, " Carter said. He climbed behind the wheel and
  took off the moment she sat down.
  'Where are we going? What's happening?"
  Carter drove straight through the camp and out to the
  runway. The layout was the same as in Iran. There were a
  series of four large shelters at the far end of the runway.
  Shelters big enough for the C-130s.
  "Maintenance manuals," Carter shouted breathlessly.
  Whoever it was had been in a hurry when they cleared out of
  here. There was debris all over the place. They had worked
  on the half-tracks; no doubt they had also worked on the
  C-130s. Maybe, just maybe, they had overlooked one
  maintenance manual. Just one somewhere in the junk
  Carter explained all that to her in quick, clipped sentences,
  and by the time they drove into the aircraft shelters, Joy was
  ready for the search.
  There was junk everywhere. Construction debris, empty
  170
  
  
  
  
  
  
  110%
  170
  NICK CARTER
  oil cans, broken tools, worn-out parts.
  Joy found the master hydraulic system manual for the
  Hercules C-130. It had fallen behind one of the cabinets that
  contained cans of hydraulic fluid.
  Carter took the book back to the Land-Rover, flipped on
  the headlights, and opened the book to the letter of promulga-
  tion found in every military manual.
  "Shit," he said, looking at the letterhead. It was the final
  proof.
  'What is it?" Joy asked. Carter held the book out so she
  could see the letterhead.
  Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FOURTEEN
  They took the early morning flight to Paris, and from there
  the connecting flight to New York. The trip took fourteen
  hours, but with the eight-hour difference in time zones, they
  landed at Kennedy at one that afternoon.
  From the moment they had left Tel Aviv, and during their
  ground time at Orly outside Paris and again in New York,
  Carter had the distinct impression that they were being fol-
  lowed. He wasn't certain, but he felt the itchy tingle between
  Joy managed to get a little sleep on the plane, but Carter's
  mind had been alive with conjecture and, he had to admit, a
  certain feeling of betrayal. Now that it seemed certain that the
  U.S. had engineered and pulled off the nuclear strike against
  the Saudi oil fields, he found that he felt like a tight-rope
  walker whose net had just been taken away. Carter was a
  product of the States. He had defended her, fought for her,
  and laid his life on the line for her interests for so long that the
  thought of his government having done something so despic-
  able was unsettling.
  When Joy woke up, about two hours out of New York,
  they had spoken about it. She had the same feelings as Carter:
  171
  172
  
  
  
  
  
  
  172
  NICK CARTER
  a sense of not belonging, that the props had been knocked out
  from under her.
  An even bigger blow came, however, when they got off
  the plane in New York and walked into the terminal. All
  incoming flights from Israel were being picketed.
  GO HOME!
  DEATH TO ZIONISTS!
  SAVE OUR OIL!
  There were several hundred demonstrators, many of them
  carrying signs, some of them chanting the popular 'Save Our
  Oil" slogan.
  Carter and Joy made their way through customs. Carter
  now used his original passport; his weapons had been sealed
  in a diplomatic bag that had been arranged for him in Paris.
  Soon they were in the main terminal, and Carter went into a
  men's room, where he unsealed the bag, pulled out his
  weapons, and strapped them on, one by one.
  Carter and Joy had decided that they were going to see this
  thing through to the end. Carter could be certain about Hawk,
  but Joy could not be certain about her chain of command, so
  she agreed to tag along with him rather than work through
  Langley. Carter had also decided that whatever they
  found—no matter how bad—-was going to be acted upon.
  When he had said that, Joy had looked at him round-eyed,
  and she asked him exactly what he meant by it.
  "I'll stop whoever started it," he said.
  "If the President ordered it?"
  "I'll kill him," Carter said grimly.
  Now, looking at his reflection in the rest room mirror, he
  asked himself if indeed it did come to that, could he actually
  pull the trigger on the President?
  He recalled the times he had acted as the President's
  personal bodyguard
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  No. he had to tell himself. Anvane else but
  173
  
  
  
  
  
  173
  No, he had to tell himself. Anyone else but.
  From the rest room he walked back across the terminal to
  where he had left Joy. Only she wasn't there.
  For a moment he looked around, wondering if he had
  mistaken the area, but then he spotted Joy's retreating figure
  moving down the escalator. A tall, husky man dressed in a
  plain gray suit had hold of her right arm. Another man was
  below her, and then they disappeared.
  Carter raced across the terminal to the escalator and started
  down, several other people between him and Joy.
  At the bottom, he got off just as the two men were hustling
  Joy toward the main doors out of the terminal. He dropped his
  suitcase by one of the support columns and sprinted after
  them.
  They were just going out the doors when he came up
  behind them. He had pulled out his Luger and held it low at
  his side.
  Joy and the man to her right noticed Carter coming up, and
  they both turned at the same moment.
  "Oh!" Joy gasped.
  The man grunted and reached inside his coat, but Carter
  brought up his Luger and jammed it into his side.
  'You're a dead man if you don't take your hand away,"
  Carter said softly.
  They stopped. The man on Joy's left had spun around and
  he too reached for his gun, but Carter shook his head.
  "Your partner is a dead man the moment I see your
  weapon, " Carter said.
  Joy disengaged herself and stepped back. A gray Chev-
  rolet had pulled up to the curb, and the driver was looking at
  them, his mouth open.
  "You have two choices, gentlemen, " Carter said. 'We
  can fight it out here, or the three of you can drop your
  weapons in the back seat of the car and walk away from this in
  one piece. I don't want this little episode to get messy."
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  174
  NICK CARTER
  For a second no one said a thing. The windows were down
  on the car, and the driver had clearly heard everything.
  Carter jabbed the man at his side with Wilhelmina.
  "All right, we'll do as the man says, nice and easy so no
  one gets hurt," the driver said.
  Carter watched as he pulled out his pistol and dropped it on
  the floor in the back. He got out of the car and stepped away
  from it.
  'The keys are in the ignition, Carter," he said
  Carter motioned to the other men, who reluctantly pulled
  out their weapons and dropped them on the back seat. There
  were hundreds of people around, but no one seemed to notice
  what was happening.
  Joy hurried around to the driver's side and got in behind the
  wheel. She started the car.
  Carter looked at the three men. 'Walk. Don't look back
  It'll be over in a minute or so, and you can call in the
  reinforcements."
  The three men walked down the sidewalk, and when they
  were twenty yards away, Carter jumped in the car and Joy
  took off. Before they got completely around the sweeping
  curve down to the main airport road, Carter looked back. The
  three men were running back into the terminal.
  Down at the exit, Carter directed Joy to the left instead of
  to the right.
  •That's back to the terminal," she protested.
  "Right," Carter said. 'Park on the ramp. We're going
  back to rent a car. We won't get very far in this one."
  She saw the logic in that, and she turned left. They went up
  the ramp, and Joy parked the car in an out-of-the-way corner.
  They found the car rental counters, where they signed up
  for a car. Their destination: Washington, D.C.
  While Joy was doing the paperwork, Carter slipped over to
  the main exits. There was no suspicious activity here, and he
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  175
  
  
  
  
  175
  easily retrieved his suitcase. The trio probably assumed they
  were already headed for New York City.
  He and Joy went back to where the rental cars were parked,
  got theirs, and were soon well away from the airport, Carter
  driving.
  They crossed Manhattan, then took Interstate 80 to the
  west, always staying well within the speed limit, stopping
  only for gas and something to eat.
  Hour by hour, the car they had rented clocked mile after
  mile. East of Cleveland they headed south on 71 through
  Columbus, Cincinnati, and Louisville, again turning west on
  64.
  For a time Joy drove while Carter slept, and always they
  kept an eye on the rearview mirror. But no one was coming
  after them.
  On the second day they were through St. Louis, Kansas
  City, and late that night, Denver, where they turned south,
  going through the mountains into New Mexico and into
  Arizona. They made it over to Tucson on Interstate 10 by
  midafternoon.
  It was hot, at least a hundred in the shade when they parked
  behind the Ramada Inn southeast of town. They had passed
  the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and the international
  airport on the way in, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
  Yet Carter could feel that something was happening here. He
  didn't know exactly what it was, but he just knew that
  something was going on.
  Carter went inside and registered under an assumed name,
  giving a false license plate number and state. It was some-
  thing hotel registration clerks never checked.
  Once they were in their room, they ordered in an early
  dinner, and Carter waited for it to come while Joy took a cool
  shower. He stood by the window looking out across the
  T »
  176
  
  
  
  
  176
  NICK CARTER
  parking lot, beyond the interstate highway to the desert. It
  was a forbidding-looking countryside. Very reminiscent of
  the deserts of Iran and the area around the Dead Sea in Israel.
  Joy was finished in the shower and he was taking his when
  their dinner came. They ate, then crawled into bed, falling
  asleep instantly. It had been a grueling twenty-five hundred
  miles from New York, and they were both dead tired. To-
  night, there'd be much work to be done.
  Carter came straight awake, and he sat up in bed. It was
  dark, and Joy was gone. The only light came from outside,
  through the open-weave curtains on the windows facing the
  parking lot. He held his breath, listening to the lack of sound
  in the room, the sounds of the motel, and finally the sounds of
  the trucks rolling by on the highway outside.
  He threw back the covers and got out of bed. She wasn't in
  the bathroom. He flipped on the lights and quickly got
  dressed, strapping on his weapons. She was gone. She could
  have gone down to the bar for a drink, or she could have taken
  off.
  Someone was at the door. He stepped back into the bath-
  room and pulled out his Luger as he flipped off the lights.
  A moment later Joy came into the room, locking the door
  behind her. She looked toward the bed and not seeing Carter,
  turned suddenly toward the bathroom as he flipped on the
  lights.
  Her face was white, her mouth slightly open, her brown
  eyes wide. She looked guilty as hell.
  "Nick," she breathed. 'You scared me.
  Carter stepped out of the bathroom, holstering the Luger.
  "I woke up and you were gone."
  "I couldn't sleep.
  "Who'd you call?"
  "Call.
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  177
  
  
  
  177
  (189 of 212)
  — + 110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE 177 "Joy, who'd you telephone? Who'd you call out here? Langley?" Her lower lip quivered. She stepped back. "Shit," he said in disgust. He turned away momentarily, but then he turned back. "I guess I understand." He went to the bureau where he grabbed the car keys. He turned around and tossed them to her. She caught them. "What's this supposed to mean?" she asked. "Go on back to Washington. You can tell them you escaped. They'll welcome you with open arms." "It's not what you think, Nick," she said "I want you out of here, Joy," Carter said. "I don't trust
  For several long moments it seemed as if she were going to challenge him, but then she turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Carter waited a couple of minutes before he slipped out of the room and took the back stairs down to the rear parking lot, where he held back behind the ice machine. Joy stood near the car looking up at their room, then she climbed in, started it, and took off. Carter did not feel bad about her. He understood her loyalties. He felt the same kinds of stirrings. It was very difficult not to go Bong with whatever was put in front of you by your own government. He stood there for a very long time. Finally he made his way through the corridors to the front desk, where, despite the hour, he arranged to rent a car and have it delivered within a half hour. Back in his room, he pocketed his money and passports, then took a deep drink of the cognac they had bought on the trip down. He telephoned AXE and quickly told the man in Opera-tions what he was going to do, but before the call could be
  170 knrir r RTF12
  
  
  
  
  ED cv V 178 (190 of 212) — + 110%
  178 NICK CARTER switched to Hawk or before any objections could be raised, he hung up. Carter sat back in the chair by the window. his eyes half closed. He felt suddenly clean. as if there was nothing to impede his progress. as if there were no reasons for him not to push this thing to the limits. Whatever it cane to. he'd definitely push. At length he went downstairs and made his way to the front desk where he signed some forms, showed his license, and then went outside where he collected his ear, a Chevy Cita-tion. He headed out away from the motel past the Pima County Hospital. then up past Reid Park and out East 22nd Street, finally cutting south again on Wilmont Road. The last houses were about a half mile from the outer perimeter fence of the air base, which was lit by powerful lights every hundred yards. Carter parked his car a few blocks from the fence. left the keys beneath the mat, and continued the rest of the way on foot The night was cool. In the distance to the south he thought he heard a jet take off, but then he wasn't quite sure. The fence was twelve feet tall and topped with barbed wire. Carter made his way halfway between one set of lights and the next, quickly took off his jacket, and scaled the fence. At the top he threw his Jacket over the barbed wire, then climbed over it On the other side, he carefully disengaged his jacket and climbed down. At the bottom he put his jacket back on. then headed out across a wide field toward a series of low hills. Caner had no real idea what he expected to find here, except that whatever had happened in Saudi Arabia led to an abandoned base in Iran, which led to an abandoned base in Israel. which finally led here. The string of leads was omi-nous. He could do nothing less than follow them.
  •
  ZERO-HOUR STRIICF Pool, ten
  T
  
  
  
  
  
  179
  About three quarters of a mile across the field, the desert
  land rose gradually up to the crest of a small hill. As Carter
  topped it, the base suddenly spread out beneath him. Far to
  the left, running mostly west to east, were the runways.
  Straight ahead and into the distance to the right were the
  hangars and maintenance buildings. Beyond were the bar-
  racks and other base buildings.
  Absolutely nothing looked out of the ordinary. This
  seemed like any other air base.
  Carter crouched on the crest of the hill looking down at the
  base. The runways and alert hangars would
  be heavily
  guarded. The base proper would be open except for routine
  surveillance.
  For just a minute Carter felt foolish sneaking onto the base
  like this. Nothing was going on here. Absolutely nothing.
  And when it was all over he'd feel silly about this. But then he
  thought about the bases in Iran and in Israel. They led here.
  He got up and, keeping low, worked his way down the hill
  to the southwest toward the base proper, away from the
  • runways.
  What he wanted to find was the BOQ or perhaps even the
  operations officer. If he could find some officer, a major or
  higher, he might be able to sweat something out of him.
  Either that or, if this was the base from which the strike had
  originated, there would have to be some sort of a staging
  area, a special section of the base set apart from everything
  else. It would probably be somewhere off one of the run-
  ways. Or perhaps stuck in some remote corner of the base.
  But that too he would get from whatever officer he man-
  aged to corner.
  It was nearly a mile down the hill, across a long field of
  scrub and across a wide drainage ditch, to the end of one of
  the streets that ran from north to south across the base
  The barracks were mostly all dark at this hour of the
  180
  
  
  
  
  
  
  180
  NICK CARTER
  morning, but far to the south he could see the lights of the
  main gate. As he watched, a set of headlights swung down
  the road, headed toward him, but then turned left.
  From the drainage ditch he hurried across the road and
  slipped into the shadows beside one of the buildings. Again,
  in the distance, he was certain he could hear a high-flying jet,
  but then the noise faded.
  He made his way around to the front of the building. On a
  large wooden sign at the corner of the building was the
  number T301. The next building down the street was num-
  bered T303, the one across the street T302.
  These were ordinary barracks, by the looks of them. Be-
  hind the buildings were dozens of automobiles parked in
  wide parking lots. Many of them looked very old and bat-
  tered. This was enlisted men's territory.
  He hurried down the street in the direction of the main
  gate, constantly watching the road as well as the buildings
  themselves for any sign that he was being watched. But there
  continued to be nothing. At length he came to a building
  whose sign out front said BACHELOR OFFICERS' QUAR
  TERS.
  A light was on in one of the rooms on the second floor.
  Carter hurried around to the back of the building and slipped
  into the ground-floor corridor.
  The building was quiet. The corridor was lit by red fire
  lights at both exits, as were the stairwells.
  He made his way to the second floor and down the corridor
  to the room with the light shining from beneath the door. Soft
  strains of classical music came from inside.
  Carter pulled out his Luger and tried the doorknob; it was
  open. He let himself in.
  A young man with dark hair, dressed only in his shorts and
  T-shirt, lay on his bed, a glass of wine on the floor beside
  him, listening to what sounded like Tchaikovsky.
  He jumped up, knocking over the wine when he saw Carter
  and the gun in his hand.
  ZERO_HOUR STRIKE EODOE
  101
  
  
  
  
  181
  "My God!" he cried. "Oh... my..
  God. " He
  raised his hands over his head
  "Who are you?" Carter asked.
  "Sir.
  "Your name and rank and duty section," Carter snapped.
  Christ, he hated this
  "Hubert, sir. Lieutenant Robert J."
  Damn, Carter thought.
  "Is this a robbery?"
  "I'm looking for the base commander."
  "Sir?'
  "Your base commander!" Carter repeated. "Does he
  reside on base?"
  "No, sir.
  "Then how about the commander of your special section?
  Does he reside on base?"
  "Yes, sir..." the lieutenant started to say, but then he
  cut it off.
  'Thank you, son, " Carter said. The lieutenant's trousers
  were draped over a chair. Carter went across the room,
  grabbed them, and tossed them across. "Get dressed, Robert
  J., we're going out. "
  For a moment the young lieutenant hesitated. Carter
  slowly and deliberately raised the Luger and pointed it at the
  man, his stomach turning over at what he was doing.
  The lieutenant tured white and hurried to put on his
  trousers. Carter threw him his shirt and shoved his shoes
  across.
  When he was dressed, Carter stepped aside and motioned
  toward the door.
  "Where are we going? What do you want?"
  'We've going to pay a visit to the commander of the
  special section on this base."
  "I don't know what you're talking about, sir."
  "The section that trained with the half-track vehicles out in
  the desert and the C-130s for touch-and-go landings. That
  190
  
  
  
  
  182
  NICK CARTER
  special section," Carter said.
  'Oh, God," the lieutenant said. "I knew it. I just knew it
  would come to this."
  At the same moment that Carter noticed the chaplain's
  insignia on the young man's uniform collar, the base siren
  started wailing.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FIFTEEN
  "Have you got a car, Chaplain?" Carter asked, lowering
  his Luger.
  "It's Father, and yes I do," the lieutenant said.
  "You can lower your hands. I couldn't shoot you if I had
  to."
  The priest brought his arms to his sides. "What is this all
  about?" he asked. He had cocked his head and was listening
  to the siren. "Has it something to do with that?"
  "If that's coming from your special section, yes, proba-
  bly. A friend of mine, a young woman who works for the
  Central Intelligence Agency, has probably set off the alarm.
  She 'll be in trouble now.
  '"And do you work for the ... CIA?"
  "No, " Carter said. "But I do work for the government."
  "Why are you here?"
  Carter took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he
  holstered Wilhelmina. "It has to do with the nuclear strike on
  Saudi Arabia. I believe the unit that made the strike is or was
  based here. I've come to put an end to it."
  'Then it is true after all," the priest murmured.
  "What is, Father? What do you know?"
  The priest blinked, and he shook his head. "Nothing,
  183
  184
  
  
  
  
  184
  NICK CARTER
  really, mostly just suspicions some of us had. There was
  training here in what you call a 'special section. ' It's the
  738th Army Airborne Wing. They were brought down here
  for special training. All of them were so..
  different,
  including their commander, Colonel Hardesty.
  "C-130s? Half-track vehicles?"
  "For months out in the fields north of the alert pods," the
  priest said.
  "They were apart. They even had their own
  section of the base, fenced off from the rest of us.
  "Are they still here?"' Carter asked.
  "They left two weeks before the . . . nuclear strike."
  "Then they're not here?"
  The priest blinked. "Oh, they're here. At least some of
  them are. They came back two days ago. " Again the priest
  cocked his head toward the siren. 'That siren is coming from
  their section over by what used to be our motor pool.
  Joy, Carter thought. He grabbed the priest by the arm.
  "You're going to have to drive me over there, show me
  where Colonel Hardesty's quarters are."
  "No...I..." the young priest mumbled, but then he
  straightened up. "If they did this thing. . if they..
  "He
  grabbed his hat and his car keys, and led Carter downstairs to
  the back parking lot where they climbed into an old Volks-
  wagen.
  "We have to hurry, Father, " Carter said, and as they
  pulled out of the parking lot the siren suddenly stopped. The
  silence was ominous.
  "Oh, dear," the priest said.
  There were a lot of lights around four buildings that were
  surrounded by a tall, temporary-looking fence. Signs warn-
  ing of high voltage were wired to the fence every fifty or
  seventy-five feet.
  At least a couple of hundred officers and men were
  gathered across the street from an open gate in the fence
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  185
  
  
  
  
  
  185
  where an ambulance was parked, its red lights flashing.
  There were a lot of military police jeeps there, and just
  through the gate, at the front of the ambulance, was a knot of
  officers.
  "There he is," the priest said, pulling up.
  'Which one?" Carter asked.
  "The gray-haired man. In the middle. That's Colonel
  Hardesty. "
  'Thank you, Father, " Carter said. He pulled out his Luger
  and, holding it out of sight at his side, worked his way
  through the crowd.
  'Step aside, I'm a doctor. Step aside," Carter said. He
  hurried across the street once he was clear of the crowd, and
  several MPs turned to challenge him. "I'm a doctor, " Carter
  shouted. "Let me through!"
  They parted, and he was through the gate and around to the
  front of the ambulance.
  They were just putting a sheet over Joy Makepiece's
  blackened face. She had evidently tried to make it over the
  fence and had hit the high voltage. The stench of cooked flesh
  was still strong.
  "Hey, he's got a gun," someone shouted as Carter came
  up to Colonel Hardesty
  The colonel, a craggy-faced man in his mid-forties with
  short-cropped gray hair, spun around, then reached for the
  .45 at his hip, but Carter was at his side and had jammed the
  Luger into the man's ribs before he got the gun.
  "You're dead, Hardesty, if you don't do exactly as I say."
  Hardesty stared at him. Carter pressed the Luger's muzzle
  into his side with a little more force.
  "I've come too far to stop now."
  The military policemen, their weapons drawn, were star-
  ing at them.
  'What do you want?"
  186
  
  
  
  
  
  186
  NICK CARTER
  "Is there a helicopter here? Within your little compound."
  "Yes, " Hardesty said tensely.
  "Good. We're going to step back away from the gate.
  We're going to call for a pilot, and we're getting out of
  here."
  "Where are you taking me? And who the hell are you?"
  "Where you're going depends totally on you, Colonel.
  Let's move it."
  Hardesty looked up and waved the others away. "He has a
  gun in my ribs. We're taking my helicopter out of here. Call
  my pilot, Captain Johns. Get him over to the chopper im-
  mediately.
  They backed slowly away from the ambulance and from
  Joy's body lying beneath the sheet on the stretcher. What the
  hell had she been doing here? The only thing Carter could
  figure was that she had hoped to provide him with a diver-
  sion, just as he had for her back at the soccer stadium in
  Riyadh. He felt very bad for her and for the things he had said
  to her. But it needn't have come to this.
  He and the colonel made it around the corner of the old
  motor pool building, out of sight of the others.
  'Where is it?" Carter asked.
  "In back."
  "Let's go, Carter said, hustling Hardesty along.
  "Who are you? What the hell do you want here?"
  "I'm Nick Carter."
  Hardesty half turned to look back at Carter. "Oh, " he
  said. "It's you. I should have known after Riyadh, Bandar
  Ma'Shur, and Mar Saba. "
  "How'd you know I was there?"
  Hardesty laughed. "Military intelligence, how else? And
  do you actually think you're going to get away with any.
  thing? You can't stop it, you know. It's already grown too
  big. Before too long it'll come out about the cooperation we
  had with General David Goldman."
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  187
  
  
  
  
  
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  187
  'Israeli Army?"
  "Air Force, and his chief of staff, and several other offi-
  cers who arranged for us to use Mar Säbă."
  "And there'll be Iranian government cooperation?"
  •Their Air Force as well, ' Hardesty said, and he laughed.
  "It's gone too far. It'll all come out, and it'll be war in the
  Middle East. "
  They made it around the corner to the helicopter as a jeep
  came from the other direction and pulled up. An officer
  jumped out but stopped short when he saw Hardesty and
  Carter.
  "My pilot," Hardesty said.
  "Tell him to get the chopper started. We're leaving im-
  mediately."
  "We're getting out of here, Bob. He's got a gun, so for the
  time being let's go along with him."
  For several long seconds the captain stood rooted to his
  spot.
  "Move it, Bob. He's got a gun!" Hardesty shouted
  "They found out he was coming, Colonel, " the captain
  said
  "What are you talking about?"
  'I was coming to teil you. It just came in over the crypto
  circuit." The captain looked at Carter.
  "You're Carter,
  aren't you? And the woman was Joy Makepiece? CIA?"
  "That's right," Carter said.
  "What's going on?" Hardesty demanded, sweat pouring
  down the side of his face.
  "It's General Richardson, sir. "
  "What about him?"
  'He said it was over. He had done what he could, but now
  it was over. Too many people were finding out-even the
  President would know. Even the President, Colonel. Which
  meant I was right. Oh, Christ. .
  "What has happened, you bastard? Tell me!"
  188
  
  
  
  
  
  
  188
  NICK CARTER
  "It's General Richardson. He committed suicide in his
  office in the Pentagon not more than half an hour ago."
  "No!" Hardesty shouted, and he shoved Carter backward
  and started for the helicopter.
  Carter regained his balance, brought up the Luger with
  both hands, and fired two shots, both of them hitting the
  colonel in the neck.
  The captain had dropped into a crouch, clutching his own
  gun, but when he saw that the colonel was dead, he uncocked
  the automatic and shoved it back in his holster. Then he
  turned to Carter.
  "Mr. Carter, there is someone on the encrypted teletype
  circuit who wishes urgently to speak with you.
  Slowly Carter straightened up, and he holstered his Luger.
  Several military police jeeps and a dozen armed men all raced
  back from the front of the compound as Captain Johns
  stepped across to where Carter stood motionless.
  "It's all right!" the captain shouted. "It's all right! Get an
  ambulance back here-
  -the Colonel has been hurt."
  There was a lot of confusion for at least ten minutes before
  Carter and Captain Johns were allowed to get back to the
  communications center. The captain left Carter there with the
  encrypted telephone.
  "Hello," he said tiredly. He could not get Joy out of his
  mind.
  "Hello, Nick. " Hawk's voice came over the secured line.
  "Have you heard about Richardson?"
  "Just now, sir, " Carter said. 'He masterminded the entire
  thing?"
  "Apparently."
  "How did he get past the Joint Chiefs?"
  "He didn't. As soon as it happened, he was the one taking
  over the secret investigation. Meanwhile, they were prepar-
  ing for the war. "
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  189
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  189
  201 of 212)
  = +
  110%
  ZERO-HOUR STRIKE FORCE
  189
  "War?"
  "That's what he wanted, as far as we can tell. The infor-
  mation is just now coming in, so it's still not perfectly clear,
  but apparently the general felt that the only way to secure our
  oil interests in the Middle East against Soviet encroachment
  was to start a war there between Saudi Arabia and Israel. "
  "I don't see ...
  "A nuclear war that would demand our immediate inter-
  vention. Once we had the territory, we'd never let it go."
  It was clear then. "I see, sir, " Carter said. 'But he didn't
  think he could get away with it. Under the noses of the Joint
  Chiefs, under the President's nose. "
  "He nearly did, Nick. He very nearly did. "
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  EPILOGUE
  It had been a terribly confusing two weeks since Tucson,
  Nick Carter thought as his flight came in for a graceful
  landing at the Nice airport on the Côte d'Azur, but finally the
  world was coming back into focus.
  The public, of course, had heard very little of what actually
  happened, but in very high levels of government apologies
  were made, reparations payments were arranged, and gradu-
  ally the tense situation in the Middle East began to calm
  down.
  Even the Russians, who everyone thought would naturally
  make a great deal out of the situation, were strangely silent.
  Only a short story in Izvestia mentioned an American grant of
  $4.5 billion to help Saudi Arabia recover its oil revenue
  losses.
  The Israelis were far too embarrassed about their unwitting
  participation in the business to say anything publicly, and of
  course no one believed anything the Khoumeni government
  said. So the dust had begun to settle.
  Very quietly the President was ramrodding a few new laws
  through Congress, giving more civilian control over the
  military. He had fired the secretary of defense, and in the
  191
  192
  
  
  
  
  192
  NICK CARTER
  Pentagon there was a major shakeup of personnel that would
  be going on for at least the next year.
  We had come close to all-out war this time. The public in
  general would never know about it, which was just as well.
  But it was frightening that it had very nearly happened.
  Marie Arlemont, wearing a light gauze shirt over very tight
  jeans, was waiting at the terminal when Carter stepped off the
  jet. She had learned a few of the details of the incident
  through her connection with the SDECE, and she was im-
  mediately solicitous, taking him by the arm and talking
  incessantly as she led him out to her Ferrari.
  Carter finally stopped her prattling. "Marie," he said,
  putting down his suitcase and taking her hands.
  She blinked but swallowed her next words.
  "I'm on vacation. I don't give a damn what happened or
  what will happen to the world. For the next ten days I want
  to do nothing more than eat, sleep, lie around the beach,
  and ..."
  "Make love with me," Marie said, her eyes twinkling.
  "And make love with you," Carter agreed.
  She reached into the car and pulled out a chilled bottle of
  champagne. "Do the honors?" she asked. He took the bottle
  and opened it, the cork flying, champagne foam bubbling all
  over the place, as she got the glasses.
  It would be nice if the only explosions on this earth were
  those of popping champagne corks, Carter thought as they
  clinked glasses. And they drank the icy wine beneath the hot
  Mediterranean sun and thought only of what future days, and
  nights, would bring.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  DON'T MISS THE NEXT NEW
  NICK CARTER SPY THRILLER
  OPERATION SHARKBITE
  Carter crouched in the closet, the scent from Bridgit
  Michaels's clothing filling his nostrils. The sap he had
  almost used on the shooter at Grayburn House was in his right
  hand
  Just in case, Wilhelmina occupied his left.
  No lights were on in the living room or the bedroom. A
  narrow shaft of sunlight seeped through a crack in the drapes
  to fall across the hanks of hair on the pillow and the sheet
  covering the wadded blankets serving as bodies.
  The door from the living room to the bedroom was open
  about six inches and within Carter's sight.
  It had been about ten minutes since Bridgit had done her
  towel-waving routine from the front window. Now she was
  dressed and crouching on the fire escape outside the window.
  "What if the neighbors across the way see me?" she had
  asked.
  "Wave to 'em. You're just getting some early morning
  air."
  193
  194
  NICK CARTER
  
  
  
  
  
  194
  NICK CARTER
  For ten seconds and ten seconds only, Carter had thought
  about calling Hamilton and MI5 for backup. But if there was
  another leak in MIS besides Bridgit, it would do little good
  ...and maybe blow the whole thing.
  A creak of wood. . . faint, barely discernible . . . but
  there.
  It was the front door of the flat.
  Carter tensed, relaxed, and tensed his muscles again to get
  them ready
  The bedroom door moved an inch, and then another six
  inches.
  The first thing through the opening was the silenced snout
  of a Heckler and Koch UP70 machine pistol. Like everything
  else the West Germans manufactured, the UP70 was a work
  of art.
  It operated on selective three round bursts from an eighteen
  round feeder, at a deadly cyclic rate of 2,200 rounds per
  minute.
  Just as fast as the trigger could be pulled.
  The man behind the UP70 was young, wearing jeans and a
  baggy pullover. The sweater had probably been used to hide
  the machine pistol as he crossed the street and climbed the
  stairs to 3C.
  His all-night vigil showed. His lean, deeply tanned face
  badly needed a shave.
  He moved toward the bed with startling economy. So
  much so that it seemed that no part of him moved except the
  extended arm holding the pistol.
  When the hand holding the UP70 was just over the foot-
  board of the bed, the long silencer began bucking. The room
  was filled with the smell of burnt powder and the dull thud of
  the slugs as they tore into the heavy blankets.
  Nick Carter was a pro. He recognized another one.
  The guy took no chances. He just kept firing.
  NICK CARTER
  195
  
  
  
  
  
  ^く
  195(207 of 212)
  - +
  110%
  NICK CARTER
  195
  Carter counted the bursts in his head: four... five. ..
  six.
  Three times six is eighteen; exactly what the UP70
  magazine held.
  The shooter was just moving around the bed on Carter's
  side to check his handiwork when the Killmaster moved out.
  The guy was sharp.
  Carter's gliding steps barely made a sound on the rug, but
  he heard them.
  —From OPERATION SHARKBITE
  A New Nick Carter Spy Thriller
  From Charter in April
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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Новые книги авторов СИ, вышедшие из печати:
О.Болдырева "Крадуш. Чужие души" М.Николаев "Вторжение на Землю"

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