Giordino stepped up to the heavy bars and within seconds was a man absorbed with a difficult and hazardous job to do. He opened the flight bag and carefully removed the contents, laying them out in order on an old towel. Quickly, he fitted two small charges of T.N.T. around a single bar, spacing them twenty inches apart, inserted the primer and heavily wrapped each charge under several layers of metal plumbers tape. Next he spun strands of heavy wire around the bulbous bands and then covered the wire with more layers of thick adhesive tape. A final look at the charges, imbedded in the thick wrappings like cocoons, and he connected the wires to the detonator. Obviously pleased with his handiwork, the entire operation had taken less than six minutes from start to finish, he motioned Pitt toward the safety of a wide block retaining wall. Slowly Giordino followed, walking backward, playing out wires leading from the detonator to the charges. At the wall, Pitt grasped him on the arm to draw his attention.

"How far will the explosion be heard?"

"If I did it right," Giordino replied, "it shouldn't sound any louder than a popgun to someone standing a hundred feet away."

Pitt stood on the lower base of the wall and hurriedly scanned a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle of landscape. Seeing no sign of human activity, he nodded, grinning at Giordino. "I hope dropping in uninvited through the service entrance isn't beneath your dignity."

"We Giordinos are pretty broadminded," he said, returning Pitt's grin.

"Shall we?"

"If you insist."

They both ducked below the top of the old wall, holding the sun-warmed stones with their hands to absorb any shock. Then Giordino turned the little plastic switch on the detonator.

Even at the short distance of ten or fifteen feet the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a mere thump. No shock wave trembled the ground, no black cloud of smoke or shooting flame belched from the archway, no deafening blast rattled their eardrums, only a small undefinable thump.

Swiftly, in a silence bred of expectancy, they leaped to their feet and rushed back to the iron gate. The two balls of tape were torn and smoldering, smelling like the burned-out pungent odor of frizzled firecrackers. A tiny curl of smoke wound in a snake-like trail between the grill and disappeared into the damp darkness of the interior passage. The bar was still in place.

Pitt looked questioningly at Giordino. "Not enough punch?"