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Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

Page 30

by Cuba (lit)


  a headband, then stuck the light to the headband with a

  piece of Velcro.

  He checked his watch. It was 1:36 A.m.

  He examined the lock, felt in the bag for his

  picks.

  Hmmm. This one, perhaps. He inserted it into the lock.

  No.

  This one? Yes.

  The latex gloves didn't seem to affect his

  feel for the lock.

  Carmellini had always enjoyed pick work. The

  exquisite feel necessary, the patience required, the

  pressure of time usually, the treasure waiting to be

  discovered on the other side of the door... the CIA

  had been a damned lucky break. Without that break

  he would have certainly wound up in prison sooner or

  later when his luck ran out, because no one's luck

  lasts forever.

  He inserted a smaller pick, felt for the contacts

  ...

  And twisted, using the strength of his fingers.

  The bolt opened.

  He stowed the picks, picked up the duffel bag, and

  opened the door.

  Dark office, with the only light coming through the windows,

  the glow of headlights on the street below, somewhere the

  flicker of a fire.

  The safe sat in the corner away from the windows. It

  was old, and huge, at least six feet tall,

  three feet wide and three feet deep. Painted

  on the door of the safe was a pas-

  toral scene; above the landscape arranged in a

  semicircle were the words "United Fruit

  Company."

  After a quick glance at the safe, Carmellini turned

  his attention to the rest of the room. He searched quickly

  and methodically. First the drawers of the desk. One of

  them held a pistol, one a bottle of expensive

  scotch whiskey and several glasses, one pens and

  pencils and a blank pad of paper. Several lists

  of names, phone numbers, addresses ...

  The lower right drawer of the desk was locked. A

  small, cheap furniture lock. He opened it with a

  knife, began examining files. The files seemed

  to be on senior people hi the government,

  girlfriends, vices, lies told, bribes offered and

  accepted, that kind of thing.

  He flipped through the files quickly, stacked them on

  the desk, and moved oa.

  The crystals were on the windowsill. A rack of

  books was below the window. A cursory check

  revealed no files peeking out between the books.

  The displays of old coins didn't even rate a

  glance. Back before he worked for the government the coins

  would have made his juices flow, but not now.

  On to the credenza. Many files in there. Carmellini

  sampled them, looking for anything on biology,

  weapons, strange code names. When he saw something

  he didn't understand he opened the file and glanced at

  the papers inside. Peoplemost of these files were

  on people. Unfortunately Tommy didn't

  recognize the names. He added the files to the stack

  on the desk.

  Now he discame to the safe. They must have lifted it

  to this floor with a crane before the windows

  viere

  installed, he thought He checked every square inch of the

  exterior to see if the safe was wired. No

  wires.

  Tommy Carmellini tried the handle.

  No.

  Turned the circular combination dial ever so carefully

  to the right, maintaining pressure on the handle. If the

  safe

  had been closed hastily, all the tumblers might not

  have gone home. He took his time.

  No. The safe was locked.

  He checked his watch. Now 1:47.

  The lights would come on soon, powered by the emergency

  generator.

  He opened the duffel bag and began extracting

  items. The first item he removed was a

  telescoping rod which he extended and positioned over

  the safe's combination dial; he secured it there with

  clamps placed on each side of the safe. Working

  quickly, witiMio lost motion, he clamped a

  small electric motor to the rod, then adjusted the

  jaws protruding from the motor so that they grasped the

  dial of the safe.

  Other sensors were placed on the top, bottom,

  left, and right sides of the safe door. These

  sensors were held in place by magnets.

  Wires led from the sensors and electric motor to a

  small computer, which he now took from the bag and

  turned on. There was one lead remaining, which

  he connected to a twelve-volt battery which was also in

  the bag.

  As he waited for the computer to boot up he checked

  all the leads one more tune. Everything okay.

  Tommy"...Carmellini pursed his lips, as if he were

  whistling.

  This contraption was of his own design, and with it he could

  open any of the older-style mechanical safes, if

  he were given enough time. An electrical current

  introduced into the door of the safe created a

  measurable magnetic field. The rotation of the

  tumblers inside the lock caused fluctuations in the

  field, fluctuations that were displayed on the computer

  screen. Finally, the computer measured the amount of

  electric current necessary to turn the dial Of the

  lock; an exquisitely sensitive measurement.

  Using both these factors, the computer could determine

  the combination that would open the safe.

  Sitting cross-legged in front of the safe with the

  com-

  puter on his lap, Carmellini tugged the latex

  gloves he was wearing tighter onto his hands, then

  manually zeroed the dial of the lock. Now he started

  the computer program.

  The dial rotated slowly, silently,

  driven by the electric motor clamped to the rod.

  After a complete turn the dial stopped at 32.

  The number appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the

  screen. After a short pause, the dial turned to the

  left, counterclockwise, as Carmellini grinned

  happily.

  In his mind's eye he could visualize the lock

  plates rotating, the tumblers moving....

  The line on the screen that tracked the magnetic

  field twitched unexpectedly. Carmellini

  frowned. He hadn't moved, the building was quiet

  Another squiggle, so insignificant he almost

  missed it And another.

  Someone was coming. Someone was walking softly down the

  hall; the sensors were picking up the shock waves of

  their footfalls as the waves spread out through the

  structure of the building.

  Careful to make no noise at all, Tommy

  Carmellini set the computer on the duffel bag,

  stood up and moved over behind the door. As he did

  he drew the Ruger from its holster under his shirt and

  thumbed off the safety, then turned off the light

  attached to his headband. Now he transferred the

  pistol to his left hand. greater-than caret ith his

  right he reached into a hip pocket and

  extracted a sap, a flexible length of rubber with the

  business end weighted with lead.

  Th
e darkness appeared total as his eyes adjusted.

  Gradually a bit of glare from headlights faintly

  illuminated the room.

  Carmellini had good ears, and he couldn't hear the

  footfalls. He could hear the tiniest whine, however,

  that the electric motor made as it turned the dial

  of the lock, the distant honking of some vehicle

  blocks away, and faintly, "ver so family, the

  wail of a fire or police siren.

  Tommy Carmellini stopped breathing, stopped

  thinking,

  stood absolutely frozen as the knob on the door

  slowly turned, then the door began to open.

  William Henry Chance walked slowly back and

  forth hi front of less-than he glass doors that

  marked the main entrance to the Ministry. The duty

  officer and his two men were hi the basement, doing God

  knows what to the emergency generator. Chance wondered

  how long it had been since the generator had been

  fueled, oiled, checked carefully, and started.

  The second hand on his watch seemed frozen. He

  checked his watch, walked, watched cars and trucks

  pass by, adjusted his duty belt and

  pistol, reset the cap on his head, strolled some

  more, promised himself he wouldn't look at the luminous

  hands on his watch, finally peeked anyway. A

  minute. One lousy minute had passed.

  Someone was coming along the sidewalk... a uniformed

  guard carrying an AK-47 at high port. He

  must be stationed at one of the side or rear entrances.

  The man stopped, slightly startled, when he saw

  Chance's figure standing in the door. Now he peered

  closer. And saluted.

  "Sir, I am looking for the'duty officer."

  "He is hi the basement, starting the emergency

  generator. Is there someone else at your post?"

  "Uh, yessir. I was coming around to check if"

  "I think you should stay at your post. The emergency

  power for the building will come on in a-few minutes, then

  you can make your request of the duty officer."

  "Yeseamsir. But the last time we started that thing,

  all the alarms went off, every one of them. The duty

  officer always wanted the alarms off before he turned the

  power back on."

  "I am sure he will take care of that. He knows the

  system."

  "Yessir."

  "And when was the emergency generator last

  used, anyway?"

  "The big storm last year, sir. Eight or nine

  months ago, I think."

  "Go back to your post."

  "Yes, sir."...The man saluted, turned, and marched

  down the sidewalk. Chance could hear his footsteps for

  several seconds after he disappeared into the gloom.

  The guy accepted him as Cuban, as had

  Lieutenant G6mez and his men. If they only

  knew the hundreds of hours of language classes

  that Chance had endured to learn the accent, to get it

  exactly right!

  All in anticipation of a moment that might never come.

  Yet the orders did arrive, and here he was,

  walking around in the foyer of secret police

  headquarters in Havana spouting Cuban Spanish

  like Jose Marti.

  He went to the guard's station, used his flashlight

  to examine the equipment there. The video monitors

  were of course blank, everything off, but where was the

  tape? If the power came on while he was there he

  didn't want to give Alejo Vargas a souvenir

  videotape of the men who cracked his safe.

  Ah, here was the videotape machine, hi this

  cabinet. He pushed the eject button,

  futilely. Without power the machine would not eject the

  tape that it contained. He used the Rugerfour shots

  into the heads of the machine.

  The brass kicked out on the floor. He picked

  them up, pocketed them.

  More pacing. Each minute was an agony of waiting.

  When the power was restored to the building, he had

  expected the alarms to go off in Vargas's office,

  and to have to cover Carmellini as he made his exit.

  By whatever means necessary, he intended to be the only

  man at the main entrance when Carmellini emerged.

  Yet if alarms were a normal occurrence, perhaps

  violence would not be necessary.

  The silenced Ruger rode inside his shirt under his

  left armpit. The pistol was an assassin's

  weapon, shot a .22 Long Rifle hollow-point

  bullet that would do minimal dam-

  age unless

  fired

  into someone's brain at point-blank range. Wounds

  in the limbs or body would be painful but not immediately

  incapacitating. The Ruger's only virtue was the

  silencer that dramatically muffled the report,

  reduced it from an ear-splitting crack to a soft,

  wet pop that was inaudible beyond a few feet.

  He wondered how Carmellini was coming on getting the

  safe open. Come

  on, Tommy!

  Footsteps from within the building.

  Here came a flashlight.

  "Ah, Colonel, the lieutenant sent me to tell

  you that it will not be much longer, that the generator will s.tart

  very soon."

  "Yes."

  "He is having difficulty, the mechanical

  condition is not as it should be."

  "I understand. I have faith in your lieutenant."

  The man went back down the hallway in the

  direction from whence he came.

  More pacing.

  At least three more minutes had passed when the

  lieutenant came down the hallway. The occasional

  flicker of passing headlights revealed him to be a

  large, rotund man.

  "I am sorry, Colonel, but we cannot make the

  cursed thing run."

  "No harm done, if your guards stay alert. And

  I can always come back tomorrow for my errand, I

  suppose."

  "We will stay alert, sir. Our duty is

  our trust."

  "You and your men have done what you can, have you not?"

  "We could awaken Colonel Santana, I

  suppose. Perhaps he knows more about the generator than

  any of us."

  Chance tried to keep his voice under control.

  "Colonel Santana is in the building, then?"

  "Yes, sir. He came in about an hour ago.

  He went to his apartment on the top floor. I

  think he was investigating the

  incident of the two saboteurs that were killed near a

  highvoltage tower south of town."

  "A high-voltage tower? That sounds like attempted

  sabotage."

  "Oh, yes, sir."

  "I hadn't heard of that incident."

  "Enemies of the regime, sir. Apparently some of

  them were successful."

  "Santana is the very man I came to seeea"...Chance

  declared. "Still, I did not expect to find him

  asleep. I suggest you give the generator one last

  mighty heroic effort, and if you are unsuccessful,

  I shall awaken Colonel Santana."

  When the doorknob had turned as far as it would go, the

  door to Alejo Vargas's office slowly

  opened. Tommy Carmellini was behind the door, still as

  a statue hi the park, w
ith a sap in his right hand and the

  silenced Ruger in his left.

  Now a flashlight beam shot out, swung quickly around

  the room, hit the safe and swung away for an

  instant, then returned to the door of the safe. The

  apparatus Carmellini had attached to the door was quite

  plain in the small beam, as was the tangle of wires

  that ran to the computer.

  Faster than he would have ever believed possible, the

  door smashed Tommy Carmellini in the face. The

  impact stunned him, threw him backward against the

  wall.

  The man sprang into the room, swung something that

  smacked Carmellini in the skull and made him see

  stars.

  He was falling, off-balance, the other man coming for him

  in a brutal, ferocious way, when he got the

  Ruger more or less pointed and began pulling the

  trigger as fast as he could. He could barely hear the

  pops.

  He fell to the floor and his assailant leaped on

  him, began smashing him in the face with his fist,

  repeatedly.

  Swinging his right hand with all his might,

  Carmellini hit the other man in the side of the head

  with the sap. And again.

  The man was slumping, falling to the left.

  Carmellini gathered his strength and smashed the man

  again, one more time, square in the head.

  The man rolled onto the floor, slumped on his

  back.

  Carmellini sat up, his breath coming

  in

  ragged gasps. Part of his face was numb, he was

  drooling from a mighty punch to the mouth.

  He forced himself to his knees. He pocketed the

  sap, reached for the flashlight, which was lying on the

  floor still lit. He played the light on the face

  of his assailant.

  San tana.

  Oooh, damn!

  He checked the pistol. He had fired at least

  five shots. A couple of the spent brass were lying

  near Santana, who had a bloody place on his

  chest, one on his neck. Hit twice, at least.

  Maybe one of the little .22 bullets would kill

  him.

  Maybe not.

  Tommy Carmellini found to his

  surprise that he didn't care one way or the

  other.

  He put the pistol back in its holster, wiped

  his face with his shirt, and went back to the computer.

  The combination was right there on the screen, all three

  numbers. The dial wasn't moving.

  He tried tiie handle, put some weight on it.

  It moved.

  The safe was open!

  He wiped his face on his sleeve, willed himself

  track to his task. First he stowed the computer and

  sensors and telescoping rod hi his duffel bag.

 

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