A huge, smoking hole was visible where Señor Valdez had stood and looked at his hand.
There was no sign of Señor Valdez.
A wave of wailing, high-pitched human sound came from the airport building and the observation deck.
Nick staggered to his feet, dazed and bleeding, his ears full of the scream of a siren and the animal cries of people in misery and fear, his senses chilled with the immediacy of sudden, hideous death.
Behind him, he could hear a woman crying bitterly, in short, frantic gasps of terror.
It sounded like Rita Jameson.
He turned swiftly and saw her at the top of the airstair, clutching the slightly buckled rail and sobbing. A swift glance around the field convinced him that there was nothing he could do for anyone. An ambulance screamed on to the concrete beyond the pit and its siren moaned to a stop. Nick ran toward the plane and sprang up the steps. Pilot and engineer brushed past him to gasp at the nightmare scene on the field.
Nick took Rita by the shoulders.
"Stop that, now. Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm all right, I'm all right, but oh God, how horrible!" She choked out the words. "The people. All the people!"
"Did you see anything out of the way before this happened?" Nick shook her gently.
She brushed the hair out of her eyes and drew her hand across her tear-stained face. It was an oddly endearing, childlike gesture.
"No, but... Señor Valdez. I thought — I thought he blew up!" She raised her hand in unconscious imitation of Valdez' final action.
"That's what I thought," said Nick. "Look, take hold of yourself. We're going to be questioned, all of us. No need to tell anyone you've talked to me — about anything. Call you tonight."
But a figure on the observation deck had seen them talking, had seen Rita's gesture with her hand, had seen them look, immediately afterwards, at the frightful hole where Valdez had once stood.
A calculating mind asked itself, "Why take a chance?" and answered its own question.
Mr. Hawk
The airfield was a madhouse for the next two hours.
A barrage of officials, police, fire trucks, ambulances and clamoring personnel crowded the strip of runway where the strange man with the even stranger hand had vanished in a puff of terrible smoke. Nick Carter, as a passenger returning from business in Jamaica, could do nothing but look properly horrified and render a baffled eyewitness account. This was no time to be the private eye he usually called himself or even the top secret agent for AXE, which he now was. This time he was strictly on the sidelines, truly as shaken as any passenger. There were no conclusions to be drawn until he had consulted with Mr. Hawk.
But the special agent who lived inside his brain was as deeply disturbed as Nick Carter, the man. The explosion-killing was one of the most inexplicable, as well as one of the most horrifying, things he had ever encountered. He thought of the mangled forms strewing the pitted strip. What maniac could have planned this frightful thing?
As soon as he could, he drifted quietly away from the maelstrom of questions and sobs. In the spacious Coffee Shop, Nick found an unoccupied phone booth and dialed Hawk's unlisted number. His mind quickly turned to the code jargon of Axe.
"Yes?" Mr. Hawk's voice was as crackling as ever, belying his sixty-odd years.
"Your pigeon's home to roost," said Carter.
"Oh, good trip?"
"Until now. Somebody's just chopped down a cherry tree. More than that — an orchard."
"That so? Hatchet?"
"No. An axe."
There was a pause. Then the old man's voice said carefully, "Something you can talk about at home?"
"Could be — but I think I need a change of scene."
"I see. I hear they have some interesting exhibits at the Museum of National History. I especially like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. At four o'clock."
"So do I," said Nick, and hung up.
It was a simple code system, but it worked.
Tyrannosaurus Rex stood poised like a monster from some Grade B horror movie. The eyeless skull and raised forepaws of the king of prehistoric reptiles, four stories high when standing erect, filled Nick Carter's view as the hands on his radium-dial wrist watch indicated four o'clock.
The large, eerily-lit room was deserted, save for Carter and a tall, lanky figure peering thoughtfully up into the rib cage of the exhibit.
Hawk always gave Nick the image of a frontiersman made to dress to the nines in a dark cutaway coat and striped morning trousers and itching to get back into his working clothes. Seven long years of association had not dimmed the sensation. There he was, America's top secret service man looking like Uncle Sam himself, except for beard and stripes.
The dreaded enemy of traitors, saboteurs and the spies of every continent was craning his neck upward with absorbed interest, looking for all the world like a spry old-timer with nothing on his mind but the wonders of nature.
Nick strolled slowly around the gigantic skeleton. He stopped, as if by chance, beside Hawk and scrutinized the bone structure.
"Ha, young man." Hawk pointed a leathery finger upward. "What do you know about the intercosta clavicle?"
"Not very much, sir, I'm afraid," apologized Nick.
"Something to do with bones, I believe. But I'm more interested in other kinds of bodies. And in jet planes that unload passengers who suddenly blow up."
"Yes," Hawk murmured. "Odd about that." He looked sharply at Nick. "You look peaky. Should be used to this sort of thing. Can't let it get you. Something special about this one?"
Nick shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like his facial expressions to be readable.
"Maybe. Very messy. And the kids — well, nothing to be done about them now. But there was something odd. A fellow with a steel hand — that ticked. Just once."
Hawk's eyes brightened. Years fell away from him.
"Let's have it."
Nick told him, his account crisp and graphic. He mentioned Rita only briefly, but not so briefly that Hawk's alert eyes failed to register the mention.
"Think there's a connection?"
"Seems possible. I'll find out."
"Hmmm. You do that"
A woman with a teenager in tow wandered into the room. Hawk indicated something in his program. Nick moved closer to him and peered over his shoulder.
"Curious coincidence," said Hawk.
"About the girl?"
"No. About the explosion. By the way, how was Jamaica?"
"Fun," said Nick.
"Fun?" Hawk raised his eyebrows.
"I mean successful," said Nick hurriedly. "Mission completed. Little fun on the side, naturally."
"Naturally," agreed Hawk drily.
"But I'm ready for work again."
"Good. You seem to have started already. Coincidence about the bombings, as I was saying. And about you being involved in one of them."
"One of them?" Nick eyed the woman and the teenager idly. "There haven't been any others quite like this."
"No, not quite, but close enough to convince me that they're connected in some way. It's your new assignment, Carter. Operation Jet. AXE is being sharpened now. Three planes have blown up in the last few months. One over the Pacific, one over the Atlantic, and — last month — one over North Africa. The insurance people are trying to pin them on money-crazy relatives eager to dispose of kin in order to cash in on accident policies. And in one case there's a suspicion of pilot error. All of which we'd go along with — except for the three jokers in the deck."