by Walter Wager
“Basement,” Williston ordered.
The green acetylene tank was heavy, but Arbolino handled it easily as they descended into the basement to find the manhole cover. The others followed with the rest of the equipment, Williston pointing the flashlight ahead of them. There it was in the floor in the corner, a three-foot-square metal plate marked SOUTHERN BELL—KEEP OUT. A sturdy lock prevented anyone without the key from raising the plate, unless he had an acetylene torch. Arbolino took out the torch, connected it to the tank and put on the special goggles. Then he burned the lock hasp off, exactly as he’d practiced.
Carstairs jerked up the plate, and the teacher aimed his beam down into the blackness. There was a low tunnel—perhaps five feet high—with heavy insulated cables along the damp concrete walls; it ran off to the left.
“Right, that’s it,” the sportsman confirmed.
Williston went down first, signaled the others to hurry. They manhandled the gear down the metal ladder carefully, started up the tunnel cautiously. Their sneakers made almost no sound in the subterranean passage. None of them spoke as they advanced up the telephone company’s conduit, for noise could betray them. There was to be no nonessential conversation on this operation. They passed three metal plates set in the ceiling, but each time Williston checked the numbers on those manhole covers with those on his chart and shook his head. At the fourth, he nodded.
If the diagram was accurate, this led into the sub-basement of the Paradise City Police Headquarters. Gilman opened his duffel bag, took out a small box and released the catch. He extracted a doctor’s stethoscope, put the twin ends into his ears and placed the black plastic disk against the manhole cover. He listened for ninety seconds, training for any sound that might indicate somebody was on the other side.
Nothing.
He smiled, raised his hand in the thumbs-up signal.
Arbolino went to work again with the torch. This was a much bigger job that would take much more time, for the lock was on the other side, so he’d have to burn out a large section of the plate itself—two feet by two feet—to let them through. The metal wasn’t the tempered steel used in bank vaults, but it still consumed twenty-one minutes to carve out the opening that the plan required.
Gilman checked his watch as the stunt man and Carstairs slipped on the asbestos gloves to remove the hot metal square.
6:33—one minute ahead of schedule.
They all put on the infrared goggles. Williston—silenced revolver in one hand and infrared lamp in the other—was the first up the ladder. He peered over the top into the darkness, swept the invisible beam slowly around the large room. There was machinery in one corner, a control box on the wall and a heap of boxes on the other side of the chamber. An oil tank squatted beside the bulk of the big machine, and on the far wall he made out a door.
He climbed up, waved his partners a silent command to follow with the gear. Two minutes later, the four men stood panting and studying the machine.
“Main generator,” Gilman diagnosed.
They all nodded.
The man from Las Vegas took three time pencils from his shoulder pouch, glanced at his watch again. 6:38. He held up his fingers, indicating that they’d have to wait for two minutes. They all understood, for they all knew that these explosive devices were equipped with settings spaced in five-minute intervals. At 6:40, he set each time pencil for twenty minutes so they’d go off precisely at 7:00. He put them in key spots in the generator. Blowing generators was nothing new to this team.
Snell’s people would be moving into the telephone booths in another seven minutes. Twenty-four people with thirty dimes each, that ought to do it. None of them had been told what the operation was or what their contribution would be, but they understood that it was important. They would dial the number—again and again and again until 7:18, and eight of them had been told to dial only once but not to hang up. They’d just feed in dimes to maintain the connection, to freeze the lines. That certainly ought to do it.
The police radio was another matter.
It too would be neutralized, but more subtly.
Williston had pointed out that destroying it would be dangerous because the cars—some of them, anyway—would pour back to headquarters if it went off the air, and that was the last thing that the assault team wanted. The trick would be to keep those cars away, as far away as possible for as long as possible. Gilman had scheduled the assault operation inside Police Headquarters for no longer than four minutes, the getaway for eight. The escape route was all laid out, and if the two radio-control devices worked there should be no problem. There would be chaos, but no problem.
Carstairs pointed to the door, then up. He formed the fingers of his right hand into a child’s version of a pistol, smiled. The others who sat on the floor beside him nodded in understanding; the police pistol range was at the head of the stairs beyond the portal. Then another flight of steps up to the street floor where four or five patrolmen, a sergeant or two and a couple of detectives might be expected. Clayton was in Cell 4 on the second floor, Snell had reported when he sketched the layout for the man he knew as Arthur Warren. There was a locked steel door at the entrance to the cell block, another on Cell 4.
Plastic charges.
The new version of that smelly C-3.
Six-second fuses.
It had to work.
If everything went according to plan, shooting wouldn’t be necessary, the teacher told himself for the twentieth time.
Then he heard the sound of gunfire.
It was barely audible, but it was there and all four of the raiders guessed what it meant. Somebody was practicing on the pistol range on the floor above. Some policeman was there with a loaded gun, firing live ammunition and blocking their access to the main floor. Surprise would be an essential ingredient in seizing control of that floor; there’d be no surprise if they had to shoot their way through the basement.
Forty-one feet from where they sweated, a heavy man in a tan shirt and gray pants peered at a target and took careful aim before he squeezed the trigger of his .38 Colt Detective Special revolver. It was somewhat incongruous for this marksman to be equipped with that weapon, for he wasn’t a detective at all. He was a criminal who’d slain eight—or was it nine?—men for money, a professional assassin. He fired again.
“Nice shooting, Luther,” complimented Paradise City’s chief of police.
“Got to keep in practice. Got to stay sharp—especially these days,” Hyatt answered.
He let off two more rounds, both bull’s-eyes.
“Now it’s my turn,” Marton announced.
“No, I’ve got three more to go.”
There was no point in arguing with Luther Hyatt, so the captain watched him finish his regular eighteen rounds and then Marton began to shoot. He wasn’t nearly as accurate as the assassin at this distance, but he was reasonably satisfied with his score when he finished at 6:50. The two men reloaded, holstered their weapons and started for the refrigerator with cold beer in Marton’s office upstairs.
Across town, Judy Ellis was getting dressed before going out to eat. Williston had told her to maintain her normal routine and schedule, to vary no detail so that she wouldn’t be suspected of any connection with the attack. She buttoned her blouse, combed her hair in front of the mirror and reached nervously for the lipstick on the dresser. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. Sighing, she bent down to look behind the dresser for the yellow cylinder.
Then she saw it.
Not the lipstick, the face of a tiny black microphone.
The room was bugged.
Somebody had been listening, had heard her lover outline the plan and time of the raid.
Pikelis—it had to be Pikelis—would have men waiting in ambush, and the attackers would all be butchered.
She had to warn them. The singer snatched her purse, hurried down to the street to find a taxi. Four went by—all occupied—before the desperate woman managed to hail one.
“I’m in a rush, urgent,” she added.
“Yes, Ma’am. Do my best.”
She looked at her wristwatch. It was 6:54, six minutes to what Williston had jocularly called “H Hour.” Six minutes to cover twenty-one blocks; it could be done. With luck, it could be done.
At 6:57, Arbolino started toward the door with the lock pick in his hand. He crouched down, studied it carefully and nodded. No sweat. The lock would be easy, a standard model. He opened his musette bag, took out the gas mask and gestured to the others. A minute later, they were all wearing similar respirators. At 6:59, Snell’s helpers began dropping in their dimes at two dozen scattered telephone booths and starting dialing PInetree 1-1111. Fifteen seconds later, something unusual happened at the switchboard of the Paradise City Police Headquarters. All the lights were flashing, all the buzzers were sounding, all the lines were busy. Nameless long-winded people—some of them either irrational or drunk—were talking gibberish, asking questions, recounting complex, senseless tales of vague problems or suspicions. Crank calls were nothing new, but such a concentration was extraordinary.
“Every nut in town is calling tonight,” grumbled the switchboard operator. “Must be drinking early…Son-of-a-bitch…Yes, police headquarters. What? What’s that? What’s your name? What are you talking about, lady?”
Every line was tied up; no calls could go out.
No calls would—until 7:18.
In the sub-basement, Williston saw the sweep second hand on his watch move steadily. He raised his left hand, opened and closed the fingers twice.
Ten seconds to go. Arbolino raised the walkie-talkie, spoke two words.
When the sweep second hand reached 7 P.M.—straight up, as radio announcers would say—the time pencils blew out the generator and there was no electric power in the building. The air-conditioners in the detectives’ squad room, the snack bar and Marton’s office all died simultaneously. The police radio transmitter was silenced—for fifteen seconds. Then it resumed again, ordering the various cars to handle assorted emergency calls on the waterfront, at the country club, the airport, the far side of the city. The police moved off quickly and obediently, unaware that these instructions were being broadcast by a compact transmitter in the back of a panel truck parked behind the Atlas Building.
Gilman had rigged the equipment rather ingeniously, but simply.
When Arbolino spoke into the walkie-talkie that was set to the right frequency, the voice-activated transmitter went on and the voice-activated recorder began to play and the tape of the stunt man reading off fake orders—he knew the call numbers after weeks of eavesdropping on police broadcasts-sent the radio cars off on imaginary emergencies far from headquarters. In seven or eight minutes—after finding no such emergencies—the mobile patrols would fretfully radio in their complaints and ask that the address be checked. There’d be no answer until 7:09, when the second part of the tape would send the police cars off on another set of wild-goose chases. As Gilman reckoned it, the second set of orders would divert the radio units until 7:13 or 7:14 and then a few of the brighter police, might start telephoning. The lines would all be busy until 7:18, by which time the raiders should be several miles outside Paradise City on Route 121.
It was a good plan, flawed only by two omissions.
It didn’t take into account the microphone in Judy Ellis’ room, and it didn’t provide for the man who owned the yellow Mustang. Or his armed associates, the people he referred to as his family when he telephoned Atlanta. The plan hadn’t included these factors because none of the Sledgehammer team, none of Snell’s watchers had discovered them. The man who was always right had been correct when he’d warned that the intelligence was inadequate.
Williston pointed to the lock, and Arbolino inserted the pick. He turned it back and forth four times before there was a click, after which he turned the knob slowly. He pushed the door open, about half an inch. The teacher stepped forward, peered through the crack, raised his silenced revolver. The others followed him through the doorway.
Two floors above, the switchboard operator was cursing and the desk sergeant in the front chamber was explaining to a gaunt, frowsy-haired spinster that he frankly doubted that the space ship that had ruined her gardenias was Russian. He doubted the existence of the craft altogether, but you couldn’t tell that to the forty-nine-year-old virgin.
“Miss Devereaux, you really ought to check with the Federal Aeronautics Administration or the Air Force,” Sergeant Morgan advised patiently. He had met Miss Devereaux a dozen times before; she was one of the “full mooners”—the nuts whose neuroses blossomed each month when the moon was ripe. These unfortunates were standard items for every city’s police.
“It isn’t a police matter,” Morgan assured her. “Not within our jurisdiction.”
“Chop suey. That’s what I say to you, the old chop suey,” answered the spinster. “You’re just shirking your duty. I’ve had enough of your disgusting old chop suey.”
“Why don’t you get in touch with the Russian ambassador in Washington, Ma’am?”
Miss Devereaux glared.
“I wrote him five months ago, Sergeant, and that treacherous Commie rat never answered. That’s the kind of vile manners he has. We ought to send him back where he came from, or are you on his side?”
The full-mooners were the worst, definitely the worst.
“Miss Devereaux,” Morgan began.
Then he saw the strange look on her face turn even stranger.
“You can’t scare me,” she cackled as she pointed over his shoulder. “Your pinko tricks don’t frighten me at all.”
The sergeant turned, and he was instantly (1) stunned, (2) frightened. Two men in white coveralls, white gloves and blue sneakers were standing in the doorway. One carried a submachine gun and the other a revolver with a silencer. As if that weren’t frightening enough, they were faceless—like creatures in those science-fiction movies—in gas masks.
“Jesus,” appealed Sergeant Morgan hopefully.
The other two policemen in the room looked up from their desks, blinked.
Now a third gas-masked figure appeared, and Morgan heard still another person dragging something. The submachine gun poked in the air menacingly; the police raised their hands in immediate response.
“You don’t scare me,” insisted the spinster confidently.
“Shut up,” advised the sergeant in an abrupt lapse of manners.
The submachine gun gestured, and one of the faceless invaders sprinted across the room to lock the street door from the inside. Miss Devereaux saw this, suddenly realized that the threat of violence was genuine. At the moment, her womanly good sense triumphed over her psychosexual problems and she did something extremely intelligent. She let out a small yip of rational terror, fainted.
Seven blocks away, Judy Ellis leaned forward in the taxi and silently cursed the Saturday traffic. She would be too late, too late to warn them.
Now the third raider raised his submachine gun—two of the strangers had the same weapons—and walked to the squad room, where two detectives were playing “21.” A few moments later, they emerged with upraised arms to join the prisoners near the front desk. One of the raiders took all five of the policemen’s guns, removed the cartridges and tossed the empty weapons into a wastebasket.
Some forty-five seconds had elapsed, and the invaders hadn’t said a word. With Williston in the lead, three of them headed for the stairs while Carstairs remained to cover the disarmed prisoners with his machine gun. At the head of the steps, a policeman was coming out of the toilet when he suddenly found himself facing a submachine gun and a .38-caliber revolver. Having limited faith in the Jefferson County pension system and a date with a delightfully promiscuous car hop that evening, he sensibly swallowed his professional pride and stood absolutely still. When the teacher hit him three times with the revolver, he fell down. As he hit the floo
r, Gilman jerked the unconscious officer’s gun from the belly holster and scattered the bullets. He dropped the weapon behind the water cooler.
They advanced up the corridor, paused at the turn to let Williston glance around the corner. He looked, waved them on. The two guards at the entrance to the cell block were much too deeply involved in discussing the comparative measurements and talents of Raquel Welch and Sophia Loren to draw their weapons in time, and they both—both the police, not the actresses—lost interest in the idea after they’d been disarmed and Maced. Instead, they concentrated on trying to breathe and/or see as they reeled and staggered.
Keys.
One of them probably had a key to the cell block, or maybe the door was operated by an electrical switch. If the system was electrical, it was dead because they’d blasted the generator. Williston glanced at the two helpless guards, decided that it would be quicker to use explosives instead of searching for the right key.
With the revolver in his right hand, he formed the letter “C” with his left.
Charge. “C” stood for charge, a charge of plastic. Arbolino opened the duffel bag, pulled out one of the prepackaged lumps they’d prepared and shaped it on the lock. He took a short length of fuse from a pocket of his coverall, inserted it deftly. Waving the others back, he flicked his lighter.
One…two…three…four…five…six.
The blast tore out the lock, and the shock swung the metal door back with a loud clatter. Gilman checked his watch. Two minutes and five seconds; half the time was gone. He tapped his wrist urgently, and they charged into the cell block on the dead run. There—Cell Number 4. The other prisoners were gaping, muttering, yelling questions, but Sam Clayton simply stared at them curiously. Snell had told him earlier in the day that his friends Tom and Jerry might visit soon, leaving the prisoner puzzled because he had no such friends. Williston stepped up to his cell, handed, in the printed note.