Delta Green - [47]

The parking lots were empty.

The driver slowed the van and turned into the wide, grass-divided entrance, braking to a stop alongside the guardhouse.

Milstein was out of the cab, standing on the asphalt by the time the guard emerged from his shack.

“What you got?” he asked.

“This,” Milstein said, raised the silenced Browning automatic, and shot him through the heart.

The man gasped once and crumpled to the ground. His clipboard clattered on the asphalt.

Moving quickly, Milstein took four steps, retrieved the clipboard, bent and grasped the body under the arms, then dragged it back into the guardhouse. He dropped it on the

floor behind the desk, looked around, spotted several jackets hanging on wall pegs, and used them to cover the body.

Then he moved to the control box, pulled the lever, and watched the tall chainlink gate slide aside.

The van pulled through, Milstein slapped the lever back, and ran outside to beat the closing of the gate.

The driver was underway again even as Milstein pulled himself back inside the cab. Though he had patiently explained the layout and the route several times, he could not resist pointing it out with a forefinger.

“To the right, over there. We go to the bay at the far end.”

“I know,” the driver said.

The south side of the plant was composed of twenty-two loading docks. There were two semitrailers backed into two of them, but no more. Business was slow.

The driver made a wide, sweeping turn as he approached the last dock, braked to a stop, and slapped the gearshift into reverse.

Milstein slid out of the cab and raced toward the building, pulled himself up onto the dock, and crossed quickly to the small door between the large roll-up doors.

It was locked, as expected, and he used the Browning to fire two shots into the lock. Though silenced, they pounded as loud as fireworks to him. He glanced in both directions, but saw no one. The lock appeared sufficiently shattered, and he shoved the door open.

The truck stopped short of the dock, and the driver got out to lower the truck’s rear ramp to the dock edge.

It was dark inside the storage room. With his hand, he searched for the light switches, found them, and shoved them upward.

On the high ceiling, a dozen floodlights sprang to life, revealing stacks of wooden crates and, thank the Lord, a forklift tractor.

He stepped inside, closed the small door, then pressed the button to raise the large door. He stopped it when it was high enough to clear the forklift.

The driver had the ramp down and the double doors on the end of the van body swung wide. The two helpers emerged and the four of them went to work.

It would have gone faster with two forklifts, but in twenty minutes, they had transferred sixty of the crates to the van. Milstein shut off the lights and closed up the warehouse while the driver shut the van doors. He climbed back into the cab for the short trip to the gate, where he opened and closed the gate for the moving van, then scrambled through the side door into the van.

Under the glow of battery-powered lights, the two helpers were already at work with crowbars, prying open the elongated crates. It took him a few minutes to become accustomed to the sway and movement of the floor under his feet as the van traveled the street, seeking the on-ramp to the highway.

At the front end of the cargo body were two large wooden boxes, attached to heavy-duty, rubber-tired casters, and built to the specifications provided to him. Their lids were removed. A large stack of six-inch-thick foam rubber pads resting on the floor was available for cushioning.

One by one, the three of them opened crates, lifted out the single slim missiles, and lowered them into padded positions in the two large boxes.

It was difficult for Milstein, not being able to see outside the van, and he hoped the driver was by now on Interstate 80, headed east out of Sacramento.

DELTA GREEN

The total flight distance was sixty-five hundred miles, and at an average of Mach 5.5, it took them almost two hours.

The local time on the west coast of the United States was 10:09 P.M.

Maslov had selected an Arctic route, over the top of the Earth, as his quickest transit line, and he approached his destination from the north.

The velocity read Mach 2.7, and the altimeter displayed sixty-seven thousand feet. He was certain that none of the radars of the American defense network had detected their intrusion. They had not been challenged on any of the radio frequencies.

“Do you have our position, Boris?”

“I do, Aleks. We are over the Washington state, in the eastern part, and the border to Nevada is just ahead.”

Maslov knew that there was software available for the MakoShark which provided map overlays on the cathode ray tubes, but they had not had a chance yet to experiment with it and learn to use it. He did not think he would need it.

He glanced at the chronometer readout, calculated his distance roughly, and eased the nose upward a little to flatten his glide and lose speed more rapidly.

A few minutes later, Maslov recognized the tiny dots of automobile headlights in a long and ragged string across the horizon.