Destroyer 96: Infernal Revenue

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

From the moment he drove through the gate, Buzz Kuttner thought there was something spooky about Woodlawn Asylum.

Maybe it was the grim-faced stone lions whose disembodied heads perched atop the brick entrance posts, or the fact that the evening sky began crackling with a sickly yellow lightning as he passed through.

Certainly it wasn't the fact that the back of his Ford Econoline van was crammed with pilfered computer equipment. Buzz Kuttner cut deals like the one that had brought him to Woodlawn on this stormy early-September night all the time. These days a dishonest buck was about the only buck the Buzz Kuttners of the world could turn.

Another forked yellow bolt stabbed down into Long Island Sound as he sent the van circling the three-story brick building, looking for the freight entrance. The thunder, when it came, was a dull, distant thump too meek to echo with conviction.

The bulb over the freight entrance couldn't have rated more than forty watts. Still, its dingy light was enough. The voice on the telephone had told him to look for a light over a corrugated steel door overlooking a rust-stained concrete loading dock.

Kuttner stopped, got out and threw open the van's rear doors before backing up snug to the dock. He waited.

A warm rain started. It drummed on the van's roof with monotonous regularity. The windshield swam. Kuttner looked at his watch, fingered the horn and considered tapping out a toot. But the phone voice who had set this up had warned him not to call attention to himself. He had been very clear on that score. In fact, he'd been very precise about everything, as if setting up surreptitious deliveries of high-tech computer equipment was SOP at Woodlawn Asylum.

Maybe it was, Kuttner thought. These days the medical industry was taking a pounding, thanks to Washington. Not as big a pounding as the computer field, but it was getting to that point.