Tropical Terror

11

Murdock, DeWitt, and Dobler watched through the glass as Ching tried to bring the prisoner back to consciousness.

Then Murdock went inside. Ching looked at him.

“What the hell, Cap. Nothing else was working. We don’t have time to play games.”

“He’s coming out of it,” Murdock said.

Zhang shuddered. Then his hands moved and his shoulders hunched where he lay with his chest on the table. Ching had bandaged the Chinese man’s shoulder and stopped the blood.

Zhang shook his head, then lifted it off his arms. Tears streamed out of his eyes. His face went white for a moment. Then his eyes half closed.

“You shot me!”

“I told you I would. The next one goes into your knee, so you’ll never walk again. Like the sound of that?”

“No.”

“So, back to the start. Where on our base has the nuclear weapon been hidden?”

“On the base. Weapon?” His face froze for a moment, then relaxed. “Yes, yes, I remember. Just don’t shoot me again. I have a low tolerance for pain. No one knew before this. The weapon is a class-three bomb for aerial delivery. It is forty kilotons and is in a heavy wooden crate. The crate has been put into a truck and three men who are in sailor uniforms and are Caucasians. They move it from site to site on the base. They think it’s a security test of the base. We told them it’s a nuclear bomb. They think it’s just an exercise.”

“It’s on the Pearl Harbor base?” Murdock asked.

The Chinese man looked up, seeing Murdock for the first time. “Ah. A commander. Shows more respect for my rank. Yes, a truck on Pearl Harbor itself. It was easy to come into the base with fake papers a week ago.”

“What kind of a truck is it?”

“Navy truck we stole. It is outfitted with nuclear energy warning signs, and more signs indicating that this is a nuclear energy testing unit, sniffing out any radiation leakage on the base or from the ships or nuclear weapons.”

“Good, Zhang. You’re doing fine. You might live through the day after all. Now, just where is that truck?”

“I have no idea. No control.”

“Where is it based?”

“This is an extra truck so it has no garage.”

“How many of these trucks are on-base?”

“Twenty-five. Some in repair, most on duty watching for any leakage.”

“Is the bomb fully armed, fused, and ready to explode?” Murdock asked.

“Absolutely. A threat is useless unless you can back it up.” The prisoner shivered. “I need medical attention. I want a doctor.”

Murdock left the room and found a phone in the observation area. He needed three tries to get the right office. It was the Radiation Search Facility. He dialed.

“No, sir, I’m sorry, all of our people are out looking for the nuclear device. I’m the only one here. I’m a civilian secretary.”

“Do you have radio contact with your boss?”

“No sir, no radios left here. All in use in the field.”

Murdock called Admiral Bennington’s office. He got a captain and told him what they had found out from the prisoner.

“We think he’s telling the truth. The man has a low pain threshold. He says there are twenty-five of these trucks. We need to find the right one.”

The captain groaned. “I just authorized Commander Running to dispatch three of those rigs to Hickam and three more to the Camp Catlin Naval Reserve area. I’ll see if I can get him back and have him pull all his units in for a quick check.”

“Won’t help much, Captain. The one we want won’t have a radio and wouldn’t come in anyway. It may be in hiding now.”

On the far side of the Naval Reserve area, three men worked over a one-ton van-type truck. They had parked it in back of a grove of trees at the very bottom part of the camp near Highway H-1 and well out of sight of any prying eyes. They had taken compressed air bottles from inside the rig, attached them to hoses and nozzles, and quickly stripped off the Navy logos and Navy gray paint and all signs about nuclear energy. The triangle signs were removed, and what remained was a civilian truck in dull blue showing logos of a brewery.

They made one more inspection. Then two men went into the cab and the third into the back, and they drove through the military reservation to the back gate and had the guard check their papers. They were cleared to deliver beer to the non-com and the officers’ clubs on this day and to use this gate.

The young Shore Patrolman on guard at the gate gave the papers a quick look and waved them through. He had been concentrating on the exercise underway to find a nuke bomb that had been planted somewhere in Pearl Harbor. There was always another test being run.

He turned his attention to three cars lined up at the barrier. It was a duty weekend coming up and the reservists were piling onto the base. It would be a busy time for him.

The three civilians in the truck used a cell phone and made contact the way they had been instructed.

“This is shit-kicking fun, outwitting the damn Navy,” the tallest of the three said. His name was Charley Blount. He was driving and in charge of the truck and cargo and getting it to the right spot at the right time.

Charley checked his watch. Almost four in the afternoon. The rig was due near the front of the Ala Moana shopping center in downtown Honolulu at six P.M. sharp. The strange little man who had hired them had been precise. He had also been free with his money. He had given each of them five hundred dollars for the four days’ work. It had been in advance, and was only a third of what they would earn when the job was done.

Charley drove at an even, legal speed. He’d been cautioned to obey every traffic law so he didn’t get stopped by police. From the shopping center he would get instructions where to go. It was an exciting operation, and would help improve the security at the base. He wasn’t sure just what being out here in the middle of Honolulu would prove, but it must fit in some way. The voice on the phone would have an explanation for the trip.

Back at the base, the twenty-five trucks used to test for radiation were slowly being ticked off by their commander. He had eighteen inspected and six more on their way in to the shop. He was sure none of his men or equipment had been compromised, and the best way to show it was to have an all-present-or-accounted-for report. If one of his trucks had been hijacked and used for the Chinese bomb, he might as well turn in his request for retirement tomorrow.

How in hell could the Chinese get a truck? How could they smuggle an active nuclear weapon into Hawaii and then get it on a truck? Questions he would probably never get answers for.

Two more trucks rolled into the big garage, and he went out to check them over himself. Both were set up strictly according to regs. No deviations, and certainly no place to put a one-ton crude nuclear weapon. The commander grinned. Only six more trucks to go.

Back at the SEALs’ official quarters, it had been a half hour after their questioning of the Chinese prisoner. He had been sent by security to the hospital clinic, treated, and returned to a security cell. No questions had been asked about how the man had been shot.

Now Murdock told his fifteen men the update. He had ordered six vehicles, and put three men in three, two in the rest.

“The brass will look in the usual spots for a truck,” he said. “We need to check out the long shots, where we would hide if we wanted to lose a truck. Work the boundary fences, the waterfront, anything or anywhere you can think of where you would want to hide a truck. Remember, this isn’t a big rig, like a one-ton with a van body on back. Let’s go.”

Murdock and Dobler drove out in a new experimental rig called the Flyer. It looked a little like a World War II Jeep, but had only one seat for the driver in front and room for two men in back. In the center of it was a sturdy gun mount that would take a .50-caliber machine gun.

It had no top and had an extremely low profile for better use in combat and for hiding in shallow gullies, then popping up and slamming .50-caliber rounds into the enemy.

It also had a diesel engine that boomed the little crate along at sixty mph on an open road. It had full-time four-wheel drive and four disc brakes. The high road clearance meant it could drive over rough country and rubble and make it. Murdock had heard that the price on the skeletal little rig was a hundred thousand dollars. He hoped the price would come down if the military went for the little bouncer.

Murdock drove as they headed for the air base at Hickam Field and began their prowl. All the SEALs had on their Motorolas, and they would check out just how far they would reach.

Everywhere that Murdock drove he drew questions and admiring stares at the little Flyer. They prowled along the base fences, through an abandoned section, then past the Fort Kamehameha Military Reservation next door. Murdock stopped the Flyer and waved at some curious onlookers, then turned to Dobler.

“If you were hiding this truck, where would you put it?”

“Not out here in the open, for damn sure. I’d stash it in some trees or brush where nobody usually went. If there is any place like that on this reservation, or Hickam, or the Reserve area, or Pearl.”

It was almost dark by the time they headed back. The radio call came through weak but readable.

“Commander Murdock, I think we have something. This is Lam and Bradford. We’re on the south side of Camp Catlin, the Navy Reserve area. We’ve found what looks like stripped-off paint that shows nuclear danger signs. We even have three of the little triangular signs that warn of radiation. Looks like they used some kind of blasting power to peel the paint strips off the rig.”

“Yeah, Lam. Get to a phone and call the admiral’s office and report what you’ve found and where you are. We’re on our way over there from Hickam.”

By the time Murdock found his way off Hickam and to the south edge of Camp Catlin, there were three carloads of Shore Patrol and officers on the scene. A commander who looked like he was having a heart attack stood to one side.

“The bastards! They painted a truck to look like one of mine. I can see it all here. It must have cruised all over the bases, the way my other rigs do. Logos and everything. So they stripped off the paint. What does the truck look like now?”

“He probably went off-base,” one of the captains said. He used a radio to ask the various gates if a one-ton truck had checked out that afternoon.

A NEST truck rolled up and six men came out in protective suits. They used sensors and began to scour the area, including the stripped-off paint and the ground where the truck must have parked.

The civilian Murdock had seen at the admiral’s office flipped up a face mask and took off a head covering. He looked at a small meter and nodded.

“Yeah, I get a point-four reading. Which means there is a little bit of radiation leakage on the bomb. Not unusual. Not dangerous. A point-four is like about three hundred wristwatch dials glowing all at once.”

Admiral Bennington stepped up. “So the truck with the bomb inside was parked here. You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

The admiral turned to one of his aides. “Any reports from the gates? Most interested in the closest one.”

“Yes, sir. I have a report from gate five that would be nearest to this spot. A beer truck went through about two hours ago. Looked like one of the trucks that normally services the clubs in this area.”

The admiral headed for his car. At the door he pointed to Murdock. “SEALs follow me. They are off-base now. We can really use your talents for this one.”

At the gate the same man who had checked the truck through was still on duty. He dug out the paper. The truck was not one that usually supplied the base. It was the New Wave Brewery. There was no such name in the phone book or with information.

Admiral Bennington leaned against his car and turned an unlit cigarette around and around with the fingers of one hand.

“We have a live, armed nuclear bomb out there in the city streets of Honolulu. It could be set off accidentally or on purpose at any time. How the hell do we find it?”

Three of his aides standing around simply shook their heads. The admiral looked over at the four SEALs.

“Murdock, you’re the resident genius on this sort of chase. Just what the hell can we do next?”

“The civilian police have to be in on it now, sir. They might be able to find that beer truck. Honolulu PD and the State Police can throw out a lot of eyes watching and they can get on it in twenty seconds. They have a lot of units out there. Get the best hard description we can on that truck from the gate guard. Now we have to think about the entire island as the target area.”

“The second I call the police, the newspapers and TV get the story. There could be a horrendous panic.”

“Don’t mention the Chinese or the bomb,” Murdock said. “This truck could contain some highly secret material. That should be enough to get the cops moving and not create a panic.”

The admiral talked quietly to another aide, who left for the admiral’s car, where Murdock guessed there must be a radio or cell phone they could contact the police with.

Admiral Bennington looked up. “Now, what the hell can we do next?”

Nobody said a word. The admiral looked at the four SEALs.

“Murdock, you’ve been our answer man so far. Any more suggestions?”

“Yes, sir. If you haven’t already, stall the noon deadline tomorrow with the Chinese about this situation.”

“Working on that.”

Murdock watched the NEST team trying to track the truck from where it parked. The men moved out ten feet, then reworked the ground with their sensors. They tried it again, then gave up.

The captain who had gone to the admiral’s car pushed out of it and hurried over to the admiral. They talked a moment. Then Admiral Bennington turned to the two dozen men around him.

“You might as well know this up front. The State Department has just approved a request of the Chinese Navy. They have asked for safe passage for a Chinese cruiser and two destroyers to approach within a mile of Pearl and bring a cease-fire agreement. We don’t know what it is. We have been ordered to stand down any aggressive action against the Chinese troops on or near Hawaii, on the sea or in the air. The State Department, speaking for the President and the National Security Council, has ordered us to stand down. We’ll be notifying all of our commanders under fire of the order.

“We still have to find that damned truck. It isn’t covered in any way by this order. Let’s get on it, people.”