Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

Ha was dead before he hit the ground.

Jackie Tian steered the bulldozer directly at the rough-coated bulging concrete wall. The man with the borer had earlier scored around the four sides of the cleared area, making a line like that between postage stamps; when Tian hit it, at twenty miles an hour, the wall popped away from the broad iron bulldozer blade, splintering into a thousand jagged rocks, all scattered ahead of him. Directly across the Interbank Building water tunnel he drove and through the scored wall on the opposite side and the next connecting tunnel.

Bumping along behind him like a dachshund on a leash was the submarine, lashed to a four-wheeled trailer and chained to the rear of the bulldozer. The sub, fifteen feet long, tapered fore and aft, had rudder and exterior propeller at the rear but no conning tower. Compressed air between its inner and outer bulls would keep it buoyant, even with two or three tons of gold aboard. Its electronic gear was all in a thickly shielded cone in its nose. Three screw-shut hatches along the flat top gave access to the cargo area.

Behind the sub came thirty men, carrying shovels, wearing workgloves and headlamps beside their shorts and shoes. They cleared the rubble Tian created, to quicken the return journey, and kept moving, their lights casting quick narrow smoky beams in the temporary cross tunnels.

Third tunnel. The gold was to the left. Tian moved the levers to turn the treads and drew back the blade. The bulldozer swiveled on its treads, huge in this space. The right corner of the blade gouged out a chunk of the far wall as he made the turn.

As he started down the tunnel, nearly filling it from side to side, his head just beneath the water pipes, submarine and workmen trailing behind, the tunnel’s lights abruptly flicked out. So everything was on schedule.

Bennett sat at Richard Curtis’s desk in Richard Curtis’s trailer and felt like a captain on the bridge of a giant ship. Seated here, he could keep in touch with Jackie in the tunnels and with Mr. Curtis himself, on his ship in the harbor. When the time came, he would be the one to detonate the explosives in the seawall, flooding the tunnels. When the diver came back after releasing the submarine into the harbor, it was Bennett who would arm the final set of explosives in the tunnel, to remove all evidence of what they’d done, and it was then Bennett who would lead Jackie Tian’s work crew through the construction site, the false building seemingly under construction there, and out the concealed exit into Partition Street, away from the main gate and all the police.

He could hear the occasional gunfire, and didn’t much like it. That was Jackie Tian’s way to do things, loud and violent and tough. Bennett was an engineer, a construction man. He wished there’d been some other way to keep the police out while the bank vault was being breached. He wished he’d dealt properly with those people in Singapore, because then there would be no police outside to deal with now.

Well, but here they were, and there was no other way to deal with them. The Jackie Tians and their willing workers were useful at times. Half an hour, no more, was all they needed, and then the gold would be gone, and so would Bennett and Tian and the diver and all the workmen. All who survived.

The diver was a Malay named Sharom, who had come late to the project. He did not know his predecessor, but he understood the man had been arrested on some sort of smuggling charge not related to this job here.

Sharom had known Jackie Tian for years, not well, but trusted him to be competent and professional, and he knew Tian felt the same way about him. His specialty was industrial sabotage. If you wanted a competitor’s offshore oil-drilling operation to run into expensive difficulties; if you wanted your aging freighter to sink in such a way the insurance company could never prove it had been scuppered; if your operation needed an illegal dead-of-night explosion in a coral reef or other protected waters, Sharom was your man.

Tonight’s operation was a simple one, for which he was being well paid, the first half of his fee already in his account in Jakarta. He trailed the bulldozer and the sub and the workcrew through the tunnels, dressed in his wetsuit. Scuba tank on his back, goggles pushed down around his throat, headlamp gleaming. He carried his flippers, and wore thin-soled rubber thongs he’d store inside the wetsuit when the time came.

On his utility belt he carried a small radio, which would switch on the submarine’s engine once the tunnels were full of water, and which he could use to direct the sub down the straight run of the tunnel to what would then be a gaping hole in the seawall. He would swim just beside or above the sub, shepherding it along the way. Once the sub was clear of the seawall, the radio would also alert the other operator, who would take over control.

Sharom understood the other operator was also the employer in this operation, but didn’t know himself who the man was, had never met him, didn’t need to. Jackie Tian was all he needed to know.

Ahead, in the darkness criss-crossed by headlamp beams, the bulldozer crashed into the vault wall.

Tony Fairchild couldn’t believe what had happened. Inspector Ha was dead. Tony had liked Inspector Ha, had found him congenial and knowledgeable. He could certainly not be faulted for having put himself in harm’s way, because who could have expected this level of violence? Four police dead, including Inspector Ha and the driver of an armored personnel carrier and two other officers. And undoubtedly there were some dead or wounded among the people inside.

Both sides had now pulled back from the fence, the people on the inside having driven a large bulldozer smack up against the gate on their side, so it couldn’t be forced. Anyone attempting to get to the fence with wire-cutters could expect to be shot down before they could accomplish a thing; thus, one of the police dead.

Tony and George and Kim sat in the van that had brought them here, parked now a safe distance from the site entrance. In one way or another, they’d all expressed their shock at the death of Inspector Ha and their frustration at the stalemate, and now there was nothing to do but wait.

George was having the worst problem with that. Twice now, Tony had had to restrain him from leaving the van, saying, “You aren’t going to do any good out there, George, leave it to the professionals.”

“We don’t have the time !”

“I’m well aware of that. But they’re bringing up reinforcements, we’ll soon be through the gate.”

“If not,” George said, “we’re all going to die. Right here.”

The workmen formed a kind of bucket brigade, moving the heavy gold ingots from their pallets in the vault out through the breached wall and into the submarine. A little farther down the tunnel, some security people had emerged from a door and been shot down by Tian’s people, who now guarded the staircase there, to see to it they were not disturbed.

Steadily, the submarine filled with gold. Sharom sat on the rear bar of the trailer to remove his thongs and put on the flippers.

The walkie-talkie on the desk in front of Bennett crackled twice, then spoke in Jackie Tian’s voice. “Coming out.”

Bennett’s hand strayed to the button that would detonate the seawall explosives, but then all at once he was in Belize again, visualizing another man in another tunnel, the sudden onrush of water. He closed his eyes, and his hand moved back from that button to pick up the walkie-talkie. “Let me know when it’s safe to set off the charge.”

“Naturally.”

Sharom was alone. His headlamp was the only light, shining on the abandoned bulldozer, the submarine on its trailer, the new ragged hole in the wall to the vault. He could hear the radio talk, knew when they meant to blow the seawall, and stepped into the vault to be out of the direct line of it.