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What Cronley and Father McKenna found when they entered the room was Dickinson working, but not on any such floor plans.

He was working on King Arthur’s round table itself.

Dickinson had somehow managed to get three Dodge three-quarter-ton trucks from what had become the motor pool up onto the second floor and into the room.

Originally designed as an ammo carrier, its three-quarter-ton chassis had been quickly adapted, officially and unofficially, to other tasks. Some, for example, were combat vehicles, with a .50 caliber Browning machine gun mounted on a pedestal in the bed.

Dickinson’s trio of three-quarter-tons in the room had been converted, by the installation of a winch-and-cable mechanisms in their beds, into vehicle-recovery trucks. While these winch-and-cables could not lift an enormous GM 6×6 truck, they were more than powerful enough to pick up a jeep.

But what these “jeep wreckers” were doing now, along with an enormous crane that had its end squeezed through one of the windows, was aiding in the disassembly of King Arthur’s round table.

“Impressive, Colonel,” Cronley said as they approached.

“Don’t get too close,” Dickinson said. “The damn thing tips the scales at two tons, if it’s an ounce. And there’s always a chance that, weakened by deconstruction, the son of a bitch could let loose and crush shit out of everyone and anything in its path.”

“Duly noted,” McKenna said, wide-eyed, taking a couple steps back.

“We got started a little early,” Dickinson said to Cronley. “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Dumb question?” Cronley said.

“Shoot.”

“Why take apart the table? I thought we were concerned with deconstructing walls, et cetera.”

“So did I. Here, let me show you something.”

Dickinson led them over to a battered wooden chair against the wall. Leaning against it was a heavy paper tube four feet in length and three inches in diameter. He pulled from the tube a loose roll of parchmentlike papers. When he unrolled them, Cronley saw that they were the engineer’s working blueprints showing walls and measurements made the previous day.

The top sheet showed a pencil-sketched outline of what Cronley recognized as King Arthur’s Court.

“So, here,” Dickinson said, pointing, “you can see this is where we’re standing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And this is where the round table sat. And this—”

“Oh, shit!” Cronley blurted.

“Yeah. It’s not certain, but we won’t know till that table . . .”

“Carry on, Colonel. I’m holding you up.”

* * *

—

Cronley and McKenna watched from a safe distance as the entire table was lifted six feet off the floor, then tilted enough by one of the three-quarter-ton wreckers so that the other two wreckers, their windshields folded down, could get underneath.

Sturdy ropes were wrapped around the table while half a dozen soldiers, some equipped with air-powered jacks and others with air-powered saws, broke the table into four roughly equal pieces.

One piece remained attached to the crane. The remaining three were held by the wreckers.

Under Dickinson’s precise—if profane, even blasphemous—direction, one by one the pieces of the table were inched through the castle wall opening and then lowered onto a waiting 6×6 in the courtyard.

Cronley was about to turn away from watching the activity in the courtyard when there came the sound of a siren, then multiple sirens.

An M8 armored car drove into the courtyard, followed by a second M8, and then three three-quarter-tons in personnel carrier mode. Each held eight Constabulary troopers.