Gunn was amused at seeing the marine stalling while enjoying the opportunity to talk to a stranger. “May we pass through and get to work, Sergeant?”
The sergeant snapped a salute and quickly pressed a button that electronically swung open the gate. After the staff car passed out of sight into the tunnel, he watched and waved to the drivers of the trucks and crane. When the last vehicle disappeared inside the volcano, he closed the gate, entered the guard compound and changed back into his shorts and aloha shirt before releasing the pause button on his VCR. He adjusted his virtual-reality headset and reversed the cassette tape until he rejoined John Wayne in blasting away at the Indians.
“So far so good,” Gunn said to Molly.
“Shame on you for telling that nice young boy you were junking the antenna,” she chided him.
“I merely said, ‘what if?’”
“We get caught forging official documents, painting a used car to look like an official Navy vehicle and stealing government property ...” Molly paused and shook her head in wonder. “They’ll hang us from the Washington Monument.”
“I’ll gladly pay the price if we save nearly two million people from a horrible death,” said Gunn without regret.
“What happens after we deflect the acoustic wave?” she asked. “Do we return the antenna and reassemble it?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He stared at her, as if surprised she asked the question, before smiling devilishly. “Unless, of course, there’s an accident and we drop it on the bottom of the sea.”
Sandecker’s end of the project was not going one-tenth as well. Despite relying heavily on the Navy’s old admiral buddy system, he could not convince anyone with command authority to temporarily loan him the aircraft carrier Roosevelt and her crew. Somewhere along the chain of command between the President and the Admiral in Command of Pacific Fleet Operations someone had spiked his request.
The admiral was pacing the office of Admiral John Overmeyer at Pearl Harbor with the ferocity of a bear who’d lost its cub to a zoo. “Damn it, John!” snapped Sandecker. “When I left Admiral Baxter of the Joint Chiefs, he assured me that approval to use the Roosevelt for the deployment of an acoustic reflector was a done deal. Now you sit there and tell me I can’t have her.”
Overmeyer, looking as sturdy and vigorous as an Indiana farmer, threw up his hands in exasperation. “Don’t blame me, Jim. I can show you the orders.”
“Who signed them?”
“Admiral George Cassidy, Commanding Officer of the San Francisco Naval District.”
“What in hell does some desk jockey who operates ferryboats have to do with anything?”
“Cassidy does not operate ferryboats,” Overmeyer said wearily. “He’s in command of the entire Pacific Logistics Command.”
“He’s not over you,” stated Sandecker sharply.
“Not directly, but if he decided to get nasty, every transport carrying supplies for all my ships between here and Singapore might be inexplicably delayed.”
“Don’t stroke me, John. Cassidy wouldn’t dare drag his feet, and you damn well know it. His career would go down the drain if he allowed petulance to stand in the way of supplying your fleet.”
“Have it your way,” said Overmeyer. “But it doesn’t alter the situation. I cannot let you have the Roosevelt.”
“Not even for a lousy seventy-two hours?”
“Not even for seventy-two seconds.”
Sandecker suddenly halted his pacing, sat down in a chair and stared Overmeyer in the eye. “Level with me, John. Who put the handcuffs on me?”
Obviously flustered, Overmeyer could not hold the stare and looked away. “That’s not for me to say.”
“The fog begins to clear,” said Sandecker. “Does George Cassidy know he’s being cast as a villain?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Overmeyer answered honestly.
“Then who in the Pentagon is stonewalling my operation?”
“You didn’t hear this from me.”
“We served together on the Iowa. You’ve never known me to expose a friend’s secrets.”
“I’d be the last man to doubt your word,” Overmeyer said without hesitation. This time he returned Sandecker’s stare. “I don’t have absolute evidence, mind you, but a friend at the Naval Weapons Testing Center hinted that it was the President himself who dropped the curtain on you, after some unnamed snitch at the Pentagon let your request for an aircraft carrier slip to the White House. My friend also suggested that scientists close to the President thought your acoustic plague theory was off the wall.”
“Can’t they get it through their collective academic heads that people and untold numbers of sea life have already died from it?”
“Apparently not.”
Sandecker sagged in his chair and expelled a long breath. “Stabbed in the back by Wilbur Hutton and the President’s National Science Board.”
“I’m sorry, Jim, but word has gone out in Washington circles that you’re some kind of fanatical kook. It may well be that the President wants to force you to resign from NUMA so he can put a political crony in your place.”
Sandecker felt as if the executioner’s axe was rising. “So what? My career is unimportant. Can’t I get through to anyone? Can’t I get it across to you, Admiral, that you and every man under your command on the island of Oahu will be dead in three days?”
Overmeyer looked at Sandecker with great sadness in his eyes. It is a difficult thing for a man to believe another is breaking down, especially if that man is his friend. “Jim, to be honest, you terrify me. I want to trust your judgment, but there are too many intelligent people who think your acoustic plague has as much chance of actually occurring as the end of the world.”
“Unless you give me the Roosevelt,” said Sandecker evenly, “your world will cease to exist on Saturday at eight o’clock in the morning.”
Overmeyer shook his head grimly. “I’m sorry, Jim, my hands are tied. Whether I believe your prediction of doom or not, you know damned well I can’t disobey orders that come down from my Commander-in-Chief.”
“If I can’t convince you, then I guess I’d better be on my way.” Sandecker came to his feet, started for the door and turned. “Do you have family here at Pearl?”
“My wife and two visiting granddaughters.”
“I hope to God I’m wrong, but if I were you, my friend, I’d get them off the island while you still can.”
The giant dish was only half dismantled by midnight. The interior of the volcano was illuminated by incandescent brilliance and echoed with the sounds of generators, the clank of metal against metal and the curses of the dismantling crew. The pace remained frantic from start to finish. The NUMA men and women sweated and fought bolted connections that were rusted together from lack of upkeep and repair. Sleep was never considered, nor were meals. Only coffee as black as the surrounding sea was passed around.
As soon as a small section of the steel-reinforced fiberglass dish was removed from the main frame, the crane picked it up and set it on the flatbed of a waiting truck. After five sections were stacked one on top of the other and tied down, the truck exited the interior of the volcano and drove toward the port of Kaumalapau on the west coast, where the antenna parts were loaded on board a small ship for transport to Pearl Harbor.
Rudi Gunn was standing shirtless, sweating from the humidity of a steamy night, directing a team of men laboring strenuously to disconnect the main hub of the antenna from its base. He was constantly consulting a set of plans for the same type of antenna used in other space tracking facilities. The plans came from Hiram Yaeger, who had obtained them by breaking into the corporate computer system of the company that had originally designed and constructed the huge dishes.