KILLMASTER #215
The Samurai Kill
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PROLOGUE
A thin red dawn tinged the eastern sky over the
remote cove not far from the mouth of the Sepik River
on the north coast of New Guinea. Rain forest hung
thick over the edges of the deep, narrow cove except
where small, rickety piers had been built out into the
water. Around the piers the jungle had been cleared (or
access.
The people stood in the clearings around the piers at
the edge of the cove.
Naked, ragged, their black skins smeared with dirt,
they stood in silence, staring down into the dark water
of the cove. Some of them, the older men with white
hair and scarred faces, shook their heads in solemn
wonder. The younger ones, men and women, licked
their lips and balanced nervously on one foot. And all
of them continued to look down at the surface of the
cove.
They seemed to stare at the water itself. But it wasn't
the water. It was what protruded from the water.
Moved in the water. Choked the water.
Moved and grew.
Even as they all silently watched in the darkness
before dawn, the vegetation grew before their eyes. Not
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as fast as a fish jumps or a snake swims, but fast enough
for the human eye to see.
It grew and choked the cove, filling it. The plant life
was already so thick that one of the old men remarked,
"Soon we will be able to walk on the water. "
The others who heard him, all Christians now,
shivered and crossed themselves.
A tall, white-haired Caucasian appeared behind the
old man who had spoken. In khaki trousers, shirt, and
bush jacket, all faded almost to white by many years of
having been washed on rocks and dried in the sun, he
was led by an energetic young black in a similar outfit,
the young man's still crisp and new-looking.
"You come see!" the younger man urged as he half
dragged the older man to the edge of the cove.
The silent people parted to let the two in khaki go to
where the old black man waited for the old white man.
"You look," the old black man said, not in his own
tribal language now but in Pisin, the pidgin lingua
franca of the new nation. The white man nodded. The
Australian station agent who had remained to help the
new government after independence had lived here most
of his life. Where else would he go?
"What is it?" he said.
"Water like jungle. Can walk on water. Fella no here
yesterday. All same here now. One night. "
"That's impossible. "
"Sure. Fella no possible. All same happen.
The tall old Caucasian stared down at the water. As
he watched he saw the thick vegetation growing up
through the slowly lightening surface of the narrow
cove, growing so fast it seemed to be more animal than
vegetable, moving across the water like a million snakes
with leaves in their mouths. The whole surface of the
cove was alive like a single giant sea monster.
Then came the fish.
Dead fish oozed to the surface of the vegetation-
choked cove. Hundreds, thousands were emerging
everywhere through the thick plant growth. Dead
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as fast as a fish jumps or a snake swims, but fast enough
for the human eye to see.
It grew and choked the cove, filling it. The plant life
was already so thick that one of the old men remarked,
"Soon we will be able to walk on the water. "
The others who heard him, all Christians now,
shivered and crossed themselves.
A tall, white-haired Caucasian appeared behind the
old man who had spoken. In khaki trousers, shirt, and
bush jacket, all faded almost to white by many years of
having been washed on rocks and dried in the sun, he
was led by an energetic young black in a similar outfit,
the young man's still crisp and new-looking.
"You come see!" the younger man urged as he half
dragged the older man to the edge of the cove.
The silent people parted to let the two in khaki go to
where the old black man waited for the old white man.
"You look," the old black man said, not in his own
tribal language now but in Pisin, the pidgin lingua
franca of the new nation. The white man nodded. The
Australian station agent who had remained to help the
new government after independence had lived here most
of his life. Where else would he go?
"What is it?" he said.
"Water like jungle. Can walk on water. Fella no here
yesterday. All same here now. One night. "
"That's impossible. "
"Sure. Fella no possible. All same happen.
The tall old Caucasian stared down at the water. As
he watched he saw the thick vegetation growing up
through the slowly lightening surface of the narrow
cove, growing so fast it seemed to be more animal than
vegetable, moving across the water like a million snakes
with leaves in their mouths. The whole surface of the
cove was alive like a single giant sea monster.
Then came the fish.
Dead fish oozed to the surface of the vegetation-
choked cove. Hundreds, thousands were emerging
everywhere through the thick plant growth. Dead
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shellfish were carried on the vegetation, their shells open
like the mouths of corpses.
And dead animals.
A cat. Two dogs. The gray bodies of rats and mice.
The tall old Australian looked to where one old black
pointed. A muskrat had come to the cove, slipped into
the water, and started to swim through the strange
vegetation. It swam out five feet, ten feet, then turned
on its back, dead.
"Get everyone away from the cove!" the Australian
shouted.
The old men needed no urging.
With the tall Australian at the rear they all hurried
away from the cove. Before they vanished into the
jungle toward their village, the Australian turned
around to stare at the unearthly sight. Then he followed
the rest at a trot toward the village and his radio.
Silence fell over the cove as dawn slowly lit the land-
scape; a silence broken only by a strange sibilant sound:
the sound of leaves and thick vines growing rapidly
through the water. An endless hiss like the distant
pound of surf. Growing and thickening. A mass of
vegetation that seemed to lift the surface of the water
itself.
Then up through the massive underwater jungle, out
of the cove, came ten men in black wet suits.
On the shore, they began to trot inland.
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Nick Carter swam into the dark shadows of the coral
cave and flattened himself against the jagged wall.
Careful to keep his air hose away from the sharp edges
of the reef, he waited in the shadows. Brilliantly colored
fish swam through the clear blue water, the paler blue
light of the surface far above.
The other swimmer appeared around the coral-
encrusted wreck of a World War II American landing
craft, moving slowly and cautiously, spear gun ready,
eyes searching behind the face mask.
The swimmer passed the dark mouth of the small
coral cave.
And whirled to suddenly race toward the opening of
the cave, spear gun out in front.
Carter waited until the last second, kicked hard off
the reef, and dove under the advancing diver.
He almost made it.
The second swimmer doubl$d like a snake, caught
one foot, and pulled. Carter somersaulted in the water
and grabbed his attacker by the waist. They wrestled in
the deep water far below the distant surface.
Until the smaller attacker caught Carter's swim
trunks and pulled them off.
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She grinned around her mouthpiece, then reached up
and untied her halter, letting her breasts float free in the
blue water in the shadows of the great reef. Carter came
to her. They held each other under the far-off pale light
of the surface, their eyes alive behind their diving
masks.
Carter pointed to the sunlit surface and the shadow of
their boat.
She nodded, her eyes flashing through the plexiglass
of the mask.
They stared at each other for a moment, desire ob-
vious in their gaze.
The sea suddenly darkened.
Carter looked up.
A giant shadow loomed through the water toward
them, a shadow that darkened the bottom of the sea like
night, a black cloud between Carter and the woman and
the light from above.
The two divers glanced quickly at each other. The
woman moved her fingers rapidly in sign language.
"A shark?"
Carter answered the same way: "The biggest shark
I've ever seen if it is."
"A whale?"
"Could be," Carter signed through the darkened
ocean.
"Maybe we'd better hit the bottom."
Carter nodded.
They sank down to the bottom, crouching against the
reef as the long shadow moved closer to pass almost
directly above them.
It wasn't a shark or a whale.
' 'A submarine!" the woman signed.
"Not any submarine I know," Carter answered.
It was small and unlike any submarine either of them
had ever seen.
It was half as thick as it was long, with windows along
the sides, ponderous and slow-moving, yet not all that
slow.
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"More like a deep-diving submersible for scientific
research," the woman signed.
It did indeed look like the kind of diving submersible
used far down at the bottom of the deepest water, yet it
was bigger and faster than any diving submersible
Carter had ever seen.
"DO you recognize it?" he asked through the
shadowy water.
She shook her head. She had never seen anything like
it either. Her name was Siobhan O'Neill, Commander
Siobhan O'Neill of the Australian Navy, and she knew
as much about underwater hardware as anyone on
earth.
Against the reef they watched the strange submersible
pass slowly over them and on out toward the open
Pacific. It moved steadily to the southeast and finally
faded from sight in the clear blue water.
Carter pointed to the surface, then said in sign
language,' 'We'd better report. "
Siobhan O'Neill nodded.
They started up.
The five men came from the direction of the vanished
submersible.
Five men swam toward them in wet suits and masks,
spear guns out in front, and—no air tanks!
Carter didn't wait.
Neither did Siobhan O'Neill.
They dove back to the bottom and the shadows of the
reef.
' 'Into the reef!" Carter signed.
They swam into the sharp-edged labyrinth of the
coral.
The first spear impaled itself in the coral an inch
behind Carter's foot as he plunged into the jagged
shadows of the reef.
The second tore paint from Siobhan O'Neill's air
tank, the metallic clang echoing through the blue water.
They swam in fast curves and turns deeper into the
reef itself. The third spear drew blood from Siobhan
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O'Neill's thigh. She was an instant too slow to escape
the lead attacker.
"Keep swimming," Carter signed.
He curved around a jagged spur of coral, then threw
himself into a somersault as Siobhan swam on past.
The lead attacker raced around the coral spur and saw
Carter a split second too late. He fired, but the
Killmaster's spear caught him in the throat as he pulled
the trigger. The man's arm jerked, and the powerful air-
propelled spear flew harmlessly over Carter's head.
Thick blood gushed into the water as the dead at-
tacker went limp and floated slowly, like a broken doll,
toward the surface.
The others came behind the dead man among the
razor-sharp coral shapes and peaks. Carter turned and
swam after Siobhan. The other four were almost on top
of him as he came out of the reef into clear water.
Siobhan picked off the first one.
The spear protruded a foot out of his back as he
thrashed and screamed soundlessly like a fish on a har-
poon.
The remaining three ducked back into the reef for
cover.
"The landing barge!" Carter signed.
They swam powerfully toward the shattered shape of
the encrusted old World War II craft, gliding through
the underwater barriers set up so long ago by the
Japanese defenders of the atoll—barrels of concrete,
jumbles of old railroad tracks, and rusted masses of
barbed wire.
Behind them the three pursuers had regrouped and
now reached the barriers. Two stopped in time. The
third didn't.
Caught by the barbed wire, he struggled to disen-
tangle himself. Carter shot from inside the old landing
craft, spearing the struggling man with a single shot
across the distange of crystal-clear water.
The man floated among the rusted rails. One more
sacrifice in the ruins of a long-ago war, his blood rose
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slowly through the blue water.
The last two slipped over the wire and the rusted bar-
riers in a final attack on Carter and Siobhan hidden in
the cover of the old landing craft.
Siobhan speared one in the left shoulder.
Carter got the other in the right arm.
The pair of attackers turned and fled, their blood
leaving a cloudy trail of red behind them.
Carter looked at Siobhan O'Neill; then signed
quickly, "You go up and report in. I'll go after them."
"So you get all the fun? Not on your life, Com-
mander Carter. You report, I chase. Or we chase
together. When someone tries to kill me, I want to know
who and why."
"How's that wound in your thigh?"
"A scratch. It's already stopped bleeding."
Carter grinned behind his mask, and together they
began to swim off after the vanishing figures.
They followed the fleeing shadows and the trail of
blood in the water. The chase led them away from the
reef in the direction of the deeper water, going down
rapidly toward the darker blue depths.
They swam low to the bottom, rising and falling in
their swimming with the contours of the dwindling reef.
The divers up ahead, who somehow breathed without
tanks, never looked back. Carter wondered if they were
too scared to care if anyone were following them—or
too sure it wouldn't matter if anyone did follow them.
"That submarine?" Carter signed to Siobhan.
"That's my guess," she agreed.
"How much air do you have?"
"Maybe another fifteen minutes," she signed, "but
we have to get back, too."
"We can go back on the surface."
Then they saw it faintly in the distance: a hazy black
shape in the darkening deep of the sea.
The submarine.
It seemed to be resting silently just above the bottom,
just on the edge of a sudden plunge down into the
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blackness of the vast ocean depths.
Silent and unmoving.
The two escaping divers seemed to swim faster as they
approached the looming shape.
"Let's get them!" Carter signed through the darker
water.
They swam in fast pursuit of their quarry and closed
the gap rapidly.
But all at once their two mysterious attackers seemed
to stop swimming and move through the water faster
than any swimmers could, like projectiles hurtling
toward the steel sides of the submarine. Hatches opened
in the submarine, and the two men vanished inside as if
sucked up by a great vacuum.
"Dive!" Carter signed quickly, urgently.
Siobhan needed no urging.
The woman and Carter dived for the bottom itself
and the sheltering rocks.
They went a few feet and stopped.
They hovered in the water unable to go any farther
down.
Held.
Caught and immobilized as if in the grip of a giant
hand.
Held by some unseen force.
A force that slowly drew them toward the black,
silent submarine.
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Carter struggled to break out of the grip of the unseen
force that dragged him slowly through the darker water
into the deep ocean. Siobhan signed frantically as she
twisted and turned beside him.
"What is it?"
"Some kind of force field that's holding us!"
"That's science fiction!"
"Not now it isn't. "
No matter how hard they twisted, turned, and strug-
gled against the force that held them, they couldn't
break away. Carter stopped fighting, and just paddled
slowly in the dark blue of the deeper water. Siobhan
stared at him.
"We can't give up!"
' 'No," Carter signed. ' 'Come on. "
He began to swim straight toward the dark shape Of
the submarine ahead. Siobhan understood at once and
swam after him into the power of whatever was drag-
ging them. Their sudden hard swimming, combined
with the pull of the force, moved them rapidly toward
the silent submersible with its side windows like blind
eyes.
They were less than fifty yards away when they real-
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ized they were getting no closer.
No matter how hard they swam they remained fifty
yards from the silent submarine with its empty win-
dowse
"It's moving!" Siobhan signed.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the submarine had
begun to move away from Carter and Siobhan O'Neill.
It moved slowly, but faster than they could possibly
swim, and the force still held them in its grip, so they
were dragged through the water.
They could neither escape nor advance any closer to
the submarine. They could only struggle helplessly and
look at their watches.
"How much air?" Siobhan signed.
"Ten minutes."
"What do we do?"
"Try to break out, and hope."
"Lovely."
They tried everything: twisted, dived, swam ahead as
fast as they could, hurled themselves sideways. They
tried resisting the pull togethe!, Carter pulling on
Siobhan's waist.
Nothing.
They looked toward the disappearing bottom as the
land sloped steeply down into the depths of the ocean. If
only they could grab a rock, Carter thought, frustrated,
but there was no way they could swim down with the
force holding them.
They tried to swim to the rear, away from the beam.
Nothing.
"How long?" Siobhan signed.
"Four minutes. "
"Less. We have to get to the surface. "
"The force beam has to come from somewhere on
that sub. Maybe a spear would carry that far?"
' 'We might as well try anything."
Carter aimed his spear gun and fired straight at the
massive black shape of the submarine that pulled them
inexorably ahead.
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The spear fell far short, and hung dangling vertically
in the pull of the force.
C' The head!" Carter signed. "Only the head!"
"The shaft is bamboo!"
"Magnetic! The pull is some kind of magnetic
force. "
"The tanks!"
"Has to be."
"Can we make the surface?"
"We'll have to. Take in all the air you can."
They breathed slowly, then took one long, deep
breath and threw off their air tanks.
They kicked upward as hard as they could, and broke
free of the force from the submarine.
The air tanks hung suspended in the water, moving on
after the vanishing submarine.
Carter and Siobhan O'Neill swam up and up toward
the surface.
Kicked up and up.
Slowly let out precious air.
Up and up and up and.. ..
Carter broke out into the air and gulped deep breaths.
Siobhan came up gasping, swallowing water but
breathing.
They breathed. Breathed.
Siobhan smiled. "Nice to breathe real air. "
"And we can even talk," Carter said with a laugh.
Siobhan laughed too, and in the bright sunlight and
air on the surface of the blue Pacific they hugged each
other and laughed and laughed. The long swells of the
sea rolled them up and over and down again under the
lighter blue of the cloudless sky. A massive, ponderous
sea that seemed to roll from the vast depths of the
Mariana Trench.
"Well, " Siobhan said, "what do you think?"
"l think it's nice to breathe and talk."
"The submarine. Do you think it's part of what we're
here for? The missing divers? The small moving 'things'
seen deep down outside the reef?"
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"That could be, but I'm more concerned with where
we spotted it, and where it was coming from. It was
pretty close to Kwaj, and coming from the direction of
the lagoon. "
"Why? They've got their surveillance ship off Kwaj
all the time. Was it a Soviet-type sub?"
"It wasn't any kind of submersible I've ever seen.
Fatter and slower than a combat sub. A lot bigger and
faster than any deep-diving submersible. "
"No clues as to who built it or where it could have
come from?"
"None."
Carter nodded where they stroked slowly in place on
the heaving rolls of the ocean, and on the crest of a swell
he looked all around.
"Any clues to where we are?" he asked Siobhan.
"About four miles northeast of the atoll by now. If
we swim due west, we should hit one of the islands
around the lagoon."
"You know where west is?"
"l am a naval officer, mate," the Australian said.
"What do they teach you in that navy of yours?"
C' Just start swimming west. "
She laughed, flipped her watch over to reveal a water-
proof compass, sighted on the sun, and began swim-
ming. Carter swam beside her through the rolls of the
open Pacific toward the Kwajalein atoll where he and
Siobhan were based for their investigation of the odd
happenings at the supersecret U.S. installation. Kwa-
jalein was where the U.S. Marines had landed so blood-
ily long ago in World War II, where the U.S. Air Force's
Ballistic Missile Office sends its intercontinental ballistic
missiles to land on their test firings from Vandenberg
Air Force Base five thousand miles away in California,
and where the supersecret Strategic Defense Initiative
research was being done.
In his disguise as Commander Nelson Carter of
United States Naval Intelligence, AXE's superagent N3,
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the Killmaster, and Siobhan O'Neill of Australian
Naval Intelligence, had been sent to Kwajalein because
native divers had been going down as they always had
from where they had been moved to Ebaye Island in the
atoll, but some of them had not been coming up. And
some of those who did come up, those yho had dived
deeper than most, brought back stories of seeing odd,
black, cigar-shaped objects moving rapidly through the
water near the supersecret atoll base, Moving, and no
one knew where to or where from.
"Nelson!"
The great dorsal fin cut through the swelling blue sur-
face no more than fifty feet away.
"Stop," Carter said. ' 'Easy."
"A white?"
"Just float, no motion."
They floated as the fin seemed to make a long, slow,
lazy curve around where they were motionless in the
middle of the vast expanse of endless water. Carter
spoke without moving his lips.
"Spear gun?"
"Not much against a white. "
"It's something."
The fin went on, not circling them, but simply swim-
ming in a long curve that moved the shark past them but
not away from them. They floated, never taking their
eyes from the moving fin.
"It hasn't seen us."
"Not yet."
' 'They don't see well."
"I'm glad we didn't wear wet suits. People think it
makes us look like seals. Slow seals, easy to catch."
"And they like seals. "
"I'm not sure how they find ... things."
"No."
The school of porpoise appeared from out of the long
swells. A large school, swimming and gamboling.
Adults and young. The great white would not catch a
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healthy adult, but there was always hope of an injury or
one of the calves wandering too far, overlooked by the
adults. The slicing fin left its circle and cruised away in a
fast, straight line after the lazily swimming porpoises.
"Breaststroke," Carter said. "For a while."
"As long as we get away from here and closer to
shore. "
They swam, breaststroking for some time, and then
changed to the powerful crawls of experienced distance
swimmers. For a long time they saw only the heavy
swells as they crested and dropped down into the
troughs and crested again. On and up and down and on
and over and down and on. Watching always for the fin
behind and the land ahead.
The fin did not come, but the land did.
First they glimpsed the far-off sight of palm trees that
seemed to grow up out of the blue swells themselves,
trees in the sky, and gone, then rising into the sky again.
And then they saw the white spray of surf breaking on
the reef, then the dark flash of the reef itself. And still
the tops of the palms inside the reef beyond the spray.
Then they saw the break in the reef, the opening of a
passage through.
"It's Bigej Channel," Siobhan said. "We're a lot far-
ther north than I thought. "
' 'Ten miles at least. "
Carter glanced toward the sun that now hung low in
the western sky behind the atoll]
"We can't swim that much farther south before it
gets dark," Carter decided. "Swim into the atoll. We'll
land on the first island. "
They swam into the wide channel through the reef
and on toward the vast atoll ringed by the low-lying
coral islands. Darkness fell abruptly, and Carter
pointed toward some palm trees and low greenery close
by.
"Let's hit shore there before it's so dark we can't see
islands or reefs. "
Once on the white sand of the shore, they found their
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legs shaking from the long swim and the hours in the
water. They sat on the still sun-hot sand without speak-
ing, getting their breath and their strength back.
Then they began to shiver.
The darkness was cold with the sun gone.
They moved close together against the shivering cold.
Their bodies touched. Cold and tired and silent with the
memory of the shark and the force that had held them
helpless far beneath the ocean, they remembered the
fear and the closeness of death. And suddenly they
wanted each other.
"Nelson?"
"It's okay."
"We could have drowned. We could have been torn
apart. We could have never come back. Not ever!"
' 'It's okay. "
"We were almost dead."
'SAImost."
"I don't want to be dead. "
"No," he said. Carter knew that death had been as
close as a white shark's eyes and the unknown force of a
submarine dragging them down into the depths of the
sea.
He picked Siobhan up and carried her into the
shadows beneath the palm trees, behind the heavy green
leaves and out of the night wind.
He lay her on the soft sand.
She took off her halter, freeing her breasts in the
cool night air. They were high and tight from the cold
and the ocean. Carter pressed the hard, cold breasts
against his chest until they began to warm and soften.
He pressed her breasts and her belly. Her hand pulled
off his trunks.
Down on the still warm sand he slipped off her bikini
bottom and knelt between her legs. She clawed at his
naked back, and he spread her wide and wider and
entered in a violent thrust that tore a long cry of need
from her throat. A cry Of relief. Of life. Of triumph
over death.
He thrust into her so deeply he felt as if he were far
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down in the dark sea again, under miles of water,
enclosed and smothered by her body as he had been by
the ocean. His hips moved, thrusting, straining deeper
and deeper into her. His back and chest were held in a
powerful grip by her arms and legs. Her teeth on his
neck, her tongue on his throat, her mouth open with low
sounds from far down in the depths of time, sounds
from a million years ago.
Cries shattered the silent night of palms and hot sand
and softly rolling waves of the sheltered lagoon and the
far-off rumble of surf on the reef and the open ocean
that reached to the ends of the earth. Timeless . . .
endless ... infinite....
The moon was up in the black sky of stars when
Carter turned to look down at her beside him in the
sand. A sea wind moved the palms above them.
"We're alive," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"On the whole, I think I prefer that."
"It has certain advantages. But it's even better with
something to eat and maybe a bed. t'
"I don't know, Commander—the sand seemed to do
fine for our purposes. "
Carter laughed and stood up. "What we could use is a
telephone. We've got to report in."
It took some time to find her bikini and his trunks in
the dark where they had thrown them. They dressed in
what little they had and moved through the thick green
growth under the palms. They saw no sign Of habitation
and came out at the edge of the water again in less than
fifty yards. They walked along the edge of the water and
returned to where they had started in another fifty or so
yards.
"It's just a damned islet, " Siobhan muttered.
"Which one?"
"How would I know? There're ninety-three of them
in the Kwaj atoll. "
"And this is probably the smallest."
Across the water they saw another islet, larger, with
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an enormous radar dome like a giant's tennis ball
against the dark sky. There was no sign of light.
' 'it could be Bigej Island," Siobhan said. "Which-
ever one it is, no one is there at night."
"Let's try the other side."
At the other end of their minuscule dot of land, the
lagoon stretched calm in the night as far as they could
"We're miles from where anyone lives," Siobhan
said.
"You feel like swimming south in the dark?"
"With great whites around? Not to mention reefs and
God knows what else?"
"Then it looks like we bed down here."
She smiled. "It's been a good bed so far."
"Very good. "
"We might as well try it again. "
They did.
And after a long time, covered by palm fronds and
other thick leaves, they even slept.
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A brilliant sun shined low through the vegetation like
a great blood orange. Nick Carter opened his eyes.
He was alone.
He sat up, scattering palm fronds and sand.
Siobhan was nowhere in sight.
Her diving mask, spear gun, swim fins, and bikini lay
on the sand next to where they had slept among the
thick undergrowth.
Carter reached for his spear gun and jumped up.
On the far side of the tiny islet something splashed
through the water of the lagoon.
Carter moved quickly in a crouch through the thick
growth under the palm trees, peering out between
parted leaves at the western edge of the tiny islet. He
saw nothing.
The surface of the lagoon stretched unbroken in the
early morning sunlight:
Then she came up, breaking through the surface in a
great surge of white water. Siobhan O'Neill, naked,
water streaming from her breasts and hair and thighs,
playing and cavorting in the lagoon like a slim white
porpoise.
She saw him.
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"Nels! Come on in!"
He laughed, put down his spear gun, and stood up.
He stripped out of his trunks and plunged into the
crystalline water of the shimmering lagoon. Siobhan
swam rapidly away from him. He pursued in a long,
powerful crawl that ate up the distance, but he gained
no ground on the swift Australian.
She swam around the point of the minuscule island,
ihen turned on her back and floated as Carter came up.
He kissed her where she floated, and in the cool, clear
water they embraced for a long time. When Carter car-
ried her out of the water she buried her face in his
shoulder and he placed her down on the exact spot of
sand where they had spent the long night under the palm
fronds.
Then they made love again.
Slowly this time, in no hurry, the smell of death gone
with the warm morning sun. Soft and slow, moving
sinuously in the sand. Watching themselves and each
other, enjoying, smiling down and up, delaying and
moving and shaping the moment in the morning sun
that moved as they moved, slowly up over the tops of
the palm trees.
Until at last their breathing grew shorter and quicker
and it was not possible to delay any longer and he ex-
ploded into her and—
A mammoth, thunderous, mountainous pillar of
water soared into the air in the center of the great
lagoon, echoing across the whole Pacific, water raining
down like some massive circular Niagara.
"My God," Siobhan whispered hoarsely when she
finally caught her breath. "What the hell was that? I
mean, you're good, Nels, but ."
With the echo of the massive impact and falling water
still reverberating across the lagoon, Carter grinned.
"ICBM coming in from Vandenberg," he said.
"Until the 'Star Wars' research, Kwaj was mainly just a
big bull's-eye for the air force boys to play with."
"Christ, I'm glad they've got good aim."
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THE •SAMURAI KILL
"On the button from five thousand miles."
Siobhan got up and began to pull on her bikini. "And
speaking of buttons, we'd better get dressed and get
back to the general with our report. "
"You want to swim, or wait to flag down a chopper
when the crew comes to that radome oyer across the
"We've had enough long-distance swimming for a
while, wouldn't you say?"
"That I would say. Okay, let's swim over and wait
for the crew at the radome. "
They did, and less than half an hour later the heli-
copter appeared, flying low up along the chain of small
islands that surrounded the vast lagoon. The civilians
who operated the radar equipment, and the army heli-
copter pilot, gaped at the two half-naked divers with
their fins and spear guns, until Carter and Siobhan
O'Neill produced their identification and top-secret
ratings from the waterproof pockets inside their bathing
suits. The civilians continued to gape and grin, but the
pilot snapped to and ushered them aboard the chopper
for the trip south to Kwajalein Island itself.
They flew low over the white line of the reef with the
massive blue Pacific stretching like a great bowl in all
directions, the edges rising at the horizons as if the
endless blue would engulf them. Carter watched the reef
and the long chain of islets below, big and small, with
the pale blue lagoon contained inside, the distant islets
out of sight on the far side of the largest atoll in the
world. He saw empty islands, and radar domes, and
great tracking satellite saucers, and the larger Ebaye
Island where all the native Kwajaleinis were packed now
in a kind of paradise slum, and finally the larger, elbow-
shaped, main Kwajalein Island.
As they hovered waiting for a pad at the headquarters
of the army officers who ran the complex, Carter and
Siobhan looked down on the mile-square island with its
coconut palms, and old Japanese bunkers, and the high-
technology community that had sprung up since the
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U.S. Army had taken over. The surf-pounded island
was home to about three thousand Americans, only
thirty of whom were military personnel. The rest were
engineers, technicians, and other civilian workers with
their spouses and children.
Even from the air, except for the expanse of endless
water, palms, and surf, Kwaj could be a small town
anywhere in mid-America. There were two nine-hole
golf courses and a pair of swimming pools, high school
proms and a VFW Post, rock music on the radio and
seven brands of beer in the single bar. The only dif-
ference, beyond the sweep of the Pacific, was that this
town's Bermuda-shorts-clad workers were all experts in
radar, optics, missile guidance, and other exotic
mathematical disciplines.
They were men and women from MIT, RCA, GTE,
and Kentron. They pored over pages of mathematical
formulas as they commuted daily to the atoll's far-flung
facilities aboard army aircraft. The billion dollars'
worth of equipment included the mammoth radar dishes
shaped to a hairsbreadth tolerance and pumping out 400
billion watts of power—including the massive, 150-foot-
diameter Altair that tracked Soviet satellites with un-
canny accuracy, telescopes that could pick up a
17,000 mph missile, 2,000 miles away and hold it in
their sights, and high-tech video cameras of incredibly
advanced design.
The greatest tribute to Kwaj's one-of-a-kind techno-
logical development was the Soviet electronics-surveil-
lance ship that lay constantly just offshore picking up
the streams of encoded data being beamed back to the
United States, data that included every nuance of how
an ICBM, its warheads and decoys, performed, and that
recently contained the island's most spectacular accom-
plishment: the triumphant culmination of the ten-year,
S300-million "Homing Overlay Experiment."
An unarmed ICBM was launched from Vandenberg
toward Kwajalein. Ten minutes later an anti-ICBM
missile was fired off Kwaj. Using a new infrared homing
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system„ the heat-seeking Defender missile caught the
ICBM's warhead more than a hundred miles up in space
over the Pacific and destroyed it in a collision that
flashed explosively across the island's ultrasensitive sen-
sor screens.
But as Carter and Siobhan O'Neill came into a land-
ing, the headquarters island of the whole supersecret
complex looked as peaceful as any American town or
suburb thousands of miles from any international
danger. Only it wasn't, and something was wrong in
paradise. Carter and Siobhan hurried into the head-
quarters of the commanding officer. The master
sergeant outside the commandant's office jumped up
when he saw them.
"The general's been looking for you two since yester-
day afternoon. Come on. "
The sergeant knocked, opened the commandant's
door. and peered in.
"Carter and the Australian cloak-and-dagger, sir. "
A deep, curt voice growled in response, "It's about
time, dammit! Send them in."
The sergeant stood aside, winked, and they walked
into a large, comfortable office that could have been on
any army or air force base anywhere in the United
States. The Stars and Stripes stood furled in one holder
behind the man at the desk, the unit standard in the
other. Only the view out the window of the calm, tur-
quoise, palm-fringed lagoon was unique.
"Where the hell have you two been?"
He was a thin, dapper little man with a fierce gray
mustache, narrow blue eyes, and a full uniform with tie
and confetti. The booming voice sounded as if it came
from a chest three times the size of his.
"We told you that we were checking the reef up off
Ebaye, General Scott," Carter said.
"You told me that you were checking the reef yester-
day morning, not for twenty-four hours! I don't care
who you report to when you're not on Kwajalein, but
when you are on Kwajalein, you will report to me at
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least three times a day! I don't like DOD Intelligence or
CIA clowns snooping around my command, not to
mention foreign agents, unless I know every goddamned
thing they're doing every goddamned minute of every
goddamned day! Is that clear to you, Commander
Carter?" He glared at Carter, then turned his cold eyes
to Siobhan. "And to you, Commander O'Neill?"
"If you would let us report, General, maybe you
would find out why we didn't report earlier. "
The irate general jumped to his feet. "Don't get wise
with me, Carter! I know you Intelligence people! You
spend half your time making simple problems com-
plicated so you can justify your jobs, and the other half
spying on real soldiers! You may be hotshot snoopers,
but here you're under my command, you hear?"
' SHOW could we forget?" Carter said drily.
Siobhan O'Neill said, "Would you care to hear what
we've really been doing, General Scott, or would you
rather rave and rant a bit longer?"
She smiled pleasantly. The general turned slowly, his
eyes wide. He was so astonished he opened his mouth
and then closed it again without saying another word.
Siobhan nodded to Carter.
"You want to give the report, Nelson?"
General Scott blinked, looked from one of them to
the other, then slowly sat down again behind his desk
and nodded. In a voice that was almost soft he såid,
"Report, Commander Carter. "
Carter sat in a chair facing the general. 'SWe decided
to check out the reports of the native divers on Ebaye:
the moving 'things' down deep that looked like black
cigars. You know that some divers who went down
didn't come up. So we dove all along the reef on the
ocean side. Most of the day nothing happened. We saw
nothing and spotted no danger of any kind."
Siobhan said, ' 'We were just about to give it up, sur-
face, and get back to our boat, when we saw it. Not
something small, and not cigar-shaped. Big and more
like a whale. A submarine."
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"Submarine?" The general sat bolt upright, mus-
tache bristling. "Russian? A Russian sub off Kwaj? I
knew it! I've told the Pentagon over and over—
"More like a submersible," Carter interjected. "For
deep-diving research. ' '
"And not Soviet," Siobhan added. "Not from any
country I could place. "
"It has to be Russian! I've suspected it all along. That
surveillance ship out there is only a decoy. The Rus-
sians've got subs out there ready to attack at any time."
"I know every sub in the world, General," Siobhan
said, ' 'and this one wasn't any Russian type I know."
"Then what type was it, Commander O'Neill?"
General Scott snapped.
"No type I'd ever seen before."
"So it could be Russian as well as any country's!"
"Yes," Siobhan admitted. "I can't say for sure it
wasn't a new Soviet type. "
"The important thing, General," Carter said, "isn't
who it belongs to, but what it is. It's smaller and fatter
than any attack sub, longer and faster and much larger
than any research sub Siobhan or I had ever heard of. It
has rows of windows, outside access ports, and divers
that don't use air tanks."
The general stared. "That's impossible! All divers use
air tanks. I mean, all free divers have to use air tanks.
They.. . Divers? What divers?"
Carter went on to tell the general everything about
their adventure under the Pacific, including the night
stranded on the tiny islet on Bigej Channel—with cer-
tain details left out that the general would have con-
sidered a gross dereliction of military ethics and duty.
"They tried to kill you?"
"They weren't playing water polo," Carter said.
"And they didn't have air tanks, " Siobhan said.
"Impossible," General Scott repeated. "No air tanks
and some kind of magnetic force beam? You expect
anyone to believe that Star Wars claptrap? "
"Star Trek," Carter said. "They use tractor and
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force beams on Star Trek, not in Star Wars."
"Whatever, " the general snapped.
"Star Wars or Star Trek, it grabbed us and held us,"
Siobhan O'Neill said, 'Sand it came from that submers-
ible."
6'A magnetic force beam that held our tanks. When
we slipped out of the tanks we got away. "
' 'About ten miles out to sea," Siobhan said, J 'and
that's why we didn't report yesterday or last night. "
The general ignored her, scowled, and pondered
behind his mammoth desk with the turquoise lagoon
outside the window behind him. He was the kind of man
who never turned to look out at the beauty of the
lagoon.
"Those divers," he said suddenly. "The ones you
killed. Any chance of getting their bodies? Their equip-
ment? To prove they were Russians?"
"l doubt it," Carter said. "By this time they've
floated out to sea if the sharks haven't gotten them."
"Or if that sub hasn't retrieved them," Siobhan said.
"I have a suspicion that whoever is running that sub
wouldn't want to be identified."
"Russians, i'
the general said. "There's no other
possible explanation. And that means they've developed
a bunch of new weapons and are waiting right offshore
to take over Kwaj any time they want to just as I've been
telling Washington for ten years. We must report it at
once. Washington can lodge a protest with the U and
Moscow within a day. We can show the whole world
what sneaky bastards those Russians are." He swiveled
in his chair to face his telephone. "I'll expect your full
reports in writing on my desk within an hour."
Carter and Siobhan O'Neill did not get up.
' 'We're not going to report that that sub was Russian,
General," Carter said.
"Or that it was or is any threat to this installation,"
Siobhan added. "That would be unsubstantiated specu-
lation, and we deal in facts, sir. 'i
The general's face turned beet red and then purple.
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"You'll report this discussion! That's a fact. "
Carter stood up. "You'll have the reports of our in-
vestigation in one hour. If that isn't satisfactory, take it
up with the Pentagon and Canberra."
The general was still glaring at them in fury as they
walked out.
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Outside in the peaceful Pacific sunlight, Carter and
Siobhan O'Neill stood under palm trees and looked out
over the glistening lagoon.
"Do you think it's a Soviet action, Nelson?"
"It could be. They've never liked us tracking their
satellites from here, and they'd sure want to get their
hands on the SDI research data. "
"But they've got that surveillance ship right offshore
for that. "
' 'We wouldn't send the SDI data out of here. No,
they'd have to come in and get that by covert action."
Siobhan watched a small outrigger canoe sailing
across the mirrorlike surface of the lagoon. "Then it
could be the Soviets."
"I don't know," Carter mused. "It would have to be
tended from that surveillance ship—there's no other
tender out there. But as far as I can tell, that ship is
exactly what it seems to be, not a sub tender. "
"It could have a base somewhere on one of the
islands. "
"Possible, but I'm not sure what a sub could do to get
data from onshore. Seems to me a collapsible rubber
boat would be a lot better for that. Someone has to
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come ashore to swipe hard data."
"Then who? What? And how do those divers breathe
without air tanks?"
' 'And who developed that magnetic force beam?"
' 'Could the Soviets just be testing new weapons? "
"Why pick Kwaj? There's sure to be hell to pay inter-
nationally if they're spotted. t'
"Maybe just because of that. Stir up the waters.
American arrogance taking over the whole Pacific. "
"Show what they can do?"
"It's possible," Siobhan said.
Carter nodded. "I think we'd better make out our
own reports directly, before General Scott files his and
doctors ours. "
"Agreed. I'll go and code mine now. It should take
me about an hour. "
"Right," Carter said.
He watched her go along the shaded street that looked
more like Kalamazoo than Kwajalein, still wearing only
her bikini and carrying her fins, mask, and spear gun.
When she was out of sight, Carter slipped back into the
headquarters building and found an empty office. He
picked up the local intraisland phone and dialed a
series of numbers. Beeps and clicks and pings crackled
through the instrument, and then a sultry voice came
on.
' 'Hello there, N3, where are you calling from? The
signal is bouncing off some Soviet satellite. My, my."
It was the secret computer network of AXE that
could pick up any telephone signal anywhere, and the
sexy electronic voice was David Hawk's little joke.
"Top secret for the director himself. Code One.
Kilimaster clearance. ' '
Carter was in no mood for making jokes with a com-
puter this morning. After more clicks and pings, the
gruff voice of Divid Hawk came on the line.
' 'It's two in the morning, N3. It had better be impor-
tant."
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"It's nine in the morning tomorrow here; sir, and it
could be."
"I hope it is. That general out there's been burning
ears at DOD Intelligence for two weeks. What the hell
are you doing to him?"
"Being here," Carter said.
' 'One of those generals?"
"In spades.
"I'll talk to someone."
"You'd better, or he'll start World War Three. "
"Tell me about it. What's happening out there under
the ocean?"
Carter told Hawk about the events of the day before,
including the divers without air tanks, the strange
submersible, and the magnetic force beam. He could
hear his Chief's butane lighter snap, the furious puffing
to light the omnipresent cheap cigar.
"That's science fiction, N3. "
"Not now it isn't, " Carter said.
"You sound like you've said that before."
"I have."
' 'And you probably will again," Hawk growled in
far-off Washington. "You think this submersible and
those divers are connected to the disappearing Marshall
Islanders and the shapes some divers saw down deep
outside the reef out there?"
"No proof or even evidence, but it stands to reason
there could be some connection.
"Russians?"
"General Scott thinks so," Carter admitted, "but
General Scott thinks the Russians are responsible for the
common cold and sunspots."
' 'If not the Soviet Union, then who?"
"Haven't a clue yet. Maybe peace activists or en-
vironmental zealots. Greenpeace or some other group.
They've been threatening to sail out here and picket the
place for years. "
"Where would they get a submarine?"
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"Where did the Weathermen get guns? There's
always someone interested in causing Uncle Sam
trouble."
"Killers?" Hawk's voice said after a moment.
"Those divers attacked you. Greenpeace has never com-
mitted any violence. "
"Then it's another group. Nice, normal, peaceful
people are bombing abortion clinics. "
The distant cigar was puffed furiously. ' 'All right, it's
possible, and it would be a lot worse than the Kremlin
boys as far as our world image is concerned, not to men-
tion the danger to the secret work out there. i'
"What danger could a submarine be?" Carter asked.
"You can't torpedo an island. They could land and take
this island, but they couldn't hold it a week, and what
the hell for? What excuse would anyone use?"
"The army's having trouble with the Kwajaleinis.
They want a better financial deal from Washington, and
they'd just as soon stop the operation and get us off
their island. Maybe someone wants to pull a Grenada on
us, liberate the Kwajaleinis from our capitalist exploita-
tion."
"Then why kill Kviajaleini divers? If the missing ones
have been killed. "
"Maybe they were people who wouldn't go along
with the radicals who want us out. Maybe to scare the
hell out of the Kwajaleinis to keep them in line."
Carter thought it over in the silence of the empty of-
fice on the peaceful little island lost in the vast Pacific.
"They'd have to have a base somewhere. The only
possibilities are that Soviet surveillance ship offshore,
one of the other islands of the atoll, or one of the other
atolls in the Marshall group."
"The ship's too obvious, even if it is a Kremlin opera-
tion," Hawk decided. 'C We can check out the other
Marshalls later. Concentrate on the other islands in the
Kwajalein atoll. "
"You know how many pieces Of sand and coral there
are in this atoll?"
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"Ninety-three," Hawk answered cheerfully. "That's
your assignment. You and the Aussie commander. I'll
get Canberra to tell her. And try to keep your mind on
the submarine base, Killmaster."
Hawk's chuckle was still echoing in Carter's ear as he
slowly hung up the receiver and sat staring into space.
He had no answers for what the submersible was doing
around Kwajalein, or why the divers had tried to kill
him and Siobhan, but Hawk was right to be concerned:
it had to be there for some reason. And whatever the
reason, there had to be a base for service, supply, and
repairs. What better place to hide a secret submarine
base than among ninety-three sandy islets around the
world's largest lagoon?
AXE's premier Killmaster left the empty office and
went back out into the bright sunlight baking the tiny
island five thousand miles from the homeland it served,
a service that did not exactly please its five-thousand-
plus rightful owners now crowded into a seventy-eight-
acre slum of cement block and plywood shanties on
salt-spray-coated Ebaye Island just to the north of the
middle-American paradise of Kwajalein itself. Was it
possible that someone was working with the disgruntled
Kwajaleinis to get their island back? Maybe to use them
to create an international incident against the United
States?
Still thinking about this, Carter returned to his
quarters in the military personnel area and sat down
to prepare his official written report as Commander
Nelson Carter, Department of Defense Intelligence. It
did not take long. He simply reported the facts in detail
leaving out the night on the island and any speculations
at all. Then he showered and dressed in his navy uni-
form, and went out again. He walked toward Siobhan
O'Neill's quarters. The Australian intelligence officer
came out before he got there. She had changed into her
tropical uniform and carried her official report.
"What did Canberra say?" Carter asked.
"File the facts, don't speculate, keep my mouth shut,
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and let General Scott make a horse's arse of himself.
Not quite in those words, but that was the gist. How
about Washington?"
He had forgotten to contact DOD, but Hawk would
cover that base for him.
"Same," he said. "Had any more thoughts on who's
behind our sub?"
' 'Greenpeace or the local disgruntleds," she said.
' 'We have to find where its base of operations is. "
She was a very intelligent intelligence officer.
"First we report back to our little Napoleon."
They walked back up the quiet street under the palms,
and the master sergeant outside General Scott's office
grinned at them again.
"Better than bikinis and spear guns. The general will
be pleased. "
' 'Wait until he reads our reports, Sergeant," Carter
said.
The sergeant shrugged. "l don't think he's waiting
for your reports, sir. We got his communiqué off to the
Pentagon half an hour ago. "
'Lovely," Siobhan-said.
The sergeant announced them again, and they went
in. General Scott was standing at his window this time,
actually looking out at the turquoise lagoon. But he
wasn't seeing it. He was seeing Washington and Mos-
cow and confrontation and maybe another star or two
for him. Seeing such an exciting international confron-
tation, and such dazzling stars, he didn't even turn as
Carter and Siobhan came in.
' 'Just leave the reports on my desk. There's no hurry
now."
"What does that mean, General?" Siobhan said.
"I've made my report to Canberra, and we have orders
to give you our full cooperation."
The general turned. "It means, Commander O'Neill,
that I have made my report to Washington and the mat-
ter is being taken care of at this moment. Your reports
are no longer of any importance. "
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"What the hell could you tell Washington without
our reports, General Scott?" Carter demanded.
"As your commanding officer, I summarized your
verbal reports and presented my conclusions from the
data. So Washington already has everything important
in your reports. I suggest you relax until I receive fur-
ther instructions from the Pentagon. "
Siobhan stared at the arrogant little general. C' You
summarized our reports? You mean you—
"Lied," Carter snapped. "You reported your own
conclusions and not ours."
"You told Washington the sub and divers were
Soviet?" Siobhan cried.
"Without saying that we don't think they are a Soviet
operation?" Carter added.
The general bristled. "They are Soviet! They can't be
anything else. That is my analysis, and that was my
report." He looked at his watch and smiled grimly. "At
this moment Washington is filing an official protest
with the Soviet government and the United Nations
Security Council. We'll see how those damned Russians
try to lie their way out of this."
Carter and Siobhan O'Neill looked at each other,
then at the belligerent little general.
"And if they aren't Soviet?" Carter said.
"What do you think the Kremlin will do, General?"
Siobhan said.
"If they aren't, we'll apologize, " General Scott said.
"I hope we have time," Carter said.
Siobhan turned. "Maybe there's still time for my
people to contact Washington and Moscow and give our
reports, Nelson. "
"There isn't," the general said, "and all outgoing
communications have now been shut down. Kwajalein
is under a state of emergency. "
"On whose authority?" Carter demanded.
"The commanding general 's! "
He grinned at them, enjoying his triumph and his
power.
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"I hope you've got plenty put away for your retire-
ment to the farm, General," Carter said. 'S When it
turns out not to be the Soviets, you'll be on half pay for
a long time. "
C' When it is the Russians, and we catch them red-
handed, there'll be a star for me, Carter, not retirement.
Maybe two more stars."
"Is that what really matters, General?" Siobhan said
quietly.
The general flushed angrily. "No! My duty is what is
important, and I know my duty if you two don't! Now,
I want you—
" You can 't go in there, Sam! The general's busy!"
"Must talk! Big trouble. "
The voices came from outside, in front of the
general's office. The voices of the master sergeant and
someone else were loud enough to come right through
the closed door.
"You'll just have to.... Sam! Goddamnit, don't you
try to—Sam
The outer door burst open, and a short, dark, white-
haired Kwajaleini wearing nothing more than a
wraparound, skirtlike cloth and a mother-of-pearl and
coral necklace came into the office with the master
sergeant behind him trying to grab his arm and pull him
back out.
"General, boss! Must talk. Very bad trouble!"
General Scott scowled at the distraught Kwajaleini.
"Dammit, Sam, I've told you before! All your prob-
lems and complaints must be submitted to my office in
writing. I have more important matters than your com-
plaining on my mind."
"No complaining. My people dying. On beach. Six
die this morning! Go into lagoon—
The general blinked. "Dying?"
"On beach. They dive. They come out of lagoon.
They die. You come, bring help, tell Washington.
Something you do in water! Your bombs. Your big
rockets. One hit in lagoon this morning. Now my people
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SAMURAI KILL
die! What you do to lagoon?"
"Ridiculous!" General Scott snapped. "Nothing
we've done could kill anyone. Your divers must be .
the Russians!" The general whirled on Carter and
Siobhan O'Neill. "They're putting something in the
lagoon! That's what they're up to! Poisoning the lagoon
so they can take over the base! I knew it!"
Carter headed for the door. "Maybe we should go
and see what is happening before we decide who's doing
it."
The Kwajaleini, Sam, nodded eagerly. "You come.
Bring medicine. Doctors. Hurry!"
General Scott glared at Carter, but he finally nodded.
' 'Very well. Sergeant, alert the medical office and
prepare a launch to go up to Ebaye. "
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Led by General Scott's second in command, a Major
Hammond, the launch carrying a squad of six soldiers,
with Carter and Siobhan aboard, plowed through the
calm, crystal-clear, green-blue waters of the great
lagoon toward the island of Ebaye to the north where all
five thousand Kwajaleinis had been moved by army
orders.
"The general thinks there's a Soviet operation going
on," Major Hammond said. "Would you know about
that, Commander Carter?"
"We know about it," Carter said.
Major Hammond frowned. "You think it could mean
real trouble?"
"If your general has his way, it could," Siobhan
O'Neill said.
"Yeah." Major Hammond nodded. "The general
does worry me sometimes, the way he hates the Rus-
sians. "
"You don't want trouble, Major?" Siobhan said.
"No, ma'am. I don't think anyone in his right mind
does. "
Carter watched the tall, slender major. An unusual
professional soldier. Maybe there was some hope.
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The launch plowed on through the bright, turquoise
water of the vast lagoon, past deserted islets, until the
larger island of Ebaye came into sight with its crowded
shantytowns where the Kwajaleinis lived. Carter
thought about the possibility of them being connected
to the submersible and the attacking divers. He was
aware that there were many among them not at all sure,
considering the way things had turned out for them,
that they were glad the Americans and not the Japanese
had won World War II.
"Commander?"
The helmsman was staring down into the water
behind the launch, and the bowman was doing the
same. It was the bowman who spoke.
"There's a ton of seaweed down under here, sir. I
never saw any seaweed in this part of the lagoon. "
' 'It could foul the propellor even with the guard we've
got, "
the helmsman said, staring down into the water
that was suddenly no longer crystal clear. No longer tur-
quoise. It was dull blue with great dark shadows
underneath, dark, twisting shadows under the surface
of the lagoon that seemed to move.
Shadows that did move!
"There must be a strong current through here,"
Siobhan said as she stared down, the launch moving
more slowly now as it had to cut through the thick
vegetation under the surface.
"There's no current," Carter said. ' 'That weed is
growing so fast we can see it grow! It's not being
moved. It's moving on its own. Growing!"
Everyone stared down at the water as the launch
slowly moved next to the rickety pier on Ebaye Island
where a large delegation of the Kwajaleinis were waiting
for them. It looked as if most of the population of the
island was ranged behind along the lagoon beach. The
Kwajaleini leader, Sam, was the first to jump ashore.
"You come," he said back over his shoulder to
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Carter and Siobhan and Major Hammond as he strode
along the pier to the beach and turned toward a small
shanty close to the beach. They followed, the squad of
soldiers close behind them.
Sam opened the shanty door and they all had to duck
to go in. The piercing sound of female voices weeping
and wailing greeted them as they entered/
' 'Stay around the building," Major Hammond in-
structed his soldiers.
Inside the shanty the light was dim; the sunlight strug-
gled through two small dirty windows. But Carter,
Siobhan, and the major didn't need a lot of light to see
what was in the hut.
The bodies of six young Kwajaleini men were laid out
on makeshift bierstof boards and palm fronds. Their
faces were contorted like the faces of poison victims.
Around them some ten or twelve women, young and
old, cried and shrieked, tearing at their hair and
touching the dead men.
' 'We find all on beach today. All on lagoon. Two
maybe mile from other three. All okay yesterday. No
sick. Young and strong. All divers, very good swimmer.
Two more very sick, not die. Ask what happen.
Nothing, they say. Nothing happen. Only dive, swim,
come up, nothing happen until come to shore and get
sick."
S' Where are the two sick ones?" Major Hammond
asked.
"In hospital down Kwajalein. Doctors say not know
what sickness is."
Carter, Siobhan, and Major Hammond examined the
six dead youths.
"Not a mark on these two," Carter said.
"Nor these, " Siobhan said.
"No marks on any of them," Major Hammond
realized. c 'Not even a bruise."
"Then how did they die?" Siobhan wondered.
"Drowned?" Major Hammond suggested.
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Chief Sam said, "No drown. Swim too good.
Drowned man not look like that."
"More like poison," Carter said. "We'll have to have
autopsies, Major."
The major nodded. "I'll have the bodies transported
down to Kwaj, and we'll get a navy pathologist to fly in
from Pearl. "
"Meanwhile," Siobhan said, ' 'what about that stuff
growing out there in the lagoon?"
Carter turned to Sam. "When did you first notice
that weed out in the lagoon?"
'UNO see. Not there yesterday."
"You mean you didn't notice it until today?"
' 'See today. Not see yesterday. Not there yesterday. "
Major Hammond tried to explain things to the Kwa-
jaleini leader. "No, it had to be there yesterday, prob-
ably for a few weeks at least, but you simply didn't
notice it, Chief. It was probably down deep and grew up
toward the surface where you spotted it today. Seaweed
that thick must have taken years to grow."
Sam shook his head emphatically. "Dive two days
before. No weed. NQ weed ever. Now weed all over."
"Impossible!" the major said.
Carter said, ' 'Maybe we'd better take another look at
that weed, Major. Something killed these six divers, and
the seaweed seems to be a mystery. When you've got
two mysteries, there's a hell of a good chance there's
some kind of connection. "
' 'Commander Carter's right," Siobhan said. "We'd
better get some samples Of that weed and have -it an-
alyzed along with the autopsy on these poor men."
The major nodded, and they all filed silently out of
the makeshift morgue leaving the weeping and wailing
women with their dead men. Outside, the Kwajaleinis
were still all standing on the lagoon beach, staring at the
water, watching *the shanty apprehensively.
Leaving the squad of soldiers onshore to guard
against any sudden attack from lagoon or ocean, Major
Hammond, Carter, and Siobhan O'Neill reboarded the
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launch, and the navy men turned it back out into the
lagoon.
"Let's see the extent of the seaweed first," Carter
suggested.
Major Hammond nodded, and gave the orders to the
helmsman. In the bow, the crewman used a long pole to
push aside the thick weed breaking the surface now and
threatening to foul the propellor and climb up the sides
Of the launch itself. To Carter, it seemed like hundreds
of snakes slithering out of the now dark water of the
lagoon.
"Good thing we've got a weed-protection cage
around the prop, Major,"
the helmsman said. "l just
hope it's good enough to keep out this much junk. "
' 'My God," the major whispered. "You really can
see it grow. Where the hell could it have come from?"
'S Yeah," Carter said. "Where and how?"
Siobhan looked at him. "Are you thinking what I
think you're thinking?"
Carter nodded. "Two mysteries could be a coin-
cidence, but when you have three mysteries, something
begins to smell very peculiar, wouldn't you say, Com-
mander?"
"But what could that submersible have to do with a
lagoon full of seaweed and some dead divers? Coin-
cidence or connection?" Siobhan wondered aloud.
"Here's the edge, sir!" thie bowman called out.
The launch seemed to surge ahead as it broke clear of
the darker water where the plants were growing. Out in
the open lagoon, the turquoise water was crystal clear
again. They were almost a mile from shore, and as
Carter looked down into the depths with the sand spark-
ing below, he could see the water darken far down even
as he watched.
"You can see it growing out, " he said, his voice shak-
ing a little in disbelief.
They all peered down into the crystalline depths in
silence as the strange weed seemed to flow out from its
own dark shadow into the clear water and then upward
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toward the surface. The helmsman turned to move with
it, and slowed the launch until it was moving at the same
pace as the growing weed.
"It's growing at almost five knots an hour, Major,"
he said, his voice awed.
"All right," Major Hammond said. "Turn her
around, and let's head back to shore and pick up those
bodies to take down to Kwaj. I've already radioed the
general to have the navy fly in a pathology team. "
The launch turned smartly in the clear water, then
plunged back into the dark morass where the weed had
grown so thick it was like entering a swamp, the
helmsman weaving slowly to keep the propellor cage
clear, the crewman at the bow pushing aside the thicker
stems with a long pole.
"Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to grow up onto the
shore," Siobhan O'Neill pointed out. "Just in the
lagoon, heading out toward the center."
"Maybe— " Carter began.
The horrible cry of agony and terror came from the
bow of the slowly moving launch.
The bow crewman had leaned too far over to clear his
pole-of weeds, had fallen overboard, and had climbed
back in laughing. He was wet all over with lagoon
water, and long strands of the thick weed hung from
him.
Now he stood with screams coming from his gaping
mouth, his whole body rigid and trembling in one great
spasm like a man bitten by the deadliest of snakes.
' 'What is it?" Siobhan O'Neill cried.
The third crewman ran to his comrade and reached to
take the seaweed off the screaming, shivering man.
"No!" Carter shouted. "Don't touch him! Don't
touch that weed!" He turned to Siobhan and Major
Hammond. "It's the water. The weed. That's what
killed those divers. The weed contains a nerve poison,
and it makes the whole lagoon poisonous."
The third crewman jumped back away from the
violently trembling man. And even as they watched, the
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screaming sailor fell to the bottom of the launch, his
mouth still open but emitting no sound now, his eyes
staring emptily into the bright sky above the sparkling
lagoon. He was dead.
"My God e" Major Hammond breathed.
I saw a guy die like .
. like that on New
Guinea once, i' the helmsman said from bebind them all,
his voice shaking in the silent sunlight of the beautiful
Pacific day. "He got a snake bite, and he died just like
that. Shaking and screaming. It took just seconds. All
shaking and screaming and then nothing. In seconds—I
mean, maybe a couple of seconds and it's all over, you
know?
"All right, sailor, " Carter said. "Don't anyone touch
him, and get us back to shore fast. "
The helmsman nodded, and the launch plowed
through the weed as fast as it could with the once clear
water of the lagoon as thick as a swamp now. No one
spoke. They kept staring at the dead man lying in the
sun with his empty eyes and gaping mouth. On shore the
Kwajaleinis were still lined up along the dazzling white
beach with the green palms behind them and their
shacks scattered around the salt-drenched little slum of
an island. Only their chief, Sam, stood on the pier.
As the launch approached the pier, some of the
younger men started to trot toward the water as if to
come out and help pull it into shore.
' 'No!" Carter shouted. "Everyone stay away from
the lagoon! Don't touch the water!"
"Stay back!" Major Hammond yelled. "Sam! Keep
your people far back from the lagoon! Don't touch the
water yourself! "
On the pier, Sam turned to order his young men back
away from the lagoon, repeating the warning from the
launch. As the launch touched the pier, Carter was the
first ashore, with Siobhan behind him. Sam waited on
the pier for them, his face expressionless.
S' We believe you now, Sam," Carter said grimly.
6' That weed wasn't there yesterday. I think it just killed
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one of our navy men, and I think it's what killed your
divers. It's growing fast enough to see. At this rate it'll
choke the whole lagoon in days, eventually the whole
ocean. Maybe that'll take years, even centuries, but if it
isn't stopped, it'll fill all the oceans of the world."
Sam remained impassive. ' 'You find way to stop?"
"First we've got to find out what it is, how it got in
the lagoon, and where it came from," Carter said.
' 'Meanwhile, you have to stay out of the lagoon, and I
wouldn't go into the ocean until we can check it. Keep
your people away even from the shoreline. Do you
understand? No one should get near that weed at all.
Don't touch its and don't even breathe near the shore. "
Sam nodded. "No go near water or shore. How
long?"
"I don't know yet."
"Not long. Must dive, fish. Need to eat."
i' We'll have a team up here to check the ocean in an
hour. They'll check the whole shoreline. I want you and
your people to watch the lagoon shore. Make sure none
of that seaweed comes ashore. It doesn't look like it
grows on land, but we have to be certain. Check the
ocean side too. If you see any sign of weed in the ocean,
report to me or Commander O'Neill or Major Ham-
mond. "
Sam nodded. "What you do now?"
' 'Report to General Scott," Carter said grimly.
"Then we'll start to work to find out what this weed is,
how to stop it, and what, or who, is behind it. "
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The slow-moving launch and its grisly cargo broke
out of the weed to the south less than a mile north of
Kwajalein Island, the dark green shoots of the weed
seeming to follow it south like the heads of a million
snakes emerging from the water behind.
"It'll be around Kwaj itself in less than a day,"
Major Hammond said. "What if it comes ashore?"
'SI don't think it will," Carter said. "Strange and im-
possible as it is, it seems to be just a water plant that
can't live out of water. "
"Strange and impossible," Siobhan O'Neill said.
"Like science fiction. "
"Yeah," Carter said. "The third time in two days.
There has to be a connection, Siobahn. "
"I'd say ninety-ten for, " she said.
"Which leaves us to figure out who, how, what, and
why
"After we try to explain it to General Scott. "
"That," Major Hammond said, "isn't going to be
easy."
They landed at the main dock of the tree-shaded
island where a team of corpsmen from the hospital met
them to take the seven bodies to the morgue. The
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pathologists were still on their way from Pearl Harbor
and wouldn't arrive for some hours, if not as late as the
next morning.
Carter and Siobhan O'Neill went with the bodies to
the hospital. There they met with the technicians in its
small but well-equipped and advanced laboratory. News
of the disaster on Ebaye had preceded the launch party
back to Kwajalein, and the technicians and doctor in
charge were ready to help.
"We'll need samples of the lagoon water in the weed
and out in the clear," Carter explained. "And samples
of the weed itself: leaves, shoots, stalks. Wear full pro-
tective clothing as if you were dealing with radioactive
materiaL Do you have it?"
"We have it," the chief pharmacist said. "Every navy
installation has. Nuclear ships could have trouble
anywhere. "
"Use long poles to gather the seaweed, and use
scoops on the ends of poles to get the water. Don't
touch anything—even with protective gloves. Not until
we know a lot more. "
"Roger, " the offi€er agreed.
"What do we do when we get the stuff back here?"
the doctor asked.
"Any test you can think of, especially for poisons,
probably nerve poisons, plus every botanical detail to
try to identify the plants. But do it all in a glove box,
and don't touch the stuff even with the rubber gloves.
Forceps, sticks, but not hands."
"l hope it's not really that serious," the doctor said.
' 'I hope so too, but we'd better get the pathology
report and some idea of what we're dealing with before
we take any chances at all."
Carter and Siobhan left the lab team preparing to go
to the launch and make the trip to Ebaye to collect their
samples. Then they went to report to General Scott.
Major Hammond had already given his report. The red
color of the general's face and his ramrod stance in
front of his desk, hands clasped behind him, didn't
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bode well for a reasonable analysis of the situation fac-
ing them.
"Seven casualties! Seven! And one is even an
American! You still think the Russians aren't behind it?
And what can you tell me about how it happened?
Nothing, I'll bet. Intelligence! i tell -you, it was in-
telligence that cost us our win in Vietnam. Well?"
Carter explained about the thick. growing weed, and
the unmarked deaths, and his suspicions.
"Poisonous seaweed that grows at more than five
knots an hour?" The general stared at all three of them,
then turned to Siobhan O'Neill. "You agree with these
two, Commander O'Neill? That's what you saw?"
"l saw the weed, but I can't prove yet that it caused
the deaths. But I watched the crewman die, General,
and it certainly looked like it was the weed or the water
or both, and it acted like a poison."
The general began to pace his silent office as the other
three watched him. "Biological warfare, that's what it
is! I've always known they were working on it, but I
never suspected they would use it." He turned to face
them all. "It's a sneak attack, just like Pearl Harbor!
We have to move fast. I'll contact Washington im-
mediately. You three—
"A sneak attack on six native divers and ninety-three
piles of sand, General?" Siobhan cut in. "Wouldn't
you say that was exposing their hand for very little
Carter was thoughtful. "This is the main tracking Sta-
tion for keeping an eye on Soviet satellites. Possibly
they want to knock out our tracking eyes because they
have something going on up in space they don't want
spotted too soon."
The general grunted. "l see one of you is doing a little
clear thinking at least. This is precisely the first installa-
tion they would knock out if they were launching a
satellite attack, and I'll bet my britches that's just what
they're doing! "
"Sir," Major Hammond said nervously,
"the, er,
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seaweed and all isn't going to knock out our radar
tracking very fast. I mean, if they wanted to mount a
surprise attack to cover satellite operations, wouldn't
they have hit the radomes and installations first? Hard
and fast sir?"
"The weed is just preparation, you idiot! Softening
us up. Fooling us. We think there's some natural
disaster going on, and we get all involved in it, see?
Then, while we're running around looking at stupid
plants, that submarine sneaks in, lands divers, and
knocks out the whole installation! Only they're not
fooling me, and we'll be ready for them!"
The stubborn general continued pacing around his of-
fice. The brilliant Pacific sun was bright outside, and
the clear water of the lagoon sparkled through the palm
trees. But the dazzling turquoise color was already
darkening to the north where the weed advanced south-
ward. "Washington will get paratroopers here in a mat-
ter of hours. We'll have all the carriers in the Pacific
diverted, every missile cruiser. Hunter subs should reach
us from Guam inside half a day. If they just give us a
little time! Just half a *day, that's all I need." He turned
on Siobhan O'Neill. "What about your forces, Com-
mander? How soon can you get paratroopers up here?
Maybe some cruisers?"
Siobhan just stared at the general. "I made my
report, sir. In my opinion the submersible and divers
were not Soviet, therefore the weed and deaths are not
caused by the Soviet Union. My government isn't going
to move a Boy Scout on your call without-word from me
or definite proof that the Soviet Union, or any other
enemy power, is behind the events here."
The general turned beet red. "Major Hammond,
place Commander O'Neill under immediate arrest! I'm
beginning to think she may be an enemy agent. New
Zealand is in Moscow's pocket, why not Australia?"
"You'd better arrest me, too, General," Carter said.
"The report I filed said the same thing. I don't think
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Washington's going to move the Pacific fleet on just
your word. "
"You think the report of a two-bit DOD Intelligence
agent is going to be taken over my report?" The feisty
little martinet laughed. "They'll have a division of
jumpers down here before we finish talking! Now—
The outer door of the office was flung open, and
General Scott's master sergeant burst irvpale and ex-
cited. "General—!"
' 'What the hell do you think you're doing, Sergeant?
You don't just—
"Sir! It's the Russians! That ship they've got out
there? They're broadcasting. Calling to us. I mean,
they're on open band, sir! They're talking right out on
open band, calling for help!"
General Scott stood rigid. "Help? Calling us?
They've never. . . .
They're not even supposed to
be e"
"Maybe we'd better hear what they're saying,
General," Major Hammond suggested nervously.
Carter and Siobhan were already on their way to the
door. The general blinked, stared at Carter and
Siobhan, then at the sergeant and Major Hammond.
Then he nodded.
' 'Yes. The radio room. Of course. Follow me," he
said as he walked out of the office behind Carter and
Siobhan, the major and the sergeant following him.
They hurried along the corridor of the headquarters
building to the large communications room where the
base kept in touch with the entire world and the
satellites in space. Three radiomen were all grouped
around the main speaker console listening to a scared,
angry, baffled, terrified voice speaking in excellent
English.
"Mayday! Mayday! Come in, Kwajalein. Soviet elec-
tronic surveillance ship fifteen miles offshore due
northeast. Come in, Kwajalein! What are you doing to
us? We lodge official, formal protest. You are using
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biological warfare that is specifically forbidden by all
international agreements and common humanity!
Whatever you are doing, you must stop! We surrender!
Send help at once! Stop your attack! We capitulate!
Urgent medical aid needed and evacuation of ship.
Coordinates—
Carter pushed the radioman aside and took up the
microphone. "Kwajalein responding to mayday of
Soviet surveillance ship. Nelson Carter, Department of
Defense Intelligence. If you have KGB aboard, put him
on. Inform him code DD-three. "
The general was pale as he stared at the speaker as if
he could see the face of the Russian. ' 'It's a trick! To
gain time, divert us. Carter, how dare—
A new voice, in much more Russian-accented
English, came over the speaker. ' 'What do you want,
Carter? Is not your inhuman attack enough—?"
"Identify!" Carter snapped.
There was a silence. Then, "Major Mishkin, four-
four-four-three."
Carter had no time to check the AXE computer now.
He just hoped his challenge had been enough to make
the Russian give his true identity. "What's going on out
there, Mishkin?"
"You know what is going on here, Commander.
Your biological attack has already killed four of our
crew. The ship is immobilized. In the name of humanity
we request helicopters to remove us before the ship is
dragged under. "
"Seaweed?" Carter said grimly into the microphone.
' 'Seaweed growing so thick and fast you can see it?
Some of your men attempted to clear it away and died
almost at once?"
"You want a testimonial to the efficiency of your in-
human weapon, Carter?" the KGB voice said bitterly.
"Tell us how long before the weed grows up over the
whole ship. "
C 'It won't. Or we don't think it will. When did you see
it first?"
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There was another silence. "This morning. We sent
divers down to see how deep it went. They did not come
back." The voice hesitated. "You are telling us you
have not done this, yet you know—
"It's happening here, Major. The seaweed is filling
the whole lagoon. We've lost six native divers and one
navy crewman up on Ebaye. We can see the weed ad-
vancing on Kwajalein itself right now. Have you made
any sighting of unknown divers or an unidentified
submersible?"
"It happens there too?"
"Believe me, Major. "
The first voice came back on. "This is Commander
Karenin. You are telling us that this weed is growing on
the atoll too? You are not responsible? Then who is?"
"Our general thinks you are, Commander. What
about—
General Scott raged in the large radio room. "It's all
a trick, Carter! I can smell it. They never tell the truth.
They're trying to lure our helicopters out there, cripple
our defense capability, catch us unawares. You're traf-
ficking with the enemy, playing into their hands, you
fool!" He grabbed for the microphone. "Give me that
microphone! I'll talk to them the way they have to be
talked to!"
Karenin's voice came back on. "Our captain, too, in-
sists it is an American trick,' an attack, an attempt to
hide from our surveillance a planned surprise attack on
our country. What can we do?"
"First, tell me if you've seen any divers or a submersi-
bje."
Mishkin answered. "No divers, Carter, but our sonar
has picked up a submarine. We consider that it is one of
yours."
"Moves too slowly for an attack sub and too fast for
a research vessel? Has a shape you don't recognize?"
"Da, yes. Both true. It is not yours?"
"No. It isn't yours?"
"Nyet." The KGB man's voice sounded even more
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scared now. An American danger he could deal with,
but some unknown attacker? Suddenly the horror of
plants that grew into a mass overnight and killed men
who touched the water they grew in hit home. "We have
tracked the submarine below us many times. It comes
sometimes from the direction Of the atoll, sometimes
from the north. It passes underneath us and suddenly
seems to disappear."
"All right. None of us knows what's going on. I sug-
gest—
General Scott still raged behind him: C' They're lying,
Carter, d'you hear? I know they're lying. Don't listen to
them! We've got to get our call off to Washington.
Every second counts, don't you understand? They're
trying to fool us, to prevent us from calling in help!"
Carter shook his head. "No, I don't think so, General
Scott. I've never thought those divers or that sub were
Soviet, and neither does Commander O'Neill. I think I
know fear when I hear it. I think they're as startled and
confused as we are. They know all we have to do is send
a single chopper out there and disprove their story at
once. No, the weed is out there, too, and that means
someone is attacking us both, and we'd better find out
why pretty damned quick ! "
"Nelson's right," Siobhan said.
"I agree with them, sir," Major Hammond said.
The general turned on his heel. "Believe what you
like, Hammond. I'm in command here, and I'll give the
orders. We don't help Russians, and you're all under ar-
rest. Guards!"
Carter spoke quickly into the microphone. "Mishkin!
Get in touch with Moscow, or Vladivostok, or wherever
you report, and do it fast. Tell them what is happening.
All of it. Tell them General Scott here thinks you people
are preparing an attack. Keep your crew away from the
water, and see if you can get your ship out of those
plants."
g 'I don't think we can get out, Commander," Com-
mander Karenin's voice said. "We've been trying. The
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weed's got us locked in so thick the propellers won't
turn and it feels like we're in a vise. "
"Try. If you can't move, sit tight, contact Moscow,
and we'll send help as soon as we can. We may have to
clear it with Washington over General Scott's head."
"Hurry, Carter," Major Mishkin said grimly. "The
pressure on our hull is building fast. Those plants do not
climb from the water, but they grow, and grass has the
power to destroy steel in the end."
"As fast as we can," Carter said, and stood up. He
and Siobhan and Major Hammond faced the general as
armed soldiers came running along the hall toward the
radio room.
• 'I don't want to have to hurt anyone, General,"
Carter said quietly. He checked where Wilhelmina was
hidden under his armpit, Hugo silent up his sleeve,
Pierre strapped in its place on his thigh.
C 'Contact Washington first, General Scott," Siobhan
said'. "Someone will be hurt here, and we're all on the
same side.
"Sir," Major Hammond began, think—
"I don't give a damn in hell what you think, Major!"
the general roared. "You'll be a civilian after this—if
you're not in prison! You three are mutinying against
me, and I'm placing you—
The sound of the violent explosion filled mie room, a
deep, rumbling roar that came from two places at once:
from the open microphone Carter had not turned Off,
and from some fifteen miles to the northeast of Kwa-
jalein Island.
Their own battle forgotten, they all rushed out into
the bright sunlight and stood staring off across the
ocean to the northeast.
A giant piller of smoke climbed into the sky from the
blue Pacific. From where there could have been nothing
to explode except the Soviet ship.
' 'My God, " General Scott said quietly.
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"Maybe," Major Hammond said, '(it's not the
Soviet ship. Maybe it was something else .. g"
Siobhan stared toward the great pillar of smoke still
rising into the cloudless sky. "All of them. No one
could survive that. How many?"
' 'A ship that size," Carter said grimly, "two or three
hundred."
General Scott's eyes were dazed, uncomprehending.
"But...
but... who? I mean what.. ? It can't be
the the Soviet ship. They're attacking us. They have
to be, don't you see? They're behind everything. It has
to be them. So . . . so
. One of our submarines. A
torpedo! No, a missile! One of our missile cruisers must
be—
"General, " Major Hammond said, his voice shaking,
"we'd know if one of our cruisers was anywhere near
Kwaj. Or a submarine. It was an unarmed surveillance
ship. We wouldn't sink it without warning. We—
' 'But Moscow will think so," Carter said. He turned
sharply to the general. ' 'You had Washington file that
protest against the submersible and divers yesterday.
We accused Moscow of mounting an attack on Kwaj,
and that ship reported its danger to Moscow! If they
didn't have time to report our communication this
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morning, Moscow is going to think we sank it on the
pretext of them attacking us!"
'IGood God," Major Hammond breathed, white-
faced. "Carter's right!"
"Moscow could think it's the beginning of a first
strike!" Siobhan cried.
General Scott blinked, and his dazed eyes cleared sud-
denly. "You're right! If they're not behind all this, and
with that protest we filed, if I were Moscow, that's just
what I'd have to think—I'd order an immediate
counterstrike. I must reach Washington at once! The
President himself!" He turned to the radioman. "Top-
priority emergency channel, coded message. Quick!"
"No," Carter said.
"Dammiti Carter!" General Scott shouted. "'I'm ad-
mitting I was wrong! We have to contact Washington
immediately. "
"Sooner than that, General, and I can get to the
President a lot faster than you can. Everyone leave—"
"Ridiculous!" General Scott snapped. "I have a top-
priority channel to the Pentagon. They'll get to the
Secretary of Defense at once and he'll get to the Presi-
dent. What could a DOI) Commander—
"Revelation sixteen, sixteen," Carter said. "Number
fifty, row seven."
The little general paled and stared at Carter. "Who
the hell are you?"
"No time, General. I need the room alone. Now!"
The general stared for another second. Two. Then
turned sharply. "Out! Everyone! Leave Carter alone.
Guards, cover the outside door. Hurry!"
They quickly filed out, with Siobhan watching Carter
quizzically, and the general still staring back at the man
who had given him the supersecret code words for im-
mediate, unhesitating assumption of command. The
door closed, and Carter turned at once to the powerful
intercontinental radio and spoke his code words that
connected him to the AXE computer, with the override
code for immediate attention of the director.
Hawk's voice was on the speaker before the last word
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had time to echo. "Here, N3."
"Soviet surveillance ship offshore Kwajalein blown
up. Cause unknown. Not, repeat, not U.S. action. Ship
was in distress, contacted Kwaj base on open channel.
We were in communication, were about to go to
assistance when she blew. Protest made yesterday by
Washington withdrawn. Soviet in no way cOnnected to
occurrences around Kwajalein. We are going to im-
mediate assistance of any survivors. Get the President
on the hot line to Gorbachev."
"Christ, N3! With that protest yesterday—
' 'Yes, sir."
' 'I hope there's time."
Hawk was gone. Carter sat back, lit a cigarette, and
waited. At the very least an ICBM could be on its way to
Kwajalein from somewhere in Siberia, or from a Soviet
submarine, at that instant. Seconds from destruction of
the atoll and everyone on it. Then again, with that
perhaps deadly weed growing so fast you could see it,
maybe it would be better for the future of the world if
an ICBM was on its way. AXE's premier Killmaster
shook his head to clear the thought. They would find
what was behind the weed, and how to stop it, without
wiping out an atoll or anything else.
Hawk's voice was shaky. "Done, N3. The President
is talking to Gorbachev right now."
"l hope they can handle it," Carter said.
"So do I, Nick, so do I." The sound of Hawk's
butane lighter came across the eight thousand miles, the
slow puffing of the cheap cigar. "All right, the whole
story. Why was the Soviet ship in distress? What blew it
"I don't know yet what blew it up," Carter said,
"but that submersible, and those divers, are also unex-
plained. "
"You smell a connection?"
"Strongly," Carter said drily into the microphone.
"But so far it's only a stink, and there's a beauty of a
third mystery, sir. "
"Yes?"
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Carter told him of the trip to Ebaye, the dead divers,
the strange weed that was filling the lagoon, and the
death of the navy man who'd fallen among the weeds in
the water. "And that was what the Soviet ship broke
radio silence about. The same weed had grown up all
around the ship, and some of their men were dead from
touching it."
"In the ocean?"
"That's what they said. "
In far-off Washington, Hawk was silent for a long
time. Too long.
The silence went on. Finally Carter heard a long, slow
letting out of breath, and Hawk's voice came again.
Low and almost empty.
"Water plants you can actually see grow?"
"I know, it's science fiction again, but it's also true
again."
There was a sigh in Washington. "I believe you,
Nick. Two days ago we got a crazy message from our
people in Australia. They had a report from some
retired Australian district commissioner up in some god-
forsaken cove in New Guinea. It seems the cove where
he lived had been completely choked by sea plants in
one night. He reported that they grew so fast you could
see them grow. He reported that animals swimming
through the seaweed died instantly, and dead fish were
all over the cove."
It was Carter's turn to be silent. Hawk's voice went
on, almost wearily.
'"No one believed it, of course. The Australians
thought the old commissioner had gone senile, our
people reported, and we thought so too. Now, who
knows?
"New Guinea?"
"Two days ago," Hawk said.
"Someone's experimenting?"
"Sounds like that now, doesn't it."
' 'Any other reports like that?"
"I'm going to run that question through the com-
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puter as soon as we're off. Then I'm going to go back to
that New Guinea report and give it the full treatment. "
"I'll see what I can dig up around here," Carter said.
' 'We have a couple of survivors who may be able to tell
me something. There may be some evidence out where
the Russian ship blew."
As they talked, both men sensed they were waiting for
something, waiting for Kwajalein to disappear in a great
blue-white flash and a mushroom cloud. Or maybe
Washington. Waiting to see if there was going to be a
world to try to save. Waiting. Then Hawk'S voice sud-
denly eased, and grew strong again, vigorous.
"Gorbachev accepts our explanation, Nick, and asks
that we do what we can to help. They'll have a ship in
the area soon, and they'll send a biological warfare ex-
pert to confer with General Scott. "
"Good, " Carter said quietly.
"Find out what that weed is and what's behind it, and
I'll check out New Guinea. Keep out of all the official
stuff, understand?"
"I had to reveal my ultrapriority status to Scott.
"He's a hundred percent by the book. He won't talk
about it."
"Siobhan O'Neill was there too. "
"That's your problem. Tell her any lie you want."
"Thanks."
"I've told you before to keep your mind on business.
Go to work, N3. "
In the silent radio room Carter couldn't help grin-
ning. Nothing ever really fazed the old bulldog. He got
up and went out into the corridor. The two guards
posted at the radio room door looked at him curiously.
"Where did the others go, soldier?"
"The general's office, I think, sir."
"Thanks."
He hurried down the corridors to General Scott's of-
fice. In it, the general was alone behind his mammoth
desk. He looked at Carter stiffly. He wasn't a man who
liked to be upstaged or overruled, but he was also a man
who had spent his life obeying orders without question
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when they were backed by ultimate authority.
"The President got through to Gorbachev, and he
understands the situation."
The general nodded.
"Moscow is sending a cruiser and a biological war-
fare expert to confer with you."
The general wasn't so sure about that. "Very well.
How much am I to show them?"
"That's up to you, General. "
The general's voice was tight. "l see. And you?"
"l have my own special job. I'll be trying to track
down what's behind the weed and the submersible. Just
ignore me. "
"Of course." The general cheered up. "Any help you
need ?
"I'll let you know, sir," Carter said. "What's the
situation now?
General Scott leaned forward, brisk again, back in
control at least of his own little empire. "Rescue boats
and helicopters have been sent out. Search planes are
looking for any evidence of that submarine or anything
else unusual out there. I'm waiting for the results of the
analysis of the weed and water. The pathology team
from Pearl will be here in a few hours. Two missile
cruisers and a carrier battle group are on their way."
Carter nodded. C' That sounds like all bases are
covered."
"l think so. We'll be ready for the Soviet ship and
their experts. I'll arrange a meeting aboard their ship,
and I'll allow their experts to cooperate fully with our
pathology and analysis teams. The rest of the base is off
limits."
"That's your decision, sir. I'll be in Commander
O'Neill's quarters if you need me."
The general was handling all the routine activities
efficiently, which gave Carter a free hand to get on
with the important work of tracking down the who and
what and why of the deadly weed. He left the general
happily arranging and planning, and went to Siobhan's
quarters.
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He found her packing.
"Going somewhere? "
"Ordered back down under."
"Any reason?"
"Reassignment. Ours is not to reason why, mate."
She looked at him. "Who are you, Nelson?
"Just a scrambler in the trenches, Siobhan, like
you."
g 'With a priority code that makes a general jump
through a hoop? That's not my kind of trench. "
"Does it matter?"
She watched him. "I'm not sure."
"l hope not. "
She zipped up her bag. "Well, Off to the kangaroos
and koalas. Perhaps we shall run across each other
again, Nels. If that's your name."
"Make it Nick, and I'll see we do."
She smiled. "Nick, then. Ciao, mate."
"I'll drive you to the plane.
She nodded. Carter took her bag and went out to
where a soldier in a Jeep was waiting. They drove to the
airstrip. An Australian Air Force jet was on the runway
ready to leave. She faced him.
"It's been exciting ... Nick."
"Very. "
"Come to Sydney. I'll make it worth your while. "
"As soon as I can."
"Right. "
She kissed him, then ran for the jet. The door closed
and it taxied away down the runway. Carter stayed there
until it stopped, turned, revved up, and made its run
down and up into the blue Pacific sky. Then he turned
and got back into the Jeep.
"The hospital, soldier. "
The Jeep drove off. Carter looked back and up into
the sky. The small jet was already a distant speck
against the vast blue.
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At the hospital the lab team had returned from
gathering the water and weed samples off Ebaye. They
were still peeling off the heavy protective clothing,
looking at the samples inside the glove box where they
handled all toxic and radioactive materials.
"You can see it still growing even after it's been cut, "
the chief pharmacist's mate said, staring in at the thick
green plant samples that squirmed almost like snakes in
their water-filled glass sample bottles. "Up at Ebaye it's
a mile out into the lagoon already. It'll be down here at
Kwaj in another couple of days."
"Any evidence yet what it is—what kind of poison's
involved?" Carter asked.
The laboratory doctor shook his head. "We've run a
few preliminary tests on the water, but there's nothing
familiar yet. "
"The plants look like some edible seaweeds they've
been working on up in Japan," one of the technicians
said, ' 'but there's some strange differences in the leaf
pattern I can't identify. They act like a normal species,
only incredibly stronger and faster growing."
"There's a kind of seed pod I've never seen on a plant
like these," the second technician said, his voice both
worried and excited. The scientist in him was excited by
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the new, the unexplained, the abnormal—something to
be studied and codified.
Carter left them eagerly starting to work on the
samples of water and still growing vegetation, handling
everything inside the glove box with mechanical in-
struments and forceps.
He went down to the office of the hospital director.
The director was a navy doctor who jumped up as soon
as he saw Carter. General Scott had obviously passed
the word around that Carter was to get VIP treatment
all the way.
' 'How can I help you, Commander?"
"You've got two Kwajaleini divers in here who came
out of the water up on Ebaye sick but alive?"
"We do," the doctor said, shaking his head. g 'No
visible injuries of any kind, no poisons that show up in
our tests, but one of them is critical and the other's not
far behind."
"Can I see them?"
The doctor hesitated. He had his orders, but he had
his ethics, too.
"It could be vital, Doctor," Carter said. He had his
job, and there wasn't much room for ethics.
"Very well," the doctor said. General Scott was more
important at the moment than Hippocrates.
They went along the clean, silent corridors to a wing
where a stern-looking nurse sat at a desk that blocked
the corridor. Behind her Carter saw the Kwajaleini
leader, Sam, seated outside a room with a closed door.
"Commander Carter will speak with our patients,
Mrs. Castro. "
The grim nurse looked him up and down. General
Scott wouldn't carry a lot of weight with her. But a doc-
tor did. Everything is relative.
"Yes, sir. But there's only one patient. The other died
an hour ago. "
The doctor shook his head. "Which one?"
' 'How would I know? It's on the chart."
The old Kwajaleini chief, Sam, stood, then walked to
them.
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"It was Tevake," Sam said. "The son of my cousin.
He has a wife, three children. They will be empty now.
We will all be empty now."
' 'I'm sorry, Sam," the doctor said.
c 'But you will not leave."
"That's not up to us, Sam."
' 'Who then is it up to? You are not a free people?"
i' We're a big country, Same We elect our leaders, and
they must do what they think is best for us."
"Who watches them, tells them what is best for
you?"
The nurse said, c 'Sir, we're busy here. We don't have
time for people to stand around and talk. "
Sam looked at her. 'S We do not have time not to
stand and talk."
The Kwajaleini turned away and went back to his seat
outside the closed door. The nurse glared after him. The
doctor motioned Carter to follow him, and they went to
the closed door. Sam stood to go in with them.
"The man is Marave," Sam said. "He was in your
navy."
Inside the silent hospital room the slender man lay
rigid in the hospital bed, eyes open and staring. Unsee-
ing eyes that stared up at the blank ceiling. Stared but
didn't look, the sick man's gaze turned inward.
"Marave?" Sam said gently.
There was no response. The man just lay there, his
eyes empty and distant at the same time, not a mark or
bruise on him, hands rigid at his sides.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Carter asked.
' 'In the water," the doctor said. ' 'In the lagoon. "
The man's eyes blinked, and his whole body twitched
in a sudden spasm. His eyes rolled in his head. His fists
clenched. He remained that way, as if frozen in the
violent spasm.
"It was the word water," the doctor said. "Water,
Marave. What happened in the water?"
The man remained rigid. Sam stepped closer to the
bed. He said something in Kwajaleini. The man jerked
as if stung, cringed, and put his hands up to shield his
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face. He began to shout in his native language.
"What's he saying?" Carter said quickly.
Sam translated, his face expressionless: "Weed!
Weed! Growing! Spit! Spit! Sting. Pots. Spitting pots.
Damned pots all over lagoon. Spitting. Growing. Bub-
bles. Bubbles. Spit. Growing. Growing ... and he just
goes on like that. Talks about pots, spitting, growing,
bubbles, weed. He in pain, but not very bad pain. He
just talk, talk. Crazy talk."
the doctor said. "I'm afraid
"Delirious, Carter,"
whatever he says isn't reliable. "
"That depends. Images can be very reliable if you
know how to analyze them. I'll be back later. Sam, can
you get me up to Ebaye?"
"You like canoe ride?"
"I like." At the moment it was better than using any
official vehicles or aircraft. Slow but alone, and he
didn't want any official eyes from any side. You never
knew who was behind something as crazy as this.
They left the hospital together, Sam and Carter, and
walked along the mid-American street to the docks on
the lagoon side where all the electronics whizzes kept
their sailboats and powerboats and water skis, the town
dock of any affluent East Coast township. Sam's
outrigger was tied up at the end of a rickety native pier.
The Kwajaleinis had been building canoes the same way
when landlocked Europeans were still watching in fear
for raiding Viking longships. The outrigger could sail
and paddle rings around the European ships that found
them, and could still outpaddle and outsail most small
boats.
Sam paddled out into the still clear lagoon, then set
his sail and the canoe shot forward, skimming the sur-
face of the crystal-clear water. Less than halfway from
Kwajalein to Ebaye the water began to darken. and
soon the shoots of the thick weed began to break the
surface like the heads of snakes swimming inexorably
south. The outrigger slowed, but not much, actually
sliding ahead on the thick weed itself.
"Lean to right, hold outrigger high, Sam instructed.
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Carter leaned. Sam watched the outrigger as loops Of
the thick weed seemed to grab at it. The canoe itself was
too high in the bow for the weed to impede it, but the
outrigger could be caught, the boat stopped and turned
if not capsized. The two men kept a delicate balance be-
tween putting too much weight on the opposite side of
the canoe from the outrigger and letting the outrigger
fall too deeply into the grasping weed.
Balanced, they seemed to sail even faster over the
matted weed so thick Carter felt they could almost walk
on it. Eerily deserted, the lagoon stretched empty where
normally canoes would be sailing everywhere, the extent
Of the weed visible in all directions like a dark stain
spreading evilly across the turquoise water of the vast
lagoon.
When they sailed into the rickety pier on Ebaye, the
pier and the beach and even the visible houses were
deserted. Sam tied up and they climbed carefully up
onto the pier.
"Where does Marave live?" Carter asked Sam.
The Kwajaleini leader led the way up the beach and
through the palms to a particularly well-kept cement-
block shack with a tin roof. A brisk Caucasian woman
in her thirties worked in a thriving vegetable garden
behind the shack. She sat back on her heels and wiped
her sweating brow as she looked up at Sam. She smiled,
but her eyes didn't.
"Any news, Sam?" she asked quietly.
"He same, Lyda," Sam replied. "Commander Carter
want talk to you, ask question."
She glanced at Carter. "What questions, Com-
' 'You're not Kwajaleini, Mrs. Marave?"
"Yes, I am," she said. "I married Marave, so I
became Kwajaleini. It's quite an education to be on the
other side when the Pentagon wants something. It
changes one's views after ten years in the navy. 'i
'Did it change your husband 's views? "
C 'Oh, yes. Very much."
"What was he in the navy?"
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"What else, Commander? A frogman. Diving is what
a Kwajaleini does best. "
Frogman? "Did he ever leave the island, Mrs.
Marave?"
"Not in years. The navy wanted to set us up on Kwaj
because of me, right? But we said no. Not until we can
all move back and live on the island that is ours. The
only thing Marave kept from the navy is his wet suit.
That's almost part of him by now."
"Wet suit?" Carter said. "Your husband wears a wet
suit to dive in? Still? I mean, now? The day he got
"Yes," she said.
A wet suit!
"The other diver," Carter said, turning quickly to
Sam. "The other one who was in the hospital. Was he
wearing a wet suit?"
' 'He wear suit."
"Where is Marave's wet suit?" Carter asked.
"In the house," Lyda Marave said.
"Can I see it?"
"It's all in his room," she said, turning back to her
garden. "For when he comes home. "
Carter went inside. There were only two rooms. The
bedroom was neat, almost Spartan. A complete wet suit
and diving gear were laid neatly on a long low table near
the only window. Carter examined each piece in turn:
full two-piece wet suit including feet and head; rubber
gloves; fins; watertight join of top and bottom of suit;
face mask. The entire outfit was watertight except
perhaps for tiny leaks around the mask—and the fact
that the mask would have been dipped in the water
before being put on.
But no water would have entered beyond the residue
of wetting, and some tiny seepage around the mask. The
power of the poison in the weed came from contact with
the skin, and the wet suit had protected Marave and the
second diver who had survived until a few hours earlier.
He went back out to where Sam still stood over the
working Lyda Marave.
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"The other diver, Tevake—is his wet suit on the
island?
Sam nodded, then said something to Lyda Marave in
Kwajaleini. She smiled and kept on gardening.
"Thanks, Mrs. Marave," Carter said.
"Will it help Marave?" she said.
'61 hope so. "
She nodded and went on digging, turning the earth
that had to have been brought in from somewhere else.
Sam led Carter to another shack, silent and empty.
Tevake's family was gone now. Inside the shack they
found the wet suit flung in a heap on the floor, everyone
afraid to come near it after the deaths. Carter examined
it using the rubber gloves he'd brought with him.
"Where are the gloves?" he asked Sam.
"No gloves. Tevake not like gloves."
Everything else was watertight. But Tevake had not
worn gloves. So the potency of the poison in the water
was -directly proportional to how much skin area it
touched. That didn't mean the plants themselves
weren't more deadly if touched directly; Carter had no
way of knowing if either diver had touched the plants.
"You want to take me back to Kwaj, Sam?" Carter
asked.
"No can. Must stay. You take canoe.
Carter nodded, and the two men left the ramshackle
home of the dead diver and walked back through the
crowded slum of Ebaye to the lagoon and the pier. Sam
pointed to a smaller canoe up on land, and the two of
them carried it out onto the pier and lowered it carefully
into the water, making sure they did not splash
themselves or touch the deadly water.
"No take chances," Sam warned. "Not fall into
water• "
"You can bet on it, Sam," Carter said and grinned.
In the canoe, he paddled out carefully through the
thick weed, wearing his rubber gloves, until it was far
enough out to set the sail. Balancing far over, coming
too close to the lethal water even for him, he sailed
south again through the matted weed. To be safe, he
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sailed far out beyond the weed this time, and circled
wide through the clear water toward Kwajalein. He was
not the sailor Sam was, and he couldn't afford to make
any mistakes.
The long curve to avoid the weed took much more
time, and it was evening when Carter finally reached
Kwaj through the clear, weed-free water of the lagoon.
He went straight to headquarters. General Scott was
somewhere at sea meeting with the Soviet experts on
their cruiser. Only Major Hammond was in his office,
and he told Carter what had happened while he was
away.
"We searched the whole area, air and sea, and didn't
find any survivors from the Soviet ship. No clues as to
what blew her up, either." Hammond shook his head.
' 'The weed is very thick out there. It just seems to be
spreading like wildfire. We spotted dead fish,' some por-
poises, even a whale. If it goes on unchecked .. v" The
major only shook his head again.
"What about the pathology team from Pearl?"
"They're working on the bodies. No report yet."
Carter nodded, then went to the laboratory at the
hospital. The chief pharmacist's mate shrugged.
"Not a damned thing so far, sir. Whatever the poison
is, we can't fit it into anything we know yet. It may not
even be a poison, just some reaction of the human body
to the seaweed."
"Have you identified the plant?"
"Only that it's some mutant of a common seaplant
often used for food in the Far East. We have no clue as
to what made it mutate, or how it got into the lagoon or
the ocean."
' 'What about the pathologists? Have they said
anything yet about the actual physical cause Of death?"
"NO, sir. But unofficially they say it looks like a pure
case of nerve poisoning, but they have no identification
of the type of poison yet. It's like a snake venom, one of
them told me, but not from any snake they can classify
so far."
Carter left the laboratory and went along toward the
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room where the su,rviving Kwajaleini, Marave, was. If
he could get the diver to tell him more about the "spit-
ting pots" and the "bubbles," he might have something
to go on. If Marave could talk about exactly what he
had done that day, what he had seen. Something maybe
the diver didn't even remember now but could dredge
up. Anything.
"You can't come in here! Oh, it's you, Com-
mander." The dour nurse on the desk that blocked the
corridor did not smile.
"How is Marave?"
"If you mean the Kwajaleini patient, I'm glad to say
he was much better this afternoon. He came out of the
delirium. Now he is resting comfortably."
"Can he talk? Can he remember?"
"l wouldn't know, Commander. Medically he's
much improved, essentially out of danger. How his
mind is isn't my job."
The refuge of the mediocre, their job. If it wasn't in
the job description, it didn't exist. Carter walked past
her and nodded to the sleepy guard outside Marave's
door. The guard waved an idle hand by way of a salute.
Carter went into the room. It was quiet and dim, a
single lamp on near the bed, the night now dark over the
sea outside the open windows.
The diver lay as silent as he had earlier, but his hands
were crossed quietly on his chest now. Relaxed. Even
limp. His eyes staring up....
Carter ran to the bed.
Marave lay on his back, eyes open but seeing nothing
at all. A pool of blood soaked the hospital sheets from
his gaping throat.
The diver's head had been almost cut off, the blood
still wet and hot.
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The blood was still hot.
Wilhelmina was in Carter's hand.
His eyes searched the whole room, dim with the single
light in the now dark night. The room was empty.
Carter crossed quickly to the open window with its cur-
tains blowing in the soft Pacific breeze.
Shadowy shapes moved among the palms.
Figures all in black like part of the night.
Carter climbed out of the window, dropped to the
ground, and ran swiftly and silently after the retreating
shapes.
They moved in military precision toward one of the
nine-hole golf courses. Twelve of them, by Carter's
count as he followed like a phantom in pursuit: two as
rear guard, -two on point, two on each flank, and four in
the center. They were like a patrol in enemy territory: a
commando raid that had done its work and was
withdrawing in good order.
Some car headlights swept the night. In the houses
people played music behind lighted windows. There was
a party at the golf club, shadows dancing through the
wide French doors.
The retreating patrol hurried on, alert and silent,
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picking its way carefully to avoid any contact, and so
moving not quite as fast as it could have.
Just as the patrol reached the golf course and started
to cross, moving faster now that the danger of meeting
anyone was less, Carter caught up.
It was an experienced patrol, trained men. The two
rear guards were close enough so that one could not be
attacked without the other knowing it, yet separated
just far enough that no one could attack them together.
No one except the Killmaster.
Silently he shadowed the two men across the dark
night of the golf course. Under palms and through
thickets of imported hibiscus and oleander. Around
bunkers white in the night. Across the slick, well-
watered greens. He came to a maintenance shed in a
grove of palms, and for an instant the rear guards were
hidden from the main body and the flank guards. Carter
approached them as they passed between the small
building and the palms.
Hugo leaped into Carter's hand, and he was on them.
The stiletto went in under the ribs of the man on the
right as Carter's arm clamped around the windpipe of
the man on the left. He flung the dead man off the nar-
row blade, killed the second man with another single
thrust, dropped his body, and was gone in the night
toward the two on the right flank.
The two on the right flank were trotting single file,
both watching out into the night away from the center,
one looking front and side, the other back and side.
Neither was looking toward the center from where
Carter thrust Hugo into the rear man, left him dead,
and leaped toward the front man.
The man turned. He saw Carter and raised a small,
stubby submachine gun. Carter had to shoot. A single
shot from Wilhelmina dropped the man.
Carter fell with the dead invader.
The burst of automatic fire came from the left. Eight
guns. Bullets slimmed into the dead man, whined over-
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head, kicked up dirt like divots from the grass of the
golf course.
"Count off!" said a voice—in Japanese.
Seven voices counted. The single voice called again.
"Miko? Fortune? Shaw? Yukio?"
A silence. Then a different voice.
"They got them! All four of them."
Another silence. And still another voice.
' 'There's no one out there. No cover. I can see two
bodies, that's all. If there's anyone close, he's behind
one of the bodies. Just one man."
Carter slipped his small infrared night binoculars
from his pocket and looped the cord over his ears. He
could see two of them close to the ground. One had
large infrared field glasses, and he was reporting what
he could see. The other was also flat on the ground, but
his head was raised and he looked like the leader.
Carter swept the night beyond the pair on the ground.
The other six were in a bunker just to the right of the
two in the open. As he watched, the two crawled back to
the bunker and tumbled in. They would talk it over for a
time.
Carter examined the body of the dead man that hid
him. The man wore a skintight black wet suit. It was
a seamless, one-piece suit, with feet and gloves, that
zipped up the back with a watertight zipper. Even the
face mask was built in, and it had some special device to
prevent fogging. There was no way water could get in.
And there was no air tank.
The dead man had been armed with the same stubby
submachine gun—a 9mm PM-63 Polish-made machine
pistol. It had the regular field twenty-five-round maga-
zine. Carter stuck it into his belt.
Somewhere in the distance he heard a siren. Someone
had heard the firing, and the military police were com-
ing. Across the night in the bunker they heard it too.
The moon was coming up, and the bunker would soon
be more visible. They emerged from the bunker in a
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tight group, two walking backward to watch the rear,
and the eight men in black hurried away across the golf
course again.
Escape was more important to them than getting their
attacker, which, to Carter, meant they had a report to
make and were under orders not to be captured.
He wanted at least one of them alive.
In their tight group they headed away toward the
ocean. Carter circled to get in front of them. They were
moving as fast as they could while ready to defend
against an attack from all sides, but he caught them at
the far edge of the golf course just above the ocean-side
beach. He had to separate them, split off one he could
capture.
He fired a burst from his borrowed PM-63.
Two screamed in the night and went down, dead
before they hit the grass.
The other six returned a fusillade that pinned him
down, and Carter took cover behind trees in the now
bright moonlight. Even without his infrared binoculars,
Carter saw that five were bunched behind trees in a
grove to his right just above the beach; the sixth was at
least fifty feet away from them, alone behind a large
palm farther inland. The light wind was blowing toward
the sea.,
Carter pulled Pierre from its place high on his thigh
and hurled the deadly gas bomb to explode directly in
the center of the group of five. He heard its lethal hiss,
then circled quickly left and upwind to come up behind
the solitary remaining invader. He slipped down his in-
frared binoculars, spotted the isolated man behind his
large palm, and ran in a crouch to get him.
Then a violent barrage of automatic fire came from
the grove where Pierre had exploded.
Carter dived frantically for the ground, rolled,
crawled, and slid into a shallow fairway bunker.
His left arm burned with pain. He'd been hit in the
fleshy part of his upper arm. Cursing, he stopped the
blood with pressure, and peered over the edge of the
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bunker, his infrared binoculars still on. His quarry was
running from behind the palm to rejoin the others, all
alive, in the grove.
Pierre should have killed all five in seconds. There
was only one answer: the special watertight wet suits
were airtight too. They were as good as permanent gas
masks as long as the face masks were on.
Carter took out one of the special plastic bandages he
always carried, bound and prepared to crawl
out of the narrow bunker. He'd have to pick them off
one by one, and take the last survivor alive.
As he started to slip into the night, the six men sud-
denly ran out of the trees and down across the beach.
Carter jumped up in pursuit. They had reached the edge
of the water and were clambering into two rubber boats.
Down on one knee, Carter aimed the Polish PM-63.
A glaring spotlight caught him in its brilliance, and a
heavy machine gun opened fire.
Sand kicked up five feet in front of Carter.
The Killmaster dived back into the bunker.
The heavy machine gun continued to chatter as the
spotlight probed slowly back and forth, up and down in
search of him.
Out on the sea in the moonlight the black submersible
heaved on the swells, the light on its conning tower, the
machine gun behind it. The six invaders were halfway to
it now in their rubber boats. Helpless, Carter watched
them reach the black craft, climb aboard, and vanish
below.
Men were running across the golf course behind him,
but it was too late. Even as he watched, the submarine
sank out of sight and was gone.
"You! Hold it right there!"
Behind him, five MPs had their weapons trained on
him. Carter sighed, dropped the little PM-63, and raised
his hands. The MPs moved up cautiously. The sergeant
saw him.
"Oh. Sorry, sir. We had a report of automatic weap-
ons fire. "
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"You heard right, Sergeant," Carter said. s 'A patrol
of frogmen. They just made it home to their sub. I got
six of them. You'll find their bodies on the golf course.
You'd better have your men pick them up."
The sergeant swallowed. "Er, yes, sir."
"Now drive me back to the hospital."
"Yes, sir. "
At the hospital he jumped from the Jeep. General
Scott stood in front of the hospital with Major Ham-
mond. Both were armed, pistols in holsters.
"We heard firing," the general said quietly.
"The nurse reported you went into Marave's room,"
Major Hammond said. "She heard a noise and went in
to check and found Marave dead. She thinks you killed
him, then escaped through the open window."
V' We knew better," General Scott said. "Who were
they? What happened?"
Carter told them about the murder of the one surviv-
ing victim of the diving off Ebaye, the squad of frogmen
in their watertight, airtight, tankless wet suits, and the
submersible that came to gather them in.
"None of the six you shot are alive?" the general
asked.
"No."
"We finally found some Soviet survivors out there,"
Major Hammond said. C' Two. Pure luck. They were
divers in full wet suits ready to go down from a rubber
boat maybe a hundred yards away from the ship. The
explosion stunned both of them, but they revived drift-
ing farther out. We missed them the first few passes. "
' 'What did they tell you?"
"Almost nothing," General Scott said. 'SThe ship ex-
ploded and sank within minutes, perhaps seconds.
There was the explosion, great clouds of flame and
smoke, and the ship was gone. They think it was some
kind of torpedo. "
"It wasn't the seaweed," Major Hammond said.
"Not this time."
"There was no chance for anyone aboard," the
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general said. "I'm sure whoever sank them counted on
no survivors at all. It was just the purest chance the two
survived. "
"At least whoever is behind this is human—they
missed the two on the raft, " Major Hammond said.
"Human and perhaps Japanese," Carter said. "The
raiders who killed Marave spoke in Japanese. Some of
the names the commander called out were Japanese,
and some weren't. It was a mixed group.
'SAn antiwar group gone completely insane?"
General Scott wondered.
"It's possible, General," Carter agreed. "What
about the laboratory tests? "
"Let's go and find out," General Scott said.
The brisk little general led the way along the hospital
corridors to the laboratory. The same team—techni-
cians, chief, and doctor—were still working on the
samples of weed and water inside the glove boxes.
C' We have isolated what appears to be an unknown
substance in the water samples," the doctor reported to
the general, "but we have no identification on it. As
near as we can tell, it fits no known chemical group-
ing."
"How can that be, Doctor?" Carter asked. "l
thought all possible structures had been worked out."
"They have, with the basic laws of chemistry we
know. This compound is not possible from what I
know, so I'm sending it to Washington for complete
analysis. "
"And the plants?" Carter asked a technician.
"Definitely a mutant of seaweeds being grown ex-
perimentally in Japan for food. We're in touch with
Tokyo now to see if they have any record of this mu-
tant."
' 'What have the pathologists found? "
The general answered. ' $ They reported an hour ago,
and went back to Pearl. All the victims died of nerve
poisoning—an extremely potent nerve poison of some
kind. They could not identify it, and two of them are
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world experts on poisons. In fact they took tissue
samples with them to work on in Pearl and to send to
every other pathologist and toxicologist in the coun-
try."
Carter nodded. "Can I use the radio room, Gen-
eraI
"Of course, Commander. If you want me, I'll be in
my office or at home. Contact me anywhere."
Major Hammond followed the general out, and the
lab team went back to work on the challenge of their
unknown problem. Carter left them working, and
walked through the bright moonlit night to the head-
quarters building. It was humming with activity as the
staff communicated with the Soviet cruiser now lying
offshore near where their electronic surveillance ship
had gone down. The big question was whether or not to
allow the Soviet crew shore leave on Kwajalein. They
were involving Moscow and Washington in the decision.
Carter found a guard on the radio room door; the
room itself was deserted. He sat at the microphone,
gave the code numbers, and waited for the dulcet tones
of the computer.
"Hello, N3, what can I give you tonight?" the voice
purred.
SSA little time with the chief, if you please."
"Well, we'll just see if that can be arranged."
Hawk came on almost before the computer had
stopped purring at Carter. CCAnything, N3?"
"I think so," Carter said, and he described all the
events of the day and evening. "Now we know the
submersible is behind it all, including the weed, and
someone is behind the submersible. Whoever it is didn't
want Marave to talk about what he'd seen, which means
there was something to see. The seaweed isn't a natural
event."
"No," Hawk said, worry etched in his voice. "They
spoke Japanese?"'
'"And the plant seems to have a connection to
Japan."
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"They're pretty advanced in underwater research."
"Even to breathing without air tanks underwater?"
Carter listened to Hawk puffing on his cigar. "A wet
suit protects?"
"As long as it's watertight. "
Hawk went on puffing. "What I don't get is what
anyone stands to gain out of this. What's the purpose?"
"Blackmail? Get the world powers to stop doing
something under threat Of turning the plant loose in
vital waterways? "
"The peace movement? "
' 'General Scott sees it as a possibility."
"General Scott was sure it was the Russians," Hawk
said drily. "What else can you do there, Nick?"
"Nothing," Carter said. "What did you learn about
that cove in New Guinea?"
' 'Nothing," Hawk said. ' 'You'd better get over
there."
' 'Any other reports of the weed? "
"Not yet. Tomorrow morning, take a navy VTOL.
I'll have one on Kwajalein by dawn. "
' 'We'd better have something else here fast," Carter
said.
"What's that?"
' 'Something to stop the weed.
Hawk puffed on the cigar in his distant office.
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TEN
The pilot of the British Navy Harrier pointed down to
the dense jungle of the coast of New Guinea. Carter
looked at the endless green, the almost hidden rivers,
the numberless coves, and the cloud-wreathed moun-
tains towering ahead in the distance. Even today, in
remote mountain valleys and dense jungle depths far
from the coast or the main rivers, there were people Iiv-
ing in the Stone Age.
"That's the mouth of the Sepik up there, Com-
mander, "
the pilot's voice said over the intercom.
"With the Aussie's directions, I'll set you down in that
district commissioner's lap. "
The broad mouth of the large river was clearly visible
farther up the coast. The Harrier jet went down rapidly,
sweeping in low over the coast and a small cove at which
Carter stared. Even from the jet he could see the dark,
almost black color of the water, the shoots protruding
like snake heads above the surface, the dead fish and
small animals.
"Swing back out to sea for a moment, Lieutenant,"
Carter instructed.
"It's your joyride," the cheerful young pilot said.
The Harrier circled over the ocean again, and Carter
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saw the shadow spreading out from the cove that in-
dicated the growing weed. It was already some fifty
miles off the coast at the point of the arc, fifty miles
along the coast in either direction. Dead fish and even
large animals dotted the silent, ominous surface of the
dark sea.
"Let's find the village," Carter said.
"Righto. "
The Harrier swept up and over and down again across
the coast and circled a small village less than a quarter
Of a mile from the weed-choked cove. In the center of
the village was a large thatched building Of palm fronds
and bamboo. The Harrier pilot grinned, pointed down,
and settled the jet lower until it hovered directly over the
open space in front of the large building, then slowly
settled to a gentle landing.
"Piece of cake," the young pilot said.
"Nice job," Carter complimented him as he climbed
out.
The pilot grinned from the cockpit but didn't get out.
"Always glad to oblige a friendly navy. Sorry I can't
stay." He glanced around the silent village. "Lively-
looking town. But duty calls."
Carter did a slow three-sixty. There was no sign of
life. "You have to leave?"
"Orders, you know. Deliver and split, that was the in-
struction. See you, Yank."
He waved, brought up the power, and the Harrier
rose into the air in its vertical takeoff and was gone over
the trees that grew thickly around the village.
Carter-picked up his sea bag and again looked slowly
all around him. The village seemed to consist of twenty
or twenty-five neat grass huts, clean and well made.
They were on high ground cleared from the jungle, the
bare dirt packed hard by generations and swept clean,
the jungle itself only feet from the last house.
There were cooking areas in front of each hut, pots
over the fires, dogs skulking warily around the build-
ings.
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THE SAMURAI KILL
But no sign of people.
Carter picked up his bag and walked slowly around
the village looking at all the huts. Everything seemed to
be there inside the huts: sleeping mats, weapons, uten-
Sils, masks, ceremonial robes. Cooking pots hung over
all the fires, most still full of food. But the fires were
out, the food cold. Eating bowls sat on the ground,
some with food still in them, as if the eaters had simply
dropped them and run.
He crossed the open area of cement-hard dirt between
the first row of huts and the large bamboo and palm
thatch house. It was the standard white-man's house in
a native village. One story, a low, shaded veranda
around three sides, windows on the inner wall of the
veranda closed not with glass but with mosquito netting
and bamboo blinds. The deserted veranda creaked
under his footsteps. The door was unlocked. He put
down his bag, drew Wilhelmina, and pushed the door
open. Nothing moved inside.
Carter slipped in like a shadow, flattened himself
against the wall, and swiftly surveyed the room. It was
one large living room with old and dusty bamboo and
rattan furniture and a bar that opened into the kitchen
at the rear. It was neat and yet disordered, things in
piles. The room of a man who lived alone and had for
some time. The doors to two bedrooms to the right were
open, a large, four-poster bed with mosquito netting in
one, the other, cluttered with old furniture and junk,
being used as a storeroom.
He crossed to the kitchen, The table in the living
room near the kitchen was set for breakfast, napkin
unfolded at one place. In the kitchen itself, eggs were
cold in the pan, toast dry and hard on the counter, a
glass of milk warm and curdled.
Carter returned Wilhelmina to her holster and went
back into the living room. The same story as outside
in the village. In the middle of breakfast, or about to
start, everyone had vanished. To where? And why? He
searched the large house without finding a single clue.
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He left his bag in the house and went outside again. In
the shadows of the veranda he slowly surveyed the entire
silent village. The dogs, grown bolder now that he was
out of sight, nosed through the abandoned cook pots
and bowls, but there was no sign of human life. It was
as if time had stopped in the village, the people vanished
into another dimension, another time warp.
He saw the movement far to the left.
A tiny, almost invisible movement of the jungle wall
that ringed the village.
It came again.
Carter showed no reaction, made no move to reveal
he had seen anything. But he had seen all he needed.
Someone was out there at the edge of the jungle
watching him.
It was the smallest motion of the thick foliage, but
Carter's trained gaze had detected the glisten of an eye,
a fleeting image of black skin where a hand or perhaps a
finger moved the green.
He walked down the steps of the house and turned
away from the movement in the jungle. He began to
search the huts one by one, working his way around
toward where the movement had been. Halfway there,
he went into a hut tluå backed against the jungle.
Inside the dim hut, Hugo leaped into his hand from
his sleeve, and he quickly cut a hole in the rear wall,
slipped through, and went into the jungle.
In the thick vegetation, among the green, sun-dappled
leaves of the jungle with its heavy green roof above, the
Killmaster circled as silently as any jungle cat to come
up behind where he had seen the faint movement, the
flash of skin and eye. His eyes slowly grew accustomed
to the dim green light, and he sensed he was close to
where he had seen the movement. Crouched low against
the massive trunk of a tree covered with lichens and
fungus, he waited and watched.
The endless sound and movement of the timeless sun-
filtered jungle, unchanged for millions of
Slow time.
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Almost without time.
The shape seemed to grow out of the shadows
themselves. Then another. And another.
Carter saw three thickset, naked men moving so
silently they seemed to float on the thick jungle air, part
of the shadowed light, an illusion.
But they were very real, and if they made no sound,
they did leave a trail as they passed Carter from the
direction of the village moving away and deeper into the
jungle. But they were out of sight almost as soon as they
had passed, the bent leaves and springing-back ferns the
only sign of their passage. It was enough.
Carter followed them, more silent than they were, the
shadow of shadows.
He was never close enough to see them, or even hear
them, but he was led on by the almost invisible trail that
was as good as a six-lane highway to a trained tracker.
He was led away from the village and the coast
toward the far-off mountains but not near the moun-
tains, led no more than a mile inland from the village to
a tinier settlement of huts. A few other men and women
noisily greeted the newcomers in a language Carter
didn't know. The three men spoke quickly and ex-
citedly, gesturing back toward the village. Carter had
found his missing villagers. Or some of them.
He stepped out of the jungle shadows, Wilhelmina
pointed straight at the three men. Some of the women
saw him first, and they screamed and scattered.
The three men did not run. They knew who he was, or
at least they knew what he wanted.
' 'What happened? "
He watched them, looking slowly from one to the
other. The oldest stepped forward.
"They come. We run away. We hear plane. We go
see. We see you. We not know what you are, so we go
away.
"What happened before I got here? What happened
after you found the weed in the cove?"
Two of them looked as if they'd just as soon run right
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then, Wilhelmina or no Wilhelmina. The older spokes-
man trembled, but he stood his ground.
"You sit. We tell. Okay, boss?"
The old man indicated a comfortable patch of dirt in
the shade of a hut and some trees, and he offered a chew
Of lime and betel nut on a leaf. His English was much
better and a lot more colloquial and even Americanized
than the usual Pisin-speaking Papuan. There was at
least one long trip far from New Guinea in his history.
Carter refused the betel nut, but he walked to the
meeting place and sat on the ground.
"Where did you travel to?" he asked the old man as
the three sat down and began to chew on their betel nuts
and lime. The other two were immediately happier.
"Me go on ship many time. Then go on big plane. Go
London. Go San Francisco, Me learn cook Australia,
go many place. You American?"
"American," Carter said. "What happened after the
cove?
The old man looked solemn and shook his head. The
other two went on chewing and keeping an eye on their
escape route. In the jungle all around, Carter sensed the
others watching and waiting.
"Fish die, animal-die. Weed very bad," the old man
said. "Old boss he tell us go away from water, come
back village. He make report Moresby, tell them weed
in cove and fish all dead. Then we all go eat. Go hut and
talk. Then they come. "
One of the others was getting up some courage.
Maybe it was the betel nut. "Many fella come along
"A lot of men?" Carter asked.
The old man nodded, his eyes still scared. "They
come, we run. I hide. I see."
"See what?"
"Many men, Come cove way. All black but not black
men, yes? Have water clothes, guns, catch people, catch
boss in house. Take away. We see, we run.i they no
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catch. We go behind, see cove, they go in! Not die.
Great black fish come from water, have light, eyes like
house. Many men go into big fish, it swim away, sink.
All gone. "
The submersible. Or one just like it. To Carter it
sounded like some kind of mistake in the cove, the ex-
periment more successful than they had expected, or
maybe they had not known an Australian was in the
area with contact to Port Moresby. If so, they had been
too late. Carter wondered if they knew that, whoever
they were.
"You can go back to the village," he told the three
men. "I don't think they'll be back, and there's no
danger. "
The three nodded sadly.
"All gone. People. "
"You three are the only survivors?"
The three men nodded.
"We go back, look, wait, maybe people come back,"
the older one said, but his voice showed that he did not
believe it. His people were gone forever.
Carter wished he could have told him he was wrong,
but he couldn't. He didn't think the villagers or the old
commissioner would be back. Whoever was behind the
weed and the submersible did not like witnesses.
"What will you do?" he asked gently.
"We live here, have new village. "
"We watch old village. Wait."
' 'Many fella belong us come back."
The other two had more hope. They had less ex-
perience, less imagination. Maybe that was better.
Carter left the three of them standing in the tiny
village and started back for the empty settlement.
Behind him he heard the other people slowly emerging
from the jungle. They would vanish at the slightest
sound, the appearance of any stranger, for a long time.
When he reached the deserted village with its larger
house, he didn't stop, but went on all the way back to
the cove. In the hardened mud at the edge he found the
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faint tracks of feet with swim fins that showed where the
wet-suited attackers had returned to the water.
He backtracked slowly to the village itself, searching
every inch of ground for any evidence of who and what
the attackers were. He found nothing.
In the village he went back up the steps of the kid-
napped commissioner's house and searched the ver-
anda. Nothing.
Inside he searched the living room. Nothing.
The bedroom with its mosquito-net-draped four-
poster yielded no clues.
In the storeroom he surveyed the clutter.
And heard the soft sound behind him. Out in the big
main room. Pressed against the wall he peered out.
A figure in a black wet suit stood in the room.
Hugo jumped into Carter's hand. The figure had its
back to him. He leaped toward it and reached around to
clamp his arm around its throat.
And was hurled through the air to crash against the
wall as the black figure attacked.
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Carter bounded away from the wall and Hugo slashed
at the silent intruder.
The attacker kicked the stiletto into the air with a
swift karate kick that numbed Carter's hand.
Carter let fly a quick kick into the attacker's ribs that
should have broken bones.
The figure in the black wet suit and mask twisted with
the force of the kick into a somersault. The unknown
assailant came up breathing hard but uninjured.
Carter moved in with a kick to the chin that missed.
The attacker chopped for Carter's neck.
The Killmaster twisted under the blow, came up in-
side the lethal hands, grappled close....
And looked into the laughing eyes behind the mask,
then felt the soft breasts hidden under the wet suit, the
slender body tight against him.
"I wondered how good your training was," Siobhan
O'Neill said. "You're not just a DOD Intelligence of-
ficer."
"And you're not just Aussie Naval Intelligence,"
Carter said, still holding her close against him. "I would
have killed most agents with the first kick."
she said,
' 'It was good, best I've been up against,"
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taking off her mask and kissing him. "You want to talk
more shop, or shall we try that bed in there?"
He picked her up lightly. ' 'A four-poster and mos-
quito netting. How could anyone resist. "
She was unbuttoning his shirt before they got to the
bed. He pulled back the heavy mosquito netting and put
her on the bed. She had his boots and pants off. He
pulled the wet suit bottom down. She was naked under
the suit. She dug her hands into his shorts and pulled
them off. He had her wet suit top off, her breasts falling
free and loose, the nipples hard. She buried her face in
his neck, moving warm and soft and hard against him.
He closed the mosquito netting and stroked the length
of her body as her mouth worked hot and wet against
his throat. Under the thick netting the light was an an-
cient yellow, distant, filtered through ages of dust and
colonial memories.
Under her, deep in the soft mattress, the thick muted
sound and light of the mosquito netting. Hot light and
hot sound. Breathing hot, close. Heavy warmth and
seeking mouth, urgent, all over him. Breathing and
searching each other under the yellow light of the dusty
bamboo room. Only_an empty village beyond the close
enclosing heat of the netting that was in another world.
A world of two bodies entwined like one animal seeking
itself.
They breathed hard. Lay side by side. Unmoving.
Only breathing and looking up at the yellow canopy of
muted light. Isolated under the netting and in them-
selves. They lay and touched and did not move, only
breathed. Breathed hard and lay close but not moving
until they could stand it no longer and he rose up on his
arms and she opened her legs as wide as the bed to draw
him into her.
The passion seemed to be held in, enclosed by the
mosquito netting, enclosed in the ancient yellow light,
encapsulated in å thick liquid light and silence v that
flowed all around them as he searched inside her,
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probed deeper and deeper, and she drew him in, held
him tight inside her, locked him in as hot and close as
the yellow light and the thick netting itself.
Cries echoed from the yellow light, echoed from the
bamboo walls and palm roof, throbbed through the vil-
lage and the jungle and the far-off cove where the dead
fish and the dead animals floated. They were cries of
live animals entwined and slippery and hot and panting
and breathing ... breathing
The yellow light seemed to come from nowhere.
Carter lay on his back and looked at the thatched roof
above him, the heat washing over him as if he were in
some kind of steam bath. He had the sensation that he
had been on a trip. Somewhere out of time. As if time
had stopped and he had returned to another world.
"Nice," Siobhan said.
She smiled where she lay beside him in the big four-
poster bed under the thick mosquito netting with the hot
tropical sun outside. Her slim, strong hand played on
his belly, stroked his legs.
"Better," he said. "Why?"
"Orders," she said. "Same as you, N3."
"You've been doing some homework. "
"We're not all kangaroos and wallabies, Nick. It so
happens we've got a man who once worked with your
boss."
"Everyone worked with my boss," Carter said with a
sigh.
"No, only the best in all the services."
"Including the KGB."
' 'We can be a pretty small club sometimes."
"Like now," Carter said. "What are your orders,
Siobhan?"
"Find out what's behind the weed and the sub-
marine. "
"Why come here?"
"It's the first reported occurrence. Or first definite
reported occurrence. "
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"First? You know others besides Kwajalein?"
She rolled close against him, her mouth breathing on
his throat.
"There are three other coves in New Guinea where
the weed is growing. They happened after this one, and
there was no old commissioner to report them right
away. Word drifted in over the last week."
"And definite?"
"When we ran a computer scan we came up with a
year-old report from one of our stringers in Japan.
There was something like the fast-growing weed
reported from a remote area of Japan, but it seems to
have made no ripples. "
"Possible, We checked back with our man yesterday:
He can't find any coverup, but there's no record of
anything being done beyond the initial report, either. "
' 'It just lay there?"
"So it seems. "
Carter was thoughtful. "There seems to be a strong
Japanese flavor to the whole thing."
' 'But no definite lead."
Carter nodded, ghen turned to look at her naked
body. In the yellow light under the netting, she looked
like a soft vision from some great painting. She ran her
fingers lightly along his chest and belly, and smiled at
him.
' 'We have to find a lead," he said.
"Yes, we do."
"We should start looking. "
"Yes, we should. "
' 'Now."
"Even sooner. "
Her mouth was soft and wet on his throat. His hand
touched her where she was soft and wet.
"Work is impprtant."
"Very."
"We have to search the village. "
"All of it."
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' 'It won't go away."
"We have time."
"All there is. "
' 'We could do something else, and this house, the
village, will still be here."
"We certainly could. "
And they did.
Some hours later, dressed now in almost identical
camouflage coveralls, they slipped out of the bamboo
and palm thatch commissioner's house and spread out
to search the village. A low, cooling evening sunlight
slanted through the silent village. Faces peered at them
from the jungle wall, but the natives did not return. Not
as long as they moved among the neat huts, their
presence unexplained and mysterious to the villagers.
They found nothing at all in the clean, swept huts.
In the commissioner's house once more, they each
searched opposite sides of the main room. They moved
methodically, the tedious work as much a part of an
agent's expertise as slipping across heavily guarded
borders or killing. Outside in the fading evening light
the people were coming into the village. They came
warily, testing each step as if the ground were quick-
sand. Life had not taught them to feel secure with light-
skinned strangers.
Siobhan tried the kitchen; Carter went into the clut-
tered storeroom. It took him so long to plow through
the mess of stored furniture, old suitcases, and rusted
filing cabinets that Siobhan came to help him.
"Nothing that adds up to anything in the kitchen,"
she reported, beginning to turn over the stacked fur-
niture and pull out its stuffing.
"I haven't hit a bonanza," Carter said.
They tore apart what was left of the room and came
up empty-handed. There was only the bedroom left.
"This is for something other than searching," Carter
said.
"Ready when you are, N3."
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Carter laughed. "Duty first, Commander."
But there was nothing in the bedroom that could be
remotely connected to the silent invaders or Japan or
the weed or a submarine.
"What now?" Siobhan asked.
Carter looked around the cluttered house. It was
something out of the last century, and more than time
had passed it by. A different world had swallowed its
owner.
"Where are these other coves?" he said.
"Do you think we'll do any better there?"
"We couldn't do worse. We have to get a lead
somewhere. "
"If there is one," Siobhan said. "These people are
pretty damned careful. "
"Can you get us a ride?"
' 'Of course." She smiled. "Tomorrow morning soon
"Is that the best you can do? "
"No, but I think I can stall that long."
He grinned, "Do your worst. "
She went out into the dusk of the slowly reviving
village. Fires burned now in front of some of the huts,
the bolder villagers watching Siobhan with only a little
wariness. Her transmitter was in her backpack. As she
took it out and set it up to call her headquarters, the
native who had traveled to London and San Francisco,
the boldest of all of them, came across the hard-packed
open area in front of the commissioner's house. He
looked at Carter, then nodded to Siobhan O'Neill.
"You smart fellas boss. You bring woman."
"Commander O'Neill is from the Royal Australian
Navy," Carter said. "She is here working to find out
about those attackers too."
A female Australian military officer in his village was
a little too much even for such a world traveler. He
shifted his feet as if he didn't know whether to salute or
run. He licked his lips and grinned. Siobhan continued
setting up. Carter noticed he had something in his hand.
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"You have something you want to show me? What's
your name?"
"Name Tukum along me."
"My name is Carter, Tukum. Is what you have in
your hand for me?"
"Car-ter!" The native, Tukum, beamed.
Carter pointed to his hand. "What you have
there?
Tukum looked down at his hand. Then he nodded,
opened his hand, and showed it to Carter. A ballpoint
pen lay in his rough hand. A white pen that looked ex-
pensive. Carter took it.
"Me find by water. Where we see black not black
men take boss to boat that sink. "
Carter looked at the pen. It was sleek and expensive in
white enamel trimmed with gold. Gold lettering on the
barrel read Takeda Research Ltd.
"Siobhan!"
He showed her the pen. She looked at it, then looked
up at him.
' 'A Japanese company. They're big in sea farming
and underwater research." Siobhan watched him. "You
want me to tell my people to pick us up right now?"
Carter smiled. "What's one day?"
"What indeed. "
' 'We have to eat. There's a table all set inside the
house. "
"I've got some fine emergency rations. "
' 'A feast," he said. "And later we can plan our
course of action. It might take all night. "
She turned to her transmitter. "Pick me up tomorrow
morning at dawn, We'll have a passenger. Commander
Carter of the U.S. Navy. Over and out. "
They smiled at each other. Carter took his survival
knife from his pack and gave it to Tukum. The native
beamed as Carter and Siobhan went back into the house
where the table was still set and waiting. They let it wait.
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The Australian Navy helicopter took them down the
coast to Lae where the Australian Air Force twin-jet
high-altitude night fighter waited to take them on. The
pilot wasn't happy to see them.
"Bloody pain in the arses Joyriders!"
He was a skinny, sallow man with a narrow face and
bloated features who was ten years too old for his rank
and looked as if he'd spent his life inside a pub. Which
was probably why he was ten years too old for his rank.
"We'll buy the beer in Japan, " Carter said.
The pilot reddened. "Screw you, mate."
"That," Carter said, "you'll have to take care of
yourself. Shall we get aboard?"
"When I jolly well say to get aboard," the pilot
snapped.
"No," Siobhan said icily, "when I say to get aboard,
Lieutenant! And I say we board now! "
The surly pilot glared at her. "Copilot ain't here
yet."
"Then get him!"
The sullen pilot went on glaring at her, but he also
went to find the copilot.
"Let's get our gear, " Siobhan said.
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They picked up their flight suits and parachutes at the
air force depot on the field, then returned to the waiting
jet. The pilot and a very young, scared-looking lieuten-
ant were waiting in their flight gear, small submachine
guns hooked to survival harnesses.
"You got a flight plan I can file?" the pilot said.
Siobhan handed him her orders. "Tokyo, I think,
Lieutenant. If you can stay sober that long. "
' 'Ah, go—
Carter didn't hear whatever the overage lieuten-
ant said after that. His peripheral vision caught an
unmarked assault helicopter landing not a hundred
yards away, and a faint voice on the radio inside the jet
said: s'. . .unauthorized landing! Identify yourself,
helicopter! Come in t"
Six men in black jumped out of the helicopter and ran
toward the night fighter jet.
"Down!" Carter yelled, Wilhelmina in his hand.
Siobhan was down even before his command was
finished. So was the sallow, scrawny, overage pilot, his
submachine gun already coming up in his hands. Only
the young copilot blinked, and looked around to see
why he should hit the ground.
The volley from the six AK-47 assault rifles cut the
young copilot to pieces, his blood showering the three
on the ground.
Carter dropped two of the attackers with single shots
through their foreheads at fifty yards, the backs of their
heads bursting open in halos of blood.
Siobhan got two more with a burst of her Uzi, blow-
ing out their bellies in gouts of red against the black
cloth.
The surly pilot mowed down the last two with his sub-
machine gun, breaking their legs. They flopped scream-
ing on the runway like dying fish in pools of their own
blood.
' 'Over there!" Carter cried.
The scrawny pilot reacted even faster than Siobhan.
He may have been a foul-mouthed, insubordinate,
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generally nasty drunk, but he was a good soldier. He
sprayed the four black-garbed attackers running in from
the left where they had circled unseen while their six
comrades attacked straight on. Two went down gushing
blood and pieces of flesh and bone, the others hit the
ground and returned fire. The pilot was hit.
"Shit!" The pilot rolled behind a jet wheel, blood
running down his left arm.
Siobhan pinned down the two attackers with short
bursts from the Uzi.
Carter was busy with the four that came from the
right in the cover of a row of parked trucks. There was
no way he could get a clear shot at them, no time to try
to take them on the flank, and it had all happened and
was happening so fast there was no help coming.
He pulled Pierre from between his legs under his
fatigues. These attackers were not in wet suits and
masks. He waited until they were bunched behind the
nearest truck, then arched the gas bomb unerringly over
the truck to explode inches behind them.
Only one had time to scream before he died in the
lethal fumes.
The two Siobhan had pinned down made their break
when she ran out of ammunition. While she changed
clips, they ran for their helicopter, pausing only long
enough to kill the two wounded men still writhing on the
ground with single shots to the head. They reached their
chopper, which lifted off immediately, swung rapidly
away north toward the ocean low across the field, and
was gone.
The wounded pilot stood up holding his bloody arm.
"Get in! We'll shoot the bastards down!"
Carter and Siobhan jumped up and started to climb
into the night fighter. At that moment the air base
security forces arrived in a scream of sirens, and a horde
of armed MPs poured out of various vehicles. They
quickly surrounded the night fighter and its three
defenders, weapons aimed. A tall major strode out
toward Carter, Siobhan, and the wounded pilot.
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"Christ," the pilot muttered, ' 'now they show up!
Bloody useless!"
"Drop your weapons and remain where you are!" the
major commanded.
"Strewth!" the pilot snarled. "We're off to catch the
bloody villains, you idiot!"
"Drop those weapons and put your hands up!" the
major repeated.
Siobhan stepped forward. "lim Commander O'Neill,
Naval Intelligence on a top-priority mission. We must
take off at once and try to catch that helicopter,
Major."
s 'I'll count to three," the major barked, "then we
open fire."
"Major-—!" Siobhan began.
"One.. ."
Carter sighed. "Put the weapons down, troops. Some
people can't think beyond the tip Of their nose."
The major reddened. "Two
"Sorry," Siobhan apologized, and put down her Uzi.
"All armies have them. "
Carter laid Wilhelmina on the runway. The scrawny
pilot tossed his submachine gun into the air in disgust,
letting it crash behind him.
"We got a dead Aussie here," the pilot said. "Maybe
you got time to pick him up ... sir."
"I see thirteen bodies. and anyone can wear an
Australian uniform. We'll just see who you three are at
headquarters! Take them in!"
'ST hink you'll get a bloody medal, don't you?" the
pilot snarled. "Bloody post in the Antarctic, that's what
you'll get when these two VIPs here are through with
you, chum. "
The major reddened again with anger, but his eyes
flickered nervously for the first time. "All right,
march
They were marched to a personnel car•rier, herded in,
and driven off across the base to the security forces
headquarters. There they were ordered out o: the carrier
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and marched into the commandant's office under full
guard, the officious major watching them with his gun
drawn. He made his report of the shooting fray.
"Four of these unidentified persons in a large and
dangerous firefight with fourteen others, sir. Two of the
survivors escaped in the unidentified helicopter. One of
this lot—wearing an air force flight outfit—was killed.
Following standard operating procedure, disarmed
and arrested these three and brought them in for inter-
rogation. "
The major finished, stepped back smartly, and sa-
luted. The commandant, a colonel, nodded.
"Thank you, Major. Well done." He looked sternly
at Carter, Siobhan, and the pilot. Then he blinked, and
looked at the pilot again.
"l ain't bloody Genghis Khan, Colonel."
The colonel looked at the majors then back at the
pilot. • 'Can you explain what you are doing with these
people, Lieutenant Davies?"
"I can, sir," Siobhan said. "Commander Siobhan
O'Neill, Naval Intelligence, on special detached assign-
ment by direct order of the War Office. "
The colonel blinked even more, looked toward the
major again, then back at Siobhan, his mouth open but
no sound coming out.
Siobhan succinctly explained the entire firefight,
finishing with, "So we were about to pursue the chop-
per, Colonel, with a good chance of overtaking it, when
your major there surrounded us, somewhat after the
horse had left the barn, and wouldn't listen to Lieuten-
ant Davies, or to me even when I identified myself. I'm
afraid Canberra is going to be a little annoyed at the
stupid interference with a top-secret, urgent combined
operation between us and the United States."
The major was stubborn. "Standard operating pro-
cedure, sir. Unexplained armed action by unauthorized
personnel on air force property: arrest all parties and
bring in for immediate interrogation. How do we know
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that story isn't all drivel? Probably a pack of lies, if I'm
any judge."
"Well," the colonel said, "we'll just check out your
story, miss. Meanwhile, we'll hold you—
' 'Code: Black Jack Ballarrat, orders Lord Nelson
five," Siobhan snapped.
It was the colonel's turn to go white, then red, then
white again. He stared at Siobhan, swallowed hard,
then spoke weakly. ' 'One to ten."
"Seven," Siobhan said quietly.
The colonel cleared his throat, then stood up. ...
er, we had no way of knowing. You should have
checked in and—
"I did, Colonel. With your intelligence people. Unfor-
tunately, the major there refused to listen to anything
we had to say. I'm afraid he lost us any chance to catch
those attackers—perhaps learn where they came from-—
and he has held up our mission by an hour or more so
far. If you're finished with us now, we'd like to get
back to our work. May I ask if anyone has attempted to
identify the bodies of the attackers? I mean, while
you've been so busy arresting our own people?"
The colonel was beet red. "Major?"
"Er, no, sir. I thought it more important—
"Stop thinking!" the colonel roared, glaring at the
officer. "Go and check those bodies for any identifica-
tion! Now!"
The major almost ran out of the office.
"We have to get back to the jet and take off, Colo-
nel, " Siobhan said. "Can we have another copilot?"
• 'Of course. At once. I I apologize for the major's
stupidity. If I'd been there—
The pilot snickered. The colonel froze in fury. It was
becoming obvious why the pilot was very old for a
lieutenant. Carter grinned. He was getting to like the
brusque, bitter, foul-mouthed Davies.
"We'll takeoff in fifteen minutes. Have the major
report to the jet anything he found on the bodies,"
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Siobhan said. "And send a medic for Lieutenant
Davies."
They left without looking at the furious colonel
again. A captain loudly ordered the driver of the per-
sonnel carrier to take them back to the jet. When they
arrived, Davies checked out all the undercarriage and
fuselage for bullet damage but found none. While the
medics treated Davies, Carter and Siobhan checked the
control linkage. Nothing seemed to have been damaged.
The new copilot showed up within minutes, another
lieutenant almost as old as Davies.
"Not you, Perkins, " Davies groaned.
8' Why not? You're not the only one the colonel
hates," the new copilot said. "Where are we off to?"
' 'Bloody Tokyo. "
The new copilot, Perkins, shrugged. "Good as
anywhere. I know some skirts in Tokyo."
Davies brightened. "Marvelous."
They were ready to take off when the major ap-
peared. He had found no identification at all on the
dead attackers—Carter hadn't expected he would—and
reported that they had been of all different races and na-
tionalities as far as he could tell.
"Four Japanese, three blacks, two that looked like
Polynesians, the rest Caucasians of various types."
They nodded, then dismissed the major. Five minutes
later the night fighter was at the end of the runway
waiting for clearance to take off, and ten minutes later
they were already looking back at Lae and the rapidly
receding green coast of New Guinea.
The jet flew at thirty thousand feet north across the
Admiralty Islands and the Carolines to Guam in the
Marianas where they stopped to refuel. In the air again,
they flew straight on toward Tokyo, passing directly
over the dark volcanic peak of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo
Jima.
"Hope your skirts are bloody ready for action,
Perkins," Davies said as they came within sight of the
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Japanese coast and he descended to twenty thousand
feet.
The explosion tore the night fighter apart.
Carter found himself sailing high, still strapped into
the ejected seat. The seat began to curve over and down,
and the parachute opened.
He gasped for air in the thin atmosphere.
His oxygen mask had been torn away, and he
breathed hard, but he had already fallen to fifteen thou-
sand feet, and the air came to meet his lungs.
He floated down slowly in the early morning sky,
breathing deeply, the smoking remains of the shattered
jet spiraling away below.
Half a torn and shattered seat floated down to his
right, the parachute open, the headless body of one of
the pilots pouring blood into the high sky like a red
Niagara that evaporated into empty air as it fell toward
earth.
Far to the left another parachute floated down, the
ejection seat dangling. An empty seat. Whose seat?
"Fucking bloody major! "
Almost on top of Carter, another ejection seat floated
down on its parachute, Lieutenant Davies swearing as
he swung near Carter.
"They had to've planted the bloody bomb while he
was playing bloody policeman with us! Couldn't even
bloody well guard a bloody jet for a bloody fucking
twenty minutes!"
Then the empty seat—?
Carter stared across the distance to the empty seat
dangling from its parachute.
A woman he had been with, next to, inside, only a
day ago? Half a day? A woman he had been coming
closer to every second. Bright, strong, trained and
skilled, slim and beautiful. Gone. Never again her
laugh, her smile, her hands on his body....
"Get ready to unbuckle, mate," Davies called as he
drifted away to the right. "We're going in the drink."
Carter looked below. The coast of Japan was directly
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ahead, a populated beach area from the look of it. He
could see cars and houses and even what looked like
police emergency trucks heading toward where they
would come down. The faint wail of sirens. But they
would hit in the water, and the surf was rough. Davies
was already below him and unbuckling to swim when he
hit.
Carter hauled on the shrouds to slip sicfeways so he
could hang longer in the air and work himself closer and
closer to land. Below, he saw Davies hit the water. A
sleek patrol boat headed out toward him with a long
white wake as it tore through the water on its rescue mis-
sion. He continued sideslipping, the land coming closer,
and saw ahead in an open field the canopy of another
parachute. The empty seat? Another pang hit him for
the loss of Siobhan, and then he was over the coast and
coming down rapidly in an open, parklike area of grass
just behind the beach.
He hit as softly as possible, and the Japanese rescue
teams were running toward him before he could even
unbuckle and stand up. A quick, efficient, polite officer
led them.
"You are okay?"
think so," Carter said. "The pilot?"
C' We picked one out of the water. Another was killed
in the explosion. Do you know what happened?"
' 'A bomb was planted on the plane. No question."
C' We have not recovered the wreckage. Why would
someone wish to put a bomb on your aircraft,
"Commander," Carter said, "Commander Nelson
Carter, U.S. Department of Defense Intelligence. We
are on an important secret investigation, and someone
didn't want us to complete it."
"l see," the officer said, nodding. "Yes, that checks
with the other agent's story. Perhaps you will accom-
pany us to police headquarters. We will have someone
from the Interior Ministry come from Tokyo with your
ambassador to arrange all the details."
"Other agent?" Carter said.
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"Commander O'Neill. "
Carter blinked. "She's ... alive?"
"I certainly hope so," Siobhan's voice said behind
him.
He whirled. She was in his arms. The Japanese
policemen smiled.
"How?" he said.
'SI was thrown clear of the seat, fell a couple of thou-
sand feet free-fall, then revived enough to open my
emergency chute." She looked at him. "They told me
one was dead. I didn't know which one."
They held each other there in the early morning
Japanese sunlight.
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Two polite but eagle-eyed internal security men came
with the man from the Interior Ministry and the
American military attaché. The American wasn't polite
until Carter gave him the code words, and then he was
stiff and wary. A Company man, CIA, he didn't much
like competition in his territory, and he liked top-secret
personnel he knew nothing about even less.
Carter explained to the two Japanese security men
exactly what had happened, gave them codes to check
with Washington and Canberra, told them to take good
care of Davies, and instructed the military attaché to
take them to the ambassador himself. The CIA man
wasn't pleased, but he took them to Tokyo in the
helicopter that had brought him and the Interior
Ministry representative. The Japanese security people
had their own chopper.
"Anything I can do, just say it," the military attaché
said as they flew low toward Tokyo over the neat,
populated Japanese countryside.
'C We appreciate that," Siobhan said.
the attaché
"If it's happening in Japan, I know It,"
said. "I could save you some time. "
"We'll keep it in mind," Carter said.
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"Just let me know what you need, " the attaché said.
"We'll be sure to call on you first, " Siobhan said.
"Tell me the problem," the attaché said, "what you
want to know, I can put you on the fast track."
"Just be ready," Carter said. "We might call on you
anytime."
S 'Better if I got started now. Just fill me in on the mis-
sion. I can set you up."
"It's too bad we can't," Carter said. "Probably slow
it all up, but that's red tape for you, right?"
The attaché scowled and glared at them. "live got top
rating on this post, top clearance. Anything happens in
my yard, I need to know."
"Too bad Washington doesn't see it that way,"
Carter said.
"You know how they are in Canberra," Siobhan
said.
"Dammit!" the attaché said. "This is my store! You
tell me what you're working on!"
Carter smiled. "Sorry. Ambassador's ears only."
"You think lousy DOD Intelligence carries weight
over the Company, Carter?" the attaché fumed. "I'll
have you on the rug so fast you'll be back pounding a
desk in Newport News in two hours."
"I'm terrified," Carter said drily. "Why don't you
call Langley right now, save time. "
The attaché glared at them both, then turned his back
and looked down at the outskirts of the sprawling
metropolis Of Tokyo. It is as modern as any city in the
world, and yet the ancient castle of the Tokugawa
shoguns, now the Imperial Palace, was still there as it
had been when the city was known as Edo, the seat of
the Tokugawa power, and the emperor had still been
hidden in faraway Kyoto practicing his tea ceremony
and paper folding.
The chopper settled them gently, and the ambassador
himself waited to greet them. From the nervous look on
the diplomat's face it was clear he had been in touch
with Washington, probably with the President. The
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military attaché scowled even more when he saw the am-
bassador.
"The packages from Kwajalein and Canberra are
here, Commander," the ambassador said without even
waiting for a formal welcome. 'S We have them in the
safe, untouched and unopened as instructed."
"Good, " Carter said.
Ignored by everyone, the military attaché/CIA man
stalked away.
"Takeda?" Siobhan said.
"You have an appointment with the managing direc-
tor in two hours. I'm sure you'd like to clean up after
the, ah, crash. We have a fresh uniform for Com-
mander Carter. But for Commander O'Neill .. ."
"Just some camouflage fatigues will suit me, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'd rather stay out of uniform, too, Mr. Am-
bassador, " Carter said. "Fatigues will do me fine."
' 'Of course. Then come with me, we'll get you out-
fitted and comfortable. "
In the embassy living quarters, Carter showered and
dressed in the new fatigues someone had laid out on the
bed of the guest bedroom. Siobhan sang in the room
next door. It was tempting, but the meeting with the of-
ficials of Takeda Research Ltd. was too important.
Carter sighed. Sometimes work did get in the way.
"Ready?" Siobhan stood in the doorway, the regula-
tion-issue fatigues looking somehow like chic sports-
wear on her slim body.
"Ready."
She watched him. "Let's wrap this one up fast."
"Even faster."
She smiled. "Right, mate."
The ambassador was waiting for them downstairs,
and they went out to his official limousine. The marine
guards were very visible around the car after the attack
in Lae and the bomb on the night fighter. Carter and
Siobhan were under tight security. For the time being
they would put up with it.
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The limousine parked under the high-rise office
building in downtown Tokyo. They went up in a private
elevator to the executive offices of Takeda Research. A
brisk secretary ushered them into a large office fur-
nished in leather and velvet, and paneled in dark wood;
it looked like the study of some Victorian English
gentleman. The small, dapper Japanese who stood up
behind the mammoth oak desk bowed not at all like an
Englishman, then waved them to high-backed chairs
that were more like thrones.
"The interior minister tells me you have some prob-
lem I may be able to help you with, Mr. Ambassador,"
the man said in perfect English, then seemed to see
Carter and Siobhan for the first time. "Ah, so sorry. I
am Ando Takeda, Managing Director of Takeda Re-
search Limited. You are—-?"
"Commanders Carter and O'Neill," the ambassador
said. "Commander Carter is from our Department of
Defense Intelligence service, and Commander O'Neill
from Australian Naval Intelligence, managing direc-
tor. "
' 'Many military ancestors in my family," Takeda
said, waving to a large portrait on the wall behind his
desk. "The great Takeda Shingen, lord of the Takeda
clan in the sixteenth century. He was the greatest soldier
of his day. But that was long ago. What can Takeda
help with now?"
"We understand Takeda Research is heavily involved
in research and even production of food from the sea,"
Siobhan said.
"Ah! Food, chemicals, clothing, everything! The sea
will be the new frontier for humanity. Perhaps we will
even live under the sea. Live and farm and manufac-
Carter lifted the carrying case up onto the managing
director's desk, opened the latched cover, and took out
the sealed glass container. Ando Takeda stared at' it.
Siobhan opened the other carrying case and placed the
second glass container beside the first. Both contained
moving, writhing, snakelike stalks and leaves of sea-
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weed, the containers almost choked with the mass of
still growing plant that threatened to burst the ultra-
strong tempered glass.
Carter told him what it was and where it had been
found, leaving out the poison and fast growth. But
Takeda could see the speed of growth for himself.
"It is growing in those containers!" he breathed.
"It's growing," Carter confirmed. "Do you recog-
nize the plant? Anything about it, sir?"
Takeda leaned closer, stared, and began to nod. "Ah,
yes, it looks very much like an excellent experimental
specimen we have been working on for many years.
Very high protein source, very strong in minerals, and
very fast in growth. We have great hopes for it, but ...
but this is not quite the same, no. The color is darker,
the leaf nodules are different. Similar, perhaps the same
basic plant, but not exactly. "
"Have you ever had any trouble with the plants you
are working on?" Siobhan said.
"No."
"No accidents?" Carter asked.
"No."
"Some unusual incident in a small bay near Arao on
Kyushu?" Siobhan said.
The managing director stared at them. "No. But we
have our research facilities for underwater farming on
the island of Ushi-shima in the Ariakeno-umi near
Arao." He looked suddenly stern and angry. He turned
to the ambassador. 'C You are not telling me something.
What is it you know that you are not telling me, Mr.
Ambassador?."
"l regret, Mr. Takeda, that we are not at liberty to
divulge the nature of our inquiry even to you at this
juncture. Be assured we have cleared this with your In-
terior Ministry, who feel that to involve anyone else
prematurely would be a mistake and possibly dangerous
to you and your company."
Takeda narrowed his eyes fiercely but said nothing.
He didn't like being in the dark, but he was a Japanese
and superior authority had spoken. He would obey until
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it became clear exactly where his own interests lay.
"Can you tell us if any incident has occurred and
been hushed up at your research facilities on Ushi-
shima?" Carter asked quietly.
"Hushed up? I would not hush up any incident of the
type I assume you are suggesting! A dangerous inci-
dent."
' 'Could something have gone wrong without your
being told?" Siobhan said.
Takeda seemed to turn to stone for an instant, his
dark eyes as fierce as those of any sixteenth-century
shogun. Then he pressed a button on his desk. The effi-
cient secretary appeared. Takeda was so angry he lapsed
into Japanese.
"Prepare my aircraft for immediate takeoff!"
She left as fast as she had come. Takeda turned his
cold eyes on Carter, Siobhan, and the ambassador.
"We will go to Ushi-shima and find out. "
"Er, " the ambassador began, "immediately, sir?"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid I can't—
"We'll take over, Mr. Ambassador," Carter said. He
turned to Takeda. 'S Whenever you're ready, Mr.
Takeda."
Ando Takeda bowed his head stiffly to Carter.
"Now, Commander Carter."
They left the ambassador to find his own way out and
down to his limousine. Takeda led them to a different
private elevator: they rode up instead of down. At the
top they were met by two men in plainclothes, clearly
bodyguards and clearly armed. Takeda led the way in
hard, determined strides for such a small man across the
roof of the highrise to a waiting helicopter on its pad. A
pilot held the door open for Takeda, Siobhan, and
Carter, the rotors already turning. They ducked and
climbed aboard. The two bodyguards climbed into the
front with the pilots.
Takeda barked in Japanese, 'SGo!"
The helicopter lifted and swung steeply away across
the teeming city. The snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji
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•v towered in the noontime sky as the helicopter flew
straight toward Tokyo International. There they landed
in a restricted area and hurried across to a waiting
twin-engine executive jet marked with the Takeda
emblem. The two silent bodyguards, who were obvi-
ously Takeda's private protection, went on first, then
Takeda nodded Siobhan and Carter aboard.
The jet took off and headed southwest across the neat
fields of Honshu and almost directly over the great
white peak of Fuji-san to the Kwanto Plain that had
been the cradle of Japanese imperial power in the an-
cient capital of Nara and the city of Kyoto to the north
as they passed over Osaka and went out across the In-
land Sea. Freighters and fishing boats dotted the great
expanse of almost landlocked water that had played
such an important role in Japanese history.
The smaller island of Shikoku passed quickly under
the jet, and then they crossed the other entrance to the
Inland Sea, the Hoyo-kaikyo, crossed Kyushu, and
reached the private Takeda Research airfield at the town
of Arao on the shore of the Ariakeno-umi. Another
helicopter was waiting for them and took them out
across the water to a small island with long low
buildings, many piers and boats, and great floating
racks and cribs of growing plants as far as Carter and
Siobhan could see.
A small group of white-coated men waited at the
helipad, one standing slightly in front of the others, all
looking excited, nervous, worried, and awed all at the
same time. The two bodyguards were first off the chop-
per. Ando Takeda went next like a lord of the clan
returning from the imperial court to his fief, his
stewards and retainers all waiting to greet him. For all
the modernity, and the disaster of the war, a lot had not
changed. In Japan, the ancient ways died slowly and
hard.
The man in front stepped farther forward, bowed his
head sharply to Takeda and began to speak in rapid
Japanese.
"Research Director Fukoa, Mr. Takeda. We are
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honored the managing director comes to view our hum-
ble work. In what way can we help?"
"It is I who am honored, Research Director Fukoa.
You can tell me if there has been some great problem
here in the last year that I, perhaps, have not heard of?"
The research director seemed to hesitate, then bowed
again. ' 'No problem has been reported here that the
managing director has not been informed of."
Takeda turned to Carter. "Commanders Carter,
O'Neill."
It was Siobhan who stepped forward with her carry-
ing case, opened it, and held up the glass container.
"Ahhhhhhhhggggggggggggg..
The cry came from all the white-coated men ranged in
a polite line behind the research director. Sharp, loud,
involuntary, it echoed across the small island and
buildings.
The research director seemed to almost stagger as he
stared in horror.
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Research Director Fukoa stared at the writhing plants
inside the sealed containers. His shaking voice was
hoarse.
"No. Not possible. No, " he croaked in Japanese.
The line of white-coated scientists behind him could
only mutter among themselves, their frightened eyes on
the glass container and its seaweed. It was obvious they
recognized the plant too.
"You all recognize the plant, " Carter said.
"What is not possible, Fukoa?" Takeda demanded.
"What is the lie you have been hiding?"
The trembling man didn't seem to hear either of
them. He stared at the container and went on talking as
if to some unseen ghost. "All destroyed, all gone. It is
not possible. They say all destroyed, all gone. No way it
could come back. No .. SY'
"Who destroyed the plant?" Carter asked.
"Where did it come from?" Siobhan added.
"What did you hide, Fukoa?" Takeda barked.
"What have you all hidden from the company? From
me! A conspiracy!"
One of the men behind the staring, trembling director
stepped forward, his face set more strongly than the
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others. A young man, not yet that afraid of the manag-
ing director.
"We could do nothing else, Managing Director. The
prime minister himself swore us all to secrecy, a matter
of national security."
"The prime minister?" Takeda said, astonished.
"How did the government become involved?" Carter
said.
Takeda became even angrier. "You reported to the
government, to the prime minister, before your com-
pany? Before me?"
"No," the young scientist said, holding his ground.
"The government discovered the danger before we
did. "
Fukoa, the research director, came out of his trance
and nodded to the young scientist. "Perhaps we should
all go into the conference room, Managing Director,
and I will tell you the whole story. "
"Perhaps," Ando Takeda said, tight-lipped, "that
would be a good thing to do."
Siobhan returned the glass container to its carrying
case, and they all walked in silence into the main
building of the research complex. Fukoa led them into a
Western-style conference room where shoes could be
worn but kimono-clad women immediately began to
serve tea in small porcelain cups emblazoned with the
ancient Takeda clan emblem. Fukoa stared at the floor
as he began to talk.
' 'A year ago we were continuing our work on the
original strain of this plant. It was our most promising
source of food from the sea, its rate of growth being the
best of those with high nutritional value. So when the
American NASA asked us if we would like to par-
ticipate in one of their space shuttle trips, you will
recall, Managing Director, that we chose to send a sam-
ple of the plant to test the effect of space radiation on
it. "
"I do not recall," Takeda said, "but it does not mat-
ter. Get to the point, Dr. Fukoa."
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The research director' took a deep breath. "When the
sample plants and seeds were returned from the space
experiment, we continued to observe and grow them
here." He looked up at Takeda, his eyes haunted.
"Almost at once we noticed a difference. The plants,
and those that grew from the seeds we had sent into
space, developed differences in configuration and ap-
pearance, and began to grow at an incredible rate. We
had never seen anything like it. They grew so fast you
could see them growing!
"We were elated, and transferred the mutant plants
to large tanks sunk into the seawater of the Ariakeno-
umi. They continued to grow fantastically, wonder-
fully!" Fukoa looked up and around at all of them: his
colleagues, Ando Takeda, Carter, and Siobhan O'Neill.
"Then it happened. We had always, of course, handled
the specimens with sterile gloves, under sterile condi-
tions, in hoods and glove boxes. This is normal practice
on experimental samples. So when we transferred the
plants to the open tanks in the sea, they were exposed to
the external world for the first time."
The haunted 100k in Fukoa's eyes changed to one of
remembered terror. "Fish began to die. We found them
floating near the tanks immediately. One of the men
who transferred the plants to the tanks became ill and
died within hours. The plants grew so fast they began to
spread out of the tanks. It all happened so fast—over-
night—that it was the defense force patrol boat that saw
the dead fish first and alerted us. When they heard
about the new plants, they immediately notified Tokyo.
The prime minister himself ordered all the plants
destroyed immediately, and ordered all of us to remain
silent. "
"Without notifying your superiors?" Takeda said.
"He did not have that right!"
"He said he did, Managing Director. He spoke of the
great fear among the people if it were ever known, of
the importance of the sea to Japan. So we remained
silent."
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"Can we see the records of the experiments?" Carter
asked.
Fukoa shook his head. "All records were destroyed.
All data about the mutant plants—everything that
related to the plants or had touched the plants—was
destroyed and we were all sworn to silence.
The word echoed in a silence of its own. No one spoke
in the elegant room, the only sound the soft padding Of
the slippered feet of the waitresses serving tea and small
cakes. It was Carter who finally broke the silence.
"Then where did these plants come from?" he said.
"Was anyone else working on the same plants?"
"No, it was a development hybrid of Takeda alone.
No one else sent it into space. The American NASA is
very careful not to duplicate experiments. "
"Someone must have been duplicating your work,"
Siobhan said. "Perhaps another research installation in
Takeda Research itself, Mr. Takeda?"
Ando Takeda shook his head. C' That would not be
economical, Commander. All our sea and underwater
research is done here. "
"Is there anyone who could have kept a set of records
—someone who might not have destroyed them?"
Carter asked.
"No," Fukoa said.
"Was there one of you who worked more closely on
this project than anyone else?" Carter pursued.
This time the silence was heavy among the Japanese
research scientists. Fukoa nodded.
"Yes. Dr. Tetsu Ashekagi, our most honored
botanist, supervised the entire project. But he could not
have kept back any records or informed anyone of the
project. "
' 'Why?" Carter said.
"Because, Commander Carter, he died in a tragic ac-
cident a week after all trace of the deadly mutation was
destroyed."
"Accident?" Carter said.
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"What kind of accident, Dr. Fukoa?" Siobhan
asked.
Both their voices were heavy with suspicion. Coin-
cidence was not something that happened often in their
trade.
"Ah, I understand what you think," Fukoa said,
"but there can be no doubt. Dr. Ashekagi was out in the
specimen launch looking for a reported colony of
shellfish not usually found this far north when the boat
struck some underwater object and sank. The doctor
must have hit his head. His body was found a week later
some thirty miles north of here with a heavy wound on
the head. Most tragic. He was a man of great
knowledge."
" You're sure it was his body?" Siobhan said.
"Absolutely. We all identified it. His family also
identified him. The head wound was •the only disfigure-
ment."
Carter rubbed his chin. "A week after the accident?
Was the body where you would have expected it to be in
that time?"
Fukoa nodded. "The defense forces were most care-
ful in their investigation; they too were suspicious."
"Could he have taken any records of his work with
him?"
"No. All were absolutely destroyed. "
C 'And every specimen? Every seed?"
"Absolutely."
Carter nodded slowly, then glanced at Siobhan. She
was looking at him. But it was Ando Takeda who
spoke.
"Then how do these specimens in the jars exist, Dr.
Fukoa?
Fukoa shook his head, almost in despair. "I do not
know, Managing Director."
"Perhaps some samples were stolen before you
discovered their danger? Perhaps in the United States?
On the space shuttle?" Takeda suggested.
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Fukoa sighed miserably. "No, Managing Director.
The samples were all carefully coded and controlled.
There is no doubt we received back all we had given to
the shuttle experiment. 't
"Dammit!" Takeda suddenly exploded. "These
samples in the containers came from somewhere! Are
you suggesting that someone else performed an exact
duplicate experiment? "
"l don't know what to suggest," Fukoa said, looking
at them all now. "l have no answer. There is no answer
I can see!"
"There's always an answer," Carter said. "No mat-
ter how unexpected or impossible. All we have to do is
find it. May we inspect the laboratory where the initial
work was done? And Dr. Ashekagi's laboratory?"
"Of course," Fukoa said. "But there is only one to
inspect. All the work was done in Dr. Ashekagi's own
laboratory."
Carter turned to Ando Takeda. "We'd like to do it
alone if you don't object, Mr. Takeda."
The leader of the Takeda clan and the company fixed
his employee scientists with a cold eye. Some of them
swallowed hard.
"Of course," Takeda said. "l wish to talk to my
people anyway, and to the prime minister. "
Fukoa led Carter and Siobhan O'Neill out of the
main building and through the shaded grounds to a dis-
tant smaller building. Inside, the building was one large
room with a glassed-in smaller laboratory in the far cor-
ner. It was empty and silent.
'S The prime minister ordered it closed for the year,"
Fukoa said. "Now no one wishes to work in here. Per-
haps the managing director will correct such supersti-
tion. "
"Meanwhile, " Carter said, "it is exactly as it was left
by Dr. Ashekagi?"
"No. As it was left by the defense troops after they
searched and destroyed everything. "
Carter and Siobhan thanked the research director,
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who left somewhat unhappily. He was not looking for-
ward to his "family" discussion with Ando Takeda.
And they were not looking forward to searching the
laboratory of the late Dr. Ashekagi.
"Not much chance," Siobhan said.
' 'No, they'll have swept it clean and polished the
air, " Car'ter agreed. "Still, let's take a look. "
They looked.
And came up with nothing.
"They didn 't even leave any dust, " Carter said.
' 'No," Siobhan agreed, but she was staring at a large
nautical chart in Dr. Ashekagi's private laboratory. It
was hung over his desk and was surrounded by snap-
shots of two smiling men sailing a medium-sized
sailboat. The chart was the kind used by yachtsmen
when sailing inland waterways.
"It's the Ariakeno-umi," Siobhan said. "A complete
chart of the waters. I'm a bit of a sailing enthusiast.
This is the kind of chart a regular pleasure sailor uses,
and it shows every reef and rock in the entire area.
"Meaning Ashekagi was an experienced sailor in
these waters and should have known every pebble, rock,
and ripple like a book."
"That's what I'd say. Look at all the photos of him
sailing the bay. "
' 'So what did he hit and why?"
"It's a good question."
"We'd better talk to his family."
Siobhan nodded. They left the laboratory and crossed
through the wooded grounds of the remote and isolated
research island back to the conference hall. They could
hear the loud, harsh tones of Ando Takeda tongue-
lashing his "family" for their misplaced loyalties in
obeying the government's orders over their duty to in-
form their own leader of what had happened. This was
not for outsiders, and as soon as Carter and Siobhan ap-
peared, Takeda abruptly dismissed the scientists, in-
formed them he would be staying a few days, perhaps
longer, and would inspect all their work.
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' 'Ahi you have had success?" the managing director
said as he turned smoothly to Carter and Siobhan with a
pleasant, natural smile.
"Not much," Siobhan said.
"Only that Dr. Ashekagi seems to have known the
waters around here like a book. He had a detailed chart
of every possible rock and reef on his wall, and prob-
ably in his head," Carter said. "It seems strange he
would collide with something, and so violently and
unexpectedly that he fell and hit his head hard enough
to knock him out while the boat sank."
"So?" Takeda said.
"Where can we talk to Dr. Ashekagi's family?"
Takeda turned sharply. "Fukoa!"
The research director had almost made it out of the
conference room. He seemed to wilt under the bark, and
turned wearily back. "Yes, Managing Director?"
"Where is Dr. Ashekagi's family?"
'I They live in Arao, Managing Director.
"You will take Commander Carter and Commander
O'Neill to see them."
"Of course, Managing Director. I will call im-
mediately and make the arrangements. Madame
Ashekagi is still in seclusion, but I am sure she will see
us when I explain that you request the visit."
Fukoa left to make the call. Takeda bowed to Carter
and Siobhan. "Rooms will be ready in the guesthouse
when you return. You are our guests as long as you wish
to remain. Perhaps you will do me the honor of joining
me for tea later?"
"We will be honored, Mr. Takeda," Siobhan said.
Fukoa returned and reported that Madame Ashekagi
would see Carter and Siobhan as Mr. Takeda wished.
Takeda left, and Fukoa seemed to brighten at once, to
turn into a different man—brisk, in charge.
"A boat is at the dock now if you are ready."
They followed Fukoa back to the dock and rode
across the Ariakeno-umi. At the village dock Dr. Fukoa
took them to a small Honda sedan. The home of the
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Ashekagi family was a large Japanese-style house with
an outer courtyard entered through a solid gate in a
street wall. Fukoa rang and a servant in a kimono
opened the outer door and ushered them into the court-
yard.
As the gate closed behind them, seven men in black
kimonos, wearing white headbands emblazoned with
red characters, a pair of samurai swordsthrust into their
sashes, appeared all around Carter, Siobhan, and
Fukoa.
s C W hat
. what . . . do you . . . ?" Fukoa stam-
mered, stepping toward Lhe tallest of the men in the
black kimonos.
The long sword seemed to shine in the afternoon sun
without even being drawn, without the swordsman
seeming to move. The long sword, a katana, in his hand
as if by magic, sliced through the air, its end pointed
high into the sky, silver and dripping red as Fukoa's
head fell to the dirt of the courtyard while his body
stood for a second longer before falling beside it.
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Wilhelmina cut down the sword-wielding warrior in
the black kimono and red-lettered headband who leaped
at Carter.
Siobhan had her small Walther PPK. She shot the
swordsman attacking her. But the black-garbed man
grunted, scowled, and kept coming on toward her.
A second man was on Carter with incredible speed,
the shining arc of the katana aimed at Carter's neck.
Carter went in under the hiss of the sword. The swords-
man kicked Wilhelmina from his hand. From his
crouch, Carter chopped the swordsman's supporting
leg, sending him crashing to the courtyard dirt. Rolling,
the man drew his wakizashi short sword and came up in
a single motion. Carter snatched the long katana from
the hand of the man he'd shot dead.
Siobhan shot again. The attacker grunted again, his
sword sweeping so close under her chin she fell
backward to the dirt, her Walther knocked from her
hand. With a savage cry the wounded man closed in,
hurled himself at her with his failing strength, and flew
over her head as she caught his chest with both feet and
flung him over her, his sword driving into the dirt of the
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courtyard, his body hanging from the hilt more dead
than alive.
Charging, the attacker with the wakizashi parried
Carter's lethal slash of his borrowed sword, ducked
under, and came up in a liquid flow with the short
sword plunging toward Carter's heart. Carter spun,
dropping him with a highv kick to the chin, the neck
snapping so loudly, it echoed through the courtyard.
The four remaining attackers pressed in.
Siobhan grabbed a long katana.
They faced, four against two.
The tall leader who had killed Dr. Fukoa spoke
sharply to his men in Japanese, assuming that the
Caucasians would not understand him.
"Full battle tactics! These two are trained with guns
and swords. Kill or die for the honor of Fujiwara. Go!"
The four spread out, two facing Carter and two now
advancing on Siobhan. The tall leader himself moved
slowly toward Car'ter as if he had decided on the most
dangerous adversary, the -Place of greatest honor.
Carter smiled, and focused not on the man's hands but
his feet.
' 'It is an honor to face the Fujiwara," Carter said in
Japanese.
The tall leader answered in English. "So? You speak
Japanese and know of the great Fujiwara clan. Perhaps
it will not be without honor to kill you."
'SA samurai who fights for a clan of courtiers has
little honor to defend," Carter said, watching the sec-
ond man inch to his left, the other two moving slowly to
take Siobhan from two sides.
The tall leader's face darkened. 'S The Fujiwara are
now samurai! The greatest family of the ancients is now
the greatest family of the future! The clan that will
renew the blood of Japan, of the world!"
The second man was almost level with Carter now,
between Carter and Siobhan. The two stalking Siobhan
moved in ever closer to where she waited with the
samurai sword resting on her shoulder like nothing
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more deadly than a garden tool. Only the tall leader had
not moved, momentarily distracted by Carter's taunt-
ing.
"By killing unarmed scientists?" Carter laughed.
C' The act of a peasant!"
The tall leader smiled. "A feeble attempt to provoke
me, American. You have studied—
The second man's jaw muscles tensed to make his
move. Carter swung his sword up and feinted a lunge at
the tall leader. The second man saw his chance and
leaped in. Carter whirled in the motion of feinting back
in the opposite direction to slice open the belly of the
second man whose sword came down on empty air, his
guts and blood pouring out across the ground. The sec-
ond man already on his knees and dying, the tall leader
frozen in mid-smile with his sword up to repel the
feinted attack that never came, Carter stood five yards
away, legs apart, sword out, watching the one man
dying and the other a momentarily frozen statue.
The two attacking Siobhan made their moves at the
same instant on some unseen signal. Unseen by anyone
except Siobhan herself. In the split second between their
standing poised and the swift motion of attack, her long
samurai katana came off her shoulder and she darted
sideways toward the attacker on the left. The swift,
unexpected move, timed to take advantage of her oppo-
nent's force moving in the opposite direction, brought
her behind the arc of his sword before he knew she had
even moved, and out of the reach of the sword of the
other attacker on her right.
The Australian plunged the katana into the attacker
in front of her, withdrew as he dropped in a fountain of
his own blood, and turned on the survivor feet apart,
sword forward, in a duplication of Carter's stance.
The four faced each other, the two surviving black-
robed attackers now aware they were not up against
amateur swordsmen.
No one moved.
Shifted feet.
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NICK CARTER
Watched.
Shuffled closer.
Held.
And the black-garbed attacker facing Siobhan broke
first, rushing forward with a violent cry. His sword
flashed down but sliced only empty air as the blood
poured from the cut across his neck made by her faster
sword that caught the final slash of his blade and
twisted the sword from his already dead hands.
The tall leader strode forward. Carter met him. Their
blades clashed, rang, flashed in the late evening sun,
circled, and thrust. The tall leader of the attackers was a
master swordsman. He parried all Carter's attacks but
could make no headway against the skill of the
Killmaster.
Siobhan came up behind the tall man in the black
kimono. The man pivoted and backed toward the court-
yard wall to keep them both in front of him.
"You've fought enough," Carter said.
The leader smiled. "l have two swords, American."
He continued to back toward the wall, and stumbled
over the barely alive body of the first man Siobhan had
cut down. Carter took the small opening, thrust and
cut, and drew blood from the tall man's right arm and
knocked away his katana.
With only his wakizashi in his left hand, the man
nodded. "So?"
t' You can't win now. Tell us who sent you," Carter
said.
"No," the man said in English, pressing his bloody
right arm against the black kimono. "l cannot win now.
A pity. You are master swordsmen. I underestimated
you both."
' 'It happens. "
"l have failed my lord. You will both die soon. I shall
merely be first."
Before they could move, the tall man slashed down
with the wakizashi in both hands and decapitated his
still twitching comrade, then cut his own throat in a
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single slash and fell to the courtyard, his blood
spreading in a pool around him.
Carter and Siobhan watched him die, his wakizashi
pointed toward them in case they tried to save him, a
smile slowly fading into the rictus of death.
They looked slowly around at the eight bodies that Iit-
tered the courtyard. They moved from one to the other,
looking for a sign of life. All were dead. Siobhan tossed
her long katana away.
"He didn't want to risk being questioned," she said.
"No," Carter agreed. "Those red symbols on the
headbands are the Fujiwara crest."
"But the Fujiwara rule ended in the twelfth century,
Nick. As far as I know, there isn't any Fujiwara clan
anymore. "
"No, but someone is using the crest, and not for
fun." He glanced around the bloody courtyard with its
severed heads and dead bodies. "Where the hell's the
family we came to talk to?"
He strode across the courtyard to the front door of
the Japanese-style house and knocked loudly. He
knocked again on the doorframe with the hilt of the
borrowed katana sword.
"You go away," a shaking voice said at last from
behind the closed door. "You go."
"Open the door or I'll cut it down!" Carter said. He
motioned to Siobhan to pick up one of the swords that
littered the yard. She nodded, and retrieved the blood-
iest.
There was -a whispered conversation in frantic
Japanese behind the closed door. Then it slowly slid
open. Carter and Siobhan kicked off their shoes and
entered warily, their bloody katanas out in front of
them.
The interior was dim, shades drawn. Seven or eight
indistinct figures stood in a line on the far side of the
room as if they wanted to stay as far from the con-
tamination of Carter and Siobhan as possible. Their
eyes caught the Stray beams of muted light through the
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drawn shades, shined like the eyes of small animals
hiding in corners.
As Carter's eyes grew accustomed to the dim interior,
he saw a woman in her thirties in the center, with two
slightly younger men on either side, all dressed in
Western clothes. An elderly couple in traditional Jap-
anese attire stood on the left, each holding the hand Of a
small child in Japanese dress. The final figure was a boy
in his early teens wearing a school uniform. They were
all utterly terrified, shaking where they stood. Only the
teen-age boy didn't shake, his eyes bolder than the rest,
a little defiant, staring at the bloody-swords.
"Mrs. Ashekagi?" Carter said.
It was as if they didn't hear him. Only the boy, whose
eyes flickered up, watched Carter almost curiously. The
others stood frozen yet trembling, their eyes searching
in every direction. They did not look at the bloody
swords as the boy did; they looked everywhere else as if
expecting some terror to appear and strike them down.
Not Carter and Siobhan, some other terror. Someone or
something else.
"Why were we attacked by those Fujiwara men? Who
were they?" Carter asked.
The name said aloud seemed to make them shake
even more. They stared at Carter and Siobhan with a
kind of horror.
"You kill," one of the men flanking the woman said
in English. ' 'Why you kill? Now we all die!"
"We killed them because they wanted to kill us,"
Carter said in Japanese. "Why will you die because we
killed them? Why did they attack us?"
They were all dumbfounded to hear Carter speak
Japanese, and stared at him. •The boy blinked, fas-
cinated.
"They didn't want us to talk to you," the boy said.
"You killed them all! How can an American be a
samurai? How can a woman?"
"They were protecting you, then," Carter said.
"Why? What are they to you? Who are they?"
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"They bring us—" the boy began.
"Quiet! Say nothing!" the old man barked sharply.
The second younger man said, his frightened voice
hoarse, "You go away. We not talk to you."
Siobhan suddenly looked around the large room.
"This is an expensive house with beautiful things.
You're living well, all of you. How?"
The widow of Dr. Ashekagi spoke for the first time.
"We have a pension. The company is most generous."
"No," Carter said. "Japanese companies take care
of their employees, but not that well. Why were those
men protecting you from us? What do you know they
didn't want you to tell us?"
"What is someone paying you off for?" Siobhan
demanded. "The secret of the mutant seaweed plant?"
"Or," Carter said, "to keep silent about the week
between your husband's accident and his death? Blood
money?
Mrs. Ashekagi fainted. The two younger men stared
at Carter, terrified out of their minds. The teen-age boy
ran to his fallen mother and looked up at Carter with
tears in his eyes. The old man stepped closer to Carter
and Siobhan.
"My son is dead. Have you no respect for the dead?
Leave us in peace."
"We respect the dead," Carter said, ' 'but we have to
help the living. That mutant plant is loose in the world,
do you understand? Your son's work has been stolen by
someone who plans to use it as a weapon. Who has it?
Who killed your son?"
"Go away," the old man said. "We know nothing."
"They will kill us," one of the younger men said.
"My sister is alone now," the other younger man
said. "They help her. She will not talk to you."
Their terror was too deep. Terror and need. They
wouldn't talk no matter how long Carter and Siobhan
waited. Carter nodded to the Australian agent. They
dropped their long samurai katana swords, went out
into the courtyard where the bodies lay silent, picked up
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their guns, and walked through the outer gate to
Fukoa's Honda.
"Someone is paying them off, " Siobhan said.
"Whoever's using the Fujiwara crest," Carter said.
"We'd better report to Takeda and let him tell the
police about Fukoa and those men. Maybe he'll have
some ideas on who these Fujiwara samurai were. "
They drove back to the pier where the Takeda
Research boat waited. The crew looked for Dr. Fukoa.
Carter shook his head.
"He won't be coming back." He told them of Dr.
Fukoa's murder. "Take us—
The Killmaster stopped. He was facing the cabin win-
dow of the motor cruiser. Reflected in the glass he saw a
car parked off the road behind some trees where anyone
seated in it could observe the boat. The car had a long
antenna, and even as he looked he saw someone inside
raise something to his face and move his head as if talk-
ing.
They were being watched and reported on!
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The man in the car hidden behind the grove of trees
lowered the radiophone. Carter continued to watch the
reflection in the window. The car was too far away to
make out more than the shapes.
"Nick?" Siobhan said.
Carter laughed, turned from the window, and pointed
out across the open water as if he'd spotted something
amusing.
'SThere's a car watching us from behind a grove of
trees up the road. At least two men. Using a radiophone
to report to someone. "
Siobhan laughed and seemed to appreciate the distant
event. "Police?"
"I don't think so. They're not good enough at cover-
ing themselves, and the car's a Mercedes. "
' 'Who then? Our Fujiwara?"
' 'That's what I'd guess. "
"They got here fast. "
"Watching all along, or the Ashekagis reported us. "
"Grab the birds?"
"Follow them back to the nest. "
Siobhan laughed again and took Carter's hand.
"How?"
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"I've got a homer in my equipment. We'll need a
decoy."
"You or me?"
"Take your pick."
"I'll decoy. I always wanted to be an actress. "
They strolled to the front of the boat, out of sight of
the hidden car. Carter removed the tiny electronic
transmitter from the equipment pouch inside his
camouflage fatigues and strapped the small receiver that
looked like a watch onto his wrist. He checked to make
sure they were operating.
' 'How do you want to handle it?" Carter asked.
"If we separate, they might try to follow both of us."
"But that would alert them, make them suspicious,"
Carter said. g 'Let's go back ashore together and
separate where they can't see us. Come on."
They told the boatmen to wait until they returned,
walked back onshore, and turned left on the road
toward the center of the town. They strolled easily, like
two tourists sampling the exotic scene of rural Japan off
the beaten track. The Mercedes soon appeared behind
them, driving casually along the road. Once in the busy
early evening streets of the town itself, Carter looked
for what he wanted: somewhere he would be out of sight
of the Mercedes but where Siobhan would be in plain
sight talking to him.
He found it in a small photographer's shop where the
rural cameraman specialized in taking postcard por-
traits of tourists against fake Japanese backdrops. The
shop was so small Siobhan had to stand outside while
Carter was inside being photographed against a
Japanese garden painted on cardboard, and there was a
back door.
Carter quickly explained what he wanted to the shop
owner, gave him five thousand yen, put on a prop
kimono where he could be seen, went inside, and slipped
out the rear door while the photographer pretended to
be taking his picture and Siobhan stood outside the shop
talking to him. She carried on an animated conversation
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with the nonexistent Carter inside the shop.
The Killmaster circled through the backyards and
alleys of the town until he calculated he was behind the
Mercedes, then moved silently back to the main street.
The black car was half a block away, parked where
anyone in it could see Siobhan talking to him inside the
shop. But they wouldn't be able to see *inside without
getting too close and risk being spotted.
Carter noticed that there were only two men in the
car, both in the front seat. One spoke from time to
time into the hand-held radio. Both smoked. They were
watchful, alert to Siobhan and the unseen Carter, but
not alert enough. They were so sure their target was in
front of them they didn't even glance at the other cars
and bicycles and people that passed.
The Killmaster motioned to a man wearing an Old-
fashioned wide straw hat shaped like a flat cone and
bought the hat from him. He let the man walk on, then
he stepped out of the alley and strode toward the rear of
the car. The hat hiding his face, his knees bent to
disguise his height, Carter blended easily with the hurry-
ing throngs of Japanese. As he passed the car he bent his
knees lower, slipped the magnetic homer under the rear
bumper, and walked on.
The two men in the car paid no attention to him,
smoking and relaxing in the false security of knowing
exactly where their quarry was. Amateurs, Carter de-
cided as he walked past the photographer's shop and
turned the next corner into a cross street of the town.
From there he worked his way quickly back to the rear
Of the photographer's shop, took off the kimono, and
appeared at the door paying the photographer and
showing the supposed postcard photos to Siobhan.
"Done?" she said.
"Done. Now back to the boat and send it off."
"l presume that means a swim?"
"I've missed the water. "
't We should have been fish."
They strolled back along the main street after giving
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the Mercedes time to back away, turn a corner, and wait
until they had passed to start along behind them again.
' 'They're not so good, 't Siobhan said.
"No," Carter agreed. ' 'An amateur operation."
"Those soldiers on Kwaj weren't amateurs,"
she
said. "And the swordsmen."
"Or the raiders on New Guinea. We've got a mixed
bag."
"Trained soldiers but not trained intelligence agents
or policemen. "
They reached the dock and boarded the boat once
more, aware of the Mercedes back in its grove of trees in
the fading evening light. On board, they walked for-
ward out of sight of the trees. The head crewman of
Takeda Research looked at the low sun, the already
darkening day.
' 'It is getting late, Commander Carter. We should
return to the island soon. "
"Yes," Carter said. 'SI want you to take the boat
back now. Commander O'Neill and I will stay behind.
Tell Managing Director Takeda that we have work to do
and we'll get back on our own, or we'll contact the
island when we want to be picked up. "
"You will stay behind?"
"With Dr. Fukoa's car. Please tell Mr. Takeda. "
"He will be tpid at once," the crewman said. 'S You
are going ashore now? "
"Not until you're on your way. "
Carter explained what he wanted done. The crewman
went off to start the boat's engines. Carter and Siobhan
returned to the stern where they sat on the low cabin and
talked in plain sight of the watching Mercedes. The boat
cast off and moved slowly out into the Ariakeno-umi in
the twilight toward the Takeda Research island. Carter
and Siobhan watched the grove of trees.
The Mercedes didn't move.
The boat sailed farther out into the open water.
One of the men in the Mercedes got out and stared
toward the boat as it sailed on.
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Carter and Siobhan walked forward out of sight of
the shore. They quickly put their weapons, watches, and
electronic equipment into the waterproof containers
they hung around their necks, and slipped over the bow
Of the moving boat. They sank deep at once to escape
the propellors as the boat passed over them, then swam
as far as they could underwater and surfaced slowly
without a ripple.
The one man was still standing beside the almost hid-
den Mercedes and watching the boat as it sailed on
toward the island.
Carter and Siobhan sank again and swam on under-
water toward shore. They surfaced in shallow water
under the dock and raised their heads cautiously. The
Mercedes was driving away.
The instant it was out of sight they climbed up and
ran to Dr. Fukoa's Honda. Dripping seawater, Siobhan
drove. Carter opened his waterproof container and
strapped the electronic receiver to his wrist. The signals
came in strong and directly ahead. They followed
through the dusk.
It was completely dark before the Mercedes turned
off the main highway.
C' They're turning back toward the Ariakeno-umi,'i
Carter said. He watched the directional signals on his
electronic scanner, and saw the dark side road as they
reached it. "This is it."
Siobhan turned right in the night. The signal was
again straight ahead. They drove on until the rising
moon reflected from water through the trees, and the
Mercedes came to a halt somewhere ahead in the night.
Siobhan stopped and turned off the headlights. Carter
watched the scanner on his wrist. Siobhan listened.
'SAbout half a mile," Carter said. "Holding steady."
'CToo far to hear, but I can see light off to the right
that could be headlights. "
"l think they're home. "
"The lights just went off. "
• "Let's move."
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Out of the car they advanced through the trees. If
there were any sentries, they would watch the road. The
scanner led them straight ahead to the edge of the water.
The Mercedes was parked just off the road. It was dark
and empty. There was no one around it in the
moonlight. A dock protruded out into the Ariakeno-
umi. It was closed off by a locked gate. The running
lights of a boat bobbed on the water, a silvery wake
leading back to the dock.
"They're on that boat," Siobhan said.
"And there's an island not far off out there," Carter
said. "Dr. Ashekagi ran into his accident off an
island. "
"Another swim?"
"Good exercise," Carter said and grinned. ' 'Only
let's keep our clothes dry this time. It gets cold later."
They stripped naked and rolled their fatigues up small
enough to fit into the waterproof containers with their
pistols and electronic equipment. They looked at each
other for a moment, smiled, and entered the water.
They swam easily in the moonlight, the water silver and
the running lights of the boat ahead slowly fading and
finally vanishing as they saw the dark shape of a rocky
island loom black in the night. As they swam closer, the
outlines of a low headland separated itself from the
larger mass of the island and revealed a narrow cove
behind it.
The boat was tied up to a dock inside the cove, all its
lights and the dock itself dark. They swam slowly into
the cove as the water grew shallower. A faint path led
upward in the moonlight from the dock and vanished
among thick trees. Faint light showed through the trees.
Siobhan stroked slowly in the dark water of the cove.
"There's a house up there. "
They swam in without a ripple. There was no one on
the dock or path. They dried off as best they could and
put on their clothes. At the top they surveyed the small,
rustic Japanese house with the light soft through the
rice-paper screens of the windows. Someone was kneel-
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ing in the main room, or shiroshoin, at the shoin writing
alcove on the raised jodan no ma section. Carter and
Siobhan circled the little four-room house and saw no
sign of anyone else. The whole island was no more than
a single large hill, and there were no other lights
anywhere.
"Where'd they go?" Siobhan wondered.
'i Two from the Mercedes, and there håd to be crew
on the boat," Carter said. "Let's find out."
They walked boldly up to the small house and
knocked on the outer door. They heard soft footsteps,
and the door was opened by a compact man wearing
old-fashioned Japanese-style clothes. He smiled in
delight as he saw them.
' 'Ah, please come in," he said in English. 6' Travelers
are always welcome in my house."
Carter and Siobhan removed their shoes and went
into the living room built in the old style as a shiroshoin.
Their smiling host motioned them to sit on cushions set
on the mats at low tables lacquered in delicate reds and
black.
"You will take tea?"
He did not wait for an answer but went out into the
kitchen section where a kettle was already boiling, and
he made a pot of tea in the English fashion without
ceremony. He brought their cups—English style with
handles—milk, and sugar.
"Our tea ceremony is a profound ritual, but I have
never seen any need to subject thirsty visitors to its
rigors."
He took his own cup and went to sit on cushions on
the raised platform. Carter studied him. His clothes
weren't just any modern kimono.
He wore the hitatare of a high member of the warrior
class of the Edo period of the Tokugawa shogunate; a
sumptuous dark red upper garment like a short kimono
with voluminous sleeves, and matching hakama trousers
that trailed on the floor behind him. Under the heavy
silk hitatare he wore a fine dark blue and white noshime
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with gold decorations on the white midsection. His feet
were not visible as he walked or sat. His hair was shaved
except for a topknot tied and held by a gold clasp.
"So," he said, ' 'to what do I owe the honor of this
visit to my humble island?"
Carter drank his tea. It was good and hot after their
swim.
"We followed two-men in a Mercedes," he said in
English, C'Mr.—-?"
"Masashige," the- man said, and bowed his head.
"Commander Carter, United States Navy, and Com-
mander O'Neill of the Australian Navy."
"Ah? These men you follow—this is a military mat-
ter? Alas, I know little of military matters. I'm only a
humble scholar." And he waved to great rows of books
and manuscripts on the shelves of his shoin and across
the whole rear wall of the tokonoma alcove.
"The Mercedes was parked on the mainland,"
Siobhan said, "at a dock where a boat took the two men
to this island. "
The man's eyes flickered for a second as he turned to
look at Siobhan when she spoke. "Here? That is not
possible. No one has come to this island. My boat has
not left for days. "
"You're sure?" Carter said.
"I expect you have examined the island, Com-
mander." Mr. Masashige smiled. "Have you found
those you followed, or any boat crew?"
"No," the Killmaster admitted.
"Ah." The man smiled again. "Probably the boat
you seek sailed around me and on to one of the larger
islands. I regret I can't help more."
Carter nodded, finished his tea, and stood up.
Siobhan looked at him but did the same, saying
nothing.
i' We thank you, Mr. Masashige, for the tea and the
help."
"It is I who thank you for your visit. Perhaps you
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147
would like to use my boat for your return trip. You may
leave it at the mainland dock."
"That's very kind of you," Siobhan said.
They left the small, compact man standing in his
doorway, looking in the hitatare, noshimes and shaved
head like some ancient daimyo. The only thing missing
were the pair of swords.
They walked back down the path in the moonlight to
the silent boat at its dock in the hidden cove.
"Is he lying, Nick?" Siobhan said.
' 'Of course he's lying," Carter said. ' 'He wasn't at all
surprised to see us on his island, and he never asked us
how we got to the island. Then he slipped and revealed
he knew we didn't have a boat. "
"He knew we swam out."
"Which means someone was watching the cove, and
as soon as he saw us he guessed who we were. Which
means he knew those two were watching us and realized
at once we'd turned the tables."
They reached the boat. Carter opened the engine
hatch and felt the engine.
"Still warm. "
"What do we do?" Siobhan asked.
"Exactly what we said. Return to the mainland, leave
the boat, and drive off."
"Then we come back underwater and find out what
Mr. Masashige is really up to. "
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SEVENTEEN
They left the boat at the dock and drove back to
Arao. The Takeda Research boat was there waiting for
them.
"Mr. Takeda say come back, wait,"
the crew chief
explained.
The boat returned them to the Takeda island, and the
police were there to greet them. They listened politely in
the private office of the managing director as Carter and
Siobhan told their story of the murder of Dr. Fukoa and
the attack of the Fujiwara "samurai. "
"The Ashekagi family must have given you the story
already," Siobhan said.
' 'Ashekagi family has disappeared," the police detec-
tive in charge said. "Also bodies of attackers. Only Dr.
Fukoa's body was in courtyard, and much blood. "
'SSo you have no proof of our story," Carter said.
'S There is the evidence of blood, and there were
witnesses," the detective said. "We do not doubt you,
Commander Carter. "
Carter nodded. "Then they took the bodies and the
Ashekagis for some other reason than to try to deny
what happened. "
"It would seem so," the detective agreed. "What
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would you think that reason could be?"
"I have no idea," Carter said blandly.
"Nor I," Siobhan said.
"l see," the detective said. "Well, perhaps if you
think of some reason, you will contact us. "
They assured him they would, and the police left.
Ando Takeda sat down and looked at them.
"So? You have no idea why the Ashekagis have
vanished?"
"Let's just say our ideas are not for police consump-
tion, Mr. Takeda," Carter said. "But we would like to
talk to you if we could."
Takeda nodded. "Of course. But you must be
hungry. And cold. Perhaps tea and sandwiches?"
Takeda pressed a button, and two of the kimono-clad
waitresses appeared, listened to his order, and left.
Takeda offered Carter and Siobhan a drink of sake.
They declined and sat down. Carter leaned forward in
his chair and told Takeda about the attack, the
surveillance, and the small man in the rustic house on
the island.
"He was dressed very elegantly, and in a very old-
fashioned way," Carter finished. "Samurai clothes
from at least two hundred years ago."
"Yes, he would be," Takeda said after a silence.
'SHis name isn't Masashige, or only his given name is.
The man you met on that island is Fujiwara Masashige
himself."
"Fujiwara?" Siobhan said. "Those attackers—?"
Takeda nodded. "His private organization. Almost a
private army, we in Japan sometimes think. But he is
such a great man, so brilliant and honored, no one will
speak out against him in public, and he has never been
accused of anything violent. Until now, that is. I think
the police will now ask some questions about what hap-
pened to you. "
' 'Honored for what? " Carter asked.
"He is a brilliant journalist and international scholar
of history, especially the Sengoku jidai, or the Japanese
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era of the country at war during the sixteenth century,
and a radical philosopher who has taught and written all
over the world. He is also an expert on Western
literature and philosophy, and a master of kendo."
"A master swordsman, in other words," Carter said.
"Yes, he and all his followers practice kendo."
"What kind of radical philosophy does he espouse?"
Siobhan asked.
Takeda thought. ' 'That is difficult to explain. Per-
haps his personal story will answer you. He is a direct
descendant of the Fujiwara family, who, as you know,
ruled Japan in the Heian period, the ninth to the twelfth
centuries, or considerably longer than the Tokugawa
shoguns. They were not a military family, but aristo-
crats at the court of the emperor in Kyoto, and while
they had the same kind of power behind the throne as
the Tokugawas, they did not take the title 'shogun.' "
The tea and sandwiches came, and Takeda waited
until they were all served before going on. "His given
name, Masashige, is that of one of our most famous,
noble, and honorable samurai of the past, Kusunoke
Masashige, and perhaps that is the best clue to his ideas.
He was not given the name as a child but took it as an
adult, and he always uses the true ancient order of
Japanese names: Fujiwara Masashige. I, for example, in
the past would have been called Takeda Ando, not the
Westernized Ando Takeda. "
"So," Carter said, "he is a man who believes in the
past of Japan, the samurai ways, even the ancient im-
perial court ideals."
"More than that," Takeda said. "Simply put, Fuji-
wara Masashige has come to blame the evils of today on
what he views as modern ways false to true human
nature. He sees today as a corrupt time and wants to
return to the old ways. "
"By force?" Carter wondered.
'WI did not think so," Takeda said, "but perhaps he
has changed."
"Yes," Carter said.
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"What will you do?"
"Find out," the Killmaster said. "And if he is behind
the violence, stop him. t'
'S That may not be so easy, Commander Carter."
"It never is, " Carter said.
When they finished their sandwiches they excused
themselves and went to the rooms prepared for them in
the research complex. They looked at the beds and each
other.
"Tonight?" Siobhan said.
"People are dying. "
' 'Tonight,"
she said with a sigh. "Underwater
again?"
"Someone spotted us swimming earlier, and a boat's
easy to see at night. "
"We didn't bring our own equipment. "
"They must have scuba gear here. After all, it's a
marine research installation."
"What if we run into that weed?"
s 'If Fujiwara is behind it, he wouldn't have it growing
near his own base. "
"When?"
"Now."
They found the scuba equipment in a diving room
near the docks on the Ariakeno-umi, and told Takeda
they wanted to use the boat again. Dressed in the bor-
rowed wet suits, fins, masks, and air tanks, they
boarded and directed the crew chief to sail as silently as
possible toward the small island some miles up the
coast.
The moon was down now, and the inland water was
black, only the small light on the dials in the cabin
breaking the night. The crew chief sailed slowly and
carefully, watching the channel markers. He knew the
waters like the back of his hand, but he still sailed
cautiously, the motor barely turning over, almost in-
audible in the blackness. But Carter took no chances.
When they were in the shadow of one of the larger
islands, he spoke quietly.
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"We'll go over now. "
"It is still a mile to the Fujiwara island, Com-
mander," the crew chief said.
"We'll have to swim it. According to the chart there's
no more cover between here and the island. It's all open
water."
"Are there any obstacles we should be aware of?"
Siobhan asked the chief, studying the chart herself in
the dim cabin light.
"NO, it is all clear water. The water is deep in this part
of the Ariakeno-umi. Even close to shore you can go
down forty feet with no problem. "
' 'Don't wait for us. We'll make our own way back to
the dock in Arao," Carter said. "You could be spotted
out here. "
"Good luck, " the crew chief said.
They thanked the chief, slid silently over the side, and
began to swim slowly toward the unseen island a mile
ahead. The pitch-black night of the rural waterway was
on their side. Still a half mile from the island, whose
outline they could just make out now against the lighter
black of the sky, they submerged and swam on under-
water.
Carter was the first to surface not ten yards from the
steep and rocky shore of the small island. Siobhan came
up silently some twenty feet away. They stroked softly
close to the shore until they once more reached the small
cove behind its headland. The boat was still there, its
engine cold now.
They made their way up the narrow trail to the
Japanese-style house on the top of the island where
everything could be observed in all directions. No one
challenged them and they saw no one. There was no
light in the small house now. The two agents circled the
house, looking down through the trees on all sides. The
house seemed empty. They saw nothing anywhere on
the island.
"Do we go inside?" Siobhan asked.
' 'We go in."
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Carter picked the lock on the front door. They left
their shoes and air tanks in front, stepped inside, and
listened. There was no sound. Each took one of the four
rooms. The house was empty.
"Not even Fujiwara himself," Siobhan said.
' 'But the boat never left the island tonight," Carter
said.
"Where are the two who shadowed us?"
' 'And the boat crew?" Carter added. "And Fuji-
wara's private army? Where could they hide on an
island this size?"
"And where is Fujiwara now?"
Carter heard the small sound and raised his arm in
warning inside the dark house. Siobhan heard it a sec-
ond later.
Somewhere out in the night.
The snap of a twig.
A stone rolling.
The faint rustle of some fallen leaves.
They flattened on either side of a window at the front
of the house.
"See anything?"
"No," Siobhan said, ' 'but they're all around the
house. The sounds. Back and front."
' 'Yeah," Carter agreed. 'They may not know we're
here."
'"Wait or go find them?"
"Go find them."
At the front door they went down, opened the door,
and crawled out right and left against the dark shadow
of the house. Carter had Wilhelmina in his hand.
Siobhan held her small Walthar PPK.
The shadowy figure came across the open space
toward them. It stood silent and immobile.
' 'Commanders Carter and O'Neill, I believe," Fuji-
wara Masashige said in Japanese.
Powerful beams of light came from all directions—
from behind the'shadowy figure, from either side, from
behind Carter and Siobhan and the house. No longer a
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shadow, Fujiwara Masashige stood in the dazzling
spotlights focused only on him, still wearing the sump-
tuous red hitatare. Only now he had a pair of samurai
swords thrust into the sash.
"As you can see, you are surrounded," the small man
said quietly. ' 'Marksmen have you in their infrared
sights at this moment. I assure you that you could not
raise your pistols without dying instantly. I would
greatly regret such an eventuality." Fujiwara smiled.
"Then, I expect you would not want me dead yet any-
way. Not before you find out what I am doing, eh?"
'S Where have you and your men been?" Carter asked
as his eyes searched for a sign of the troops hidden in the
night. "We know no one left the island the first time we
were here, but we couldn't find anyone but you. "
'SI could explain, Commander, but I would prefer to
show you. If you would lay down your weapons, I will
do just that. "
The two agents watched the night. Whether Fuji-
wara's marksmen were out there or not, or good enough
to kill them in the dark night or not, they were still sur-
rounded by an enemy they could not see at all. They had
little choice.
Carter tossed Wilhelmina out toward Fujiwara and
stood up. Siobhan stood beside him and dropped her
Walther.
"You show good judgment and great confidence in
yourselves," Fujiwara said. "Wait to make your fight
tomorrow, eh? We understand each other already."
The black-robed men with the red Fujiwara emblem
on their headbands materialized from the night all
around Fujiwara. Some were armed with the long
Japanese swords, and some carried Soviet AK-47
assault rifles. Fujiwara himself picked up Wilhelmina,
and the Walthar PPK, and handed them to an assistant.
"Come."
The soldiers closed in all around Carter and Siobhan,
and with Fujiwara walking ahead of them, they
marched away from the house and the cove below to the
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far side of the island facing the open Ariakeno-umi.
There were no lights and no sign of a trail, but the
soldiers and Fujiwara knew exactly where they were go-
inge
At the edge of the dark expanse of water itself, Fuji-
wara turned to the two agents.
"Your scuba tanks are behind you. Put them on
now."
They watched as all the soldiers and Fujiwara himself
removed their Japanese robes to reveal wet suits
underneath. At a command from Fujiwara, the entire
side of the island seemed to swing open showing a con-
cealed cove lined with wooden buildings. The soldiers
placed their clothes in the buildings, came out, and one
by one they slipped into the water of the cove and
vanished into the blackness of the Ariakeno-umi. None
of them had air tanks.
"Commander Carter, Commander O'Neill. "
Fujiwara Masashige stood at the edge of the water in
a wet suit that showed his small, compact body to be a
solid mass of powerful muscles. In the wet suit he
seemed to move like a shadow, a fluid force.
"You will go now."
Carter and Siobhan entered the water and submerged,
the soldiers all around them armed with spear guns,
Fujiwara Masashige directly behind them armed with a
samurai sword. He handled it like a man who knew how
to use it.
They swam in a descending line out into the dark
water, small lights on the back of each soldier. They
looked like a long string of shining pearls going deeper
toward the very center of the Ariakeno-umi.
Then Car'ter saw it directly ahead: on the bottom
some forty feet down was a large transparent dome that
seemed to shine with a deep blue light of its own.
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"In Japan we have been learning to live on the sea
bottom for many years," Fujiwara Masashige said.
"This is only a small dome, enough to protect an in-
stallation the size of a large house. We are self-
contained, create our own air atmosphere, and have our
own waste facilities and recycling processes much as
does a spaceship."
The small, muscular man sat on the raised platform
of a room almost identical to that in his house on the
island. Carter and Siobhan sat in the lower area. There
were no guards visible, but the two agents knew they
were not far away, and Fujiwara could defend himself
with his sword until they reached him. They had entered
the dome through air locks, and inside there was no
sense of being at the bottom of the sea. The air seemed
normal, and the light was a pleasant, muted yellow like
morning sunlight.
' 'Why?" Carter said.
Fujiwara was wearing a less formal kimono of dark
blue silk and wide silk trousers, two swords thrust into
his sash. Carter and Siobhan also wore Japanese
clothing, Carter in a similar kimono and trousers,
Siobhan in complete female dress with tight sash and
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Obi and narrow skirt that made it difficult to walk. Her
eyes were angry as she glared at Fujiwara; he ignored
her.
"At first because it was there to do, Commander
Carter," Fujiwara said, then smiled again. It was the
smile of a man without humor, who only smiled to show
his amusement at a world inferior to himself. "Or
should I call you Killmaster, agent N3 of AXE,
America's most secret espionage agency? "
"Whatever," Carter said. "The installation for
underwater living—why now?"
Fujiwara frowned. "You are not surprised I know
who you really are? You do not wonder how know?"
"Surprise is a useless emotion. You know who I am.
How is not important right now. "
The muscular Japanese nodded. "You are an in-
teresting man, Mr. Carter. I thought you could be from
the start. "
"The start?" Siobhan said.
Fujiwara did not look at her. "Females do not speak
to Fujiwara until they are commanded to speak. You
will remember that, Commander O'Neill."
"No, I don't think I will, Mr. Fujiwara, but give me a
sword and you'll remember. "
The little man looked at her now. "So?"
She looked at him. "Tell us about the start, Mr.
Fujiwara."
He nodded slowly, then turned back toward Carter.
"From the first time my people encountered you at the
Kwajalein reef I have been tracking you."
"And trying to kill us," Carter said.
"You were a danger. But you defeated all our at-
tacks, from the reef to the bomb on the Australian jet.
And then the swordsmanship when my men attacked at
the Ashekagi house. Remarkable, Mr. Carter. You are a
superior man."
wasn't alone," Carter said.
"No, you were not." Fujiwara looked again at
Siobhan, a certain interest in his dark eyes now, even
respect.
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She watched him."' You haven't told us why under-
water living is so important to you now."
Fujiwara's eyes seemed to blaze up in a sudden surge
of fire. He stood on the raised platform and began to
pace, his hand on the hilt of his long katana.
' 'At first I thought the only way would be a space
vehicle, perhaps one of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter,
some giant vehicle we could live on for hundreds of
years, a self-contained world—Titan or Triton, a
satellite large enough to have an atmosphere to protect
against the cosmic rays. But the progress in space travel
is so slow, so impossibly slow!"
Fujiwara paced faster, waving his free hand angrily,
the right hand white where it gripped the hilt of the
katana thrust into his sash.
' 'The only way for what?" Carter said.
Fujiwara didn't seem to hear. "Then I learned of the
underwater experiments. I studied the entire concept,
worked on improvements myself, until I was able to
build this dome large enough to protect a house under
the sea, with its own atmosphere, waste recycling, ar-
tificial sunlight, food production. I had it built and
operating here when Ashekagi told me Of the seaweed
mutant from the space experiment. I knew then that fate
had made me the instrument. Destiny had chosen me,
and I was ready!"
"Ready for what?" Carter asked.
Siobhan said nothing. She just watched the intense
little man as he paced, talked, gripped the hilt of his
sword, waved his free hand in sweeping gestures. Her
eyes were almost as intense as Fujiwara's as she watched
him.
"TO do what I have known for a long time must be
done, Killmaster," the fiery Japanese said, turning his
dark eyes to stare at Carter. "This world is a sick world,
a filthy and evil world. We have lost all that made us
human: truth, honor, courage, vision, community, pur-
pose, faith, love. Half the world turns men into cogs,
machines, slaves—faceless and without honor or vision
as individuals. The other half institutionalizes injustice
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and corrupts human potential in favor of a code of
greed and injustice that has no sense of human com-
munity, or love, or personal honor."
He stood on the raised level and stared down at
Carter. "We have lost the truth of the past, lost honor
for greed, lost vision for safety. Drab slaves or corrupt
thieves! We must return to an older, simpler, nobler
way of life on this planet, Mr. Carter, or we will vanish
in our own corruption, our own lack of vision and pur-
pose. It is time to end this corrupt, purposeless,
honorless, lost world we have and begin again. I will
wipe the slate clean, start all over, and perhaps this time
we can go forward without losing all that is good about
us as a species. "
Carter looked up at the fierce-eyed man with his old-
fashioned kimono and sash full of swords, saw his in-
tense, brilliant, and violent eyes.
"Wipe the slate clean," Carter said slowly, "with in-
credibly fast-growing, deadly seaweed?"
Fujiwara stood on the low raised section of the room
like the statue of an ancient daimyo, his head shaved,
his hand on his sword. He did not smile now as he
looked at Carter and then at Siobhan, who was still
watching him intently.
C' Yes," Fujiwara- said. ' 'With an incredibly fast-
growing and deadly seaweed. "
' 'You 're crazy," Carter said.
"Perhaps," Fujiwara said, and shrugged: "l must be
a little insane or I would not be strong enough to do
what must be done—a certain mental state the present
society would call insane, but* it does not prevent me
from knowing what must be done if we are to have any
future on this earth as a species. The way we are going
we will destroy ourselves in a few centuries, perhaps
sooner, and destroy the entire planet with us. My way,
we will only cease to exist in our present form sooner,
and the planet will not be damaged beyond repair.
Perhaps I'm not so insane at that. "
"How did you get the seaweed?"
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"Dr. Ashekagi was one of my followers. He had been
for years. When the NASA experiment resulted in the
mutant plant, and he learned what it could do, he in-
formed me. I sensed instantly what I had to do. He gave
me the data and some samples, but unfortunately his
associates put the weed into the Ariakeno-umi and the
government became involved. Dr. Ashekagi realized
ghat he would .be questioned, watched, and perhaps
would be forced to reveal our plans. Hé asked to die.
We accepted his honorable sacrifice and promised to
take complete care of his family, which we have done. '
"And now you have the weed and are testing it all
over, poisoning the sea," Carter said. "To destroy the
world. "
Fujiwara's eyes blazed again. "To save the world,
Killmaster! To destroy the corrupt body Of mankind to
save the soul Of mankind!"
"We don't live in the sea, Fujiwara," Siobhan said
suddenly, still without taking her gaze from the small
man.
Fujiwara nodded. "No, Commander O'Neill, but the
rain does."
' 'The rain?" Carter said.
"One of the first things Ashekagi told me was that the
poison would make the sea deadly, and that would
make the rain deadly. And after a few years, perhaps
only a year, there would be no life left on this planet.
None."
' 'But not all life, Fujiwara," Carter said. ' 'You and
your army will be in a dome under the sea. You'll have
special wet suits with special breathing apparatus and
one-man submarines, and you'll farm and forage on the
bottom of the ocean because the poison doesn't affect
plant life. "
S'My people and I, and a group of others I am even
now in the process of selecting. You two have impressed
me greatly with your intelligence, skill, and sense of
honor. Perhaps you would find it possible to join me?"
' 'And if we don't find it possible? "
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Fujiwara shrugged. "To keep you imprisoned would
mean far too much risk, and obviously I cannot allow
you to leave."
"Obviously," Carter said.
Fujiwara looked at each of them. They said nothing
more. Carter stood, his eyes meeting Fujiwara's gaze
without flinching. Siobhan remained seated, kneeling,
looking up at Fujiwara. The muscular Japanese sighed.
"Perhaps you will think about the possibility. I would
be honored to have two so strong and determined with
me for the future." He clapped his hands loudly.
"How long under the ocean, Fujiwara?" Carter
asked.
"A generation. Perhaps less. Dr. Ashekagi said the
poison would slowly dissipate. It would sink into the
earth and lose its power in a hundred years. We would
not see the surface again except in our protective suits,
but the world would be reborn. A clean world. But since
then my people have found an antidote to the Boison
and a chemical that will kill the weed. How long it will
take to cleanse the entire earth we do not know, but
perhaps we ourselves would see the surface again in our
lifetimes."
Four guards in black kimonos entered on Fujiwara's
signal. Siobhan stood suddenly.
"I'll do it! I'll join you!"
Fujiwara whirled and strode to her, his hands out in
welcome. So fast even Carter barely saw it, so fast
Fujiwara stood as if paralyzed, the Australian woman
jumped away from the muscular little man, his long
katana in her hands.
The four guards sprang toward her, drawing their
swords.
' 'Beautiful," Fujiwara said softly as he stared at
Siobhan, and he raised his hands to stop the charging
guards. He drew his short wakizashi and moved in
toward Siobhan.
Carter broke the neck of the guard nearest him with a
single karate chop, grabbed the long sword from his
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dead fingers, and dashed out the door the guards had
left open. Siobhan had given him his chance; he had to
take it no matter what happened to her. Too much was
at stake for both their countries.
He found himself in a narrow passage and heard
the guards coming out of the room behind him. A metal
door straight ahead had a watertight seal, was dogged
all around, but the dogs were open. Carter reached the
door and spun the hydraulic wheel that opened it.
Footsteps pounded behind him.
He whirled, parried the lunging slash of the black-
robed guard, and cut deep into the man's neck at the
shoulder, blood gushing. The man's sword fell, his eyes
glazed with shock, and he collapsed in a pool of his own
blood, mortally wounded.
The second guard hesitated.
It cost him his life. The third guard appeared at the
far end of the passage and Carter couldn't wait. With a
cry, he leaped on the man in front of him, caught his
parry, and cut him down in a single unexpected thrust.
Blood still dripping from his sword, Carter was
through the door and clanged it closed, dogging it down
all around before the last guard could reach it.
He was in a narrow stairwell that spiraled upward to
the curved translucent skin of the dome. The dogs were
already opening again on the door from the other side.
He ran up the spiral stairs and at the top found an
escape air lock. By the time he got it open and closed,
the chamber filled with water and the outer door
opened, Fujiwara's men would be there to reopen the
inner door and drag him out.
He could hear them below. Fujiwara's own voice
echoed somewhere in the distance along the passage he
had left.
Carter took the long katana in both hands and hacked
the thick plastic skin of the dome. He slashed at it again
and again. The razor-sharp, unbreakable steel plunged
through. A small stream of water spurted in. Carter
punched two more holes as he heard them start up the
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stairs. A long crack appeared between two of the holes,
the plastic bending now under the weight of the water,
and a large chunk broke away sending a torrent Of water
to the bottom Of the stairwell.
Below he heard Fujiwara ordering them out. They
would have to close off the stairwell to prevent the dome
from flooding.
He had maybe a two-minute advantage before Fuji-
wara could send his men to other air locks.
Carter crawled into the air lock and closed the small
inner door. He opened the valves and waited for the
chamber to fill before he could open the outer door. A
small air pocket remained when the pressure was equal
enough for him to force the outer door open. Carter
took a deep breath, swam out, and kicked for the sur-
face.
He broke through into the dark night and swam hard
for Fujiwara Masashige's small island. They would be
after him in minutes. But the last place they would look
would be Fujiwara's own island.
He was ashore and moving up the slope toward the
small Japanese house when he heard them breaking the
surface out in the Ariakeno-umi. Voices called in Jap-
anese, instructing •them to spread out and swim in all
directions. Flashlights went on all across the dark water-
way. One voice instructed some to swim for the island
and get the boat.
Carter ran silently on up to the dark house.
Inside he found the telephone and dialed the secret
code of numbers that connected him to the AXE com-
puter. The series of clicks and pings and bleeps was
longer than usual. A rural connection.
"Hello there, N3, are you—" the soft, sultry voice
began.
Carter punched in the automatic six-digit code for ex-
treme emergency rescue, gave his coordinates and the
verbal instructions, "Fujiwara island in Ariakeno-umi,
immediate," and slipped back out into the night and the
trees.
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Four shapes in Wet suits jogged up to the house and
entered warily, searching.
"Empty. He was not so clever."
They ran back down toward the shore.
Among the trees Carter waited. He looked at his
watch, all that Fujiwara had left him of his equipment.
A minute had passed.
Two minutes.
The boat started down in the cove, backed out, and
began to make long sweeps around the island, its search-
light picking out the heads of the swimming troops of
Fujiwara Masashige.
Five minutes.
Voices came up the slopes of the island again toward
the house. Someone had begun to wonder about the
island.
Carter heard the sound to the east.
Two jets were coming in fast. Lights swept low over
the water and the island, illuminating the boat and the
swimming heads. Machine guns and small cannon fired
as the jets roared over, banked, and swung back to
sweep in again. The swimmers dived, and the boat
twisted in evasive maneuvers. On the island the voices
froze among the trees as the jets swept in once more.
And again.
The roar of the jet engines filled the sky.
Carter didn't hear the helicopter until it was hovering
almost directly over the small house.
The Killmaster ran for the dangling harness, caught
it, and the chopper vanished into the dark night before
anyone on the island or in the Ariakeno-umi knew there
had even been a helicopter.
As the American Army crew leaned over and cranked
him up, Car'ter looked at his watch again. It had been
ten minutes since he had made his call to Washington.
AXE was getting slow.
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The boats of the Japanese defense force ringed the
area on the surface of the Ariakeno-umi above the
submerged dome. On the deck of the command boat,
Nick Carter stood with David Hawk himself.
"Blown up, flooded, and everyone gone," Carter
said. ' 'The three bodies of the men I killed, no one else.
Not even Siobhan. "
Hawk smoked and chewed one of his cheap cigars.
Carter stood in a wet suit and scuba gear, his mask up
now, water dripping from him. The rest of the divers
still searched the surface and the depths for any trace of
survivors or bodies. Hawk stared grimly down at the
dark water Off the small island where other soldiers of
the defense force combed the woods for signs of Fuji-
wara and his men.
"She sacrificed herself so I could escape," Carter
said.
"It's in the report," Hawk said gruffly. "She could
be alive. We haven't found her body. Where the hell are
they, Nick?"
'SAnywhere."
"Three hours, that's all they had, and the jets were
coming over regularly. Where are they and how did they
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get away without anyone seeing a hair of them?"
"Underwater," Carter said. "Fujiwara plans to live
under the ocean for a hundred years at least, and if he
was testing the weed in the open, he was ready. He
would have been prepared for underwater escape with
those special tankless suits that must make their own ox-
ygen from chemicals that react with seawater, one-man
submarines, or the large submersibles. And somewhere
he's got a dome big enough for his army and then
some. "
"Where?"
"I've got a hunch. Get me a new set of my equipment.
and a couple of special items. "
"You'll go alone?"
"Fujiwara's got Siobhan. "
"Not good enough, Nick. We've got to stop him;
she's expendable. "
"We need Fujiwara alive with the antidote to the
poison and the weed killer. He'd kill himself and all of
them, and leave the weed to grow and destroy us. He'd
rather see us all end than go on the way we are."
Hawk chewed on the foul cigar. "Where?" he
growled.
"Off Kwajalein,- where that Soviet ship was de-
stroyed. It's the only logical answer. The Russians were
too close to his big dome. "
"Let's get your equipment. "
It was just after dawn when Nick Carter's fighter jet
swept in low over the giant lagoon and touched down on
the airfield of Kwajalein. He had seen the black water as
he passed over the lagoon. The weed filled it now shore
to shore, the shoots moving like the heads of a million
snakes.
General Scott was waiting on the airstrip, wearing his
pistols, with an armed squad of his men. He was tight-
lipped, but there.was a glint in his eyes.
"I have instructions to place my entire command
under your orders,"
the ramrod-straight little general
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said. He was angry at being upstaged but excited by the
prospect of action.
"No orders," Carter said, "just some help, Gen-
eral. "
The general looked happier. "That's what I'm here
for. What do you need?"
c 'A boat and crew, full scuba gear, spear gun, four
extra air tanks, and an underwater sled for carrying the
tanks."
The general was disappointed. There wasn't much ac-
tion for him in supplying Carter with equipment.
"An armed guard on the boat, perhaps. It might be
good if you were out there to back me up, General."
The general beamed. Carter suppressed a smile.
"Let's get you going," the general said.
They left the field with the armed escort, the general
leading as if on a forced march to catch the enemy by
surprise. At the headquarters building Major Ham-
mond took the list of what Carter needed, then the
general went to work getting the boat ready, and Carter
went to his old quarters to prepare his own equipment.
A new Luger took Wilhelmina's place, a new Pierre was
strapped to his upper thigh, and a new Hugo went up his
sleeve under the wet suit.
He slipped his emergency equipment inside his water-
proof container and strapped on the heavy waterproof
diving watch with its hidden devices. He took a tight roll
of what looked like some thin cloth Hawk had brought
him, wrapped it almost flat around his waist, then
wrapped a smaller piece around his thigh under Pierre.
He put on a suit of silk thermal underwear to wear
under the wet suit. Fujiwara hadn't searched him in the
Ariakeno-umi dome; he had simply taken everything in-
cluding the wet suit but not his long underwear or
watch.
He was in his wet suit and ready when the firing
erupted in the direction of the headquarters building.
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Heavy firing. Uzis and AK-47s and M-16s from the
sounds. Grenades. Rocket launchers.
Carter drew his Lugar and ran toward the sound of
the firing.
They were everywhere.
Men in black wet suits with built-in masks and
without air tanks swarmed over the grounds. Small
helicopters hovered, firing down at the buildings and
the fleeing American civilians.
Carter ran for the headquarters building. Five of the
attackers saw him. He shot down three before they
could even yell. The other two dived for cover. Carter
didn't wait; he ran on and into the headquarters
building. Major Hammond was dead across his desk,
his pistol still in its holster. Soldiers lay in the corridors
in their blood.
The master sergeant slumped dead outside General
Scott's office. Inside, the office was empty, the win-
dows smashed, the walls riddled with bullets. Two dead
attackers in their wet suits without tanks lay on the
floor.
Carter heard firing close by. He dropped, crawled to
the shattered windows, and peered out. Twenty yards
across the lawn behind the headquarters building ten
American soldiers were making a stand behind an old
World War II Japanese bunker, General Scott clear
among them, shouting defiance.
The black-suited attackers were closing a ring around
them but had not yet completed the encirclement. The
reason became clear: three mortar shells exploded
among the black-garbed attackers attempting to close
the circle, sending them diving back for cover.
It was the general himself aiming the three mortars,
slapping the shoulders of the prone loaders to fire one
after the other. And the general had chosen his ground
well. The half-destroyed bunker gave cover in front, a
high earth bank protected sides and rear, and a thick
grove of palms around the entire area prevented the
small helicopter gunships from getting close enough to
fire straight down.
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But they were closing the circle and would overwhelm
the position as soon as the general ran out of mortar
shells. The general needed a diversion, a crossfire to
break up the line of the attackers.
Carter crawled back out into the corridor and ran for
the armory at the far end. Other dead soldiers lay in the
corridor, but the attackers had gone on. In the armory
he found what he needed—an XM-174 automatic gre-
nade launcher with four fully-loaded twelve-round
magazines in a canvas carrying sling. Carter unlocked it
from its tripod mount and ran back down the corridor
to the general's office.
The firing was still heavy outside.
Carter crawled back to the window dragging the
XM-174 and the sling of ammo. He raised up and
peered out again. The circle had been closed, and there
were fewer men kneeling behind the old blockhouse
with the general and the three mortars. It wouldn't be
long.
Carter raised up on one knee, rested the automatic
grenade launcher on the windowsill, locked on a
magazine, set the gun on semiautomatic, and aimed for
the line of black-suited attackers between him and the
window.
He fired.
Moved the sights left. Fired.
Moved the sights right. Fired.
The three spin-stabilized grenades exploded among
the attackers one after the other in a rapid-fire line.
Carter aimed over the blockhouse and the general's
beleaguered troops at the attackers on the far side, and
fired another three grenades.
Then he fired one right and one left.
The remaining four he fired again at the attackers
closest to him, then he pulled off the magazine and
slammed home a second magazine.
The surviving attackers broke and ran for the cover of
the other buildings. The general hurried them on their
way with three more mortar shells.
Carter heard someone running into the headquarters
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building, dropped the grenade launcher, and whirled
with his Lugar pointing at the office door.
She came in running, breathing hard, her hair di-
sheveled.
He had to jerk his hand left to miss her as he shot.
Siobhan!
"Nick! Christ, it's me!"
She carried a short M-16Al and dived to the floor
behind a chair as Carter shot before he could stop.
' 'How?" Carter said, crawling to her.
'SFujiwara brought me with them and left a guard on
me. I slipped him in the fight."
"The general's out there with a few men. I've cleared
out Fujiwara's troops for a moment with a grenade
launcher, but they'll be back, and I think the general's
people are all the resistance left." He listened, but there
was no sound of firing from anywhere else across the
island and its Midwestern suburban village. "Cover my
rear.
He crawled back to the window, picked up the
grenade launcher, and peered out again. Fujiwara's men
were creeping back as the sun beat down on the few
American soldiers left behind the old bunker around the
general. Even as Carter watched, he saw the general fire
his last mortar shäl, pat his men on the back, and take
out his pistols.
"It's up to us," Carter said over his shoulder, and
raised the grenade launcher to the windowsill.
The burst of automatic fire from behind him knocked
the launcher from his hands.
The Killmaster whirled, reaching for Wilhelmina.
Siobhan O'Neill shot him in the right arm.
"Sorry," she said. "You're not an easy man to argue
with. Just don't make any moves, Nick."
Four of Fujiwara's men came into the room behind
her.
Carter turned and looked back out the window.
The attackers were all standing now, covering the
window. Behind the bunker, the general and his last few
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men stood with ther hands up. Carter turned back to
Siobhan, who held her stubby M-16Al pointed at his
heart.
"Nice work," the Killmaster said.
She waved the commando gun. "Take him. Get his
air tanks and bring him to the boat." She looked at
Carter. "Be very careful—he's tough and tricky. Tie
him up—hold him on ropes. Keep two men ten feet
behind all the time. Keep your guns out and your eyes
on him. All of you."
Carter smiled. "l sound like a one-man army."
Siobhan said nothing, and walked out of the general's
shattered office. Three men tied Carter's arms tight to
his body Japanese style, attached ropes to his wrists,
and stepped back. They dragged him up and pulled him
out of the office along the corridor and out into the hot
morning sun of Kwajalein.
The peaceful island was a shambles now, the black-
kimono-clad soldiers of Fujiwara everywhere, rounding
up the Americans. They pulled Carter to the ocean-side
beach and shoved him aboard a large rubber boat. Six
men paddled the giant raft out through the reef breakers
to where the large submersible waited heaving pon-
derously on the Pacific swells. Carter was pushed and
pulled aboard, then shoved down a hatch into the inte-
rior of the submersible. He heard the hatch close and
felt the undersea craft move into a dive.
"Forward. "
He walked forward to a low room with the row of
small windows open to the clear undersea world as they
descended. Siobhan sat there alone, her M-16Al on her
lap. They pushed Carter into a chair, and four of them
stood around the room behind him with their weapons
ready. Siobhan did not Offer to untie him. She wore
Japanese dress, female dress, but she had a pair of
swords thrust into the sash like a samurai.
"How long?" Carter asked the Australian woman.
"Only yesterday."
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She shrugged. "I like his ideas. I've had the same
thoughts. I like him. He's even stronger than you, Nick.
I've looked for a man like him for a long time. "
' 'The world?"
"It won't be missed."
"Me?"
She smiled. "We'll talk." And she suddenly leaned
forward. S' There it is!"
Through the row of narrow windows he saw a deep
blue glow that seemed to fill the entire bottom of the
sea. A gigantic plastic dome covered the flat top of an
undersea mountain some thousand feet below the sur-
face, a dome large enough to cover a city. Torpedolike
one-man submarines came and went through air locks,
and their submersible was heading straight toward it.
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Carter sat in the narrow, windowless, bare room.
Stripped to his underwear, he sat on tatami mats and
leaned against the smooth plastic of the wall.
The air had that stale, chemical quality of windowless
vaults deep beneath a city.
The light came from nowhere, diffused and cold.
He was surrounded by total, oppressive silence.
There was nothing alive except himself, and how long
would that be?
Imprisoned in the narrow, low-ceilinged room, Carter
listened for voices but heard none. He thought about a
hundred years in the plastic air and light deep under the
sea with nowhere to go. Nothing but exercises and
games and training and libraries, and occasional swims
out to tend the crops and harvest the shellfish and fish
to feed the submerged survivors who could wait down
here a hundred years.
Could they do it?
Maybe the Japanese could do it better than any other
people. After all, they had spent 250 years in an ar-
tificial world under a plastic dome of ruthless self-
isolation. It was possible. He didn't think he could do it,
but maybe they could if anyone could.
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He began to study the narrow cell. It was not much
bigger than a box, too low for a man his size to stand up
in. The walls and floor and ceiling were all smooth
plastic. The door was the full width of the room, and
would open outward. There was nowhere to hide and
jump someone coming in. No crevices or protrusions.
No sink or toilet.
No way out. Only there always was. The air had to
come from somewhere. And the light. Behind the ap-
parent smooth plastic there had to be vents, electrical
connections, conduits. There was no such thing as a
sealed room beyond the tomb.
He was still searching for a flaw when they came for
him.
"Come. "
They stood in the open doorway dressed in the usual
black robes but now with beautiful jimbaori jackets em-
broidered with the Fujiwara crest over the dark
kimonos. They were somehow more confident and more
relaxed at the same time. In the clan stronghold. At
home.
Carter bent to go out into the narrow passage. The
leader of the guards handed him a black kimono to put
over his underwear, a pair of sandals, and a sash.
Dressed, Carter wås marched along the passage toward
a watertight door.
Voices came to meet him, voices everywhere through
the steel watertight door. From above, from below.
Crowds of voices talking, shouting in team games, drill-
ing and shouting. Voices and the pounding of feet, the
clash of wooden kendo swords, the ringing steel of real
samurai swords in close-combat training.
The guards took him through the steel door into a
much larger corridor filled with people in black
kimonos hurrying along, moving in and out of rooms
on either side. Through another door they crossed a
large public room where kendo classes were in session,
karate classes, ånd plain exercise classes.
There were two more large rooms filled with games,
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conferences, and every kind of group activity before
Carter was taken into a Japanese-style waiting room.
Each room in the underwater complex was protected
with watertight doors, all apparently made to look like
rooms familiar to those who would live in the dome.
The domed installation was as large as a small town,
and was probably able to sustain a thousand people or
more.
A tall black in a sumptuous red hitatare slid open a
door and motioned to Carter like a major-domo. The
guards went in with Carter this time. Fujiwara learned
quickly, or perhaps Siobhan had reminded them of the
Killmaster's skills.
They sat together on the raised jodan no ma. Siobhan
wore voluminous red robes embroidered in gold over a
white underskirt. She wore all female attire—except for
the swords thrust into the sash. Fujiwara was in a simple
offLwhite noshi jacket from the twelfth century over
plain white hakama trousers, showing in stark contrast
the pair of black lacquered and gold-fitted swords in the
white sash.
The tall black motioned for Carter to sit on a cushion
on the mats facing the raised platform. A small table
stood in front of the cushion, holding a white porcelain
sake decanter and a single white cup. The sake was just
warm. A single rose in a dark blue bud vase decorated
the table.
"A daring and resourceful escape, Killmaster," Fuji-
wara said solemnly, "but this time we are much too far
down. The pressure alone would kill you before you
could geihalfway up. "
"l couldn't have escaped at all without Siobhan,"
Carter said with a smile.
"No, " the Australian said, ' 'you couldn't have. "
"It is one of the things I most admired about her,"
Fujiwara said. "A rare woman. I did not believe such a
woman existed. One is always learning in life."
"Yes," Carter said, looking at Siobhan. "Only since
yesterday, Commander?"
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"Only then for Masashige," Siobhan said, "perhaps
all my life for someone like him. You're a powerful
man, Nick, but you lack vision, the vision that brings
greatness."
f' Vision or insanity?" Carter mused.
"Sometimes they can be quite close," Siobhan said,
and smiled at Fujiwara. "You have to -really know
someone before you can tell the difference."
"Sometimes not even then," Carter said.
Fujiwara's eyes darkened, and his hand touched the
hilt of his katana. Siobhan put her hand on his arm. The
muscular Japanese took a deep breath.
"Please, Killmaster, the sake is for your comfort as
we talk," he said.
Carter poured a cup. "Talk about what?"
'S Your future," Fujiwara said.
"And the future of the world," Siobhan added.
The sake was excellent. Carter sipped, savored, and
waited. Maybe Fujiwara thought he could use Carter, or
maybe it was Siobhan's conscience, but they didn't want
to kill him. It was what he had counted on, his one big
advantage, and he had to use it somehow to destroy
Fujiwara and his insane plan. How would depend on
what they did, what they had brought him here to talk
about. So he sipped the warm rice wine, smiled, and
waited.
"The world as we know it will end, Nick," Siobhan
said. "The people. Only we in this dome will be left. We
want the survivors, those who will start a new world, to
be the best. We want you, Nick."
"Is that it?" Carter said. "You're that afraid to
die?
Fujiwara clutched the hilt of his sword again, and
half rose on the raised platform.
"No," Siobhan said. "He is probing for weakness,
Masashige. Let me go on."
"Why do we need him, lady? We should kill him
"We need his skills, his brain, his knowledge,
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Masashige. We will need a man like him when we
emerge." She looked down at Carter. "Him or his
children."
Carter watched her, and sipped the warm sake.
"Join us, Nick. We have a woman for you, a place.
You can take the place of the man who killed himself in
the Ashekagis' courtyard. He was Masashige's closest
associate. You can be that to us."
"And if not?"
Fujiwara spoke. "You will die with the rest of the
corrupt animals of this earth of ours."
C SAnd when will that be, Fujiwara? Even the seaweed
will take years, maybe decades to fill the oceans."
Fujiwara smiled. "No, it will not be that long,
Killmaster. My scientists have developed an even newer
strain of the mutant, and this very day it will go on its
mission to every corner of the earth. Perhaps a month, a
week, and the rain will fall to end the eons of corrup-
tion. "
"Don't tell him," Siobhan said.
"Why? He will not escape from here," Fujiwara said.
"If we don't tell him, it won't matter even if he
does," she said.
Fujiwara nodded slowly. Carter sipped his sake.
Fujiwara had already told him enough. All he had to do
was escape.
"Well, Carter?" Fujiwara said. "What will it be?
Death, or life with us down here and a new future for
"Doesn't sound like I have much choice," Carter
said. "There's no way out of here, so even if I don't
agree with anything you say or do, it looks like I'll be
here or dead. On the whole, I'd rather hang around and
see what I can do to help the new world. With you two
making it, it may need a lot of help."
Fujiwara frowned. "Does that mean yes or no?"
"It means I think you're both crazy, but it looks like
I'm going to be with you after everyone else is dead
whether I want to or not. It means you can't ever go
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back, Fujiwara; nothing can ever be erased, and those
good old days of yours weren't that good anyway. The
truth is, we're better today than we ever were; we just
have a way to go to be really good. Maybe a long way. It
means I guess I'm with you down here, and there's not
much I can do about it, so I might as well join you. I
hope that woman you've got for me is good-looking and
sexy as hell. It's going to be a long fifty or so years down
here."
Siobhan laughed. "You're a wonder, Nick Carter.
Don't believe a word of that, Masashige. He doesn't.
He's just playing us for time."
"Of course, my lady, but he may be a lot more right
than he thinks. So we'll hold him, and after we've
cleaned up the rest of the world, we can talk to him
again. Is that agreeable to you?"
Siobhan hesitated. "Perhaps you're right, Masashige.
We should kill him, and now. "
"Perhaps," Fujiwara said. "But, like you, lady, I
hate to waste such a man if we can have him with us
later. Who knows what may happen on the surface
while we wait, or what we will find when we emerge. We
will keep him in that cell, and watch him Nntil it is over
on the surface." Fujiwara nodded to the guards. "Take
him back. "
Carter finished his sake, smiled at Siobhan, and stood
up. The guards closed around him and they marched
out. Despite Siobhan, Fujiwara had told him enough.
Whatever they were going to do would require action
that could not happen there in the dome a thousand feet
under the ocean, and was going to happen soon,
perhaps within hours. It meant they would be leaving
the dome to go somewhere, and it meant that they
would all be very busy.
TOO busy to worry about one man locked safely in a
two-by-four solid cell.
He was marched back through the large public rooms
where he saw that the soldiers seemed to be preparing
for something, sharpening their swords and cleaning
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their rifles, the officers conferring. Along the corridors
everyone was busy now in the offices. In his passage
only one guard watched the door of his cell as they
pushed him back in once more.
He waited only until he heard the clang of the steel
door behind the men who had brought him, and then,
alone on the floor of the narrow little room, Carter went
to work.
He quickly stripped off his silk long johns and
unwrapped the all-but-invisible body wrap he'd had
prepared for just this kind of emergency. Laid out on
the floor it was a complete bodysuit of an ultralight,
ultrastrong, ultrainsulated plastic fabric, complete with
a clear eye piece and an exhaling valve.
He listened at the door, but there was no sound out in
the narrow passage except the distant breathing of the
single guard, alone and bored, as sure as Fujiwara that
there was nowhere for the prisoner to escape to even if
he could get out of the cell.
Back at the spread-out suit, he took off his watch,
opened the back, and took out a miniature valve no big-
ger than his smallest fingernail. He attached the tiny
valve to the suit, and listened again. No one moved in
the passage.
He unwrapped a long flat rectangle of the same
ultrastrong plastic fabric from his leg and attached it to
the other end of the miniature valve. Then he dressed in
his underwear again, and slowly, carefully, slipped into
the thin bodysuit, drew it up as far as his neck, and
listened once more.
Satisfied there was no one in the passage but the
single guard, Carter opened the thick strap of the watch
in three places, opened the back of the watch again, and
took out the quartz battery. When he had assembled the
four pieces and the miniature battery, he had an L-
shaped instrument that rested easily in the palm of his
hand. Holding it between thumb and forefinger by the
short arm of the L, he carefully studied the door and
measured up from the floor until he was sure of exactly
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where the lock and knob were.
He aimed the long arm of the L, and a narrow laser
beam bit deeply into the smooth plastic of the door. The
laser cut through the plastic like butter, swiftly and
silently. He had almost cut the large square through
when he became aware of an odor....
The plastic was giving off a gas that had a strong,
pungent odor.
Outside, the guard moved. Steps came slowly toward
the door. Carter could picture the guard's face, his nose
sniffing, his eyes questioning as he came along the
passage looking for the source of the stink. Not alarmed
yet, only puzzled. Not sure just where the odor was
coming from. Bending and sniffing as he moved to the
door. door he'd blink, perhaps see the faint
outline of the laser cut. Bend closer to see what it could
be..
Carter hurled his weight against the door, knowing it
opened outward so a prisoner could not hide behind it.
It burst open leaving the square of plastic with the lock
still firmly attached to the doorframe. The guard was
hurled across the narrow passage to smash against the
wall and bounce off into Carter's deadly karate slash at
his neck.
The neck snapped with a sickening crack of bone, and
the man's dead body dropped limp to the floor.
Carter dragged the body inside the cell and stripped
it, then he put on the black kimono and sandals. The
guard had no keys. Carter closed the door around the
cut-out square, picked up the guard's AK-47, and ran
lightly to the door at the end of the passage. He listened.
People moved beyond the door, hurrying along the
wider corridor as if in the last stages of preparation for
the mission. There was no lessening of the traffic, and
the Killmaster couldn't wait.
He used his tiny laser gun on the visible lock, burning
through the steel-bolt this time, and opened the door.
People passed, but no one even glanced at him as he
stepped out with his Kalishnikov and closed the door.
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They should have known that the guard could not let
himself out, but they didn't think about it, busy with
their own assignments.
He moved quickly along the broad corridor as if on
some vital mission. His eyes searched for what he
needed: the air lock entry from the submersible. They
should be loading the underwater craft, getting ready to
leave, taking .
. and he saw them: fouf men in white
coats escorting a cart loaded with large metal con-
tainers.
Carter followed among the hurrying Fujiwara sol-
diers.
The room they walked into had an extrathick water-
tight door, and they had to lift the cart over the water-
tight lip at the bottom. The small room had a heavy
hatch-door already open on the far side that led to
another open doorway and the inside of the submersible
where Fujiwara himself was supervising preparations.
The powerful little Japanese looked at his watch and
urged his men to move faster in the work of loading the
submersible.
Carter went on past. They would be leaving soon
to wherever they were going.
It took him ten more minutes to find the air locks
where the one-man submarines entered the dome.
Everyone was involved with the imminent trip of the
submersible, and the smaller air lock room was empty.
Carter slipped quickly inside one of the air locks, closed
the inner hatch, and took off his watch one last time.
This time he screwed the entire watch to the tiny valve,
then opened the sea valves to let the air lock flood.
When the chamber was half full, he slipped the last
piece of the thin plastic suit over his headi closed the
steel zipper, and submerged. Almost instantly the cloth
rectangle attached to the tiny valve inflated as pure ox-
ygen poured from the watch when the chemicals embed-
ded inside reacted with the seawater. Carter opened the
valve into the plastic suit as the water filled the
chamber. The pressure equalized as Carter breathed
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slowly, opened the outer hatch, and swam out into the
sea beside the dome.
Protected by his plastic pressure suit, breathing the
oxygen that gave both the pressure and his air, he swam
through the deep water illuminated only by the dark
blue glow of the dome itself until he reached the .sub-
mersible fastened to the dome through its air lock. He
kicked up to the conning tower and grabbed the hand-
holds set into the deck for holding on to when the
submersible was on the surface in rough weather.
He waited.
They would find the dead guard sooner or later, and
they would search the dome from top to bottom looking
for him in a black kimono. They would search the
submersible. They would not find him. No one would
even imagine he had left the dome at this depth. Except,
perhaps, Siobhan, and even she would not imagine he
had a pressure suit for the deep water, so they would go
on looking. When they were sure he was not on the
submersible, they would leave on their mission.
The only problem was how much time he had before
the submersible left for whatever its destination was.
His air would only last a few hours.
Before he even finished the thought he heard the
heavy hatch doors close and felt the sub begin to shiver
as its engines took hold. It moved, starting upward to its
final destination, carrying its terrible cargo.
Carter held tight as they rode upward. He had no
problem now, except, somehow, to stop them from
destroying the world.
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The sea remained dark until a faint silver tinged the
surface above, and the bottom was suddenly shallower.
It was night, a moonlit night, and Nick Carter knew
where the submersible and Fujiwara were going. Back
to Kwajalein. There was no other atoll close to the
underwater city.
When he saw the reef dim ahead, and felt the submer-
Sible begin to rise toward the surface, he released his
hold and let himself drift back until he was clear Of the
propellors. Then he turned and swam over the reef and
into the shallows around the string of tiny islands.
Only when he was almost onshore did he cautiously
surface, unzip the thin suit, and pull back the headpiece.
He looked carefully all around. In the distance in the
moonlight the submersible was on the surface, unmov-
ing, floodlights on and figures filling its decks, rubber
boats being slid over the sides to cross the reef and land
on the beaches of Kwajalein Island.
Carter waded ashore, removed the collapsible air tank
but not the sleek fabric suit, and began to trot toward
the dark streets of Kwajalein village. He was on the edge
of another of the nine-hole golf courses when he saw the
missiles giant in the night. There were six of them--—
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long-range ICBMs on mobile launchers.
Fujiwara was going to launch his deadly mutant to all
corners of the Pacific and Indian oceans in the nose
cones of the missiles!
When?
Carter looked up at the moon. It was already late in
the night. Fujiwara would want to be off the island as
soon as possible to minimize the chance of accidental
discovery by some wandering aircraft that could warn
the superpowers perhaps in time for them to destroy the
missiles in flight.
It meant that Fujiwara would be on full radar alert,
and would probably fire at dawn.
It also meant that he did not have much time.
Hawk was standing on alert with an American carrier
task force somewhere off the Marshalls far out of radar
range. But would there be time for the carrier jets to
reach Kwajalein before Fujiwara could fire? Carter
didn't know, couldn't risk it. He would activate the
signal embedded under his skin when he was sure the
missiles could not be launched the instant Fujiwara
picked up the jets on radar. Until then, there was only
himself and his skill, training, and wits.
He moved on cautiously, crossing the open areas of
the golf •course toward the buildings on the far side,
working his way through the dark, silent, deserted
streets toward the main radar tracking installation and
the missile launching control center.
The island still looked like some peaceful American
village, but a village without people—the way American
towns were going to look after the rockets took their
mutant cargo to the corners of the earth and the deadly
rain began to fall, the way the world would look if Fuji-
wara wasn't stopped.
Silent, empty houses. Deserted yards and lawns.
Abandoned cars, bicycles, children's yard toys.
Where were they? The people?
Had Fujiwara killed them all with the general and his
soldiers? No. Fujiwara was insane, but he wasn't a
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murderer. He would kill for his cause—destroy human-
ity—but he would not kill innocent people. He would
try to recruit them for the dome, or let them go their
way and die later under his deadly rain.
Where were they?
Carter turned and began to trot among the empty
houses toward the high school. There was only one
place Fujiwara's men would imprison captives: the high
school gym or swimming pool. As he neared the high
school he began to see the black kimonos of the in-
vaders.
They were moving around the high school and the dis-
tant radar control center. The ICBMs themselves
towered in the night along the main road on their mobile
launchers.
At the high school, guards held positions at all the
doors and out among the trees, ringing the building.
The outdoor pool was not being guarded. As Carter had
expected, any prisoners were in the high school gym.
The island motor pool was between the high school
and General Scott's headquarters building. Carter
moved in a circle among the trees. He needed cover. At
the corner of an outbuilding a single soldier wearing a
wide Japanese straw hat relieved himself behind some
bushes. Carter's arm locked around his throat cutting
off any sound.
When the man was dead, Carter stripped his body,
hid it in the bushes, dressed again in the black kimono,
pulled the wide hat low over his face, and walked out
and on toward the motor pool with the soldier's M-16 at
the ready. The motor pool was deserted; no one had any
need for vehicles on the island this night.
In the dispatcher's building the keys were all neat on
their rack of hooks. He took the keys to a six-wheeler
and a smaller ammunition carrier, and found a book of
matches in the desk drawer. Outside, the moon was
almost down, dawn not far away.
Moving like a shadow, Carter filled gasoline cans at
the motor pool pump and piled them into the back of
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the six-wheeler. When it was loaded, he slipped through
the night, evading the few soldiers moving on missions
or yawning on guard at the buildings, until he reached
the headquarters building. It was riddled with bullet
holes and grenade damage. There was no guard and it
appeared deserted.
Inside, he listened. There was no sound in the shat-
tered, empty corridors. The bodies had been removed,
but the blood still stained the floors and walls. He found
the armory. The heavy arms had been taken, but the
M-16s were still there with their boxes of loaded clips.
Carter took as many as he could carry and worked his
way back to the motor pool. He loaded the rifles into
the smaller ammo carrier and made two more trips to
the armory. As he returned with his last load, the moon
was down, the heavy darkness pitch-black toward
dawn. But Carter was ready.
He took a bayonet he had picked up in the armory
and sliced a thin layer of skin from his left arm exposing
a plastic disk. He scratched the disk, activating an elec-
tronic signal that would be picked up by AXE receivers
everywhere in the world. Hawk would know the loca-
tion of transmission. The planes from the carrier task
force would be at Kwajalein within two hours, maybe
less.
And the island radar would pick up the carrier jets
within twenty minutes or less.
Carter opened a can of gasoline in the back of the six-
wheeler, spilled it all around the other cans, climbed
into the cab, and drove slowly toward the missile con-
trol center. He saw the shadows of the guards ringed
around the building. This was where Fujiwara and
Siobhan would be. Here the guards would be alert.
He drove slowly until he saw the gleam of an eye
where a tall black figure stood outside the control
center. "Where are you going?" came the gruff chal-
lenge in Japanese.
The truck had been spotted.
"Launcher parts, emergency," Carter growled in
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Japanese, then he stamped hard on the accelerator,
tossed a lighted match into the rear, and jumped.
The truck burst into flames, careened straight toward
the control building, and exploded in a great roar of fire
as it smashed into the wall.
Carter raced back through the night to the motor
pool.
The guards from the high school came running
toward the explosion. Carter urged them on in excited
Japanese.
"Attackers! Everyone to the control center!"
He climbed into the ammunition carrier and drove
straight to the high school. The remaining guards were
all staring toward the flames that burned at the missile
control center. Carter never slowed down. He rammed
the ammunition carrier through the side double doors of
the gymnasium and skidded to a stop among the startled
Americans, the fiesty General Scott himself standing in
front of them.
The Killmaster leaped out.
' 'In the truck! Guns! All loaded!"
He dropped to the floor with his own M-16 and shot
down two black-kimono-clad guards who ran into the
gymnasium. The general wasted no time. With the other
six soldiers in the big room, he jumped into the truck
and started throwing out the rifles.
Carter shot down three more guards.
Two Americans fell, hit by fire from the guards.
The general himself was already prone and firing. The
six soldiers were soon covering other doors and win-
dows. The civilians hesitated.
"Take guns!" the general shouted. "Everyone! They
can't let us escape now. Fight back!"
Two civilians grabbed rifles. Then four more. Then
all of them, men and women. The children were in a far
corner. Six of the men ran to protect them.
Suddenly there were no more guards.
"Outside!" Carter cried.
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They poured through the double doors and spread
out. The general formed them into seven groups, each
led by a soldier, and sent them to take up positions in
the predawn darkness. He knew the base, knew every
good defensive position. On the east a faint line of light
tinged the sky over the Pacific.
"General, I have to get to the missile control. Hold all
the guards you can as long as you can. Help will be com-
ing in an hour!"
"Good luck, Carter!"
"You too, sir," Carter said. He saluted, turned, and
ran off once more.
Still in his black kimono, he went unnoticed in the
melee of confused Fujiwara soldiers. Officers bawled
orders, but none of them seemed to be sure which way
to attack—the gymnasium and the escaped prisoners, or
the control center and the flames.
Carter reached the control center. The fire was blaz-
ing, but most of it was the truck itself and the cans of
gasoline that were still exploding.
A single guard at one door tried to halt Carter, and
died in a burst of his own blood.
Another appeared. Car'ter fired. The M-16 jammed.
The guard shot a searing pain through his left hip. Curs-
ing the Pentagon idiots who had ruined the design of the
weapon, Carter slammed into the man before he could
get Off a second shot and heard the neck bone snap as
his hands twisted.
Carter grabbed the pair of swords from the sash of
the dead guard, ran down the corridor, and burst
through the door into the control room.
Fujiwara Masashige stood alone at the missile firing
keys and whirled when he heard Carter. He stared.
"So? You have a hundred lives, Killmaster. I would
not have believed it. But you are too late. The count-
down cannot be stopped now. "
"It can be stopped," Carter said.
Fujiwara smiled. He wore now a complete suit of
gusoku-style Japanese armor, the Fujiwara crest on the
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helmet. "Only if ydu come past me. It is too late,
Killmaster."
"No," Carter said, and he drew the katana and
wakizashi from his sash.
The door burst open again, and Siobhan ran into the
room. Dressed in the same gusoku-style light armor, she
cried, "Jets coming in on the radar! I knew Carter would
bring trouble somehow!" She saw him and froze
momentarily, then drew her sword. "Damn you, this
time I'll make sure!"
Carter backed against the door and turned the lock.
"Just the three of us, " Carter said.
Fujiwara nodded. "With swords, Killmaster? We in
armor?"
"Piece of cake." Carter grinned. "Old Australian
saying."
Fujiwara's face darkened in anger. Siobhan moved
toward Carter.
"This time it's not your cake."
"Woman!" Fujiwara thundered. The muscular
Japanese drew his swords. "You go too far! This is for
He moved in toward Carter, katana up on his
shoulder, wakizashi held horizontal in front, feet
sliding, knees flexed and loose. Carter waited, both
swords at his sides.
Fujiwara darted in, katana slashing down, wakizashi
slicing up and out.
Carter parried the slash, ducked away from the cut,
and lunged with his wakizashi.
Fujiwara whirled away, came back with a lightning
cut of the long sword, and parried Carter's riposte with
the short one. Carter caught the cut and stabbed in with
the short sword. Both swept past each other, faced,
swords up, breathing hard.
Fujiwara leaped in again.
Carter evaded, parried.
Fujiwara pressed in and in.
The fight went on, circling, lunging, as Siobhan
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watched with her long sword out, waiting.
She watched, waited.
The sun was up now outside and the countdown for
the launch was almost ended. The two men were almost
perfectly matched, Fujiwara with the edge of the armor.
Siobhan smiled; Carter was not going to defeat Fuji-
wara. The missiles would be launched and the Fujiwara
forces gone before the jets on the radar could reach the
island.
"Too late, Nick," she said softly. "We'll do it, and
we'll get away."
Carter had circled with his back to the launching con-
trols, then suddenly he jumped away from Fujiwara and
raised his katana to smash it down into the keys and
dials of the launch controls. Fujiwara leaped in, a reflex
move to block Carter's slash at the instrument board.
"Masashige!" Siobhan cried. "No!"
She was too late. Fujiwara, momentarily diverted
from Carter himself to the imagined threat to his launch
controls, exposed his body and Carter slashed, almost
cutting him in half through the leather armor with the
razor-sharp katana.
' 'So?" Fujiwara whispered, slowly sinking to the
floor as his blood and intestines poured out. "A trick,
Killmaster. Only a trick."
"A trick," Carter said. "l couldn't beat you, and I
had to beat you."
Fujiwara nodded. ... understand. Your ...
job. I
. had ....
greater ... dreams greater "
And Fujiwara was dead.
Carter faced Siobhan.
She looked down at Fujiwara, then at Carter. "It
might even have worked, Nick. "
"We'll find an easier way."
She nodded, smiled. "Well, I'll make a deal."
"Who knows, I might even be as good a swordsman
as you, still save the day for the bad guys. But I really
only wanted Masashige. I'll stop the countdown, and
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tell you where to find the antidote and neutralizer for
the weed. You forget about me." She laughed. "They'll
never believe you anyway, and you can't prove it now. "
Carter watched her. She went on smiling.
' 'No deal, " he said.
He turned to the console and studied it for a second,
then threw six switches and pulled six levers. The dials
slowly sank to zero, and the flashing lights of the launch
sequence went out. He turned back to Siobhan O'Neill.
"No deal."
She shrugged. "There's still the antidote for the
poison and the killer of the seaweed. I'll go quietly,
Nick. The politicians will make the deal. "
"Let them, " Carter said.
He bent, picked up the still bleeding body of Fujiwara
Masashige, and carried it out into the corridor and on
into the slowly brightening morning sunlight over the
vast Pacific. Some of the black-robed soldiers ran up,
their guns ready, swords out, and stopped. Carter
placed the dead man against the wall of the building, sit-
ting up.
"He's dead," he said in Japanese. "U.S. Navy jets
will be here in twenty minutes, maybe less. You can't get
away now, and there's nothing more to fight for. "
The soldiers stood there looking at their dead leader.
Them they dropped their weapons to the ground, turned,
and walked away. They would spread the word. It was
over. Carter sat down in the morning light beside the
body of Fujiwara Masashige.
David Hawk stood on the deck of the carrier and
looked back toward the high clouds over the Kwajalein
atoll.
"They'll all stand trial in Japan, but I don't gxpect
they'll get much. Loyal to Fujiwara and his crazy ideas,
that's all. "
"That's enough," Carter said. ' 'Crazy ideas can
kill. "
"And did," Hawk said. "But thanks to you, Nick,
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NICK CARTER
there's no permanent or long-term damage. Scott will
have that base back to normal in a month, and he loved
every second Of the fighting."
Hawk scowled, and chewed his cheap cigar. "l said
no deal—Canberra should charge her as Fujiwara's
partner. We'll come up with the antidote and the weed
neutralizer sooner or later. I hope they throw the god-
damned book at her!"
"Will they?"
' 'Of course not. They'll deal, and they'll get what she
knows. She'll lie, retire from the service, and probably
live on a pension from ten governments."
"Yeah," Carter said. "What about Sam and his
Kwajaleinis? They want their island back."
' "Talk to Congress, Nick. When you get back from
your next job, that is. "
Carter walked away. He wanted some cold sea wind
on his face. Maybe Fujiwara Masashige hadn't been so
very crazy after all. Maybe not crazy at all.
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