Seawitch by Alistair MacLean

be sitting in a crowded barracks when an ammo dump blew up next door?"
    Roomer straightened from the keyhole of the main door of the arms depot and reluctantly pocketed the very large set of keys which any ill-disposed law officer could have jailed him for carrying.
    "I thought I could open any door with this bunch. But not this one. Give you one guess where the keys are now."
    "Probably sailing down from a chopper into the Gulf."
    "Right. Those loading doors have the same lock. Besides that, nothing but barred windows. You don't have a hacksaw on you, do you, Mike?"
    "I will next time." He shone his flashlight through one of the barred windows. All he could see was his own reflection. He took out his pistol and, holding it by the barrel, struck the heavy butt several times against the glass, without any noticeable effect—hardly surprising, considering that the window lay several inches beyond the bars and the force of the blows was minimal.
    Roomer said: "What are you trying to do?"
    Mitchell was patient. "Break the glass."
    "Breaking the glass won't help you get inside."
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    "It'll help me see and maybe hear. I wonder if that's just plate glass or armored stuff.** "How should I know?"
    "Well, we'll find out. If it's armored, the bullet will ricochet. Get down." Both men crouched and Mitchell fired one shot at an upward angle. The bullet did not ricochet. It passed through, leaving a jagged hole with radiating cracks. Mitchell began chipping away round the hole but desisted when Roomer appeared with a heavy car j ack-handle: a few powerful blows and Roomer had a hole almost a foot in diameter. Mitchell shone his flash through this: an office lined with filing cabinets and an open door beyond. He put his ear as close to the hole as possible and he heard it at once, the faint but unmistakable sound of metal clanging against metal and the shouting of unmistakably hoarse voices. Mitchell withdrew his head and nodded to Roomer, who leaned forward and listened in turn.
    Roomer straightened and said: "There are a lot of frustrated people in there."
    About a mile beyond the entrance to the army command post they stopped by a roadside telephone booth. Mitchell telephoned the army post, told them the state of defenses at their arsenal building would bear investigation and that it would be advisable for them to bring along a duplicate set of keys for the main door. When asked who was speaking he hung up and returned to Roomer's car.
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    'Too late to call in the Air Force now, I suppose?"
    "Too late. They'll be well out over extraterritorial waters by now. There's no state of war. Not yet." He sighed. "Why, oh why, didn't I have an infrared movie camera tonight?"
    Over in Mississippi Conde's task of breaking into the naval depot there turned out to be ridiculously easy. He had with him only six men, although he had sixteen more waiting in reserve aboard the 120-foot vessel Roomer, which was tied up dockside less than thirty feet from the arsenal. Those men had already effectively neutralized the three armed guards who patrolled the dock area at night.
    The arsenal was guarded by only two retired naval petty officers, who regarded their job not only as a sinecure but downright nonsense, for who in his right mind would want to steal depth charges and naval guns? It was their invariable custom to prepare themselves for sleep immediately upon arrival, and asleep they soundly were when Conde and his men entered through the door they hadn't even bothered to lock.
    They used two forklift trucks to trundle depth charges, light, dual-purpose antiaircraft guns, and a sufficiency of shells down to the dockside, then used one of the scores of cranes that lined the dockside to lower the stolen equipment into the hold of the Roamer, which was then battened down. Clearing customs was the merest formal-
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    ity. The customs official had seen the Roamer come and go so many times that they had long ago