Mitchell paused in slicing bread. «As far as your last question is concerned, why don't you call up Melinda and ask her?»
Roomer gave him a long, quizzical look, sighed and reached for the telephone.
Chapter 3
COFFIELD had been wrong in his guess. Lord Worth was possessed of no private arsenal. But the United States armed services were, and in their dozens, at that.
The two break-ins were accomplished with the professional expertise born of a long and arduous practice that precluded any possibility of mistakes. The targets in both cases were government arsenals, one army and one naval. Both, naturally, were manned by round-the-clock guards, none of whom was killed or even injured if one were to disregard the cranial contusions—and those were few—caused by sandbagging and sapping: Lord Worth had been very explicit on the use of minimal violence.
Giuseppe Palermo, who looked and dressed like a successful Wall Street broker, had the more difficult task of the two, although, as a man who held the Mafia in tolerant contempt, he regarded the exercise as almost childishly easy. Accompanied by nine almost equally respectable men—sartorially respectable, that is—three of whom were dressed as army majors, he arrived at the Florida arms depot at fifteen minutes to midnight. The six young guards, none of whom had even seen or heard a shot fired in anger, were at their drowsiest and expecting nothing but their midnight reliefs. Only two were really fully awake—the other four had dozed away—and those two, responding to a heavy and peremptory hammering on the main entrance door, were disturbed, not to say highly alarmed, by the appearance of three army officers who announced that they were making a snap inspection to test security and alertness. Five minutes later all six were bound and gagged—two of them uncon-cious and due to wake up with very sore heads because of their misguided attempts to put up a show of resistance—and safely locked up in one of the many so-called secure rooms in the depot.
During this period and the next twenty minutes, one of Palermo's men, an electronics expert called Jamieson, made a thorough search for all the external alarm signals to both the police and nearest military HQ. He either bypassed or disconnected them all.
It was when he was engaged in this that the relief guards, almost as drowsy as those whom they had been expecting to find, made their appearance and were highly disconcerted to find themselves looking at the muzzles of three machine carbines. Within minutes, securely bound but not gagged, they had joined the previous guards, whose gags were now removed. They could now shout until doomsday, as the nearest habitation was more than a mile away: the temporary gagging of the first six guards had been merely for the purpose of preventing their warning off their reliefs.
Palermo now had almost eight hours before the break-in could be discovered.
He sent one of his men, Watkins, to bring round to the front the concealed minibus in which they had arrived. All of them, Watkins excepted, changed from their conservative clothing and military uniforms into rough workclothes, which resulted in rather remarkable changes in their appearance and character. While they were doing this, Watkins went to the depot garage, picked a surprisingly ineffectual lock, selected a two-ton truck, hot-wired the ignition—the keys were, understandably, missing—and drove out to the already open main loading doors of the depot.
Palermo had brought along with him one by the name of Jacobson who, between sojourns in various penitentiaries, had developed to a remarkable degree the fine art of opening any type of lock, combination or otherwise. Fortunately his services were not needed, for nobody, curiously enough, had taken the trouble to conceal some score of keys hanging on the wall in the main office.
In less than half an hour Palermo and his men had loaded aboard the truck—chosen because it was a covered-van type—a staggering variety of weaponry, ranging from bazookas to machine pistols, together with sufficient ammunition for a battalion and a considerable amount of high explosives. Then they relocked the doors and took the keys with them—when the next relief arrived at eight in the morning it would take them that much longer to discover what had actually happened. After that, they locked the loading and main entrance doors.
Watkins drove the minibus, with its load of discarded clothes, back to its place of concealment, returned to the truck and drove off. The other nine sat or lay in varying degrees of discomfort among the weaponry in the back. It was as well for them that it was only twenty minutes' drive to Lord Worth's private, isolated and deserted heliport—deserted, that is, except for two helicopters, their pilots and copilots.
The truck, using only its sidelights, came through the gates of the heliport and drew up alongside one of the helicopters. Discreet portable loading lights were switched on, casting hardly more than a dull glow, but sufficient for a man only eighty yards away and equipped with a pair of night glasses to distinguish clearly what was going on. And Roomer, prone in the spinney with the binoculars to his eyes, was only eighty yards away. No attempt had been made to wrap or in any way to disguise the nature of the cargo. It took only twenty minutes to unload the truck and stow its contents away in the helicopter under the watchful eye of a pilot with a keen regard for weight distribution.
Palermo and his men, with the exception of Watkins, boarded the other helicopter and sat back to await promised reinforcements. The pilot of this helicopter had already, as was customary, radio-filed his flight plan to the nearest airport, accurately giving his destination as the Seawitch. To have done otherwise would have been foolish indeed. The radar tracking systems along the Gulf states are as efficient as any in the world, and any course deviation from a falsely declared destination would have meant that, in very short order, two highly suspicious pilots in supersonic jets would be flying alongside and asking some very unpleasant questions.
Watkins drove the truck back to the garage, Jewired the ignition, locked the door, retrieved the minibus and left. Before dawn, all his friends* clothes would have been returned to their apartments, and the minibus, which had of course been stolen, to its parking lot.
Roomer was getting bored and his elbows were becoming sore. Since the minibus had driven away some half hour ago he had remained in the same prone position, his night glasses seldom far from his eyes. His sandwiches were gone, as was all his coffee, and he would have given much for a cigarette but decided it would be unwise. Clearly those aboard the helicopters were waiting for something, and that something could only be the arrival of Lord Worth.
He heard the sound of an approaching engine and saw another vehicle, with only sidelights on, turn through the gateway. It was another minibus. Whoever was inside was not the man he was waiting for, he knew: Lord Worth was not much given to traveling in minibuses. The vehicle drew up alongside the passenger helicopter and its passengers disembarked and climbed aboard the helicooter. Roomer counted twelve in all.
The last was just disappearing inside the helicopter when another vehicle arrived. This one didn't pass through the gateway; it swept through it, with only parking lights on. A Rolls Royce. Lord Worth, for a certainty. As if to redouble his certainty, there caine to his ears the soft swish of tires on the grass. He twisted round to see a car, both lights and engine off, coasting to a soundless stop beside his own.
«Over here,» Roomer called softly. Mitchell joined him, and together they watched the white-clad figure of Lord Worth leave the Rolls and mount the steps to the helicopter. «I guess that completes the payload for the night.»