If it had been only opium smuggled across the Turkish border, or even the savage murder of!the girl Mija of the notorious it would not have involved Axe, America's super-secret intelligence agency.

But the stakes were far higher- nothing less than the total security of nations at the brink of World War III.

It was the climactic assignment for our ranking counter-espionage agent, the man with the frightening miniaturized weapons — Nick Carter, called by his fellow-agents

How did beautiful women come to be known as ‘The Terrible Ones’?

Nick Carter, top agent of AXE, sometimes known as Killmaster, had his hands full finding out.

Not that he didn’t have other things on his mind. The Chinese Communists weren’t in beautiful Dominica to sun themselves — and ‘Operation Blast’ wasn’t the nickname of a drinking-contest. Tnujillo’s last diabolical joke had been to leave a hundred million dollars in potential munitions money — a fortune in gold and jewels buried somewhere on the island, tantalisingly hidden right under everybody’s nose!

And as if Nick Carter didn’t have enough trouble on his hands, there was always the danger of an ecstatic death from THE TERRIBLE ONES.

Under any other circumstances it would have been cause for celebration when Nick Carter’s three friends showed up in the States—

• the cross-eyed Egyptian criminologist , who had so often used his devious talents and hideous appearance to such devastating effect.

• the jolly peasant woman , the Russian agent who was built like a tank but had a heart as big and warm as the sun

• and the beautiful with whom Nick Carter is as much in love as his dangerous profession permits…

— but their reunion is not to celebrate mutual admiration, friendship or love — it is a “nightmare party’, an assignment so perilous that the foundations of the free world will crumble into radioactive dust if they do not succeed. Already the whole of the United States has been gripped with panic under the terrifying rumours of drugs added to drinking water, poisons in the air —

The message over the CIA hot-line sent AXE into an uproar. CIA’s top man in Tibet had been killed. His dying words had identified his assassin— “Nick Carter!”

AXE made their own Nick Carter’s briefing short:

1. A fake Killmaster at large in the East meant something explosive in the works, while the obvious lure to trap the super-agent was intriguing but probably of secondary importance.

2. Highest authority wanted the matter investigated and settled, fast!

Within hours, N3 had jumped into Tibet to pick up the trail of his mysterious double. In India the path ran through streets thronged with those seeking the fortune offered in reward for Nick Carter’s arrest. It led to the remote Pakistani border region where Nick found the fuse which, once ignited in India, would set off a holocaust that would destroy all the nations of the East.

JUST A ROUTINE CASE OF MURDER.

A clumsy hatchet job by an enraged husband on his slatternly, nagging wife. Followed by the desperate flight of the culprit with the FBI in methodical, well organized pursuit.

Clearly, it was a job for Nick Carter. His orders: Find the missing man. Kill him. Fast. Before the Reds close in.

The hunt led Killmaster through the dark underbelly of Asia — from the exotic house of pleasure that served as an espionage hideout, to the guerrilla band's mountain stronghold with its grisly, skeleton-filled torture chamber.

It was a terrifying assignment. America's very existence depended on Nick Carter's success.

America's astronauts were the targets. Four had been killed so far — with their murderers conveniently found dead just a few hours later.

The enemy was known. Red China. But China's mastermind in the U.S. was a mystery. There were five possibilities.

Dr. Joy Sun, the beautiful NASA scientist, with a voracious sexual appetite… Alex Simian, the multi-millionaire, with the strange "friends" in China… Major Sollitz, the career officer, with luxurious tastes his meager salary couldn't satisfy… Candy Sweet, the sensuous playgirl, with a lust for bizarre kicks… Reno Tree, the crippled hood, with ambitions to take over a Mafia empire.

One of them was in the pay of Red China. But which one? Nick Carter could only wait — with himself as the bait.

Killmaster had made his usual bargain with death!

DEATH TRAP FOR KILLMASTER

It was just another expensive call girl operation, catering to Washington's elite. Until AXE realized that too many of the high-ranking customers were beginning to die. A senator. A cabinet officer. A congressman. Suddenly dead — and all of natural causes.

It was one of Killmaster's hottest assignments. It called for a false identity, and lots of field work with the willing women in the dead men's lives.

But each encounter ended with an attempt on Nick's life. The "accident" on the deserted highway… the bullet whistling past his head…the sharp-honed knife in the hands of a butchering assailant. The assignment was heating up!

Nick knew what he had to find. The Chicom agent behind the whole terrifying set-up. The man who trained beautiful women into exquisite sex machines; the man who blackmailed top American officials into treason after his girls finished with them; the man who killed those who refused to co-operate — like Nick Carter.

America's top agent, on a bizarre assassination assignment

America's top agent, on a bizarre assassination assignment

Fragments of an incredible espionage plot; targets — the U.S. and Red China

The world in flames, or peace — depending on who won

Somewhere in Tokyo's espionage jungle, a shocking double cross warned that the plot was under way. America's supersecret espionage network, AXE, moved frantically to assign its top operative — Nick Carter — to Japan.

But agent N3 had disappeared; drugged and kidnapped through the oldest ploy of all — a beautiful woman with a body built for betrayal. And for the first time in his life, Nick Carter found himself helpless, weaponless, alone — and trapped into helping the enemy!

The scene was Hong Kong. The mission was to find Professor Loo, whose scientific knowledge could give the Red Chinese protection against any nuclear attack.

It began with a black man, a white woman and enough gold to ransom the world.

The man was consumed with race hate, driven to senseless slaughter by a single-minded plan for retribution. The woman was possessed by the need for every variety of sensual delight. The gold was mined secretly in Rhodesia, owned by a die-hard Nazi who had long ago sacrifice a soul and sanity to insatiable dreams of glory.

This was the terrifying trio that awaited Nick Carter in Rhodesia — on a brutal seek-and-destroy mission against an organization of assassins that had infiltrated every country of Africa.

Dr Damon Zeno: microbiologist… American defector… a dedicated and dangerous enemy. That was about all Nick Carter knew about the man he was hunting — except that Zeno was set up in a secret lab, perfecting a chilling new weapon for the destruction of the United States.

The weapon was the 'Omega mutation' — a microscopic bug. It multiplied quickly and it could not be destroyed. It would kill a man in a matter of days. Zeno planned to turn it loose in the United States — and Nick Carter had no choice but to destroy Zeno before 'Omega Day'.

Soon Carter was in Tangier, hot on Zeno's trail — with his automatic snug in its holster… a beautiful girl named Gabrielle close at his side… and a death trap waiting for him at every turn.

Nick Carter must stop a reign of terror that has gripped most of the civilized world. Sane men are being turned into kamikaze killers who hit like lightning and tell no tales!

The deathmaker was a small device, no larger than a heart patient's pacemaker. But it had the power to kill millions.

Knox Warnow, ex-U.S. atomic scientist, knew this. He had the device implanted in his chest. He also knew that if his heart stopped beating, the bombs that he'd planted across America would automatically explode. New York, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, and L.A. would be wiped off the face of this world.

Nick Carter didn't know, and his assignment was to assassinate Knox Warnow. By the time Nick discovered Warnow's deadly secret, it was going to be much too late.

One of them was running the biggest heroin operation the world has seen. It was Killmaster's job to find out which.

AXE chief David Hawk has a brilliant plan to lure one of the agency's most dangerous enemies out of Russia, and into Nick Carter's hands. Nikolai Kobelev has been the diabolical foe in some of agent N3's most perilous cases and N3 has to stop him before he hatches another fiendish plot.

With a dead ringer for Kobelev's beautiful daughter as bait, it seems the KGB killer is as good as caught… until the tables are suddenly turned, and Nick finds himself locked in a deadly struggle to save two gorgeous American espionage agents-and himself — from certain death.