Tucker smiled. “Quite — the operative word being, of course, was.” He sat back, perfectly at ease, utterly relaxed and confident. “You have the background, Commander. Now we come to the things I wish to know.”
“You’ll have to go on wishing.”
“You are a foolish man,” Tucker said quietly. “You Whites cannot stand against all the non-White races on the move. You as an individual can achieve nothing now by silence. On the other hand, if you talk, you may perhaps save some lives that would otherwise be lost, since to ease our task must be, in effect, to reduce the bloodshed.” Once again he leaned forward massively. “Here is what I wish to know: First, I wish you to tell me precisely and in detail all that is known to your security people about the current activities of the Dead Line, and secondly, I want full particulars of any current activities in intelligence circles that might, however remotely, impinge upon our forward plans as outlined. Thirdly, I want to know the present whereabouts and operational orders of all agents employed by your department, and also what their combat orders are likely to be on the outbreak of hostilities. Fourthly, I shall want you to talk to one of my staff officers, an expert in cracking cyphers… I shall want you to give him a complete breakdown on the communications system and the codes and cyphers used by your department in maintaining contact with its agents in the field, and in confidential communication with United States and N.A.T.O. defence departments, together with dates of change of all basic codes and cyphers and all recoding and recyphering tables.” Tucker waved a hand, wafting Havana smoke around his head. “If you refuse to give this information, we shall naturally manage very well without it — this must be obvious, since your arrival here is no more than a fortunate windfall on which clearly we could not count when making our detailed plans. Thus I repeat… there is no point whatever in your remaining silent and unco-operative now.”
To Shaw there was an element of sheer fantasy in Tucker’s sitting in this Kansas dug-out and talking as though he were a world leader already. But fantastic or not, Shaw knew that what the Negro had outlined was perfectly possible of execution.
Sanderson and the strong-arm boys were sent for when Shaw refused to talk.
They removed the rope and started on the girl but to Shaw’s immense relief she went into a dead faint pretty quickly, and after that they concentrated on Shaw. By the time they had done with him he was sick and giddy with blow after blow in his guts but he hadn’t talked. He had tried to shut his mind to the pain, to the constant and insistent questioning, tried to think only of getting away from this rock-built headquarters and of reaching a telephone line to Washington. His head reeled; he staggered drunkenly. But still he didn’t talk. In the end Tucker lost patience. He snapped, “This is getting us nowhere. Shaw and the girl must take the consequences. We shall have no use for them after the next few days in any case. Mr Sanderson,” he said to the Westerner, “you will have them taken to the hills right away. Tell Lee to have the explosives ready. I think Shaw will talk very fast within the next few hours.”
Chapter Sixteen
Flame had recovered by the time Sanderson came back to say Lee was ready. With the Negro guards behind them again Shaw and the girl were marched away along the tunnel and when they had gone a dozen yards from Tucker’s apartment the rope snaked down over their shoulders once more, and tautened. They were marched back along to the parking lot where this time a covered truck was waiting. They were pushed into the back of this and a fresh set of armed guards took over and got in behind them while Sanderson got in the front alongside the driver. Half a minute later two more men, Negroes, came up. One of them handed a heavy wooden box to Sanderson, who stowed it down by his feet. This was presumably the box of explosives Tucker had called for, and its Negro handler would be Lee.
Lee and his companion came round and got in the back. Looking ahead through the windscreen between Sanderson and the driver Shaw noticed two vertical lights like traffic signals set into the wall of the cavern and currently dead. As he watched, a man approached a telephone on a bracket below the lights. His hand on the receiver, this man looked inquiringly at Sanderson.
“All set,” Sanderson said abruptly.
The man lifted the instrument and spoke into it. As he put the phone down a red light came on above. After three-quarters of a minute the red went out and the bottom light glowed green. The truck driver pulled the starter and after a word from Sanderson the vehicle moved slowly ahead. They drove into the exit tunnel with the headlights beaming into pitch darkness, picking out the rough rock. The going was shaky here; perhaps intentionally, the track had been left unsurfaced. Farther along and after a bend the truck eased its speed and passed over what looked in the headlights like solid ground but which gave back a curious hollow sound — the sound Shaw had noted on the inward journey in the hearse — as the tyres crunched over the loose, gritty surface. Sanderson turned his head and grinned at Shaw.
“Vehicle trap,” he said. “Once the alarm’s given, a button gets pressed back along the tunnel and that withdraws the supports underpinning this section. Anything that’s on the trap-doors, drops into a thousand-foot natural pit. What’s the other side of it, doesn’t move any farther in. Kind of drawbridge… like you have in Britain, I guess. Nothing like the simple, old-fashioned ideas,” he added with a chuckle. A moment later he announced, “End of section,” and the truck increased speed again.
A little farther along, when they had gone around a hundred yards and had taken the second bend, the headlights picked up the dull metal gleam of machine-guns — M-60’s, capable of firing 550 rounds of 7·62 mm. N.A.T.O. cartridges per minute — four on either side of the tunnel, their muzzles thrust wickedly from apertures in the rock. Through lighted slits Shaw could see the shining, sweat-streaked faces of more uniformed men, steel-helmeted, alert. No one was going to take this place easily if ever it was discovered at all. Beyond the gun-posts the headlights picked out a mass of scrub and leafy branches lining the tunnel away ahead — and just beyond them, a circle of daylight. The truck put on more speed and, another hundred yards on from the last bend now, they reached the entrance. The scrub and branches stood back on either side, like doors. Sanderson explained, “There’s a concealed framework behind all that there leafery, holding the disguise in place. When it’s closed, you’d never tell there was anything but hillside and scrub. Just sinks into the general background. Cunning.…”
The track halted just inside the entrance. Sanderson reached out and made a switch on the rock face close to the vehicle’s side, then pulled in a microphone on a flexible steel stalk. He said, “Horizon report,” and let the switch go.
A voice came back through an amplifier: “Still clear. Okay to go on out.”
Sanderson nodded at the driver. The truck went on through into wind and rain, went ahead across rock and scrub, then dropped down to a descending track running below the level of the entrance and high above a long, wide valley. Looking ahead through the rain Shaw could just make out in this valley a distant white ribbon of highway. Even if the truck should be seen from below it wouldn’t, in fact, be worth a second glance. Shaw looked out of the back at the hill that covered Tucker’s headquarters; that hill rendered the place impregnable even against concentrated bombing, he fancied… it was more than just a hill, it was a baby mountain and it was solid rock.
They lurched and bumped over the rough track through an utterly deserted landscape. They passed through some thickly wooded country and after that they began another climb, threading their way with great difficulty over ground that by now was scarcely even a track. It was a case of picking a path between boulders and scrub and stunted trees. This climb was continued for half an hour at dead slow speed and then Sanderson called a halt beneath a tree-hung rock face.