by Ahern, Jerry
The video display—it was fed to the computer as a regular video, then digitized for added clarity—showed the blue van still dogging the Shore Patrol.
Because of the way the drone was vectoring over the shops and businesses in order to be out of direct line of sight with the street, therefore less easily noticed, Shaw couldn’t see the entire convoy of three trucks and a lead car. The trucks were the Real McCoy, a shipment of surface-to-air missiles for the shore batteries guarding Pearl Harbor—just the sort of target the Nazis would want to take out preparatory to an attack.
His eyes stayed on the blue van. There was no way of telling who or what was inside. Only amateurs would have tried to explode the van near to the convoy and precipitate a mass explosion of the missiles, because the warheads would not be armed and nothing would happen. But if enough explosives were used, the missiles could be destroyed, rendered into high-ticket junk that would be useless.
Or the trucks could be hijacked with the intent of arming the missiles and then either using them or detonating them.
“Lots of cheerful possibilities,” Shaw said aloud.
“What was that, Tim?”
“Just wonderin’ what these guys’U try if they go for it.”
Bob Bilsom was grinning when Shaw looked over at him. “I bet they stop the convoy, put a truck full of explosives at either end and maybe one in the middle and blow the whole friggin’ thing to junk, and trash James Madison Way at the same time.”
“Ya could be right, Bobby.” Bob’s theory was as good as any, Shaw reflected.
Such an explosion would destroy both sides of the street for at least a block in either direction, probably knock out the power grid, communications, not to mention cause a lot of deaths. Tim Shaw still had the radio on the seat beside him. He pushed to talk. “Eddie. Talk to your father. Over.”
“What’s up, Dad? Over.”
“Bobby’s got an idea, might be a good one—but with Bobby hey, who can tell? Listen, can you get up a video remote?”
“From the street?”
“Yeah, from the street. I need one you can coast in
over the front of the convoy.” “I gotta clear it with—”
“Fuck clearin’ it—launch it. I need to see if the bad guys got the front end of the convoy tapped. Do it now and get back to me. Out.” Tim Shaw smacked the handset he’d used for talking with his son into the dashboard nest, then reached across for the one nearer to Bob Bilsom. “Watchdog to Lamb. Over.”
The by-now-familiar Shore Patrolman’s voice came back. “This is Lamb, Watchdog. Over.”
“Both you guys on radio?”
“Affirmative, Watchdog. Lead and drag car. What’s the problem, Watchdog? Over.”
“You got one in the front like you got in the back? Over.”
“Say again Watchdog. Over.” “You’re waggin’ a tail. You shakin’ a dick too? Over.”
“Negative, Watchdog. Only the tail. Over.”
“Stay cool; you might be wrong. Watchdog Out.” Shaw put the handset back into its receptacle. His eyes went back to the video display on his computer screen.
The radio set linking him to the SWAT Team started crackling, “Watchdog Two to Watchdog One. Watchdog Two to Watchdog One. Come in. Over.”
Shaw had the set in his hand. “What’s the story, Eddie?”
“Got a problem. The probe can go up, but we can’t control it. The magic box’s broken. Won’t switch on. So, we can’t launch it.”
“Shit. Anybody can fix it?”
“Negative on that, Watchdog.”
“Wonderful—” Before he could say anything else, the probe that was already up picked up something it digitized into the far lower right corner of his screen. “Hold tight, Eddie.” Tim Shaw threw down the handset and started fiddling with the computer controls, getting the machine to pick up the image from the lower right corner and move it to center screen, then fill in the rest of the image based on data in its memory. What was taking shape was an armored delivery vehicle, the kind used for gold and diamond shipments. “Eddie—still there?”
“Right here.”
“Get on the radio telephone and check with the armored car companies quick as you can. See if they got anybody toolin’ down James Madison about a half-block behind the convoy. I’m gonna check with auto theft. Call me back.” Tim Shaw flicked off the localized frequency and into the police emergency band. “This is Tim Shaw. Get me Phil Zimowitz in auto. Quick as you can. I’m holdin’.”
The operator acknowledged, saying, “Put you through right away, Inspector.”
It was a bad patch, but Zimowitz was connected in under thirty seconds. “Tim, what’s happenin’?”
“You got any reports on an armored car getting boosted lately?”
“How’d you know? You find it?”
“Yeah. I found it. I’ll get back to you.” Shaw cut frequencies and back to the localized band. “Eddie. Whatchya got?”
“Two of the companies down, one to go. Nobody should be on this route, but the guys over at Blackstone
Protective wanted to know if we found the car they lost.”
“Make that third call as you close in. We cut off the van that’s following the drag car and then we block James Madison Way, completely. Sidewalks and everything.”
“This it?”
“Damn right,” Tim Shaw said.
Thirty-Five
By using muscle rather than technology, the protective cap of something like synth-concrete out of which the gas escape vent emerged was broken open in large sections. Then the sections were set aside for possible replacement. There would be no way in which they could ever hope to have the fact that they had disturbed the cap pass detection in close inspection, but from a distance at least, things might well appear normal.
Below the cap was a funnel-shaped feeder leading out of a sixteen-inch diameter pipe. The sensors which read the gas content went wild at the volume.
John Rourke stepped back in order to consider the problem. He wanted a cigar, very badly, but under the circumstances that would be impossible. “I hate to say this,” Rourke at last announced, “but in one way at least, we’ve wasted our time and our energy, gentlemen. This pipe is too narrow, at this end at least, for us to use it as a means of ingress. We’ll be forced to blast our way in. And not from here. On the plus side, the volume of gas indicates that it is being evacuated from
a substantially sized chamber below us.” Almost in the same instant that he said that, the sensors reading the gas began to show that its flow had ceased. There was no visual confirmation.
John Rourke considered that.
“What do you think it is, Doctor Rourke?” Dr. Mentz asked him.
“The reason for the gas?’
“Yes.”
“I hate to make a judgement based on so little hard data, but it seems quite likely that lysergic diethylamide acid in a gaseous state occurring simultaneously with what appears to be a synthetic form of some cyanide-based compound would indicate that the gas is perhaps used as a means of execution where it is, for some reason, necessary that the victims are in a euphoric state while they die. Hence, this isn’t for extermination of vermin or anything like that, but rather sentient beings. I’d say that below us, wherever this pipe ends, there is organized death.”
Paul looked up from the vent. John Rourke saw the tilt of his friend’s head, although he could not see his face. Rourke had come to understand every nuance of the younger man’s body language over the years, just as Paul, it seemed evident, had learned to read him. It was a natural result of fighting side by side, a natural defense system. The body language told Rourke more than language could have at the moment—that Paul was at once shocked and wary. John Rourke, for the benefit of the others, said, “Our experience in earlier days with the ill-fated survival colony from which my son’s late wife originated would be ample precedent for such a thing. The society from which Madison Rourke was rescued by Michael was predicated on a stati
c population figure which could never be violated. Such is the fate of a closed world.
“It might not be imprudent to infer,” Rourke went on, “that the methodology is to some degree or another ritualistic. Ritual takes on great importance in closed societies as well, without the outside influences by which it can be judged.”
“This sounds like a lecture in basic sociology, Herr Doctor,” Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz announced.
“Perhaps it’s their basic sociology; but I hope I’m wrong.”
Thirty-Six
On Ed Shaw’s signal, the pursuit cars converged on James Madison Way simultaneously with the convoy that was increasing its speed in order to distance itself from the grey van and the armored delivery truck. The armored truck was massive, not powered by electricity but by internal combustion, powerful enough to punch through most obstacles—including police cars, Tim Shaw realized.
Tim Shaw shouted to Bob Bilsom, “Cut up over the curb, Bobby—here!” As the unmarked cruiser bounced over the curb diagonally and onto the sidewalk, blocking the south side of the street, Tim Shaw was already throwing open the door. The car’s front bumper was about a yard away from the window of an expensive men’s store—the window mannequins decked out in brightly colored collarless jackets and color coordinated walking shorts—just the sort of peacock-ish crap, Shaw told himself, he’d never get caught dead wearing. But he might get caught dead.
The armored car was barreling up the center of the
street cutting away passenger cars and motorcycles in its path. The grey van was skidding to a stop, sliding doors on both sides opening up.
Tim Shaw glanced behind him. Further along up the street, the convoy was on its way, the Shore Patrol escort cars and one of Eddie’s SWAT vans with it. Uniformed cars would be joining it along the route.
Ed Shaw’s voice crackled from the radio in Tim Shaw’s left ear. “I’m gonna break out the grenade launchers against that armored car.”
“Use ‘em, Eddie,” Shaw told his son. “Get somebody on a bullhorn warning the civilians.”
“Right.”
Men from the team were closing around Tim Shaw now. Shaw shouted to Bob Bilsom, “Bobby—get on PA and warn people to take cover and get off the street. Now!” Tim Shaw had his .45 in his right hand, his thumb poised over the safety, the little .38 Special out of his raincoat, and in his left hand. The rain was lashing across the street on a strong wind, blowing in cold angular sheets. The snapped-down brim of Shaw’s black fedora was low over his face, but he still had to squint against the rain in order to see. “You two guys,” Shaw ordered, “Get a grenade launcher goin’ on that armored truck. We can get ‘em in a crossfire. And stay down. Gonna be a lotta bullets flyin’.” Shaw drew his raincoat closed around him, pocketing the revolver so he had a hand free for the buttons. The raincoat was made of bullet-resistant material. “You stay with Bobby here at the car and cover us,” Shaw told one of the men, an ex-SEAL, turned cop, and one of the best guys in Eddie’s unit. “Don’t spare the suppressive fire.” Then Shaw looked at the remaining six men with him.
“The rest of you guys, let’s go.”
His coat buttoned, the collar up against the rain and his hat screwed down tighter against the wind, Tim Shaw had the little .38 back in his left hand as he started off the curb and into the street.
He was the least well-armed of the group—the others equipped with shotguns, projectile-firing assault rifles and energy weapons.
Tim Shaw thrust the .38 Special revolver into his pocket and took a bullhorn from one of the men near him, squeezed the handle and talked into it as he walked. “This is the Honolulu Police Department TAC Squad. You in the grey late model van. You in the armored truck. Cease all vehicular motion at once. Step out of your vehicles with your hands raised over your heads and clearly in view, weaponless. This is a police order. Failure to cooperate might result in your death or injury. If you surrender now, you will not be harmed.”
Then Shaw handed off the bullhorn, remarking as he did it, “Now we’re through with that bullshit we can get to work.”
The little .38 back into his hand, he kept walking.
The armored truck was steadily rolling down the street, still about a hundred yards off and going slowly now. The men in both open sides of the grey van weren’t shooting yet and Shaw didn’t want to have his men fire first, except at the armored truck, and that to stop it.
Shaw kept walking, closing the distance to the grey van.
He could hear public address systems on both sides of the street urging people to cover, warning them away. In a second or so, the first of the grenade
launchers would open up and, if the shooting hadn’t already started, it would start then. Shaw and his six men were only a few feet from the central parkway which ran for miles along James Madison Way. There were synth-concrete benches that would make good cover against most types of small arms fire, including energy weapons. There were palm trees every few yards, their trunks good cover as well, because the trees were wide enough at the base.
And every man wore body armor.
The downside of that was that the bad guys would be wearing it too …
Marie wore nothing but a lace-trimmed cream-color slip. And Doring knew—he had watched her dress— that beneath the slip Marie wore nothing at all. Even if he had not watched her, such would have been readily apparent.
The way the garment draped over her body, the crack between the cheeks of her rear end was visible, as was, in profile, the nipple of her left breast.
She stood beside the apartment’s solitary window, the curtains pushed back. Rain smudged across the glass in long grey streaks, the volcanic ash which fell when the rain did not, combining with the water to make mud.
Her fingernails were pressed lightly against one of the panes, and every once in a while Doring could hear a faint tapping noise which was not the sound of the rain.
Doring watched her for a second longer, then went back to watching the all-news station on the video screen. There was almost nonstop coverage of Kia-luaea’s continuous erupting. But when the attack on the convoy took place, there would surely be an interruption. And that should be at any moment.
Working through his island contacts, he had worked out the attack plan to the smallest detail, then let the Nazi sympathizers “engaged” for the operation run it themselves. If the operation proved successful, Doring could use the same system again, saving his own considerably diminished force for political assassinations and major acts of more subtle sabotage. If the operation failed, it would still terrorize the populace here in Hawaii and doubtless claim some police and military lives.
Doring was violating his mission parameters, but under the circumstances he had no choice. He, along with Marie and the men, had been infiltrated here as a totally independent unit, hence untraceable if the Americans should prove successful in capturing personnel or records from among the other more conventional infiltration teams.
But along came an old man, a policeman in a funny hat who did not play by the rules of the game. He thought like a general, fought like a commando, killed like a terrorist. Totally without warning, this policeman and the Honolulu TAC Team had raided the safehouse where Doring and his people had been staying. In one raid, the policeman was responsible for the loss of half of Doring’s unit.
If the policeman, Inspector Tim Shaw, proved successful this time, before anything further could be done, Shaw would have to be eliminated.
His radioset near him (he was waiting for word from
a street observer who would alert him once the attack on the missile convoy was in progress) and his eyes on the video screen, Doring could do nothing now but wait.
Marie, he thought, just shaking his head. Women were so wonderfully, admirably simple. She could wile away her time by watching rain drops streaking dirty windows, nothing of consequence on her mind. She would stand there in her underwear just awaiting his pleasure should he wish to take her to bed again (
which he intended to do soon). There were no real worries for her, except perhaps if her hair was properly brushed or she was physically pleasing in the sheets.
Perpetual children women were. In a way, such a life must have had its charms, of course, but to be a woman, Doring thought, would be worse than being dead.
The radioset beside him crackled with static and Doring picked up his earphone; he felt a smile beginning to cross his lips …
Several things happened at once. The grenade launcher from Ed Shaw’s side of the street opened fire, the armored truck slow enough and well in range of it. The men in the grey van started shooting, energy weapons mostly, but at least two conventional projectile-firing submachineguns. The grenade launcher from the south side of the street, where Bob Bilsom had wedged the car, opened up.
Tim Shaw and the six TAC Team men with him moved for cover, already returning fire as they ran.
The .45 in Shaw’s right fist fired twice, then twice again as he dropped down on his knees into the mud behind the cover of one of the synth-concrete benches positioned in the parkway along the median strip of James Madison Way. And Shaw snapped, “First time I wore this suit since it was cleaned—shit.” He snapped off another three rounds, then a fourth and tucked down to make a tactical magazine change. “You guys all right?”
It was his son’s voice coming to him through the earpiece for his radio.
The armored truck was picking up speed again, big clouds of grey smoke and some falling debris from the grenade impacts on either side of it. But the truck was seemingly unaffected and was coming right at them. “In about sixty seconds we won’t be, Eddie. Take the grenade launcher yourself and put a pair on ‘em, try knockin’ out the front tires. And hurry it up.”
Tim Shaw told himself to ignore the armored truck, then proceeded to do it. “Okay, you three with me, you guys, go for the other side. We close in on the van from both sides. Give us fifteen seconds then go for it.” And Tim Shaw was up, running, the guns in his hands spitting lead toward the open doorway of the van on the side nearest him. He reasoned that as long as he was moving, chances were slimmer that the armored truck would pile into him and the longer he left things with the van, the worse they’d get.