Parker said, “What kind of check do the commercial trucks get?”
“They must have some kind of pass,” Fusco told him. “Every one of them stopped, the driver held something out for the kid on the gate to look at, and then the kid waved him through.”
“In and out both?”
“Right.”
“Nobody got waved through? Not even people going to be the same every day? The gate guards have to know some of those drivers.”
Fusco shook his head. “Everybody stopped. No exceptions.”
Stan told Parker, “There’s some chicken outfit goes around trying to crack security on Air Force bases. They hit here three or four months ago, and the story went all over the base. One of their men came in in a Coke company truck, put a red brick with ‘bomb’ stenciled on it in white in every Coke machine on the base. Then called up the Provost Marshal and told him the whole base had just blown up.”
Parker shook his head. “That’s beautiful. So now they’re bright and alert. Just to make things tougher.”
Fusco said. “We wouldn’t count on them being slack anyway. It doesn’t change anything.” He still had a small fear that Parker would suddenly decide the job was no good after all, and up and walk out. Parker was capable of something like that, if he didn’t like the set-up.
But it wasn’t going to happen now, not over the gate guards. Parker nodded agreement with what Fusco had said, and turned to Stan, saying, “What time does the payroll get to the base?”
“To the base, or to our office?”
“Both. Base first.”
“The plane lands at nine-twenty. The money gets into the finance office no later than quarter to ten.”
“When does it start getting split up?”
“Right away. Six guys work on it all day long.”
“They work after hours?”
Stan grinned. “No, they get it done by five. I know, I’m one of the six, all we want is to be done and out of there by five o’clock.”
“Where’s this happen?”
Stan picked up one of the photos on the coffee table and handed it over to Parker. “In the Major’s office there. Where the vault is. See those two long tables along the left wall? That’s where we sit.”
“And the two boxes with the money?”
“In front,” Stan said. “Next to the glass wall here.”
”Is that glass bulletproof?”
“No, it’s just regular plate glass.”
“But the windows back here are barred.”
Stan shrugged. “That’s the way the Air Force does things.”
Ellen came quietly in at that point, carrying a cup of coffee for herself, and sat unobtrusively in the chair in the corner.
Parker said, “Besides the six men working on the payroll who else is upstairs then?”
“Everybody who works up there,” Stan said. “About twenty people.”
“Anybody else in the room with the money?”
“The Major. And Lieutenant Wormley and Captain Henley. They both check out .45’s from Supply in the morning and stand around and play guard.”
“Describe them.”
“Wormley and Henley?” Stan shrugged. “Wormley’s like his name. A little creep, fresh out of ROTC. A nothing.”
“What about Henley?”
“He’s supposed to be an alcoholic,” Stan said. “I don’t know. He lives with his family in the dependent housing area, he’s got lots of kids, he’s in his forties, I hear he was passed over for major once, he likes to reminisce about when he was in Europe in the Second World War.”
“Does he know how to use a gun?”
Stan shrugged. “Beats me. All officers are supposed to be checked out on the .45. I figure Wormley just went to the firing range and shut his eyes and plugged away till they told him to stop. Maybe Henley did do some stuff in the Big War, I don’t know.”
Fusco had been listening, trying to figure out the characters of the men from Stan’s descriptions. He was pretty good at that, at working out what kind of a man somebody was and guessing what that kind of man would do in such a situation. Now he said, “That’s the one to look out for—Henley.”
Stan didn’t understand. He looked at Fusco and said, “The war was a long time ago.”
”Not for anything he learned in the war,” Fusco said. “If he‘s a passed-over captain, maybe twenty-five years in the service, got a family, drinks too much, maybe he’s out to prove himself. Maybe he’d like to be a hero and make major.”
