Sledgehammer

by Walter Wager

  Williston wriggled through the shrubbery to hide the radio-controlled device just under the gate guard’s air-conditioner, and Arbolino found the main telephone cable leading from the casino to a nearby line. He had to struggle with the insulated cutters, but after five tries he succeeded in severing the line at 11:47. Twenty yards away, Carstairs was loading the weapon that was supposed to get them out. It felt odd. He hadn’t handled one of these in years, not since they’d led the Maquis attack on the Wehrmacht armored-car column a week before D-Day. Or had it been the raid on Hitler’s birthday?

  He placed the weapon beside the radio transmitter on the floor of the back of the car, watched Williston and the stunt man return. They all checked their watches. It was almost 11:49—time to attack.

  “Three minutes, and then we’ll come out like gangbusters,” warned the taut teacher.

  “Your car will be waiting, sir. Although I really ought to go in with you.”

  Williston shook his head.

  “We’ve been through all that. You’re the best driver, and you’re the best outdoors marksman, so you’re logical to cover us out here, Petie,” he reminded the sportsman.

  Arbolino and Williston picked up the gear that Carstairs had unloaded from the suitcases for them.

  “You’d be smarter to take the nine-millimeter Uzi instead of the M-3,” Carstairs grumbled. “It’s got a higher rate of fire—six hundred and fifty rounds per minute instead of four hundred—and it packs a forty-round magazine instead of thirty.”

  “This is going to be a raid, not a massacre,” Arbolino observed, “and these silenced M-3s make a lot less noise.”

  “Let’s move,” ordered the teacher.

  They turned toward the building.

  “Merde,” Carstairs called out softly in the traditional farewell used by Allied agents before parachuting into Occupied France.

  “Merde,” floated back Williston’s whisper in the darkness.

  The two raiders reached the rear door, and the teacher carefully inserted the extra key that Gilman had provided. Inside, one of the guards was seated in a canvas and metal armchair—smoking a cigarette and listening to the music that drifted up the corridor from the lounge where the band was playing Jim Webb’s “Up, Up and Away.” It was a catchy, pleasant tune, made even more familiar as a much broadcast airline commercial. Suddenly, the door swung open and the startled guard stared.

  Two men.

  Two men in black suits, each wearing a Santa Claus mask.

  Two black-suited and masked men, each wearing an Army musette bag over his left shoulder and each pointing a submachine gun at him. The weapons didn’t look exactly like the ordinary submachine guns, but the difference wouldn’t cover his burial expenses.

  The guard froze.

  “Not a fraction of an inch, or you’re dead,” one of the intruders whispered.

  “In red chunks,” added the other.

  The guard knew that a .45-caliber automatic weapon could do just that at such short range—five yards. Unlike Carstairs, he didn’t know that the M-3 weighed 8.15 pounds, was 29.8 inches long—with the stock extended—and fired with a muzzle velocity of 920 feet per second. He didn’t care about those fine points, being aware of the fundamental fact that this piece of hardware could literally dismember him at this range.

  “What do you want?” croaked the frightened thug.

  “We’re looking for a pay phone, you idiot,” Williston replied.

  Then he stepped forward swiftly, swung the gun and knocked the guard to the floor. Arbolino drew a can of Mace from his musette bag, sprayed the dazed man in the face for a full five seconds.

  Williston glanced at his watch.

  11:51. Late, but not dangerously.

  At that moment, the incendiary time pencil ignited and burned out the alarm-system controls. Only a tiny wisp of smoke seeped out from the closed and hidden control box, but the temperature inside was nearly 1000 degrees.

  The invaders moved down the corridor cautiously, found the curtained passage that Gilman had described and peered through a narrow opening between the velvet drapes. They were looking directly into the gambling room, where several dozen men and women were cheerily and naïvely trying their “luck.” Gilman was swapping wisecracks with the blond band singer who stood watching the roulette and sipping Scotch on the rocks, and dapper Willie Dennison was standing near the dice table, where seven or eight grown men were totally occupied with two pitted ivory cubes. One of them paused between rolls to pat the rump of his redheaded companion, as if the call girl’s plump flank would bring some magic to his throws.

  A very ordinary Wednesday night at the Fun Parlor.

  “Four…three…two…one…go,” chanted Professor Andrew Williston of the Columbia University faculty.

  Then the raiders charged into the room. Arbolino shifted his rapid-fire gun to cover the door to the lounge, outside which at least two guards were always posted. A moment later, he swung it around in a tight arc to point it at the armed man who protected the cashier’s booth. Williston spun on his heel, aimed his machine gun at the other guard who stood by the door to the manager’s office. For several moments, nobody noticed them. One of the bettors glanced up from his poker hand, gaped.

  A plump woman in an expensive silk pants suit that did nothing for her peered, screamed.

  It was a small ladylike scream, but adequate.

  Hush.

  “Nobody move,” Arbolino ordered loudly. “You two bastards—you by the cashier and you at the back exit—put your hands behind your necks…Now—or you’re dogmeat!”

  One of the guards hesitated, and Williston put four bullets into the wall about half a foot to his left.

  “He’ll kill you with the next burst,” the stunt man promised.

  Both guards obeyed.

  “Now you two lie face down on the floor—over in the middle where we can see you,” he commanded.

  They obeyed.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” rasped Dennison.

  “Ho, ho, ho—we’re having Christmas early this year, Daddy,” Arbolino answered.

  The plan was for Arbolino to do the talking: Williston’s voice was known around town from all the interviewing.

  “Only this time Santa is taking instead of bringing the presents,” Arbolino continued. “No, don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, we don’t want your jewels or your wallets. Just the house cash, just the bank’s money. Just Little John Pikelis’ money.”

  Dennison was edging backward, and Williston guessed that the casino manager meant to reach the alarm button built into the side of the dice table. It didn’t matter. Beneath the hot mask, he smiled at the awareness that the alarm system had been neutralized.

  “Get the money,” he whispered.

  Arbolino moved swiftly to the cashier’s cage, pushed the muzzle of his M-3 within eight inches of the man inside.

  “Nothing smaller than twenties, and fast,” commanded the stunt man as he opened his musette bag.

  The cashier hesitated nervously.

  “Either the money goes out in this bag, or they’ll carry you out in another one,” Arbolino promised.

  That did it, and within thirty seconds the musette bag was bulging with thousands—perhaps seventy or eighty—of dollars in currency.

  “Bug-out time,” announced the stunt man.

  “The reindeer are getting restless, so we’re leaving now,” he told the people in the room. “If nobody follows us for three minutes, nobody will get hurt…Go.”

  Arbolino went, backing out toward the drapes through which they’d entered. Williston followed the same procedure, swiveling his eyes and machine gun like the rotating radar antennas atop a warship. It was going perfectly, perfectly.

  “Dennison,” a husky voice off to the left warned softly.

  Just as he’d been trained so many years earlier, he swung the machine gun and simultaneously picked out his target. The casino manager had drawn a .32 automatic from somewh
ere, was raising it furtively. The instantaneous burst from the M-3 slashed at his upper right arm and shoulder, punching three holes in his dinner jacket and slamming Dennison back against the dice table as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat. The casino manager slumped over the green felt, now spotted with red-brown from the wounds.

  “I’ll take your head off next time, Willie,” whispered the gunman who’d once been known as Marie Antoinette.

  “Son of a bitch…son of a bitch,” moaned the casino manager.

  Williston swept the machine gun back and forth twice, but nobody moved.

  “Just stay where you are, ladies and gentlemen. This isn’t your money or your war,” Arbolino told the patrons. “Give our regards to Pikelis, Willie.”

  Dennison cursed again; the pain was terrible.

  Suddenly, they were gone. They fled up the corridor, pausing only to throw three tear-gas grenades that flooded the passageway behind them with choking, blinding fumes. At the door, they ripped off the masks and fled into the night. Carstairs was waiting in the Cadillac, holding the magnetized metal box out the window. While Williston covered the door of the building with his automatic weapon, the stunt man crammed the musette bag into the metal box and locked it as he sprinted swiftly to Gilman’s parked car—one of thirty in the employees’ lot. Arbolino crouched down, slammed the magnetized box into place under the bottom—midway between the front and rear wheels—and raced to the Cadillac.

  “Let’s go, let’s go—dammit,” urged the second most eligible bachelor in the United States.

  They opened the front door on the right side, pulled out the limp chauffeur and dropped him on the concrete. Then Williston and Arbolino jumped into the rear passenger section, slamming the doors as Carstairs put his foot down on the gas pedal. The teacher reached down, found the radio-control device, raised the small transmitter to his lap. It had to work, or they’d never get through the gate.

  He flipped the switch and stared through the moonlight at the guard house at the entrance—perhaps 120 yards away. A moment later, the cylinder he’d placed began to spew yellow nauseating gas which the air-conditioner intake sucked into the guard house. That ought to take care of the sentry. Now it was up to Arbolino to cope with the heavy metal gate.

  It barred their exit—100 yards ahead.

  “Ready, Tony?” Carstairs asked over his shoulder.

  “Ready…stop.”

  The millionaire stopped the car, Arbolino raised the weapon and took careful aim—and fired. The bazooka rocket flamed through the night, struck the gate and blasted it open.

  “Groovy,” exulted Carstairs, who’d suggested the anti-tank weapon as a key to the exit.

  The Cadillac roared through the ruined gate at fifty miles per hour, swept down around the curve along Ocean Road for two minutes before the wealthy racing-car enthusiast slowed it to a less ostentatious forty. “One minute and fifty-five seconds to the truck, clock it,” he challenged. The men in the rear were busy peeling off the black jackets, cramming those garments and the machine guns into a suitcase along with the masks and the radio-control device. Williston put on a blue and white cord jacket, clip-on gray bow tie; Arbolino was busy ripping off his gray shirt to expose the gaudy green-and-yellow sport shirt beneath.

  “One fifty-three, two seconds under,” Carstairs boasted as he pulled the limousine off the road and flicked off the headlights. He hurried out, raised the hood and placed another incendiary time pencil inside before closing it. Then he peeled off the gloves that he’d worn to avoid leaving any fingerprints, sighed. Arbolino and Williston were loading the two suitcases into the back of the truck.

  “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Carstairs demanded.

  “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as Tony gets this truck rolling.”

  Williston and the millionaire jumped into the rear compartment of the panel truck, and the stunt man immediately swung the vehicle back onto the highway. In three and a half minutes, he stopped and banged on the partition behind him. Williston leaped out, vanished into the trees on the dead run. The truck rolled on a moment later, heading toward Paradise City. Arbolino would let Carstairs out near the entrance to the alley leading to the Paradise House garage, and the millionaire was to make his way back up to the Breckenridge Suite by the service stairs. Then Arbolino would drive “home” to the trailer camp on Route 121. It was unlikely that he’d meet any police road blocks, for (1) they’d knocked out the gambling casino’s phone lines; (2) Crowden’s Caravan Camp was far from the Fun Parlor—on the opposite side of Paradise City.

  Williston paused at the tree line, looked. He recognized the scene on the screen; there were still at least twenty minutes more of Bullitt to come. Crouching low, he moved back to his car and slipped in—pushing down the dummy to the floor. Then he leaned back, pointing his eyes at the screen as if he cared. It had gone well, remarkably well. Gilman’s plan had worked. That business with Dennison had almost…well, the whispered warning had saved him. He tried to remember who’d been standing nearby, who’d alerted him in time.

  He was still thinking about this when the film ended, and then he drove out in the herd of other cars. As he guided the blue Dart out onto the highway, he saw a flash of distant flame in his rear-view mirror. The time pencil had ignited, and now Pikelis’ Cadillac—with any evidence or fingerprints—was burning. He heard the sirens of two police cars, saw them race past in the direction of the Fun Parlor a few moments later. The police paid no attention to the stream of vehicles eddying out of the Starlight Drive-In, reckoning that none of these cars could have been involved in the hold-up. Yes, it was going along according to plan. The man from Las Vegas, who’d played the major role in designing the operation, had been right again.

  Williston drove along in the caravan carefully, maintaining the same speed as the other recent alumni of the Starlight’s sex-and-violence course. It had been a fairly ordinary evening at the Starlight, if you took the larger view. A fat girl named Beverly had had relations with three teen-age boys in the back of a green Ford, but that wasn’t unusual for Beverly, and the Arden sisters had “fooled around” with a couple of fellows who’d starred on the football field for Jefferson High. That wasn’t extraordinary either, since the sisters’ fondness for both athletes and “fooling around” was well known. The cashier would report that business had been about average for a Wednesday night, and sales of pizzas and hot dogs were nothing exceptional.

  At the Turner Traffic Circle, the cars split out in various directions, and Williston found he could pick up some speed. Two more police cars swept past as the sound of a distant blast echoed, announcing that the Cadillac’s fuel tank had exploded. The limousine would be a total loss, the ex-OSS agent thought happily, and this would add to Pikelis’ humiliation. Now he’d know that they were here, that there were several of them and they meant to fight. Near the city limits, the teacher began to look around for a place to dispose of the dummy. It wasn’t until he reached the London Boulevard section that he spotted a pair of garbage pails on the sidewalk. He stopped the car, found one of the pails empty and dropped in the dummy.

  “Out hitting the hot spots?” joked the sallow desk clerk as Williston entered the lobby of the Jefferson ten minutes later.

  “I wish I had.”

  “If you’re looking for a piece of tail…” suggested the clerk.

  Williston yawned, shook his head.

  “Some other time. I’m going to try to sleep off the effects of that show at the drive-in.”

  “I heard Bullitt’s pretty good,” countered the clerk.

  “You’re right, but the other one—Rape of the Zombies, a real stinker.”

  “Rape of the Zombies?” chuckled the balding man behind the desk. “Rape of the Zombies? Hot damn!”

  The spy shrugged wearily, took the self-service elevator to the fourth floor. Later—after he’d undressed and washed and listened to the radio—he realized that it was 2:13 and Arbolino might be broadcasting in half a min
ute. He tuned his set to the proper frequency, waited.

  “Please repeat the message, Charlie. Please repeat the message, Charlie,” he heard Arbolino say.

  The key word was “Charlie.” Everything was all right. The stunt man had dropped off Carstairs and returned to the trailer camp without incident. That was fine, but Williston was still troubled by the question of the unknown helper who’d saved him at the Fun Parlor. Who would want to—dare to—assist the enemies of brutal John Pikelis? He turned off the radio, leaned back on the bed and closed his eyes. For the tenth time, he struggled to recall the faces of the people who’d been standing near him when Dennison reached for the gun.

  Suddenly he remembered, and then he guessed who it was.

  Yes, he recognized the voice now.

  It was the shapely deep-throated blonde who sang with the band.

  Judy…Judy something…Judy Ellis.

  Yes, it was Judy Ellis.

  Now why would Judy Ellis do that? Why would she risk so much for masked strangers?

  It didn’t make any sense, unless—so far as Judy Ellis was concerned—they weren’t strangers at all. This realization left Williston even more puzzled, for he had no recollection of ever meeting her or even hearing her name. He would have to ask the others, and they would have to decide what to do about her. They couldn’t ignore her, for if she knew them she was dangerous.

  That, at least, was certain.

  Who she was or who she was working for remained an annoying mystery, one that continued to trouble Professor Andrew Williston until he finally surrendered to sleep.

  22

  “I know the rates are higher during the week, but I didn’t think this ought to wait till Sunday, Bud,” announced the man who called Atlanta each week. “Anyway, it’s me who’s paying, not you…No, I didn’t telephone because I’m lonely or because I miss my Teddy bear either. I’m calling because of what happened last night. In concise if not quite elegant terms, the fit has really hit the Shan…That’s an old joke, Bud. If you don’t know it, I’m not going to tell it now at these prices. I’m not made of quarters, you know.”