Seven Silent Men Read Online Free Page A

sandbags at the tunnel’s mouth. Sandbags already closed the narrow passage mouth across the cavern leading to the irrigation tunnel.
    Little Haifa’s walkie-talkie crackled. He raised it up to hear Meadow Muffin tell him the 11 P . M . monitor check had been taken and all was well in the bank premises above and in the street fronting the premises.
    Little Haifa ordered Rat to prepare the booby traps and demolition charges for the equipment being left behind in the cavern and storage cave, then went on fusing in the tunnel. News from Meadow Muffin that Mule was on the radio sent him on ahead to the command post.
    He had figured out something he could do, Mule explained to Little Haifa, a dangerous thing on all counts. The floodgates leading down from the Tomahawk Hill reservoir could be opened. Emergency gates which would spill out one helluva lotta water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons. That much water would ride them away from the scene like lightning. Or faster. That much water would probably wipe out parts of the city’s sewerage system as well.
    Mule said that if Little Haifa was worried about the dimouts they’d been causing in the city by draining off electricity in the past, he’d have a nervous breakdown when the floodgates got opened. That to open those gates would require activating not only the huge generator which had created the dimouts but a twin generator as well. That they would be sucking far more electricity out of the city’s power supply than they’d ever used before. That whole parts of the city could be blacked out.
    Little Haifa wanted to know that if the gates were opened, how fast it would take for the water to rise to the required level at their escape point.
    About five minutes, was the answer.
    Then do it.
    I gotta warn you again, it’s gonna be the deluge.
    Do it. Open the gates.
    Mule said he would need another five minutes of lead time in which to warm up the generators.
    Little Haifa told him to start warming them up as of that moment.
    Mule said there was one more thing, that Meadow Muffin had best leave the scene with the rest of the gang … that Mule might not be able to slow down enough to pick up Meadow Muffin as previously planned.
    Little Haifa agreed, instructed Meadow Muffin to put on his wet suit and remain in the bunker until he radioed Mule the order to open the flood gates, then to set the time-delay mechanism which would blow up the command bunker minutes later and run like hell … use the escape hatch and get onto the catwalk in the irrigation tunnel and run the one hundred and fifty yards to where the gang would be waiting on the concrete platform like he had never run for anything in his life.
    A final instruction Little Haifa intended to give Meadow Muffin was interrupted by Wiggles, who entered the bunker holding up an empty fusing drum and yelling they’d been gypped, that he’d run out of fusing seventy-five feet away, that the second spool contained seventy-five feet less than it should have … that it was Little Haifa’s fault for dealing with the scumbag nephew of his.
    Little Haifa said he’d checked both drums himself, that there was no shortage of fusing.
    Wiggles waved the empty spool menacingly, asked if he was being called a liar.
    Meadow Muffin blanched at the sight of the upraised spool, meekly confessed he thought it had contained rope rather than detonation fuse … revealed that he had taken the seventy-five missing feet and given them to Mule when Mule asked for rope.
    THE ROPE! THE ROPE! Little Haifa repeated into the microphone. WHERE IS THE ROPE MEADOW MUFFIN GIVE YA!
    Mule wanted to know what kind of moron would be worrying about rope at a moment like this … at the instant he was about to activate the generators. He again let it be known he didn’t enjoy being yelled at.
    WE NEED THE ROPE! THE ROPE IS FUSE!
    THE ROPE IS ROPE! rebutted Mule. THE ROPE IS CUT UP INTO LITTLE TINY PIECES