White Death

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The blood spread thick and scarlet over the fisherman's vest. It was a tidy pool of blood, slowly sloughing down the dead man's chest. He was resting comfortably back against a pine tree, his fishing rod in his hand, waiting for a bite.

The remote mountain stream rushed and sang among ferns and moss-covered boulders. The New Zealand air was crisp and clear, sparkling with the throbbing calls of birds. Nick Carter moved forward silently and set his tackle box and rod on the sloping bank. He squatted in front of the dead man.

The instrument of death was a highly sophisticated poison dart fired from a rifle at great distance. It was a weapon used most often by international agents. The killing had been expertly quiet, performed sometime in the last fifteen minutes. The blood was fresh, warm. The killer had known where to find his target. By now, he would have disappeared.

Carter felt the dead man's pockets and took out the wallet. Jerome Mackenzie, the driver's license said, forty-two years old, height five-eleven, weight one-eighty, address in Wellington. What the license didn't say was that the man was also head of New Zealand's civil air authority.

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