“What point? I’m not following you.”
“The ’61’s are the rarest SuperSports of all. It was the first year they built ’em, and they only made a dozen or so all told. There can’t be more’n three or four left in original condition. So when Radmore loaned Chris that car, he not only helped out a buddy, he really stuck the needle inta Galmont at the same time. Like he was saying, ‘See, my collection’s so hot I can afford to risk one of the rarest cars ever built.’ And it worked, too. Galmont quit drivin’ rather than lose to Chris for another season, which he woulda done, since he didn’t own a SuperSport at the time. He’s bought a couple since, but he never raced ’em, which is fine by me. The guy was a maniac on the track. Hated to lose, really hated it.”
“You say Galmont owns a couple of SuperSports now? How do you know?”
“Word gets around when somebody lays out hellacious money for cars. I heard he paid more’n double what they were worth.”
“I guess he can afford it,” Andy said thoughtfully, swallowing the last of his coffee. “Can you tell me anything else about the cars he bought?”
“Not really,” Buchek frowned, “I ain’t into collectin’ so I didn’t pay much attention. I just heard he paid too much for ’em.”
“I see,” Andy nodded. “Would you ah, happen to remember what model the cars were?”
“Yeah,” Buchek said, brightening a little, “I think they was all ’61’s. ’61 SuperSports.”
The noise brought him down. McMahon had been sure it would. All the soundproofing in the world couldn’t muffle the roar of three finely tuned racing engines howling wide open in a closed garage.
He came prepared, of course. Dressed in an olive drab jumpsuit and carrying an M-1 carbine, he looked every inch the professional soldier he’d been. But McMahon expected that also. He waited, flattened against the wall adjacent to the soundproofed door, and pressed the muzzle of his.38 against Galmont’s temple the moment he stepped out. The colonel hesitated a moment, then lowered the carbine without being told. Very professional indeed. McMahon took the weapon out of his hands and tossed it aside.
“Evening, colonel,” Andy shouted over the roar coming through the drying room door, “sorry about the lateness of the hour. Hope I woke you.”
“Sergeant McMahon? My God, I might have shot you. What the hell are you doing down here?”
“I had such a great time this afternoon I thought I’d come back. You’ve got a terrific collection, colonel, in fact it’s even better than you said it was. You told me you owned a Morgan, but you must have forgotten a couple. There are three of them in the drying room, though they don’t seem to be drying. They’re all in perfect shape. And since Chris Wilde’s unfortunate accident in Avery Radmore’s SS, I’m guessing they’re the last mint condition ’61 SuperSports in the world.”
“Look, you can’t let them run wide open like that! They’ll destroy themselves!”
“I kinda like the sound. There’s real power there, raw power. It must be a helluva kick knowing you own them all. A — what did you call it — a permanent victory? Quite a coup. Of course you’d probably want to wait a decent interval before showing them, but it shouldn’t take long. People have short memories, and as you said, what’s one gay more or less?”
“All right, all right, I underestimated you, sergeant, but it’s not too late to remedy that. We can work something out.”
“Can we? Like what?”
“Like a million. In cash. Deposited in Switzerland or anywhere you like. You can be set for life, sergeant. For life!”
“That’s a lot of money for one dead gay.”
“You’re damn right it is, especially since he wasn’t the primary objective anyway. The car was. Wilde was strictly a target of opportunity, icing on the cake.”
“And you didn’t have to get down off the mountain afterward, did you? You belonged there.”
“I hid in plain sight,” Galmont conceded. “I was a course judge. After the crash people were milling around like sheep and I just joined the crowd. Simplicity, sergeant, the key component of any successful action.”
“You should have consulted your computer,” McMahon said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You said your computer helped you make deals. You should have checked it before you made me an offer, colonel. For background information. For Chris Wilde’s real name, for instance. It was McMahon. Christopher Ian McMahon. He was my younger brother, Galmont. And I don’t know what your computer figures the going rate for a brother is, but I know you don’t have enough. Not nearly enough.”
“Perhaps not,” Galmont said slowly, “but I have enough to make a fight of it, sergeant. You really don’t have much of a case, you know. Are you sure you won’t reconsider my offer?”
“No chance,” McMahon said, lifting the slim Sony mini-corder far enough out of his breastpocket for Galmont to see it. “And my case may be stronger than you think.”
Galmont’s thin mouth narrowed and his shoulders sagged, but only a little. He’d been a soldier a long time. And he knew about lost causes. “I guess we’ll find out in court,” he said. “Now, can I turn off the damned cars?”
“Go ahead,” Andy nodded, “no point in damaging the evidence.”
Galmont opened the drying room door, hesitated a moment as the roar of the engines and the exhaust stench met him full force, then he covered his mouth with a handkerchief and plunged into the room.
McMahon slid the recorder out of his pocket, rewound part of the tape, and played it back. Only bits and pieces of their conversation were audible. Most of it had been drowned out by the engine noise. A pity. But perhaps it was for the best. As the colonel said, simplicity...
He slammed the drying room door and jammed a chair against it. Then he went into Galmont’s office to type the colonel’s confession/suicide note into the computer.
It was quiet in the office, peaceful. He could barely hear Galmont pounding on the drying room door.
And after a while, the noise stopped.
Children of the Silo
by Michael Beres
Inside the capsule, Donovan could feel the motion and could hear the clatter of the capsule being lowered into a shipping crate. And he could hear the muted sounds of the crate being nailed shut. If he’d had claustrophobia he surely would have gone over the edge by now, or he would have taken deep breaths to allow the breathing mixture to put him back into the full state of suspended animation. During training he had discovered his ability to come out of suspended animation several times without his trainers knowing. The method was something like counting to ten over and over. He would count, concentrate, program his mind with numbers, and awaken minutes or hours or days into his sleep. The only problem was that when he did awaken he was not exactly certain of how long it had been.
Donovan understood the need for secrecy. If the other side knew the approximate location of a silo it wouldn’t take much effort with satellite scanning to pinpoint the exact location and assign a silo killer laser satellite to it. And if that happened the silo and its missiles would have to be subtracted, leading to a dangerous imbalance for some period of time. The secrecy had another benefit, too. No one wanted a silo in their back yard or anywhere within a hundred miles of where they lived. Therefore it was best to keep the locations of the underground silos secret from everyone, even the men and women who were assigned to them.
The fact that he would be locked in a silo with two others for an entire year did not bother him. If he had had any fears of that, the training would surely have brought it out. And he did not fear being put in suspended animation. Even with his ability to control the suspended animation somewhat, he was more than willing to put himself under after awakening himself for a moment or two. Another advantage given for putting him under was to allow several months to pass so that knowledge of political situations would have no effect on performance. During the time he was under, the balance of power would have shifted back and forth several times and many smaller countries would have aligned themselves accordingly in the nuclear stalemate that needed to be maintained.