Countdown (12 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
AT FIRST LORRAINE ABBOTT wanted nothing to do with McGarvey. As she said, he could have been anyone with some inside knowledge. Even Mossad trying to trick her into revealing the extent of her own information.
“If I were a Mossad agent, it would have been an extraordinary admission on my part, telling you about En Gedi,” he'd said.
“If it's true,” she'd countered.
“That's what I'm here to find out.”
They had left the cocktail lounge early, and McGarvey had
gone up to his room where he cleaned up and changed clothes. A few minutes before nine he went up to her seventh-floor room and knocked on the door.
gone up to his room where he cleaned up and changed clothes. A few minutes before nine he went up to her seventh-floor room and knocked on the door.
“I want to tell you one thing,” she said, letting him in. “I am no spy.”
“Neither am I,” McGarvey said and he motioned for her to keep silent. For a moment or two she had no idea what he was trying to tell her as he gestured at the ceiling, the drapes, the television set, and the telephone, but then she caught it.
“The room is probably bugged,” he mouthed the words.
She nodded her understanding.
“Are you ready for dinner?” he asked out loud.
She was dressed in a simple dark skirt and white silk blouse, sandals on her feet, and only a slight amount of makeup to accent her high cheekbones and wide eyes. She looked freshly scrubbed, almost but not quite innocent. She nodded a little uncertainly. “Here in the hotel?” she asked.
“I thought we'd go for a walk first. It's a nice evening. Afterward you can buy, last time in San Francisco it was my treat, remember?”
She shot him an angry look, but got her purse. They picked up their tail as they crossed the lobby to the front doors, and outside they walked across the broad driveway and headed back into the city, the night pleasantly cool with a nice breeze from the sea.
“Did you call the general?” McGarvey asked when they were well away from the hotel. Traffic was still fairly heavy. The city smelled of car exhaust and something else, something almost exotic.
“No. I didn't think it was too smart under the circumstances.”
“They're probably going to kick both of us out of the country by morning,” McGarvey said. He didn't bother turning around to see if their tail had followed them from the hotel. He knew the man had. Instead, he kept his eye on the passing cars and trucks, because he had even less doubt that he had been made from the moment he'd shown up at the hotel. The Mossad would
be frantically trying to figure out what the hell he was doing here.
be frantically trying to figure out what the hell he was doing here.
Lorraine bridled. “I'll be damned if I'll let them,” she snapped. “I'm still an NPT representative, and there are still questions about the incident for which I've received no satisfactory answers.”
“This is their country, Dr. Abbott,” he said. “And they consider themselves at war. If they want you to leave Israel you'll have to go.” He looked closely at her. She was angry, but he could see just a little fear and uncertainty tinged in her eyes. Trotter had told him that she'd done a little work for the Company. But it had mainly been of the variety of keeping an open eye and reporting what she saw. “If and when they ask you to leave, I want you to go without an argument.”
She stopped short and faced him. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded.
“At this point, someone who is trying to save your life, Dr. Abbott,” he said firmly.
She was taken aback. Her mouth opened.
“There have already been half a dozen lives lost,” he told her. “And if you get in the way they won't hesitate to pull the trigger, no matter who you represent ⦠or how pretty you are.”
This last stung. “Goddamnit ⦔ she started to protest angrily, but McGarvey took her arm forcefully and they continued down the street.
“Now, just what is it I'm supposed to be looking for out at En Gedi?” he asked.
“Air vents,” she said after a moment. “And the equipment for a laminar airflow installation. If they're storing weapons out there, they'll probably be deep underground.” She looked at him. “They'll shoot you.”
“I'll take my chances.”
“You're crazy if you think you can just sneak in and look around.”
“It's called a finesse,” McGarvey said. “Now let's get to a very public restaurant. You and I are going to have a loud argument.”
McGarvey pulled the small dark blue Fiat he had stolen from a side street in Tel Aviv to the side of the road and doused the lights. Below in the valley about two miles away was the En Gedi Nuclear Research Station, lit up like a small town along the shore of the Dead Sea. A faint wisp of steam came from the one small cooling tower. Even from this distance he could see some activity within the compound.
If the weapons were stockpiled down there, the Israelis would have been fighting a difficult battle from day one. If they guarded the place too heavily, it would call attention to the fact that something more than research was going on. If they were too lax, it would invite penetration.
Lorraine had put on a convincing performance, raising her voice so loudly that everyone in the restaurant had stopped and looked at them.
She had jumped up and started to leave, but he managed to grab her arm. Immediately she whirled around and slapped him in the face. “You sonofabitch,” she shouted, and she stomped off.
McGarvey threw down enough money for their bill and hurried out after her, but she was already halfway down the street. “Then go, bitch,” he shouted, and he turned and stormed off in the opposite direction.
In the first sixty seconds the Mossad team who had been watching them was confused. This wasn't what they expected at all. McGarvey had been easily able to shake the one man who'd split off to follow him, had doubled back to an area of apartment buildings, finding the Fiat, and headed out of the city.
His cheek still stung, and he reached up to rub it, a faint smile coming to his lips. He had told her to go directly back to the hotel and start packing without a word to anyone. He hoped that she had done just that.
He had been told a long time ago that if getting in the back door was impossible, you could always try the front door. The trick was in coming up with the key.
Trotter had wanted him to confirm the existence of the weapons
stockpile here. Going through the back door could get him killed, so he'd been provided with a key. It had come with his weapon in the diplomatic pouch.
stockpile here. Going through the back door could get him killed, so he'd been provided with a key. It had come with his weapon in the diplomatic pouch.
He pulled the plastic NPT Inspection Service badge out of his pocket, clipped it to his lapel, and switched on the headlights. He pulled away from the side of the road and headed down into the valley.
For most of the way he drove slowly but steadily, keeping the car in a straight line. It was getting late, nearly midnight, and there was no other traffic on the road.
At the bottom the highway curved south. A broad road led east for two hundred yards to the research facility's main gate. Anything that moved on the highway in the vicinity of the entrance road would be carefully monitored. Guard towers rose every three hundred yards or so from the inner fence.
As he neared the access road, McGarvey sped up a little, then stabbed on his brakes as he swung the car left, nearly running it off the highway. When he finally got the car straightened out, he turned onto the entrance road and shakily drove toward the main gate, swerving from side to side, alternately hitting his brake and the accelerator.
Two men came out of the gatehouse and watched him. A second later one of them hurried back inside while the other stepped around the barrier and started to wave his arms.
McGarvey slumped over the wheel at the last moment and let the car roll slowly the last few yards, crashing it gently into the fence, his head bouncing off the wheel and then lying on the horn.
Someone was shouting something, and a moment later the car door was yanked open and he was pulled away from the steering wheel. He let his eyes flutter.
“Heart ⦔ he stammered. “It's my ⦠heart.”
Already there were four or five armed guards surrounding the car and others coming from the compound on the run.
Hands were fumbling at the plastic badge on his lapel. McGarvey opened his eyes and looked up into the concerned face of a young soldier.
“Please help me,” he whispered. “My heart ⦔
“It's all right, take it easy now,” the soldier said. He shouted something in Hebrew over his shoulder. McGarvey thought he caught the English letters NPT, and the guard turned back to him. “An ambulance is coming. Just take it easy. Do you have any medicine with you?”
“No ⦠nothing,” McGarvey whispered, trying to grab for the young man's tunic. “Help me ⦔
“Easy now,” the soldier said. He took McGarvey's NPT badge and handed it out to one of the other soldiers, who said something in Hebrew.
Within ninety seconds the ambulance, siren blaring and blue lights flashing, came from within the facility, eased through the gate, and pulled up alongside McGarvey's car.
“I don't want to die,” McGarvey whispered.
“You'll be okay now,” the soldier said. “Just lie back and relax.”
The soldier moved aside as two ambulance attendants rushed over. One of them opened McGarvey's shirt and listened to his chest with a stethoscope.
“It hurts,” McGarvey whispered.
“You got chest pains?” the attendant asked. “Your heart sounds good.”
“Christ, it hurts ⦠hard to breathe.”
“Let's get him to the clinic,” the attendant shouted.
With the help of the other attendant and one of the soldiers, they eased McGarvey out of the car, placed him on the gurney, and started to strap him down, but he struggled up against them.
“No ⦠God no ⦠!”
“All right, no straps,” the attendant said, and they rolled him over to the ambulance and put him inside. One of them got in the back and the other hurried around front and climbed in behind the wheel.
As they started to move, the attendant placed a blood pressure cuff on McGarvey's left arm. McGarvey could see out the windows as they passed through the inner gate. He reached around to the small of his back, grabbed his gun, and, pushing the attendant back, sat up, bringing his pistol out.
“I don't want to kill you,” he said.
THE AMBULANCE ATTENDANT stared openmouthed in stunned disbelief as McGarvey yanked off the blood pressure cuff and swung his legs over the side of the gurney.
“If you cooperate with me, I promise that no one will get hurt.”
The driver had no idea yet that anything was wrong. The attendant with McGarvey hadn't uttered a sound.
“Take off your uniform,” McGarvey said urgently. “Now.”
The attendant hurriedly began unbuttoning his white tunic
as McGarvey twisted around, opened the door to the cab, and placed the barrel of his pistol at the base of the driver's head. He could see through the windshield that they were approaching the dispensary. At the restaurant, Lorraine had drawn him a quick sketch map of the facility. The air vents and airflow equipment, if they existed, would most likely be located somewhere in the vicinity of the secondary power-generation building. She had vaguely remembered something from one of her early inspection tours. There would be procedures, she'd been told, should the reactor building itself ever have to be sealed. The people inside would need an emergency air supply.
as McGarvey twisted around, opened the door to the cab, and placed the barrel of his pistol at the base of the driver's head. He could see through the windshield that they were approaching the dispensary. At the restaurant, Lorraine had drawn him a quick sketch map of the facility. The air vents and airflow equipment, if they existed, would most likely be located somewhere in the vicinity of the secondary power-generation building. She had vaguely remembered something from one of her early inspection tours. There would be procedures, she'd been told, should the reactor building itself ever have to be sealed. The people inside would need an emergency air supply.
“There has been an accident in the air vent building,” McGarvey said softly.
The driver jerked as if he had been shot. He started to turn around but McGarvey jammed the gun harder against his neck.
“I don't want to kill you or your partner, but I will unless you cooperate with me completely. Do you understand?”
The driver was swallowing hard, but he nodded. The attendant with McGarvey had the tunic off and was removing his trousers.
“Slow it down and turn here.”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” the driver stuttered. “What air vent building? I don't ⦔
“I think you do,” McGarvey said. “It will be a big building near the power generators.”
“It's G-3 between the reactor building and the cooling tower,” the attendant in back said. “For God's sake, do as he says, Misha.”
The driver had slowed down. They were barely twenty yards from the back of the dispensary. He said something in Hebrew.
McGarvey cocked the Walther's hammer. “Now,” he demanded.
“Yes, yes, I'm doing it,” the driver cried, and he slowed even further as he hauled the ambulance around in a tight circle.
“Cut the siren,” McGarvey ordered.
The driver did as he was told.
“Nice and easy now. And I don't want you to stop for anything, anything whatsoever, do you understand this?”
“Yes, sir.”
McGarvey turned back to the other attendant who was now sitting in his shorts and boots. “I want some surgical tape and a packet of gauze,” he said.
As the attendant was rummaging in the ambulance's supplies, McGarvey pulled off his jacket and donned the white tunic, buttoning it up over his shirt, while keeping an eye on the driver.
It wouldn't take very long now for security to realize that something was wrong and issue an all-out alert.
The attendant's trousers were a little small, but they were baggy so he was able to pull them on over his own trousers. He got up from the gurney and made the attendant take his place, lying face up.
“We're coming up on it now,” the driver called back. “Fifty meters.”
“Can you drive inside the building?”
“I don't know.”
“Try,” McGarvey said. He turned back to the other attendant and quickly strapped him down to the gurney, stuffing a wad of gauze into the man's mouth, and then taping more gauze over his face as if he had been severely injured. The ambulance was beginning to slow down again. He grabbed a stethoscope, looped it around his neck, and then crawled forward into the seat next to the driver. The man was highly agitated, his eyes bulging practically out of their sockets with fear.
So far the alarm had not sounded. But it wouldn't be much longer now.
They were approaching a large, three-story metal building, two squat stacks rising five feet above the flat roofline. There were no windows, but on the front and side walls were large service doors, both of them closed, flanked by smaller doors.
The building could have housed almost anything and was probably used as a warehouse for parts and equipment even if it also housed the laminar airflow equipment that Lorraine Abbott had described for him.
“They would have to hide it out in the open so that no one from the NPT Inspection Service would know it for what it was,” she'd said bitterly.
“But you had no reason to be suspicious.”
She smiled wanly. “You forget, that's our job. But I guess we
were blinded by the fact that Israel was operating a research reactor that we all thought was a fuel breeder.” She shook her head. “Which it is, of course. But we never thought to look for evidence of a weapons stockpile.”
were blinded by the fact that Israel was operating a research reactor that we all thought was a fuel breeder.” She shook her head. “Which it is, of course. But we never thought to look for evidence of a weapons stockpile.”
“That's what I'll try to find out,” he said.
“Goddamnit, they'll shoot you,” she insisted again.
He had grinned. “If they do, it'll prove that whatever they're trying to hide is damned important.”
“You're crazy.”
“I've got a job to do,” he'd said.
“Pull up at the front service door,” McGarvey told the driver. “And hit your siren.”
The driver nervously swung the ambulance around and stopped in front of the door. He flipped the switch for the siren, the bellowing whoops echoing and reechoing off the buildings.
A man in battle fatigues came out of one of the smaller doors.
“We have an emergency,” McGarvey instructed the driver, jamming the barrel of his gun into the man's side.
The driver hung out the open window and said something in Hebrew. The soldier, who was armed, shouted something back. McGarvey jammed the pistol harder into the driver's side and the man shouted something else.
A moment later the soldier went back into the building, and the big service door began to open.
“What did he say?”
“He said he knows of no emergency here. But he will admit us, only just within the loading area. He has to get his sergeant.”
“All right, listen to me now,” McGarvey said. “We're going to drive right through the loading area, all the way to the back of the building if we can get that far.”
“They'll open fire ⦔
“Not at an ambulance. Besides, my gun is a hell of a lot closer to you than theirs. Do you understand me?”
The young driver was torn between two choices, both of which frightened him half out of his mind. But what McGarvey said was true. He nodded.
When the door was three-quarters open the soldier beckoned for them to drive through.
“Now,” McGarvey said.
The driver jammed his foot to the floor and the ambulance shot forward past the startled soldier into the cavernous building. Big lights hung from the ceiling illuminating the front third of the interior which was obviously used as a storage area. Tall crates were stacked, in some cases nearly up to the rafters, on long pallets that formed rows and lanes. To the left they passed four jeeps and two canvas-covered trucks, backed up against the wall, and then the lane swung sharply right, deeper into the bowels of the building, darkness closing around them.
McGarvey reached over and shut off the ambulance's siren, and suddenly he could hear a loud Klaxon blaring. Within the building. The alarm had definitely been raised.
They sped past what appeared to McGarvey to be electrical distribution cabinets, something Lorraine had said he might see, and then the lane suddenly turned left again, the driver nearly missing his turn. The ambulance skidded, slamming sideways into one of the cabinets with a huge shower of sparks, before the driver regained control.
The lane immediately opened into a broad, dimly lit area where what appeared to be a series of wide air vents jutted from the concrete floor.
“Bingo,” McGarvey said.
Two soldiers in battle fatigues came out of the shadows in a dead run, their Uzi submachine guns unslung.
The driver slammed on the brakes, hauling the ambulance around to the right, sending it into another skid at the same moment the soldiers opened fire.
“Down,” McGarvey shouted, pulling the terrified young driver below the level of the windshield that erupted in a shower of glass.
The ambulance shuddered to a complete stop against one of the air vents, knocking it askew. McGarvey shoved open his door and leapt out, keeping low as he raced around the half-crumpled vent into the darkness.
“Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” he shouted as he ran.
A burst of automatic weapons fire ricocheted off the concrete floor ten feet behind him.
McGarvey pulled up behind another of the air vents, yanked
open the screen that covered the intake, and stuck his head inside. The darkness was unfathomable. But he could hear machinery running, and he could definitely feel that the vent was drawing air down into the shaft, not the other way around.
open the screen that covered the intake, and stuck his head inside. The darkness was unfathomable. But he could hear machinery running, and he could definitely feel that the vent was drawing air down into the shaft, not the other way around.
The warehouse was suddenly in silence as the Klaxon was cut off. To the left he heard someone running, and then he stopped. Someone shouted something in Hebrew, and another man farther away answered. More soldiers were pounding in from the front of the building.
McGarvey figured he had less than a half a minute remaining. He had found most of what he had come looking for. But not all of it.
If the weapons are stockpiled underground, they will be very deep. Perhaps two hundred feet or more,
Lorraine Abbott had told him.
Lorraine Abbott had told him.
He ejected a round from his Walther, and then stuffing the gun back in his pocket, he dropped the bullet down into the air shaft, cocking an ear to listen for when it hit bottom, counting the seconds silently.
Five seconds later he heard the faint clatter as the bullet hit bottom. Three hundred feet, give or take, he calculated. Deep. Deep enough for a weapons stockpile.
Now was the time to save his own life. He turned away in time to see the stock of an Uzi swinging in a tight arc toward him but not in time to protect his head as it connected with a sickening crunch and he went down.
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