From the third truck back a lieutenant came stamping up in the mud. “Barns, why are we stopped? I didn’t give any orders to stop here.”
“All right, Lieutenant, knock it off,” the DIA man said.
“Who in the hell are you?”
“Carmine, DIA.” The man pulled a badge out of his civilian raincoat pocket, flashed it briefly.
“Oh,” the lieutenant said, much quieter. Barns grinned.
Someone came out of the darkness, a big man in a belted black raincoat and plasticovered hat. He had enormous shoulders and a heavy, powerful body, yet he had come down (lie road without a sound, like a tiger coming down to a watering place. “That Security?”
“That’s right, Mr. Bahr,” Carmine answered. The man called Bahr moved forward between the two DIA men and squinted at the lieutenant.
“You’re Axtell, attached to the Wildwood Plant, right?” It was not a question, but a direct statement of fact, as if lie were challenging Axtell to dare to be anyone else. “All right, I’m Julian Bahr . . . DIA. We picked up an alarm on our atomic net and got a field unit in here. Was that signal inbound or outbound?”
It caught Axtell unprepared. “I . . . don’t know, sir.”
“Then well assume it was outbound. U-metal theft,” Bahr said. “Whoever it was can’t have gotten far yet in this brush, and we know he’s not on the road. I want you to deploy your men in a large circle around the strike point. Send your trucks out in a pincers and drop a man off every quarter mile with an eye-beam. Stick to open country, grass and roads, and use the eye-beams for a fence. I don’t want anything larger than a chipmunk to get out of the strike area. Now move!”
Lieutenant Axtell saluted, rather uselessly, since Bahr was a civilian and did not return it, then hurried back down the road to the trucks and began shouting. Tires squealed, men pushed and cursed, gyros screamed as the trucks broke away from the road strip and started rolling in both directions out across the soggy, rain-swept fields.
Down the road a siren whined, and the trucks stopped moving. A winking red turret light was dodging swiftly up the road between the half-evacuated trucks. Then the car, a sleek, mud-spattered Volta 400 one-wheeler, ground screaming to a halt a few yards from Bahr and the other DIA men. A short, lean, raincoated officer with major’s leaves on his shoulders was the only one in the car. He jumped out into the mud.
“Axtell!” he screamed.
Axtell bellowed from down the road, started running through the mud. The major turned on the DIA men, a flashlight sweeping across their faces, picking up their civilian clothes. “What are you doing here?”
Axtell stumbled to a halt, saluted. “Lieutenant Axtell reporting, sir.”
The major swung around to him. “What’s the matter with the road? Is there a tree down?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why are you pulling the trucks off into the mud? You’re not at strike point yet. Have you spotted something out there?”
“Sir . . . these DIA men told me . . . .”
The major looked from the lieutenant to the DIA men and back. His face was gray and heavily lined, but his eyes were bright with anger. “DIA? What’s the Department of Internal Affairs doing on a military security problem?”
“We picked up the alarm on our atomic net,” Bahr said, moving forward. “We’ve been waiting here for over ten minutes,” he added pointedly. “I directed your man here to circle the strike area and fence it in.”
“On whose authority?” Alexander asked.
“Atomic Security Act of 2005,” Bahr said. “That was an outgoing signal from your road monitor. That means a theft of U-metal from your plant until proven otherwise.”
“You haven’t been called in on the problem,” the major said.
Bahr snorted. “You were a little too late to call us in. We’ve already got road blocks mounted. We had a ’copter unit in the air at the time of the alarm. We stationed it immediately.” He hunched his shoulders forward, with a glance at Carmine. “You can take it from me that there’s no vehicle between here and the road block. Whoever broke U-metal out of that plant has taken to the woods by now.”
“Then I’ll send a unit in after them,” the major snapped.
“In this downpour?” Bahr said. “You’re fifteen minutes late for that. The only chance now is a circling move.” Bahr started to move off down the road.
“Let’s just get something straight here,” the major said. “I’m Major Alexander, 923rd Security. These are my troops, my territory, and my problem. I don’t want a lot of Washington Intelligence men nosing around this power plant.”
Bahr suddenly looked at him very hard. “My name is Bahr,” he said. “Assistant Director, DIA.” He flashed his badge, then moved forward a step to look at Alexander coldly. “And I’d like to know what sort of a security system you’re running that lets hot-stuff get five miles outside your compound before it’s picked up by monitors. I’m also curious to know why you’re trying so hard to delay an organized search.”
Alexander felt a sudden knotting in his stomach. DIA meant investigation, and nowadays investigation could mean a full scale DEPCO psych-probe, months of interrogation, stability downgrading . . . ruin. And DIA could play the sluggish arrival of his security troops into anything they wanted . . . .
“I’m not trying to delay anything,” he insisted. “I am trying to carry out a security plan. Unless you want to make this a straight DIA project.”
“I’m making it a joint maneuver,” Bahr said shortly. “My organization and your personnel. I’ll have more DIA units here in fifteen minutes. In the meantime I don’t want anybody or anything to get out of that strike area.”
“All right,” Alexander said, “then we’ll combine efforts.” He turned to Axtell. “Lieutenant, deploy your troops on Mr. Bahr’s orders.”
Axtell saluted, ran down the road, and began shouting. The squeal of tires and treads began once again.
Bahr turned on his heel and slogged across the road strip into the clearing where his ’copter had landed, Carmine at his side. Angrily, Major Alexander followed through the mud. A man was standing by the ’copter radio. “Have we got anything?” Bahr asked the radioman.
“Unit B just reported in, Mr. Bahr. Seven ’copters.”
“Good. Give them the strike point co-ordinates. Tell them to use an expanding square and drop their Geigers through the trees on cables at thirty-yard intervals.” He turned to Alexander. “What we need to know now is how much U-metal was stolen. Do you know how much is missing from the plant?”
“No U-metal is missing from the plant,” Alexander said tightly. “I checked on the way out. There are exit monitors at all the gates and none of them have recorded radioactives going out.”
Bahr stared at him. “Are you trying to tell me that a road alarm goes off five miles from your plant indicating hot-stuff being moved away from the pile, and yet nothing has disappeared out of the plant?”
“I don’t know what tripped the road Geiger,” Alexander snapped. “All I know is that nothing could have been smuggled from the plant. Our security system is quite thorough.”
“Your security system stinks,” said Bahr. “Your guards are probably asleep, or in town drunk. You couldn’t even get a truck full of troops up here for fifteen minutes. By God, Carmine, make a note of that. We’ll have a look at that security system before we’re through here.” He turned back to Alexander. “Do you by any chance keep an inventory of the U-metal at the plant?”