Then he disconnected the jumper cables from the tractor, got on it, and drove off between the stunted pines. He drove very carefully, so there would be no great risk of somehow, despite all his precautions, setting off one of the detonators.

When he reached the garbage dump, he decided that the first order of business was making sure the shortwave transmitter and the receivers worked. He had tested them in Philadelphia, but electronic equipment didn't like to be bounced around and it was better to be sure.

He dug out the Saltines box from between the pillows, and carried it carefully two hundred yards into the pines as a safety precaution. Then he returned to the garbage dump and carefully rigged the test setup.

When he pressed the key on the transmitter, the capacitors that he had installed in the receiver where the speaker had been began to accumulate electrical energy and then discharged. The 15-watt 110-volt refrigerator bulb Marion had installed where the detonator would ultimately be glowed brightly for a moment. There would be more than enough juice to fire the detonator.

He disconnected everything, in the interest of safety, walked back into the pines, and took one detonator from the Saltine box. He went back to the garbage dump and carefully slipped the detonator into one of the double blocks of Composition C-4. He taped this, except for the leads, into place with duct tape.

Then he carried this down into the garbage dump, to one of the lockers, and propped the door open with his shoulder as he inserted the device, then hooked the receiver up to the exposed leads.

He then closed the locker door, put a quarter in the slot, removed the key, and climbed up out of the garbage dump. He got back on the tractor and drove what he estimated to be two hundred yards away, and then stopped. Carrying the transmitter with him, he walked fifty feet from the tractor and then turned on the Radio Shack transmitter.

He depressed the key. Nothing happened.

Kaboom!

Marion smiled.

TEN

Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, wearing a faded green polo shirt and somewhat frayed khaki trousers, both liberally stained with oil spots and various colors of paint was in the process of filling a stainlesssteel thermos bottle with coffee when his door buzzer went off.

He went quickly to it and pulled it open. A slight, olive-skinned twenty-four-year-old was standing there, dressed in a somewhat flashy suit and obviously fresh from the barber.

"Hello, Hay-zus," Wohl said. "Come on in."

"Good morning, sir," Martinez said.

"You pulled your car in the garage?"

"Yes, sir."

"I just made coffee. Will you have some?"

"Thank you, please."

Wohl gestured for Martinez to have a seat on the couch under the oil painting of the naked Rubenesque lady, took two mugs from a kitchen cabinet, carried them to the coffee table, fetched the thermos, and sat down beside Martinez on the couch.

"So how are things at the airport?" Wohl asked with a smile.

The question had been intended to put Martinez at ease. It had, Wohl saw, almost the opposite reaction. Martinez was almost visibly uncomfortable.

"I'm not pushing you, Hay-zus," Wohl said. "You've only been out there a couple of weeks. I don't think anybody expected you to learn very much in that short a time."

"Yes, sir," Jesus said, then blurted: "I think I figured out how I would get drugs, or for that matter anything else, out of there."

"How?"

"For little packages, anyway. Coke. Heroin. Are they still trying to smuggle diamonds, jewels, into this country?"

I really don't know, Wohl thought. That's the first time jewelry has come up.

"All the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs mentioned was drugs," Wohl said. "You think someone is smuggling diamonds, gemstones, through the airport?"

"The way it works, on international flights, is that the plane lands and comes up to the terminal. The baggage handlers come out, they open doors in the bottom of the airplane. On the big airplanes, one guy, maybe two guys, actually get in the baggage compartment. Nobody can see them from the ground. If they knew which suitcase had the stuff, they could open it, take out a small package, packages, conceal it on their person, and then send the luggage onto the conveyor belt over to the customs area."

"Hay-zus," Wohl said. "I want to show you something."

He got up and walked to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a vinyl-covered loose-leaf notebook. On it was stamped:

BUREAU OF NARCOTICS

Investigator's Manual

Martinez looked at the cover, then opened the manual and flipped through it, and then looked at Wohl for an explanation.

"They sent that over, they thought it would be helpful."

Martinez nodded.

"I took a look at it," Wohl said. "They refer to what you just described as a common means of smuggling."

"I guess it is," Martinez said. "I didn't exactly feel like Sherlock Holmes."

"Maybe not Sherlock Holmes," Wohl said. "But maybe Dick Tracy. It didn't take you long to figure that out."

That was intended, too, to put Martinez at ease. This time, Wohl saw in Martinez's face, it worked.

"When you leave, take this with you. I don't think I have to tell you not to let anybody see it."

"Yeah," Martinez said. "Thank you."

"Okay. So tell me what you've figured out about how someone, a baggage handler, or anyone else, would get a small package out of the airport."

"Well, there's all sorts of people keeping an eye on the baggage handlers. The airline has their security people. Customs is there, and the drug guys, and, of course, our guys. When the baggage handlers come to work, they change into uniforms, coveralls, or whatever, in their locker room. They change back into their regular clothes when they leave work. They have spot checks, they actually search them. What they're looking for is stuff they might have stolen, tools, stuff like that, but if the airlines security people should find a small package, they would damned sure know what it was."

"Unless they were part of the system," Wohl said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, but they're subject to the same sort of spot checks whenthey leave, and also, I think, when they're working. I thought about that. What theycould do, once one of the baggage handlers had this stuff, is take it from them, and then move into the terminal and pass it to somebody, a passenger, for example. Once they got it into the terminal, that wouldn't be hard."

"You think that's the way it's being done?"

Martinez did not reply directly.

"Another way it could be done, which would not involve the airlines security people, I mean, them being in on it, would be to put the package in another piece of luggage, one being either unloaded off, or being put on, a domestic flight. They don't search domestic luggage."

"But they do have drug-sniffing dogs working domestic luggage."

"Not every place," Martinez argued. "Like for example, AllentownBethlehem-Easton. Or Harrisburg."

"Yeah," Wohl agreed.

"The risk the baggage handlers would run would be getting caught with this stuff before they could get rid of it. Which means they would have to know when the plane with the drugs was arriving, and when the plane for, say, Allentown was leaving. And then they would have to arrange it so they worked that plane too."

"How do you think it's being done? Or do you think it's being done?"

"It's being done, all right," Martinez said. "And I think we have a dirty cop involved in it."