Littell ran through his checklist.

Goggles, earplugs, wire cutters, glass cutter-check. Magnet strips, gloves, shotgun, ammunition-check.

Waterproof-fuse dynamite-check. Acoustical baffling, hammer, nails-check.

Check: You wiped every print-sustaining surface in this motel room.

Check: You left your check-out cash on the dresser.

Check: You avoided all contact with your fellow motel tenants.

He ran through his three-week precaution list.

You changed motels every other day-in zigzag patterns throughout southern Wisconsin.

You wore fake beards and fake mustaches at all times.

You changed rental cars at odd intervals. You took buses between car-rental pickups. You secured said cars at distant sites: Des Moines, Minneapolis and Green Bay.

You rented said cars with fake ID.

You paid cash.

You parked said cars nowhere near the motels you checked into.

You made no motel-room phone calls. You print-wiped every surface before you checked out.

You employed tail-evasion tactics. You limited your liquor intake: six shots a night to insure steady nerves.

You spotted no tails.

You stared at single men, gauged their reactions and discerned nothing cop- or Mob-like. Most men evinced discomfort: you were rough-looking now.

You cased Jules Schiffrin’s estate. You determined that the man had no live-in help or on-site watchmen.

You learned Schiffrin’s routine:

Saturday-night dinner and cards at Badger Glen Country Club. Early-Sunday-morning sojourns at the, home of one Glenda Rae Mattson.

Jules Schiffrin was gone from 7:05 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. every Saturday into Sunday. His estate – was police patrolled every two hours-cursory perimeter road checks.

You secured safe-placement and alarm diagrams. You queried seventeen services to get them. You impersonated a Milwaukee PD lieutenant and buttressed the impersonations with forged documents and credentials purchased from a forger that you arrested years ago.

All your police impersonations were carried out in disguise.

Two steel-plated safes were installed on the premises. They weighed ninety-five pounds apiece. You had their exact location memorized.

Final checks:

Your new motel room outside Beloit: safely rented.

The newspaper piece on Schiffrin’s art collection: clipped out to leave at the crime scene.

Littell took a deep breath and downed three quick shots. His nerves fluttered and almost leveled out.

He checked his face in the bathroom mirror. One last look for courage-

o o o

Low clouds covered the moon. Littell drove to the half-mile-out point.

It was 11:47. He had two hours and thirteen minutes to get clear.

A State Police cruiser passed him eastbound. On time: the standard 11:45 perimeter check.

Littell swung off the pavement. Hard-packed dirt grabbed his tires. He hit his brights and slalomed downhill.

The slope evened out. He brodied his back wheels to obliterate tread marks. -

Trees dotted the clearing-his car couldn’t be seen from the road.

He killed the lights and grabbed his duffel bag. He saw house lights due west uphill-a faint directional glow to work off of.

He walked toward it. Leaf clumps obscured his footprints. The glow expanded every few seconds.

He hit the driveway adjoining the carport. Schiffrin’s Eldorado Brougham was gone.

He ran to the library window and crouched low. An inside lamp provided hazy light to work by.

He got out his tools and snipped two wires taped to a storm drain. An exterior arc light sputtered. He saw alarm tape bracketing the window glass-mounted between two thick panes.

He gauged the circumference.

He cut magnet-tape strips to cover it.

He stuck them to the outside glass in a near-perfect outline.

His legs ached. Cold sweat stung some shaving cuts.

He ran a magnet over the tape. He traced a circle inside the outline with his glass cutter.

The glass was THICK-it took two hands and all his weight to notch a groove.

No alarms went off. No lights flashed.

He gouged circles in the glass. No sirens whirred; no general pursuit noise went down.

His arms burned. His blade went sharp to dull. His sweat froze and made him shiver.

The outside pane broke. He tucked his sleeves inside his gloves and bore down harder.

Elbow pressure snapped the inside pane. Littell kicked the frame glass out to make a crawl space.

He vaulted inside. The fit was tight-glass shards cut him down to the skin.

The library was oak-paneled and furnished with green leather chairs. The side walls featured artwork: one Matisse, one Cezanne, one van Gogh.

Floor lamps gave him light-just enough to do the job by.

He arranged his tools.

He found the safes: wall-panel-recessed two feet apart.

He covered every inch of wall space with triple-thick acoustical baffling. He hammered it down tight-fivepenny nails into highvarnished oak.

He X-marked the sections covering the safes. He put on his goggles and stuffed in his earplugs. He loaded his shotgun and let fly.

One round, two rounds-huge contained explosions. Three rounds, four rounds-padding chunks and hardwood decomposing.

Littell reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired.

Wood chips sliced his face. Muzzle smoke had him retching. Visibility was zero: mulch slammed up against his goggles.

Littell reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired. Forty-odd rounds took the wall and rear ceiling beams down.

Wood and plaster crashed. Second-story furniture dropped down and shattered. Two safes fell out of the rubble.

Littell kicked through it-Please, God, let me breathe.

He vomited splinters and scotch. He coughed up gunsmoke and black phlegm. He dug through wood heaps and lugged the safes over to his duffel bag.

The library was blasted through to the dining room. Forty-odd explosions toppled the artwork.

The Cezanne was intact. The Matisse bore slight frame damage. The van Gogh was pellet-shredded nothingness.

Littell dropped the newspaper clip.

Littell lashed the duffel to his back with curtain strips.

Littell grabbed the paintings and ran out the front door.

Pure air made him go lightheaded. He gulped it in and ran.

He slid on leaves and bounced off trees. His bladder went- nothing ever felt so good. He stumbled, hunched over double- two hundred pounds of steel kept him plummeting downhill.

He fell. His body went rubber-he couldn’t stand up or lift the duffel bag.

He crawled and dragged it the rest of the way. He loaded his car and fishtailed up to the access road, heaving for breath the whole time.

He caught his face in the rearview mirror. The word “heroic” came up short.

o o o

He took switchbacks north/northwest. He found his preselected detonation spot: a forest clearing outside Prairie du Chien.

He lit the clearing with three big Coleman lanterns. He burned the paintings and scattered the ashes.

He crimped the butt ends of six sticks of dynamite and slid them up against the safe dial-housings.

He strung fuses a hundred yards out and lit a match.

The safes blew. The doors shot all the way up to the tree line. A breeze scattered scorched piles of currency.