Operation Fireball by Dan J. Marlowe Page B

came several open boxes of what looked like radio equipment. When there was nothing left in the pickup except two small wooden crates, Wilson jumped down and carried one into the basement. I carried the other. For their size, they were deceptively heavy. Stenciled boldly on all sides of the crates was the single word CLASSIFIED . “What’s in these?” I asked Wilson as he closed the outer basement doors.
    “You can read, can’t you?” he grunted.
    I started to heat up until I realized that he didn’t know, either. He got into the pickup and drove off down the alley. I walked around to the front and went inside. I wanted a shower.
    Hazel was busy at the tables. I climbed the stairs to our room. “Hey, Drake!” Slater called to me as I passed his open door. I went into his room. He seemed more tense than he had in San Diego. “Who’s the redhead at the bar?” he wanted to know.
    “My girl.”
    “Your girl! How’d you round up that bit of catnip?”
    I decided that the truth couldn’t hurt anything. “She’s the moneyman.” I unbuttoned my sweat-soaked shirt and slipped out of it.
    Slater cocked a heavy eyebrow. “All that and money, too,” he said admiringly. “What did Captain Bligh have to say?”
    I knew he meant Erikson. “Nothing. Yet.” And now that I thought of it, it was strange that he hadn’t.
    Slater’s gaze was on my chest where some of the scars from the plastic surgery transplants partly showed above my undershirt. “Somebody didn’t like you a whole lot one time, hmm?” he remarked.
    I didn’t correct him. If he didn’t make the connection between the multicolored scars and my new face, it was all right with me. “Erikson said there was a load of stuff in the basement we’d move upstairs tonight after closin’ time,” Slater continued. “What d’you think of our boat captain?”
    “I’ll let you meet him first.”
    “You don’t like him?”
    “I don’t have to like him if he gets the job done. On the water he seems capable enough.”
    “He’s not gonna be on the water when we jump the fence at Gitmo,” Slater objected.
    “Maybe he has hidden talent,” I said, and went into my room for my shower.
    • • •
    The following night I knocked on Erikson’s door. I could hear the tap-tap-tapping of a typewriter inside. Down the corridor I could hear Slater’s full-throated snores. I had no idea where Wilson was.
    Erikson’s door opened silently with the blond man shielded behind it until he saw who it was. He closed the door behind me when I entered. Piled in corners were the articles Wilson and I had unloaded from Wilson’s pickup the previous night.
    Erikson went back to the typewriter. A bulldog pipe was in an ashtray on the desk and blue tobacco smoke eddied in the air conditioning. “We have work to do,” Erikson said as he sat down.
    “Tonight?”
    “Tonight. Are you handy with tools?”
    “I’m no master mechanic, but I get by.”
    “Good. You can help.” There was a five-second pause. “The deputy from White Pine County mentioned that you were handy with a gun.”
    “What brought that up on your radar?”
    He swiveled on his chair to look me in the eye. “You and Wilson,” he said bluntly.
    “Forget it,” I said. “Hazel will hand him his head.”
    “I believe that,” he answered. “I just hope that you do, too. By the way, can she sew?”
    “Sew?” Erikson made a series of stitching motions. “Oh. Damned if I know. I’ll ask her. Why?”
    He glanced at the piles of clothing and equipment. “There’s sleeve insignia to be sewed onto these uniforms.”
    “Okay, I’ll find out. What’s the job tonight?”
    “Installing the transceiver in the storeroom behind the bar. We can’t erect the antenna tonight because the lights on the roof would attract too much attention. We’ll put up the antenna at sundown tomorrow when it will look to anyone watching as if we’re adjusting the TV antenna.”
    I had moved in behind him until I was