Читать книгу Hostage Tower - Alistair MacLean, Alistair MacLean, John Denis - Страница 5

It was a sheltered place, twenty-eight miles west of Stuttgart: a plateau in wooded country screened from the road by trees, and hardly ever overflown. It made an ideal secret firing range. The US Army used the unfenced fields to test their newest toy, the General Electric Lap-Laser-gun.

The US Army had four Lap-Lasers at Stuttgart. Not very many, they conceded, but still one-third of those known to exist. For the manufacturers had made only twelve so far, and they were as yet in the experimental stage. Since the Army chiefs were confident that neither General Electric’s security nor their own had been breached, they took their time about putting the Lap-Laser through its paces. No one, after all, they reasoned, was going to steal it …

On the day appointed by Smith for the theft of all four guns, a fine but drenching rain speckled the goggles of the Army’s chief weapons instructor as he strained his eyes skywards to pick up the incoming helicopter. The fretful buzz of its motor sounded intermittently out of the heavy clouds. He chewed his gum viciously and spat, a not un-accomplished combined operation.

The helicopter was part of the daily Lap-Laser routine, bringing the precious guns from the big, closely guarded Stuttgart base to the range each morning, and taking them back again in the evening for safe keeping. The guns could not be tested at the base: they were too powerful, too unpredictable.

Apart from that, they needed an enormous power source, and rather than transport huge and unwieldy banks of generators from place to place, the Army preferred the option of an isolated testing ground where they could install a small nuclear power plant.

The colonel glanced back over his shoulder at his sleekly sinister ‘babies’, all four stripped and stacked away, ready to leave on the return trip to the base. He grinned and winked at his second-in-command at his side.

‘They’re really somethin’ aren’t they.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Yeah,’ acknowledged the major, through a stubby cigar that rarely left his stained lips.

There were US Army Generals, plenty of them, who would greet with genuinely blank astonishment any leading question about a laser-gun, and the chief weapons instructor and his 2–IC basked in the realization that they were part of an impressively small band of experts. For example, if put to the trouble, which they rarely were, they would be able to explain that the Lap-Laser was made possible by advances not in ballistics or aero-dynamics, but in the field of optics. That statement in itself was enough to confound most questioners.

The colonel grinned appreciatively at the final touch the laser-gunners had insisted on adding to the already successful day’s tests: at a range of a thousand metres they had drilled ‘USAAF’ through a four-inch plate of sheet steel as cleanly as if it had been stencilled on cartridge-paper.

The Lap-Laser’s guidance system was similar to that of a conventional radar device, except that instead of using radio beams, it reflected beams of light when seeking its target. It could be sensitized to any target within its range, or any kind of target, because the mouse-ear detectors of the Lap-Laser, on either side of its firing mechanism, were tuned to distinguish the properties of a variety of different materials. They could run from a dozen different sorts of metal, to wood, brick, or the human body.

Once the target was located, the Lap-Laser sent out a concentrated ray of appallingly destructive force, which annihilated anything in its direct path.

Its other great advantage was speed. It is the practice in orthodox electronics to work down to a nano-second – one thousandth of a millionth of a second. If even greater speed is required, the only alternative carrier is light, which can be con trolled to a pico-second, or micromicro-second – a millionth of a millionth fraction of time, of such minute duration as to be incomprehensible in human terms.

The Lap-Laser worked to pico-second tolerances, using a processor which General Electric built into the controlling computer specially for the job. To give the optical system the necessary speed to match the sophisticated laser-gun, the processor employed mini-lasers no larger than a grain of salt.

Allied to a power source of massive concentration and force, the lasers combined to produce a weapon that was like a glimpse into a fearful future. Everything ultimately depended on the uses to which the Lap-Laser was put, and on the inviolable guarantee that it could never fall into the wrong hands.

Yet the hands of Mister Smith were among the dirtiest in creation.

And the instrument of his criminal ambition was at that moment speeding down an autobahn in a hired car to keep an appointment with the four deadliest ‘babies’ of all time.

‘AUSGANG-STUTTGART’ the road sign read, and Michael Graham obediently urged the BMW into the stream that peeled off the motorway.

When the price was right, Graham was invariably obedient. Van Beck’s price had been not only right, but generous. The unknown client, the German explained, was prepared to pay for excellence. And Mike Graham, van Beck had known, was awesome in his field of weapons and weapon systems. He had received the kind of training that only the US Army could supply, and had used a privileged position to enlarge his knowledge and raise his performance to a peak of unparalleled capability.

Smith had provided the means, through van Beck, to steal the Lap-Lasers, but the plan was Mike Graham’s, and he turned it over in his mind for the thousandth time.

Using a laser-guided, tripod-mounted electronic surveillance device over a range of more than half a mile, Graham had bugged the US Army base guardroom to obtain the weekly series of passwords that would gain him admittance to the off-limits compound at the right time … when the helicopter touched down on its run back from the firing range.

Graham had also sounded out the other parts of the base’s territory which interested him: the officers’ club, and the living quarters for visiting top brass, whose faces would not be known to the guards. He had selected and marked his target officer, and now had a complete set of forged papers in his new identity. He drove carefully along the public road through the base, away from the off-limits section, and pulled into a cul-de-sac not far from the officers’ quarters, located in a mini-apartment block.

Ten minutes later, a figure in the uniform of a General of the United States Army strode the short distance from the living quarters to the officers’ club. He had a bundle under his arm. He checked his wrist-watch, peered up at the sky, and made his way to a jeep parked at the rear of the club.

The guard corporal dropped his girlie magazine and jumped to his feet as the jeep screeched to a halt outside the guardroom. He joined another soldier at the door, and they peered out into the near-darkness. The harsh whirr of the descending helicopter’s engine sounded loudly in their ears.

A man leapt lithely from the jeep, and the guardroom lights winked on his General’s stars. The corporal tightened his grip on his M–1 carbine.

‘Halt,’ he commanded. Graham did. ‘It’s an emergency, for Christ’s sake, Corporal,’ he shouted. ‘I’m in one hell of a hurry.’

‘Advance and be recognized.’ Snorting with impatience. Graham advanced. The GIs saw a man they did not know, tall and bronzed, with brown hair and moustache, broad-shouldered and thin-faced, looking at them from soft, quick, intelligent eyes. He had a commanding, arrogant manner. But then, the soldiers reasoned, Generals usually did.

‘Hurry it up,’ Graham ordered. The banshee wail of the chopper told him it would soon be settling on the launch-pad in the compound beyond the guard block.

‘Password,’ the corporal rapped.

‘Don’t play games with me,’ Graham snapped. ‘You first – that’s the drill.’

‘Sleepy dog,’ the guard rejoined.

‘Angle-iron,’ said Graham, handing over his papers.

The corporal recollected the name. ‘General Otis T. Brick.’ Visiting brass. Weapons expert. He snapped up a salute. ‘Yessir General,’ he bellowed, while his subordinate pressed the button to raise the barrier to the compound.

Graham vaulted back into the jeep, gunned the motor to speed into the compound and slew to a halt in a spray of gravel near the launch-pad. Three startled soldiers, waiting for the helicopter to come back from the range with the four crated laser-guns on board, jumped like scalded tomcats when Graham screamed, ‘Get away from there – now!’

‘Ten-shun!’ barked the corporal in charge, and all three snapped into rigidity.

Graham saluted, and said, ‘Get your men away from this area. There’s a leak in the nuclear generator shielding out at the range. The radioactivity could have spread to the guns, or even the helicopter. My orders are to take the chopper away.’

‘Who – who are you, s-sir,’ the corporal stammered. Graham had already raced back to the jeep and extricated the anti-radiation suit he had brought with him. Climbing into it, he shouted above the roar of the settling helicopter, ‘General Brick, Third Army Special Weapons Division. Now move it, soldier – move it!’

Graham reached back into the jeep and pulled out a geiger counter, and what looked like a steel brief-case. The helicopter’s rotors were beating the air, and the pilot looked anxiously out at the charade on the tarmac. Graham ducked under the sweeping blades, and wrenched open the door.

‘Out!’ he ordered the pilot. ‘Radiation scare. You could have got a dose. The Emergency Med. Unit’ll be here soon to check you over. I’ll take the chopper away. Don’t switch the motor off.’

The pilot needed no second bidding. He scrambled out of the seat and dropped to the ground, almost colliding with Graham.

‘Will you be all right, sir?’ he screamed.

‘The suit will protect me,’ Graham shouted. ‘I’ll fly the chopper to the far end of the range and quarantine it. Look after yourself, man.’

The blare of a motor-horn from the direction of the guardroom drew the eyes of all four men on the ground away from the helicopter, where Graham was already revving the engine.

Two jeeps packed with men hurtled towards the launch-pad. A burst of machine-gun fire came from the leading vehicle. The three soldiers and the pilot scattered to hit the deck, and the jeeps pulled up short of a stack of gasolene cans a hundred yards from the chopper. Graham throttled viciously, and another spurt of tracer fire arced towards him.

Bullets pinged off the shell of the helicopter, and one tore a track across the shoulder of his anti-radiation suit, but he felt no pain. A third salvo stuttered out, and Graham, who had been about to take off, swore brutally. He snapped open the clasp of his brief-case and drew out a heavy, ugly Schmeisser machine pistol.

He could barely see the two vehicles in the pool of blinding light, so he hit the easier target.

A vast swell of sound erupted as the gasolene cans exploded. The GIs were safe behind their jeeps, but there was now no possibility of stopping Graham.

Behind a concealing wall of smoke and flame, the helicopter rose into the air, taking the false General, and four crated but fully operative Lap-Laser-guns, away to do the bidding of Mister Smith.

The troops on the ground fired madly at the departing plane to ease their frustration, until the officer in charge resignedly flapped his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

‘Who the hell was he, sir?’ asked his sergeant.

‘Christ knows,’ the captain returned wearily, ‘but he sure wasn’t General Brick, because I’ve just been talking to General Brick in the officers’ club. Somebody walked off with his dress uniform, and it wasn’t his batman, so it must’ve been that sonofabitch up there.’

He tipped his peaked cap back on his head, put his hands on his hips, and whistled out a tight-lipped sigh. ‘Can you imagine the crap that’s going to be flying around when the brass find out we’ve lost not just one of their favourite toys, but all four? Jeeze.’ He shook his head, almost admiringly. ‘You gotta hand it to that guy. He sure pulled a neat trick, whoever he is.’

But the Army never did learn Graham’s identity. The BMW was untraceable, and Graham had made no fingerprints. His abandoned clothing was unmarked, and in any case had been bought from a chain store. He might as well have been a ghost for all the clues he left. Or a spook.

He flew the helicopter eastwards for perhaps fifteen minutes on a pre-arranged flight path. Then he brought her in low and skimmed the tree-tops, his eyes combing the ground.

There it was. A winking light in a pool of blackness. He flashed his own landing lights, and three pairs of vehicle headlamps came on in answer.

Mike set the plane down quickly and expertly, forming a square in the deserted field with the big, dark Citröen, the Volkswagen, and the tough little pick-up truck that waited to greet him.

He ran to the larger car, and the driver’s window slid noiselessly down. ‘You have them?’ asked a man in the uniform as a chauffeur.

Mike said, ‘Yep.’

‘Excellent,’ the chauffeur returned briefly. He spoke guttural German. He reached over to the front passenger seat and handed Graham a loosely wrapped parcel and a brief-case of soft matt leather.

‘Clothing, your size,’ he grunted. ‘In the valise – money, and the keys to the Volkswagen. Don’t worry about the lasers. We’ll load them into the truck. You’ll be contacted for Phase Two. For now, disappear.’

Graham opened the brief-case, and raised his eyebrows as he saw the fat bundles of small denomination US dollars. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ The chauffeur nodded.

Mike tried to peer beyond him to the man whom he could dimly see in the rear offside passenger seat, but a panel of tinted glass blocked his view. The windows were tinted, too. The man had not spoken a word, and sat hunched inside an enveloping overcoat, with a black Homburg pulled down over his brow.

‘Thank you, too,’ Graham said, cheerily. The mystery man stayed silent and unmoving. Mike gave up the struggle and walked away, whistling.

The chauffeur turned and slid back the glass panel. ‘I’ll transfer the guns and take the pick-up to the warehouse, sir,’ he said, respectfully.

‘Do that,’ Smith grunted. ‘I’ll drive the Citröen and see you at the hotel. Don’t make any mistakes. Graham didn’t. He’s good.’

The chauffeur nodded. ‘And the helicopter?’

‘Kill it,’ Smith ordered. ‘With Graham’s uniform and anti-radiation suit in it.’

Mike was a mile away when he heard the ‘crump’ of the explosion, and saw in his rear-view mirror the funeral pyre of the helicopter.

‘You gotta hand it to that guy,’ he murmured, patting the brief-case on the seat beside him. ‘He sure pulls neat tricks, whoever he is.’