And, if the assembled bomb was to be installed aboard the ship, it would probably be done under cover of darkness. Except for the people on the bridge, and the man he’d fought with, the ship had been deserted.
The time was now. The bomb was going to be put aboard tonight. In the morning the regular crew would come aboard and the Grande Dame II would sail east; perhaps for San Francisco, where a nuclear explosion would wipe out TSI Industries. Perhaps Honolulu, as a reprise of the start of World War II.
Or perhaps even the Panama Canal, which would isolate the Pacific Basin, making an eventual Japanese takeover more feasible.
Once the body was found just outside the engine room, however, there was no telling what Fukai would do. Obviously he would have to change his plans.
The elevator door rattled slightly with a change of air pressure inside the shaft.
McGarvey again put his ear to the door, and this time he could definitely hear the car coming up.
He sprinted down the corridor and slipped back into the electrical distribution cabinet, softly closing and latching the mesh gate, then easing farther into the shadows.
A minute later the same technicians and guards came down the corridor with the motorized cart, but as they passed McGarvey’s hiding place he got a good look at what they had brought up. It was an oblong metal container about the same size and shape as the one they’d brought down. But this unit was marked in English: HYDRAULIC DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM-SECONDARY, beneath which were the letters TBC. The Boeing Company? It was a Boeing 747 they’d seen parked on the ramp to the north of the headquarters building.
Perhaps the parts had arrived by boat, and would be leaving by plane.
The group turned right, past the freight elevator, and disappeared from McGarvey’s view down the opposite corridor. As before, the Geiger counter went crazy, but unlike earlier, the guards were not so jumpy. As they’d passed the electrical distribution cabinet McGarvey had gotten a close look at them. They’d been wary, alert, on edge, but definitely not jumpy. They’d learned something in the past half hour. What?
McGarvey waited a full half minute then carefully opened the gate and stepped out, his pistol still in hand. At the corner he flattened himself against the wall and eased around the edge.
This corridor was in darkness too, the light fading thirty yards away. One of the guards switched on a flashlight and led the way. Within a minute or so they had disappeared in the distance. And unless it was an optical illusion, McGarvey thought that the corridor sloped upward at a very slight angle.
Like the other wing, no doors led off this corridor, and within seventy or eighty yards he came again within sight of the four men. He slowed down so that he just matched their pace, keeping well back so that even if they did stop and turn around, he would be outside the range of their flashlight and would have plenty of time to get back to his hiding spot.
But they didn’t turn or alter their pace and fifteen minutes later McGarvey thought he could see the first faint glimmers of light from somewhere well ahead.
He figured they had come at least half a mile or more from the freight elevator, which had to put them at the edge of the main building, and probably near the airfield.
He was also certain that the corridor was sloping upward at a gentle angle, and what he had guessed at before was not an optical illusion.
An assembled nuclear device was going to be loaded aboard a Fukai jetliner, probably one of his 747s, which would take him to Paris via the West Coast of the United States.
When they stopped for refueling in San Francisco, the bomb would be off-loaded and stored at an in-transit warehouse, timed to explode after Fukai was well clear of the area. Possibly even days later.
But Fukai was too brilliant to leave anything to chance. The bomb would probably be equipped with some sort of a proximity detonator, or certainly a tamper-proof firing mechanism. It could possibly even be fitted with a remote control, the triggering impulse sent by radio, or perhaps cellular telephone.
The problem was there would be no way of knowing any of that for certain without actually being aboard the airplane.
McGarvey stopped fifty yards later when he could make out the end of the corridor, which seemed to open into a large room or open space of some sort.
The technicians turned left through the opening and disappeared, leaving McGarvey alone in the dark corridor. It struck him again how simple it all had been, getting off the ship and following the technicians here. Almost as if they had been expecting him, and this was a setup.
He glanced up at the light fixtures on the ceiling. They were spaced every fifteen feet or so, and had they been lit the corridor would have been so brightly illuminated he could not possibly have followed the technicians this far.
But it changed nothing, he thought, tightening the grip on his pistol. He still had to find out what Fukai’s exact plan was, and he didn’t want to back off until he had extracted his own revenge for what they had done to Kathleen, and especially to Liz.
Also, when it came down to it, he too had been backed against a wall and left for dead. It was no love of country (though he thought he loved his country) that motivated him. Nor, he supposed, was it simply revenge.
He had been in this position before, where backing off would have been the most sensible option, but where each time he not only hadn’t turned away, he found that he could not.
In the end it was shame, he supposed, that made him who he was. Who he had become.
Though he seldom had the courage to admit it, even to himself.
The sins of the fathers shall visit their sons, from cradle to grave. That would be chiseled on his tomb should the truth ever be known.
“Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” a man’s voice came from an overhead speaker.
McGarvey stepped back against the wall as the corridor lights came slowly up.
“It’s all right, no one will harm you for the moment,” the man said. His English was heavily accented with Japanese, but clearly understandable.
“What do you want?” McGarvey asked, again looking back the way he had come. The corridor was fully illuminated now, and he could see no one back there.
“For you to be my guest this morning. We’re flying to Paris, and it would only be correct of me to take you as far as San Francisco.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“We’ve been following your progress all evening, Mr. McGarvey. The only time you had us confused was when you slipped into the electrical distribution box. Our motion detectors lost you. But we figured it out. Now, come along please.”
Chapter 76
Two Fukai Air Transport Division crewmen, armed with Ingram Model 11 submachine guns, relieved McGarvey of his pistol and the Geiger counter, then stepped aside and motioned for him to go first.
The corridor opened onto a broad balcony that looked down into a vast aircraft hangar, easily large enough to accommodate two 747s. One of the gigantic airplanes was parked three-fourths of the way into the building, with only its tail section outside. Its hatches and cargo bay doors were open and from what McGarvey could see it looked as if the plane were in the final stages of being loaded and readied for takeoff.
A jetway connected the front passenger door of the plane to a spot one level below this balcony. The armed crewmen motioned for McGarvey to cross to an open freight elevator just at the end of the balcony, five yards from the corridor.