Seven Silent Men Read Online Free Page B

AND IS GODDAM UNDERWATER AND YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? ’CAUSE THIS CHINTZY OUTFIT’S TOO CHEAP OR TOO IGNORANT TO BUY OR STEAL ANOTHER RUBBER BOAT! SO I BUILT ME A WOOD RAFT AND LASHED IT ALL TOGETHER WITH THAT THERE ROPE! YOU CAN HAVE IT BACK WHEN I FLOAT DOWNSTREAM TO SEE YA! AND TALKING ABOUT DUMB, WHAT KIND OF MORON PUTS IN THE NITROGLYCERIN WHEN HE STILL HAS LOTS OF THINGS LEFT TO DO? THE SOUP GOES IN LAST, ALWAYS! NOW, YOU GONNA GO ON BEING DUMB AND IGNORANT OR SHOULD I TURN ON THESE GENERATORS SO YOU CAN GET WATER DOWN THERE?
    Little Haifa told Mule to turn on the generators.
    Almost instantly the bunker’s electric light bulb dimmed and a far-off echo of humming arose, the whir of an ancient and mammoth generator starting up. A second whirring resounded. The light went completely out, after a moment glowed back to half strength, then to full power.
    The detonator was taken from the command bunker and the fusing removed from the northern tunnel and restrung across the main cavern and on into the narrow southern passageway which ran down to the concrete platform in the irrigation tunnel … a platform on which the inflated rubber boats rested in rows and tied together by long strands of nautical nylon rope … four rubber boats, each being hurriedly outfitted with a plastic tiller and plastic emergency oars and a waterproof rifle and life jackets and two powerful battery-driven, front-gunnel searchlights and cross-gunnel static lines on which waterproof bags of stolen money and getaway clothing would be snapped.
    The tunnel mouth on the northern wall of the main cavern was sandbagged shut. So was the entrance to the small storage cave in which the booby traps and demolition charges and other explosives were stowed. Except for a narrow opening through which a man could barely squeeze, a double tier of sandbags closed off the passageway on the southern side of the cavern.
    At 11:20 P . M . Little Haifa began his final inspection of the main cavern … climbed to the top of the scaffold and examined, without touching, each of the eleven sealed-up holes in the exposed square of metal above … studied the fuses leading down from each hole … felt the junction at which these lead fuses had been twisted together and spliced into the master fuse suspended from a hook in the top of the cavern.
    Once down on the floor of the cavern Little Haifa scrutinized the end of the dangling master fuse while Wiggles rolled away the portable scaffold. Little Haifa dropped to one knee, waved Wiggles off, snapped on his walkie-talkie and asked Meadow Muffin for a report. Hearing that everything was normal on the monitor screens, that no one was inside or outside of the bank premises above, Little Haifa hooked the radio to his shoulder strap and lifted the slack end of the master fuse leading up to the nitroglycerin … gingerly connected it to the fuse on the ground and running back the entire length of the cavern and on under the sandbagged opening of the narrow passageway in the south wall.
    Little Haifa crawled along inspecting the fuse, traced it back into the passageway and past an interior barrier of sandbags behind which Wiggles, Cowboy, Rat, Windy Walt and Worm were lying. He moved on to where the detonator rested. He ordered everyone to turn on the miner’s lamps on their hardhats. Those whose lamps were not already on complied. He ordered the passageway to be closed off from the cavern. Wiggles and Cowboy scurried forward, sealed shut the narrow opening with a double layer of sandbags. Little Haifa said he needed only one of the men to stay with him, that the other four should continue down the passageway and go out and wait on the cement platform of the irrigation tunnel. Windy Walt began to get up, but was restrained by Rat, who told Little Haifa they were all staying with him here in the passageway. Little Haifa protested that such an action was stupid … that if anything happened and the