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.
“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.”
“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.
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.
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.