Free 1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 by Frederick Ramsay

sat and felt the cold steel of the handcuffs circle her wrists, heard its ratchet-clatter as they were closed. Jack, recovered from her kick, decided to be a hero. He jerked his arm away from the cuffs and demanded to know who these people were.
    “Shut up, kid,” a voice said.
    Jack danced back and forth like a boxer and told them in no uncertain terms the consequences that would come if they messed with him.
    “I said, shut up, kid.”
    Then, Jack dropped into a martial arts crouch and signaled them to come on. There was a sigh and then one of the biggest, ugliest red-haired men Jennifer had ever seen stepped into the circle of light. Jack swallowed, raised his fists, and was about to speak, when the red-haired man’s fist caught him flat on the nose, mouth, and forehead. It was a big fist. Jack dropped to his knees like a sack of trash, spitting blood and teeth, and making funny whistling noises. They handcuffed him beside her.
    The light and the men moved away. Jennifer looked around. Her back was to the building, its low profile barely visible, even with the parking lot lights on. She wriggled around so that she could watch.
    Two men stood in front of the door. One held a heavy rucksack. The other wore a black suit, hat, and tie. He seemed overdressed, she thought. Then she heard the rumble of a truck and watched in fascination as it stopped, air brakes whistling, and backed its trailer up to the door. The trailer unhitched, the tractor drove off again.
    I don’t believe this, she thought. They’re going to break into the bunker.
    Jack started to whimper.
    “Shut up, kid,” she said.

Chapter Nine
    Harry studied the door, oblivious to Donati’s presence and the activity around him. It was his show now. Whether the job would go off as planned depended on his skill. It also depended on his willingness to go through with it. He could not refuse, not and live. But he could trip one of the several silent alarms without anyone knowing it, and within minutes the area would be crawling with police. He’d considered that possibility several times during the previous week. It might get him his job back at the Bureau. But he’d rejected the plan as too risky. He would be the first to go, once the double-cross was discovered, and even if he survived that, the chances of the Bureau being impressed were slim. Then there were Donati’s frank references to his children. So now he had to shut out the world and do the only thing he knew how to do—disarm alarms and let his new employers get at the treasure the system protected.
    Concentration. It’s about concentration. He took a power drill from his bag, fitted it with a quarter-inch diamond bit, selected his spot in the upper right-hand corner of the door, and drilled a hole through its face. The steel sheathing was thin and soft. The bit cut into the door’s wooden core, solid oak by the look of the curl emerging from the hole. He felt the bit grab metal again and adjusted the drill’s speed to its lowest setting. He gentled the bit through the inner steel sheath, felt it give way, and stopped the drill, leaving it suspended in the hole.
    Harry reached into his bag again and removed a tissue-thin diaphragm. He backed the drill out and, as the bit cleared, slid the diaphragm over the hole. Fingers, placed V-like, held it in place. Nothing moved. He waited thirty seconds and studied the diaphragm. There was no ballooning outward, no movement inward. The building had not been equipped with a positive or negative air pressure alarm. Thank God for that. He had not allowed time for fitting an air lock, and doubted he could have done it had it been necessary.
    He tossed the diaphragm in the direction of the bag and mounted a cutting device on the door using the hole he just drilled as a fixture point. A self-tapping screw locked in the base plate. He fitted a threaded shaft to the plate, locked a tripod to the shaft, and pressed its suction-cup feet to the door. Next, he