Deathrace (9 page)

“I didn’t know.” He took her in his arms and held her.

After a while, she stopped crying.

“I’ll be putting in some extra time. It’s my job to teach her how to shoot our weapons, show her what we do, and how we do it. If I do my job right, then she won’t cause any of us to get wounded or worse. Yes, we’ll be baby-sitting her, but unexpected things always happen. If she can defend herself, so much the better.”

“She, she. Does this woman have a name?”

“Katherine Garnet. She has the temporary rank of full lieutenant and she said to call her Kat.”

“How nice.” Milly sniffed. “I’m sorry, Ed, I didn’t mean to sound so snide. She’s probably a fine person. I want you to invite her over to dinner tomorrow night. If you aren’t having any kind of night drills.”

“I’ll arrange it. Yes, good idea. I think you’ll like Kat. Now, I think your marvelous dinner is ready. May I seat you at the table and serve you?”

As they ate, they talked about her work, and the new theater season coming up. All the while DeWitt remembered what she had said about losing ten pounds while he was gone. She shouldn’t do that. But who could they trust? Then he remembered one of the men in his squad, Fernandez, who lived with a woman in Coronado. He’d talked to him. Maybe the two women could get together when the platoon was on a mission. He’d never met the woman. They would have one huge thing in common. It might just work. He’d talk to Fernandez in the morning.

That night, Milly clung to him. She had slipped into bed beside him without wearing her usual nightgown. She
kissed him, and put his hands on her, and whispered in his ear.

“We’re going to make love every night from now until you leave.”

Ed laughed softly. “We’re not shipping out for a month yet.”

Milly nodded. “Good, I’ll keep you so worn out you won’t even know that Kat is a woman. She’ll just be another one of the guys you have to train. Now, roll over. I want to be on top the first time tonight.”

9

George Imhoff had struggled with his decision for three hours, as he went from one small cafe to another, nibbling at rolls and drinking the bitter tea. There was no other way. He had used up his best prospects. The British student he was supposed to see that afternoon might be hard to find now.

He worked his way slowly to the right street and paused in the shadows for five minutes watching it and the surrounding half-block area. Nothing moved. No one walked or rode by. Only one light showed in the whole area. He moved cautiously to the front of the small building and found the gate where it was supposed to be.

It was unlatched. He pushed it inward.

Nothing happened.

He darted quickly through the opening and closed the wooden gate. A walkway led to the rear of the structure. It had two stories. The front of it was some kind of a retail store with windows covered by wooden panels locked in place.

Trust your fellow man and he will trust you.

Right.

George found the rear door and knocked on it three times. He expected no reaction. Picking the lock would do no good. Everyone in this part of the world used locks with steel bars on the inside as well.

To his surprise the door opened a crack, and a small voice asked him a question. He caught only one word and that didn’t make sense. He used the code word with hesitation.

“Armageddon,” he said.

There was a pause, then a sucked-in breath.

“Just a moment,” the voice said in English.

He heard movement inside, then the door opened more. “Not if we can prevent it,” the countersign came.

“Thank God,” George said. The door opened to a dimly lit interior.

“Come in, my friend. Come in. We have been expecting you. Things are not going well for us on this adventure.”

The tall Iranian man, dressed in work clothes, held out his hand and George shook it.

“I’m George,” he said.

“Call me Peter.” The door closed and the two men went into a small room with cushions on the floor and a single light bulb burning in the corner.

“We know about Shahpur. His family claimed his body. Have you eaten? You need sleep? What can we do for you?”

George leaned against the wall. Suddenly he was tremendously tired. “Some sleep would be good, but first, do you know my mission here?”

The man called Peter shook his head. “None of us know.”

“Yes, usually it’s better that way. But now you must know. I need help in locating a facility. I have only two more contacts, and I’m afraid one of them has been picked up by the Secret Police already.”

George told Peter about needing the exact location of the nuclear bomb fabrication plant in southern Iran.

The tall man sat on one of the cushions on the floor and
rubbed his beard. “From time to time we hear stories. Nothing solid, no two alike. It’s some marvelous weapon that will make Iran king of the whole Arab world.”

“With one or more nuclear bombs, Iran could threaten all of the Arab states, and ensnare them into one giant confederation that could rule all of the near east,” George said. “It would disrupt the balance of power and pit the Muslim world against the West.”

“Yes, yes, it would be even worse than that,” Peter said.

“Do you know anyone who might help us locate this facility? We know it’s in the mountains somewhere north of the port city of Chah Bahar.”

“That is many hundreds of miles away.”

“Do you know anyone who has traveled down there, or used to live there? Anything we can learn will help.”

“I know of no one who could aid us. Let me talk tomorrow to several friends who will not betray me. Now it’s time for you to sleep.”

“First I need to get to your roof. I must send another radio message. Don’t worry, not the best radio receivers in Tehran could intercept the message and pinpoint it here.”

Peter led him to the roof, where George set up the small dish antenna, aligned it, and sent off his message in a half-second burst.

The message said: “George. Out of contacts. Site is in mountains north of Chah Bahar. Check satellite photos. Good road to it a must. Am at sight A. So far not compromised. Any ideas? George out.”

Downstairs, George fell on a floor mattress, and went to sleep in minutes. Peter carefully checked the contents of the shoulder bag. There was no money in it—a few personal items, the radio, and a blank notebook and pens.

Peter watched the American for a time, then went to his own pallet. He would do some talking at the market tomorrow. If he could tie down the exact location, he could charge the Americans a year’s wages. Peter smiled at the
prospect. If everything worked out right tomorrow, he could be well on his way to achieving his retirement.

Across town in the Minister of Defense’s office, four-star General Reza Ruhollah sat back at his desk, and frowned. His Secret Police had uncovered something sinister that made him nervous. They had caught a suspected agent for the United States with more than fifteen hundred U.S. dollars on his person.

He had tried to talk to, and probably bribe, an engineer who worked in the south on Project Equalizer. The engineer had told them of the traitor, and they had grabbed him and the money. When they went to the place where the spy’s control was known to be, they were shot at, and whoever had been there escaped.

Could that person have been a U.S. CIA agent? General Ruhollah pondered it. There was a good chance. He stood, paced to the window, and stared out over his beloved Tehran. Well over seven million people lived here now. His nation held almost seventy million. Iran should be leading the Arab world in a once-and-for-all battle to drive the Western powers out of the Middle East.

When Project Equalizer was finished, they would have the power to do just that. It had been difficult. Iran had no history of such scientific wonders. Neither did it have the agencies, and the mechanics, to keep such a huge project secret. Somehow traces of news had leaked out. He knew the U.S. and Israel had agents in his country trying to gain the critical information they would need to halt or destroy the project.

He would not permit anything to happen to his facility the way it had near Baghdad, Iraq, in 1981. There Israeli jet fighters destroyed a nuclear reactor. Israel claimed the reactor would produce plutonium which could then be used for Iraq’s nuclear weapons program already in development. They had been wrong. Iraq had no such program, and the
Iraqis were too stupid to even try for something so complicated.

The problem was that Israel got away with the act of war against the traditional power in the Middle East without any world censure. It would not happen again. One Israeli agent had been caught and killed in a gun battle late last month. Now one U.S. agent—true, an Iranian—had been caught and eliminated. But where was his control, his master from the U.S.?

An aide came in after knocking. He was a trusted friend. He stopped three feet in front of the desk and waited to be recognized. The Defense Minister turned and nodded at him.

“General Ruhollah, we have good news. The huge American we have so long sought has been found. We haven’t brought him here, because he’s so big he won’t go through the door to his quarters. But we have questioned him.”

“This is the American we have been watching for, the one who supports every wild-eyed student protest, and several small groups agitating for rights for women?”

“The same, my General.”

“Is he a spy for the United States?”

“We don’t believe so, my General. He had no radio, no spy equipment, no code books, that sort of thing.”

“What about U.S. currency?”

“Only ten dollars U.S. He said his mother sent it to him in a letter. Not enough to bother with, and U.S. dollars are not illegal in this country.”

“On the other hand, Colonel, the U.S. dollar is much sought after by our oilmen, and merchants looking for hard currency. So, does this huge one have any tie-in with the U.S. spy your men did catch today?”

“Not that we know of, my General.”

“Very well. Release the man. Put a camera in a hidden
place and take pictures of everyone who enters or leaves his rooms.”

“It shall be done.”

General Ruhollah waved the colonel away. At least they knew where this huge American was now. He’d heard the man weighed more than six-hundred pounds. How much must he eat every day to keep up that much weight? Amazing.

General Ruhollah took a file out of a locked drawer in his desk and looked over the engineer’s last report.

The machining of the metal similar to stainless steel was well under way. They still needed blanks for the manufacturing process.

He looked at some sketches the head engineer had done. One showed a folded cylinder of plutonium. Situated around this was a cylinder of beryllium. This is a very light, stiff metal, which would form an X-ray window, and become a neutron reflector.

“Beryllium is difficult to machine,” the engineer wrote. “We must use cubic boron-nitrate tools. Anything else, such as carbon or steel tools, will not give satisfactory results. We still need the powder form of tungsten-rhenium. We will sinter this into cylindrical segments.”

The General stopped. Sintering, sinter. What did that mean? He checked a dictionary. Sinter: heating matter just hot enough so it will form.

“The tungsten-rhenium will be used to form a cylinder around the beryllium for density. Around this cylinder goes our explosive-lens assembly.”

General Ruhollah put down the report and rubbed his eyes. He had never taken science classes at the military academy. It was enough to learn to read and write, and then study the history of their country, the
military
history, and then to learn the ways of warfare. He had been trying to catch up ever since. Most of the reports by the engineers made no sense to him whatsoever. He did have two trusted
scientists at the university who checked the reports weekly and gave him advice.

“Why does the project move so slowly?” he asked out loud. He knew that the science, the physics, of a nuclear bomb was no longer a secret. There were schematics of bombs on the Internet, and papers and manuals telling how to build a crude one.

They wanted one step up from crude, so it was taking longer. He dreamed of the day he would have the first operational bomb ready. He would tell the world about it, then threaten one neighbor with the total destruction of their capital city, if they did not surrender and become a part of the Greater Iranian Islamic Republic. What a day that would be!

There would be outrage around the world, but no nation would challenge him with its own nuclear weapons. He would use his if he had to, and the whole world knew it. Who would be the first Arab nation to capitulate and join forces with him? Iraq with its 25 million people? Maybe Syria with ports on the Mediterranean would be good. Then Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Yes!

He would put together a united nation of over 135 million people! That would be enough strength so the other world powers would have to recognize him.

Israel, with only 5 million people, would be a terrible problem. They never would capitulate. He might have to waste a bomb on them, or simply ignore them, and in time, bit by bit, drive them all into the sea.

He stared out the window, and dreamed his dream of great power and wealth. No one could stop him once he had the might of the nuclear bombs under his control. No one.

He looked back at his desk and saw the report on the dead Iranian who had been working for the U.S. Who had his control been? Where was the American CIA spy who pulled the man’s strings? He had to find that infidel American spy quickly.

10

Murdock looked up as Jaybird Sterling came through the door.

“You called, L-T?”

“Right, we’ve got traveling orders for two men, Douglas and Franklin. They’re flying out of North Island at thirteen hundred riding shotgun in a pair of Tomcats.”

“This is a workday. The platoon knows. Everyone to report at oh eight hundred.”