Blueprint for Destruction (A Steve Carradine Thriller)

by John Glasby

  Venders led the way down one of the shallowly sloping corridors cut into the ice. At the far end there was an elevator in which they plummeted down into the very bowels of the ice cap. Carradine felt his stomach rise up with a swift rush, watched Venders out of the corner of his vision as the other thumbed the buttons near the iron-grille door.

  The door slid back as the elevator came to a halt. Venders motioned him forward. “Here we are,” he said quietly. “This is what makes this station possible. Without it, we’d probably all be frozen to death in a very short time.”

  “Would it be easy to sabotage the reactors?” Carradine asked directly.

  “If you mean could someone destroy them, that I suppose that it is possible. But they would have to know plenty about them. No use putting a few sticks of dynamite in here and hoping to do it that way.”

  “Then how would they do it?”

  “Are you serious?” The other took his arm and led him forward. The pulsing note of the giant turbines that virtually ran Station K was a purring, sing-song note in his ears and the whole place seemed to be alive with shuddering, invisible energies.

  A few moments later, he came to an abrupt halt. There was a low handrail in front of him and he found himself looking down into what seemed to be a vast amphitheatre. Down below them, some eighty or ninety feet away, he guessed, were banks of instruments stretched around the wide floor in a great semi-circle. There were five men working below. None of them looked up as Carradine looked down at them.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Carradine said quietly. “How could anyone sabotage this?” He waved a hand to indicate the tremendous sweep of the instrument panels with the thousands of lights flashing on and off along the tiered banks.

  “The reactors are controlled mainly by rods of some neutron absorbing material, heavy water or boron. They are pushed in or pulled out to control the rate of the nuclear reaction. All one would have to do would be to override the automatic controls and keep the rods out. That way, the reaction would become critical in a reasonably short space of time.”

  “How long?” Carradine persisted.

  Venders pursed his lips. “Hard to say with any real degree of accuracy. A few hours maybe. Certainly not much longer.”

  “And then there would be one almighty bang and everything would be disintegrated.”

  “Exactly.” The other moved along the circular platform, pausing and pointing directly beneath him. “There is the main control panel. You can just see it if you lean over the rail.”

  Carradine moved up beside him, gripped the rail tightly and leaned forward. Directly below him, he could make out the edge of the control panel, a row of brilliant green lights stretching across its face. Then, without warning, there was a sharp, rending crash that came from somewhere very close at hand and he felt himself being thrust forward into empty space as the metal rail snapped under his weight, pitching him away from the platform.

  For a long drawn-out second, it seemed inevitable that he should plunge all the way down to the floor of the control room below. Then something caught at his back. For a moment he hung there, feet scrabbling for a hold on the platform. His arms flailed desperately and then, miraculously, he was back on his feet, all the breath gone from his lungs, a pounding in his ears as the blood rushed through his temples.

  Slowly, as he edged his way back from the platform rim, Venders released his tight-fisted grip on him.

  “You all right?” There was no doubting the note of concern in his tone. It could have been simulated, of course, Carradine thought quickly. He was back on balance now. Yet if the other had tried to kill him, why had he saved his life at the very last second? It didn’t make sense. Certainly the man he was looking for would never have a lapse of conscience like that. Rubbing the back of his hand over his perspiring forehead, he moved cautiously towards the broken rail.

  “Funny that it should have snapped like that,” said Venders, going down carefully on one knee. Down below, the technicians were staring up at them in stunned surprise.

  Carefully, Carradine ran his fingers along the broken edge of the metal. At last, he gave a nod of brief satisfaction. “Quite simple,” he said gently. “It’s been sawn through here so that any weight against it would cause it to break.”

  Venders’ eyes widened a little. “Then it was another try at murder.”

  CHAPTER 8 - FLIGHT INTO DANGER

  It was on the next day that Carradine asked to have a further talk with Colonel Brinson. He had briefly mentioned the incident in the reactor room, but had asked the other to say nothing about it to any of the other men.

  “I’ve been giving this accident a great deal of thought since we last met,” Brinson said as he waved the other to a chair. “I suppose that until this happened I had been fooling myself all along the line that there was little to these events beyond coincidence. Whenever you get men cooped up here for months on end, there are bound to be side-effects, tempers become frayed, nerves stretched taut, and men are bound to make errors of judgement which can look worse than they really are.”

  “But now that you’re quite convinced?”

  Brinson gave a helpless movement of his left hand. “I have to be,” he admitted. “Here we have the most secret base the United States possesses yet clearly the enemy knows of its existence, must have known for a long time if you’re right about them and not only that, but somehow they have succeeded in placing at least one of their top men here, right under our very noses. And all the time, we felt sure that our security was sufficient to rule out any possibility of this ever happening.”

  “I’m afraid that we all seem to have underestimated these people to the danger point. God knows how many there are, nor what sort of devilry they’re up to at this very moment.”

  “What do you want me to do in this matter?” Brinson spread his hands flat on top of the desk. “As you have made absolutely clear, I can trust no one here. I’m even beginning to suspect myself.”

  “I’ve virtually ruled out Lieutenant Venders,” Carradine said quietly. “I must confess that he was my first suspect. He was apparently with the men in the surface huts and could have fired that shot at me. His manner was certainly not calculated to diminish my suspicious. Yet on the other hand, he would not have saved me from that fall unless he was innocent.”

  “He could have done that with the idea of diverting suspicion from himself, especially if he got it into his head that you were on to him.”

  “True. But I’ve no doubt in my mind that an eighty-foot drop would have been more than enough to kill me. Even a cat wouldn’t have landed on his feet after that drop. So Venders must have known such a fall would have had fatal consequences. Yet he pulled me back and at considerable risk to himself. I’m no lightweight as you can guess.”

  “So where do you go from here?”

  “I’d like your cooperation in a little scheme I have in mind to smoke our friend out into the open.” Carradine leaned forward conspiratorially. “He’s jumpy now, nervous. He can feel the net beginning to close in on him and like most men in his position, he knows the consequences of failure. I’m certain that he’ll make his move in the very near future.”

  *

  Carradine took one comprehensive look around him and then pulled his body back, out of sight behind the tall console. He leaned against the cool metal and waited, the smooth solidity of the Luger cradled in his holster. There was no sound in the vast control room beyond the endless, eternal pulsing of the mighty engines that pumped electrical energy and warmth around the entire confines of Station K. Without the beating of this massive heart, flooding the arteries with light and heat, the station would die. Worse than that, if the reaction inside the atomic reactors got out of control, everything would go up in one hellish flair of radiation. The seismographs all over the world would record a tremor close to the North Pole and then, slowly, the full report would come in of an atomic explosion on the ice pack. There would, however, be nobody left h
ere to be aware of this.

  He tried to find himself a more comfortable position. Outside, it would be night now. A bitter night full of the freezing wind, the lancing shards of ice and the brilliant light of stars and aurora which made up the polar night. Down here, everything was on automatic. No one attended the reactors. If anything went wrong, machines put it right or gave audible warning in sufficient time for technicians to arrive and rectify matters.

  Carradine glanced down at his watch. Ten-thirty. Would the Red Dragon agent make his move that night? It seemed probable. Brinson had done everything he had asked. There would be an unusually long gap between the changing of the men on watch. During that time, a man could get down into the control room, set the control rods and leave, making his way over to the Russian border to the east before the nuclear bomb exploded.

  The minutes ticked by very slowly. The pulsing hum went on and on, forming a background noise, which gradually became unnoticed except when he concentrated on it. Eleven o’clock. Still no sound that would indicate the presence of another human being nearby.

  Had he been mistaken? Had the other been too clever for him, had seen through the trap and was determined to ignore it, to get Carradine on his own terms and at a time and place of his own choosing? Gently, he eased himself forward, peered cautiously around the edge of the huge console. Only the flickering rows of green lights give any light to the control room. They seemed to flash through the entire spectrum of colour as he watched. No doubt the men who attended the gigantic machines, who controlled this terrible power, knew what each light meant; but to him it appeared simply as a maze of colour that was oddly straining on the vision. He shut his eyes to squeeze out the glare, then opened them again swiftly, instinctively as a faint half-heard whisper of sound reached him. The fact that he had picked it out above the much louder, more insistent throb of the turbines meant one thing. That it had to be an extraneous sound, immediately making itself heard.

  For several seconds afterwards, there was nothing. He strained his eyes and ears to pick out something that would give him a lead. At first—nothing. Then something moved, slowly and cautiously on the very edge of his vision, a humped shadow making its way down the flight of stairs from the circular platform overlooking the wide spread of the floor.

  He tried to make out who the other was. Not tall enough to be either Venders or Brinson. Theoretically, it could have been anyone on the station, he told himself. He waited tensely as the other came forward. The gun felt heavy in his right hand. Acting on impulse, he thrust it back into his pocket. Now that he knew where the other was, he felt he had no immediate need of the weapon. He wanted to take this man alive if he could. Maybe, thought Carradine, though it was extremely doubtful, he could get the other to talk once he realised that he had failed in his mission.

  Less than twelve feet from where Carradine crouched, stood the control panel which Venders had pointed out to him; the one which controlled the reactor rods that held everything in equilibrium. He guessed that this man would pull the control rods, and then try to make a break for it. Somehow, Carradine had to stop him before he succeeded. Deliberately, he tensed himself, braced his legs beneath him, ready to hurl himself forward across the intervening distance. The man padded forward on soft feet, making scarcely any sound. His face was still an anonymous black shadow in which Carradine could make out nothing to give him a clue as to the other’s identity. Then, slipping forward, the other moved over to the control panel and the greenish glow from the lights fell full on his face.

  Carradine sucked in a breath. It was Lieutenant Carstairs. Narrowing his eyes, he waited until the other had paused in front of the panel. He saw the man’s right hand to go out towards the controls, then made his move.

  Some hidden instinct warned Carstairs of his danger. Carradine had covered half the distance when the other turned, spinning abruptly on his heel. His hand dropped towards his belt and the lips were drawn back into a savage snarl that completely altered his features. Now there seemed something diabolical about the greenish face that stared out at Carradine.

  There was a faint glint of light on metal as the other tugged at the gun in his pocket. It would be a near thing, Carradine thought. He struck downward with the flat edge of his right hand. The other moved back a pace and the blow merely caught him a light blow on the wrist, but it was sufficient to deflect the weapon. Carstairs squeezed the trigger instinctively and there was a shrill, high-pitched whine as the slug ricocheted off the hard floor and smashed into the face of the console on the opposite side of the room. Carradine’s muscles coiled as he struck again, aiming for the exposed throat. Carstairs uttered a wailing cry, fell back against the panel. His scrambling fingers caught at the control. With a sudden movement, he jerked and in the same instant a row of lights above the panel flickered amber, then began to switch to red one by one.

  “Damn you,” he muttered through twisted lips. “That’s the control rods out. Another fifteen minutes and all of this goes up.”

  Desperately, Carradine tried to move forward. Carstairs effectively blocked his way. A bunched fist caught Carradine on the side of his head, knocking him sideways, off-balance and in the same moment, the other flung himself forward, dropping all of his weight on Carradone’s prone body. Carradine’s teeth ground together in his mouth as all of the air in his lungs gushed out through his lips. He felt the other scrambling for his throat, felt the taloned hands get their grip on his neck, beginning to squeeze inexorably.

  His body was being twisted and thrust down. Nails dug deeply into the flesh of his throat. The pounding roar of the whining turbines became overlaid by another thudding sound; the beat of his own bottled-up blood as it tried to get down into his body and the tortured rasp of air whistling in and out of his constricted throat.

  Half on his back, he kicked out blindly with his left foot. The toecap of his shoe hit something soft and yielding and there came a momentary scream of pain from the man on top of him. For a second, the tortuous pressure on his throat eased and he gulped air down into his heaving lungs. He hammered out again with his leg, but the other had shifted his position slightly and he found that it made no difference now what he did. Over the other’s lowered head he saw that all of the lights on the console were now glaring redly in the multi-coloured dimness. The twisted, grimacing face drew closer as Carstairs leaned all of his weight forward in one last effort.

  Then, abruptly, the pale reds and greens vanished, wiped out in the harsh, actinic glare of white light. Carstairs jerked up his head, stared behind him. Dimly, Carradine was aware of shouts in the distance, of footsteps clattering on the metal stairs. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging them, half-blinding him as he acted instinctively. Exerting all of the strength left in him, he jerked his arms wide, freeing them from the other’s weight. Gasping air down into his body, focusing his gaze on the other, he swung both hands, straight and stiff, into the other’s body, down near the soft parts in the middle.

  Carstairs uttered a harsh, bleating gasp of agony. Thrusting upwards with his knees, Carradine managed to hurl him away. Carstairs fell over onto his side, lay there for a moment, then heaved himself onto his feet, ran for the dim shadows that lay beneath the overhanging platform.

  The first men reached the floor, started after him. Straightening up on to his hands and knees, Carradine yelled in a harsh croak: “Watch him! He’s got a gun and he’ll use it.”

  “You’re damned right he will,” Carstairs yelled back. “And don’t forget that those bars are out. Only a little longer and everything goes up.”

  The other punctuated his yell with a couple of shots. One of the men at the bottom of the stairs went down as his kneecap was smashed by the bullet. Another slumped sideways. Then the men were closing in from all sides. With an effort, Carradine thrust himself to his feet. His body felt numbed and bruised in every limb and each breath he took burned in his throat.

  Venders came hurrying forward and Brinson was close on his heels.

&
nbsp; With a jerk of his shoulders, Carradine pointed to the control panel nearby. “You’d better check that,” he said, forcing the words out from swollen lips. “He’s pulled out the control rods.”

  Brinson took everything in at once. Good man, thought Carradine as the other turned, began giving orders. He didn’t waste time asking questions. He got going right away.

  “You’d better sit down,” said Venders. “No need to worry now. Everything is under control.”

  “But Carstairs....” Carradine struggled to push the other’s restraining hands away but Venders held him down and shook his head. “Carstairs—or whatever his real name is—won’t be giving us any further trouble.”

  Carradine lifted his head. Very slowly, it dawned on him that there was very little noise in the room beyond the humming lilt of the dynamos. He stared beyond Venders, into the dark shadows beneath the platform. Almost directly under the spot where he had almost fallen to his death, something humped and dark lay silent on the floor, arms and legs outstretched. He nodded his head very slowly in understanding.

  Brinson came over, stood looking down at him for a long moment before speaking, then said: “There wasn’t enough time for him to do any real, permanent damage. The reactors will be functioning normally again in ten minutes or so.”

  Carradine shook his head in an effort to clear it of the fog that swirled around in his brain. There was something in the back of his mind that desperately needed to come out into the open where he could recognise it. He lurched to his feet, stared at Brinson. “Where do you keep the transmitter?” he asked throatily.

  “Why on the surface, of course. What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s just possible that Carstairs had an accomplice. It isn’t usual for these men to work as lone wolves whenever there’s something as vitally important as this at stake. If he has, then my guess is that he’s waiting near the transmitter, ready to send off a message saying whether their attempt has been successful or a failure.”