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Overview
A $31 million bank robbery is the biggest news in the history of tiny Prairie Port, Missouri—and it only gets bigger when the trail of clues leads detectives to a gang of backwoods misfits. The FBI doesn’t believe rank amateurs could have pulled off such a sophisticated heist, however, and only when the Bureau’s most wanted felon confesses to the caper is the case finally closed.
No one in law enforcement seems concerned by the outrageous coincidences or high-profile names that appeared in the course of the investigation, but rogue FBI agents Billy Yates and Martin Brewmeister begin to suspect they have stumbled into a deadly and far-reaching conspiracy. As the body count climbs, Yates and Brewmeister go on the run in a desperate attempt to stay alive long enough to uncover the real masterminds behind the crime of the century.
Jam-packed with colorful characters, intricate plot twists, and crackling dialogue, Seven Silent Men is entertainment of the highest order—a bravura combination of heist caper and conspiracy thriller that will grab ahold of the reader and never let go.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504036658 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 06/14/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 509 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Seven Silent Men
A Crime Novel
By Noel Behn
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1984 Noel BehnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3665-8
CHAPTER 1
8:17 P.M.
Little Haifa adjusted the battery-powered light attached to his blue metal miner's hat, hiked up his hip-high yellow vinyl fisherman's boots and splashed forward through the tunnel north of the main cavern; entered and crossed a small grotto; ducked along a low passageway; came out in the improvised command bunker fashioned from a decaying underground control booth of a long-abandoned irrigation and flood-control system. Little Haifa removed his hardhat and checked the first of four television monitoring screens. The bank premises some forty feet above, as expected, were empty ... were, as expected, illuminated by soft, low-wattage night lights. The second TV monitor screen offered another view of the ground-level office, a moving view which revealed the two glowing red dots of an operative burglary alarm system. He glanced over at the third screen, saw that the street outside the bank was dark and empty. The fourth screen displayed the front of a massive, burnished-metal, walk-in vault.
Little Haifa clamped on a radio headset ... asked into the tiny microphone if the wires in the main cavern were ready to be connected.
Wiggles's voice told him everything was ready for connection.
Little Haifa asked if the scaffold had been rolled away.
The voice of Windy Walt said the scaffold was away.
Little Haifa called for Worm, inquired of Worm if the supply cave had been sealed off with sandbags.
Worm, via walkie-talkie, confirmed that the cave had just been sealed off ... that all the supplies were secure within.
Little Haifa asked Rat the condition of the passage leading from the south wall of the main cavern.
Rat said the sandbags were in place just inside the passage mouth, that he was already behind them waiting to be joined by Windy Walt and Worm.
Little Haifa raised Cowboy, wanted to know from Cowboy the state of the tunnel leading into the northern side of the cavern, the tunnel through which Little Haifa had traveled to reach the command bunker.
Cowboy said the tunnel was sandbagged shut except for a narrow opening by which Wiggles could enter.
Little Haifa asked Meadow Muffin to return to the command bunker.
Thirty seconds later, Meadow Muffin, his walkie-talkie in hand, emerged through a steel hatch in the floor of the bunker ... announced that the water level of the irrigation tunnel beneath them was three and a half feet lower than it should be, that the water current must be speeded up.
Little Haifa called into the mircophone for Mule. When there was no reply, he called louder.
Mule's voice responded from far off, asked what was so important.
Little Haifa half shouted that the water level and water flow in the irrigation tunnel should be increased substantially.
Mule answered, Gotcha.
The naked light bulb dangling beside Little Haifa's head dimmed. A faint echo of creaking wood and metal rose as the distant water-control machinery activated.
Little Haifa again spoke loudly, ordered everyone but Mule to leave the main cavern and take refuge in their designated shelters with their hardhats on and the hat's miner's light on and hat's plastic visor down.
Cowboy, then Rat, soon were heard saying the order had been obeyed.
Little Haifa told Wiggles to make the final connection and go to his assigned shelter and report in.
Seconds later Wiggles said he was secure behind sandbags and that the connection had been made.
Little Haifa checked the television monitor screens, saw that everything within the bank premises and on the street beyond was normal, announced into the microphone that the countdown was beginning ... put his hand on the control switch of the console detonator ... began to count backward from 20 to 19 to 18 to 17 ... kept his eyes on the monitoring screen showing the front of the walk-in vault ... at the count of 6 slowed the cadence slightly ... 5 .... 4 ..... 3 ...... 2 .......
The detonation switch twisted to "activate."
A thud shook the concrete bunker but did not move the vault door he was watching on the TV screen. Little Haifa glanced at another monitor. The two red lights of the alarm system continued to glow. He looked at a third screen. No one was on the street outside the bank.
Little Haifa announced into the microphone that the bank's alarm system had not gone off as a result of the explosion ... that he would now inspect the results ... that everyone should remain in place except Wiggles and Cowboy.
He handed the headset to Meadow Muffin, donned his hardhat realizing he had forgotten to turn off the miner's lamp on its front, grabbed an Army-issue walkie-talkie, ducked out the command bunker and through the short low passageway ... recrossed the small grotto ... splashed forward through a half inch of water in a long tunnel ... passed around a barrier of sandbags piled just within the tunnel's mouth ... emerged from the tunnel into a huge underground cavern ... a twenty-five-foot-high subterranean chamber of rock and clay illuminated by string after string of suspended, unfrosted electric light bulbs.
Wiggles and Cowboy, both in hardhats, stood beside a portable scaffold pointing up. A large segment of rock ceiling had been blasted away. Lying exposed above was mangled and shattered concrete ... the concrete floor of the building overhead.
Wiggles limped rapidly forward on a gimp leg, pulled the portable scaffold out and around. Held it firm. Little Haifa shed his fisherman's boots and climbed the scaffold to the ceiling, began pulling at the shattered concrete. It fell away more easily than expected. If his calculations were correct, the bottom of the vault would be four to five feet up. What bothered him as he continued tearing down debris was that the vault hadn't budged one mite during the explosion. This could mean the concrete floor was thicker than the estimated four to five feet. It could mean there wasn't any vault or vault room directly above. Or bank.
Little Haifa signaled for assistance. Cowboy, in black-and-white snakeskin riding boots, ascended the scaffold and with pick and electric drill attacked the more resistant portions of concrete. Little Haifa soon learned his error. Two and a half feet up, not four or five, a metal surface was struck. A hard metal surface.
Little Haifa raised his walkie-talkie and proclaimed he was right on target, that he had reached the bottom of the vault. He checked his wristwatch and saw that it was 9:17 P.M., then repeated the time into the radio and added they were slightly ahead of schedule and should be done with the job and out on the river well before 12:30. He told Meadow Muffin to use the command bunker's powerful radio transmitter to let Mule know everything would now proceed as planned. He ordered Windy Walt and Worm and Rat, who were waiting in the sandbag-shut passage on the southern side of the cavern, to exit out of the opposite end of the passageway and prepare the platform in the irrigation tunnel for their impending getaway ... turn on the lights and stake out the four areas of embarkation and open the equipment cartons.
More concrete was chopped and drilled away. The exposed bottom surface of the metal vault expanded to a roughly three-foot-by-three-foot square. Little Haifa took up the electric drill, inserted a diamond bit and began boring up into the hard alloy overhead.
Eleven holes were drilled before Little Haifa and Cowboy descended the scaffold. Cowboy and Wiggles went and waited in the southern passageway. Little Haifa entered the partially sandbagged storage cave, emerged carrying a small wooden rack containing eleven vials of nitroglycerin with attached fusing ... holding the rack of volatile explosives as steadily as possible, he reclimbed the scaffold ever so carefully.
Ever so slowly, so cautiously, the first vial of nitroglycerin was removed from the rack and raised and slid into an angular hole drilled in the metal overhead ... sealed in by plastic and with its connecting fuse exposed and dangling. The second vial was inserted in the next slot and sealed with its fuse dangling. Another hole was filled and sealed. Then another.
When the final vial was in place, Little Haifa gathered the eleven dangling fuses, twisted them into one central cord and attached the cord to a master fuse already suspended from the ceiling which trailed down the twenty-five feet to the cavern floor below.
Perspiring, Little Haifa descended the scaffold, plunked onto the ground, raised his walkie-talkie, ordered Meadow Muffin to take a final check, listened as Meadow Muffin said all four television screens showed conditions at the bank premises to be normal.
Little Haifa asked for a progress report from the loading platform in the irrigation tunnel.
Windy Walt said all the physical chores had been seen to but that there was trouble with the water level in the tunnel ... that the water was three and a half feet lower than it should be ... a good three and a half feet below the platform ... that the water flow seemed far weaker than was advisable ... dangerously slow.
Little Haifa ordered Windy Walt and Rat and Worm into the main cavern, then walkie-talkied Meadow Muffin and told him to tell Mule to totally cut off the supply of water to the Sewerage Department's secondary mains and anywhere else ... to concentrate only on the main irrigation tunnel ... to divert all the water he could into the main irrigation tunnel.
A minute of silence elapsed before Meadow Muffin's voice emitted from Little Haifa's walkie-talkie saying Mule said it was dangerous to cut off the water to the Sewerage Department's secondary mains ... that if he did, Sewerage Department officials would see that something was wrong ... would see that someone was tampering with the water controls of the city.
Little Haifa told Meadow Muffin to tell Mule they would have to take the risk ... reordered Meadow to order Mule to cut off the water to everywhere except the main irrigation tunnel.
Meadow was on the air some twenty seconds later saying Mule was doing as ordered, but not happily.
Windy Walt and Rat and Worm removed the sandbags from the mouth of the southern passageway and entered the cavern. Walt helped Little Haifa and Wiggles and Cowboy remove four large rubber boats from the supply cave and inflate them. Worm and Rat broke open the wooden crates of waterproof and lightweight plastic buoys and land mines and sacks and life jackets, booby traps and plastic explosives and dynamite and timing devices.
Their chores done, the six men stripped naked and put on wet suits ... went to the storage cave and retrieved the clothes they would be wearing following the getaway, placed the clothes in waterproof bags ... attached an elastic wrist band to each bag. Windy Walt and Rat and Worm sorted through the pile of discarded work clothes and shoes and rubber boots, rechecking to make certain no identifying marks had been left. After that the discards were stuffed into larger, nonwaterproof sacks. Cowboy's snakeskin boots, however, went into his waterproof getaway bag.
Little Haifa, Cowboy and Wiggles hoisted a rubber boat, tilted it on its side and hurried into a narrow passageway on the southern side of the cavern. They came out on the cement platform of an enormous underground irrigation tunnel lit up, at this juncture, by a line of bare light bulbs set atop stanchions ... an echoing subterranean concrete aqueduct whose spuming water level was a good four feet below the platform on which the rubber boat was being set ... a half foot lower than it had been when Windy Walt reported it to the command bunker earlier.
Little Haifa raised his walkie-talkie, tried to contact Meadow Muffin. He couldn't hear over the resounding water rush, not even his own voice.
There were two routes by which Little Haifa could get to the command bunker due north from the platform on which he stood. The easterly path was encumbered, entailed backtracking up the narrow passageway he had just traveled, reentering and crossing the main cavern, going into the tunnel in the opposite, northern wall of the cavern and following it westerly into the grotto and short passage leading to the bunker.
The other way was uncluttered but circuitous, required using the metal catwalk running along the twenty-foot-high irrigation tunnel ... a curving tunnel which arched northwest, then northeast around the west periphery of the main cavern.
Little Haifa chose the second route ... stepped from the concrete platform onto the iron catwalk ... ran along it in his tight-fitting rubber wet suit with the bobbing beam of his metal miner's hat piercing the bending blackness ahead ... ran for one hundred and fifty yards over the rough grating before reaching the metal ladder rungs set into the tunnel's cement wall ... climbed the rungs to the steel hatch in the floor of the abandoned irrigation system control booth above. Pushed the hatch open. Boosted himself up and into the improvised command bunker. Without a word to Meadow Muffin, grabbed the radio headset and yelled into it. Yelled for Mule.
Mule's voice could be heard in the earphone, just barely.
Little Haifa screamed for Mule to speak up.
Mule answered, somewhat louder, to stop shouting at him, that he could hear perfectly well when Little Haifa used an ordinary tone of voice, that even if he could speak louder he wouldn't because he had a worsening sore throat from standing around in the friggin' dampness trying to operate the friggin' controls. Then he asked what Little Haifa wanted anyway.
Little Haifa yelled that the water level in the main irrigation tunnel was falling instead of rising.
Mule asked how the hell Little Haifa thought he got his sore throat in the first place ... by running around trying to get the water level up.
Trying wasn't good enough, Little Haifa countered. The water level was four feet too low. Four feet was a DISASTER.
Mule warned against shouting.
Little Haifa excitedly explained that everything was ready to go ... that everybody was in place ... that the soup was even sealed into the box ... that THE WHOLE OPERATION COULD GO INTO THE TOILET BECAUSE THE WATER LEVEL IS TOO GODDAM LOW!
Mule cautioned that one shouts at dumb animals and speaks civilly to human beings and told Little Haifa DON'T SHOUT AT ME ABOUT IT! GO SHOUT AT THAT FRIGGIN' PUSS-HEADED NEPHEW OF YOURS ABOUT IT! YOUR PUSS-HEADED NEPHEW DREAMT UP THIS SYSTEM! HE KNOWS HOW IT WORKS, NOT ME! GO GET HIM TO SHOW YOU!
Little Haifa let it be known YOU KNOW GODDAM WELL HE WENT AND VANISHED ON US! YOU GOTTA DO IT! YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THEM CONTROLS! YOU GOTTA HOLD UP YOUR END!
HOW? demanded Mule. YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT PUSS HEAD WENT AND DONE? YOUR GENIUS NEPHEW? HE WENT AND TOOK THE IRRIGATION CONTROLS AND THE FLOOD-CONTROL CONTROLS FOR A CITY OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AND SPLICED THEM ALL TOGETHER UP HERE IN ONE BIG BOWL OF FRIGGIN' SPAGHETTI! IF YOU FLUSH A TOILET IN UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS YOU'RE LIABLE TO BLOW FUSES AT THE RIVERFRONT MOTEL. I DON'T KNOW WHAT OPERATES WHAT UP HERE! ALL I KNOW IS EVERYTHING IS HOOKED INTO SOME SORT OF FRIGGIN' AUTOMATIC TIMER THAT'S SET FOR GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN!
WHY YOU KEEPING SECRETS? Little Haifa asked. WHY DIDN'T YOU SPEAK UP LIKE A MAN? WHY D'YOU GO ON SAYING 'GOTCHA, GOTCHA' ANY TIME I ASKED FOR SOMETHING TO GET DONE?
'CAUSE WAY BACK THEN I WAS IGNORANT! WAY BACK THEN I THOUGHT I COULD GET THESE CRAZY CONTROLS UNJAMMED AND WORKING. NOW I SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.
Mule, what we gonna do? asked Little Haifa.
Put the score off, was the reply. Hit it tomorrow like we planned to do. Maybe by tomorrow I'll have these controls figured out.
Can't go tomorrow, Mule. Gotta go right now. Mule, I already put the nitroglycerin in. A bank employee comes in and as much as sneezes in that vault room, it's boom and good-by.
Maybe you can go with the water like is? Mule suggested.
With the water that low, most of the irrigation tunnels downstream will be bone dry. We'll have to walk through them tunnels maybe ten miles carrying the score and our gear. By the time we get to the river, it could be dawn. We'll miss the Treachery. Uh-uh, we're stuck, Mule. We gotta go right now. You gotta come up with something to get us away from here.
Keep getting ready ... I'll call you back, Mule said.
Returning to the underground excavation site, Little Haifa, with Wiggles and Cowboy, began stringing fuse into the northern tunnel leading to the command bunker. While they did, Windy Walt began piling sandbags at the tunnel's mouth. Sandbags already closed the narrow passage mouth across the cavern leading to the irrigation tunnel.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Seven Silent Men by Noel Behn. Copyright © 1984 Noel Behn. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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