Troika

Troika
Hersch L. Zitt
Ephod Press
Berkeley, CA
2005

Copyright ? 2005 Hersch L. Zitt
Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Book Design by Joseph Zitt
Cover Design by Matt Rooney

All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced without express written consent of the author or publisher.

Ephod Press
P.O.Box 10146
Berkeley, CA 94709 USA
[email protected]
www.ephodpress.com

First printing
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication
For Ruth, my ever patient wife.

In memory of
ERIC KLEIN
who first gave me the idea for TROIKA

Acknowledgments:
To my son, Joseph Samuel Zitt.
To my editor, Claudia Crowley

Troika
Naval Weapons Station,
Earle, Colts Neck, New Jersey
29 October
0500 Hours
A steady, soaking rain was falling as the eighteen wheeler backed slowly into the loading dock. With short, skillful maneuvers, the driver, Alex Burr, jockeyed into the assigned cargo bay. The crew loaded several gray canisters. The crew chief flipped up the required yellow and black insignia. The contents were radioactive.
Burr returned, checked his load, wrote "16" on the bill of lading, climbed into the cab, swung left and continued on to the exit road where a guard waved him out of the compound.
The truck moved out onto the access road parallel to the New Jersey Garden State Parkway. The windshield wipers oscillated rapidly to clear the now heavy rain that obscured his vision. Four and a half miles outside the gate, Burr stopped, opened the rear door, removed two canisters and placed them in a slight depression on the edge of a clearing. He returned to the cab, slipped a thin sheet of cardboard under top layer of the bill of lading, erased "16" and wrote "14" in the space left by the erasure, then checked the altered bill to make certain that it was not smudged. Satisfied, he edged onto the highway.
Burr reached over with his right hand and felt again for the package on the passenger seat. The large manila envelope, picked up at the tuck sign up hall, held the job sheet, other related papers, and ten used one hundred dollar bills.
Ten minutes later, a small gray panel truck pulled up to the place where the canisters were lying. Two men got out of the truck, picked up the canisters and stowed them in the cargo space, and moved out onto the highway toward Trenton.
The rain was still coming down heavily. Suddenly, the panel truck swerved, spun halfway around and headed toward the ditch on the far side of the road. "Goddamn, that was hairy," the driver, Ben Ford, muttered as he regained control of the vehicle. His partner nodded in agreement.
"We're almost at the truck stop," his partner, Lew Carter said. "I could use some coffee. What a hell of a night for a pick up. What are we hauling anyway?"
"Who cares! We're gettin' paid, ain't we? All I know is we make the pick up, leave the truck and drive back to town in my car. Two hundred bucks for a two hour job ain't bad. No questions asked." Ford shrugged. He and Carter often operated outside the law.
The truck stop was one of the thousands of eating, resting and refueling depots which are strung out across the country like a series of life buoys. The parking lot was brightly lit. A large red, white and blue neon sign announced, in oversized capital letters that this was S D's PLACE. The windows, steamed with condensation, made it difficult to see inside.
Ford and Carter entered the diner and greeted several drivers whom they knew. A general griping about the lousy weather and bad driving conditions hung like a cloud intermixed with stale tobacco and grill smoke. The pair ordered their coffees and moved to a booth. Several minutes later they left by the side door, got into a light blue Pontiac and drove out of the parking lot. Their work was finished.
Tom Crespi, glanced at his watch, as he had been several times each minute. Seeing that it was finally exactly 07:00/00 he stood up from a stool at the counter, fumbled in his pocket for change, put a dollar beside the empty coffee cup to pay for his coffee, and left.
In the parking lot, he got into the gray panel truck, looked back to see that his cargo was secure and backed out of the parking space. Grinding the gears, he lurched out of the lot onto the highway, cursing as he drove, not used to shifting. He moved into the flow of traffic.
The rain had eased and visibility was better. The ride went smoothly. He felt secure enough to turn on the radio and listen to an all-night talk show. After a while, he changed to a country and western station and began to sing along with the music.
Dawn was breaking; traffic beginning to pick up. By the time it was fully daylight, the once nearly empty road traffic was getting heavier. In