Seawitch by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page A

Jamieson, made a thorough search for all the external alarm signals to both the police and
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    nearest military HQ. He either bypassed or disconnected them all.
    It was when he was engaged in this that the relief guards, almost as drowsy as those whom they had been expecting to find, made their appearance and were highly disconcerted to find themselves looking at the muzzles of three machine carbines. Within minutes, securely bound but not gagged, they had joined the previous guards, whose gags were now removed. They could now shout until doomsday, as the nearest habitation was more than a mile away: the temporary gagging of the first six guards had been merely for the purpose of preventing their warning off their reliefs.
    Palermo now had almost eight hours before the break-in could be discovered.
    He sent one of his men, Watkins, to bring round to the front the concealed minibus in which they had arrived. All of them, Watkins excepted, changed from their conservative clothing and military uniforms into rough workclothes, which resulted in rather remarkable changes in their appearance and character. While they were doing this, Watkins went to the depot garage, picked a surprisingly ineffectual lock, selected a two-ton truck, hot-wired the ignition—the keys were, understandably, missing—and drove out to the already open main loading doors of the depot.
    Palermo had brought along with him one by
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    the name of Jacobson who, between sojourns in various penitentiaries, had developed to a remarkable degree the fine art of opening any type of lock, combination or otherwise. Fortunately his services were not needed, for nobody, curiously enough, had taken the trouble to conceal some score of keys hanging on the wall in the main office.
    In less than half an hour Palermo and his men had loaded aboard the truck—chosen because it was a covered-van type—a staggering variety of weaponry, ranging from bazookas to machine pistols, together with sufficient ammunition for a battalion and a considerable amount of high explosives. Then they relocked the doors and took the keys with them—when the next relief arrived at eight in the morning it would take them that much longer to discover what had actually happened. After that, they locked the loading and main entrance doors.
    Watkins drove the minibus, with its load of discarded clothes, back to its place of concealment, returned to the truck and drove off. The other nine sat or lay in varying degrees of discomfort among the weaponry in the back. It was as well for them that it was only twenty minutes' drive to Lord Worth's private, isolated and deserted heliport—deserted, that is, except for two helicopters, their pilots and copilots.
    The truck,  using only  its  sidelights,  came
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    through the gates of the heliport and drew up alongside one of the helicopters. Discreet portable loading lights were switched on, casting hardly more than a dull glow, but sufficient for a man only eighty yards away and equipped with a pair of night glasses to distinguish clearly what was going on. And Roomer, prone in the spinney with the binoculars to his eyes, was only eighty yards away. No attempt had been made to wrap or in any way to disguise the nature of the cargo. It took only twenty minutes to unload the truck and stow its contents away in the helicopter under the watchful eye of a pilot with a keen regard for weight distribution.
    Palermo and his men, with the exception of Watkins, boarded the other helicopter and sat back to await promised reinforcements. The pilot of this helicopter had already, as was customary, radio-filed his flight plan to the nearest airport, accurately giving his destination as the Seawitch. To have done otherwise would have been foolish indeed. The radar tracking systems along the Gulf states are as efficient as any in the world, and any course deviation from a falsely declared destination would have meant that, in very