“No, not this trip,” Dick replied. “But I did learn from Uncle Tomaso that it’s pretty heavily guarded. There’s a power station there, too. The underground has disrupted it a few times, so a sizable guard is around, I guess. It won’t be easy to get a big load of dynamite planted in the right spot there. But—one problem at a time, I say. The radio is the first job, and we’ll take care of that tomorrow night.”
They finally went to sleep, and they slept late into the morning. Then they ate and sat around. Dick looked in at Lieutenant Scotti regularly, and he seemed better all the time. But his inability to speak seemed to bother him a great deal.
“Don’t try to talk yet,” Dick said. “It’s too much for you.”
This time, Scotti nodded his head slightly to show that he understood. So Dick proceeded to tell him about the plans for placing the radio in the bell tower. When he finished he asked, “Did you understand it all? Do you think it’s okay?”
Again there was a slight nod of the head, and there seemed to be a smile in Scotti’s eyes.
“I believe he thinks it’s really a funny situation, too,” Dick said to himself. “He’d like to laugh if he could, poor guy.”
The day seemed endless for them all. They could do nothing but sit and wait for darkness. For men who loved action as these men did, it was difficult to sit still while there was so much to be done.
Even after darkness came, there was a long wait ahead of them, for they were not to meet Tomaso until after midnight. Every fifteen minutes from ten o’clock on, Vince or Max asked Dick if it weren’t time to start yet. These two particularly were restless, for they had done nothing at all since their landing by parachute. Dick and Tony had at least gone into the town and laid plans.
It was well after eleven before Dick agreed to go. The radio equipment was packed and ready long before that. Vince had built a fifteen-foot ladder with an extra board at one end to enable it to fit over another ladder. They took rope and a sort of metal grappling hook which Max had hammered out of the metal cover of one of the supply containers.
Dick led the way down the hill, after telling Lieutenant Scotti that they were leaving, and getting a nod in reply. Slade wished them luck and sat by the entrance to the cave with a sub-machine gun across his knees.