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. He pulled the plastic NPF 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. I I 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.
“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 NPF 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”
“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
