I didn't say anything. I had rebounded from the low point I'd experienced upon driving inside the steel warehouse, because common sense dictated that the hijack wouldn't be taking place there. When we left for the hijack location, Erikson would once again be able to pick up the bumper beeper signals, if he trusted his equipment and didn't move too far away during the signal black-out.
Hassan said something to the man who had been riding in the back seat with me. The man went to the green panel truck, opened the rear doors, and removed a folding card table which he proceeded to set up beneath one of the overhead lights. Hassan lit up a fresh cigar before placing on the card table a sheet of paper. Even at a distance, I recognized it as a facsimile of the street plan of the hijack location I'd seen in Erikson's office, but without the circles and squares indicating the placement of men and vehicles.
There was a triple-beep outside the warehouse. Hassan went to the entrance and punched a button. The huge door slid upward and another car rolled inside. It was just as well that Erikson hadn't been following too closely, I reflected. The second car had obviously been trailing the one which brought me.
Two men got out of the second car. Both were dressed in nondescript olive-drab jackets and trousers. Facially they could have been twins of the pair who met me at the gate house. One of the newcomers was carrying an M-16 automatic rifle.
The five men crowded around the card table. "You have the floor," Hassan said to me.
"Okay. Where's the map of the actual location?"
"You don't need that."
"The hell I don't. How am I going to lay out a getaway if I don't know the location?"
"We'll take care of the getaway." Both his eyes and voice were chilly. "You take care of getting into the truck."
"Forget it!" I said angrily. "It may be amateur night for you, but not for me. I'm not going to jail for your mistakes."
"Nobody is going to jail." Hassan drew lengthily on his fresh cigar and examined me through the wreath of blue smoke he slowly exhaled. "This is a military operation, Drake. We take the objective; then we worry about the getaway."
I started to say something but he kept right on talking. "Iskir thinks you may have something going for yourself on this. I'll tell you now that it will be your last mistake if you try anything. I argued with Iskir about including you, but he insisted that instead of stopping the truck and shooting it out you could finesse us inside it less noticeably."
"But we'll still have to have a plan for-"
"The only plan we need is for stopping the truck. We're wasting time. Either you lay out the job and come with us and direct it, or we leave your body here and do it our way."
I wasn't going to win any arguments with this fanatic. "Have you seen the actual location?"
"I've seen it."
"Is there a traffic light?"
"Yes."
"Is there a curve on Road A, the road along which the truck will be approaching, either just before or just after the light?"
He squinted while endeavoring to remember. "There is a curve perhaps one hundred to one hundred and twenty meters beyond the light."
"How much is a meter?"
"Approximately three and a quarter feet."
I did a little mental arithmetic. "So there's a curve three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet beyond the light. Where's the equipment?"
He gestured toward the corner of the warehouse. "In the truck."
"Break it out."
He snapped his fingers and issued a command. Two men went to the truck and began unloading automatic weapons and sawhorses with yellow-and-black signs saying CONSTRUCTION on them. I used the time to _ transfer to the sheet of paper on the card table the rectangles and circles indicating relative positions of the target truck, the men, and the getaway cars.
"They speak English?" I asked when everyone was around the table again.
"Enough to understand," Hassan replied.
"How do we recognize the truck?"
"Show him the picture," Hassan said to the driver of the car that had brought me to the warehouse. The man produced a colored snapshot of a big jimmy-diesel with R&M Transportation Company prominently lettered on its front and the side that could be seen in the picture.
"We'll set up on the curve," I said, positioning sawhorses diagonally on the warehouse floor, simulating a gradual closure of the outer lane of traffic on a highway. "That way when we block traffic from the rear, we can stop it far enough around the curve so drivers can't see what's happening to the truck."
I pointed to the sawhorses. "We force the traffic to move over to the inner edge of the road," I said. "Everything must go past us in one lane, and slowly."
One of the men nodded. "You four will be waiting here," I continued, pointing to each of the four men in turn except Hassan, and then placing my finger on the first set of circles I'd drawn on the map. "Two on each side of the road. When the truck appears, one of each pair will swing up onto the jump-seat step on each side of the truck cab and hold a gun on the driver."
There were several nods. "When the truck stops, it will be the responsibility of the second man on the driver's side of the truck to keep the traffic on the opposite side of the road moving. Don't let anyone stop to see what's going on. Do it by arm signals if possible, but keep that traffic flowing."
I pointed to the second set of circles I'd drawn on the map. "The positions will then be as follows, except for the second man on the inner edge of the road. He will run back up the road around the curve, carrying a sawhorse and will place it across the single lane of traffic so that cars must stop. Some won't want to stop, but they must not be allowed to continue around the curve."
I looked at Hassan. "You and I will then have four or five minutes to unbutton the truck and get the package." This man would give the order for my erasure when I was considered expendable. I intended to stay close enough to him to make sure the order was never given. "We can't reasonably expect to freeze traffic any longer than that."
"It is a competent plan," he admitted grudgingly after studying the map and considering my lined-up sawhorses. "What about getting into the truck?"
"If it's just an ordinary lock on the back doors, a revolver bullet should do it. If it's anything more complicated, we'll need the torch or the plastic. The torch would take about three minutes, the explosive one minute."
"Then we are ready to proceed," Hassan announced. "Reload the truck, Ahmed. Then blindfold this one."
"Now wait a minute-" I began.
"Blindfold him," Hassan repeated. "He has no need to see until we reach the scene."
Ahmed supervised the reloading of the green panel truck, then approached me with a grimy handkerchief which he folded deftly. He placed it over my eyes and knotted it at the back of my head, then took my arm and steered me to the front seat of a car. I was relieved to find it was the car I'd come in, the one with the beeper transmission unit. Hassan settled down beside me at the wheel. I knew it was him because of the odor from his cigar.
If Erikson hadn't received word from Washington about where to intercept the truck, we were in for a bad time. Even if he made the scene while the hijack was going on with another earful of agents as he promised, we were going to be outmanned and outgunned. I'd seen enough automatic weapons aboard the green panel truck for a small-scale war. And because Bayak's suspicion of me had been passed on to Hassan, that hawk-eyed worthy was sure to attempt to punch my clock permanently the moment the shooting broke out.
I heard the rumbling sound as the warehouse door lifted again. The car backed up, swung around, and rolled forward. I heard a second car, and then a heavier engine that could only be the panel truck.