Operation Breakthrough Read online

  “Won’t someone smell it?” he asked doubtfully. “A draft could draw the smoke through the hole you burned in the vault liner and carry it up the elevator shaft.”

  “Half of them will be smoking anyhow, Karl.”

  He hesitated another moment, then lit up. He spoke again after the first expelled lungful of smoke wreathed his square-chinned, bulldog features and rough-looking blond hair. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Earl. The one place they’ll never think to look for us is inside the vault itself.” He took another deep drag on his cigarette before extinguishing it and dropping the butt into his shirt pocket. “How long will it take you to get into the safe deposit boxes?”

  “No time at all. Nothing like what it would take to get inside this money chest I’m sitting on.”

  “We’re not here for that!” he said sharply.

  “You never did tell me why we’re here,” I pointed out.

  He didn’t answer me.

  It hadn’t taken Karl Erikson long to get to the point when he showed up at Hazel’s ranch in the copper-mining district of eastern Nevada a month ago. Out of Hazel’s hearing he informed me that his as-always-unspecified bosses in Washington had handed him the assignment of procuring an unnamed something from a couple of safe deposit boxes in a bank vault in Nassau.

  “I told them I couldn’t even consider making the attempt unless I could pick the man to go with me,” Karl said earnestly when we were alone in front of the barn where I was gassing up the rented car in which he’d driven from Reno. There’s a United flight daily from San Francisco into the Ely airport which goes on to Salt Lake City and vice versa, but if you miss them, you wait twenty-four hours. Karl Erikson didn’t have that kind of patience. “But after what happened to the Turk on our last job, the head man didn’t want to okay it when I named you,” he continued. “He finally gave in when I insisted no one else could swing the job.”

  “Did you ever consider I might like the option of saying ‘No’ sometimes before you volunteer me for one of your projects?” I had asked a bit warmly.

  “Ahhhhh, come on, Earl. There just isn’t anyone on our books who can match your talent for this job.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I told him firmly.

  But of course it had.

  Plus the fact I owed Karl Erikson a couple of favors difficult to repay in ordinary coin.

  He knew what I’d been. Not in detail, but he knew. He was a complete opportunist when it came to carrying out his orders, though, and he had no qualms about using me. Not that our prior relationship had been a one-way street. Karl Erikson drew a lot of water in the underground levels of government where he operated — a situation which in the light of my past afforded a substantial umbrella when he was on my side.

  He was a hard man to say no to and make it stick. He was that truly hard-to-find individual, a dedicated man in the service of his country, and so closemouthed that it should really have been no surprise to me that I sat beside him inside a Nassau bank vault and still had no idea why we were there.

  I had my own ideas, of course. If I’d still been in business for myself, Nassau was just the type of banking situation I might have taken a hard look at. Along with Switzerland, Spain, and Hong Kong it had become both a tax haven and a repository for undeclared income. There should be some juicy stacks of bills in the safe deposit boxes against which my back was resting.

  The sound of voices was diminishing outside the vault. Erikson paced, not nervously but impatiently. His head was cocked to one side as he listened. “I’m curious,” he said finally, coming to a halt in front of me. “What alternative plan did you have if anything had gone wrong and we couldn’t get out of the vault before the building opened in the morning and the elevators were in use, pinning us here?”

  “Simple,” I said. “I’d have jammed the vault’s timing mechanism from inside here. I’d have jammed it so badly it would have taken technicians a couple of days to open the twenty-ton door. If the bank personnel couldn’t open the door, they couldn’t know we were here, and we’d have gone out over the roof again after the building closed tonight. You said the plane would be showing up once every twenty-four hours for three days, so we’d just have been set back a day. That’s the only thing that could have gone wrong.”

  “Speaking of things going wrong,” Erikson said. “If only one of us makes it in the plane to Andrews Field in Washington, we’re to meet a man named Baker and turn the material over to him. He’ll be there each of the next three days from 8:00 to 8:10 A.M.”

  I waved it aside. “The only thing that bothers me is that we’ve got to hide out for a day now before the plane shows up and this is a damned small island.”

  “Eighty square miles,” Erikson said soberly.

  “Oh well, we’ve made up before for shortcomings of the Washington brain bank,” I philosophized. “We’ll manage this time, too.”

  “Nothing like working with a professional,” Erikson said drily. There were no sounds now from outside the vault. “Are we ready?”

  “Relax. Let’s give the police time to get back in the sack after giving the security people hell for rousting them out.”

  We both fell silent. For half an hour the only sound inside the vault was our breathing. Finally I stood up, drawing on my rubber gloves again. “Okay,” I said. “What are we after?”

  Erikson took my thin-beamed light and shined it on the rows of safe deposit boxes. The beam traveled in a short arc, returned, then repeated its passage. “These three,” Erikson said. “Numbers C-114, C-115, and C-116.”

  I moved in more closely and examined the twin locks on the boxes. They were quite ordinary. Who puts expensive locks on safe deposit boxes inside a vault? Not the banks in Nassau, anyway.

  “No problem,” I assured Erikson. I went to our equipment and selected a U-shaped steel punch. I picked up a ball-peen hammer also and then approached the boxes again.

  Speed was important now because the next noise we made was going to convince an already nervous watchman that things weren’t kosher. I hoped he was stationed close to the vault door where the thicknesses of steel and solid concrete would help to muffle noise. If the police had left a second man in the lobby near the elevator doors, there was no way he could miss hearing us. There was nothing we could do about it except move fast.

  I positioned the punch over the twin lock of box C-114, took a short grip on the hammer, and swung it hard. The contact sounded like a bomb going off in the confined space of the vault. The box drawer sagged open drunkenly, its lock mechanism pulverized.

  Erikson shook his head. “I thought Jock McLaren was good with locks, but he could go to your school.” He lifted the cover from the box and began to scoop its contents into a small canvas sack. The contents seemed to be mostly loose papers and not too many of them.

  Jock McLaren was one of Erikson’s men who had been with us at the finale when a fat Turk took an unhealthy interest in an AEC shipment from Hanford, Washington, that was being trucked across the country. “Seen Jock lately?” I asked as I placed the punch over the lock of C-115. BOOOOONNNNNGGGG! The box sprang open.

  “I had dinner with him and his wife a few weeks ago at their home in Arlington, Virginia,” Erikson said as he rifled the second box.

  C-116 required two blows from the hammer instead of one. Otherwise the results were the same. It was like poking three winners in a row from a huge punchboard. “That’s it?” I asked Erikson as he flattened papers inside the canvas sack to make it more manageable.

  “That’s it.” He knotted a cord around the neck of the sack, which bulged hardly at all.

  There had been no sound from outside the vault. The whole affair hardly seemed worth the trouble. I looked with regret at the rows and rows of additional boxes and the money chests scattered around the floor of the vault. “You sure we’re not mad at this bank? It could be a hell of a nice touch.”

  “We’re ready to leave,” Erikson said emphatically.

  “
You’re the doctor,” I surrendered. “Don’t bother about the tools. We won’t be taking most of them. Don’t forget to write off the expense on your next income tax return.”

  Erikson snorted as I selected a screwdriver and an eighteen-inch crowbar from the tools on the floor and returned to the entrance hole we’d made in the back of the vault. The magnets I’d used to hold the elevator’s loosened back wall panel in place were too strong for me to pull away with my hands, but I pried them free with the crowbar. I shoved the panel out of the way.

  I stepped up into the cab and Erikson followed right behind me. “Quietly now,” I cautioned. “Anyone listening can hear us a lot more plainly in this thing than through the vault thicknesses.”

  I reached above my head to push open the emergency door in the elevator roof, then froze. Just above my up-stretched hands the elevator light still glowed, and it illuminated brilliantly the two-way fixture I’d installed to provide both light and a power source.

  Erikson saw the direction of my glance, and his brow corrugated when he spotted the fixture. “Goddamnit,” he said softly, “I forgot to take it out. Of all the stupid — ”

  “I should have reminded you,” I cut in.

  “I shouldn’t have needed to be reminded!” he growled. “You told me the cab had to look as though no one had been aboard it. I could have blown the whole bit by forgetting to remove that fixture.”

  A sharp-eyed cop could certainly have earned himself a promotion. I wondered uneasily if a sharp-eyed cop was going to earn himself a promotion. If the tell-tale fixture had been noticed and the roof of the bank building and the street outside were staked out by silent, waiting Bahamian police …

  I reached under my jacket and loosened my .38 in its shoulder holster. “There’s going to be one hell of a scramble if the police are waiting for us on the roof, Karl. I think we’d better — ”

  A smashing blow on the muscle of my right arm numbed the arm and slammed me up against the side of the elevator cab. Karl Erikson’s big hand snaked inside my jacket and emerged with my .38. “No shooting!” he said harshly.

  “No shooting?” I echoed incredulously as the numbness vanished and pain flooded my entire right side. “Goddamn you, Karl, I’m not going to rot in a stinking — ”

  “I said no shooting,” he repeated but in a quieter tone. “This is a friendly government. Maybe they didn’t notice anything. Get up the ladder.”

  We certainly had to do that anyway. I shoved open the emergency door in the cab’s roof and pulled myself up through the opening with Erikson assisting me from below. I needed assistance; the big bastard had just about decommissioned me with one punch. I helped him up when I was standing on the elevator roof. The pain in my right arm seemed to be increasing steadily. Erikson had a fist with the impact of a jackhammer.

  I transferred the screwdriver to a jacket pocket and the crowbar to a hanging loop on my vest before I started up the steel ladder. I used my left hand to pull myself upward. At the top of the shaft I unscrewed the single screw I’d left to hold the loosened piece of tin flooring, then pushed the square of metal aside.

  I reached still further upward with only the upper part of my body through the opening and feet still on the ladder rungs. I could hear the sounds of Erikson’s scuffling ascent below me as I leaned forward and put a hand on the door and gently cracked open the entrance to the small structure housing the elevator mechanism.

  It was still dark outside but not the total blackness of several hours before. A tinge of gray in the eastern sky hinted at the approaching dawn. Everything seemed quiet on the rooftop. I took a relieved breath and raised a foot to the next ladder rung.

  And then through the crack I saw at the farthest perimeter of the roof a dark face appear suddenly in the quick glow of a lighted cigarette held in a cupped hand.

  TWO

  I DROPPED down inside the shaft, then bent nearly double on the ladder to get closer to Erikson. “They’re on the roof!” I whispered. “Give me the gun!” His response was to remove my .38 from a pocket and drop it down the elevator shaft. I heard the dull thud of its landing on the roof of the elevator. “Goddamnit, Karl — !”

  “Shut up!” His response was more rasp than whisper. “We’ve got to get clear with this sack. Here. You take it.” He thrust it at me. “I’ll meet you at the airstrip rendezvous this time tomorrow morning if we become separated. If only one of us makes it, remember the name Baker at Andrews at eight A.M. Now change places with me. I’m going out first.”

  “What the hell difference does it make who goes out first? Climb back down and get my gun, and I’ll — ”

  “Shut up and do as I say!”

  We changed places on the ladder in a grisly ballet of sweaty, grasping hands and bumping bodies. Perspiration was crawling down my back by the time Erikson scrambled past me on the narrow ladder. I made a loop in the cord around the neck of the sack and hung it around my neck after ripping off my tool-carrying vest and dropping it into the elevator pit. I held onto the ladder with one hand while I buttoned my jacket over the sack with the other. Its bulk didn’t seem too conspicuous, and it left both my hands free.

  Erikson pulled himself upward until he could straddle the opening in the floor. Then he burst through the door and went out across the roof in a bulllike rush. I was still trying to pull myself up through the hole when I heard excited shouts and the sounds of heavy bodies colliding violently.

  Bobbing flashlight beams played upon a totally disorganized scene when I reached the doorway. Erikson’s initial charge had taken him nearly to the edge of the roof, opposite the way we had gained it. He was enveloped in a cloud of men, but his muscular body kept shedding them like a dog flinging off water drops.

  All attention was fixed upon the melee. Men in uniform danced around its edges, trying to get into the action. I knew that I was supposed to take advantage of Erikson’s delaying action. I eased out the door and started across the roof toward the open space between the buildings.

  A hand clutched my arm tightly as I approached the roof’s edge. I hadn’t even seen the man until I felt the hand, but I caught a glimpse of a uniform sleeve with stripes on it. “Follow me, Sergeant!” I got out in as much of a tone of command as I could muster. “There’s another one on the next roof!”

  The hand fell away. I didn’t look around. I took two long strides followed by two loping ones, then leaped across the gap. My challenger landed almost on my heels, but I was ready for him. I hand bladed the back of his neck solidly as he came down in a half-crouched position. He grunted heavily as he plowed up the roof’s tarred surface with his face, rolled over, and then collapsed motionless.

  There was no one on the second roof. I trotted down the rear fire escape while the sounds of battle from the roof of the bank building echoed clearly in the predawn stillness. My conservatively cut business suit had passed me at first glance, but I knew I couldn’t stand a close inspection. I might not look like a bank robber, but I surely resembled a man who had had a long, hard night.

  Just before I dropped down from the final section of fire escape into the littered alley, the sounds from the roof of the bank ceased. I knew that Karl Erikson wouldn’t be meeting me at the airstrip rendezvous the following morning.

  And I knew I wasn’t in much better shape myself.

  I had to find someplace to hide for twenty-four hours until Erikson’s pilot made the rendezvous. I had to hide while every cop in and out of uniform shook down the tiny island looking for me.

  I moved along the alley for three-quarters of a block, remaining in the deeper shadow of the building walls. I turned into a narrow side passage and hurried to Shirley Street. I stopped just short of the sidewalk and looked up the street. In front of the bank police cars and jeeps were parked at odd angles with red and orange spinner lights flickering like a kaleidoscope gone mad.

  I left the security of the alley entrance and walked in the opposite direction as leisurely as my hard-pumping adrenalin gland
and perspiration-itching scars would permit. I was trying to hold down the surge of bitter anger at the thought of a single mistake that had blown a perfect job. Anger wouldn’t solve anything. Because of the mistake Karl Erikson was in custody, and I was going to be hard put not to join him.

  I couldn’t stand any sort of inquiry. Passports and visas aren’t required in the Bahamas, but proof of identity in the form of a birth certificate or something similar is a necessity. Neither Erikson nor I had anything of the sort, of course. We had stripped ourselves of all possible means of identification. We had even removed clothing labels.

  I was automatically in trouble the first time I couldn’t produce proof of identity for anyone requesting it. I had to get off the street at the earliest possible moment, and I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t check into a hotel without identification, and dressed as I was, I could hardly go to the beach. The stores wouldn’t open for another three or four hours, and the gambling casino on Paradise Island didn’t open until midafternoon.

  I zigzagged away from the trouble spot, turning onto Victoria Avenue from Shirley Street. I passed Dowdeswell Street before reaching Bay, where I turned east. Another two blocks brought me to Rawson Square, one of the centers of business activity.

  I stood indecisively in the square near a carriage stand under a mango tree. An increasing number of early-morning risers proceeding along the sidewalks kept me from feeling quite so noticeable. Smiling black men on bicycles, wearing white uniforms with open-throated white shirts, hailed each other in soft Bahamian accents. They were apparently hotel employees on their way to work. “Hey, mon!” one called cheerfully across the street to a friend. “See you at the party tonight, righto?”

  The clipped British-sounding voice reminded me of something. When I had recently been on a chartered flight to Las Vegas for professional gamblers, one of the more prominent crap shooters on the plane had been a stocky, smiling black man in a lime green suit, lime green suede shoes, lime green derby hat, and a pink ruffled shirt. And the black man had spoken in just such a clipped British-sounding inflection.