“No, sir, I’m sorry, all of our people are out looking for the nuclear device. I’m the only one here. I’m a civilian secretary.”
“Do you have radio contact with your boss?”
“No sir, no radios left here. All in use in the field.”
Murdock called Admiral Bennington’s office. He got a captain and told him what they had found out from the prisoner.
“We think he’s telling the truth. The man has a low pain threshold. He says there are twenty-five of these trucks. We need to find the right one.”
The captain groaned. “I just authorized Commander Running to dispatch three of those rigs to Hickam and three more to the Camp Catlin Naval Reserve area. I’ll see if I can get him back and have him pull all his units in for a quick check.”
“Won’t help much, Captain. The one we want won’t have a radio and wouldn’t come in anyway. It may be in hiding now.”
On the far side of the Naval Reserve area, three men worked over a one-ton van-type truck. They had parked it in back of a grove of trees at the very bottom part of the camp near Highway H-1 and well out of sight of any prying eyes. They had taken compressed air bottles from inside the rig, attached them to hoses and nozzles, and quickly stripped off the Navy logos and Navy gray paint and all signs about nuclear energy. The triangle signs were removed, and what remained was a civilian truck in dull blue showing logos of a brewery.
They made one more inspection. Then two men went into the cab and the third into the back, and they drove through the military reservation to the back gate and had the guard check their papers. They were cleared to deliver beer to the non-com and the officers’ clubs on this day and to use this gate.
The young Shore Patrolman on guard at the gate gave the papers a quick look and waved them through. He had been concentrating on the exercise underway to find a nuke bomb that had been planted somewhere in Pearl Harbor. There was always another test being run.
He turned his attention to three cars lined up at the barrier. It was a duty weekend coming up and the reservists were piling onto the base. It would be a busy time for him.
The three civilians in the truck used a cell phone and made contact the way they had been instructed.
“This is shit-kicking fun, outwitting the damn Navy,” the tallest of the three said. His name was Charley Blount. He was driving and in charge of the truck and cargo and getting it to the right spot at the right time.
Charley checked his watch. Almost four in the afternoon. The rig was due near the front of the Ala Moana shopping center in downtown Honolulu at six P.M. sharp. The strange little man who had hired them had been precise. He had also been free with his money. He had given each of them five hundred dollars for the four days’ work. It had been in advance, and was only a third of what they would earn when the job was done.
Charley drove at an even, legal speed. He’d been cautioned to obey every traffic law so he didn’t get stopped by police. From the shopping center he would get instructions where to go. It was an exciting operation, and would help improve the security at the base. He wasn’t sure just what being out here in the middle of Honolulu would prove, but it must fit in some way. The voice on the phone would have an explanation for the trip.
Back at the base, the twenty-five trucks used to test for radiation were slowly being ticked off by their commander. He had eighteen inspected and six more on their way in to the shop. He was sure none of his men or equipment had been compromised, and the best way to show it was to have an all-present-or-accounted-for report. If one of his trucks had been hijacked and used for the Chinese bomb, he might as well turn in his request for retirement tomorrow.
How in hell could the Chinese get a truck? How could they smuggle an active nuclear weapon into Hawaii and then get it on a truck? Questions he would probably never get answers for.
Two more trucks rolled into the big garage, and he went out to check them over himself. Both were set up strictly according to regs. No deviations, and certainly no place to put a one-ton crude nuclear weapon. The commander grinned. Only six more trucks to go.
Back at the SEALs’ official quarters, it had been a half hour after their questioning of the Chinese prisoner. He had been sent by security to the hospital clinic, treated, and returned to a security cell. No questions had been asked about how the man had been shot.
Now Murdock told his fifteen men the update. He had ordered six vehicles, and put three men in three, two in the rest.
“The brass will look in the usual spots for a truck,” he said. “We need to check out the long shots, where we would hide if we wanted to lose a truck. Work the boundary fences, the waterfront, anything or anywhere you can think of where you would want to hide a truck. Remember, this isn’t a big rig, like a one-ton with a van body on back. Let’s go.”
Murdock and Dobler drove out in a new experimental rig called the Flyer. It looked a little like a World War II Jeep, but had only one seat for the driver in front and room for two men in back. In the center of it was a sturdy gun mount that would take a .50-caliber machine gun.
It had no top and had an extremely low profile for better use in combat and for hiding in shallow gullies, then popping up and slamming .50-caliber rounds into the enemy.
It also had a diesel engine that boomed the little crate along at sixty mph on an open road. It had full-time four-wheel drive and four disc brakes. The high road clearance meant it could drive over rough country and rubble and make it. Murdock had heard that the price on the skeletal little rig was a hundred thousand dollars. He hoped the price would come down if the military went for the little bouncer.
Murdock drove as they headed for the air base at Hickam Field and began their prowl. All the SEALs had on their Motorolas, and they would check out just how far they would reach.
Everywhere that Murdock drove he drew questions and admiring stares at the little Flyer. They prowled along the base fences, through an abandoned section, then past the Fort Kamehameha Military Reservation next door. Murdock stopped the Flyer and waved at some curious onlookers, then turned to Dobler.
“If you were hiding this truck, where would you put it?”
“Not out here in the open, for damn sure. I’d stash it in some trees or brush where nobody usually went. If there is any place like that on this reservation, or Hickam, or the Reserve area, or Pearl.”
It was almost dark by the time they headed back. The radio call came through weak but readable.
“Commander Murdock, I think we have something. This is Lam and Bradford. We’re on the south side of Camp Catlin, the Navy Reserve area. We’ve found what looks like stripped-off paint that shows nuclear danger signs. We even have three of the little triangular signs that warn of radiation. Looks like they used some kind of blasting power to peel the paint strips off the rig.”
“Yeah, Lam. Get to a phone and call the admiral’s office and report what you’ve found and where you are. We’re on our way over there from Hickam.”
By the time Murdock found his way off Hickam and to the south edge of Camp Catlin, there were three carloads of Shore Patrol and officers on the scene. A commander who looked like he was having a heart attack stood to one side.
“The bastards! They painted a truck to look like one of mine. I can see it all here. It must have cruised all over the bases, the way my other rigs do. Logos and everything. So they stripped off the paint. What does the truck look like now?”
“He probably went off-base,” one of the captains said. He used a radio to ask the various gates if a one-ton truck had checked out that afternoon.
A NEST truck rolled up and six men came out in protective suits. They used sensors and began to scour the area, including the stripped-off paint and the ground where the truck must have parked.