"A diesel truck on the highway isn't like a train on a track which runs on a schedule," I said to Hassan. "If there's a long wait, we're bound to look conspicuous waiting alongside the road."
"The truck won't be late," Hassan replied. "It checks in periodically on its trip across the country. It cost Iskir a lot of money to acquire the check-in information, but we know the time of the truck's arrival at the intersection, give or take five minutes. The next-to-last check-in was made twenty-five minutes ago."
"How about recognition?" I asked. "Even forcing the traffic to slow down in a single lane, a diesel rolls up on you fast."
"That is provided for," Hassan answered. "A man with a field telephone in his car is stationed at the brightly lighted intersection. When the truck appears, the man will call the green panel truck. We will have a minimum of thirty seconds warning, more if the traffic light at the intersection detains the truck. But even thirty seconds will be sufficient."
I'd made a mistake in thinking of these men as amateurs. With the fire power they possessed, a pocket battleship wouldn't have been too much of a problem for them, let alone an unarmored truck. They really didn't need me to get into it for them, either, now that I thought about it. I wondered if the shrewd Bayak's real reason for including me had been simply to supply a dead criminal body to divert the police after the hijack.
Our car stopped. I thought it was for a traffic light, but then I heard Hassan open the door on his side. "We're here," he stated. There was no emotion in his voice.
"Already?" I responded, startled. Everything had been on paper to this point. Now for the first time I had the feeling we were really going into action.
The door on my side opened, and someone leaned in. "Remove the blindfold," Hassan's voice ordered. It was ripped ungently from my eyes. When my vision adjusted, I saw a four-lane highway divided by a median. The night air felt damp. Running figures were unloading sawhorses from the panel truck across the road and setting them up on the highway on our side of the road in the pattern I'd indicated at the warehouse. Other figures were carrying weapons from the panel truck. A man handed a Sten gun to Hassan. I reached across my chest and touched the butt of my holstered Smith & Wesson to reassure myself somewhat.
Across the median the lights of the parked panel truck flipped on and off three times. "Get out," Hassan said. He still had his half-smoked cigar between his teeth. "It's coming."
I picked up the sack containing the torch and the plastic which had been in the seat between us, then stepped out onto the shoulder of the road. A car passed us, and then another, slowly, herded over to the edge of the road by the sawhorses. Another set of headlights, wider spaced, appeared on the upper perimeter of the curve. Hassan grunted and walked rapidly toward them.
A man ran out and placed a sawhorse across the single lane of traffic, sealing it off. There was an immediate shriek of hastily applied brakes as the truck loomed up alongside us. A khaki-clad figure bounded up onto the jump step as the truck came to a stop. The butt of his automatic rifle smashed through the cab window, and the man reversed his gun and leaned inside the cab. The plan called for another man to be holding a gun on the driver from the jump step on the other side, and I was sure that he was there although I couldn't see him.
Hassan strode to the rear of the truck. Both his hands were free as the sten gun was suspended from a shoulder sling. I followed right behind him. From now on I was determined that the stocky Hassan would never get behind me. Just one more straw in the wind as to my future with this group was the fact that Hassan had made no offer of the locker key to where my money presumably awaited me upon the completion of the hijack.
Hassan reached the rear of the truck while the sounds of tinkling glass from the truck's smashed cab windows still echoed in the night air. Across the road a man with a red lantern was busily waving-through traffic going in the opposite direction.
I had expected to be the one to force the door lock, and I would have taken as long as I dared to give Erikson more time to catch up to us by tracing the beeper transmission signal. Instead, Hassan unslung the sten gun and fired a long burst into the lock. It was wasteful but effective. The lock shattered, and we stood there for an instant while spent shells pattered to the roadway like falling rain.
Hassan flung open the doors and scrambled up into the truck. I turned and looked up the road. No headlights were advancing toward us. Around the curve the road had been sealed off according to the plan. I climbed up into the back of the truck and immediately drew my.38. Whatever was going to happen now was going to happen fast.
Hassan was prowling the truck's interior with a three-cell flashlight in his left hand. His right hand cradled the barrel of the sten gun still slung on his shoulder. According to the division of responsibilities outlined by the Turk, Hassan shouldn't have known what he was looking for, but he obviously did. Another indication that I was to be left on the scene as a very dead red herring.
Hassan's flashlight beam moved on past a stack of crates and lingered on a gray package, its shape almost like a miniature coffin. I couldn't see the AEC #3M45D, Hanford, Washington identifying marking, but I didn't need to see it. Hassan's pleased exclamation was identification enough. He started to bend down to pick it up, and then the night outside the truck was pierced by a rattle of machine-gun fire, followed at once by another burst, much closer.
Hassan froze in his semi-crouched position. His flashlight went out, but not before I saw the barrel of the sten gun start to swing in my direction. I fired the Smith & Wesson three times. The range was six feet. By the gun's flash I saw Hassan's cigar fall to the truck floor from his slack mouth an instant before his body fell. There wasn't much left of his head.
The machine-gun exchange continued noisily outside. Erikson had arrived, and apparently in force. Right now I was intent upon survival. This was a dedicated group, and I was sure that someone else would be after the AEC package when Hassan didn't appear.
I dragged his body to the rear doors and flattened myself on the truck floor behind it. A voice snapped an impatient question in a foreign language. I waited,38 at the ready. A man started to scramble up into the truck. He paused when confronted by the barrier of Hassan's body, then went backward over the tail gate when I put a bullet into his chest.
A machine gun went off so close to me I could almost feel the heat. Hassan's body jumped and quivered as the slugs ripped into it. Then a waist-high spray of bullets hosed down the truck's interior. I stretched out my arm as I tried to line up on the unseen machine gunner.
The machine gun suddenly became silent. It took me only a second to see why. Through the open truck doors I saw a brilliant pair of headlights rounding the curve as a big car rocketed down the closed-off, outside lane, bouncing sawhorses to one side or grinding them beneath the wheels. The limousine-type car slid to a halt to the rear of the truck. Two men rushed out; one raised his arm, and lobbed a pineapple-shaped object toward the truck. It landed short, in the roadway, and rolled beneath the truck, out of my line of vision.
I knew what it was, but I couldn't do anything about it.
There was a brilliant flare of light as the grenade went off, and a giant hand slammed the truck body upward into my stomach.
My ears rang and my sight dimmed.
I could feel the truck disintegrating around me.
Then blackness descended.
I came to with hands patting my body. "He's breathing, and I can't find any wounds," I heard Erikson's voice. "It might be just concussion. How's your leg, Jock?"