I said to the listening world, “This show is WUSWIPP’s, not Peking’s. No blame attaches to the Chinese People’s Republic other than that they allowed themselves to be duped. You are facing WUSWIPP, which is the more dangerous since they’re subject to no control by way of alliances or treaties or broad political divisions.” I hoped that would be enough to give the word that world war need not result from any obliteration of Nodd. I hoped it would be enough to resolve Darrell’s doubts always assuming he picked up the broadcast at all, of course. At least I was reasonably certain he would know his point of aim: back in Yamchow I’d asked the man from the British Embassy to pass the location of Nodd’s base to the Hampton Roads, and if that was not enough, then the huge flames that sprang up at each launch from the pads below us would be visible easily from the higher reaches of the Gulf of Tongking. I sat back: my part was done, for good or ill. Now it was up to Darrell as the one and only action-effective ally outside the base who knew its location. I hoped he would tick over on that point as well. I hoped a hell of a lot of things, probably too many. I began to feel a degree of panic that all my hopes were false and that Darrell’s mind would never, never tick over along the lines I wanted. There were far too many ifs and buts and the whole thing had to be much more clearly spelled out. Much more. Just as Nodd signalled lor the remote control transmitter to be switched off, I made, in the heat of the moment and the press of nagging doubt, a colossal error. I said, “Hold on a minute. I have more to say and it’s important.” Without waiting for Nodd, I said it. “Come in Hampton Roads, you have a clear. Calling Commander Darrell. It’s all yours now.” If Darrell didn’t get that, the Pentagon would, and might, just might, sort it out and flash the executive order across the world to the Gulf of Tongking. I believe, in fact, that the transmitter had been cut off the air before I’d quite finished: certainly Nodd’s reaction was fast. He’d smelt an outsize rat and I saw the vicious look in his face as he lifted his UV concentrate pistol and aimed it at me. My own reaction was bloody fast as well. I shoved my chair backwards with every ounce of strength and fetched up against a bank of dials and switches with shattering effect just as Nodd missed me by a foot and sent his nastiness into one of his operators, who did a Rackstall and powdered on the floor of the gallery. After that there was pandemonium. There was a flash and a roar and a shaking of the structure as another space vehicle was launched, and I got to my feet and threw myself bodily on Nodd, bringing him to the floor beneath my body. With the handcuffs on there was little I could do but stay lying on him like an all-in wrestler. I saw one of his thugs pick up his Astra, which he had dropped when he went down, and dance around me looking for an opening to douse me with UV concentrate without also powdering the boss. He found it difficult, luckily, and while he was dodging about hopefully I saw Felicity go into action against him: she lifted a foot and kicked him hard and beautifully in a tender spot and he went down yelling and clasping his vitals. He dropped Nodd’s pistol close enough for me to yank it in with a leg and I yelled at Felicity to grab it before retaliation set in and hold it against Nodd’s ear. It was not easy with the cuffs on, but she managed it, and, temporarily at any rate, opposition was inhibited, though from underneath me Nodd yelled out an order:
“Close the dome, shut down for possible attack!”
And that, of course, had been my error: I’d projected Nodd into early closure.
17
Something took me on the side of the head just after that shout from Nodd and I passed right out for a while. When I came to I was lying under Nodd’s rostrum and there was noise everywhere, sheer bedlam. Also a very scarifying earthquake-like rocking of the base. The coloured lights were flashing and at the top of the TV screen the figures flickered for countdown to another launch: the dome was open yet, and I wondered why; and wondered also why I had been allowed to live.
I gave my head a shake and it began to clear. I crawled out from under and saw Felicity lying nearby with blood pouring from her head. My own hair felt caked too. I went over to her: she was alive and breathing and the gash in her head didn’t look all that bad, more blood than damage, but she was unconscious. Once again my eye was caught by the big TV screen: the launch area was in full operation all right, but, curiously, the edges of the dome were visible as though they had been moved a little way and then stopped. Sudden hope leapt: if there was a jam, then Nodd’s base was still at the mercy of the missiles.
But where was Nodd?
The gallery was empty but for Felicity and myself: I took a quick look round and fancied I found some answers. That panel I’d crashed back against: it had a sorry look. Maybe I’d jammed the closing mechanism and caused a nasty crunch. I had a feeling I’d caused something, anyway: Nodd’s master control was blackened, evidence of a fire. I fancied my impact with the panel in rear had buggered the electrics just a little. I went to the guardrail of the gallery and looked down and there was Nodd, sitting at one of the panels and listening to his headphones. My diagnosis was that his master control up here in the gallery was out of action and he’d gone into secondary control, a kind of emergency steering as it were. He still looked confident and, apart from that possibly jammed dome, the operation was proceeding smoothly enough, and as I watched the screen, the countdown ended and another rocket blasted its space vehicle into the heavens.
Then I was seen.
From below someone lifted an automatic rifle and just in time it registered in the corner of my eye and I dropped and rolled to the back of the gallery and a spray of bullets zinged over my head like bees to smack into the damaged panel. There was a bright flash and a smell of burning and a growing flame shot up. Visible on the TV screen, the two halves of the dome sagged inwards a little more. It was time to go. I got up, then bent and somehow or other, filled with a desperate energy under the impact of need, I got my cuffed hands under Felicity’s body and lifted her off the ground with her weight between my forearms and chest. Out of sight from below I staggered to the exit at the back of the gallery and out into the passage up which we had been brought earlier. My geography was still hazy but I meant to find the tunnel leading to the concrete slab that formed the entry in the forest on the perimeter of the base, dump Felicity where she might be safe both from Nodd and from the missiles, assuming they were spot on target, assuming they came at all; and then come back to get the American seamen out if I could find them — and finish off Nodd just in case the missiles failed me. I fancied I might have a fair chance: true, Nodd had had that confident look, but he was facing a degree of mechanical trouble and must know his base was likely to remain wide open to retaliation. He had other things to worry about than me, and with any luck at all so would his thugs. Nevertheless, there was a snag: I hadn’t the key that would open the various doors for me, nor the key that would unshackle the handcuffs.
The key to all keys was, of course, Mr Sigg.
*
I was forced now to waste time on a Sigg hunt. Felicity became a dead weight and I started to tire, my arms aching as though they would never, recover as I went as fast as possible along the passages. There were few guards around: the only two I saw I managed to avoid by rapid disappearances into cross-passages before they saw me. There was a lot of noise, a high whine of electrics doing their best to make something move, and that something must be the protective dome. Every now and again the Tannoy system came alive and issued orders in sundry tongues, orders with more than a touch of panic about them. Only once did I pick up a reference to myself and Miss Mandrake: an order in Russian that we were to be found and killed. Once found, I knew I would have no chance at all. Both of us were now helpless lambs for the slaughter. This situation, however, was due to change: when I was just about at my last gasp I found Sigg. I found him lying in a bed in a compartment that looked like the sick bay: several beds, all empty except the one containing Sigg, a drug cupboard, a hypodermic outfit, things of that sort. Sigg didn’t look too well: he was one big blister in his visible parts and his eyes were larg
e and luminous and the irises had gone black. He could still see us, however, and reacted accordingly. His body shook and the blisters swelled up as though he was sweating into them profusely. But he didn’t utter: something, shock perhaps, had affected his speech organs. A high whining sound came from him and that was all, and I was thankful for it because Nodd may well have had his sick quarters bugged and if so Sigg could have given the alarm.
Because of this, I kept quiet too.
I laid Felicity gently on one of the beds, just as a temporary measure, and was much relieved to see her eyelids flicker. With no time wasted now I freed Sigg’s chained bunch of keys from his belt. I recognised the heavy, odd-shaped key that operated all the interior doors and the main entry, but I didn’t recognise the handcuff one. I dumped the bunch on Sigg’s chest and held out my wrists and stared at him with meaning. When he didn’t respond I became a bastard: I picked up the keys and I ground the point of the master-key into his facial blisters. The whine intensified and tears ran and Sigg took up the keys with raw fingers and inserted one into the lock of my handcuffs. When they fell away I took the keys over to Felicity and released her. Then I went back to Sigg, who looked incapable of motion.
I bent closer to his ear and whispered in it. “You have work to do, Sigg. Get out of bed, half dead or not.”
Still no sound, but his lips worked and his eyes stared. I aimed the pointed key at him. There was a sort of soundless gibber and a foot went down to the floor. Then another. Sigg stood and swayed, clutching at a wall for support. I whispered to him again: “You’re going to lead us out, Sigg. You’re going to take us to the exit into the forest, through the tunnel. And there’s one fact you’d do well to bear in mind, Sigg: Nodd’s base has had it. Soon, the missiles’ll be coming in — and the roof’s jammed open.”
That, I believe he knew: he would have heard the panic broadcasts on the Tannoy. He nodded, which seemed to be a painful process. I looked across at Felicity and saw she was back to life: she was sitting up on the bed and looking white and sick but determined. I put a finger to my lips and beckoned her over. She was mobile: she joined us and I whispered my instructions for out.
We moved for the door, keeping right behind slow-moving, sick Sigg and his great blisters. There was an appalling racket going on around us now and I believe Sigg was dead seared of the implications: something told me that he wouldn’t be leading us wrong. The outside world beckoned strongly and he knew neither Felicity nor I were armed and he might be able to beat it once we were out and away — that’s how I read his mind. But he wasn’t going to be so lucky. Not so far, as it happened, from the passage containing the sick bay we came into the one that housed the guardroom where once I’d found a thug to guide me to Sigg’s office the first time I’d met him. And just after we had passed that guardroom, which was empty, a posse of men appealed, marching down on us from the distance ahead: the six US Navy men, still handcuffed, under guard of one man armed with a kalashnikov. I ticked over rapidly: Sigg I knew was incapable of shouting a warning and he was too blistered and demoralised from his appalling physical condition to go into any attack. I told him to get behind us. I told Felicity to do as I did, which was to cross my wrists in front of my body as though they were still handcuffed. Watching Mr Sigg over my shoulder I moved on with Felicity and came level with the American ratings and their escort. I saw the guard thug stare towards Sigg with a mixture of horror at his chief’s appearance and fear that Sigg might vent some spleen in passing and while his attention was thus occupied I disengaged my wrists and made a rapid move: I grabbed his Kalashnikov and forced him back against the wall with him still holding it. He was taken completely by surprise: so for a moment were Magill and his seamen, but the moment was not a long one. Under Magill’s orders they crowded Sigg, preventing any escape while I dealt with the armed escort. There was no point in killing for killing’s sake, so I just twisted the Kalashnikov from his grip and used the butt to put him out for long enough to suit me. Then Sigg’s key was brought into operation again and the American ratings were released, after which I locked a pair of cuffs on to the unconscious thug, slipped another round his ankles, pulled his body backwards into a nice little circle and used a third pair to hitch wrists to feet and then bundled him into the guardroom which I locked behind him with Sigg’s master-key.
Then we all got moving again, and just about in time: as we went along the passage behind Sigg, once again in his position as guide, there was a fiendish noise, a violent explosion that rocked the whole complex to its foundation with an accompaniment of what sounded like escaping steam and grinding metal and crashing concrete. Through the forced-draught system, momentarily, came devastating waves of heat and then, abruptly, the system died, its eerie hum ceasing. There came a smell of burning and from the distance I heard frantic shouting and screams. It all added up, I fancied, to the missiles, probably from the Hampton Roads … after that, Sigg couldn’t wait to get out. Frankly, neither could I. Sigg mastered his blisters and went fast ahead of us, along the most direct route possible to the tunnel entry, which we found wide open and unguarded, evidence to me that the man on watch had very sensibly scarpered along his own post.
We went through that immensely long tunnel as fast as we could make it and eventually the sounds of devastation died away behind us. They were in fact overlaid by the closer sounds of running feet as a number of Nodd’s henchmen and scientists, now a disorderly rabble, fled the nest and pushed their way past us for safety. I let them go: they wouldn’t last long on the run in China. When we reached the steps at the forest end of the tunnel, light was streaming down, evil-looking and red: the concrete slab was wide open like the entry door had been. As we emerged we found, to my great surprise, the escapees in a huddle under a ring of Chinese armour: capture already! There were many troops and down the track stood an armoured personnel carrier of the People’s Liberation Army, and from it was descending a man I recognised: Military Commander, not to say General, Yu Yung-kuei, currently looking grim yet pleased. He was as surprised to see me as l was to see him and his men. Lit by a ghastly red glow from Nodd’s stricken base he came forward and took my hand.
“Commander Shaw, you are safe and I am glad —”
“Delighted to see you,” I said, grinning. I waved towards the source of the threatening glow. “The missiles, I presume?”
“Not so.” Yu seemed puzzled. “You do not know what has happened?”
I said, briefly, that I’d been busy; things had happened around me whilst heavily engaged. Yu wiped sweat from his forehead: much heat was being generated and blown across by a light wind. He said, “The sections of the concrete dome had sagged —”
“That, I know —”
“And as Professor Nodd tried to put another vehicle into space, they sagged more, and the rocket struck and exploded in the launch area.”
I let out a long, long breath. I might have guessed! I asked, “Are you sure of this, General Yu?”
“It is certain,” the Chinese answered. “The base has been under observation … I have two divisions of infantry and guns and armour in the area, by command of Peking.”
“So Peking’s taken my word about Nodd?”
Yu smiled. “Not unsupported, Commander Shaw. Certain suspect persons in our governmental circles have been under duress —”
“And they’ve spilt the beans on Nodd — is that it?”
“That is so.” Yu paused. “Thus there are also aircraft at my disposal …”
“You mean to use them?”
Yu stared towards the base, frowning. The trees around us were lit by that angry light, and the red flickers passing across his face and pointing up the high cheekbones gave him a savage, imperial look. He answered obliquely. “The damage may not be so great as would appear, Commander Shaw, and Nodd may be able to make good his base again. It was strongly built with accidents in mind such can always occur, and have occurred both in the United States and in the Soviet Union. For now, however, Nodd
’s sate cover is lifted … as you yourself took into account earlier. I think you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do know, General.” Evidently my broadcast had been effective. There was no further point in concealment so I went on, “The USS Hampton Roads is on station and could be available.”
“Yes,” Yu said, and smiled gently. “It is so much better for the world, however, if the matter can be settled domestically … do you not agree?”
I nodded. “I agree.” I said. “Are you in communication with the Hampton Roads?”
“Yes. The submarine will be informed that we of China will settle the matter.” Yu said, and turned away to speak to an officer standing a few feet behind him. Half a minute later I heard the intermittent buzzes going out from Yu’s command vehicle. We waited, not speaking now, all of us Felicity, Magill, the US sailors, Sigg and the rounded-up group of thugs and scientists, Yu and his military staff. We all knew the end was coming. It was not long before we heard the whine of jet engines approaching from the north-west; as they came in and circled the base the noise grew tremendous, battering at the eardrums, filled with an awesome menace as still the trees glowed red.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 20