Seven Silent Men Read online

  The detonation switch twisted to “activate.”

  A thud shook the concrete bunker but did not move the vault door he was watching on the TV screen. Little Haifa glanced at another monitor. The two red lights of the alarm system continued to glow. He looked at a third screen. No one was on the street outside the bank.

  Little Haifa announced into the microphone that the bank’s alarm system had not gone off as a result of the explosion … that he would now inspect the results … that everyone should remain in place except Wiggles and Cowboy.

  He handed the headset to Meadow Muffin, donned his hardhat realizing he had forgotten to turn off the miner’s lamp on its front, grabbed an Army-issue walkie-talkie, ducked out the command bunker and through the short low passageway … recrossed the small grotto … splashed forward through a half inch of water in a long tunnel … passed around a barrier of sandbags piled just within the tunnel’s mouth … emerged from the tunnel into a huge underground cavern … a twenty-five-foot-high subterranean chamber of rock and clay illuminated by string after string of suspended, unfrosted electric light bulbs.

  Wiggles and Cowboy, both in hardhats, stood beside a portable scaffold pointing up. A large segment of rock ceiling had been blasted away. Lying exposed above was mangled and shattered concrete … the concrete floor of the building overhead.

  Wiggles limped rapidly forward on a gimp leg, pulled the portable scaffold out and around. Held it firm. Little Haifa shed his fisherman’s boots and climbed the scaffold to the ceiling, began pulling at the shattered concrete. It fell away more easily than expected. If his calculations were correct, the bottom of the vault would be four to five feet up. What bothered him as he continued tearing down debris was that the vault hadn’t budged one mite during the explosion. This could mean the concrete floor was thicker than the estimated four to five feet. It could mean there wasn’t any vault or vault room directly above. Or bank.

  Little Haifa signaled for assistance. Cowboy, in black-and-white snakeskin riding boots, ascended the scaffold and with pick and electric drill attacked the more resistant portions of concrete. Little Haifa soon learned his error. Two and a half feet up, not four or five, a metal surface was struck. A hard metal surface.

  Little Haifa raised his walkie-talkie and proclaimed he was right on target, that he had reached the bottom of the vault. He checked his wristwatch and saw that it was 9:17 P.M., then repeated the time into the radio and added they were slightly ahead of schedule and should be done with the job and out on the river well before 12:30. He told Meadow Muffin to use the command bunker’s powerful radio transmitter to let Mule know everything would now proceed as planned. He ordered Windy Walt and Worm and Rat, who were waiting in the sandbag-shut passage on the southern side of the cavern, to exit out of the opposite end of the passageway and prepare the platform in the irrigation tunnel for their impending getaway … turn on the lights and stake out the four areas of embarkation and open the equipment cartons.

  More concrete was chopped and drilled away. The exposed bottom surface of the metal vault expanded to a roughly three-foot-by-three-foot square. Little Haifa took up the electric drill, inserted a diamond bit and began boring up into the hard alloy overhead.

  Eleven holes were drilled before Little Haifa and Cowboy descended the scaffold. Cowboy and Wiggles went and waited in the southern passageway. Little Haifa entered the partially sandbagged storage cave, emerged carrying a small wooden rack containing eleven vials of nitroglycerin with attached fusing … holding the rack of volatile explosives as steadily as possible, he reclimbed the scaffold ever so carefully.

  Ever so slowly, so cautiously, the first vial of nitroglycerin was removed from the rack and raised and slid into an angular hole drilled in the metal overhead … sealed in by plastic and with its connecting fuse exposed and dangling. The second vial was inserted in the next slot and sealed with its fuse dangling. Another hole was filled and sealed. Then another.

  When the final vial was in place, Little Haifa gathered the eleven dangling fuses, twisted them into one central cord and attached the cord to a master fuse already suspended from the ceiling which trailed down the twenty-five feet to the cavern floor below.

  Perspiring, Little Haifa descended the scaffold, plunked onto the ground, raised his walkie-talkie, ordered Meadow Muffin to take a final check, listened as Meadow Muffin said all four television screens showed conditions at the bank premises to be normal.

  Little Haifa asked for a progress report from the loading platform in the irrigation tunnel.

  Windy Walt said all the physical chores had been seen to but that there was trouble with the water level in the tunnel … that the water was three and a half feet lower than it should be … a good three and a half feet below the platform … that the water flow seemed far weaker than was advisable … dangerously slow.

  Little Haifa ordered Windy Walt and Rat and Worm into the main cavern, then walkie-talkied Meadow Muffin and told him to tell Mule to totally cut off the supply of water to the Sewerage Department’s secondary mains and anywhere else … to concentrate only on the main irrigation tunnel … to divert all the water he could into the main irrigation tunnel.

  A minute of silence elapsed before Meadow Muffin’s voice emitted from Little Haifa’s walkie-talkie saying Mule said it was dangerous to cut off the water to the Sewerage Department’s secondary mains … that if he did, Sewerage Department officials would see that something was wrong … would see that someone was tampering with the water controls of the city.

  Little Haifa told Meadow Muffin to tell Mule they would have to take the risk … reordered Meadow to order Mule to cut off the water to everywhere except the main irrigation tunnel.

  Meadow was on the air some twenty seconds later saying Mule was doing as ordered, but not happily.

  Windy Walt and Rat and Worm removed the sandbags from the mouth of the southern passageway and entered the cavern. Walt helped Little Haifa and Wiggles and Cowboy remove four large rubber boats from the supply cave and inflate them. Worm and Rat broke open the wooden crates of waterproof and lightweight plastic buoys and land mines and sacks and life jackets, booby traps and plastic explosives and dynamite and timing devices.

  Their chores done, the six men stripped naked and put on wet suits … went to the storage cave and retrieved the clothes they would be wearing following the getaway, placed the clothes in waterproof bags … attached an elastic wrist band to each bag. Windy Walt and Rat and Worm sorted through the pile of discarded work clothes and shoes and rubber boots, rechecking to make certain no identifying marks had been left. After that the discards were stuffed into larger, nonwaterproof sacks. Cowboy’s snakeskin boots, however, went into his waterproof getaway bag.

  Little Haifa, Cowboy and Wiggles hoisted a rubber boat, tilted it on its side and hurried into a narrow passageway on the southern side of the cavern. They came out on the cement platform of an enormous underground irrigation tunnel lit up, at this juncture, by a line of bare light bulbs set atop stanchions … an echoing subterranean concrete aqueduct whose spuming water level was a good four feet below the platform on which the rubber boat was being set … a half foot lower than it had been when Windy Walt reported it to the command bunker earlier.

  Little Haifa raised his walkie-talkie, tried to contact Meadow Muffin. He couldn’t hear over the resounding water rush, not even his own voice.

  There were two routes by which Little Haifa could get to the command bunker due north from the platform on which he stood. The easterly path was encumbered, entailed backtracking up the narrow passageway he had just traveled, reentering and crossing the main cavern, going into the tunnel in the opposite, northern wall of the cavern and following it westerly into the grotto and short passage leading to the bunker.

  The other way was uncluttered but circuitous, required using the metal catwalk running along the twenty-foot-high irrigation tunnel … a curving tunnel which arched northwest, then northeast around the west periphery of the m
ain cavern.

  Little Haifa chose the second route … stepped from the concrete platform onto the iron catwalk … ran along it in his tight-fitting rubber wet suit with the bobbing beam of his metal miner’s hat piercing the bending blackness ahead … ran for one hundred and fifty yards over the rough grating before reaching the metal ladder rungs set into the tunnel’s cement wall … climbed the rungs to the steel hatch in the floor of the abandoned irrigation system control booth above. Pushed the hatch open. Boosted himself up and into the improvised command bunker. Without a word to Meadow Muffin, grabbed the radio headset and yelled into it. Yelled for Mule.

  Mule’s voice could be heard in the earphone, just barely.

  Little Haifa screamed for Mule to speak up.

  Mule answered, somewhat louder, to stop shouting at him, that he could hear perfectly well when Little Haifa used an ordinary tone of voice, that even if he could speak louder he wouldn’t because he had a worsening sore throat from standing around in the friggin’ dampness trying to operate the friggin’ controls. Then he asked what Little Haifa wanted anyway.

  Little Haifa yelled that the water level in the main irrigation tunnel was falling instead of rising.

  Mule asked how the hell Little Haifa thought he got his sore throat in the first place … by running around trying to get the water level up.

  Trying wasn’t good enough, Little Haifa countered. The water level was four feet too low. Four feet was a DISASTER.

  Mule warned against shouting.

  Little Haifa excitedly explained that everything was ready to go … that everybody was in place … that the soup was even sealed into the box … that THE WHOLE OPERATION COULD GO INTO THE TOILET BECAUSE THE WATER LEVEL IS TOO GODDAM LOW!

  Mule cautioned that one shouts at dumb animals and speaks civilly to human beings and told Little Haifa DON’T SHOUT AT ME ABOUT IT! GO SHOUT AT THAT FRIGGIN’ PUSS-HEADED NEPHEW OF YOURS ABOUT IT! YOUR PUSS-HEADED NEPHEW DREAMT UP THIS SYSTEM! HE KNOWS HOW IT WORKS, NOT ME! GO GET HIM TO SHOW YOU!

  Little Haifa let it be known YOU KNOW GODDAM WELL HE WENT AND VANISHED ON US! YOU GOTTA DO IT! YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THEM CONTROLS! YOU GOTTA HOLD UP YOUR END!

  HOW? demanded Mule. YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT PUSS HEAD WENT AND DONE? YOUR GENIUS NEPHEW? HE WENT AND TOOK THE IRRIGATION CONTROLS AND THE FLOOD-CONTROL CONTROLS FOR A CITY OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AND SPLICED THEM ALL TOGETHER UP HERE IN ONE BIG BOWL OF FRIGGIN’ SPAGHETTI! IF YOU FLUSH A TOILET IN UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS YOU’RE LIABLE TO BLOW FUSES AT THE RIVERFRONT MOTEL. I DON’T KNOW WHAT OPERATES WHAT UP HERE! ALL I KNOW IS EVERYTHING IS HOOKED INTO SOME SORT OF FRIGGIN’ AUTOMATIC TIMER THAT’S SET FOR GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN!

  WHY YOU KEEPING SECRETS? Little Haifa asked. WHY DIDN’T YOU SPEAK UP LIKE A MAN? WHY D’YOU GO ON SAYING ‘GOTCHA, GOTCHA’ ANY TIME I ASKED FOR SOMETHING TO GET DONE?

  ’CAUSE WAY BACK THEN I WAS IGNORANT! WAY BACK THEN I THOUGHT I COULD GET THESE CRAZY CONTROLS UNJAMMED AND WORKING. NOW I SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.

  Mule, what we gonna do? asked Little Haifa.

  Put the score off, was the reply. Hit it tomorrow like we planned to do. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have these controls figured out.

  Can’t go tomorrow, Mule. Gotta go right now. Mule, I already put the nitroglycerin in. A bank employee comes in and as much as sneezes in that vault room, it’s boom and good-by.

  Maybe you can go with the water like is? Mule suggested.

  With the water that low, most of the irrigation tunnels downstream will be bone dry. We’ll have to walk through them tunnels maybe ten miles carrying the score and our gear. By the time we get to the river, it could be dawn. We’ll miss the Treachery. Uh-uh, we’re stuck, Mule. We gotta go right now. You gotta come up with something to get us away from here.

  Keep getting ready … I’ll call you back, Mule said.

  Returning to the underground excavation site, Little Haifa, with Wiggles and Cowboy, began stringing fuse into the northern tunnel leading to the command bunker. While they did, Windy Walt began piling sandbags at the tunnel’s mouth. Sandbags already closed the narrow passage mouth across the cavern leading to the irrigation tunnel.

  Little Haifa’s walkie-talkie crackled. He raised it up to hear Meadow Muffin tell him the 11 P.M. monitor check had been taken and all was well in the bank premises above and in the street fronting the premises.

  Little Haifa ordered Rat to prepare the booby traps and demolition charges for the equipment being left behind in the cavern and storage cave, then went on fusing in the tunnel. News from Meadow Muffin that Mule was on the radio sent him on ahead to the command post.

  He had figured out something he could do, Mule explained to Little Haifa, a dangerous thing on all counts. The floodgates leading down from the Tomahawk Hill reservoir could be opened. Emergency gates which would spill out one helluva lotta water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons. That much water would ride them away from the scene like lightning. Or faster. That much water would probably wipe out parts of the city’s sewerage system as well.

  Mule said that if Little Haifa was worried about the dimouts they’d been causing in the city by draining off electricity in the past, he’d have a nervous breakdown when the floodgates got opened. That to open those gates would require activating not only the huge generator which had created the dimouts but a twin generator as well. That they would be sucking far more electricity out of the city’s power supply than they’d ever used before. That whole parts of the city could be blacked out.

  Little Haifa wanted to know that if the gates were opened, how fast it would take for the water to rise to the required level at their escape point.

  About five minutes, was the answer.

  Then do it.

  I gotta warn you again, it’s gonna be the deluge.

  Do it. Open the gates.

  Mule said he would need another five minutes of lead time in which to warm up the generators.

  Little Haifa told him to start warming them up as of that moment.

  Mule said there was one more thing, that Meadow Muffin had best leave the scene with the rest of the gang … that Mule might not be able to slow down enough to pick up Meadow Muffin as previously planned.

  Little Haifa agreed, instructed Meadow Muffin to put on his wet suit and remain in the bunker until he radioed Mule the order to open the flood gates, then to set the time-delay mechanism which would blow up the command bunker minutes later and run like hell … use the escape hatch and get onto the catwalk in the irrigation tunnel and run the one hundred and fifty yards to where the gang would be waiting on the concrete platform like he had never run for anything in his life.

  A final instruction Little Haifa intended to give Meadow Muffin was interrupted by Wiggles, who entered the bunker holding up an empty fusing drum and yelling they’d been gypped, that he’d run out of fusing seventy-five feet away, that the second spool contained seventy-five feet less than it should have … that it was Little Haifa’s fault for dealing with the scumbag nephew of his.

  Little Haifa said he’d checked both drums himself, that there was no shortage of fusing.

  Wiggles waved the empty spool menacingly, asked if he was being called a liar.

  Meadow Muffin blanched at the sight of the upraised spool, meekly confessed he thought it had contained rope rather than detonation fuse … revealed that he had taken the seventy-five missing feet and given them to Mule when Mule asked for rope.

  THE ROPE! THE ROPE! Little Haifa repeated into the microphone. WHERE IS THE ROPE MEADOW MUFFIN GIVE YA!

  Mule wanted to know what kind of moron would be worrying about rope at a moment like this … at the instant he was about to activate the generators. He again let it be known he didn’t enjoy being yelled at.

  WE NEED THE ROPE! THE ROPE IS FUSE!

  THE ROPE IS ROPE! rebutted Mule. THE ROPE IS CUT UP INTO LITTLE TINY PIECES AND IS GODDAM UNDERWATER AND YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? ’CAUSE THIS CHINTZY OUTFIT’S TOO CHEAP OR TOO IGNORANT TO BUY OR STEAL
ANOTHER RUBBER BOAT! SO I BUILT ME A WOOD RAFT AND LASHED IT ALL TOGETHER WITH THAT THERE ROPE! YOU CAN HAVE IT BACK WHEN I FLOAT DOWNSTREAM TO SEE YA! AND TALKING ABOUT DUMB, WHAT KIND OF MORON PUTS IN THE NITROGLYCERIN WHEN HE STILL HAS LOTS OF THINGS LEFT TO DO? THE SOUP GOES IN LAST, ALWAYS! NOW, YOU GONNA GO ON BEING DUMB AND IGNORANT OR SHOULD I TURN ON THESE GENERATORS SO YOU CAN GET WATER DOWN THERE?

  Little Haifa told Mule to turn on the generators.

  Almost instantly the bunker’s electric light bulb dimmed and a far-off echo of humming arose, the whir of an ancient and mammoth generator starting up. A second whirring resounded. The light went completely out, after a moment glowed back to half strength, then to full power.

  The detonator was taken from the command bunker and the fusing removed from the northern tunnel and restrung across the main cavern and on into the narrow southern passageway which ran down to the concrete platform in the irrigation tunnel … a platform on which the inflated rubber boats rested in rows and tied together by long strands of nautical nylon rope … four rubber boats, each being hurriedly outfitted with a plastic tiller and plastic emergency oars and a waterproof rifle and life jackets and two powerful battery-driven, front-gunnel searchlights and cross-gunnel static lines on which waterproof bags of stolen money and getaway clothing would be snapped.

  The tunnel mouth on the northern wall of the main cavern was sandbagged shut. So was the entrance to the small storage cave in which the booby traps and demolition charges and other explosives were stowed. Except for a narrow opening through which a man could barely squeeze, a double tier of sandbags closed off the passageway on the southern side of the cavern.

  At 11:20 P.M. Little Haifa began his final inspection of the main cavern … climbed to the top of the scaffold and examined, without touching, each of the eleven sealed-up holes in the exposed square of metal above … studied the fuses leading down from each hole … felt the junction at which these lead fuses had been twisted together and spliced into the master fuse suspended from a hook in the top of the cavern.