Sledgehammer

by Walter Wager

  When he reached the lodge, the millionaire found Williston and the others packing food in the freezers and kitchen closets. The thin boyish Vermonter had gotten back first; he was always first. After all the boxes and packages were unloaded, the men who could not forget Edward R. Barringer changed into loose-fitting fatigues. Now they were ready to go to work, to finish the obstacle course and training devices. It was hard sweaty labor in the bright clear sun, chopping trees and digging ditches and sealing rough-barked, sweet-smelling fir trunks to rig lines. By sunset, they knew how far from being battle-ready their bodies were, and they sensed how much strenuous work would be necessary to recondition four men in their forties into anything like the quick, tough “Jeds” they’d once been. The stunt man and the wealthy sportsman-athlete were in the best condition, Williston next and the Las Vegas mathematician the furthest from combat-fit. When they sat down to dinner that night, they agreed that there was much to do before they could go into action against the enemy.

  They were already using military terminology—again. The house was “headquarters” and Paradise City was “the target area,” and their talk focused on “infiltration routes” and “field security procedures” and the foe’s “order of battle.” Within forty-eight hours after the caretaker left, they had achieved a rigid training schedule that left them feeling tired but purposeful by each sunset. The days were long, beginning at six A.M. with an hour of calisthenics before breakfast and then a jarring sixty minutes on the obstacle course before the distance trotting started. They were panting, drenched with acrid sweat by the time they dived into the icy lake for a mile swim. Later it would be two miles, and the afternoon marksmanship drills would move on from hand guns to rifles and automatic weapons. They ate a lot, cursed a lot, laughed infrequently and slept long and deeply.

  Their bodies began to respond, to remember, to revive. After a week, they started to walk differently, to breathe differently and move with traces of the old animal alertness. Now Arbolino could add daily instruction in judo and karate, a basic course in knife-fighting and the half-forgotten but still familiar tactics of “dirty” unarmed combat. The ugly tricks were coming back to them day by day, hour by hour. The four men who had long since put all this aside were remembering how to stun, hurt, cripple, kill. Although he didn’t mention it, Arbolino was surprised at the exceptional skill and energy—almost ferocity—that the professor showed in this work. It was as if some hungry beast inside Andy Williston was being unleashed—something dangerous and angry and savage. It was clear that his body had forgotten very little despite the long peaceful years of scholarship and teaching, for he was fighting expertly by reflex—by instinct—within two days.

  In the third week, the ammunition began to run low and it was agreed that Carstairs would drive down to buy more in Newark, where the laws and regulations weren’t as rigidly enforced as those in adjacent New York City. Williston left with him to start the research on the “target area,” a complex project that could take months but might be completed much more quickly if he could farm out parts of the work to three intelligent graduate students whom he knew needed money. Upper New York State is a lovely place in mid-June, and even with their minds busy planning secret violence the two former OSS agents were soothed and seduced by the green hills and rolling fields so alive in the late spring sun. The two nondescript men in light windbreakers drove south along the six-lane highway in the rented panel truck, eying the splendid landscape and talking about what lay ahead and each wondering whether the other could be relied upon when the crises came.

  They would surely come.

  Carstairs turned off Manhattan’s West Side Highway at 125th Street, dropped the teacher near the Columbia campus and continued down Broadway to the Lincoln Tunnel that extended beneath the Hudson River bottom to New Jersey. Williston left his tan canvas suitcase at his small Riverside Drive apartment, looked down briefly at the ships—he loved ships and water—and proceeded to his office to find the addresses of the three graduate students. It was quiet on the campus now, a welcome change after the demonstrations and violence of the spring semester. How long this steamy tranquility would last was another matter, he thought as he dialed the number of the man whom he wanted as his first recruit.

  Marvin Asher.

  Asher, Baker, Carlson—it was as easy as A,B,C.

  The money provided by the second most eligible bachelor in the United States made it that simple. Marvin Asher, Thomas Baker and Eric Carlson were delighted to do research on Paradise City for $750 each, and not one of the three graduate students showed any suspicion that the funds weren’t actually coming from “the new Ford Foundation race and crime in the South study” that Professor Williston mentioned. The thought of $750 for two weeks of concentrated work was more than enough; for the same money they would have investigated masturbation patterns among Apache Indians or the impact of lobbyists on the Massachusetts legislature or the divorce rate among Miss America winners since the death of Woodrow Wilson. A charming redhead who’d been Andy Williston’s girl for a year after his wife died in 1960 was now a senior researcher at Time, and she was willing to go through the magazine’s files to provide additional material and information on the notorious town where Barringer had been murdered. She still liked Williston; he was very likable in so many ways. He had been a strong, honest, excellent lover—and he might be again.

  It was a very different motive that caused Barry Corman to mail up from Washington the printed transcripts and exhibits of the 1962 and 1965 Senate Rackets Committee hearings on Paradise City. Corman, best of the bow-tied and crew-cut administrative assistants to an ambitious Michigan senator, had studied under Williston and had received a Fulbright grant largely on the basis of his teacher’s enthusiastic letter of recommendation. It wasn’t just that Corman owed him a favor—although he did and was enough of an instinctive politician to know that debts must be paid—but Corman admired and respected Andrew Williston. This was useful. Ordinarily, a letter requesting copies of hearings would bear fruit in eight or ten days. Williston had his, via special delivery, nineteen hours after he telephoned.

  The second most eligible bachelor in the United States was equally successful, although the trip to New Jersey had proved a minor disappointment. Purchase of bullets for the hand guns and rifles had been uneventful, but the bald gunsmith who’d previously been able to supply machine-gun ammunition explained that “the heat’s been on since the Kennedy thing, and even the Boys are running short on this stuff.” If the Boys—a fun-loving group united in sincere conviction that Al Capone had been a better businessman than Henry Ford—were low on clips for their automatic weapons, the situation was obviously difficult. However, resourceful P.T. Carstairs had an alternate source in reserve—the bartender at a Greenwich Village nightclub named the Balls of Fire, where the drinks were $1.50 each, the “exotic” dancers $50 and the barbecued spare ribs terrible. But the bartender had a friend who knew a man whose brother-in-law was a longshoreman, a galaxy of social relationships that might not have thrilled either Dr. Margaret Mead or Professor Kenneth Clark but which finally provided 9,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition for the British L2A3s plus 6,000 for the .45-caliber U.S. weapons.

  It was all stolen and they all knew it, and nobody mentioned it—not even once. Carstairs’ three dozen $20 bills did almost all the talking; the rest of the conversations consisted of grunts, inane pleasantries and delivery instructions. It was heavy, bulky. The handsome sportsman also knew that it was dangerous. Within an hour after the ammunition was loaded into the rented panel truck, he was driving north at a law-abiding fifty miles per hour en route to The Inferno.

  The truck returned to Manhattan three days later, with Samuel Mordecai Gilman at the wheel. He was looking tanner, leaner, tougher and even more purposeful than usual.

  “I suppose I could have mailed down my little shopping list,” he told Williston over lunch at a very good Chinese restaurant on 125th Street near Broadway, “but I’m a terribly
wary and fussy fellow and I’d rather buy this gear myself. I want to see exactly what I’m buying.”

  “Pass the shrimp,” the teacher answered.

  “You think I’m compulsive, don’t you, Andy?”

  Williston shrugged.

  “You think I’m compulsive,” Gilman insisted.

  “No, not really, but I think you’re hogging all the shrimp.”

  The man who was always right pushed the dish toward his friend, sighed.

  “All right, I’m compulsive—especially about details,” admitted the man from Las Vegas.

  “It’s not such a bad thing, Sammy.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I was raised that way, trained like that.”

  The psychology professor ladled more of the shrimp onto his own plate, nodded.

  “Please don’t tell me terrible stories about your terrible childhood,” he requested. “Not here, anyway. I’m a dead loss without my couch.”

  “I’ve got to be right, perfect. My parents—both teachers—brought me up like that. That’s why I have to do things myself—to make sure they’re done right.”

  Williston smiled sympathetically.

  “As compulsions go, yours is one of the more useful ones,” he assured his friend. “It’s a lot better than starting fires or exposing yourself in the subway. You get things done, and that’s worth a lot of Brownie points. You’re clean, efficient and know the words of every lyric Cole Porter ever wrote—so don’t brood about your compulsions.”

  “My father—”

  The thin Vermonter broke in, aiming his fork as if it were a classroom pointer.

  “Was a difficult man. But you’re not, just a bit fussy. I’m counting on that. We’re all counting on that, on you,” Williston assured him. “Without your special talents, your precision—yes, your occasionally irritating compulsion—we wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Now it was Gilman who smiled, a grateful but oddly haunted smile.

  They finished the meal as the man from Las Vegas explained where he meant to purchase the radio and electronics equipment, the shop on West 46th and the two stores far downtown near Chambers Street. These purchases, like the earlier ones in Albany, would be spread among three different stores so that the unusual size of the total order would be less noticeable. Nine of the newest solid-state “walkie talkie” radio sets, four for use and five to serve as replacements. Each set weighed only three pounds, had a range of more than a mile. They were the sturdiest, most compact and most expensive—the best that P.T. Carstairs’ money could buy. These “walkie talkie” units were the first items on Gilman’s shopping list.

  There were others that were more costly.

  Item: one AM radio transmitter made up of two suitcase-size components that could be fairly easily concealed, a voice-and code-sending rig with a range of 500 miles.

  Item: one telescoping antenna for use with that transmitter.

  Item: three FR-11 jammers easily adjustable to neutralize certain short-wave frequencies, including those used by many police radio networks.

  Item: eight different sorts of “bugs,” wire-tapping and electronic surveillance gadgets ranging from a miniature FM transmitter no larger than a silver dollar to a long-range “shotgun” that could pick up voices at 200 yards.

  Item: four tape recorders, all the modern voice-actuated models, including a $1,900 Swiss “Nagra,” a Uher 400 and a tiny “body model” designed to be worn in a holster inside a man’s jacket.

  Item: five of the cigarette-pack-size “bug” detectors, Japanese gadgets that were set to sweep the frequencies often used by concealed transmitters.

  Replacement batteries, spare parts, an electronics technician’s tool kit—Gilman bought them all with the prudence of a supply officer outfitting an expedition into the remotest corner of a New Guinea jungle. The gear completely filled the rear of the panel truck, leaving no room for the still-to-be-purchased infrared equipment or safe-cracking torches with their bulky acetylene tanks.

  “Tony’ll have to pick the rest of it up when he buys the trailer,” Williston calculated as they locked the cargo compartment.

  It was 5:40 P.M. on a boiling summer afternoon in Manhattan, and the heat and the traffic and the exhaust fumes and the humidity combined in a conspiracy so offensive that it might have seemed deliberate. Any well-adjusted New York City paranoid would have judged it deliberate if not outright malicious, Williston thought as the truck inched northward up Eighth Avenue, and there were obviously quite a few paranoids nearby. Most of them seemed to be driving the vehicles that surrounded the Sledgehammer truck, he pointed out to Gilman at a red light at the corner of 32nd Street.

  “Easy on the persecution complex,” the man from Las Vegas advised while he mopped the soot from his brow. “Remember, you’re the psychologist, not the patient. They’re the paranoids.”

  “Even paranoids have real enemies,” the teacher jested wryly.

  The light changed, and this time they covered almost an entire block before the traffic stopped them. Drenched with sweat and oppressed by the choking wet heat, the two worn men exchanged weary glances.

  “Even a paranoid wouldn’t be crazy enough to drive in this, Sammy,” Williston judged. “Let’s park the truck near my place, shower and eat and then you can start for The Inferno at about ten when it’s cooler.”

  “You’re very practical for an egghead college professor who never met a payroll,” Gilman complimented in arch accord.

  The Columbia teacher chuckled.

  “For a man who’s always right you’ve got a short memory,” Williston corrected. “I met at least one payroll—with you, and a tommy gun. Remember?”

  The Wehrmacht payroll.

  Swift, savage, sure.

  Williston had been like a surgeon on that operation, cool and competent and professionally indifferent to the sight of blood. Violence had been an instrument, a tool, a matter of course for all of them in those days. They’d been young and the Nazis had been evil, and everything had seemed so clear and simple.

  A long time ago.

  “I remember the payroll,” the gray-eyed mathematician announced. “We were pretty wild back then—young and wild.”

  “Barely house-broken,” Williston agreed.

  Gilman wondered, eyed his friend at the wheel.

  “It’s going to be different this time,” the man from Las Vegas said in a voice that was as much question as promise.

  “I sincerely hope so.”

  The fountain was splashing at Columbus Circle and the fountain was splashing as they drove north on Broadway past the Lincoln Center complex, but the two men felt no relief until they entered Williston’s air-conditioned apartment on Riverside Drive. Showers, chilled beer, a simple dinner of cold chicken and fruit all helped. A few minutes after ten, they each put on fresh clothes and descended to the side street where the truck was parked.

  A thin swarthy man, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, was sitting on the steps of a brownstone a few yards from their vehicle. Williston and Gilman were nearly abreast of him before they realized why.

  Lookout.

  He was the lookout for two other men who were trying to jimmy open the lock on the truck’s cargo compartment.

  “Take the lookout!” snapped the Vermonter as he moved forward.

  The thieves turned, saw Williston coming at them and swore.

  “Stay away, Mother!” warned the big one with the jimmy.

  “You’ll get hurt!” promised the other thief.

  His left hand moved; a switch-blade knife blossomed.

  At that moment, the lookout bolted and Gilman turned just as Williston dodged a swinging jimmy that was intended to split open his skull. The teacher feinted, faked a punch with his left hand and dropped low under a second swoop of the steel tool. Then a number of things happened very quickly and in stunning but utterly logical succession—logical to any alumnus of the OSS hand-to-hand combat or “silent killing” course.

  It was e
ffortless, classic, right out of the textbook.

  Within thirty seconds—perhaps twenty—the man with the jimmy was lying on the sidewalk. His wrist—the hand that clutched the burglar tool—was broken, his collarbone was smashed, his head was bleeding from two places and he was retching helplessly from the awful blow to his stomach. The man with the knife had been circling warily for an opening, but now he saw his ruined partner on the cement and he panicked.

  He rushed in blindly, holding the switch blade high.

  “Andy!” Gilman warned.

  The lean teacher spun, dropped agilely into that graceful crouch—and hit. The knife flew. Hit. The man screamed as a numbing blow paralyzed one arm. Hit. Something broke. Hit. Teeth and jawbone splintered. Hit. Williston was using his hands like hammers, but with the precision of a homicidal surgeon. He knew exactly what he was doing, or at least he was doing exactly what he’d been trained to do. It was almost as if the whole thing was choreographed and terribly well rehearsed.

  Suddenly Gilman realized what came next in the karate sequence.

  “Andy! Don’t kill him! Don’t!”

  Williston hesitated, and the man slumped into the filth of the gutter. The teacher looked around, sighed.

  “I wasn’t going to kill him,” he assured his friend. “I admit that I was fighting by reflex, all right—not bad after all these years either—but I certainly wasn’t going to kill him. I’d have to be crazy to do that.”

  Gilman looked down at the two bodies, searched the larger man’s jacket and found what he’d expected—his “works.”

  “Just as I thought,” announced the man who was always right as he held up the hypodermic. “Junkies—needle commandos out looting cars and trucks for anything that might bring cash to buy drugs.”