That stopped Maxwell in his tracks. “Why do you ask?”
Kelly nodded. “You just answered my question, Admiral.”
“We’re not sure, Chief.” Maxwell ducked his head under the rotor and got into the back of the helicopter. As it lifted off, he found himself wishing again that Kelly had taken the invitation to officer-candidate school. The lad was smarter than he’d realized, and the Admiral made a note to look up his former commander for a fuller evaluation. He also wondered what Kelly would do on his formal recall to active duty. It seemed a shame to betray the boy’s trust—it might seem that way to him, Maxwell thought as the SeaSprite turned and headed northeast—but his mind and soul lingered with the twenty men believed to be SENDER GREEN, and his first loyalty had to be to them. Besides, maybe Kelly needed the distraction from his personal troubles. The Admiral consoled himself with that thought.
Kelly watched the helo disappear into the forenoon haze. Then he walked towards his machine shop. He’d expected that by this time today his body would be hurting and his mind relaxed. Strangely, the reverse was now true. The exercise at the hospital had paid off more handsomely than he’d dared to hope. There was still a problem with stamina, but his shoulder, after the usual start-up pain, had accepted the abuse with surprising good grace, and now having passed through the customary post-exercise agony, the secondary period of euphoria had set in. He’d feel good all day, Kelly expected, though he’d hit the bed early tonight in anticipation of yet another day’s punishing exercise, and tomorrow he’d take a watch and start exercising in earnest by rating himself against the clock. The Admiral had given him two weeks. That was about the time he’d given to himself for his physical preparation. Now it was time for another sort.
Naval stations, whatever their size and purpose, were all alike. There were some things they all had to have. One of these was a machine shop. For six years there had been crashboats stationed at Battery Island, and to support them, there had to be machine tools to repair and fabricate broken machine parts. Kelly’s collection of tools was the rough equivalent of what would be found on a destroyer, and had probably been purchased that way, the Navy Standard Mark One Mod Zero machine shop selected straight out of some service catalog. Maybe even the Air Force had the same thing for all he knew. He switched on a South Bend milling machine and began checking its various parts and oil reservoirs to make sure it would do what he wanted.
Attendant to the machine were numerous hand tools and gauges and drawers full of various steel blanks, just roughly machined metal shapes intended for further manufacturing into whatever specific purpose a technician might need. Kelly sat in a stool to decide exactly what he needed, then decided that he needed something else first. He took down the .45 automatic from its place on the wall, unloaded and disassembled it before giving the slide and barrel a very careful look inside and out.
“You’re going to need two of everything.” Kelly said to himself. But first things first. He set the slide on a sturdy jig and used the milling machine first of all to drill two small holes in the top of the slide. The South Bend machine made an admirably efficient drill, not even a tenth of a turn on the four-handled wheel and the tiny cutting bit lanced through the ordnance steel of the automatic. Kelly repeated the exercise, making a second hole 1.25 inches from the first. Tapping the holes for threads was just as easy, and a screwdriver completed the exercise. That ended the easy part of the day’s work and got him used to operating the machine, something he hadn’t done in over a year. A final examination of the modified gun slide assured Kelly that he hadn’t hurt anything. It was now time for the tricky part.
He didn’t have the time or equipment to do a really proper job. He knew how to use a welding set well enough, but lacked the gear to fabricate the special parts needed for the sort of instrument he would have liked to have. To do that would mean going to a small foundry whose artisans might have guessed what he was up to, and that was something he could not risk. He consoled himself with the thought that good enough was good enough, while perfect was always a pain in the ass and often not worth the effort anyway.
First he got a sturdy steel blank, rather like a can, but narrower and with thicker walls. Again he drilled and tapped a hole, this time in the center of the bottom plate, axial with the body of the “can,” as he already thought of it. The hole was .60 inches in diameter, something he had already checked with a pair of calipers. There were seven similar blanks, but of lesser outside diameter. These he cut off to a length of three quarters of an inch before drilling holes in their bottoms. These new holes were .24 inches, and the shapes he ended up with were like small cups with holes in the bottom, or maybe diminutive flowerpots with vertical sides, he thought with a smile. Each of these was a “baffle.” He tried to slide the baffles into the “can,” but they were too wide. That earned Kelly a grumble at himself. Each baffle had to go on his lathe. This he did, trimming down the outside of each to a shiny, uniform diameter exactly one millimeter less than that of the inside of the can, a lengthy operation that had him swearing at himself for the fifty minutes it required. Finished, finally, he rewarded himself with a cold Coke before sliding the baffles inside the can. Agreeably, they all fit snugly enough that they didn’t rattle, but loosely enough that they slid out with only a shake or two. Good. He dumped them out and next machined a cover cap for the can, which had to be threaded as well. Finished with that task, he first screwed it into place with the baffles out, and then with the baffles in, congratulating himself for the tight fit of all the parts—before he realized that he hadn’t cut a hole in the cover plate, which he had to do next, again with the milling machine. This hole was a scant .23 inches in diameter, but when he was done he could see straight through the entire assembly. At least he’d managed to drill everything straight.
Next came the important part. Kelly took his time setting up the machine, checking the arrangements no less than five times before doing the last tapping operation with one pull on the operating handle—that after a long breath. This was something he’d observed a few times but never actually done himself, and though he was pretty good with tools, he was a retired bosun, not a machinist’s mate. Finished, he dismounted the barrel and reassembled the pistol, heading outside with a box of .22 Long Rifle ammunition.
Kelly had never been intimidated by the large, heavy Colt automatic, but the cost of .45 ACP was far higher than that of .22 rimfire cartridges, and so the previous year he’d purchased a conversion kit allowing the lighter rounds to be fired through the pistol. He tossed the Coke can about fifteen feet before loading three rounds in the magazine. He didn’t bother with ear protection. He stood as he always did, relaxed, hands at his sides, then brought the gun up fast, dropping into a crouching two-hand stance. Kelly stopped cold, realizing that the can screwed onto the barrel blanked out his sights. That would be a problem. The gun went back down, then came up again, and Kelly squeezed off the first round without actually seeing the target. With the predictable results: when he looked, the can was untouched. That was the bad news. The good news was that the suppressor had functioned well. Often misrepresented by TV and movie sound editors into an almost musical zing, the noise radiated by a really good silencer is much like that made by swiping a metal brush along a piece of finished lumber. The expanding gas from the cartridge was trapped in the baffles as the bullet passed through the holes, largely plugging them and forcing the gas to expand in the enclosed spaces inside the can. With five internal baffles—the cover plate made for number six—the noise of the firing was muted to a whisper.
All of which was fine, Kelly thought, but if you missed the target, he would probably hear the even louder sound of the pistol’s slide racking back and forth, and the mechanical sounds of a firearm were impossible to mistake for anything harmless. Missing a soda can at fifteen feet did not speak well of his marksmanship. The human head was bigger, of course, but his target area inside the human head was not. Kelly relaxed and tried again, bringing the gun u
p from his side in a smooth and quick arc. This time he started pulling the trigger just as the silencer can began to occult the target. It worked, after a fashion. The can went down with a .22-inch hole an inch from the bottom. Kelly’s timing wasn’t quite right. His next shot was roughly in the center of the can, however, evoking a smile. He ejected the magazine, loading five hollow-point rounds, and a minute later, the can was no longer usable as a target, with seven holes, six of them roughly grouped in the center.
“Still have the old touch, Johnnie-boy,” Kelly said to himself, safing the pistol. But this was in daylight against a stationary piece of red metal, and Kelly knew that. He walked back to his shop and stripped the pistol down again. The suppressor had tolerated the use without any apparent damage, but he cleaned it anyway, lightly oiling the internal parts. One more thing, he thought. With a small brush and white enamel he painted a straight white line down the top of the slide. Now it was two in the afternoon. Kelly allowed himself a light lunch before starting his afternoon exercises.
“Wow, that much?”
“You complaining?” Tucker demanded. “What’s the matter, can’t you handle it?”
“Henry, I can handle whatever you deliver,” Piaggi replied, more than a little miffed at first by the man’s arrogance, then wondering what might come next.
“We’re going to be here three days!” Eddie Morello whined for his part.
“Don’t trust your old lady that long?” Tucker grinned at the man. Eddie would have to be next, he had already decided. Morello didn’t have much sense of humor anyway. His face flushed red.
“Look, Henry—”
“Settle down, everybody.” Piaggi looked at the eight kilos of material on the table before turning back to Tucker. “I’d love to know where you get this stuff.”
“I’m sure you would, Tony, but we already talked about that. Can you handle it?”
“You gotta remember, once you start this sort of thing, it’s kinda hard to stop it. People depend on you, kinda like what do you tell the bear when you’re outa cookies, y‘know?” Piaggi was already thinking. He had contacts in Philadelphia and New York, young men—like himself, tired of working for a mustache with old-fashioned rules. The money potential here was stunning. Henry had access to—what? he wondered. They had started only two months before, with two kilograms that had assayed out to a degree of purity that only the best Sicilian White matched, but at half the delivery price. And the problems associated with delivery were Henry’s, not his, which made the deal doubly attractive. Finally, the physical security arrangements were what most impressed Piaggi. Henry was no dummy, not some upstart with big ideas and small brains. He was, in fact, a businessman, calm and professional, someone who might make a serious ally and associate, Piaggi thought now.
“My supply is pretty solid. Let me worry about that, paisan.”
“Okay.” Piaggi nodded. “There is one problem, Henry. It’ll take me a while to get the cash together for something this big. You should have warned me, man.”
Tucker allowed himself a laugh. “I didn’t want to scare you off, Anthony.”
“Trust me on the money?”
A nod and a look. “I know you’re a serious guy.” Which was the smart play. Piaggi wouldn’t walk away from the chance to establish a regular supply to his associates. The long-term money was just too good. Angelo Vorano might not have grasped that, but he had served as the means to meet Piaggi, and that was enough. Besides, Angelo was now crab shit.
“This is pure stuff, same as before?” Morello asked, annoying both of the others.
“Eddie, the man isn’t going to trust us on the cash and fuck us at the same time, is he?” Piaggi asked.
“Gentlemen, let me tell you what’s happening here, okay? I got a big supply of good stuff. Where I get it, how I get it, that’s my business. I even got a territory I don’t want you fooling with, but we ain’t bumped heads yet on the street and we’ll keep it that way.” Both of the Italians nodded, Tucker saw. Eddie dumbly, but Tony with understanding and respect. Piaggi spoke the same way:
“You need distribution. We can handle that. You have your own territory, and we can respect that, too.”
It was time for the next play. “I didn’t get this far by being stupid. After today, you guys are out of this part of the business.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, no more boat rides. I mean you guys don’t handle the material anymore.”
Piaggi smiled. He’d done this four times now, and the novelty had already worn off. “You have no argument from me on that. If you want, I can have my people take deliveries whenever you want.”
“We separate the stuff from the money. We handle it like a business,” Tucker said. “Line of credit, like.”
“The stuff comes over first.”
“Fair enough, Tony. You pick good people, okay? The idea is we separate you and me from the drugs as much as possible.”
“People get caught, they talk,” Morello pointed out. He felt excluded from the conversation, but wasn’t quite bright enough to grasp the significance of that.
“Mine don’t,” Tucker said evenly. “My people know better.”
“That was you, wasn’t it?” Piaggi asked, making the connection and getting a nod. “I like your style, Henry. Try to be more careful next time, okay?”
“I spent two years getting this all set up, cost me a lot of money. I want this operation to run for a long time, and I’m not taking any more chances than I have to anymore. Now, when can you pay me off for this load?”
“I brought an even hundred with me.” Tony waved towards the duffel bag on the deck. This little operation had grown with surprising rapidity as it was, but the first three loads had sold off for fine prices, and Tucker, Piaggi thought, was a man you could trust, insofar as you could trust anyone in this line of work. But, he figured, a rip would have happened already if that was what Tucker wanted, and this much drugs was too much for a guy running that kind of setup. “It’s yours to take, Henry. Looks like we’re going to owe you another ... five hundred? I’ll need some time, like a week or so. Sorry, man, but you kinda sandbagged me this way. Takes time to front up that much cash, y’know?”
“Call it four, Tony. No sense squeezing your friends first time out. Let’s generate a little goodwill at first, okay?”
“Special introductory offer?” Piaggi laughed at that and tossed Henry a beer. “You gotta have some Italian blood in you, boy. Okay! We’ll do it like you say, man.” Just how good is that supply of yours, Henry? Piaggi couldn’t ask.
“And now there’s work to do.” Tucker slit open the first plastic bag and dumped it into a stainless-steel mixing bowl, glad that he wouldn’t have to trouble himself with this mess again. The seventh step in his marketing plan was now complete. From now on he’d have others do this kitchen stuff, under his supervision at first, of course, but starting today Henry Tucker would start acting like the executive he had become. Mixing the inert material into the bowl, he congratulated himself on his intelligence. He’d started the business in exactly the right way, taking risks, but carefully considered ones, building his organization from the bottom up, doing things himself, getting his hands dirty. Perhaps Piaggi’s antecedents had started the same way, Tucker thought. Probably Tony had forgotten that, and forgotten also its implications. But that wasn’t Tucker’s problem.
“Look, Colonel, I was just an aide, okay? How many times do I have to tell you that? I did the same thing your generals’ aides do, all the littler dumb stuff.”
“Then why take such a job?” It was sad, Colonel Nikolay Yevgeniyevich Grishanov thought, that a man had to go through this, but Colonel Zacharias wasn’t a man. He was an enemy, the Russian reminded himself with some reluctance, and he wanted to get the man talking again.
“Isn’t it the same in your air force? You get noticed by a general and you get promoted a lot faster.” The American paused for a moment. “1 wrote speeches, too.” That couldn??
?t get him into any trouble, could it?
“That’s the job of a political officer in my air force.” Grishanov dismissed that frivolity with a wave.
It was their sixth session. Grishanov was the only Soviet officer allowed to interview these Americans, the Vietnamese were playing their cards so carefully. Twenty of them, all the same, all different. Zacharias was as much an intelligence officer as fighter pilot, his dossier said. He’d spent his twenty-odd-year career studying air-defense systems. A master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in electrical engineering. The dossier even included a recently acquired copy of his master’s thesis, “Aspects of Microwave Propagation and Diffusion over Angular Terrain,” photocopied from the university archives by some helpful soul, one of the unknown three who had contributed to his knowledge of the Colonel. The thesis ought to have been classified immediately upon its completion—as would have happened in the Soviet Union, Grishanov knew. It was a very clever examination of what happened to low-frequency search-radar energy—and how, incidentally, an aircraft could use mountains and hills to mask itself from it. Three years after that, following a tour of duty in a fighter squadron, he’d been assigned to a tour of duty at Offutt Air Force Base, just outside Omaha, Nebraska. Part of the Strategic Air Command’s war-plans staff, he’d worked on flight profiles which might allow American B-52 bombers to penetrate Soviet air defenses, applying his theoretical knowledge of physics to the practical world of strategic-nuclear war.
Grishanov could not bring himself to hate this man. A fighter pilot himself, having just completed a regimental command in PVO-Strany, the Soviet air-defense command, and already selected for another, the Russian colonel was in a curious way Zacharias’s exact counterpart. His job, in the event of war, was to stop those bombers from ravaging his country, and in peace to plan methods of making their penetration of Soviet air space as difficult as possible. That identity made his current job both difficult and necessary. Not a KGB officer, certainly not one of these little brown savages, he took no pleasure at all in hurting people—shooting them down was something else entirely—even Americans who plotted the destruction of his country. But those who knew how to extract information did not know how to analyze what he was looking for, nor even what questions to ask—and writing the questions down would be no help; you had to see the man’s eyes when he spoke. A man clever enough to formulate such plans was also clever enough to lie with enough conviction and authority to fool almost anyone.