There was not much of the night left. Dawn came early. The morning was long. Search activities started at first light. The effort appeared to be erratic, over-manned, and disorganized. By noon the hubbub below had died down and shifted elsewhere. By noon our torture started. The air was humid, the sun unbearably warm. Our dark clothing captured both heat and moisture. We were miserable — hungry and thirsty — and suffering from deep fatigue. A pelting afternoon thunderstorm brought some relief, but with it came high winds. We hung onto our narrow supports like seamen clinging to a ship’s rigging in a heavy squall. We rode out of the storm and welcomed twilight that came soon after.
We waited until full darkness before descending. Then we went only as far as the uppermost platform. Willow left us after a short rest and returned shortly with water from the spigot near the foreman’s shed. Everything was quiet, she said while gulping down dried rations to revive her strength.
Refreshed and in slightly better spirits, I laid out the whole dismal situation to Martin. He listened and allowed Willow to examine his wound. The frown that grew on her face told me she didn’t like what she saw. The bullet had made an in-and-out wound, but it was not a clean one. Willow sprinkled on a powdered antibiotic then applied a field dressing over the inflamed area. Martin endured the mild discomfort without a sound. He was a man of steel.
Martin listened intently. He grasped our predicament, emphatically endorsed the idea of filching the MIA lists, accepted the attendant dangers offhandedly, and grew impatient to get on with the attempt.
Two hours later, it began.
Nineteen
My watch said ten minutes past midnight when we started up the rust-encrusted fire escape at the rear of the department store next to the government building. I could feel the perspiration breaking out on the back of my neck in the humidity of the warm night as we lugged our equipment up to the roof. With anyone less strong than Keith Martin for a pack-horse partner it would have taken more than one trip.
I paused for a breather on the roof. At that height a slight breeze was both noticeable and welcome. When I perspire, I have a tendency to itch. During the next few hours I expected to itch a good deal, and I didn’t mind postponing it momentarily.
Willow’s last check-in call to the French Embassy brought a rare, clear-text message from Hawk. It mentioned an upcoming rice crop failure. That indicated that something had gone off the rails. His guarded conversation translated into the fact that we had to undertake the effort without delay because what we were after inside the vault might not be there the next day.
It put a definite squeeze on a carefully timed plan. For one thing, we wouldn’t be able to get clear of the country immediately after we completed the job. The getaway arrangements set up by Hawk involved a lot of governmental red tape, and the system was too rigid to react to sudden changes. So now we were committed to play cat-and-mouse with Vietnamese police and alerted military forces for a day and a night until the prearranged transportation showed up. I didn’t like it, but there was nothing I could do about it.
The department store roof was high enough so I could see, against the blackness of the night, the carpet of glittering lights that defined the city. The air around us was heavy and the lights were screened by a thin layer of smog.
“What’s the hangup, Nick?” Martin demanded impatiently. He kept his voice down. Sounds travel well in the hushed tropical night.
“Nothing,” I said. “Let’s move over to the other roof.”
Martin scooped up the heavier of the two canvas bags and walked to the roof edge I had marked on our diagram. He made it look easy as he leaped across the intervening space to the next building. I picked up the other sack and set my teeth as I confronted the eight-foot gap with a litter-filled alley below. Heights don’t bother me, but with more than my own weight to take across the chasm, the distance I had to jump was a challenge. I backed off, took a run at it, and jumped without giving myself time to think.
I landed off balance, stumbled, then righted myself. The staff of the building left at eight o’clock each evening, leaving it vacant. Street and exterior guards patrolled the area, but none were stationed inside. There were several alarm systems scattered throughout the building, all of them sophisticated enough to insure that even a good technician would be almost sure to trigger an alarm at some point during his trespassing. The inside security measures were so sensitive and extensive that no personnel could be placed within the building during its closure.
When I first studied the wiring diagrams webbing the building, I thought we might have to import an expert to knock out the electronic devices. I also knew, with the uproar we had caused, such an attempt would be impossible. Even Hawk couldn’t get a gnat through the defenses that had been erected to search us out. When I examined the schematic further, I realized we could do without special help. The alarms were a handicap only if they kept us from getting into the vault and escaping afterward. The more I studied the circuits, the more sure I became that it was going to take more than flashing lights, TV cameras, or ringing bells to stop us.
The wiring diagrams of the security headquarters had been obtained only through the intervention and pressure by Hawk on some dirty tricks group back home who had obtained access to some contractor’s blueprint room. My guess was that the plans were drawn up either in Moscow or Peking. The burglarized sheets had been photofaxed over a scrambler line between Washington and the French Embassy here in Hanoi. It was these that I held. I hardly needed them for reference. I had them memorized down to the dimensions in the area we intended to infiltrate.
A door led down from the roof into the interior of the building. I checked it automatically, but it was locked as I expected. Close inspection disclosed tiny, silver wires of an alarm system. I turned to the small adjoining structure housing the mechanism for the building’s elevators. The blueprints indicated that it was neither locked nor bugged, and it represented the single major weakness I had found in the entire building’s security system.
Keith Martin crowded in behind me when I pried open the door gently and entered the small, shedlike structure. I turned to him. “Go back and get Willow. Now is when we’ll need her to protect our backs. We’ll post her right here as a lookout.”
While Martin was gone, I worked at the four screws holding down a plate fastened over the elevator shaft’s metal roof. The four rusty screws holding down the access panel finally yielded to the force of the long-shanked screwdriver I used. When Martin returned with Willow in tow, I had the inspection plate set aside. I flashed my penlight downward until its beam found the metal ladder leading into the shaft exactly where it was on the blueprint.
Three elevators rode side by side in the seven story shaft. All three were now parked at basement level. Examination of the wiring diagram had shown me that if any one of them were moved, an alarm would be set off. Similarly, if any of the elevator doors on each floor leading to the shaft were opened, the result would be the same. To avoid setting off an alarm, we had to confine our activities to the shaft itself.
This presented no obstacle. The construction plans revealed that the back wall of the elevator shaft at the reinforced basement level was also the rear wall of the documents vault. It could never happen in the U.S., but evidently the Vietnamese were more casual about that sort of thing. It meant we wouldn’t have to leave the elevator shaft until we were ready to enter the vault.