The Human Time Bomb (KM 046), page 1
part #46 of Killmaster Series
The Human Time Bomb (1969)
(The 46th book in the Killmaster series)
Version 0.9
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
CHAPTER I
N82 knew he had made a mistake when a door in the big building closed with a soft thud and the night insects stopped their chirping. Then the frogs in the landscaped pool, far to his left in the industrial park, went silent. There was somebody moving in the darkness over there.
It had been easy to get this far last night, under a low spot in the chain link fence where fill had washed out. N82 decided he shouldn’t have used the same route twice. He watched an oval cloud mask the half moon and crawled backward, intending to retreat the way he had come. He didn’t dare pick a new course in the dark.
He wasn’t afraid of the Dobermans. The essence of bitch-in-heat in a small atomizer was a reliable defense. Anyway, the four big, handsome dogs had been in their kennel runs at the gatehouse near the highway. For him to see, and think, they’re not on patrol now, come right in. His scalp prickled. The trap had been beautifully planned.
He was in. In deep. He crawled faster. Steps closed in on him from several directions. So! He stood up, drew his .38 Chief’s Airweight Special.
N82’s name was Hubert P. Dumont, a powerful young man with a zest for adventure, soaring planes and plumpish girls. In the personnel files at AXE the one negative comment was “overconfidence.” Perhaps it came with the bright red hair, quick grin and mighty muscles.
He had completed AXE’s intensive two-year training program and some “test” assignments. Now he crawled through blackness in a Colorado valley because he had begged for this job. He had gotten it because David Hawk was short of men, Nick Carter was in Europe, and anyway it was supposed to be just an investigation. Look. Record. Report.
But to look you wanted to get close to the heart of the matter, didn’t you? Hubie got close—to the central building in the Reed-Farben Ltd. complex.
Now he changed direction and crawled to his right because the steps tramping in from the left, crunching the crisp grass, were louder. Strange footsteps, like elephants taught to tiptoe. They changed direction with him. The ones behind him were closing in at a faster pace.
The oval cloud sailed on and exposed the moon’s faint light He stood erect, saw a giant form. He was intercepted, gripped, held by hands as powerful as his own or stronger.
He gagged at the man’s smell—a blend of operating room chemicals and slaughterhouse meat.
“Let go or I’ll shoot,” Hubie said clearly. He followed the rules. Three warnings. “Let go. Let go—”
A hand groped for his gun. The one that had pinioned his left biceps whipped around his neck. Crushed against a broad chest, Hubie fired. He shot while cramped, but with care. The three-inch barrel blasted the first slug up under the man’s rib cage, the bvoom slightly muffled between them as they struggled.
Hubie’s attacker shuddered, but the deadlock arm tightened. Hubie shot four more times, the .38 Special cartridges jolting the small round butt against his palm. He felt the harsh prick of a needle in his back and knew that the man behind him had arrived. He tried to push away the one in front of him, thinking, five .38s—this guy is made of iron!
Hubie got a palm under the headlock and levered upward, not knowing that the move was slow and without power. His head buzzed, he felt a short, almost drunken glow, and he fell. The man he had shot went down with him. Hubie lay inert, locked in the grip of a dead man.
*
When N82 failed to report, two days after his disaster in the darkness, a yellow tag appeared on a giant map at AXE HQ. After the warning slip had been in place eight hours, Bernard Santos was notified in Control. He made cautious calls to Denver. Because the yellow tag was there the next morning, he notified David Hawk, in accordance with procedure.
AXE has a tight, direct chain of command. As the respected head, David Hawk can obtain appropriations from Congress as easily as the seventeen other major intelligence-security units. But perhaps it is part of the secret of AXE’s efficiency that it operates on a budget only a fraction of that of the other agencies.
You can get involved in just spending money and keeping it coming. Administration smothers action. On the other hand, AXE has a limited number of men in reserve. There’s no featherbedding.
It’s interesting to note that while FBI men are “agents” and many people refer to the “CIA boys,” AXEmen are often referred to by insiders as “representatives.” Senators in the know and many in Executive and in Justice use the term.
AXEmen—and David Hawk—appreciate this, although oddly they refer to themselves as AXEmen and by their code letters and numbers.
Hubie Dumont entered the N category because of his intelligence and athletic qualifications. If he had lived and proved his ability and judgment he might have become a Killmaster. These few AXEmen are representatives of the United States with the right of unquestioned action in emergencies. An able but free-styling columnist who once discovered some details of an AXE case labeled them Killmasters. AXEmen don’t care for the name but it stuck.
Hubie Dumont might have made it (only one out of fifteen does, on the final exams and tests, and remember, they’re already seasoned AXEmen)—but when David Hawk received the “failed to report” slip he gave no thought to that. From his downtown Washington office near DuPont Circle he talked with Santos on the private, scrambled circuit.
“Bernie, about N82—any other news from out there?”
“None, sir. Teletypes are clean. State BCI there has nothing. Sheriff’s office also blank. There’s a town force that doesn’t get that way very often. Just a three-man force. I haven’t called them because there might be complications. They have a C-4 rate. Shall I try ’em?”
Hawk’s seamed features were very grave. “No. What position on N3?”
“Paris. Return tomorrow.”
“Please route him to me. Quickest.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hawk hung up and lifted a file from the lower drawer of his desk. It was marked REED-FARBEN LTD. He scanned the few sheets in it.
You could consider Reed-Farben just another quick-growth firm in the booming pharmaceutical field, or you could consider it damn mysterious. It could depend on your experience—and intuition. They were well financed, but some of it was foreign money. Their principals were never seen, but neither are many top executives. They employed German and Japanese and French scientists, but so do many companies. They built their own airstrip and turned down federal financing aid. They profitably produced industrial chemicals and medicines but they employed top biologists and one doctor who was an authority on heart and kidney transplants. Oddly enough, he hadn’t given an interview since he went to work for Reed-Farben.
The muscles at the comers of Hawk’s mouth tightened. Young N82 had been sent to have a look. When an AXEman failed to report—especially a determined young man like Hubie Dumont—you could be sure your original intuition had been reliable. Hawk closed the folder slowly and put it in his upper right drawer—the one he called his “urgent.”
*
Martha Wagner missed Hubie. She was the only person in the world, outside of AXE, to notice the bare spot he left in society. She missed his company for the midnight snack. She looked for him in vain at morning coffee time and for lunch.
Martha was a young woman with purposeful go, plumpish where it looked good. She was pretty, with more than just nice looks.
She was the Martha of the neon sign near the road that announced MARTHA’S DINER, HOME COOKING, COCKTAILS. Six years ago her father’s lungs had quit, too early, plugged with mine dust, but he left a $6000 policy plus bits from the company, and the union.
When it happened, Martha had been working for nearly two years in Perlinson’s Restaurant in Colorado Springs. She dodged hands, made good money and tried to keep her brother Pete sober enough to stay with his latest reporter’s job on the Rocky Mountain News. On their rare holidays they came up to Copperpot Valley to ski, and Martha took a long look at Lucky Ed’s Diner. Lucky was seventy, and the diner was filthy but still did a nice gross. It was the only game in town.
She bought it, kept Bob Half-Crow, one of Perlinson’s best cooks, and a few months later you had to wait for a seat in Martha’s Diner during the tourist rush.
Peter Wagner, good reporter or not, mixed gin with journalism in too strong a blend and became his sister’s assistant manager. It was an interesting situation, because Bob Half-Crow hated booze—“It ruined my race.” When not cooking —and now he had four helpers—he made a marvelous head bartender—friendly, precise as a mixer and entertaining. He once confided to Martha, “I love to serve white men alcohol. I tell ’em, ‘I think you had enough,’ but they never listen.”
He made a fine watchdog for Pete. They were close friends except on the periodic occasions when Pete took one, then two, and the rest could not be counted. Bob once went all the way to Boise to bring him home.
Some years ago Martha had had Ed’s wooden structure bulldozed into splinters and built a new diner-restaurant-lounge, all stainless steel and Formica inside, varnished native wood on the exterior. During the tourist and ski seasons you still often waited for a table.
Martha missed Hubie Dumont because he came across to her the way she did to many people. He was alert, friendly, and you could tell he was a hell of a lot more than he seemed. And Martha was healthy, her vital juices chur
He said he was a chemical salesman, “Just a peddler.”
He had watched the operation and complimented her and drawn most of her life’s story out of her. She thought he might ask her for a date—perhaps next time?
On the night he was carried, totally unconscious, into the big windowless building he had tried to investigate, Martha Wagner sat over a beer long after closing. Then she smiled her firm little smile, shrugged and drove the half mile along the highway to the cottage she shared with Pete.
*
Martha Wagner was surprised when another one showed up. It must be my year, she thought, or I’m getting eager. This one was bigger than Hubie, with brown hair instead of red, but he had the same easy way of getting acquainted. Polite and reserved, yet you felt he was interested in you and you were drawn to him. He was handsome. Some girls might not think so if they preferred the thin-cheeks-and-sideburns type. Jim Perry had a full round chin and a mouth above it that grinned easily though not often. She thought he had the keenest eyes she had ever seen, next to Bob Half-Crow’s.
He drove a four-year-old Ford but it was clean and dent free. He said he came from Pittsburgh and points north and south—making that small grin—and needed a job. The steel mills were just too much.
Martha sized up Jim Perry carefully that first evening, staying long after the time she usually went home for her evening break after the dinner rush. She wasn’t sure why—(I am not, she told herself frequently and again this evening, burning for a man). She was now twenty-seven, a hard worker and vibrantly healthy, smarter than many, and often had the company of her brother Pete in their immaculate little cottage. On Tuesday mornings she had nice talks with the once-a-week maid. She subscribed to four magazines and a New York paper. Pete was teaching her to play chess. Why should I be lonely for a man?
She decided she was sizing Jim Perry up through caution. After all, there were the six slot machines in the foyer between the bar and the dining room, and of course she creamed the top of the gross from Internal Revenue like everyone else. This Jim Perry could be one. He was so clean and quiet. And wouldn’t you say too intelligent for a steelworker and truck driver?
The truckdriving bit came up after he approached her in her “private” fend booth with a question. He asked it with soft politeness and a shy grin, not the overconfident nearbluster of some of them. “Miss Wagner? My name’s Jim Perry. Could you recommend a place to stay around here that’s reasonable and clean? I’m not broke. Not holding heavy.”
She gave him her check-cashing-and-credit appraisal. That was when she noticed the keen, wide-set gray eyes and the man-boy roundness of his chin and cheeks. He was no boy. About her own age. Noting the look, Nick Carter was glad he wasn’t wearing contact lenses (the AXE makeup department gave you any color eyes, hair and style features you needed, but this girl searched for flaws).
“Try the Alpine. Four miles west, you won’t miss it. Don’t let the little old cottages fool you. Abe Phipps rims a clean, quiet place.”
“Thanks.” He hesitated shyly. “Would you cash a check for me? I don’t mean now. You put it through and give me the money when it clears.”
“Fair enough. Who’s it on?”
“Monongahela Steel Fabricating.” He gave her a pay check for $159.32. “My last week. I asked Bob at the bar and he said you might—”
“Sure.” She hesitated an instant. Her private booth was respected by the regulars. If a newcomer sat down without an invitation, big Bob Half-Crow would arrive shortly with the suggestion, “why don’t you sit in that one over there?” “Sit down, Jim,” she said.
“Thanks. Can I buy?”
“A beer. On me. Don’t start buying the conductor a ticket.”
“I usually don’t. But you being a lady, I broke my rule.”
They laughed. Bob Half-Crow came over. Martha gave him the O.K. signal—left palm flat on the table—and said, “Two beers, please, Bob.”
Nick said, “You run a tight ship. I remember when this was Lucky Ed’s. You were lucky to live if you ate a full meal.”
“You’ve been up here before?”
“Came up skiing. When Lyman Electronics built the first building where Reed-Farben is now. I tried to get a job but they didn’t have anything. I figured I’d like to live here. All the hunting and skiing I wanted. When I couldn’t take any more steel cuttings in my face I headed back.”
“You’re going to try at Reed-Farben?”
“Thought I would.”
“They’re chemicals, not steel.”
“I’ve got a Colorado truck driver’s ticket. But I’ll take anything.”
“They want security clearance.”
“Got it too. We did a lot of war stuff at Monongahela Steel.”
Martha nodded thoughtfully. The check and the background talk removed her doubts. Jim Perry was a handsome rambling man, not a Revenue Agent or from the State BCI office; they were even worse—you had to lay low awhile if you got an eager beaver or pay if he was a black box man. She studied Jim as he relaxed and watched the crowd.
Three bartenders were busy, two up-and-down and one covering the rear handles and service bar. Bob Half-Crow stood easy, watching the kitchen, the roughnecks and the dampers. It was Pete’s night off. Nick admired the setup. Working stiffs on this side, isolated from the tourist dining room across the foyer, with the kitchen feeding through double doors in between. You got the families, and the gross on this side must be good. Two small pool tables had waiting groups and the shuffleboard gang were betting ten dollars a side. This gang could get tough, but Bob Half-Crow, his black eyes everywhere and standing straight as an oak and as big across as Nick himself, was undoubtedly a quick cooler.
“How long have you had the place, Miss Wagner?” Nick asked.
“Five years. I tore down Ed’s old place after the first two.”
“I was up here about then. That would be just about the time Reed-Farben made their move.” The gray eyes met hers, quizzical but warm. She felt a tiny shiver inside. Easy, Martha, she warned herself, a rambling truckdriver!
“That’s right,” she replied.
“So you picked the perfect time to make your move. Business was due to at least triple and you bought the only eatery. You’re a smart businesswoman.”
“Just lucky, maybe.”
He chuckled and one of his brown eyebrows went up and down as if agreeing to something they both understood. She thought, sonuvagun, he’s a smart one. Even Bob and Pete hadn’t figured out that Pearly Abbott, ex-congressman and wheeler-dealer in everything from banks to real estate in eight states, had given her the tip at Perlinson’s—of which he had a piece.
Later he had said, “Martha, I never thought you’d move so fast, And did you have to steal our best cook?”
She had told him Perlinson’s had several, but she only had Bob for a gamble that was make or break for her. Abbot’s three chins had bounced affectionately at her above his spotless white forty-dollar shirt and she let him get his feel. She could have eluded his plump hand, hidden by the tablecloth, but when you owed—
A year later she didn’t have to favor Pearly or anybody, although you never crossed Pearly. He came in at least once a month, sometimes with a party, which cost her an unpaid check of about $100, unless he gave her a hint that someone with him would pay. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that he had more than a casual interest in Reed-Farben Ltd.
“Jim,” she said, “Reed-Farben hires a lot of people, but they’re sticky. I mean there are local boys they won’t touch, yet lots of people drive a hundred miles a day to work there. The personnel man is Kenny Abbott. He’s—connected politically. You won’t get to see him right away, I don’t suppose, but if you do—you can say I gave you his name. Tell him—I cash your checks.”
Martha’s eyes, a dark green the shade of the skin on king olives, met Nick’s gray ones. She looked down first. Why? She had never used this connection to give a stranger a leg-up before.
“Thanks,” Nick said softly. “I’ll only use it if I need it, and real easy like.”
