he day after the cabin was located, it had taken Shrader and Littleton only an hour at the local county courthouse to obtain a copy of the property tax records with the owner's name and last known address.

It took the next two days to locate the deceased owner's heir, a grandson, who was sailing on his yacht in the Caribbean. On Sunday morning at seven, he finally returned Shrader's call from his ship-to-shore radio. He told Shrader everything he could remember about his grandfather's property in the Catskills, including the existence of a narrow garage built into the back of a hillside during the early 1950s. Originally intended as a bomb shelter, it was hollowed out of the rock, supported with timbers, and lined with shelves where canned goods and emergency supplies had once been stored.

After that, it took less than an hour for a county sheriff to locate the entry to the bomb shelter-garage. The doors opened outward, and the snow on the hillside had slid downward, creating a giant drift that had to be completely cleared away at the base before they could be opened. After an hour of hard shoveling, the sheriff was finally able to open one door wide enough to beam his flashlight into the blackness of the hillside cavity.

Four shiny chrome letters leapt out at him: JEEP.