by Philip Wylie
“I more or less remember.”
“My friend wrote Kennedy to put him straight. With the right elements in the jackets around them—and because our weather moves west to east—a suitable number detonated offshore would not just send a tidal wave over the coast to the mountains from Puget Sound to Lower California. It would make a radioactive cloud that would slowly move over the continent with the weather drift. The fallout would be hot enough to kill most people in the USA, Canada and part of Mexico.”
Jerry was staring. “But when it got on to Russia—and China—?”
“That’s the point of the special jacketing.” He saw the perplexity of the pilot. “As that cloud passed over the mainland of North America its fallout would be deadly. And there’d be too little time, on the East Coast, to take any effective steps for the masses in the area, or even those in the Middle West. You’d need special filters and special pumps to bring air to deep shelters. That, or stored air, enough for several weeks for each person. But when the cloud went on across the Atlantic the fallout level would have declined greatly.”
“Nice,” Jerry murmured.
Grove went on, thinking aloud to get ready for his call. “Probably a lot of people in Great Britain, France, middle Europe would die. Certainly, millions would get radiation sickness. But Moscow doesn’t mind other people’s troubles. And as for China—Peking boasts it can stand a loss of hundreds of millions. The USSR and Red China would have a far less serious fallout to deal with. And more time to get ready. The top people would be all set, of course.”
Jerry didn’t respond but his expression was sufficient.
Grove cogitated for a time and then asked, “Anything else that ‘Ivan’ told you I need to know? Rather, that others need to?”
“Maybe. They had to borrow—power to get that cave—”
“Lava tube,” Grove put in. “That’s what I saw out with Sapphire Abbott and the porpoises.”
“—to get it ready for the last operation,” Jerry continued. “Put up the fake rock pile. Make the lock. Seal off some cracks. So they could put in diesel power or steam or whatever they did. And bring in the towed subs. They’d been sunk and anchored offshore in special spots for a long time. If we could have traced that tap on the power line above the park, we’d have been home sooner.”
“But we couldn’t. And they knew that.” Grove again reflected and finally said, “That makes it pretty clear, I guess. If there’s not anything else?”
“Nothing I think of. We pumped him dry. But I thought part of what he said was crazy. Though he wouldn’t change his story.”
“Not crazy.”
“Hard to believe. Did JFK?”
“Did—oh! When my friend wrote him the super-bomb tests weren’t mere fright-makers? I saw Kennedy’s reply to him. A long letter. Glad to stand corrected and promising to go over it with his scientific advisers. JFK was that kind of a man. And a quick study. So’s—the one there now. I hope to God he is! And that we’ll give him time enough so he—or his advisers—can come up with a workable scheme.”
“If they knew I’d picked you up—”
“I doubt if they could know. Not for sure, at least.”
“Could they pull out?”
“I don’t see how. Personnel, maybe. But they won’t—with what’s hanging on the chance for success—not till the final moment they’re sure it’s hopeless.”
“If they blow it?”
“No Hawaii,” Grove said bluntly.
“The cloud?”
“Bad. But it would be concentrated. And half the Pacific to cross. Still—” Grove started to unclasp his mike and then asked, “What about the prisoner. That ‘Ivan’?”
“On his way to Molokai. Bob has a hunting shack in the wilds there. He’ll keep Ivan secure till he hears.”
“Good.” Grove smiled and added, “We are in a hurry now.”
Jerry moved the throttles. The clouds thinned as the chopper descended.
Kauai was not very distant; green, sungilded and beautiful. Jerry began craning his neck and Grove realized, abruptly, that hostile aircraft weren’t unthinkable. Solentor had everything.
Grove peered until Jerry made a thumb-up gesture. Minutes passed and then Grove grinned; he would have asked the question sooner … in ordinary times.
“How come you can fly one of these?”
“Last job I tried for required the drill. And the last flight I made in one was final for my buddies.”
Grove didn’t reply. Nothing to say.
They went over the shore and climbed a wooded hill. Then the craft cornered an escarpment and the world dropped sheer beneath. It was strange—like riding a pendulum, Grove thought.
Then he gave up watching and he ordered his thoughts as carefully as he could before they reached the field.
Jerry was making palm-up signals to the men below. He frowned as he gave Grove more facts. “I got leave from the Honolulu Police, early in the Vietnam thing. My military career ended out there. In a chopper. A VC rocket. So I was back in the cops.”
They landed noisily but gently.
Armed marines surrounded the ship. Grove opened a window and said mildly, “Will some of you guys tell the base switchboard operator to contact Captain Houghton Defton?”
A sergeant answered, “No such officer here, mister. Look, you guys—”
“Just try it. The name’s code.”
There was a short and mystified discussion. A marine was dispatched to the operations building. He soon ran back. Grove leaned out again—an improbable passenger in a chopper that had no right to land on the field. “I’m to tell you,” the marine said, and started to salute as he spoke. He checked that uneasily. “—that the man you want is not here. But if we can do anything for you, sir—”
The other marines were stunned.
Grove looked at the ranks of fighter planes in the distance and the military helicopters behind them. “Thanks, soldier. And please thank whoever told you to help us out.” He turned to Jerry. “Need gas?” Jerry nodded and a tank truck soon rolled up alongside.
The sergeant said, “Would it be too much to ask how come a couple of civilians get such service?”
“Yes,” Grove replied.
The sergeant nodded. “CIA? Oh well. Top ’em off, fellows.”
A hose was unreeled. Gasoline flowed into the chopper. The men on the ground stared and shook their heads. Presently Grove called, “Could I get to—the man I wanted—by phone, a private wire, from here?”
“Not unless you are God. The gentleman’s on a submarine and the sub’s silent. If you can wait till day after tomorrow …”
“We can’t.”
Jerry spoke to Grove in a low tone. “If I’m flying this crate again, where is it to?”
“I can’t decide. Gimme a minute.”
Grove pondered. They might get to his home; no communications even if it hadn’t been burned down by now. They could hardly expect to use the development area again—Solentor would have that covered. Helicopters could and frequently did land in the park. But that idea was not appealing. Russian vessels had radar. He knew his jump off the Na Pali Coast could have been seen and, likelier, his lucky rescue. So the airports at Kauai and Honolulu would be under watch. All Solentor had to do, Grove reasoned, was to keep himself and Jerry from getting to a phone to call the man on the Big Island. Not the President—save as a last resort—because Steve had set up this route for emergencies. Should he phone the geologist here? Would it make sense to call Oddie if his other contact wasn’t on hand? Was there that much rush? As long as a chance remained, Solentor would take it—try to stop the ideas in the minds of Grove and Jerry, and perhaps Bob, from going any further.
Suppose they asked for fighter plane transport to the Big Island?
Solentor could anticipate that possibility, surely. Already had, probably. The best thing would be to phone from this base. He started to loosen his safety belt and heard a siren sound. A jeep now roared toward the choppe
r from an HQ building. The siren didn’t make its first zoom to top pitch; halfway, it died out. The jeep braked hard but Grove knew the message it was bringing.
“Phones went out, just now,” the captain beside the driver of the jeep yelled to the sergeant. “And I guess the power just went too.”
It gave Grove an idea of how fast Solentor worked, of his desperation, and of his extensive personnel. It also indicated that the chopper and the men around it might come under fire, any minute. His mind charged. If your goal is world domination, you have to be ready with every sort of protective measure, even such sorts.
Grove glanced at the man topping off the tanks. He was all but finished. “That’s plenty,” Grove called.
The sailor nodded and screwed the tank’s top in place tightly, leaping back on the truck afterward.
The sergeant was muttering to the jeep-borne captain. He turned to Grove and Jerry. “You have anything to do with this power cutoff?”
Grove knew it had to be very quick now. “Not us!” he called. “We’re taking off at once! And have your men scatter—there might be firing, any second.”
The captain was puzzled. Grove made a sign to Jerry and yelled, “And now hear this, too! We never landed. If they insist, well, we never made a phone call. Okay?”
The chopper roared. Uniformed men stepped back. The truck rushed away from the chopper and its exhaust. The men below were scattering and the jeep was heading off the strip.
“Low,” Grove bellowed above the engine and rotor din. “And fast! Out to sea.”
Jerry nodded and followed the—unneeded—suggestions.
“Can we make the Big Island?”
Grove did not ask that until they had skimmed the contoured hills of Kauai and until Jerry had gestured with a thumb. Grove had agreed—so they’d climbed into the large, spaced but convenient clouds above the sea.
To the delayed question, Jerry replied, “Have to refuel for that trip.”
“Not good.”
“Getting on in the day,” Jerry offered later as they circled around in the misty cumulus.
Time passed. Their intercom was open but they didn’t seem to have anything to say to each other. Jerry was waiting for Ring to determine what to do next.
“Seems idiot,” Grove finally said in a musing manner, “not to be able to figure out how to get to a phone.”
“Solentor is figuring all the ways we could try, and how to prevent us.”
“Yes.”
More time passed. The chopper sometimes lost a cloud but quickly found another. Jerry began working their way back toward Oahu, his idea, but Grove didn’t object. Grove finally asked, “Could we skim in toward my place and, if it’s still there, hang low? Dive into the sea and swim ashore with the chopper preset to go on, climbing and seaward, till it ran out of gas?”
“No communications in your place, you said.”
“None. But beds. And food. If we could make it seem we came in for inspection and decided not to land—after dark, of course—we could get home safe—maybe.”
“Maybe. Unless they have a squad there to meet us.”
“They wouldn’t. Not at my house. They might have burned it but I doubt that. Too obvious. Conspicuous. They have men on the talus, above the place, and, for sure, a ready-group in both directions, along the Kalan. Not on the grounds—they might expect people to be looking for us, there.”
“So we do it. Swim ashore. Get in your place. And it’s a rattrap, from what you said.”
“Not quite. Because there’s only one really good place for a bunch of people to keep watch for a car or what not coming from my place toward Waimanalo. Several vacant lots with thick Australian pines. Given some sleep, and with a predawn start—from my place to next door and thence, by swimming, to that woods—where we could maybe put the surveillance out of action—and even borrow their transportation, which they won’t shoot at, right away—”
Grove looked at his friend, who shrugged. “Stopping in the village to phone, then?”
“Well—no. Making a break for the airport.”
“And another reception committee?”
“Well, perhaps we could avoid it, for a few moments.” He hesitated and nodded to himself. “We could look over the one possible Kalan post before we got some sleep.”
Jerry realized that Grove was about finished and he wasn’t at his best. He thought he understood and Grove verified what he’d been guessing:
“If Neptune is more or less the thing I think it is—the problem of how to—well, defuse it, say, is beyond me. Take the Navy and a lot of specialists, submariners, nuclear people, frog men, Lord knows. A lot to explain. And it’s got to be the President who decides the team that takes charge. The Reds may blow it—and all Hawaii—clean off the Pacific, given the opportunity. If Eaper had the news first he might make one more fumble, and one too frightening to imagine. Anybody may fail. But it’s got to be Steve who’s briefed for the decisions.”
“Steve,” Jerry repeated mildly. “Yeah.” Later he said, “How far do you want this damned chopper to sail after we jump?”
“Miles and miles. Possible?”
“We better move in, then. It’ll be plenty dark when we get off Oahu.”
It was.
They came around Makapuu at top speed and low. The chopper stopped and hung when it was opposite Grove’s property. The house was intact and dark as was the one next door. Jerry jockeyed in close and then back out to sea a ways as if for deliberation.
The chopper sank to within a few feet of the swells. Two forms dropped in the night and splashed. One carried a leather case. The machine leaped upward then and, with locked controls, it moved on a rising and somewhat wobbly course toward the east and the empty Pacific.
Two men swam ashore, taking pains to be unobtrusive. Wet, cold, they nevertheless scouted Grove’s house and the adjacent property with great caution before Grove recovered a buried key and they entered through an end door on the lower level. Grove led the way upstairs. He crossed the living room without a sound and as if he could see clearly. Jerry admired that. He was relieved when Grove came back and handed him a gun. They waited a long time before they went to the bedroom and changed to dry clothes, Jerry’s very tight. Grove provided food; cold, ample.
Jerry insisted he make the planned scouting trip. He borrowed trunks and left in the manner Grove showed him, through a tunnel to the vacant place next door, through it to the far yard, across that behind trees, some recently planted, and over a wall. From there, Jerry went carefully to the shore and waded out. Then he swam—toward the lights of the village and those on Kaneohe Point, beyond.
Grove was asleep when Jerry returned.
It took time to rouse him. Finally, however, he seemed awake enough.
“They’re in the Australian pine woods, all right. Quite a few of them. They have some vehicles or at least one, up near the road. I didn’t get close enough to make it all—too dark—too liable to bust a twig and get shot. I’d think, if we hit their beach just before first light, we might take ’em. You said so—and so far, you’ve guessed right. Which relieves me far more than surprises.”
Grove made a sound of comprehension and fell back. Both men had alarm clocks and the clocks were set for the same moment of action.
Grove snored.
Off and on, in the guest room, Jerry dozed. Any slight sound roused him and the wind made many. He tried to figure what better way they might have found for their aim—and failed. He was dry, warm, fed, resting and alive—so far.
When his alarm clock buzzed he shut it off in three seconds. He stretched and wondered how much longer he would be—alive, even. His own clothes were damp, but they fit.
He went to meet Grove and found him dazedly trying to shut off his humming clock. Jerry took it and cut the sound. As they ate in the darkness Grove seemed to come alive and awake, inchmeal.
When they left he was all there.
They traveled over the route Jerry had taken some ho
urs earlier. Grove still had the leather case—to Jerry’s slight wonder. They both had guns which went into waterproof bags before they started this third swim for Jerry and Grove’s second. They made it to the near edge of the tree-covered lots and got into the woods without trouble; without trouble, because both were skilled in such work.
Once set in a suitable thicket, they waited for daylight. When it was sufficient, Grove touched Jerry; they moved apart on planned courses soon beyond sight of one another. Already traffic on the Kalan, not more than a hundred yards ahead and beyond the woods, began growing heavier. Peculiar, Jerry reflected, but the whole world was behaving normally while threatened with an end to all normality and while the state of Hawaii might vanish, any second.
It occurred to him as he crawled forward that traffic wouldn’t be normal on the highway if Tack Abbott had taken any effective steps. The thought made his sense of responsibility almost overwhelming. Then that weight was shunted aside by a more immediate demand. A guard—or one of unknown numbers—posted to watch the shore, was visible doing that. Jerry was behind him. He began to study the ground and tree trunks, the fallen limbs and needle carpet between himself and the man’s back; he was fair-sized and had an automatic pistol. Jerry had no intention of shooting.
This was a drill he knew. The man watching the shore and sea did not even sense danger until hands closed on his throat. He thrashed for a while and then his body bent stiffly for a time. After that, he was dead. It had not been very noisy although the pistol thumped when let go. Jerry snaked it into the woods and hid it, his ears and eyes elsewhere. There could be a second man on seaward watch; and there was, Jerry soon gathered.
The man whistled, perhaps because he had heard the sounds of his struggling comrade or perhaps because that whistling was standard operating procedure. Jerry didn’t try to respond to it. But he moved very swiftly to another spot. When the second man showed and saw the fallen form, he acted as Jerry had expected, hurrying up after a glance into the dense woods and kneeling to see whether the other was dead, merely hurt, or perhaps taken sick. With his left hand clamped on a preselected limb, Jerry swung out like a silent ape and used his gun butt. Then he turned away from the shore to hunt for others.
