Countdown to Terror (9 page)

Joe also found a stairway with a small arrow pointing down and a sign that said: Office.

"Let's check it out," Frank whispered.

At the foot of the stairs was a small, walled-in area with a door marked Private. Beyond that was a large, shadowy open area.

They tried the office first. It was a mess.

Piles of paper rose in one corner of the room. Frank went to check them, and they turned out to be nothing more than the business records of the firm. On top of the pile was a contract stating that the Forte Brothers had sold their business to somebody named Jihan Singh. He wondered if that was the Indian equivalent of John Smith.

Joe, in the meantime, was concentrating on a desk, which was littered with wires and tools. He touched a soldering iron, some resistors, and a digital timer, which he held up. "Look familiar?" he asked.

"I seem to remember disassembling something rather like that," Frank admitted. He flashed his light around. "This might be the workbench, but I don't see the finished product in here."

They stepped out of the office and into the larger space. As they flashed their lights around, they saw it was a salesroom. Racks lined the walls, with various styles of coffins on display.

Joe gave a low whistle. "I don't believe this," he said.

In the center of the room was what must have been the Cadillac of coffins. It was a metallic box about half the size of a luxury car and colored a carefully polished deep bronze.

The handles looked like solid gold, and probably cost as much as any three other caskets.

But unlike any of the other caskets, this one was closed. All the rest of the models were open.

Frank had a weird feeling the moment he saw this behemoth. He was stepping toward it, reaching out with his hand, when the lights suddenly snapped on.

Jihan Singh's voice rang out in the small room.

"It wouldn't be wise to touch that, Frank Hardy. There are conventional dangers as well as a nuclear one."

SINGH WAS NOT alone. At least four other guys backed him up, all of them pointing Uzis or MAC-10 submachine guns at Shauna and the Hardys.

"How did you know we were here?" Joe asked, not caring about the firepower trained on him.

Singh smiled at him. "I'm surprised that you didn't notice the motion detectors. Each room has one. But, my dear Joe — you don't mind that I call you Joe? — we were expecting you." His smile got wider and brighter under his huge black mustache. "Why do you think we left that window open?"

Frank and Joe looked at each other, feeling like perfect chumps.

"So, now we have the famous Frank and Joe Hardy, and a lovely friend." Singh turned to Shauna. "Tell me, are you with the Halifax police? We know most of the local undercover forces. Or perhaps you represent the national forces? RCMP, perhaps."

"RCMP?" said Joe.

"Royal Canadian Mounted Police," Frank explained. "They handle a lot of security jobs—like the FBI back home."

Joe stared at the head terrorist. "You think she's a cop?" he asked in disbelief. "She's Shauna MacLaren, an architecture student and part-time waitress. One of your boys nearly blew her up when you planted that bomb at the Hungry Guardsman."

"Is this true?"

Shauna nodded, still staring silently at the four gun muzzles.

Singh nodded. "We worried that you might have gone to the authorities — especially when that unmarked police car came for you at Dartmouth. I had to use a local operative there who did not recognize Sergeant Dundee. But he did not know that his superiors no longer listened to the old man."

"Oh, yeah?" Joe said. "That 'old man' was the one who put us on to you."

"I knew he had started to ask some embarrassing questions." Singh shook his head. "He should have died of a heart attack, a stroke — something appropriate for a man his age. I'm afraid that bomb drew far too much attention."

"Why have you been trying to blow us up?" Frank demanded. "Ever since we arrived in this city — "

"Ever since I saw you arrive," Singh corrected. He stared at the Hardys. "You really don't know? Then, Frank and Joe, let me tell you about your rare honor — "

"You make it sound like 'This Is Your Life,' " Joe cut in.

Singh ignored him. "It's something the Assassins haven't used in nearly a hundred years. We've been ordered to kill you on sight."

The Hardys stared for a moment. Then Joe said, "Pretty heavy-duty. So you sicced your goons on us."

"Yes," Singh said. "You've been rather a drain on my local manpower. We have one dead, and three in local hospitals at this time. One is in the same Intensive Care Unit as is your friend Dundee. Luckily, none of these patients know the exact timing of our project."

"What's your rush?" Joe asked.

"It's your fault," Singh told him. "This is what you Americans call a crash project. I had just assembled my team when one of our most important agents was captured."

"Captured? I thought all you people would die to avoid that," Joe taunted.

"It was very bad luck," Singh admitted.

Frank, however, was staring at the head Assassin with slitted eyes. "Who was this agent?"

"His code name is Adyab. You knew him as Sandy White."

Sandy White led the Assassin task force working undercover to destroy the Alaska pipeline. During the Trouble in the Pipeline case, the Assassins almost succeeded in cutting the oil flow—except for Frank and Joe. In fact, Joe was the reason White had been captured. He'd literally punched the poison tooth out of White's mouth.

"We have word that Adyab is still resisting interrogation," Singh told them. "But for how much longer? He knows too many damaging facts about our organization. We can't allow him to be cracked."

"So you're going to take an entire city hostage," Frank said.

Singh nodded. "You live up to your reputation for having a quick mind," he said. "My project was pushed ahead as having the best chance of getting Adyab released."

"Well, it certainly raises the stakes," Frank admitted. "You must have had a pretty tough job."

"With an international organization, much can be accomplished," Singh said. "We had already begun collecting fissionable material. I had a physicist for the theoretical design. All I needed was an explosives expert."

"And you got Omar Fellawi."

"You recognized his work." Singh smiled at Frank. "He was most impressed that you survived. I'll introduce you in a moment—after we make sure you can't cause trouble."

He gestured to a row of heavy metal caskets. "Please back up against them." Then he pulled sets of handcuffs out of his pocket.

Joe glanced at Frank. This might be the only chance they'd get to make a move.

But Singh was too experienced to fall into any traps. As his prisoners moved, so did the guards, keeping them covered at all times. And he was careful to stay out of the line of fire as he cuffed Frank, Joe, and Shauna. Not only were their hands behind their backs, but the chains between their cuffs ran through a handle on each of the three different coffins.

"It's just a small precaution to keep you from moving around," he said. "And don't bother screaming for help. This room is soundproofed. One of the first improvements I made after buying the place. It makes an excellent safe house, doesn't it?"

"Very clever," Frank said, complimenting him.

"My plan was well along, except for the problem of getting the nuclear materials into the city. Then I had the idea—"

Singh looked at Frank. "You may be aware of the sudden outbreak of terror in the Middle East?"

"I've been reading about it, yes."

"But have you noticed the number of Canadians who've recently lost their lives? There was one in that bus who blew up, another on that boat."

Frank looked hard at the terrorist. "Now that you mention it, there have been quite a few."

"Six, to be exact — six paper people that I created. Passports, tickets, visas, I arranged for them all. Then I gave them to agents who traveled under the identities. Since we knew where and when these—disasters were to occur, it was easy enough to plant the identification papers. Then other friends and agents took care of sending back the 'remains.' Of course, you saw what was really shipped."

Frank nodded. "Dummies in lead-lined coffins, each carrying a slug of—what? Uranium? Plutonium?"

"Uranium-238," a new voice cut in. A short, thickset man thumped down the steps on stumpy legs. His coarse blond hair was shaved down to a brush cut, and his icy blue eyes crackled with intelligence. "Six slugs—sixty grams. Less than an ounce of fissionable material, but enough to make two nuclear bombs."

"Thank you, Herr Professor," Singh said. "Let me introduce Ranulf Lupec, our scientific advisor."

"So these are the people who kept you so busy these last few days?" There was the faintest trace of an accent in Lupec's words as he looked at the prisoners. He could just as easily have been examining a shipment of laboratory rats.

Another figure came down the stairs — a tall, gawky guy with a beak of a nose, wild black hair, and a receding hairline. He looked like the kind of person who wound up running the soda machine in a fast-food joint. Yet Frank found himself looking at the man's hands. The fingertips were stained with nicotine and acid. But the long, thin fingers were amazingly graceful, even grasping a heavy lead box.

"Omar Fellawi?" Frank asked.

The lanky man stopped and gave him a big grin. "You are the one who took apart my bomb," he said. "Very smart — I must stop using that loop."

He turned away to the coffin in the center of the room. "I would like to talk, but there is work to finish."

Frank watched as Fellawi ran his fingers over several places on the casket—on one of the locking bolts, behind a handle, and at the base. Then he carefully swung the coffin lid open.

Even the hardened killers shrank back. Only Lupec, Singh, and Fellawi leaned over the revealed machinery.

"This is a gun-type atomic weapon." Lupec spoke to the prisoners almost as if he were lecturing a class. "An explosive charge drives a small piece of uranium into a larger piece at two thousand feet per second. When the two pieces are smashed together, they reach critical mass and explode with the force of thousands of tons of dynamite."

He smiled. "It's the simplest form of bomb. The Americans were so sure of this design, they didn't even test it before dropping it on Hiroshima."

"Yes, the design is simple," Fellawi said. "Making it work—that is hard. Especially when these young people try to steal our parts."

"The slug you tried to intercept was our final shipment," Singh explained.

"We didn't try to intercept anything," Joe told him. "We didn't even know what it was until after we left."

Frank had been thinking over something else Lupec had said. "You said you'd smuggled in enough for two bombs," he began.

"That's right," Singh told him. "We have the assembly for one bomb all ready to be brought across the border. Omar here is finishing our second one right now."

Fellawi had opened up the lead box and removed a short, fat cylinder, maybe four inches tall. He bent over the innards of the coffin-bomb and began working with his magic fingers. "I move it here, I shift here, slip it in— good. Now, I make the connections." He looked around. "Where is my soldering iron?" A guard dashed into the office and came back with the tool. Fellawi leaned over again, using the soldering gun with all the brilliance of a brain surgeon. "We connect here, and here. Move this— No!" He almost slapped Lupec's hand away.

The scientist glared daggers at the gawky, almost clownish figure towering over him. But Fellawi shook his head fiercely. "You know about the fission and the critical mass," he said. "But me—I know about bombs."

A few more minutes' work, and Fellawi stepped back. "Ready," he said. "We set the timer now."

Joe couldn't believe his ears. "Set the timer? How are you going to carry that thing when it's armed?"

"Oh, we're not going to carry it," Singh told him. "We're leaving it here."

He smiled at the horrified expressions on the young people's faces. "The other bomb, with the final assembly not completed, will head for the United States tonight. After we've landed in your country, this bomb will go off. When Halifax disappears in a mushroom cloud, your government will have to believe that we can— and will—destroy one of your cities. They'll have to set Adyab free."

Singh and Lupec watched as Fellawi set the timer, then started it. "Eight hours," the bomb maker said. "More than enough time."

He put the timer inside, then closed the top of the coffin. His hands were covered now with black graphite lubricant, and one of his knuckles was skinned and bleeding. "We go now?" he asked.

"I am afraid we'll have to leave you," Singh said to the prisoners. "This is why, of course, we were so willing to tell you so much. In an operation like this, we don't need to tie up loose ends." He smiled, "We've already tethered you."

Frank, Joe, and Shauna stood frozen. In less than eight hours the bomb would go off—and they would be vaporized.

"I'll mention your names to Adyab," Singh promised Joe and Frank. "He'll be so happy to hear that you helped gain his freedom."

FELLAWI SMILED AT Frank. "Goodbye, smart boy." He wasn't making fun of Frank — he meant his compliment sincerely. "I wish I could show you this bomb. Three loops inside." He held up three fingers. "But now we go to the place with the funny name. Stony Strand?" He shook his head and went upstairs.

Singh smiled at the retreating genius's back. "For all his brilliance, he never connects the victim with his bombs."

"I think you are the first victims he actually talked to," Lupec added. He gave the prisoners a short, ironic bow. "Gentlemen, lady, our transportation to the States is waiting for us. Goodbye."

Singh just nodded his farewell and barked an order to the guards. Joe thought he had never seen people so happy to be getting out of a room.

At the top of the stairs, Singh paused. "I'll leave the light on, so you can see each other," he said. "We don't want to be cruel, after all."