Seek and Destroy Read online

  He nodded. “I am beginning to understand what I’ve let myself in for,” he said without emotion. “And the rest of these men? Will you be holding them by the same kind of threat?”

  “That is often not necessary. We pay them well, far more than they could get anywhere else in this country. They do not stop to consider what they are doing so long as there are plenty of pesos for them to send home.”

  Carradine leaned back in his seat. Outwardly, he seemed to be turning over the position in his mind, brow furrowed in thought. Inwardly, he was preparing his mind for what would come once they arrived at their destination. On purpose, he had made this man feel that he might question some of the things he found so that their respect for him might be increased and their view of him — as a man who might be useful to them once they discovered that he could be trusted — would be confirmed. A lot was going to depend on how well he could convince them that he was ready to throw in his lot with them, for a price. Obviously they would need men who could supervise the others, could be placed in positions of trust, and it would be men such as these who would have the opportunity of learning the most about this place. But he would have to be careful. It needed only one slight mistake and it could be the end of the game for him.

  “Think over what I’ve told you,” said the other softly. He got to his feet, then bent so that his mouth was close to Carradine’s ear. “But don’t breathe a word of our little conversation to anyone else, otherwise it could mean trouble.”

  Carradine said nothing, but continued to stare after the other as he made his way back to the pilot’s compartment. For a moment, ten seconds perhaps, certainly not longer, the man stood in the opening at the end of the plane, staring back at Carradine. Then he lowered the curtain, went through into the control cabin and closed the door behind him.

  Slowly, Carradine turned his glance towards the man seated next to him. The other did not seem to have heard a word of the conversation. If he had, there was no interest on his face. Outside the aircraft, the storm was abating swiftly. They had flown through the worst part of it while he had been in conversation with the Russian. Strange that the mere act of talking could often force the mind away from even the greatest feeling of terror. Now there were the usual noises of the plane. The pounding, insistent roar of the twin engines, the faintly heard shriek of air past the airframe, the shaking, shuddering vibration of metal as it quivered in tune to the throbbing motors. The round, spectral eye on the moon appeared as the plane banked to port. The clouds drifted away from in front of it and it sailed out into a wide, clear patch of sky, almost, it seemed, on a level with them. They were probably flying around eight thousand feet now, he reckoned. Down below, there could be the pampas, or thick jungle, it was impossible to tell which. Even where there was no cloud, the ground was a dark carpet of midnight, featureless, without even a hint as to its composition.

  He sat quietly in the dimness, letting himself relax. After a while, he closed his eyes, head resting uncomfortably against the chill metal at his back. Presently, he was asleep while the DC-3 flew on through the night.

  Four hundred and fifty miles from its point of take-off, the plane swung north after travelling almost due west for most of the night. Argentina had gone below them, now they were over the heart of the jungle, a dark and poisonous green which could just have been made out where the moonlight fell as a dull grey wash over the unbroken stretches of trees down beneath them, with occasionally a river shining like a strip of silver wire against the darker and more monotonous background.

  Carradine woke with the change in the note of the engines as they began to lose height. He sat up with a sudden start and stared about him. Nothing had changed. The interior of the plane was still as dim. Outside, the moon had altered its position in the sky, was much lower now, almost touching the distant horizon and it was just possible to make out the contours of the ground below them in the greying light of an early dawn. Here and there, a low hill lifted from the flatness of the terrain over which they were flying. Dense jungle lay everywhere with very few clearings to be seen. Where in God’s name did the pilot intend to land this aircraft? Surely there couldn’t be a stretch of open ground long enough or even level enough to take a plane this size.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of one of the crew in the doorway. “We shall be landing in ten minutes. Please remain seated after we touch down. Further orders will then be given to you.”

  So they didn’t intend any of them to get out and start looking around, thought Carradine grimly. Evidently they had a lot to hide here. The plane hit an air pocket. Carradine’s body jerked back with the sudden kick and his teeth were snapped shut in his head. He tried to sit calmly and relaxed. The jungle drifted below them as the DC-3 slid into its landing glide, lining up with the landing ground still some forty or fifty miles ahead, out of sight from where he sat. They were flying quite steadily now with the dawn brightening in the eastern half of the sky. The tops of the trees were a green blur beneath the wing. Here and there, he was able to pick out a wide, sluggish river that wound around the base of a rising hill. Once or twice, he saw a clearing in the rain forest. But in every direction, dominating the scene out to the far horizons there was only the jungle; dense, poisonous, deadly. The Russian’s words came back to him as he stared down at it. Even if one got through the guards surrounding the launching site, the chances of getting through the jungle were infinitely remote, if not non-existent.

  Glancing down at his hands, he saw that they were quite steady. Sighing a little, he leaned back. The feeling of being on his own in this place, knowing that the slightest slip could mean the end of everything, disturbed him. How could one man hope to fight the organisation these people had built up over the past few years? The security system at this site would be quite fantastic. They would leave nothing to chance. And the fact that back in Montevideo, they had made more than one attempt to kill him, indicated quite clearly that they suspected someone would have been sent to track down the whereabouts of this launching site. Merton had been killed because he had certain knowledge; not as much as he, Carradine, possessed. But it had been sufficient for the M.G.B. to realise that he could be troublesome. For all he knew, this could be a complicated M.G.B. plot to get him out here, unsuspecting, to finish him in this desolate, out-of-the-way spot, where nobody would be any the wiser. Back in London, they might be able to trace his progress part of the way and then come up against a brick wall. Another agent might be assigned to this job and it was possible he would stumble on the Aroyo Mining Corporation and discover that they were merely a front for the Reds.

  The day outside brightened. The sun popped up over the eastern horizon, springing up redly into the clear heavens. They were still three or four thousand feet up and the ground immediately below them still lay in darkness. Leaning as far back as he could, pressing the side of his face close to the cold perspex of the window, he tried to make out the terrain in front of them. They were banking in a wide sweep now, the screech of air past the plane sounding above the throttled back whine of the engines. A few moments later, he made out the vast space which had been gouged out of the jungle. The bare tract of ground stood out like a scar on the surface of the countryside. While the aircraft executed a wide curve, Carradine watched the ground below, searching for his first sight of any of the installations. He was doomed to disappointment. He could see nothing beyond a few wooden buildings and a larger, concrete erection which stood a little way to one side of the landing strip. The plane came out of its banking turn and the scene vanished. He could see nothing but the jungle trees now, reaching up for the belly of the plane as it sped over them. They were losing height rapidly, levelling off as they approached the runway.

  Wedging himself tightly against the fuselage, he braced his back against the hard metal and waited for touchdown. There was a bump that sent a shudder through the plane, a rattling of metal, then a high-screeched wail for several seconds as the pilot cut the engines. The wh
eels hit the ground for a second time, then they were down, rolling towards the far end of the airstrip. He let his breath go in a harsh exhalation, realised that he was trembling a little.

  They came to a halt in front of the concrete building. Carradine eyed it curiously through the window while they waited for orders to disembark. Merely a control tower of some kind, he decided finally. Clearly it was nothing to do with the launching site. He tried to see beyond it, all the way across the cleared section, but there was nothing visible. Had he been mistaken? Were the builders so far behind schedule that they had not erected any of the installations yet? Or had they been brought to the wrong place, brought here for further questioning before allowed to proceed with the rest of the journey?

  A host of ideas tumbled through his mind, were halted as the harsh voice from the pilot’s cabin shouted. “Outside everybody!”

  Carradine pushed himself stiffly to his feet. His right leg had lost all feeling due to the cramped position in which he had been forced to sit. He limped slowly after the others, down the short flight of steps which had been thrust up against the side of the plane, out into the first, red rays of the morning sun. The air was still crisp and cold and he felt it bite at his throat and lungs as he drew down a deep breath. But it cleared his head and he looked about him with some curiosity.

  “You will first be taken to your quarters,” said the squat, broad-shouldered Russian. “Then you will be told where to begin work.”

  They began to move off. Now that they were off the plane, the rest of the passengers seemed to have perked up, become more interested in their surroundings. As Carradine stepped forward, to fall in with the rest, the squat man laid a hand on his arm. “You will come with me, Señor Perez,” he said authoritatively. “Those men are simply workers. We have something a little different for you.”

  Again there was that faint tremor in his arms and legs as he followed the other over the rough ground, past the concrete control block, across a boulder-strewn patch of ground towards the rising slope of the hillside in the distance. The man beside him was silent and Carradine knew better than to ask any questions, even though there were a hundred of them in his mind, each demanding an answer. Patience and watchfulness were required now if he was not to give himself away. Very soon, within the next few minutes perhaps, he would know whether he had fooled these men or not. whether he would go on living with a chance to disrupt their plans and find out how the nuclear warheads were to be brought here, or whether they had their own plans for him.

  Carradine’s companion walked directly towards the jungle trees, where they had not been cleared. Curious, he followed close on the man’s heels. A dank smell, mixed with a faint animal stench greeted them as they walked into the undergrowth. There was a narrow path here that wound among the trees. Picking his way carefully forward, he noticed the glimmer of steel among the thick foliage. They came upon the mouth of the tunnel almost unexpectedly. It led, he guessed, right into the hillside and was excellently hidden from the air. He doubted if any plane ever flew over this stretch of the country, yet these people had spent thousands, possibly millions of pesos, building everything underground. Perhaps they were looking to the future when the U.S. spy satellites were in orbit, photographing every square mile of ground, relaying back all of the relevant data to their control centres. There might be danger of discovery then and the Russians had been clever enough to have foreseen it.

  The tunnel went on downwards and would, he guessed, go right below the surface of the hill, perhaps a mile underground. Lights gleamed at intervals along the curved walls and a set of glittering rails ran down the centre of the tunnel which was more than thirty feet in diameter. It was a tremendous achievement, but there was more to come.

  The man beside him said suddenly: “It is a long walk. Fortunately all of it is downhill.” His short, sharp laugh was thrown back at them by the curved walls. “An engineer such as yourself will be able to appreciate the immensity of an undertaking such as this. I am neither a scientist nor an engineer. My job is security. But even I cannot fail to be — how would you say it, exhilarated — by all of this.”

  Fifty yards along the tunnel, it widened and then branched into three, each more brilliantly lit than the single tunnel from the surface. His guide took the one on the left, their footsteps echoing hollowly from the walls and the roof which curved over their heads. In the distance, there was a heavy, rhythmic beat of machinery, like a great mechanical heart beating amid the complex array of tunnels. They were approaching the nerve centre of the huge installation.

  Three minutes later, the tunnel opened out into a vast underground chamber which had been hewn out of the solid rock. It was larger than he had expected, perhaps five hundred yards in length and about three hundred in width. The roof was perhaps a hundred feet above his head, blazing with lights. As he stepped through, into the chamber, he noticed the edges of the steel doors which formed the end of the tunnel, doors which could, he knew, be closed at a moment’s notice. A little prickle of apprehensive wonder touched his spine. He knew now why they had been so worried about this place back in London, why Merton had been killed so that his information might die with him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Web of Shadows

  “These will be your living quarters while you are working here.” The squat man whose name, Carradine had learned, was Donovsky, stood in the doorway of the small room and waved an expressive hand to indicate the amenities. The room was more like a cell than anything Carradine had seen before. A wash basin in one corner, an iron bed, a small chest of drawers and a couple of chairs made up the meagre furniture. There was a solitary carpet on the concrete floor with a flower pattern on it. Carradine felt a twinge of grim amusement. Evidently, as one of the engineers on the project, they reckoned he rated some form of luxury.

  “Thank you.” He gave a brief nod. One thing, there was plenty of light in the room. He guessed that there were several powerful dynamos supplying them with all of the electrical power they needed.

  “You will be given instructions concerning your work here in a little while. In the meantime, you must remain in your quarters. Failure to observe this rule could lead to trouble.”

  There was no mistaking the menace in the other’s tone. Carradine nodded again, settled himself in one of the chairs as the other closed the door. On an instinct, he went over to the door and turned the knob slowly. As he had guessed, the door was locked. Nothing for it now but to make the best of things, he decided. He thought of his room at the Hotel Uruguayo, for a moment his thoughts slipped back to the girl, Valentina Veronova, tall and beautiful, deadly perhaps, but still fun to be with; and suddenly he found himself wishing that he was back there instead of here in this sterile room, devoid of any of the material comforts. He had a momentary impression of men scurrying around underground here like ants in some gigantic anthill and the thought chilled him, although he was not sure why. There were a couple of mining journals on the top of the bureau. He took them down and riffled through them, studying their contents. He knew very little about mining, but he doubted if anyone would go into it in great detail unless they already suspected him and were wanting to catch him out. The engineering required for a site such as this would be far more complex and specialised than anything an ordinary mining engineer would be supposed to know and he had the feeling that if they wanted him to help in the work here, he would be put under the wing of someone already at work on the site. When that happened, it would be up to him to keep his eyes and ears open, to discover all he could about this place and particularly where any secret plans were kept and how the nuclear warheads were to be smuggled into the country, ready for the missiles which he knew to be already there.

  Even if he was successful on either of these two counts, what would there be for him to do? He made up his mind on that at once. Somehow, he would have to get out of this place, even if it meant trying to steal the plane. How much that would achieve, he wasn’t sure apart from alerting
the organisation as to his true identity. Would he be able to get the information back to London or the FBI? If so, would they be able to stop those nuclear warheads from being brought into the country? The last thing America would want would be an international incident. Everything would have to be done discreetly and with the maximum amount of security and secrecy. He stared down at the magazine in his hands, listened to the far away hum of machinery and tried to calm his jumping nerves and clear his mind of the background thoughts which persisted in cluttering it up, making it difficult to think things out clearly.

  An hour passed; an hour during which nothing happened. During that time, Carradine’s imagination ran riot as he tried to figure out what might be happening outside that steel door which had been so unceremoniously locked on him. It was possible that he had been recognised on the plane by his fellow-traveller from London, who could only have been some high-ranking man from Moscow. It was equally likely that they had discovered something when they had checked out his background in Montevideo, maybe even connecting him with Merton. Were these men, even now, working out how best to dispose of him, starting more inquiries into his past, sending word back to Montevideo, asking for more information about Perez, a man who called himself an engineer?

  The door opened, shutting off his train of thought. Donovsky stood in the opening. He said shortly: “They are waiting for you now, Perez. Come with me and I’ll take you to them.”

  Carradine had expected a brief smile from the other, but there was nothing. The thick lips twisted just a little and the cold eyes regarded him with the stillness of a snake watching its prey just before it struck. Donovsky stood on one side to allow Carradine to precede him, snapped off the light switch before closing the door and falling into step beside him. Carradine looked up into the other’s square features. He knew the type well enough, had met up with men like this on past missions. Dedicated men, knowing only one purpose, to carry out any orders given them and see that things ran smoothly, answering directly to Moscow if anything went wrong. While in Moscow, he would perform routine jobs, see to despatches, check reports coming in from all over the world. At intervals, he would be given assignments such as this, missions which were given only to men who could be trusted implicitly, for there had been too many occasions in the past when agents whom the Soviets had considered to be reliable, had sought, and been given, political asylum. They had brought certain secrets with them which had made their going over to the other side even more of a defeat for the M.G.B. than might ordinarily have been the case.