On the way up from Acapulco Nick had been doing some thinking. Now he asked, “Does this mission have anything to do with that wave of phony five-dollar bills?”
Hawk nodded. “Right the first time. I’m surprised that you know about that. You mean you tore yourself away from your fleshpots long enough to read a newspaper?”
Nick shook his head and smiled. “Nope. Radio. I was in bed at the time.”
“I’ll bet.”
“They don’t seem to be passing them in Mexico,” Nick said.
Hawk nodded. “That makes sense. If we’ve got this thing doped right, the bad stuff is coming from Mexico. They wouldn’t want to foul their own nest. But there is a lot more to this than just the counterfeit bills. A hell of a lot more. Most of it I don’t know myself yet. That’s why we’re going to meet Mr. Big. He dropped all his other chores and flew out here to talk to you personally. That, son, will give you some slight idea of just how important this mission is!” Nick whistled softly. Not a man to be easily impressed, he was impressed now. It looked as if he would be returning to Mexico muy pronto. This time he doubted if there would be any Angies...
Half an hour later Nick and Hawk had been locked into a snug, map-lined room in a sub-basement of the Naval Air Station. Outside a red light was burning over the door. Nick had been introduced, had shaken hands, and had undergone a searching scrutiny by a pair of coldly intelligent eyes. The head of the CIA was a big man, husky, with a nose that might have been flattened in a fight or football, a pugnacious jaw, and a mop of flaming red hair.
Nick sat quietly and waited. Smoking was permitted and he lit a gold tip and amused himself by watching Hawk try to restrain his natural militancy and pride in AXE. Hawk was a fire eater and saw red at any hint of condescension. Try to patronize Hawk and you were in trouble. The trouble here, Nick thought, was that although the men held equal rank — CIA was senior. And Hawk knew it.
Hawk and Nick remained seated while the CIA chief paced briefly, a pointer in his hand. He hesitated a moment before a map, then came to stand before Nick. “Do you carry a cyanide pill, Carter? Or any device that will give you a quick and easy death?”
Nick met the cold eyes steadily. “No, sir. I never have.”
“You will on this mission. You’re going to hear things in this room that are beyond top secret. The fact is that we don’t have an adequate label for these things — call them top secret and you still don’t quite get it. Do I make myself clear?”
Hawk, a little gruffly, said: “Carter’s clearance is the same as mine, Rad. You know what that is.” It was as high as they came. Hawk, along with the CIA man and a few others, was on a level with the President in security matters.
The CIA chief nodded. “I know, David. But he will carry a cyanide pill, or an equivalent. He will use it if he is taken and made subject to torture. I’m senior, and I’m in command of this mission by direct orders of the President. Cyanide is an order!”
Hawk looked at Nick, who thought he detected a slight flutter of wink as his boss said, “You will carry cyanide, Nick.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” said the CIA man. “Let’s get on with it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I think the best way is for you two to listen while I run through the whole thing. Save your questions until afterward. You can take notes if you like, Carter, but burn them before you leave this room.”
Nick smiled. “No need for that, sir. I remember very well.”
“All right. Here we go. For convenience, and to help you remember, I’m going to divide this briefing into two main parts — the facts, what we actually know; and the educated guesses we’re making, the hypotheses. As you must know, in any operation such as this we have to go by guess and by God and hope we’re right.”
The big redheaded man went to the desk and picked up something. He handed it to Nick. The AXE agent examined it carefully. It was a golden bracelet in the form of a serpent with its tail in its mouth. Nick ran his fingers over the thing and detected minute flutings, or ridges, just in back of the flat head.
The CIA man was watching him. “You feel them, eh? They’re hard to see. The workmanship is poor, but those little ridges are supposed to be feathers.”
Nick took a small magnifying glass from his pocket and examined the bracelet again. He could see now that it was only gold plate, and slovenly made. He put the glass away and handed the bracelet back to the CIA man. He had known the symbol instantly.
“That’s the Feathered Serpent,” he said. “The symbol of the old Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl.”
The CIA man seemed pleased. A grim smile hovered on his hard face for a moment. He tossed the bracelet back on the desk. “Right. It is also the symbol, or insignia, of a new political party in Mexico. They use the bracelets as we use campaign buttons. They call themselves the Radical-Democrats, or the Serpent Party, and just to give you an idea of the party line — they’re yelling for the return of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to Mexico!”
Even Hawk was jolted out of his usual composure. “What? That’s incredible! They must be a bunch of nuts.”
The CIA man shrugged. “Not so nuts, maybe. Of course the leaders don’t believe that nonsense themselves — but it sounds good to the peasants in the poor districts. That doesn’t concern us now — what does concern us is that our experts think the bracelets are made in China. And I don’t mean Taiwan!”
Hawk was thinking: so it is the Dragon after all.
The CIA boss picked up the bracelet again and spun it on his finger. “This was taken from a dead man. He crashed his plane in Texas and a Ranger saw the crash and found the wreckage. He found something else, too. Two suitcases loaded with counterfeit five-dollar bills. We were notified immediately and got right to work. I think our men have done a tremendous job. We sealed off the area and went over that plane with a glass, you might say. I think we’ve milked it for all it’s worth.”
He went to a map and with a red crayon drew a small circle in Texas near the Mexican border. “The plane crashed here, in Big Bend Park. Luckily for us it didn’t burn. From the amount of gas left in the tanks we were able to plot a back trail for the plane. Within a certain radius, of course. That helped a little, but it was only a start. From the dried mud, and some twigs and leaves on the undercarriage, our men managed to narrow it down a bit more. Most important was the mud — it came from gold-bearing earth. We found very faint traces of gold ore.”
“There’s a lot of gold in Mexico,” Hawk said. “And it’s a hell of a big country.”
The CIA man’s smile was cold. “Exactly, David. A hell of a big country. But we got a little lucky. By reverse projection we could establish a possible takeoff point for the plane that crashed — always within a certain radius, naturally. But we were looking for gold country, and for country where the vegetation matched what was found caught in the undercarriage, all within the imaginary line based on the gas consumption of the plane. We think we’ve found it.” The CIA man drew another red circle, larger this time, on the map. Nick went close to study it.
The demarcated area was on the west coast of Mexico, roughly parallel with the mouth of the Bay of California. The red arc ran inland through Mazatlan as far as Durango, then curved north into the Sierra Madre range. The line came back to the Bay at Los Mochis, on the alternate Pan American Highway.
Nick Carter stared at the CIA man. “That is a hell of a lot of territory — for one man.” He knew, of course, that he was going to have to do this alone.