Operation Breakthrough (17 page)

“Behind the shop,” she said. She made a circle in the air with one finger to indicate the direction. Hurricane Ronnie nodded.

“Are we straight now?” I asked him.

“Righto, myte. I’ll berth the
Matilda
at one fifteen an’ meet you in the alley behind the jail a half hour lyter. But park the truck a little bit away, right? Then we’ll spring the lad an’ tickety-boo it for the
Matilda.”
He paused. “Which night are we layin’ it on?”

It was my turn to pause. I thought of Candy’s warning as transmitted by Chen Yi about the syndicate’s obsession with getting to Erikson. Why delay if I had any success in obtaining what I needed to get him out? “Would tonight be too soon?”

“Not a bit,” he said promptly.

“Or tomorrow night,” I amended it. “Can Chen Yi call you to let you know?” Both Chen Yi and Hurricane Ronnie nodded. “Good.” I took a crisp hundred dollar bill from Hazel’s bag and placed it on the coffee table. “You can take that along with you, too, if you can tell me where on the island there’s any explosives stored. On one of the construction jobs, I mean. Dynamite or plastique preferably.”

“Now that’s tricky stuff, guv’nor,” the bewhiskered boat captain said slowly. He picked up the bill and studied both sides of it longingly. “Sorry, I don’t have a clue.” He had started to replace the bill on the coffee table when his blue eyes blazed and he jerked his hand and the bill back. “ ‘Alf a mo'!” The scratchy voice was triumphant. “I do know. Up at North End a new ‘otel’s goin’ up, an’ they’re blastin’ out a small anchorage for private boats. I saw a blinkin’ charge go off meself day before yesterday.”

“The hundred’s yours.”

He tossed me his truck keys. His expression was absentminded; his attention was fixed on the bills still on the coffee table as though wondering how he might increase them. “If you need a partner to ‘elp requisition the explosives, guv’nor, I’m willin’ to ‘ave a go at it wif yer.”

I almost said yes, then changed my mind. If something went wrong and I had to get away from the hotel construction site in a hurry, I had more confidence that I could make it than that Hurricane Ronnie could. And if he were along, I’d have to look out for him. The
Matilda
was crucial to Erikson’s escape, and nothing should be allowed to interfere with that. “Just meet me at 1:30. Wear dark clothing and shoes, not sandals. And get some kind of knit pull-over cap to cover all that hair.”

“Whatever you say, guv’nor.” He gave a wave of his hand that included all three of us, and Chen Yi took him to the door.

“I like him,” Hazel declared. “I think he’ll do all right.”

“I hope so,” I said as Chen Yi returned to the Incense Room. “Speaking of clothing, does Candy have any work clothes here?”

“A closetfull,” Chen Yi said. “He works two or three days as a mason every once in a while so he can show a means of support if he’s questioned about it. I’ll show you.”

She took us to a bedroom that was the twin of the one Hazel and I were occupying and opened the closet door. I pulled out cement-encrusted work trousers and shirt and made a speedy changeover. The shirt was too large in the shoulders and the pants were too short in the legs, but I managed. There was a pair of concrete-laden heavy boots on the closet floor, and I kicked off my shoes and put on the boots.

On the closet shelf was a black beret. I took off my wig and handed it to Hazel, then pulled the beret on over my bald pate. Hazel giggled nervously. “Doesn’t he look like an undernourished Yul Brynner?” she appealed to Chen Yi. The Chinese girl smiled sympathetically.

There were work gloves on the shelf, and I tried on a pair. When they fit, I shoved them into a back pocket. “Does Candy have a tool kit?” I asked Chen Yi.

“Not unless it’s in the kitchen drawer next to the stove,” she answered.

I went into the kitchen and opened the drawer. Candy evidently wasn’t too much of a do-it-yourself man. There were four masonry trowels in the small drawer, a large and a small screwdriver, and a ball-peen hammer. I took the two screwdrivers.

“Is it dark out yet?” I asked Chen Yi.

“Not quite.”

We wandered back into the Incense Room. I sat down on a divan after placing a towel on it to protect it from the work clothes. Nobody seemed to have anything to say. Hazel had a look on her face which indicated that things were moving faster than she had anticipated.

After awhile I got up and pulled one of the window draperies aside. It wasn’t full dark but dark enough. “This shouldn’t take too long,” I said to them. Hazel didn’t say anything, but she followed me to the door, where she caught my hand and squeezed it for a moment. Chen Yi came downstairs with me to let me out the door of the massage parlor which was locked.

“I know he doesn’t look like much, but Candy says Cap’n Firbank has
machismo,”
Chen Yi said in her soft voice.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t need it,” I replied and went out. I walked around to the rear of the building. The truck was a panel job, an elderly Ford. The first time I started the engine it flooded, and I made a mental note to go easy on the choke.

At the end of the block I saw a car coming directly at me. A horn blew indignantly, and I remembered Nassau had left-hand-drive traffic. I pulled over and concentrated on what I was doing. I saw only a single pair of taillights ahead of me on the road to North End, and no cars came the other way. The car-driving population of the island was now at home near Oakes Field or Lyford Cay.

I had no trouble finding the hotel construction site. I drove past its steel girder framework, then turned around, and drove past it again. There was no sign of activity. I parked a quarter mile beyond it off the roadway on the wrong side by US standards. I got out of the car, traversed a ditch of soft sand, and struck out across gently rolling, gravelly terrain.

There was a moon, but it was just a sliver. Some of the stars appeared to give off more light than the moon. It was dark enough for me to stumble over low bushes until my eyes became accustomed to the absence of light. The wind was from the ocean, light and steady. It carried damp sea smells. My footsteps were cushioned in the sandy gravel.

I topped a small rise and came in sight of the construction area. It was surrounded by poles about twelve feet high between which were strung strands of wire furnishing power to regularly spaced, bare light bulbs. The illumination was obviously designed to discourage trespassers and to assist a night watchman in the completion of his rounds.

I hunched down next to a low scrub oak and waited. Ten minutes went by before a man rounded the corner of the first floor construction about twenty yards from me. He was stoop shouldered and had on a light blue windbreaker and dark trousers. I looked at my watch, then settled down to await his next circuit.

I felt cramped in every muscle by the time he appeared again. My watch said that thirty-five minutes had elapsed. I crept forward a little and settled myself behind a fifty-five-gallon steel drum. I needed to know if the watchman’s thirty-five-minute circuit was his regular one.

The night breeze grew chilly while I waited. I was glad for the heavy work clothes. My watch ticked off thirty-two minutes before the watchman showed up again. I had verified his circuit time, and more important, he didn’t seem to have a dog with him on the site. Moreover, from the quick glimpses I’d had of him the watchman didn’t seem to be young or particularly alert.

I had studied the layout while clocking the watchman. I could see from my position a huge pyramid of sand, a thirty-foot-long stack of cement sacks piled four deep and head high, covered with protective plastic sheeting, and a huge concrete mixing machine. Beyond that lay a great bundle of steel reinforcing rods. A short distance away was a mobile trailer that probably served as the construction engineer’s office. Off to one side, herded to itself by the sand pile, was a bare-board shed which I was sure was my goal.

I pulled on my gloves and resettled the beret firmly on my head. Then I ran toward the shed, keeping in the shadows of the sand pile, the cement sacks, and the concrete mixer. It was heavy going in the loose, shifting sand but almost noiseless.

The shed door was padlocked when I reached it. One glance was enough to confirm that the padlock was more of the type to discourage kids than to afford real protection. I could have picked up any of the four-foot sections of reinforcing steel rods on the ground and used it as a crowbar to snap the padlock open, but that would have made too much noise.

I took the larger screwdriver of Candy’s pair I’d brought along, removed the screws from the hinge of the padlock, and lifted hinge and padlock away from the door. I opened the door carefully to avoid squeaks and stepped into the dark interior. I raised my hand above my head and swept it in a large circle. My hand encountered a light bulb hung from a pair of wires, and I pulled the chain light switch.

The shed interior jumped into focus. I didn’t know if the jerry-built affair was lightproof or not, so I had to work fast. A slash-board counter supported rows of heavy tools, and underneath it were wooden boxes. The top one was open, displaying greasy-looking sticks of dynamite.

I had already taken a step in that direction when I saw the burning bar. Beside it was an oxygen tank, and I didn’t even have to weigh the choice. A burning bar is a 6-foot long, inch-and-a-half-in-diameter pipe with special incendiary packing. When used with pure oxygen under pressure, it produces a flame of fantastic temperature. A burning bar will slice through feet of reinforced concrete as easily as lightning passes through copper wire. Such a tool would be quicker, quieter, and safer than dynamite.

But not lighter.

It would take more time and effort to get the equipment to the road, but I felt it was worth it. I turned off the light and went to work. I muscled the oxygen tank up into my arms and carried it outside. I set it down while I closed the door of the shed. The tank was really heavy. I alternately lugged and dragged it across the yielding sand and left it in the ditch beside the truck. My mouth was dry, my breathing was heavy, and my body was soaked with perspiration under the heavy work clothes. Candy’s boots were half-filled with loose sand and felt like lead weights on my feet.

I was still gasping for breath when I reached the shed again. Inside I picked up the bar, much lighter since it was only a hollow metal tube, and turned to leave. I hadn’t turned on the light the second time because I knew where the bar was, but the darkness was split by a flashlight beam that caught me full in the face. “W’at you do here, hah?” a suspicious voice said harshly.

I couldn’t see the man behind the flashlight, but I could see a hand in a light blue windbreaker sleeve holding a four-foot section of half-inch reinforcing rod. This time the watchman had shaved ten minutes on his round. When I didn’t answer, the steel rod moved up and then down in an arc aimed at my head.

There was no time to draw my gun. Instinctively, I countered with the burning bar in my hands. The rod hit the bar, slid off, and came down like a whip across my left shoulder. I could hear my own grunt of pain as I staggered against the door frame. The flashlight had shifted, and I couldn’t see the steel rod, but I knew it must be on the way again. I swung the bar sideways in desperation and felt it hit something solid.

Flashlight, steel rod, and watchman hit the floor of the shed with three separate, identifiable thuds. The flashlight didn’t go out even after its jarring fall, and in its beam I could see the watchman’s face on the floor. He was out cold. I balanced myself precariously against the door frame, dizzy with pain, trying to keep from blacking out.

Finally I made myself move. I jerked the unconscious watchman out of his jacket, which I ripped into strips. I tied his hands in back of him, tied his ankles, and then tied his hands to his ankles in back of him. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for awhile. The flashlight beam was aimed at a lightweight hand truck that was probably the best method of transportation for the oxygen tank anywhere except in the surrounding loose sand.

I picked up the burning bar again and took hold of one of the twin handles of the hand truck. I dragged the whole business out to the roadside and the truck. Before opening the truck’s back doors, I swung my left arm in circles to prevent the shoulder from tightening up. It wasn’t only my recent labor that had my forehead beaded with sweat.

I loaded the loot into the truck. The oxygen tank almost did me in when its weight pulled at my left shoulder. No cars came along the road during the loading process. I climbed under the wheel again and headed for Candy’s apartment, driving with my right hand, remembering to stay on the left hand side of the road.

I parked in the rear of the building and walked around front to the massage parlor entrance. I didn’t have to knock; Chen Yi opened the door. Hazel was right behind her. “You were gone so long,” she said anxiously. “Did — ” She interrupted herself when she saw my face. “What happened?”

“I’ve got everything I need,” I said.

Chen Yi’s eyes were upon me as I moved inside. “What is the matter with your shoulder?” she asked.

“I scuffed it up getting the material. Run upstairs and call Hurricane Ronnie and tell him we go tonight.”

The Chinese girl approached me and ran her hands lightly over my sore shoulder. Despite the delicacy of her touch I couldn’t avoid flinching when she reached the throbbing tender spot. “I think it’s more than that,” she declared. “Take your shirt off and stretch out on one of my tables, and I will see what I can do for it when I return.” She disappeared through the door leading upstairs to the apartment.

“It’s not necessary,” I protested to Hazel.

“You do what she says,” Hazel scolded me. “Here, let me unbutton your shirt.”

I was still fending Hazel off when Chen Yi returned. “He will be there as agreed upon,” she said.

“That’s the best news I’ve had tonight,” I sighed.

“Take your shirt off,” Chen Yi directed.

“It won’t really be lame until tomorrow,” I told her. “It’s just stiffening a bit now.”

“You may need every possible bit of freedom of movement tonight,” the Chinese girl said gravely.