Assault on Alpha Base Read Free Page B

their right. “I’ve found it.”
    Harding moved the binoculars back to his eyes. “Well?”
    “C-17 Globemaster III, cargo aircraft of the U.S. Air Force,” she recited. “Twenty-five hundred nautical mile range carrying a max payload of 170,900 pounds, and a top airspeed of 0.77 mach.” She looked up. “So what does that tell us?”
    “Not much,” answered Harding, “except if we can believe the intelligence NUFA gave us, the next time a C-17 lands at Wendover, chances are it will either be loading or unloading nuclear weapons. And if we’re going to steal one of them, this is the time to do it.”
    Vikki stared. “Steal a nuke? Are you crazy? Look at the mouseketeers out there. They’ve got this place locked up tighter than supermax. I don’t want to die doing something stupid.”
    Harding was silent for a moment.
    Vikki narrowed her eyes at him. She studied his dark, squat features. His once solid body had given way to a slight paunch. The wire-framed glasses added to the studious look. Gray peppered his hair, and a large bald spot adorned his head. He was on the wrong side of forty, and looked more like Vikki’s father than her lover.
    She scanned the concrete apron where activity began to pick up. Armored trucks encircled the C-17, reminding her of covered wagons closing in to keep attacking Indians away. A hundred and fifty years and they’re still using the same tactics, she thought.
    Men scurried around the plane and took their positions on the ground, prone, with their weapons pointed outward. In the distance four helicopters hovered, not moving from their posts. Sun reflected off a deserted hangar behind the apron.
    Harding spoke to himself. “They certainly seem to be covering all the bases.”
    “What?”
    Harding pointed to the helicopters Vikki had just noticed. “They’re guarding the C-17 from the air as well as the ground. They don’t want to chance anything going wrong.”
    Military police stood at a roadblock, blocking traffic to allow operations to continue. A police car sat off to the side of the road.
    The C-17 sat on a pad, north of Vikki and Harding; the runway was east of them, and Alpha Base to the west. Vikki could barely make out the town of Wendover fifteen miles north of the C-17.
    She leaned her head out the window. No breeze blew in the dry desert air. Heat rippled up from the road.
    The flatbeds positioned themselves behind the C-17’s gaping rear door. White, oversized barrels were carefully taken from the aircraft and gingerly strapped onto the flatbed, anchored by a series of straps and cables, keeping them upright and secure against tilting. Each barrel took less than a minute to position. After ten minutes the first flatbed pulled away to allow the second one access.
    Once the drums were securely fastened to the second flatbed, two armored personnel carriers drove away from the plane, followed by the two flatbeds. A Ford Bronco, resplendent with machine guns and an official-looking flag waving from the front, sped in front of the convoy.
    The convoy inched west down the main road. Several armed men guarded the route. Scanning the area, they kept close watch for anything that might approach the convoy.
    Once the convoy had passed, security policemen started waving the traffic on. Vikki started the van. “What now?”
    Harding pointed to the road. “Just follow the convoy.”
    Vikki put the Chevy van into gear and started slowly off, heading west.
    “You had better begin thinking fast,” she said, nodding ahead of her. “They’re sending one of the guards to stop us.”
    A security policeman stepped from the side of the road and stopped the cars following the convoy. He walked straight toward them.
    The guard sauntered up to the van. He shouldered his rifle and grinned at Vikki, all but ignoring Harding. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
    Harding leaned past Vikki. “Good afternoon, sir. What seems to be the problem?”
    The security policeman looked surprised. “You