Sledgehammer

by Walter Wager

  “Here to save you from fake suicide police planning. Stand back from door.”

  It was signed “Tom and Jerry.”

  The ice-truck driver nodded, retreated to the far corner. Williston raised his hand in the “C” again; Arbolino responded immediately. Some thirty-six seconds later, the second charge exploded. The lock was smashed, but the door didn’t open. Somehow the goddam lock was jammed. While Gilman covered the exit with his machine gun, the teacher and the stunt man pushed and struggled. They stepped back, both hit the door with their shoulders in coordinated impact.

  It yielded suddenly, swung wide open.

  The two raiders nearly fell in, but they caught themselves and Williston signaled Clayton to hurry. By this time, the other prisoners were shouting and screaming to be let out too. The assault team ignored them, hustled the ice-truck driver up the passage toward the stairs.

  Below, Carstairs was firing. The sounds of the two explosions had been heard by Marton and Hyatt, had brought them charging out of the chief’s office to investigate. Parker Terence Carstairs sent them diving back into the office with two quick bursts, and then he threw in one of the nauseating gas canisters to keep them “honest.” As he lobbed the bomb, he simultaneously stepped back against the wall and swung the submachine gun to cover the disarmed policemen. A moment later, Williston led the others down and through to the steps leading to the basement. Three shots, then two more, flew from Marton’s office, and the second most eligible bachelor in North America replied with another gas grenade. He dropped two more in the front room, leaving the five police gagging and vomiting as he backed out warily.

  The passageway was already thick with gas from four canisters Gilman had tossed twenty seconds earlier, but Carstairs made his way through the fog and descended. When he reached the pistol range, he paused to lock the door behind him as a responsible rear guard should.

  Three minutes and fifteen seconds, and they were still inside police headquarters. By the time Carstairs reached the sub-basement, Gilman, Arbolino and Clayton had already passed down into the tunnel. Williston was crouched on one knee, his silenced revolver pointed at the door—just in case. He gestured toward the manhole, and then Carstairs graciously waved for him to go first. It was a sort of joke, but it was also ridiculous. There was no time for such games, a point that Professor Andrew Williston emphasized by aiming his gun at the millionaire.

  “Temper, temper,” the celebrity thought archly as he yielded to the startling threat.

  Three minutes and forty seconds, twenty seconds left.

  Carstairs vanished into the hole. Williston looked around, saw the generator was on fire and tossed his last two gas grenades before descending into the telephone company’s tunnel. The others were already fifty yards up the passageway, breathing deeply now that they had removed the unpleasant respirators. Clayton seemed to be staggering a little; maybe he’d taken the blast of the plastic charge.

  A block away, Judy Barringer-Ellis was paying off her taxi driver in front of the Atlas Building. The streets were still crowded with shoppers, couples in the downtown area for dinner and a movie, kids emerging from double features at the nearby movie theaters. She made her way through, found the alley and ran toward the back of the office building as quickly as she could.

  There was the truck.

  And there was a policeman beside it.

  They were trapped.

  She couldn’t stop herself, so she kept running toward the panel truck without any idea of what she’d do or say. She didn’t have to do or say anything. The policeman turned from the vehicle as he heard her coming, and this made it much easier for Carstairs to knock him unconscious with the butt of the submachine gun. She stood there staring and sobbing, unable to believe it. The policeman, who’d been routinely checking the front and rear doors of office buildings on his beat, would have no trouble at all in believing it. He’d have a concussion and a terrible headache for five days to prove it.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Williston asked the singer.

  She couldn’t stop crying.

  “Better bring her along,” counseled Gilman. “No time to talk.”

  And there wasn’t. They had only six and a half minutes to get out of the city, perhaps a few more if the other radiocontrol devices functioned.

  “Get him inside,” Williston ordered as he gestured toward the black man.

  Clayton was vaguely sick, having caught some of the nauseating gas. They’d forgotten to bring a mask for him. As Gilman and Carstairs helped him into the back of the truck, Arbolino and Williston ripped off the twin Ace Elevator signs they’d taped to the body so neatly. The signs peeled off like giant Band-aids, leaving an unmarked 1965 Ford panel truck—with a supercharged 1969 motor. The teacher threw the two signs into the back, boosted his woman into that compartment and followed her a moment later. As he closed the rear door, Arbolino turned the key in the ignition.

  The traffic was heavy; the truck averaged only three blocks per green light. Counting the lights carefully, the stunt man waited until the vehicle was eighteen blocks from the police headquarters before he hit his fist twice against the partition behind him. Gilman flicked the first switch on the little transmitter, and five seconds later eighteen scattered fire-alarm boxes in the streets of Paradise City began to sound. The control panel at the fire department’s central station—which the invaders had “rigged”—lit up almost completely; moments later every piece of fire-fighting equipment in town was rolling out with sirens screaming.

  Good. That would add to the chaos and confusion, slow down pursuit.

  Six blocks farther on the flight out of town, Gilman threw the second switch.

  The radio-controlled charge knocked out the traffic-department computer in the basement of the municipal office building, instantly blitzing all the controls that regulated the traffic lights. The lights were all frozen for a few moments, then they all went out. The hundreds of drivers who were beginning to grumble at the sudden flood of fire trucks now found traffic totally snarled; they cursed, blew their horns furiously—and blocked the streets.

  That too would delay possible police pursuit.

  The panel truck swung onto Route 121 at a proper forty miles per hour, rolling toward the caravan camp where they would hide out in the trailer until darkness. Then Gilman would go off to his job at the Fun Parlor, Carstairs would proceed to his date at the country club and Williston would drive to the marina to pick up the speedboat he’d chartered. At ten, he’d move the boat up near the shore—the beach was only 400 yards from Crowden’s Caravan Camp—and Clayton would swim out to make his escape. The craft would put him ashore—in the clothes of a crewman—310 miles south at a marina near Fort Lauderdale, where a car and driver hired by the Southern Public Opinion Corporation would be waiting.

  At 7:17—one minute before the telephone calls would stop and sixty-eight minutes before sunset would come—Arbolino slowed down to turn off the highway into the trailer park. He backed the truck into its place in front of his trailer, turned off the motor and strolled back to buy a couple of beers from nasty Fred Crowden. The idea was to engage the old man’s attention while the others slipped out to enter the trailer unnoticed. There was some risk that the families in the other six trailers might see the group, but they were, unlike Crowden, basically people who minded their own business.

  Arbolino bought the beer, chatted with the old widower about the cowboy picture that WPAR-TV had announced for that night and then made his way back to the trailer. As he entered, WPAR radio was reporting the known details of “the most fantastic jail delivery in state history.” City and state police were throwing up roadblocks on all highways out of the county; Chief Marton was confident that “these vicious criminals and the escaped murderer” would be apprehended before morning.

  “Try the police frequency,” Williston ordered.

  The police radio was back on the air now, sizzling with rapid-fire instructions to the patrol cars. None o
f the commands indicated the slightest suspicion that the fugitives were at the trailer camp on 121.

  “Seems okay,” judged the stunt man.

  “Maybe,” Williston answered. He repeated what the singer had reported about the hidden microphone.

  It was puzzling.

  “If they knew we were coming, why didn’t they stop us?” Arbolino wondered.

  The teacher, who’d doffed his coveralls like the others, shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Even our mastermind-in-residence, the Great Gilman, doesn’t know.”

  The man from Las Vegas shrugged, sipped at the beer.

  “I know and understand and can predict what’s logical, what figures, what makes sense,” he answered slowly. “This doesn’t figure. It doesn’t figure at all. You checked the room for bugs, didn’t you, Andy?”

  “A week ago, but it wasn’t there a week ago.”

  Yes, it was puzzling.

  They listened to WPAR and the police radio for another ten minutes, until the beer ran out and the stunt man agreed to buy a few bottles more. When he rapped on the door of Crowden’s cottage-office, the white-haired proprietor opened the door immediately. It was as if he’d been expecting someone. At this time on Saturday nights, Crowden was usually staring at the color TV set—fantasizing lewdly about the leggy dancers who decorated the Gleason variety show.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the old man mumbled.

  He seemed tense and exceptionally alert for a person who’d been absorbing beer since eleven in the morning.

  “Who were you expecting, the Black Hand?”

  Crowden giggled weakly.

  “That’s a good one. The Black Hand, ha, ha…Say, what can I do for you?”

  “The heat’s got me. I could use three more beers, please.”

  Crowden’s acknowledging smile was as watery as his aged blue eyes, but he produced the bottles without comment. He moved with unusual speed, made change quickly and said nothing that might delay Arbolino’s departure. The old man generally talked quite a bit—too much—but tonight he seemed to want to be alone. Maybe he’s waiting for some woman, the stunt man speculated as he started back toward his own trailer.

  Just as he reached it, he heard the sounds and turned. There was a large green sedan entering the caravan camp, two other cars behind it. A dozen men emerged from the vehicles; Arbolino recognized two of them at once. He jerked open the trailer door.

  “They’re here. Pikelis’ hoods. Three carloads,” he whispered.

  Something had gone wrong. The man from Vegas had been right—again.

  Carstairs, Gilman and Williston seized submachine guns in automatic reflex.

  “Pete, move toward the road. Sam, cover the back. Tony, you get behind the truck,” the man who’d once been “Marie Antoinette” ordered quickly. “Judy and Sam—Sam Clayton—stay on the floor inside here…Let’s go.”

  They slipped out of the trailer on the run, moving swiftly. Crouching low, Williston saw one of the enemy—yes, it was that bastard Hyatt—walk to the office, knock softly. He emerged a few moments later with Crowden, and when the trailer camp owner pointed to the Sledgehammer vehicle Williston guessed that it was the old man who’d betrayed them.

  The professor’s eyes swept over the battleground twice, watched the foe fan out in a wide arc. Some fifteen yards away, Parker Terence Carstairs was studying the “situation” from behind another car. It was not a good “situation.” The terrain gave the defenders no advantage, there was no easy “escape route” and the Fascists outnumbered them twelve or thirteen to four. Gilman wouldn’t like this “situation” or those odds at all, the millionaire reflected coolly.

  Grenades.

  We could take them quite easily with grenades, he thought.

  Thermite grenades would knock out their cars, and either antipersonnel or gas grenades would neutralize the men.

  It had been a mistake not to bring grenades and launchers, Carstairs concluded. Then he saw one of the gangsters circling between two trailers, drew the silenced .32 that he was still carrying from the jail raid and snapped off two shots. The first punched a hole in the hoodlum’s right shoulder, the second broke his left thigh four inches above the knee. It was almost like skeet shooting, the sportsman realized. The man screamed as the slugs hit him, dropped his gun as he fell.

  Williston heard the wounded enemy moan, turned to see the millionaire signal that he’d hit him with the silenced .32. The man’s cries were continued, and the psychology professor wondered why Carstairs hadn’t shot to kill. He’d always done that in the other war. Had he changed, or was his marksmanship faltering?

  Luther Hyatt heard the cries, wondered. There had been no sound of shooting, no indication that the men in the trailer sensed they were being surrounded. Uncertain and wary, he gestured to another gunman to check on the source of the moans. As the thug moved out in a low crouch, Gilman rapped softly on the door of a trailer that housed a young couple with two children. There were armed men in the camp, he whispered to the astonished father, and there would soon be heavy firing. They must flee—out to the rear—with the children immediately. The man saw the machine gun, collected his family, instructed them to follow him in absolute silence because their lives depended on it. In a television situation comedy, the wife would have laughed and the young boys would have said something snippy about poor old Dad. When they glimpsed the machine gun, they remembered all those news broadcasts—all that Vietnam film—and they realized that this wasn’t funny at all. They obeyed without hesitation, genuinely frightened by the awesome awareness that violence had somehow emerged from the seventeen-inch glass screen to enter their lives.

  Gilman was tapping at the door of another trailer when Carstairs spotted the second thug nearing the wounded man. The .32 wasn’t actually that accurate, the marksman reflected, and for a moment he yearned for the Smith & Wesson K-38 that was so much more precise. Only for a moment, then his training and instincts took charge. He aimed, squinted earnestly, fired.

  Plop.

  A low muffled plop, and then the hoodlum spun like some ballet dancer with an intestinal seizure. He lost his weapon, his footing, and reeled clutching his abdomen. A short terrible cry echoed as the man crumpled. Carstairs had heard such sounds many times, but he’d never noticed the awful animal anguish before. It was terrible in some undefinable, primeval way. Surprised by his own reaction, the sharpshooter turned to see Gilman pointing the way to safety for an elderly couple emerging from another trailer. Carstairs wondered why he was wasting his time and attention on such details, for it wasn’t like the focussed, purposeful man from Las Vegas to lose sight of the realities of battle.

  What the hell was Sam doing?

  Gunfire.

  Somewhere down Route 121, heavy gunfire.

  Automatic weapons. At least two, maybe three or four, Williston identified mechanically. Submachine guns, and not very far away. A mile, maybe a bit less. What did it mean?

  Hyatt heard the shooting too, turned to stare in the direction from which the hammering staccato came. He didn’t see the line of men emerging from the woods behind the trailer camp; he was looking the wrong way. They were armed—nearly a dozen seemed to carry machine guns—and they were many. Twenty or twenty-five, Williston calculated. With these reinforcements, the Pikelis group outnumbered the invaders so overwhelmingly that the outcome was unavoidably clear.

  Paradise City wasn’t going to be liberated after all.

  Williston took aim at the gas tank of the car behind which Hyatt was standing, ready to explode it as soon as the assassin fired. At that moment, one of the new arrivals raised something wide-mouthed and metallic—something that glittered in the fading sun—to his face.

  “This is the FBI…This is the FBI,” the electric bull horn boomed.

  Hyatt and his men turned.

  “This is the FBI,” the harsh voice continued. “Put down your weapons. The entire area is sealed off. You are outnumbered and outgunned. We are Federa
l agents. You have fifteen seconds to lay down your guns. That means everybody. Fifteen seconds.”

  It was a good trick, Williston thought grimly as he stared at the reinforcements spread out in a wide skirmish line like trained infantry. A good dirty trick. The Sledgehammer team would lay down its weapons as instructed by these supposed government agents, and this fake “FBI” troop would massacre them.

  “Put down your weapons. You have less than ten seconds.”

  Williston was quite surprised to see Luther Hyatt raise his gun, point it at the man with the bull horn as if to fire. He was even more surprised when the assassin’s .38 boomed, and—instantly—submachine guns in the hands of two of the reinforcements destroyed most of Hyatt’s head and upper torso.

  “Excellent reflex shooting,” Carstairs thought.

  “No more free samples,” warned the bull horn. “The party’s over. You’ve all got five seconds to get smart, or join Luther. Five…four…three…two…one!”

  The men who’d arrived with the late Luther Hyatt looked at each other and then at the corpse—very briefly—before they threw down their weapons, raised their arms. Gilman stared at the strange scene, puzzled because he hadn’t figured on anything like this. It didn’t figure—not rationally—at all.

  “Good. That’s good,” approved the amplified voice. “Now walk slowly…slowly and with no tricks…walk slowly with your hands above your heads back to your cars…That’s it…When you get there, face the vehicles and put your hands on the roofs of the cars.”

  There had been no sign of the FBI, the troubled man from Las Vegas calculated. How could anyone expect that they’d arrive like this, like the cavalry in some ridiculously corny cowboy flick?

  “Hands on the cars…Face the vehicles…New Orleans section, cover them.”