She nodded, and I squeezed her arm. I caught a flash of her white teeth as she smiled. I opened the truck doors, hauled out the burning bar, and handed it to Hazel. I muscled the oxygen tank to the ground with a reminding twinge from my shoulder. It hit the alley dirt with a dull clank, but it didn’t bother me. At a certain point in any operation a little boldness affords its own concealment.
I disregarded the hand truck. Speed was important now, and I didn’t want to take the time to work it through the hole in the fence and drag the oxygen tank to it. “Follow me,” I said to Hazel. I took a deep breath, muscled the tank up into my arms, inched my way sideways through the fence gap, and trotted to the back of the building wall. I could hear Hazel right behind me lugging the burning bar. I could also hear the diminishing sound of the truck’s engine as Chen Yi drove out of the alley.
My shoulder felt like an aching tooth, and I was panting heavily when I set the tank down against the building wall, then lowered it until it was flat on the ground. There was no sound from inside. Only a single faint light showed from the left hand end of the building. I counted windows until I located the one where I’d seen Erikson that afternoon. “Climb up — when I make a leg — and see if you — can see him,” I whispered to Hazel between rasping breaths.
I leaned bent kneed with my back supported by the dried-brick wall. Hazel climbed up on my knee cap platform. I’d barely locked my hands around the back of her leg to steady her when she dropped to the ground. “I saw him,” she breathed against my ear. “But there’s another man in there with him. I didn’t see any guards.”
“Some goddamn drunk thrown in with him who’ll get underfoot,” I said in disgust. “Well, the hell with it. Squat down here.” I sat her astraddle the oxygen tank. “We could have used a little practice with this, but listen closely to me now.”
I tapped the top of the tank. “See this hose and handle attachment?” I continued. “That’s the pressure control valve that meters the flow of oxygen into the bar. The hose attaches to the base of the bar — ” I screwed the coupling together as I spoke “ — and feeds oxygen through the bar’s hollow center to its ignited muzzle. The oxygen powers burning thermite which produces a flame about seven degrees cooler than a reactor pile.”
“What controls it?” Hazel whispered.
“You do.” I placed her hand on the oxygen flow control knob. “The higher the pressure, the hotter and more concentrated the flame becomes. It’s really just a variable-length torch but with nearly the heat capacity of a solar flare.”
I thought back over the procedure in my mind to be sure I’d covered everything. “When I say ‘Now!,’ you turn the knob and feed the bar a steadily increasing supply of oxygen. And when I say ‘Go!,’ you turn loose of everything and get the hell out through the hole in the fence. We’ll be right behind you. All set?”
“Yes.” I could hear the tension in her voice.
“Relax, baby,” I told her. “This is the number on the wheel we came here to play.”
The tank’s high pressure hose and the length of the burning bar brought me to within six inches of the wall. Much too close. I backed off while I carefully unscrewed the threaded cap that covered the business end of the bar. In the darkness I couldn’t see the greasy substance smeared around its muzzle, but the strong odor of its chemical compound assailed my nostrils.
I glanced upward to make sure I was directly beneath Erikson’s window, pulled on my work gloves, then worked my hands backward until they were almost half the length of the bar away from the torch end. “Now!” I said. I heard the faint hiss of oxygen as Hazel turned the knob that opened the valve to permit the oxygen to flow through the tube. The grease at the torch end of the bar began to smoke and stink unpleasantly; chemical reaction had been initiated, the forerunner of combustion.
In two seconds a licking blue flame surrounded the tip of the bar. The flame changed to a dull red, then to a bright orange. Finally with a faint sputtering sound the entire rim of the tube burst into an intensely white phosphorus glare.
The white flame stretched out to a foot in length. It looked like a chopped-off spray of sunlit water coming from a garden hose. The hissing sound had built up to a low roar. When the flame was two feet in length and no larger than the tube’s diameter, I took a long breath. “Go!” I called. Hazel slithered from the tank and disappeared outside the shallow perimeter of phosphorus light.
I directed the dragon tongue of flame beneath the window, close to the ground. I made a circular sweep of the roaring torrent of flame, and immediately, bits of charred brick and plaster exploded and burst away from the superheated wall. Steam and smoke marked the course of the torch cutting its way through brick, lathing, stone, and the plaster and paint of the interior wall. “What the hell?” I heard a startled voice say from inside.
I had no mask, and I had to keep turning my face away from the heat. Hot bits of building material sprayed onto my gloves, burning my hands even through the gloves. I could smell the odor of burning cloth as sparks burnt themselves out in Candy’s windbreaker. The way the burning bar was eating its way through the wall I knew I had an overkill tool in my hands. The smoke was getting thicker, and I could hear someone coughing.
The weakened wall collapsed and crumbled even before I joined the circular flame-edged slice to its point of origin. Bricks, mortar, burning ends of two-by-fours, and flickering, flame-fringed laths tumbled out into the yard.
“Shag it out of there!” I yelled.
I couldn’t see the interior of the exposed cell because of the billowing smoke. The wall was burning openly. Then a figure smaller than Erikson’s should have been scrambled through the hole, running doubled up to escape the flames curling at its edges. My first thought was that a drunk shouldn’t be able to move that fast, and then I saw a revolver in his hand.
The smoke-blinded, doubled-up new arrival couldn’t see me. I raised the burning bar again. One wrong move with the revolver and I’d liquefy him. I was so intent on the slack gun-hand that I didn’t notice action behind me.
Two strong arms wrapped around me, and two big hands gripped the burning bar and directed its flame to one side. “Hold it, Earl,” Karl Erikson’s welcome voice said in my ear. “That chicken you’re planning to fricassee is your old buddy Jock McLaren.”
“Jock — !” I swallowed the rest of what I had been about to say. “Quick! Out through the hole in the fence!” I aimed the flare momentarily in that direction to give them guidance, then reached down, and turned off the oxygen valve. The white hot, hissing flame died out.
I was the last one through the fence. Erikson was hugging Hazel exuberantly. “Earl!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “Chen Yi says a car followed her each time she circled! She thinks it followed us from the apartment!” She was staring over Erikson’s shoulder at McLaren. “Who’s that man?” she asked in bewilderment.
“An added starter,” I said. “You and Hazel and McLaren climb into the back,” I said to Erikson, opening the doors at the rear of the truck.
“Goddamn it, Drake,” Jock McLaren complained bitterly as they all climbed in, “all you’ve done is drag Karl out into the open for them to get at him! I had the wheels greased so the Bahamian government would have eased him out of here in another three weeks if you hadn’t butted in!”
“And in another three weeks I’d have gone out of my skull in that cell,” Erikson said flatly. “I was never so glad to see anything in my life, Earl, as your ugly puss atop that fence this afternoon.”
I closed and latched the rear doors, then ran forward to the truck’s side window. “Where did you last see the car?” I demanded of Chen Yi.
The Chinese girl jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “At the mouth of the alley behind us. It remains always the same distance in the rear.”
“Okay,” I said. “Drive to the other end of the alley and wait. I’ll be along in a minute.”
The truck pulled away. Before the sound of its wheezing engine died out, I h
eard a new motor sound, higher pitched and much more powerful. The dark blur of a sedan without lights on came down the alley. I could barely make it out even in the added illumination furnished by the flickering flames from the jail cell.
I was standing beside the hole in the fence. I stepped back into the gap, and I had my gun in my hand. I couldn’t imagine how they could keep tabs on us so accurately in the darkness unless they had an owl eye, a nightscope used in Army field maneuvers. Excited, British-accented voices sounded from the smoldering jail.
I couldn’t see how many were in the sedan. I could hardly see the sedan. I fired three shots, two at the right front tire and one at the left. Someone shouted as the car veered sharply into the fence. Planking flew like popcorn, one piece grazing my shoulder. The sedan plowed through the fence, across the sandy yard, and rammed solidly into the jail wall with a grinding, metal-crunching crash barely six feet from where I’d burned the hole in the wall.
I was running up the alley while the sound of tinkling glass was still in the air. I jerked open the truck door on the passenger side and scrambled in beside Chen Yi. “Take off!” I barked at her.
“What was that shooting?” McLaren demanded suspiciously.
I didn’t answer him. The truck lurched forward and turned the corner. I twisted around to look into the back of the truck. “We’re two hours ahead of the rendezvous time at the dock because they rousted us at the hideout apartment and I had to move early,” I said. “Anyone got any ideas where we could spend the time? If — ”
“There’s another car,” Karl Erikson said quietly. He was crouched down on his heels on the truck bed, talking through the glassless rear window.
Chen Yi had no sooner straightened the truck out after the turn when a sedan that could have been the twin of the first one pulled away from the curb and fell in behind us. “Turn the next corner, Chen Yi,” I said, “then slow down enough for me to slip out and fix their wagon.”
“No!” Erikson and McLaren exclaimed as one. “It might be the police,” McLaren added.
“The police would have lights and sirens, you idiot!”
“No,” Erikson said again. “Not out in public like this. Someone might get hurt.”
“The government conscience,” I rasped. “Why don’t I just have Chen Yi drive you back to Cartwright Street where you can turn yourselves in?”
“You’ve botched even that possibility,” McClaren declared. “With this mess on top of the other we’d be lucky to be processed out in an ordinary lifetime.”
“The only way I’ll go back to Cartwright Street is if they carry me.” Karl Erikson’s voice wasn’t loud, but his tone carried conviction. His hand gripped my shoulder solidly. “This crowd doesn’t want any trouble in public, either, or they’d have made a move before now. What they’d like is to get us in a deserted area. Is there any chance your man might be early at the rendezvous?”
“Chen Yi?”
“It is possible, but who knows?” she replied.
“Where’s the rendezvous?” Erikson asked.
“Pier nine, next to the Commonwealth Fuel and Petroleum Warehouse dock.”
“It’s not what you’d call public, but it’s not really deserted, either,” Chen Yi added.
“Drive there,” Erikson directed. “We’ll hope your boatman is ahead of schedule.”
Chen Yi made a left turn, and the truck clattered toward the wharves. In the side-view mirror I could see the second sedan pacing us a hundred yards to the rear.
“Why haven’t we heard the police chasing us?” Hazel wondered.
“We got a break,” I explained. “The sedan I derailed smashed into the back of the jail, and from the way it hit they’ll be sorting out the contents for awhile. The police won’t even be sure for awhile that these two weren’t in it.” I turned again to look into the back. “How in hell did you happen to be at Cartwright Street, Jock?”
“I was sent there to make sure Karl had protection until his release was effected. When the man clearing out the office in New York described you and said you’d been trying to leave a briefcase for Karl, I realized — ”
“Where’s the briefcase now, Earl?” Erikson cut in.
“At the Lambert Warehouse and Storage Company in Alexandria.” I added details quickly about making up the crate and shipping it.
“I realized something must have gone wrong,” McLaren resumed, “although I didn’t know what Karl’s latest assignment was. I called Washington and gave them the word, and ten minutes later I had orders to come to Nassau myself. Through a negotiated agreement at a bureau-to-bureau level I was to be placed in Karl’s cell until the higher level diplomatic negotiations for a full release were worked out.”
“And why the hell it took so long I’ll never understand,” Erikson said. “With Jock’s documentation the release should have been automatic.”
“Red tape,” McLaren said. “One thing, Earl. How did you get away from the two men the office sent to Ely to recover the briefcase from you once we realized what was going on?”
“Those were government men?”
“Yes, what did you think?”
“I thought it was the syndicate. Hazel’s early warning system told us two men were on the way, so we took off. You government types have a certain lack of communication in your operations.”
“For once I’d have to agree with you,” Erikson said wryly.
“That was a hell of a move you put on the back of that jail building just now,” McLaren said to me with more of his usual amiability. “When I woke up inside there, I thought Dante’s Inferno was having a rerun. I was positive it was the syndicate after Karl. We’d been expecting it, and I was — ”
“We are getting close,” Chen Yi interrupted in an apologetic tone of voice. The truck was weaving through a tangled complex of narrow lanes. The night air became suddenly more humid.
“D’you think the syndicate was actually smooth enough to stand in the wings while I pulled you out of the fire as the big fat chestnut they wanted?” I asked Erikson.
“No. I think they lucked into that by trailing you to the jail, and sometime you’ll have to tell me how they got close enough to you to be able to do that.”
“My peculiar style of beauty.”
He nodded. “A bad break but — ”
“Pier nine,” Chen Yi announced. She braked the truck to a stop. The ancient vehicle had been making so much noise in transit that even with the motor still running it was comparatively quiet. The truck’s nose was pointed directly at a narrow pier alongside a much wider pier at which a tug and barge were moored. There was no fishing smack moored at the end of the narrow pier.
“He’s not here yet,” I said.
“Drive out on the pier, Chen Yi,” Erikson ordered. “As far as you can go.”
“We’re dead ending ourselves,” I warned.
“We’re buying time,” Erikson said. “These goons behind us don’t give orders, they take them. I’ve found the situation useful before in dealing with the syndicate. They’ll make no move without instructions unless your boatman pulls in here.”
The truck inched forward, rumbling slowly over wooden planking that wasn’t much more than twice the width of the truck. “If the girl in the massage parlor heard everything, they know we’re going out by boat,” I told Erikson. “Couldn’t they be using the delay to round up some water transport of their own?”
He rubbed his chin. “You’re right. I’d overlooked that point.” He raised his voice. “This is far enough.”
The truck stopped again, two-thirds of the way out to the end of the wharf. This time Chen Yi turned the motor off. It was so quiet I could hear wavelets lapping against the piles under the pier. “Their car is sitting back where we stopped before,” McLaren reported. “Nothing’s happening.”
“They think they have us penned in,” Erikson said.
“Think, hell!” I snorted. “We are penned in unless that damn fishing boat shows up, and even then they
’ll be all over us like maggots on a dead cat.”
“I don’t think I care for your simile,” McLaren said. “If — ”
He stopped when Hazel reached across him to tug at Erikson’s arm. She pointed to the dark outline of the tug and barge moored at the next pier a few feet closer to the end of the wharf than our position. “We could run that,” she said.
“Run it?” Erikson queried.
She gestured impatiently. “Board it and take off.”
“Piracy?” Erikson said. He actually sounded shocked.
“Great!” I said, and I meant it. “Forget your ex-Navy scruples and get us off this time bomb we’re sitting on here.”
He was looking at the tug and barge. “I’m sure the tug would be no problem, but unless we could cast off the tow, it would be a damn sticky wicket. Towing is a tricky technique.”
“Get aboard and see if it’s possible,” I urged him. “Hazel can be your first mate. But let’s turn this truck first. Crossways, so it blocks the approach to this end of the pier.”
Erikson, McLaren, and I worked the truck back and forth in a series of wheel-cramping maneuvers until we had it at right angles to the pier. There was barely a foot of clearance at either end.
“They’re getting out of their car,” Hazel said. She had been watching the sedan at the inner end of the pier. “They’ve seen what we’re doing.”
I drew my gun which I had reloaded previously. McLaren already had his in his hand. “Get to the tug before they rush us,” I told Erikson.
“They won’t rush us until they have no other recourse,” he said. “The recovery of the material we took from the bank is their prime interest. Killing us off wouldn’t help them recover it.”
“Here comes an emissary,” McLaren said.
We all looked shoreward.
It was quite an emissary.
Hermione was walking hesitantly along the pier, glancing back over her shoulder occasionally, her blond hair ruffled by the night breeze but standing out even in the semidarkness. “We want to talk to you!” a male voice shouted from the sedan.
Operation Breakthrough Page 16