"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?"
"Certainly," Alexander said, his face very red.
"Well, take another one right now. Shut down the whole lousy boiler factory if you have to, but I want every slug of U-metal and every cubic inch of slush accounted for."
"You're out of your mind," Alexander said. "All of greater St. Louis is using our heat and power. You can't just turn off a power plant the way you cut a station off the air."
"Look, Major," Bahr grated. "There's been a U-metal theft. It's slipped past your security system. I want to know how much metal has been taken. Now are you going to order the inventory, or am I?"
"You have no authority inside that compound," Alexander insisted.
Bahr looked at him. Then he turned and walked to the 'copter. He grabbed up the radio mouthpiece. "Get me Unit C," he said.
The radioman spun the dial rapidly. "Listen," Alexander burst out. "I warn you . . ."
"This is Bahr," the big man said into the mouthpiece. "Bahr talking. There is a change of plan for Unit C. I want all personnel to land inside the compound at the Wildwood Plant. I said inside. I want a complete inventory on the U-metal in that plant. I want to know how much has been stolen, and I don't care how you find out."
"If your 'copters are fired on, it'll be your own responsibility," Alexander said. "My men have orders . . ."
"They won't be fired on," Bahr cut him off. "Nobody fires on DIA 'copters."
Overhead, six fiery red circles made by jet-tipped 'copter blades were moving across the field toward a patch of woods, buzzing just over the treetops, hanging motionless for a moment as Geigers were dropped through the trees and then reeled up again, then moving on.
Alexander turned to the radioman, bristling with rage. "I want to send a message," he said. "Crash priority."
"Sorry, sir. This unit is busy now." "This is crash priority," Alexander snapped. "You heard him," Bahr said without turning. "Use your own radio."
Alexander scuffed back through the mud to his Volta, turned on the sending unit, and contacted the relay back at the plant. "This is Alexander. I want a crash priority through to Washington. Urgent, personal, to John McEwen, Director, DIA. Reference Wildwood Power Plant: Your assistant, Bahr, orders shutdown of entire project for investigation—stop—exceeding authority—stop—request you direct him rescind this order pending further study and evidence—stop. Harvey Alexander, Major, nine-two-three Security. Reply immediately. Out."
He dropped the mike back in the slot and sank back in the Volta. Suddenly he realized that his hands were trembling. Unless he had a quick response from Washington he was in trouble, bad trouble. He groaned inwardly. As if there hadn't been enough trouble in the past six weeksl He knew enough about how the DIA worked . . . why hadn't he just kept his mouth shut, co-operated, and then struck back through the proper channels later? Why couldn't he have had that much sense, instead of acting like a bumbling fool?
But still, he was stunned at the ruthless disregard Bahr had shown for military authority. The man was out of line, unless there was far more involved here than he could see.
Alexander gnawed the inside of his mouth, listening to the pelting rain on the plexiglass roof. The ground trucks had moved out in a wide circle now, with the 'copters preceding them overhead. Alexander scowled. What was so imperative about some radioactives passing a Geiger alarm? Bahr had no evidence whatsoever that the hot stuff had come from the plant. And Alexander was virtually certain that it had not.
He knew the security system at the plant because he had personally organized it from top to bottom. After his downgrading from BURINF, when they had ordered him to the military limbo of this antique power pile in the Illinois flatlands, Harvey Alexander had realized that his only hope for reinstatement would be a record of exemplary execution of his new job—the security protection of the plant. Within a week he had studied and thrown out the old, ineffective security system and installed the system he had so carefully and painstakingly devised to meet any imaginable emergency situation.
It was as perfect a system as Alexander knew how to devise, and he was singularly expert on the matter of security systems . . . though only God and BRINT knew that, besides himself. And he was sure that no U-metal could have left that plant without his knowing it.
But even if it had, he could see no cause for panic. Who would try to steal U-metal? It was as useless as gold bullion. There were no markets for it. It was worthless outside a power pile. Besides, the Wildwood Plant was one of the oldest piles in existence, built back in the Twentieth Century with all the incredible engineering inefficiencies that the early 1960's had produced. The U-metal slugs it used would only fit that particular pile.
It simply didn't make sense. The complete irrationality of anybody stealing U-metal caught in Alexander's orderly mind like a barbed hook. And this DIA investigation . . . he winced.
What could there be about a U-metal theft . . . the most impractical of all crimes . . . that attracted the DIA?
From somewhere to the West, two more squads of 'copters slid into the sky, fanning out in a huge circle radiating from the thick patch of woodland and brush surrounding the area of the strike point.
Somewhere out there, something radioactive had tripped a road monitor and centered an alarm. Whatever it was, it was still out there. But even as he watched, Alexander could see the huge circle growing tighter. Men shouted and trucks moved. 'Copter blades fanned the sky. In the gloom he could see the DIA men moving efficiently and quickly, following the maneuver from the headquarters of Bahr's copter.
It was like a huge, well-oiled machine, and he had no part of it. There was nothing for him to do, no orders for him to give, because Bahr had done it all.
The crackle of the radio jerked Alexander to alertness. "Major Alexander. ASPX nine-two-three calling Major Alexander."
He picked up the speaker, held the switch down. "Alexander here."
"Washington refers us to Lowrie Field, Denver, sir. McEwen is on vacation there."
"Then resend the message," Alexander said. "Plain-language heading: 'Personal McEwen', and put it on a Q priority."
"Yes, sir." Over the speaker Alexander could hear the click-click of the cipher-typer as the new message was made up. "Hold it a minute, sir . . . the OD wants
to talk to you."
The OD's voice rasped in the speaker. "There are six DIA 'copters just landed in the compound, sir. The investigators want to stop production and hold a U-metal inventory right now. What should I do?"
A number of suggestions, all of them obscene, came immediately to Alexander's mind, but he stifled them and thought carefully for a moment. He'd hoped for an answer from McEwen by this time, but now everything was sitting in his lap. He knew the DIA had no authority in the compound without special orders from DEPOP, but that was a legal technicality, not a practical consideration. Obviously Bahr was going to force through an inventory if he had to hold off the compound guards with stunners. And the chance of Alexander's OD putting up any resistance to a determined DIA squad was less than epsilon for any epsilon chosen. Bahr was not going to be stopped.
"Do nothing whatever," he said to the OD. "Don't co-operate, don't interfere. They're exceeding authority."
"Very well, Major." The squawker went dead.
Alexander leaned back, sweat pouring down his sides. Everything now depended on McEwen backing him up, even if it were too late to stop the inventory. It would be Bahr's neck, not his, as long as McEwen stuck to the letter of the law.
And that, he thought warmly, he could count on. McEwen had been doing that for twelve years.
For all the ominous reputation of investigations, arrests, and interrogations carried on by the Department of Internal Affairs, the dreaded civilian intelligence organization that had grown up in the wake of the corrupted and long-defunct FBI to serve as watchdog for the new Vanner-Elling Stability government, one single fact had always remained paramount: The DIA would never exceed the legal limits of its authority. Even Alexander, after his brief and bitter experience in the Bureau of Information, still believed this record to be accurate, and not simply a matter of silencing all witnesses to exceptional cases.
The DIA had no need to break laws. Their investigations and interrogations were so thorough that they could, on sound legal grounds, pick up a man for a misfiled travel permit, or an unsatisfactory follow-up marital survey, or even for failing to report a prostitute's serial number correctly, and in a few days of questioning get him to confess to every crime and misdemeanor he had ever committed or even imagined he had committed. For the tough cases their legal lobby would squeeze a new law into the books in the middle of an investigation, just to fit the case.
But this time Alexander knew the law. He knew he was right, but he was a little surprised at the rapid pounding of his heart and the sudden trickle of sweat running down his arms. There was something ominous about this sudden appearance of a swarm of DIA 'copters at the site of an isolated Geiger alert.
He looked through the haze of headlights and falling rain at the tall, dark-coated figure standing there, shoulders hunched, hands deep in his raincoat pockets. Julian Bahr . . .
The name was oddly familiar to Alexander. So was the big, thick-set body, the hunched shoulders, the heavy face, the bark of the man's voice. He knew Bahr from somewhere, he was sure of that.
Alexander ran backward in his mind through his career in BURINF, the huge, energetic mouthpiece for the Department of Exploitation—super press room, propaganda mill, advertising agency, motivational research center and public relations bureau without peer in the world. Faces, names, ideas . . . private conversations, board meetings, luncheons flooded his memory. He felt a wave of nostalgia begin to rise smotheringly, a pervading sense of desolation at the fall he had taken from there, so abrupt, so unexplainable.
He blocked it. Julian Bahr was not part of BURINF.
Back farther, then. Britain, Turkey, Buenos Aires, Australia ... a dozen past assignments shuttled through his mind: the solar research project he had been in charge of in Mexico; the huge Yangtze dam at which he had been only a lieutenant, the curious Asian-Western partial truce that had resulted in the U.S. Army building the world's greatest dam across the Yangtze to stop the floods and starvation that were driving China into ruthless expansion in spite of the brilliant economic blockade with which the West had accelerated her inflation, until the vast continent was almost entirely reduced to barter, governmental ferocity notwithstanding.
The Army, the vast administrative tool of the Department of Exploitation, since it no longer had any function as an effective fighting force. Fifteen million men and officers handling the immense problems of supply, law enforcement, transportation, engineering and education in the precise ecological reorientation that the Vanner-EIling system prescribed when it came to power after the Crash in 1995, and which DEPEX operated. That was the old Army of fifteen years ago when a man was given a job to do and the authority to do it, not like the snarled . . . Alexander blocked the engulfing bitterness. Bahr had not been in China . . .
Antarctica . . .
Like a key fitting a lock, something clicked in Alexander's mind, and he realized why he had not been able to place this man.
It was Antarctica. He remembered Julian Bahr.
He jumped as the door of the Volta slid open and Bahr stood there, rain pouring from his hat. "I need your car," he said.
"Is that an order?" Alexander asked.
"Call it whatever you want," Bahr snapped. "A couple of our ground units have been flown in about a mile up the road, and I—"
"Strike!" The squawker boomed. "Mr. Bahr . . . there's a strong signal on a Geiger from Unit B 'copter Number Seven. They're holding position. Over."
Bahr picked up the speaker, rotated the broadcast selector to the DIA frequency. "This is Bahr. Number Seven? What have you got there?"
"Can't see it, but there's something down here in the woods," the voice crackled. "Got a hell of a jolt on the Geiger."
"All right, all units," Bahr said. "Circle at a quarter-mile radius from Number Seven. Ground units alert for encirclement. Use caution. Whatever's in that circle, keep it in there! But do not attack. Repeat: do not attack! Out."
He turned to Alexander as Carmine came stumbling up through the muck and rain and slid into the car without saying a word. "You heard that," Bahr said. "I need this car to join the ground units."
"This is a Volta," Alexander said. "You'll break your neck in it, if you don't know how to drive it."
"Then you drive it," Bahr said. "Now get it moving."
He knows you, Alexander thought. He knows you, and he's playing this little game out, just waiting for you to break. There was no longer any question in Alexander's mind about his being investigated. But McEwen could get him off the hook. He'd known McEwen back in Mexico, when McEwen was training with BRINT. McEwen would help him . . .
Viciously, Alexander slammed the controls into full drive. The car screamed out of the soft, muddy rut, siren going, and Alexander sent it screeching along the center of the road strip, wet grass and bushes slapping at the sleek, high-speed plastic shell, headlight on high and red turret-light winking. The Volta could actually do 300 on a good road, but on this winding, gravel-shouldered road strip Alexander held it down to 120. They made a sharp turn, and he slammed the directional gyro at a ninety-degree offset, using the boosters to overcome the inertia of the loaded car. Gravel spat out under the single wheel as the Volta skidded onto the shoulder, gyros whining to keep the car from toppling. He could feel Bahr's huge body stiffen as a tree loomed up at them, then relax as they slammed off it and kept on going after the jolt.
"Hold it," Bahr said as they approached the helicopter cluster. Alexander hit the brake button and the Volta squealed to a halt, rocking. Spotlights were on them for three seconds before the car stopped. Carmine opened the door, and he and Bahr jumped out without a word to Alexander.
The DIA ground troops were already trotting into the drenched brush and forest, their flashlights bobbing, disappearing. They melted into the brush with a certain grim urgency ... no shouting, no waste motion. Probably veterans of the crack 801st, Alexander thought, the legendary guerilla army that had been fighting the war of containment in the East Indies. Commanded by the Brit
ish, the 801st had never been manned by anyone but Americans, the toughest, hardest, most incorrigible mercenaries the British could find, executing raids on Indonesia and South China that made Sherman's march look like a reforestation project. British Intelligence used the 801st to forge stubborn links in the Asian economic and political situation, but BRINT's interest in a young army sent back to the Americas each year a steady quota of battle-toughened, BRINT-rrained intelligence men in their late twenties.
The DIA had their pick of these men, and to date there was no record of anyone resisting arrest by DIA agents. Which, Alexander thought, was just a little bit ominous.
"Strike!" the squawker boomed again. "Ground Unit Three. There's something up here, Mr. Bahr."
"Hold your position," Bahr's voice grated from one of the 'copters. "What do you see?"
"Nothing clearly. It's hot, though . . ."
"Get some flares in the air. Bring your circle in tighter, but hold fire . . ." Bahr's voice trailed off in a crackle of static. Then another voice came in.
"Mr. Bahr? This is Johnson, at the plant. You were right, sir. Three U-metal slugs are missing from Number Four pile. Dummies loaded instead."
"Good work," Bahr's voice came back. "That about clinches it. We've got them cornered out here. Sit tight."
Stunned, slack-mouthed, Alexander slumped back in his seat, his heart barely beating, cold sweat forming on his palms and forehead. A dead, crushing weight seemed to be locked inside his chest.
Three slugs missing.
Even McEwen could not help him now.
His security system, worked out step by step over the months at Wildwood, thought to be absolutely flawless, had let three U-metal slugs, each weighing fifteen pounds and furiously radioactive, get out of the compound. And his career ... he swallowed, a bitter taste cloying up in his mouth.
A supply dump in Watooki at best. At worst, a full-scale DIA investigation, a court-martial, a DEPCO psych-probe, the final downgrading.
Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer Page 2