Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller

by Philip McCutchan

  He had a point and a good one: the time taken didn’t matter all that much, Nodd would be in a fine position to act at leisure, piecemeal according to the most propitious natural times and conditions, while, chunk by chunk, the rest of the world burned up. China’s massive army would hold her frontiers intact against any invasion, while her enormous land mass would absorb any nuclear strike that might be launched against her. It was foolproof — almost. There was just one thing: Nodd’s operating base could, once pinpointed, come under attack and be destroyed. As yet I knew nothing of his modus operandi, but logic told me his pad had to be rather more static than mobile and would probably not be dispersible in the same sense as, for instance, missile-launching sites. There Nodd’s weakness must surely lie.

  If only I still had that ballpoint-housed radio transmitter …

  11

  In darkness we came down to a flarepath. It guided us to an airstrip cut swathe-like through the middle of forest clothing a deep valley lying beneath tree-clad hills. We disembarked into a chilly night. There was a car waiting, and into this got Nodd. When he had driven off, the rest of us were fallen in by the armed guards and told to march: told, that was, by much gabble and a finger that pointed to a man who had got out of the car and was waiting out front to guide us. We shambled off rather than marched, our tails well down by this time, with Rackstall in his rear-admiral’s headgear looking glummer than ever. I suppose we marched something like three miles, then we came quite suddenly out from a forest track and saw Nodd’s little set-up ahead. Little! It was bloody immense. An enormous mass of concrete, curved so that its sides met the ground at flat angles all round — like a gigantic tortoise. There was a moon and it could be seen clear and stark and monstrous — and very, very quiet. I guessed that that flat dome, which I found later was a half-mile across, was the stressed-concrete, nuclear-bomb-proof cover for Nodd’s operation. So maybe his one weakness wasn’t all that weak after all, though presumably a sustained and accurate bombardment would keep the bastard holed up so he couldn’t operate his aerosol. We didn’t head directly for the dome which, at distant inspection, didn’t appear to have any entrances; just on the edge of the forest was a flat slab of concrete in the ground and towards this our guide led us. Reaching it, he squatted and produced a key, a heavy and very distinctively shaped one with a long thin point and a number of crossbars — like a sailing ship’s mast and yards in miniature. This he inserted into a square metal plate in the slab. He withdrew the key, got up, and waited. Thirty seconds later, without a sound of any kind, the slab rose in the air. It was a good four feet thick. Beneath it were concrete steps, down which we were pushed ahead of the guns. When the last man was down, the slab went back into position. At the bottom of the steps was a very long tunnel, also of concrete, well lit by electric bulbs at intervals, and seeming to take a dip into the earth before flattening out into the far distance. The steps had taken us down an estimated thirty feet already; Nodd was safer than a mole.

  When we had gone some 500 yards along the tunnel, along which were set watertight, blastproof doors like a warship’s damage control divisions, we were halted by our guide outside a steel door on which once again he used his key, the same one as before. The door slid, as silently as the slab, into a recess in the wall and we went through into a side tunnel and after another walk, longer this time and accompanied by a curious rumbling sound from below, and a suspicion of a tremor, we were all put into individual steel-lined cells, one by one, and locked in securely by the guide’s master-key.

  *

  I had no idea of time now: my watch had been removed long since. Dog-tired, I slept a while, I don’t know how long for. The cell was small but there was just room to lie down, and the air was fresh enough, coming in from a forced-draught system. When I woke the rumble was still going on beneath me: a brew of aerosol expellant? And what was going on in the world outside? My knowledge was nil except for one thing: I had made a colossal balls-up and was as helpless as a trussed hen: Max would be tearing his hair out by the roots. All the same, there had been a certain inevitability about events since I’d virtually walked into the Chinese on the beach: Ellum’s spiel had been a calculated risk that hadn’t come off in my favour and that was that, period. End of negative thinking: 6D2 likes its operatives to think positively and I started to project ahead. While I was doing so there was a small happening: my door rose six inches vertically, food and water were pushed through in plastic containers, and the door came down again. The food was boiled rice and I didn’t like the taste of the water, but I ate and drank to keep alive, and in fact with a less empty stomach I felt my spirits revive a little. Nodd hadn’t won out yet, not right out: he hadn’t brought us all here without a reason, and once that reason had emerged we just might be able to fight back, though God alone knew how.

  An hour after the meal, at a guess, the door opened again, this time sideways, and two H & K assault rifles looked in at me and I was beckoned out.

  *

  Nodd’s operating base was a self-contained city, an incredible place to find in the wilds of south China or anywhere else: I was marched along an intricate network of passages that opened into small squares, rather like a hospital complex, past self-vending drinks machines, past mess halls, past shops selling cigarettes and girlie magazines and confectionery. There were doors with keep-out signs, doors that probably led to power rooms and machinery spaces and laboratories. After a long walk along the electrically-lit passages I was marched into Nodd’s sanctum: the word is not quite right, but it had that sort of feeling when you saw the holy look on Nodd’s face — and it was some sanctum. A big chamber, solid in its concrete walls, brilliantly lit by daylight lighting. One wall, or the greater part of it, carried a giant TV screen, currently blank. In a U-formation in front of this screen were ranged banks of computers. There were panels of dials and switches, microphones, small screens with green light snaking across them intermittently, and internal telephones. At each panel sat an operator; there were men and women, one or two of them Oriental but the majority European — some of the brains and dedication of WUSWIPP assembled to do the West no good. Nodd was seated on a high gallery at the back of the chamber, in a commanding position, his big head rearing over his subordinates with all-seeing eyes and his face wearing a look almost of beatification. With him was Rackstall, and after I was brought in and taken up to the gallery, we were joined by Felicity.

  Behind Nodd were batteries of clocks, all showing different times, obviously by time-zones around the world. I was still in the dark as to what local time might be and as I scanned the clock-faces Nodd uttered.

  “See,” he said, and lifted a pointer which he laid against a clock showing a quarter to noon. Above this clock a sticker read UNITED KINGDOM. “Now you will have a demonstration.” He lifted a hand and below in one of the operating positions a gin flicked a switch and the large TV screen came to life. When the picture had formed I saw the great concrete dome roof above us, saw its full enormous extent from above. It looked like a giant mushroom now, a mushroom on which I saw a kind of railed-in enclosure dead centre and three big flaps open to show gaping black holes. I didn’t know what the enclosure might be, but when another switch was made I head a high whine and Nodd’s control-room shook a little and through the three holes rose networks of steel that grew to something like a hundred feet by my reckoning — aerials, I supposed, and was surprised that Nodd should wish to transmit, unless it was to address more threats to Washington or London.

  I asked him the question, and he laughed.

  “Not threats, Commander Shaw, but action.”

  I felt cold. “Action? Just when is your new deadline?”

  “Not yet. For now a hastener, a softener-up.”

  Down below, one of the WUSWIPP operators did things to a panel — not the girl who had sent up the aerials, but a man two panels to her right.

  “Now,” Nodd said. He looked at me, and smiled. “You are puzzled, Commander?”

&
nbsp; “Yes.”

  “You should not be. You should use your head! Do you suppose I sit here and squirt expellant gases up into the air, like a woman in her kitchen killing flies? Is this what Ludwig Ercks told you before he died?”

  I said, “So you know about that. You had him killed, of course.”

  “Of course.” Nodd, who was wearing a white coat like a doctor, flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. “Answer my question: did he tell you this?”

  “No. I made an assumption.”

  “A poor one.” Nodd waved a hand towards the TV screen. “My aerials transmit impulses, not gas! Not directly gas. You understand?”

  It began to dawn and, dawning, hit like a bullet. I said, “Satellites … vehicles in space! Is that it?”

  “Correct,” Nodd said. “Vehicles, large ones carrying the propellant gases, the chlorofluorocarbons, under remote control from this room. Very many of them, ready at my word to change their orbit and approach selected spots above the ozone layer, and make their discharges. The ozone layer is as susceptible from above as it is from below.”

  “And they’ve not been spotted yet?”

  Nodd shrugged. “Space is full of hardware, Commander, as you must know, so much still spinning around from past experiments by America and Russia.”

  “But when they approach the ozone layer …”

  “They do not approach so closely, and so far they have not approached often. In the case of the Candars, for example, I sometimes emulated the woman in the kitchen —”

  “Not when you had Miss Mandrake staked out?”

  “Not then. Other times. I projected from below, for which I have the facility, but it is not good enough for full-scale use, do you see?”

  I said I did. I asked, “And now — this demonstration? Are you projecting right now?”

  “Yes,” Nodd said. “Burning will be felt, and will continue to be felt for half an hour or so, in south London. Parks and open spaces will turn brown, and many people will be affected, and some will die — either at once, or later from skin cancers.” He added, “When this is done, as it will be if necessary, on a large scale … I think you have enough imagination to fill in the details for yourself, Commander Shaw. I say what I have said before: there is no defence against it, and from this base I can control all life upon earth.”

  *

  When the demonstration of Nodd’s power was over, and he had made certain other points, Felicity, Rackstall and I were taken under guard to another room off the tunnel outside the control chamber, all three of us being locked in together to consider, no doubt under bugs, a proposition put to us by Nodd. Another demonstration had been put on the TV screen and we had watched the concrete dome separate in the middle and rise in two sections on either side so that amid much shake and rumble and general panic it seemed to sprout from the earth like a huge tulip: launch pads had been revealed, and Nodd had explained that this base was also his launch area for the gas-filled vehicles — which, naturally enough, could not be recovered when spent. This had led to the proposition. The operation was a very expensive one to mount and Nodd did not, he’d said, wish necessarily to attack in full force with his space-spinning chlorofluorocarbons. On the grounds of conservation he preferred to use Operation Sunstrike merely as a threat whenever possible. He could achieve all he wanted that way and in achieving it need not cause widespread death. What stood in his way was a basic disbelief on the part of both the US and the British Governments, a disbelief in total obliteration that was pretty firmly planted despite the fact that my presence alone was an indication that the special services at any rate were taking things seriously — and there was Rackstall too, that simple seadog who had dropped into it somewhat accidentally really. As for the other Western powers — Germany, France, Italy and so on — broadcasts picked up in the last few hours had indicated clearly that they refused to take the big threat for real despite the demonstrations. Small-scale stuff was one thing, nationwide devastation quite another, something that just was not ever going to happen to them. Even so, in the meantime counterthreats had gone eastward through diplomatic channels: the communist countries, not specified by name, might well receive some nuclear warheads if there was any large scale burn-up in the West. China, Nodd said, could and would take this and didn’t care what happened to Russia, but death was nasty and no one wanted all-out war, did they?

  Rackstall at that point had said no, they didn’t, but what was the alternative other than a back-down by Nodd?

  “They must hear the truth,” Nodd had said, and the truth — that he could and would bring down the UV in quantity — must come from us. A broadcast to Washington and Whitehall from Nodd’s transmitters, a broadcast made by two British agents of standing, plus an American admiral, could save millions of lives all over the world. Which was why he had wanted us out of Peking. The US Navy ratings would also be in on the act: the enlisted man’s viewpoint, his plea as sadly he called up mom …

  Now in our threesome isolation in the locked room, Rackstall smote a fist into his palm. “Sure no one wants goddam war! Sure no one wants a burn-up either. But we can’t act treasonably, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  Felicity didn’t agree: there was absolutely no disloyalty in her and, I believe truly, no personal lack of courage either. It was just the basic woman’s point of view: compromise was better than war. And it wouldn’t be treason, it would be a putting of the facts as we had now seen them for ourselves. After that, it would be for the governments to decide. We would not be committing anyone to anything. The decision could be to fight back.

  I said to Rackstall, lifting an eyebrow, “She has a point, sir.”

  “Like hell!” Rackstall said harshly. “We’re not here to play Nodd’s dirty game, Commander. We’re here to stop him in his tracks, right?”

  “Right,” I said, “but how the heck do we, short of war?”

  He didn’t answer. He put his hands behind his back, hunched his scraggy shoulders, and perambulated like any senior naval officer with a load on his mind. Felicity caught my eye and I murmured that why shouldn’t we put it to the vote, and she agreed. Two to one, we had to win, but I was really far from convinced. Felicity said, “It’s only fair, I think.”

  Rackstall halted in front of her, his eyes cold as ice. “Fair, eh? Fair, I like that! This is no kids’ game. Fair to what?”

  “Fair to warn our own people,” Felicity said, staring him in the face. “That’s all it is, isn’t it?”

  Rackstall’s face was rock hard but he held his tongue in check. He swung away and did another walkabout, then after a while came back and in an astonishing volte face — though I saw through it right away — said, “Maybe. Maybe you’re right after all. Okay, I’ll go along with you.”

  *

  Nodd was informed by messenger. We were taken back to our respective and lonely cells. During that night sound was fed into my cell from I knew not what aperture since I could see none — a news broadcast from London. In fact, the 1800 BBC News. Noon had brought a degree of horror to south London. Battersea Park, Wandsworth Common had suddenly dried out and caught fire. Hundreds of people, slammed by the UV in their lunch hour, had collapsed and the hospitals were full, even the geriatric unit at St John’s Hospital being pressed into service for skin burns. There had been, as predicted by Nodd, deaths: fifty-seven men, women and children. Paint had peeled, more tyres had burst and in fact some of the deaths had been due to the resulting traffic accidents. Buildings had been set alight and tarmac had melted. The public were urged not to panic, the situation was under control. Later I was fed with a private telephone conversation between Number 10 Downing Street and the White House: WUSWIPP, evidently, had been diligently tapping lines and hooking that call in to Nodd, a brilliant piece of work. The President was being assured that it had been very localised and that there was still no need to assume that similar events could take place on a wider scale. There was, I felt, far too much complacency around, though
I knew one person who wouldn’t be at all complacent: Max. I had no doubt he would have put his opinions across forcibly but he didn’t appear to be having much success. Anyway, shortly after that telephone conversation had been relayed to me, my door was opened up and I found the gunmen waiting to take me over and I was marched once again into the presence of Nodd, still in his white coat and still in his computer-packed control-room. As before I was joined by Felicity and Rackstall plus, this time, the US Navy men from the Hampton Roads.

  Nodd had transcripts ready of what we were to broadcast to the Western capitals: they were all pretty similar, just angled slightly differently by the scriptwriters according to our British or American, male or female natures. They were minor masterpieces of persuasion, indicating our utter conviction that Nodd was going to do just as he’d said and that he could bring it off successfully. Our considered advice was to heed, learn, act for peace and humanity … as I read my script I glanced over at Rear-Admiral Rackstall: he was reading too, but without attention, and I knew why, as I had known from the start. I hadn’t warned him against it: I knew he would be immovable and I knew he would be well aware of the risk anyway.

  He started first, after a general warning from Nodd that any of us who failed to stick rigidly to our scripts would pay the penalty. What appeared to be the instrument of penalty lay on Nodd’s desk: an automatic pistol, an Astra, Spanish made. WUSWIPP was nothing if not fully international. There was a tense silence as the right switches and so on were made down below in the body of the control-room, linking Nodd’s base in world wide, or West wide anyway. When all was ready a voice spoke into a microphone below us, a man’s voice speaking heavily accented English — Polish, I fancied his nationality might be. This voice said, “This is WUSWIPP calling London and Washington, WUSWIPP calling the heads of government in Britain and the United States. I have an important message for you, firstly to be broadcast by Rear-Admiral Rackstall of the United States Navy.”