Take a Mexican political party that demands the territorial return of Texas... and New Mexico... and Arizona... and California.

Add a Chinese paper exporting operation that exports a fine engraver’s surface for the familiar five-dollar portrait of Lincoln.

Stir with a Countess who has made a fortune in cosmetics and runs a private little kingdom at her castle deep in the Mexican jungle.

Mix in the CIA and AXE, prickling each other’s sensitivities while the nation and the highest men in government are stumped to stop the ruin of the American economy...

And suddenly, in the meeting between Hawk and the CIA man, the ingredients have blended into a little pill they hand Nick Carter. His instructions are: straighten things out — or swallow your defeat in L pills!

THE DEATH STRAIN... is a lethal virus for which there is no antidote and which kills in a hideous, painful way.

THE DEATH STRAIN... becomes a paralyzing threat to the world in the hands of the maddened genius who had developed it for America’s use in germ warfare.

THE DEATH STRAIN... leads Nick Carter to an elite legion of the damned, a group whose motto is “Kill for Peace,” a group he must destroy before it is too late!

Assuming the identity of a cold-blooded Cosa Nostra killer, Nick Carter finds himself on his way to Palermo to infiltrate the Mafia.

Using false papers, real bullets, and the aid of an AXE-trained blonde named Tanya, his mission is to stop the flow of heroin to Saigon — a Chicom plot to demoralize American troops in Vietnam as well as to control organized crime in the U.S.

But playing the part of a Mafia Don has big drawbacks, like being found out. And when that happens to Nick, he is marked for inescapable death by the macabre Mafia code of vengeance...

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Defense Minister are assassinated. The British Government receives a demand for GBP 12 million to stop the killings. Carter is assigned to assist in the investigation.

A KILLER AT THE TOP OF HIS BLOODY PROFESSION...

A man unknown to any professional Intelligence Service in the world. The mastermind behind a billion-dollar private spy network called Topcon, Inc. A sadist whose brutal power reached halfway across the world...

IN PARIS

The Red defector scheduled to fill Nick Carter in about Topcon’s deadly game was knifed before he could utter a word.

IN LAUSANNE

The beautiful young German agent used every trick of her well-trained mind and body to destroy Nick’s chances of finding Topcon.

IN MILAN

The Chinese operative almost stopped Nick permanently, with a killing karate chop. The Chicom agent was also after the man who ran Topcon.

IN TRIESTE

The mistress of a Nazi war criminal forced Nick into an explosive game of hide-and-seek. And while she sidetracked Nick, Topcon’s elusive No. 1 man escaped once more.

IN BELGRADE

A macabre masquerade turned into a nightmare as Nick Carter finally discovered the true identity of Topcon’s master!

A Greek agent, an old friend of Carter, has been working behind the Iron Curtain but wants out and needs the help of AXE to accomplish it.

When a retiring Mafia hitman and an AXE agent are gunned down along with several bodyguards, Hawk wants answer and then he wants retribution.

“WE WILL BURY YOU!”

The Communist threat had never seemed so real! AXE had barely assigned Killmaster to his new mission when the message came from “the spoilers” — they were threatening to deal a death blow to American international influence.

It was clearly a job for Nick Carter — the most lethal of his career. For AXE’s top Killmaster was destined to play the lead in the diabolical plot.

What had they done to him? Had they really turned AXE’s most valuable agent against the very powers he was sworn to protect? It wasn’t until Nick came under the spell of the sensuous Russian operative that he began to understand how he was being used. But was it too late? Did his mind already belong to the KGB?

“WE WANT TO HEAR THE MUSIC BEFORE HIS THROAT IS SLIT.”

Those were Nick Carter’s orders. Translated, they meant that Nick had to find Rico Corelli before the Syndicate killers did.

Corelli had been controlling the international drug chain from Corsica for years. But when the Mob found that their profits were slipping and Corelli’s were mounting, the heat was on and Corelli was on the run.

If Killmaster got to him first, Corelli could be made to talk and the drug chain would drop in AXE’s lap. If the Mafia did, there’d be one more bloody name on the Mob’s death list.

Armed only with a beautiful female narc and a flimsy cover, AXE’s chief agent begins the hunt. But the Mafia’s enforcers are with him all the way. And the first corpse is a ringer for the man Nick Carter is supposed to impersonate...

In a tense, bloody race against time, Killmaster stalks a man he’s never seen, a ruthless unphotographed killer running for his life from the men who know him best!

He was a highly paid professional, killing anyone, anywhere, for a price. A murderer who relished his work, lovingly watching each victim writhe in blood.

The Intelligence establishment named him The Vulture — “the scarlet vulture,” his mechanized talons dripping with human blood. Destroying The Vulture was Nick Carter’s next assignment.

But before Carter could get to his lethal quarry, he had to hunt down another man. A bizarre double of The Vulture, forced into becoming the assassin’s perfect weapon — and his next agonized victim!

A new army of killers was being recruited in Sicily by the Dons in the States. Young, tough, ruthless men were being smuggled into America, trained to wage brutal war within the underworld.

The government wanted to hasten the butchery and let the Brotherhood strangles its own blood. Someone had to infiltrate the Mob, go right to the top and assassinate the Number One Don.

It was an impossible assignment. So AXE gave it to Killmaster N3, Nick Carter!

Kidnapped...  a top nuclear scientist with knowledge vital to Western security.

Tortured...  a harmless merchant whose dying words were as enigmatic as his murder.

Massacred...  the screaming patrons of a Tangier nightclub, slaughtered along with the key AXE informer in their midst.

To Killmaster, each viscous crime marked another stage in a terrifying global strategy that stretched from the reeking contagion of a San Juan leper colony to the impregnable stronghold of a secret military organization, a group that had forged an extortion plot on an undreamed scale!

The KGB was planning to wreck the U.S. economy by forcing the biggest banks to dump all their stocks at the same time. A plant in one of Boston’s old families — and the manipulation of their vast financial power — would trigger total economic collapse!

Killmaster had to discover the identity of the phony “Boston Brahmin” and make his sudden death look like an accident — before the collapse began. But there was a welcoming committee of thousands of killers waiting for him...

VENDETTA IN VIETNAM

General Martin is a hero. He proved his courage in Vietnam. And he paid for it in a POW camp. Now General Keith Martin is missing. Maybe he’s disappeared to have some privacy. And maybe he’s collecting on some old debts...

N-3’s assignment is to find him — at any cost. The trail gets hot when a beautiful Eurasian agent is assigned as Nick’s partner and when the murders of highly-placed North Vietnamese officials turn into an epidemic.

In a kabuki theater in Bangkok, Nick Carter is transformed into a Viet peasant. And in the middle of a sultry Southeast Asia night he parachutes into the countryside near Hanoi. If his disguise fails there’s no return ticket. And if he doesn’t find Keith Martin and stop the assassinations, the Vietnam War will look like a dress rehearsal for the real thing...

ISLANDS OF DEATH!

Nicarxa and Apalca — idyllic island republics in the Caribbean. Until Don Carlos Italla, monk turned warlord and guerilla leader, chooses one of them for a hideout.

In a bizarre struggle for power and influence in the Americas, Nick Carter, AXE agent N3, has to ferret out the guerillas — and fend off the Cuban marine forces. All without the official recognition of the U.S. government!

Deep in the tropical mountains, Alto Arete stands, an impregnable fortress. Nick Carter’s job is to conquer it and Don Carlos’s crazed army of “monks” before peace in the Western Hemisphere becomes no more than a fond memory!

When angry natives attack a secret U.S. satellite station on a remote Pacific island, Nick Carter goes undercover to find out why. The island’s French governor can’t be bled for information, but his gorgeous young wife is infinitely more helpful...

She leads Carter to a nearby island-and a tribe of cannibals thirsty for American blood. Someone is inciting them to murder-and to annihilation of the satellite station. It’s up to N3 to put a stop to the bloody uprisings, but first he’ll have to escape a perilous trap-and do battle with an unexpected and deadly foe.

From a lonely beach in the Yucatán to a tiny nation high in the Pyrenees, Nick Carter stalks the trail of international terrorists. Eight deadly nuclear missiles have been hijacked, and the Killmaster’s job is to get the missiles back and distribute AXE justice to the thieves.

For agent N3, it’s a piece-of-cake assignment with sweet rewards... until a mysterious Basque millionaires spins a web of danger and death that threatens all Europe with nuclear destruction!

A lever. A coma. Then sudden death. The latest in high tech genocide from a renegade Russian scientist bent on “purifying the world”.

Forced into teaming up with the KGB, N3 trails the world-class murderer to his impenetrable fortress in the frozen Antarctic waste. But this time, even the honed and deadly skills of the AXE Killmaster may not enough to stop a madman who has the power to kill millions overnight.

Colonel Arkadi Ganin. A man of many identities — and one motive: to kill Agent N3.

Ganin had been on a lot of assignments in his distinguished career, but none compared to this one. It was the sort of thing he liked most. This time there would be no flabby, unaware politician to kill; no military leader, no general, no diplomat. This time he was going after a much more interesting target. A target that would fight back.

Ganin was ready for it. Nick Carter. One-on-one. To the death...

The target: Stephan Conway, an American, founder of Protec International, the government’s chief supplier of missile guidance systems. At first, Conway was the victim of blackmail. But then... he was marked for murder. Nick Carter was at hand in Berlin when Conway’s wife was killed by a cyanide-tipped bullet.

It looked like a failed assassination attempt. But Carter knew the plot was more complicated than it appeared. Experience had taught him one important thing: a professional never misses...