by John Glasby
For the remainder of the day, Carradine stayed close to Karafio as the other explained the workings of the various instruments in the control chamber. Slowly, gradually, he was able to build up some sort of a picture of the place in his mind. As he listened to what little bits of information the other man could provide, he felt his skin begin to crawl as he realised the enormous potentialities of this place, situated as it was in this strategic spot. It was obvious that the Russians had been planning this for many years. How long, it was impossible to tell. Certainly as long as they had been in possession of nuclear arms themselves. They must have realised, during the very early years after the war, that to gain the upper hand in the cold war, it would be necessary to nullify British and American bases around the periphery of the Soviet Union, to site a launching station in the very backyard of the NATO countries. The mere existence of this base was sufficient evidence of how well they had succeeded.
No matter what happened to him personally, even if it meant his life, he would have to get word of this back to London or Washington, leave them to deal with it in any way they saw fit. Beyond that, he could do very little. One man could not pit himself against all of this. He wondered how much time he had to give that warning. Every day that passed would bring those nuclear warheads closer to the base. Once they arrived, it would make things difficult, if not impossible for the men in Washington to take the necessary action. If he could only discover how they were being brought, when and where they were due to arrive, and get that information back too, it would be the only means of destroying the warheads before they reached their destination.
That evening, in his quarters, he went over everything he had learned. It seemed precious little. Brusquely, he closed his mind to the thought of those atomic devices on their way there from Russia, and focused all of his attention instead, on the position as he found it there, in this vast underground site which had been kept such a secret project that it had only come to the ears of the British Secret Service in London as the merest whisper of suspicion.
*****
It was a busy, confused three days which followed for Carradine. As time went on, he picked up more tiny bits of information and from the seemingly scattered pieces, filled in more and more of the jigsaw puzzle. The missiles, he learned, by asking apparently innocent questions, were housed in an underground chamber some distance removed from the control units. They would remain hidden beneath the hillside until needed, being launched from underground to provide greater protection both from possible enemy action and observation from the air. More than half of the men on the site were Russian technicians. They had built the prototype control units and computers and were now training the rest of the men employed there. How much of the nature of the work the Government knew, Carradine was unable to discover. Very little, it seemed. The generals might have been told something about it, but it would be a simple matter for the true nature of the project to be hidden from them in a welter of scientific jargon. One day, the Government and the Army would wake up and realise that there was a missile-launching site in their midst and by that time, it would be far too late to start asking questions, or to do anything about it.
The ordinary labourers were carefully segregated from the rest of the scientific staff and the minor psychological factors which usually went with a tremendous scheme such as this had all been foreseen and prepared for by Lieutenant-General Vozdashevsky and the security men under his command. It was certainly this man who had achieved this minor miracle. If they had not been on opposite sides of the fence, Carradine could have even felt some kind of grudging admiration for the man.
By the end of the fourth day, he had learned sufficient about the running of the site and its layout to be able to formulate a plan. A few questions here and there, combined with a little tactical eaves-dropping, had enabled him to discover that the nuclear warheads were being brought from Russia on board a submarine which was due to reach the west coast some time within the next five days. Vozdashevsky himself, would travel to the coast to rendezvous with the submarine and bring back the warheads. The coastline less than a hundred miles west of the site was apparently particularly suited to a night landing. Rugged and desolate, it would be a simple matter for the devices to be transferred from the submarine standing offshore, to a handful of trucks, ready to bring them back to the site.
The sheer simplicity and audacity of the plan made it all the more likely to succeed. Carradine lay back on the iron bed, stared up at the low ceiling, and forced himself to relax. There was a further piece of information which he had learned which could be of the greatest importance. Vozdashevsky kept all of his top secret papers in a safe inside one of the offices halfway along the tunnel leading to the surface. London would give their eyes to get their hands on those papers and with a little luck, it was possible he might be able to do just that before getting out of this place. He had already made up his mind that the only possible way of escape lay in stealing the DC-3. It was the only means of transport from the site which gave him any chance of getting far enough from the place in time to throw off all pursuit.
Lying there on his back, he turned everything over in his mind, weighing up the pros and cons of the situation as he saw them, assessing every possibility. Within the next twenty-four hours, he would have to check the position of every guard along the tunnel and particularly in the vicinity of the office containing the secret papers, and the plane which was apparently left close to the concrete control block, fuelled and ready for instant use. There were sure to be alarms inside that office, but that was a risk he would have to take if he wanted to lay hands on those papers. If he could quickly get rid of any guards there, he reckoned he would have fifteen minutes at the most in which to crack that safe and get away. Once he was in the air, nothing could stop him, unless they got in touch with the Argentinian Government and asked that he be shot down or forced down, accusing him of stealing the plane.
There were so many possibilities that it was difficult to assess the situation correctly. Behind all of his reasoning, he was forced to admit there was a lot of wishful thinking. He was on his own. There was no one here that he could trust to help him and the desire to face up to these people, single-handed, and defeat them, was almost overwhelming. It was only by a tremendous effort of will that he was able to force the feeling away, and think things out objectively in his mind.
* * * * *
There was only the one guard outside the office in the outer tunnel. Carradine gave him a seemingly cursory glance as he made his way past him the following morning; but that single glance had taken in everything, the manner in which the man paced for twenty feet or so in front of the door, for ten feet on either side, so that for half of the time, he had his back to the door he was supposedly guarding. In addition to this, there was a narrow passage which led off into the rock not more than forty feet from the office. It led to a storeroom and the lighting there was not as good as in the main corridors. A man could conceal himself there without being noticed. As for getting inside the office, he had already ascertained that Vozdashevsky took any papers he had been working on during the day down to the safe at precisely nine o’clock each evening as regularly as clockwork and that the guard, once he had satisfied himself as to the identity of the other, continued with his rhythmic, monotonous pacing, taking no further interest in the Lieutenant-General. All that remained for Carradine to do, to put his plan into operation, was to ensure that the door of his quarters, which was of the self-locking type, was not locked that evening after the last meal of the day ...
Carradine had eaten all of the food on the tray and was smoking one of his meagre supply of cigarettes when the door opened and the guard came in. The other looked relaxed and almost cheerful as he bent, picked up the tray and backed towards the door. He barely gave Carradine a second glance as the other rose lazily to his feet, moved slowly across the small room towards the bureau near the door. One hand holding the tray, the guard nodded, swung the door with the
other hand, releasing his hold on the handle as he did so. Out of the corner of his eye, Carradine saw the man turn his back as he moved away from the door and out into the corridor. The door was already closing. Acting swiftly, instinctively, knowing that if the guard turned even for a single moment, everything would be lost, he slid the slender metal strip between the door and the jamb. There was a faint grating click, sufficiently like the closing and locking of the door for it to be mistaken for it. But the door was not locked. The metal strip had successfully prevented it from closing properly and the lock had not gone fully home. Slowly, Carradine let the breath go from his lungs, realised that he had been holding it from the moment the guard had stepped out of the room with the tray. So far, so good. Now he would have to wait and pray that no one would think of visiting him until he was ready to make his next move. He checked the watch on his wrist. It was a little after eight o’clock. There was almost an hour to go before Vozdashevsky left his room and made his way to the office along the tunnel.
Carradine felt the seconds and minutes begin to drag. Once he stepped through that door, everything would have to go with military precision. He would need all of the luck in the world — and then some. A lot was going to depend on the guard and Vozdashevsky keeping to their usual schedule. It only needed the Lieutenant-General to depart from it by a minute and it could mean failure.
Watching the second hand of the watch sweep relentlessly around the circular face, he dug the nails of his fingers into his palms. Inwardly, he thought: We knew that the Russians were good, but nobody knew they were quite as good as this. He could understand his chief’s concern, knew there had been no exaggeration when the other had stated, quite simply, that millions of pounds had been poured into South America over the past few years. It would have cost millions to build these vast underground chambers, quite part from the instrumentation.
At precisely ten minutes to nine, he checked the knife along his wrist, put out the light in his room and opened the door quietly. For a moment, it had refused to budge and he had experienced a skin-crawling tickle across his chest as it seemed to him that he had failed at the very beginning. Then the door had swung open, the strip of metal falling into his hand. A quick glance up and down the passage and he was outside. Carradine tensed. The dull, monotonous sound of machinery was still audible, something which never ceased. There would be men working all through the night here, working against time to get everything completed on schedule.
He reached the end of the corridor, turned left and walked quickly in the direction of the main tunnel. In the glare of the powerful lights, everything stood out starkly and clearly. It needed only one man to enter the tunnel and he would be seen. As he approached the bend some fifty yards ahead of him, where the gleaming rails curved out of sight before stretching straight up to the surface, he slowed his pace a little. Somewhere just around the bend, the guard should be pacing back and forth in front of that door set in the solid rock. Carradine tightened the muscles of his body, pressing himself close in to the smooth concrete wall, placing one foot carefully in front of the other. The slightest sound now could bring a warning shout, perhaps a bullet. His pulse was racing, his heart hammering in his chest, thudding painfully against his ribs. A faint breath of wind sighed along the tunnel, touched his face. Sweat lay in a cold film on his forehead and limbs.
A few moments later, he peered cautiously around the curve of the tunnel. The guard was there just where he expected him to be. Breathing slowly in an effort to lessen the tension within him, he paused for a moment, watching the man as he paced up and down, just to one side of the rails. The other was one of Donovsky’s security men, a simple-minded man from the expression of his face, a man who carried out his orders exactly, who never deviated from his rhythmic pendulum-like movement. Carradine had been relying on this. An Englishman placed on guard might have stopped every now and then unexpectedly, perhaps to glance behind him as he marched, or to take a short breather when he knew no one to be watching him. Had that been the case, the chances of discovery were high. But with a man like this, animal-like and unimaginative, the danger was that much less.
Carradine eyed the shadowed opening of the passage leading to the storeroom, less than fifteen feet from where he stood, waited until the guard had reached the point nearest to him. A second later, the man had turned, was striding away, his back to him. Noiselessly, Carradine ran along the side of the tunnel, measuring the distance with his eyes, planning each step he took. A quick sideways leap and he was inside the passage before the guard had reached the far end of his stretch.
Carradine slowly relaxed, checked his watch. It was four minutes to nine! There had been no noise to warn the guard. Gently, he slid the long-bladed knife from its slim leather sheath. It glinted bluely in the faint light in the passage. Carefully, he wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers, then waited as the seconds slowly ticked themselves away into a vast eternity.
The sound of footsteps coming along the tunnel jerked him abruptly upright, the tip of the knife blade was cold and hard between the finger and thumb of his right hand. Vozdashevsky would be armed, he knew that; but the knife was not intended for the Lieutenant-General, but for the guard. He would have to be killed in the split second after Vozdashevsky opened the door. Once that was done, the die would be cast and he would be forced to see this thing through to its conclusion, one way or the other. With a dead guard on the site, they would soon know who he was and what his purpose was.
The tall, mountainous shadow moved across the passage as Vozdashevsky stepped past along the tunnel. He did not pause to glance along it and was still walking towards the door and the pacing guard as Carradine edged towards the entrance, stood poised, his right arm hanging loosely and relaxed by his side. Slowly, inch by inch, he moved his body forward. Vozdashevsky had paused outside the door of the office. He held a bulky file under one arm and there was a bunch of keys in his other hand. Carradine heard him say something in a low undertone to the guard. Then he had found the key he wanted, inserted it into the lock. The guard had his back to Carradine as Vozdashevsky turned the key, pushed open the door. Carradine drew back his arm until the wrist was level with his neck, then swung it forward at a blurring speed. The knife flashed across the intervening space. The guard uttered a low cough, collapsed to his knees, the rifle falling with a clatter on to the floor of the tunnel. In the doorway of the office, Vozdashevsky turned abruptly, dropped the keys from his hand and fumbled for the pistol at his waist. He was seconds too late.
Before he could unbutton the polished leather flap of the holster, Carradine had reached the doorway, leaping forward in the final spring, one hand to the man’s throat, the other to the gun. Vozdashevsky went backward as the other’s weight thudded into him, knocking him off his feet. The bone-shaking impact emptied the Russian’s lungs of air with a harsh grunt. His arm flailed, papers from the file spilling over the floor of the office just inside the door. There was no time to think out any moves, every second was precious now. His fingers found the carotid artery, squeezed with all of the strength in his hands. Vozdashevsky writhed and struggled ineffectually on the floor, legs threshing wildly, lungs labouring for breath. He was virtually unconscious now, but some animal instinct made him struggle on as he attempted to throw Carradine off. Savagely, Carradine pinned him to the ground with his legs. The Russian’s face purpled as he continued to increase the pressure. Somehow, the man succeeded in dragging the pistol from its holster. Air whistling in and out of his tightly-clenched teeth, he brought it up, trying to point the muzzle at Carradine’s chest, his arm wavering with the tremendous effort he was exerting. Lifting himself a little, still thrusting down with his powerful fingers, Carradine shifted his body a little to one side, then dropped his knees on Vozdashevsky’s right arm. There was a sickening crack as the bone snapped with the force of the blow. Throwing all of his weight forward now, Carradine saw the other’s tongue protrude from between his lips, the eyes flicker up until only the
whites showed. Then it was over. Lieutenant-General Vozdashevsky, one of the most powerful men outside of Russia, was dead. Gasping for air, Carradine got to his feet, moved out into the brightly-lit tunnel, grasped the guard by the legs and hauled him in through the doorway. He returned for the other’s rifle, then closed the door softly, stepped over the crumpled body of Vozdashevsky and switched on the light. The safe stood on the far side of the room. It was a formidable looking piece of metal, he thought tautly, possibly wired to give an alarm if anyone tried to break into it.
Bending in front of it, he checked the exterior carefully, nodded to himself as he located the thin wire which led from the back into the wall. It was the work of a moment to cut it. Fifteen minutes at the most! The thought pounded incessantly through Carradine’s skull as he went to work on the safe. Very soon, the guard would be missed. At any moment, someone could come along that tunnel outside and initiate a chain of reaction which could result in his discovery.
Danger could be felt in this room. It crowded in on him from all sides. The sweat popped out on his forehead and trickled down into his eyes so that he was forced to keep brushing it away with the sleeve of his jacket. The tumblers began to drop, one by one, deep within the heavy metal shell of the safe. He gave a faint sigh, then held his breath, as he listened carefully to them. With the proper equipment he could probably have opened this safe within a couple of minutes. It was a type he knew, one he had come up against in the past. But working only with his sensitive fingers and his ears, it was a longer job than he had anticipated.
He glanced at his watch once more. Ten of the fifteen minutes he had allowed himself were already gone. Deliberately, he sharpened his senses. Five more minutes and he would have to leave, try to make for the plane, whether he got the papers from the safe or not. His prime objective was to stay alive and get word of that submarine, carrying its highly lethal cargo, through to Washington. Once that was done, there might be the opportunity of giving the whereabouts of this secret site to the authorities and letting them take whatever action they thought appropriate in the circumstances.