Countdown to Terror (8 page)

Legs pumping, Frank risked a look over his shoulder. The car was aimed straight at him. He looked ahead. That trailer was too far — Frank knew he couldn't outrun the little monster. He'd have to dodge. Last time, he'd dodged left. This time he'd go right.

From the sound, Frank knew the car had blown its muffler. It now sounded like a racing machine as it thundered on. Frank glanced back again. How could he have thought of that car as small? It was huge—and only twenty feet behind him!

He faked left, then dove right. The driver hooked his car left, missed Frank, and went into a hair-raising skid as he jammed on the brakes and his wheels locked.

Frank leapt to his feet and ran like a maniac. The car was now in a position to cut him off. All that mistreatment must be affecting the car's handling, Frank hoped.

He refused to look at the car, concentrating only on the trailer ahead. But his side vision caught the movement of the car. It was zooming straight for him.

He stepped into a pothole he couldn't see because it was so dark and he fell.

It was a lucky fall. If he'd gone two steps farther, he'd have been right in the path of the speeding car.

It fishtailed through another crazy U-turn to come back. Frank had barely enough time to get up and throw himself to safety under the trailer before the car flew past him again.

This time, instead of screaming into another turn, the car screeched to a jerky stop, and two guys got out. Frank wondered if they really wanted to catch him or if they were just afraid of their friend's driving.

Well, he couldn't stay there and let the ground troops drive him out of cover. While the guys were still getting out of the car, Frank sprinted for the warehouse.

This building was long and thin — a rectangle—with loading bays on both sides. As he ran for the nearest bay, Frank could see straight through the building to the other side. The perfect shortcut — provided the two goons didn't station themselves on the far side.

He heard the car spin its wheels, but he knew he had it beat to the warehouse. Catching a ragged breath, Frank threw himself at the nearest loading dock—and nearly went into shock as a pair of strong arms gripped him.

Joe grinned down at him. "I thought you'd done enough," he said, walking into the warehouse with Frank. "While you kept those clowns occupied, I managed to get Shauna all the way over to the bluffs. There's a sort of path up there, and this bozo won't be able to drive after us. I guess we're lucky they didn't know at the warehouse what we did. They had to split up to search for us. Speaking of which," — he pointed to the bays on the far side of the building — "those goons plan to catch you as soon as you go out over there."

His grin got wider. "But they won't be expecting two of us, and I'm rested, so I can take the heat from the driver for a while." He led the way across the warehouse floor. "I have a plan."

Joe was right — the two guys weren't expecting two people to come out of the warehouse. Guns in hand, they'd positioned themselves at either end of the building, so that if Frank came for one, the other could cover him. When an attacker leapt on both of them, however, they weren't ready.

Frank jumped on his guy from the loading dock. The gunman dropped like a sack of potatoes. Joe had his man pinned to the ground, grappling with him. He gestured with his head for Frank to get going.

As Frank ran, he heard the sound of the compact car's engine laboring around the warehouse building. This was bad. There was no place to hide at all — just a few stunted weed-trees, and beyond them, railroad tracks. The tracks could throw the car out of control if it hit them, but that wouldn't stop the driver from going for him.

Then, as the car swerved around to aim for Frank, two shots rang out. He turned back and saw Joe smashing his adversary's gun hand against the ground.

Frank couldn't believe it. One bullet had taken out the car's left headlight, the other, the left front tire.

The driver had a new target now. His car barreled at Joe, who jumped safely aside. The driver came close to hitting his own man, who now lay out of it on the ground.

Joe got up and trotted, tauntingly slow, toward the far end of the building. It took the driver a little longer to take his battered car through the turnaround. But when he saw Joe almost reach the corner of the building, he floored the gas pedal to get him.

The car shimmied wildly but moved as fast as a rocket. Joe pretended to be unaware that it was coming, as he strolled toward the corner. But when Joe did turn and saw the car, a look of horror crossed his face. He'd made his move too late. Even if he got around the corner, the driver could cut him down.

Joe raced around the corner and flattened himself against the building as the little car pursued him on two wheels.

The car slammed into a telephone pole. It shuddered and fell down right on the hood of the car.

That ended the chase.

The steep climb up the overgrown path wasn't easy, but Frank, Joe, and Shauna handled it quickly. They didn't want to be hanging around when their pursuers regained consciousness.

Shauna found a pay phone to call the police to report the accident. If those guys needed any help, they'd get it. In the meantime, they hoped, the police would keep them off the streets for a while.

"Where to?" Joe asked.

"Back to Fort Needham for a moment," Frank said.

"But it's dark," Joe said.

"It's lit up at night and looks very beautiful," Shauna said.

"I just want someplace pleasant where I can think," Frank replied. While he'd been busy escaping and running for his life, he hadn't had a chance to put together all the things he'd seen. Now ... Frank sat on the grass, smiling as Joe shot a flash picture of Shauna with his camera. Joe frowned at the result.

"Look at this," he complained. "The picture's all foggy—as if it had already been exposed. What do you think, Frank? Is it bad film? Or did I break the cam — "

Joe broke off when he saw Frank looking at the film as if it were a nightmare come true. "Come on, it's just a bad picture."

"Take another one," Frank ordered him. "Just shoot—anything."

Shrugging at Frank's weird reaction, Joe took another picture of Shauna. It was just as foggy as the first.

"This isn't a new load of film, is it?" Frank sounded as if he were interrogating Joe. "You took a perfectly clear shot of me in the airport."

"It's the same film," Joe said. "What's the big deal?"

"I know how the film got ruined," Frank said. "Remember how the camera fell on that little metal canister inside the dummy? That's what did it."

"Did what?" Shauna asked.

"It irradiated the film." Frank looked at them with growing horror in his eyes. "That metal slug had a little pellet of something very radioactive inside. That's why those guys were so upset when we opened up the coffin and found it."

His voice dropped lower as he stared at the ruined prints. "We just saw a piece of an atomic bomb."

"AN ATOMIC BOMB?" Shauna said, stumbling over the words in disbelief. "Here in Halifax? You must be joking."

Frank shook his head, ice growing in his stomach. "Actually, it makes a terrible sort of sense. Halifax is a big port city, with lots of ships—and people—passing through from all over the world. It's a Canadian city, a perfect place for the Assassins to launch a plot against the U.S. And there are three thousand miles of friendly border to smuggle it across—unless they bring it down by boat."

He looked slowly from the pictures to Shauna. "In fact, I couldn't think of a better place on the East Coast to assemble and build a nuclear bomb."

She stared at him in complete shock. "Well — we've got to do something about it! Tell the government! Tell the police!"

Joe sighed deeply. "We can try," he said.

"Try?" Shauna burst out.

"I think what Joe is trying to say is that we don't have much hard proof," Frank explained. "A lot of things have happened — bombs going off, people getting hurt, even killed. But the police would have to take our word to pull it all together."

"And cops aren't exactly eager to take a kid's word about something like this," Joe finished up for him. "They think we get weird ideas from watching too many spy movies and just tune us out."

Joe shook his head. "The one contact we had on the force was Gerry Dundee. He found out something fishy was going on at Forte Brothers, and they shut his mouth for him."

"We played it very straight, telling the police everything that happened since we arrived in town," Frank said. "And the detective in charge just shrugged it off."

"Think how he'd react if we came in and told him that his case ties in with some kind of nuclear terrorism plot." Joe's lips were a hard, thin line.

"But this is important!" Shauna wailed. "Think about it for a minute," Joe said gently. "If you hadn't been along with us and we told you this story, would you believe it?" "I ... well, I would — " Finally, Shauna nodded. "I would think you were out of your minds. Back at the Hungry Guardsman, when you first started telling me all this stuff, I thought you were pulling my leg. Then that guy tried to blow the place up!"

Frank smiled. "Explosions are usually a good way to persuade people. But I'm afraid we can't depend on somebody planting a bomb at police headquarters when we go to talk to them." His smile faded. "We need some proof—something a lot stronger than foggy pictures and a story about a coffin. They won't go for a search warrant unless we have some solid proof."

"Luckily, we don't need search warrants— and we know where to find some proof." Joe began pacing back and forth. "So, where do the Forte Brothers do business?"

"I couldn't tell you that," Shauna said, heading out of the park. "But I'll lead you to the nearest phone book."

They found a telephone directory at a corner cafe a few blocks down from Fort Needham Park.

"Here it is," Shauna said, paging through the directory. "It's about nine blocks from here, back the way we came, in the Hydrostone."

"The whozie-stone?" Joe asked.

"You know those houses behind Fort Needham Park?" Shauna said.

Frank and Joe nodded.

"It's a housing project," Shauna explained, "built in an area that was completely devastated. Hydrostone is a kind of concrete block — that's what they used to build the houses."

"Well, what do you say we head back there?" Joe said.

The others nodded. "But first I have to pick up a couple of things back at the hotel," Frank said.

Walking down the street that was listed as the address of Forte Brothers, they passed a line of closed and dark shops. The funeral home was in the middle of the block. No lights showed in the windows or on its porch.

Frank led the way to the end of the block and made a right. "There's too much street traffic to go in the front," he said. "Let's see how the back looks."

Joe had been expecting that. "It's the fourth house from the end. We'll just count our way up."

The stores backed up on a spacious alleyway, which they shared with the rear of a line of houses.

"Not as crowded," Frank muttered. "But we'll have to be quiet, unless we want the neighbors looking over our shoulders."

From the windows of one house, they could hear the theme music of a popular TV show.

"I think they've got other things to watch than us," Joe said.

"Let's hope so," Frank muttered, "because we're going in."

It turned out that they didn't need to count houses. Parked behind Forte Brothers was a dead giveaway — the company hearse. They hid behind it as they made their way up to the back door.

Frank slid the screen door open, bracing it with his knee. Then he knelt by the doorknob, slipping a little box with wires out of his pocket.

Shauna watched wide-eyed. "What's that?" she asked.

"It started out as a circuit tester. I made a few modifications." Frank touched the wires to the doorknob, then ran them up and down the space between the door and the frame. A light flashed on the box.

"Trouble," Frank whispered. "They've got an alarm on the door. Open it up, and a siren sounds."

"Does this mean we can't get in?" Shauna asked.

"It means we use the door as a last resort," Joe explained. He backed up to check the windows.

"Frank, look at the last window on the right — the one behind the bush."

Frank slid over, reached up, and felt around. "Bathroom window," he whispered. "We're in luck. Somebody left it open." Even so, he checked carefully for pressure pads or contacts in the window frame before he shoved the window up.

Then he switched on a miniflashlight, and shielding it with his hand, checked the tiled windowsill.

"People have a bad habit of leaving things on bathroom windowsills," Joe explained to Shauna. "If we knocked anything over coming in, it would land on the tile floor with a nice, loud crash."

"You think there still could be people inside?" She stared up at the dark windows.

"We don't know. So we'll play it safe."

Frank was leaning in the window now, playing his light around the room. He wasn't shielding it anymore. "The door's closed. I'm going in."

The creeping bush that grew up past the window made the opening quite small, but Frank swung himself in.

Joe laced his fingers together to make a cup of his hands. "Put your foot in here," he told Shauna. "You're next."

With a boost from Joe, she made it in silently. Then Joe had to squeeze in.

He pulled out his own flashlight and glanced around the room. "Doesn't look like they're hiding the bomb in here," he whispered. "Where do we go next?"

Frank glanced back. "Kill the light." He stood with his ear to the door, listening. When he was sure no one was outside, he turned the doorknob and eased the door open. It made the slightest squeak, but no one came to investigate.

The hallway outside was carpeted — they could tell that much by feel. It was also totally dark. Frank and Joe flashed their lights in opposite directions. They saw a small sitting room by the front door, and two funeral chapels, one large, one smaller.