“What gets me,” Slater, who must have been thinking about the same thing, said to Cardon, “is where they got hold of those two fighter-bombers. That kind of stuff isn’t supposed to be in private hands.”
“A couple of hundred years ago, they had something they called the Sullivan Law,” Cardon told him. “Private citizens weren’t even allowed to own pistols. But the gangsters and hoodlums seemed to be able to get hold of all the pistols they wanted, and burp guns, too. I know of four or five racket gangs in this area that have aircraft like that, based up in the Adirondacks, at secret fields. Anybody who has connections with one of those gangs can order an air attack like this on an hour’s notice, if he’s able to pay for it. What I can’t understand is the Independent-Conservatives doing anything like this. The facts about this business will be all over the state before the polls open tomorrow—” He snapped his fingers suddenly. “Come on; let’s have a look at those fellows who came down on the lift!”
There were two dead men in white Independent-Conservative robes and hoods, lying where they had been dragged from the lift platform. Cardon pulled off the hoods and zipped open the white robes. One of the men was a complete stranger; the other, however, was a man he had seen, earlier in the day, at the Manhattan headquarters of the Radical-Socialist Party. One of the Consolidated Illiterates’ Organization people; a follower of West and Yingling.
“So that’s how it was!” he said, straightening. “Now I get it! Let’s go see if any of those wounded goons are in condition to be questioned.”
Ray Pelton and Doug Yetsko had their heads out an open window on the right side of the cab of the ’copter truck; Ray was pointing down.
“That roof, over there, looks like a good place to land,” he said. “We can get down the fire escape, and the hatch to the conveyor belt is only half a block away.”
Yetsko nodded. There’d be a watchman, or a private cop, in the building on which Ray intended landing. A couple of hundred dollars would take care of him, and they could leave two of Mason’s boys with the vehicles to see that he stayed bribed.
“Sure we can get in on the freight conveyor?” he asked. “Maybe it’ll be guarded.”
“Then we’ll have to crawl in through the cable conduit,” Ray said. “I’ve done that, lots of times; so have most of the other guys.” He nodded toward the body of the truck, behind, where his dozen-odd teenage recruits were riding. “I’ve played all over the store, ever since I’ve been big enough to walk; I must know more about it than anybody but the guy who built it. That’s why I said we’d have to bring bullet guns; down where we’re going, we’d gas ourselves with gas guns, and if we used sono guns, we’d knock ourselves out with the echo.”
“You know, Ray, you’ll make a real storm trooper,” Yetsko said. “If you manage to stay alive for another ten years, you’ll be almost as good a storm troop captain as Captain Prestonby.”
That, Ray knew, was about as high praise as Doug Yetsko could give anybody. He’d have liked to ask Doug more about Captain Prestonby—Doug could never seem to get used to the idea of his officer being a schoolteacher—but there was no time. The ’copter truck was already settling onto the roof.
The watchman proved amenable to reason. He took one look at Yetsko, with three feet of weighted fire hose in his hand, and gulped, then accepted the two C-notes Yetsko gave him. They left a couple of Literates’ guards with the vehicles, and Ray led the way to the fire escape, and down into the alley. A few hundred feet away, there was an iron grating which they pulled up. Ray drew the pistol he had gotten out of Captain Prestonby’s arms locker and checked the magazine, chamber, and safety, knowing that Yetsko and the other guards were watching him critically, and then started climbing down the ladder.
The conduit was halfway down. Yetsko, climbing behind him, examined it with his flashlight, probably wondering how he was going to fit himself into a hole like that. They climbed down onto the concrete walkway beside the conveyor belts, and in the dim light of the overhead lamps Ray could see that the two broad belts, to and from the store, were empty for as far as he could see in either direction. Normally, there should be things moving constantly in both directions—big wire baskets full of parcels for delivery, and trash containers, going out, and bales and crates and cases of merchandise, and empty delivery baskets and trash containers coming in. He pointed this out to Yetsko.
“Sure,” the big Literates’ guards sergeant nodded. “They got control of the opening from the terminal, and they probably got a gang up at the other end, too,” he shouted, over the noise of the conveyor belts. “I hope they haven’t got into the basement of
