The Scotsman regarded his companion closely. “You know that we can’t guarantee you any help at all,” he said. “Officially, BRINT knows nothing of what you’re planning to do.”
“But you’ll help, just the same. Just give me time. I’ll need more of that than anything else.”
“I know,” said the Scotsman. “That’s what we’re afraid of. Because there isn’t much time left, any more.”
Later, the helicopter engines coughed, and the craft slid back into the air, hovered for a moment, and then headed East, leaving the dying ship in a swirl of dust.
The two men understood each other, at least up to a point. They both wanted the same thing, even though their reasons were a world apart. Consequently, they would help each other.
Only the Scotsman knew that it was the eleventh hour.
Part I
Project Frisco
Chapter One
The alarm went off at ten minutes to midnight. Loud, clattering, urgent, splitting the drowsy silence of the power plant guardroom, it jarred the two corporals into stunned wakefulness.
“What the hell!” They jumped to their feet, jaws slack, as the screaming bell hammered in their ears. In the corner of the small drab room the chopper was spitting patterns of triangular holes into the alarm tape, its own clack-clack-clack lost in the steady, deafening ringing of the alarm bell.
Across the hall the duty sergeant burst out of the john, still stuffing his shirt into his green cotton pants. “Geiger alert!” he yelled at the still-immobilized corporals. “For Christ sake, don’t just stand there, call the OD! Switch on the floods and the radar sweep . . . .”
The sergeant snapped on the squawk-box to the plant security police barracks and turned up the volume. Behind him the corporals were frantically pulling emergency switches, flooding the whole rain-soaked power plant compound with powerful but invisible infra-red.
“This is Hutch in F-Building,” the sergeant growled into the squawk-box. “Geiger alert. Get all your flying squads up. Burp guns, ground trucks and squooshers ready. Got that?”
“What happened? Where?” the voice came back.
“How do I know where? Somewhere in Sector Five . . . .” The sergeant checked the alarm tape. “About five miles north of the gate. Sent the ground trucks out on Road 423 and get them out there fast!”
He flicked the selector to the inside guard barracks, all security-cleared troops assigned to patrol the inside of the Wildwood Slow-Neutron Power Plant. “All patrols,” the sergeant barked. “Geiger alert outside the compound. Start Plan B as of now . . . stunners and infra-scopes. The floods are on. Freeze the compound and check IDs on everyone inside the fence. Got that? That means yourselves, too.”
He let the switch go and turned to the map. The gong had stopped ringing, the chopper had stopped feeding tape. Out in the plant the dull, steady hum of the slow-neutron separation units continued unbroken. The compound outside, cross-flooded by infras, was still black to the sergeant’s eyes, but he could make out faint running shapes circling between the wire mesh fences in the slow, drizzling rain.
“On my watch!” he exploded to the corporals standing nervously by. He went to the wall map and jammed in a red flag at the site of the buried alarm station five miles north of the plant, the place where the alarm had originated. “Eighteen years those Geigers have been sitting out there, and the first time hot stuff goes through them has to be on my watch . .
The OD burst into the guardroom, his jacket still unbuttoned, sleep heavy in his eyes. He was carrying a stunner in active position in his hand. “What happened?”
“Geiger alert, sir.” The sergeant pointed to the red flag on the map. “Outside the compound. And would you please put that stunner back in the holster, sir?”
The OD stared open-mouthed at the map, then at his hand, then at the sergeant, then at his hand again, and put the stunner back in his holster.
“It’s still on active, sir.”
The OD swallowed and flicked the safety on. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What happened?”
“Some hot stuff . . . radioactives . . . went past that alarm unit out on the north road, and the alarm went off.”
“Outside the compound? But how did it get out there?”
“I don’t know, sir. It got out, somehow, only none of the gate units picked it up.”
Bewilderment deepened on the OD’s face. “You mean somebody stole some U-metal out of this place? But that’s ridiculous. Who’d want to do that?”
“I don’t know, sir.” The sergeant shifted uncomfortably. “We’ll probably have an investigation to find out.”
The OD cursed and ran through the alarm tape swiftly. “Wait till I get my hands on those goddamn gate guards. Did you order the patrols out?”
“Yes, sir. The minute the alarm came in.” Somewhere in the distance he heard the gyros on the ground trucks whining into high gear. “Christ! They didn’t even have the gyros running.”
“How’s that?” the OD asked.
“I said the gyros are running now, sir,” the sergeant covered up hastily. It would be somebody’s neck if they found out that the patrol squads had to wait for gyros to get revved up. But what could they expect after eighteen years of nothing happening in a godforsaken boiler factory like this?
“Did you notify the major?”
The sergeant rubbed his chin. “I thought you’d better do that, sir. He’s not going to like it, sir.”
With a groan the OD spun the telephone dial, listened to it buzz as the clock hand hit midnight. The sergeant was dead right about that one—the major was not going to like it.
North of the plant, the leading ground truck churned slowly up the single 18-inch asphalt wheel strip, its headlights picking out the trees and tangled brush edging the road. Rain beat down unmercifully out of the blackness. Somewhere ahead was the automatic alarm station that had sounded the Geiger alert, a buried monitor triggered to pick up any hard radiation that passed within thirty yards of it.
“Light up ahead,” the driver said suddenly, slamming the brake. The ground truck skidded to a halt, almost jumping the strip. Stabilizing gyros jerked against the buffer springs to keep the two-wheeled truck from tipping.
“Put the beam on them,” the corporal said, cranking his burp gun and letting the safety lid snap open. “It may be what we’re after.” He stuck his head out of the cab, shouting back at the trucks behind, “Squooshers . . . Ready!”
“Hold it,” the driver said. “They’re signaling back. It’s a DIA field unit.”
The corporal blinked. “DIA? What in hell are they doing out here?” He stuck his head out again. “Hold it . . . Hold it . . . DIA Unit.”
As the buzzing of the squooshers subsided, the corporal stumbled out of the truck, shielded himself against the rain, and started ahead toward the light. “What’s a DIA unit doing here?” somebody mumbled behind him. “Those guys hit faster than strychnine. It’s only been ten minutes since the alarm went off.”
“Fifteen,” said the corporal, feeling a tightness in his throat as he approached the two men holding hand flashes on them.
“Army?” a voice asked.
“That’s right. 923rd Security Police, Wildwood Power Plant, Corporal Barns.” He held his badge forward in the flashlight beam.
“All right, Barns. Put those burp guns back on safety,” the voice said. Barns knew better than to argue with DIA men, or even to ask for counter-identification. He didn’t want any damned investigation made on him. He didn’t want anything to do with the DIA.