He dropped to one knee and rolled his gaze up. Through the night goggles, he saw a machine pistol come up from one man's side as a second bolted down the stairs.
"Roll!" Carter barked.
Hadley and Chris dived. Carter got off two quick shots. Both were hits, but not quick enough.
The machine pistol in the man's hands began chattering, sending a spray of slugs across the floor and up the wall to shatter the huge window.
"Shit." Carter hissed. "You guys okay?"
"Chris caught one in the thigh."
"Take care of him. I'll go after the other one!"
Carter raced toward the rear of the house, hoping Carlotta was as good as be thought she was.
When the emergency generator went out, Ali Kashmir's ardor cooled with it.
"Something is wrong."
"Forget it," Carlotta said, tugging him back to her with her left hand on his neck. "You said it is only a power failure."
"No, the emergency…"
"Come to me, Ali," she cooed. "I am ready."
He started to settle back between her thighs, but she could tell from the tenseness in his body and the wariness in his eyes that any sound or movement around him would send him into flight.
He opened his lips to speak, but Carlotta silenced him by crushing her lips over his mouth. At the same time, she arched her hips, rubbing herself against him.
By the time he had pulled his lips from hers and lifted his head, the stiletto was out of sight behind his shoulder.
"I'd better go check. Someone should be…"
The night erupted. There was a loud stutter of gunfire, and suddenly one of the huge cathedral windows shattered outward, sending fragments of glass over the stone patio.
"Ali… Ali, we are overcome!"
Above her head, Carlotta saw a figure dash from the house. There was a spurt of flame from the hill to her right, and the man staggered.
"Damn!" Kashmir cried as the man pitched forward and slid nearly to the pool's edge.
Ali's eyes rolled down to meet Carlotta's, and in that instant he knew.
He was reaching for her throat when Carlotta wound her legs tightly around his back and snapped her feet together. She still clutched his neck and her left hand and, with her finger, counted the bumps of his upper vertebrae.
He managed to curl his fingers up from the back of her neck and close them over her throat.
"Bitch!" he gasped as their struggles rolled them underwater.
Carlotta could feel his fingers tightening. She found the part of his spine she wanted and placed the needlelike point of the stiletto an eighth of an inch into the flesh.
At the sharp prick of pain, his fingers instantly left her throat and reached to stop the thrust.
He was too late.
She placed both hands on the hilt of the stiletto and, with all the power in her arms, pushed the blade down, toward her own breast sliding beneath him.
It was a sure hit. The spine severed neatly, and his body went limp against her.
By the time Carter reached the edge of the pool, she was standing waist-deep in the water, her small breasts heaving.
Beside her, Ali Kashmir floated facedown, a trickle of blood seeping from around the hilt of the stiletto protruding from his neck.
"You all right?"
She rolled her head up to face him. Her eyes were clear and her lower lip quivered only slightly.
"Yes. It couldn't be helped."
Carter grasped Kashmir's body by the hair and pulled it toward the side. The stiletto was his own, the second of Nick Carter's deadly friends, nicknamed Hugo.
He pulled the blade out, swished it in the water to remove the red residue, and slipped it into his belt.
Then he picked up Carlotta's black silk wrap from the cement with his right hand and held out his left to the woman.
"He's no great loss. C'mon."
"Al?"
"Yeah," Garrett answered from a motel room approximately five miles from where Carter stood in Ali Kashmir's upstairs office.
"We're secure. Bring it on in!"
"Twenty minutes."
The phone went dead. Carter looked up as Marko entered the room.
"All secure. We'll have the garbage boys take away the stiffs. The others are padded down in the wine cellar."
"How's Chris?"
"He'll be all right. A lot of blood, but nothing severely severed."
"Good."
Marko moved around the desk. "A couple of them were only too happy to talk." He twisted the wall molding, and the panel in the wall slid open.
Carter glanced in quickly and smiled. "Al Garrett will have a ball."
"I'll set up the perimeter guards."
Carter nodded and exited the room with him. Marko went down the stairs, Carter down the hall. He stopped at the second door he came to and knocked.
"Come in."
She was seated at a vanity, a large, European-style bath towel wound around her body. Her eyes caught his in the mirror, but the hand wielding a brush through her long, glossy black tresses didn't stop.
"You still okay?"
"Of course. It's not the first time."
"I didn't think it was."
He stopped the hand and brought it to his lips. Gently, he kissed it.
"You're good."
"Thank you."
"But this is only the beginning."
"I know. Don't worry about me."
"Did you make the call to Rome?"
Carlotta nodded. "I informed Palmori that Kashmir himself would be accompanying me to Amsterdam and would help in the final delivery of the goods in Italy."
"Any static?"
"None. Palmori considers Kashmir a friend of our cause."
"And you're sure none of them will recognize me when the time comes?"
"No one. I am the only one in the Liberta who has had personal contact with Kashmir.
"Good." He checked his watch. It would be dawn in less than an hour. "You'd better get some sleep. We'll drive to Manhattan at around five in the limo. Our plane leaves Kennedy tonight at ten-fifteen."
She nodded and went back to brushing her hair. Her voice stopped Carter just as he reached the door.
"Are you sure your people can keep this place secure for as long as the operation will take?"
"I'm sure," Carter replied. "And Al Garrett will know enough about Ali Kashmir's business within a week to run the whole thing right from that computer in the office."
"What about friends… business or personal?"
"Kashmir is on a long business trip…" Carter paused, smiling. "Which is partially true."
"And when it breaks in the papers that Ali Kashmir has been imprisoned in Italy for gunrunning and terrorist activities…?"
Again Carter smiled. "We have people specially trained to mount and maintain a cover, no matter what may occur. Satisfied?"
"Satisfied, Nick…"
"Yes?"
"For what it's worth, I think I'm going to enjoy the rest of the time with you."
"That goes both ways."
He closed the door gently behind him, but not before he got a quick glimpse of Carlotta Polti standing, dropping the towel, and moving toward the bed.
She looked a lot more beautiful in the bedroom than she had in the pool with a dead body floating beside her.
Downstairs, he eyeballed the bottles behind the bar and found the most expensive scotch there. He poured three fingers into a glass and downed it. He doctored four fingers of a second one with ice and was just starting on it when Al Garrett and his entourage of technicians walked through the front door.
"Anybody left alive?"
"A few," Carter replied. "They're in the wine cellar. Marko says a couple of them are very talkative, should you need to know something."
Garrett nodded and turned to the waiting men behind him. "Okay, you guys, spread out and find rooms. As soon as you stow your gear, come on back down here. We'll get started right away. We've got a big company to run."