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During a particularly tense period of the Cold War, the installation had been one of many such batteries surrounding Philadelphia and from which, should the Russian bombers have come, NIKE rockets would have been launched to blow them out of the sky.
Roughly in the center of the four launcher emplacements (their launching mechanisms long since removed) was a windowless concrete building. Its thick concrete walls had been designed to resist anything short of a direct hit from a low-yield nuclear weapon. When the site had been active, the building had held, in four interior rooms, an additional dozen NIKE rockets, as well as some maintenance supplies and equipment.
The dozen NIKEs were to be used to reload the four launchers, a process that would take—presuming the launchers and their crews were still intact after the first Russian assault—about twenty minutes. The possibility had occurred to the planners that the shock waves generated by the first bombs dropped would almost certainly put any elevator system bringing the spare NIKEs from underground storage out of whack, even if there was, immediately post-strike, any electricity to power the elevator.
So the spare NIKEs were stored at ground level, behind thick concrete walls and heavy steel doors, in rooms from which they could be manhandled to the launchers.
Paulo Cassandro was impressed—but not surprised—when Mr. Savarese had told him about the NIKE sites, and how he thought they might come in useful at some time for some purpose. Mr. S. had said he thought they would be around for some years, deserted but in reasonably intact condition.
Wherever possible, Mr. S. had told him, they had been built on land that was cheap, which meant that no one could see much that could be done with it, and for which there was still not much demand. Now that use of the areas would require the demolition—very expensive demolition—of thick, steel-reinforced concrete before anything else could be erected on it, the land was even less desirable.
But what he had found really interesting about the NIKE sites, Mr. S. had told him, was that they were federal property, much like Fort Dix over in New Jersey. Local police did not have authority on federal property. Which meant not only that the Philadelphia police would not be patrolling the NIKE sites, but also that the federal authorities, with nothing to protect but empty, and practically indestructible, buildings, would not be giving them very much attention, either.
Mr. Savarese had told Paulo to put an eye on several of the NIKE sites and determine which of them could be put to use while attracting the least attention. And after that, to keep an eye on it, in case anything should change.
After making a careful survey of the abandoned NIKE sites, Cassandro had come up with two that seemed to meet about equally the criteria Mr. Savarese had set up. They were in reasonably remote areas, and not readily visible from the streets and highways. He had gone to Mr. Savarese and suggested that while it would obviously take twice as much manpower to keep an eye on both sites, he recommended this course of action, as it would give them two convenient places. Mr. Savarese had agreed to this, with the caveat that he did not wish to use the sites routinely, but rather as sort of emergency support, and therefore he wished to be consulted before either of the sites was used at all.
Mr. Savarese had given permission to use the sites only twice. The first time was to store a hijacked tractor-trailer load of whiskey for five days until the heat was off. In this case, the driver of the truck had been a fucking fool who had gotten brave, and when struck in the head with a crowbar suffered more severe cranial injuries than was planned, which in turn caused more police attention than was anticipated.
The second site, near Chester, had been used once for a similar purpose, this time a tractor-trailer load of sides of beef. The police seemed to be paying an unusual amount of attention to the cold-storage locker where such a cargo would normally be taken, so Mr. Savarese authorized the use of the NIKE site until distribution of the meat could be arranged. Even the sound of the diesel engine powering the refrigeration system of the insulated trailer attracted no attention in the three days and nights the trailer was at the NIKE site. But, of course, one had to consider that looking for that tractor trailer was not a high police priority.
Pietro Cassandro drove the Ford pickup to the rear (most distant from the road) gate in the hurricane fence and stopped. Paulo Cassandro got out and swung the creaking gate open and flat against the fence itself, reasoning that it would be better to have the gate open, in case a rapid departure became necessary, even if the open gate—improbably, in the dark—attracted attention.
He then walked to the building, taking from his pocket as he walked a full-face ski mask and pulling it over his head.
Pietro Cassandro drove the Ford pickup to the rear of the building, turned it around so that it was headed toward the open gate, and then got out.
“This won’t take long, Mr. S.,” he said.
Mr. Savarese nodded, and arranged himself more comfortably on the seat.
Pietro pulled a similar full-face ski mask over his head, then took two battery-powered floodlights from the tool bin in the bed of the truck. Then he joined his brother at the steel door to the building.
They opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door, turned on the floodlights, and walked down the corridor to the room in which, twenty-four hours before, they had left Mr. Ronald R. Ketcham to his thoughts in the dark.
The door was closed with two locking levers much like those used to secure hatches on vessels.
Pietro Cas
sandro opened both quickly and pushed the door inward. Paulo Cassandro, his floodlight in his left hand and a crowbar in the other, went quickly into the room.
His floodlight quickly found Ketcham, who was cowering in a far corner of the room, the too-small overcoat not quite concealing his nakedness under it. Ketcham shielded his eyes against the painful glow of light.
“On your feet, cocksucker!” Paulo ordered.
Ketcham pushed himself erect by sliding up the wall behind him.
“Can we talk?” Ketcham asked.
“Oh, we’ll talk,” Paulo said.
“Jesus Christ,” Pietro said in disgust, “it smells like shit in here. We can’t bring—”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” his brother admonished him, and then addressed Ketcham. “Take the coat off and put it over your head, asshole!”
“I really think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
“The next time you open your mouth without being told to, you’re going to eat the fucking crowbar!”
