From there, they would drop down to within fifty feet of the water and head across to Great Inagua Island, staying well north of Matthew Town.
That was the halfway point; if they had not been detected by then, if there were no stray U.S. naval vessels around, they would continue. Ganin could almost smell the start of the hunt. Carter would never know what hit him.
“I want you to be close enough to see his face, Arkadi Konstantinovich,” Kobelev had instructed him. “I want you to be able to tell me exactly what it was you saw in his eyes.”
Three
Something had awakened Carter. He raised his left arm so that he could see his watch. It was just about two o’clock. The moon had set earlier; now only the light from the stars provided any illumination through the open windows. A light breeze ruffled the curtains, and he could just make out the gentle lapping of the waves on the beach below the house.
“What is it?” Sigourney asked from beside him.
“Did I wake you?”
“No,” she said. “I thought I heard something. But I’m just jumpy.”
Carter sat up, his hand reaching for Wilhelmina on the night table. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing...” she started, but then she sat up. “Hear it?” she asked softly.
He had indeed. And he thought he knew what it was. Carter jumped out of the bed, fingered the Luger’s safety to the off position, and stepped over to the window. He kept well within the shadows so that he provided less of a target from outside.
His eyes scanned the area along the beach, and a few yards offshore, but he couldn’t make out a thing. The noise he thought he heard had sounded very much like a pair of oars dipping into the water.
He stood there by the window for a full five minutes, but there were no further sounds, nor was anything moving below. Yet Hawk’s telephone warning was there. It nagged at him. Some visceral feeling deep in his gut was warning him.
“Anything?” Sigourney asked softly from the bed. The sheet covering her had fallen away, exposing her lovely breasts. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders.
“Get dressed,” Carter whispered. He went around to the bureau along the far wall, got a pair of shorts, and pulled them on as Sigourney was pulling on her shorts and top. He stuffed his sheathed stiletto into the waistband of his shorts, transferred Wilhelmina to his left hand, and picked up Pierre, the deadly gas bomb, with his right. The dull metal casing gleamed in the soft light.
He turned as Sigourney was finishing, then went to her. “Here,” he said, handing her the device.
She looked into his eyes, then took the gas bomb.
“I want you to stay here, in this room, no matter what happens,” he said.
She nodded.
“We may be having some company,” he said. He glanced toward the window. “I’m going out.”
Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “Ganin?” she asked.
“Possibly,” Carter said. “Now, listen to me, Sigourney.” He quickly explained exactly what Pierre was and how it worked. “If anyone comes in, twist the case, toss it, and hold your breath. This new gas is active for less than thirty seconds. But during that time it’s extremely deadly.”
Sigourney swallowed hard, but she nodded her understanding. “Be careful, Nick,” she said, and hugged him fiercely.
He kissed her. “Be right back,” he said. He turned and slipped out of the bedroom, across the darkened living room, and out the back way.
If Ganin was involved with the new KGB assassination department, one of his first targets might likely be Carter. Hawk was worried about it, otherwise he would not have called him. With Ganin less than two hundred miles away in Cuba, the call was justified. On the other hand, Carter thought, it was possible they were overreacting. There was no real reason at this particular moment to think Ganin would be after him. Still, the coincidental arrival of the KGB’s master assassin so close was something to think about.
Keeping low, and well in the shadows, Carter crossed behind the house, off the path, and into the thick brush and palmettos that led down to the staff quarters a couple of hundred yards away.
He stopped every few yards to scan the beach and listen for sounds. But there was nothing. One part of him was beginning to feel a bit foolish sneaking around out there, with Sigourney back at the house worried. Yet another, more instinctual, part of him was totally alert, his every sense open for the reception of the smallest sound or movement.
The broad path from the main house swung left, merging with the open area around the four small cottages occupied by the resort island’s staff. No lights shone from any of the cottages, nor had Carter expected to see any. The staff would all be asleep at this hour.
He had emerged from the brush and was starting across behind the cottages, when a tremendous explosion from the other side of the tiny island shattered the night’s silence and lit up the sky.
Carter spun around and looked back the way he had come. For a split second he debated returning for Sigourney, but she was capable, and she had the gas bomb. Instead, he raced toward the path that led up the hill, on the other side of which was the generator shed where he expected the explosion had been set.
Automatic weapons fire sounded from the west, by the boat dock, and as Carter raced toward the crest of the hill he began to feel the first nagging doubts that he may have been set up. The explosion could very well have been a diversion. But for what? To trap him?
Some inner voice reached his consciousness just as he crested the hill, and he rolled left, diving behind a half-dozen palm trees at the same moment as the dry rattle of automatic weapons fire raked the broad path.
He scrambled around the thick bole of one of the trees and stood up as more automatic fire came from below. This time he was able to pinpoint the direction, and in the dim light he could just make out a rubber raft tied up at the dock and two figures racing away from the furiously burning remnants of the generator shed just below him.
Steadying his gun hand against the tree, he squeezed off three shots in rapid succession, the first knocking down the lead figure, the second missing but the third finding its mark, downing the second black-suited attacker.
For several long seconds, Carter remained where he was, in the protection of the hilltop copse, watching for any further movement from below.
Satisfied that the two he had downed would remain down, he raced up over the path and down the hill around the west side of the generator shed.
Reaching the bodies, he scanned the beach area, the dock, and the crest of the hill behind him for any others. A voice at the back of his head was nagging that this had all been too easy. It was some kind of a setup.
He turned the first man over and pulled back the black hood covering his face. A large hole was blown in his chest from Carter’s shot. In the light from the burning generator shed, Carter could see that the dead man was a Latino. Quite possibly a Cuban. The same was true of the second man.
Carter stood up. If they were Cubans, and if Ganin had indeed been spotted in Cuba, he could very well be on the island or had at least mounted this operation.
But there was something else. He could feel it thick in the air.
He raced down to the boat dock to see where the black rubber raft was tied. The resort’s boat used for diving, formerly moored on the other side of the dock, was settling slowly to the bottom. They had been at it. Carter pulled out Hugo and punctured the rubber raft’s four air chambers, which deflated with explosive bangs, then he cut the raft’s fabric into irreparable shreds.