Flashpoint Read online

  There was dead silence around me for a long moment. Then there was a babel of profane complaints as the gamblers dragged themselves to their feet, clutching at various parts of bruised anatomies. "Jesus!" Duke exclaimed hoarsely. "What d'you suppose-"

  "Each person is to remain in seat!" a heavily accented voice rasped over the cabin loudspeaker system. "We mean business! Man in rear of plane has Sten gun to use!"

  A brrr-rrr-rrrttt of machine-gun fire punctuated the words. Someone had opened the exit in the rear of the plane, and the man with the machine-gun had climbed the lowered stairway and placed himself in charge.

  The sound of machine-gun bullets ripping into the ceiling of the plane had sent the gamblers diving into their seats. Down the aisle, at a run from the rear of the plane, came the white-coated bartender with the pin point eyes. That's the little bastard who opened the rear boarding door, I decided. This goddamn situation is a hijack.

  "We advance now through the plane!" the loudspeaker blared. I couldn't see into the front compartment around the bulge of the galley. Duke leaned out into the aisle, peering toward the front where the hophead bartender had disappeared. "Your money and your weapons you will put into this canvas sack!" the metallic voice continued. "We watch you closely, and the machine-gun is at the front here to protect our men coming through the plane!"

  I thought of Hazel's money. I unfastened my chamois-lined shoulder holster containing my Smith & Wesson.38 and dropped it into the pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me. It sank out of sight with the airline literature and the barf bag. With the gun out of the way, I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled out the bulky envelope containing Tippy Larkin's seventy-five thousand dollars.

  I tried to jam the thick manila envelope into the seat pocket, but the space was too small. The mouth of the pocket gaped open, sure to attract unwelcome attention. Tens and twenties in that amount just don't make a neat package. I tried to stuff the envelope down beside me in the seat cushion. It wouldn't fit there, either.

  "Look!" Duke said excitedly, nudging me. "It's the other bartender. He's holdin' a gun on the pilot an' stewardess. The little guy is with him an'-" Duke paused "-he's got a knife in his hand. It looks-it looks- they're startin'-"

  "We show you we mean business!" the loudspeaker announced.

  A murmured ripple of sound ran from front to back of the aircraft.

  "God, look at that!" someone exclaimed.

  "-cut the pilot's throat!" a voice said clearly.

  "-mos' took his head off!" I recognized Candy's voice.

  Duke Conboy shrank back into his seat from his aisle-leaning position. His round face was white. "They-they killed-" he stammered.

  "You saw what happened to the Jewish pig of a pilot!" the loudspeaker said harshly. "It will be the same for the Jew girl if anyone makes trouble. Each one stand up by seat as we come past and put everything in sack."

  The broken-English instructions were poorly worded, but the message was perfectly clear. Another burst of machine-gun fire from the rear of the plane emphasized the order. Everyone flinched.

  The girl stewardess was first into my line of vision. Her head was tilted upward by a white-coated arm under her chin, exposing the whole of her slender throat to the bloody, double-bladed knife pressed against it by the hophead bartender. The girl's eyes were bulging with terror. She was so limp it looked as though most of her weight was supported by the dark-skinned arm under her chin. Wet stains on her uniform skirt and stockings indicated she had lost control of her bodily functions.

  Right behind the slow-moving pair and in step with them was the second bartender. The group paused beside each seat while cursing, snarling gamblers emptied their pockets into the large canvas sack held out by the second man. I saw knives and guns disappearing along with handfuls of bills. The man with the sack leaned into each seat and made quick patting motions to assure himself that individual pockets had been emptied of money and weapons.

  They continued along the aisle with balletlike precision. The men remained back-to-back with the girl in front of them. The knife at the girl's strained, pulsating throat never wavered. Duke stood up and threw his money into the sack. I tossed Hazel's manila envelope with Larkin's seventy-five G's and my own wallet into the sack. A deft hand patted my pockets lightly. I sat down with a brassy taste in my throat. I was going to look like a prize ass trying to explain this development to Hazel.

  The bizarre ballet moved into the rear compartment of the plane. Everyone twisted in his seat to watch. Men leaned out into the aisles to see the procession as it passed out of sight. "The bastards'll get better'n a quarter million on this job," Duke predicted sorrowfully.

  It struck me that while the machine gunner at the rear of the stairway of the plane was a hard-and-fast reality, there couldn't be another in the cockpit as the man with the sack had said. Machine gun or not, a man in the front of the plane couldn't hope to walk down the aisle alone among sixty infuriated gamblers without a hostage like the young stewardess and hope to make it to the rear exit alive. The hijacker who had been doing all the talking was running a bluff.

  I looked up at the emergency-exit handle above my head, then fumbled in the storage pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me and retrieved the Smith & Wesson I had dropped into it. I had just reached for the emergency-exit handle at the top of the window when a choked feminine scream that quickly died out sounded above a renewed babble of voices all around me.

  "He killed the girl!" someone shouted from the rear compartment. "The hook-nosed sonofabitch knifed the girl!"

  A rattle of machine gun fire brought silence again. Men who had started to surge out into the aisle shrank back into their seats quickly. I jerked the red emergency-exit handle, releasing the locking pins. The window section sagged, and I took hold of the handles at the top and bottom and pulled the panel toward me. I dumped the entire window section in Duke's lap as dry, hot desert air flowed over me. I crawled out the opening onto the wing, feeling as conspicuous in the bright sunlight as a snowflake on a coal pile.

  On hands and knees I scrambled farther out onto the wing so I could see under the tail of the 727. The private plane was turning in a short arc, pointing back up the runway. I could see the registration number NR 81332 painted on its fuselage.

  I stopped crawling when I could see the rear stairway extending from the tail section to the ground. The white-coated bartender who had held the knife at the girl's throat during the march through the plane was two-thirds of the way down to the ground. I dropped prone on the sloping surface of the wing and fired at him three times. He flew sideways off the stairway and sprawled on the sandy soil. He tried to get up, fell back, and tried again. He didn't make it, but I could see him still moving.

  The second man started down the ladder. He had the canvas sack slung over his shoulder, and its bulk concealed nearly all of his body. Right behind him on the stairway was the machine gunner. I snapped off a shot at the first man's fast-moving feet, but nothing happened.

  At the sound of my shot the machine gunner stopped on the stairway. He raised his weapon above the handrail and aimed it in my direction. I squeezed off another shot at the man with the sack. He did a stutter step, then plunged to the ground. The sack rolled away from him.

  The machine gunner let go a burst at me. I had an indelible impression of a bronzed, strong-featured face with an eagle-beak nose above the winking snout of the machine gun as slugs chewed up the wing between me and the emergency-exit window.

  I pulled back farther onto the wing's broad surface. When the sound of the machine gun died out, I inched forward again. The machine gunner had slung his weapon over his shoulder by its sling when he hit the ground, had grabbed up the canvas sack, and was running for the waiting plane. I crossed my right hand over my left wrist to try to sight in on him with my.38. I let go the shot, but at that distance I might as well have tossed a pebble. The man threw the sack into the plane and jumped aboard it. The plane roared down the runway and cleared th
e strip in what looked like less than six hundred yards.

  The dusty desert air was suddenly quiet. I looked down at the distance a drop to the ground from the top of the wing would require, then decided against it. A broken ankle I didn't need. I slithered back along the bullet-chewed wing and ducked back into the plane.

  The gamblers had all surged to the rear. I had to claw my way through them. Near the stairway-exit a group was crouched around the stewardess. There was blood everywhere: on the wall, on the floor, and bubbling from three jagged slits in the girl's throat. One look was enough to tell that no one was going to be able to help her.

  I shoved through the group and climbed down the stairway. Half the gamblers were already outside the plane. Candy, Sal, and Tim were kneeling beside the white-coated bartender who had walked through the plane holding the knife at the girl's throat. Flat on his back in the loose sand, the man spat up at them contemptuously.

  Sal lunged for his throat, but the muscular Candy brushed Sal to one side. A barber's razor appeared in Candy's right hand. He leaned over the man on the ground, and his arm rose and fell half a dozen times in a whipping motion. A purple mist and then great gouts of blood spurted through jagged openings in the man's ruined face. Sal snatched the razor from Candy and cross-hatched the slits. The dark-featured man still spat at them from what was left of his destroyed face.

  Tim lunged to his feet and hurried to the second bartender ten yards away. He put a shoe under one shoulder and lifted. The body flopped over onto its back. Sal took one look and turned back to the first man.

  Duke Conboy clumped heavily down the rear exit stairway. "The machine gunner got away with the sack," I gave him the bad news.

  Sal and Candy were arguing about who got to use the razor next. "Cut that out!" Duke rapped at them. "Let the desert finish the bastard off. We got to get the hell out of here. This is gonna cause the goddamnedest stink you ever imagined."

  The gamblers clustered around the man who was their natural leader. "There's two of the crew dead in the cockpit," someone said.

  "Yeah, the whole crew's dead," a man pointed out. "No one's gonna fly this kite out of here, Duke. What are we gonna do?"

  "Where was that town we saw on the way in here, Earl?" Duke asked me.

  I pointed. "Three or four miles that way, I'd guess. Maybe five. Hard to tell in this desert air."

  "So we hoof it," Duke decreed. "An' I know some of you characters didn't tap out into that goddamn sack. I got a C-note in my shoe. The rest of you get it out of your brassieres or your arseholes, but get it out. We got to hire cars an' get to Vegas an' hit the airlines an' split in sixty different directions. Like right now."

  A scattering of bills appeared. Duke appropriated them, and no one argued. No one spared a glance for the crumpled figure Tim had kicked onto its back or for the crimson-masked but still-silent thing writhing on the sand.

  At the edge of the abandoned airstrip where the hijackers had forced the crew to land, I turned and looked back at the plane.

  In the arid atmosphere it looked as though it could have been there for a hundred years.

  Or would be there for another hundred.

  I kicked a hole in the loose soil and buried my Smith & Wesson in it.

  I scuffed loose sand over the burial place, then hurried to catch up with Duke and the main body of gamblers.

  2

  "HEY, there's a road!" Sal called out as I rejoined the group.

  The "road" consisted of time-worn ruts overgrown with tangled bunch grass and scrubby cactus. Duke studied it doubtfully. He was carrying his jacket over his arm, but in the stifling heat large patches of perspiration had already broken through his white shirt. "Where d'you figure we are?" he asked me in a low tone after drawing me to one side.

  "We can't be too far from Vegas," I answered. "You said yourself we were only twenty minutes away just before the hijack started. And if the hijack gang planned everything else as well as they did the hijack itself, they probably took into account that the Seven-twenty-seven couldn't disappear too soon from radar screens by changing course without drawing attention to itself. I'll bet we're as close as thirty miles. Maybe closer." I lowered my voice. "This hike to town isn't going to work, Duke."

  "It's not?"

  "No. You saw the size of the town. You've got sixty men here. That means you need ten cars to move them. In a town like that you couldn't round up ten extra cars with a gun." Duke swiped at the moisture on his upper lip with a chubby forefinger while he considered this. "But there's something else. Once our plane was overdue in Vegas, every law enforcement agency in the state was alerted to be on the lookout for it. And even in that little town we saw from the air, someone must have noticed a plane as big as ours trying to land just a few miles away. The natural thing for them to do would be to call the sheriff's department."

  "So?"

  "We're going to meet a reception committee before we ever make it to that town."

  "If we do, I've got a hole card." Duke said it confidently.

  "You're going to need it," I warned.

  Duke raised his voice to address the waiting gamblers. "Okay, boys. Follow the track. It's easier goin', anyway. An' if anyone shows up, let me do the talkin'."

  The men started out in a struggling line along the rutted road. "Whaddya s'pose that jazz was on the plane about Jewish pigs?" Duke asked as I fell in beside him.

  "I've been wondering about that. If this was the Middle East, I'd say that the Arabs had just conducted a raid on the Israelis."

  "Them two sonsabitches we left by the plane sure looked like Ay-rabs," Duke said thoughtfully.

  "So did the one who got away."

  "You got a good look at him?"

  "I sure did."

  After that we saved our breath. It was hot, dusty walking. Loose stones rolled underfoot, endangering equilibrium and ankles. There wasn't a tree visible with even a promise of shade. Nothing seemed to grow taller than waist-high in this desert country. We were lucky the plane had come down so close to sundown. If it had been in the middle of the day, some of the poorly-conditioned gamblers would have been in real difficulty.

  "Hey, Duke! Cars!"

  The shout was raised from the head of the procession where-improbably enough-the ex-boxer Tim was among the leaders. He pointed at two dust clouds advancing toward us along the rutted trail we were following.

  "Let me handle it when they get here!" Duke called. "Out of the road, boys. We'll wait for them."

  The gamblers moved off to one side. They bunched into groups from which an uneasy bzz-bzz of conversation rose during the five minutes it took the cars causing the dust clouds to reach us. Both were jeeps, and in the lead one a big man in a deputy's uniform with numerous stripes on one sleeve sat beside the driver. The men in the jeeps stared curiously at the city-dressed gamblers against a background so obviously inhospitable to city types.

  "I'm Morgan," the uniformed deputy announced. "Where's the plane?"

  "Back at the landin' strip," Duke answered.

  "Where's the crew?"

  "With the plane."

  "I'm a doctor," a man in the second jeep said. "Does anyone at the plane need first aid?"

  Duke looked at his watch. "I doubt it."

  "You doubt it? You don't know? What kind of answer-"

  The deputy's heavier voice drowned out the doctor's. He was looking directly at Duke. "What happened to the plane?"

  "Hijack," Duke replied laconically.

  The jeep driver snorted. "Thinks he's in Cuba," he said to no one in particular.

  Morgan stood up in the front seat of the jeep. "Doc, you come with me," he said. "The rest of you stay here with these people till we get back." The lead jeep lurched away along the rutted road after the switch had been made.

  The second jeep had a whip antenna coiled backward along its length. Duke strolled to the jeep and pointed to the antenna. "Can you talk to Vegas with that thing?" he asked.

  "Sure I can," the drive
r said.

  "Well, you can see we need transportation," Duke went on. "I'd appreciate it if you'd call Tom Weston in Vegas an' tell him Duke Conboy said to get two buses down here to pick us up. An' to come along himself."

  There was a momentary silence. "You mean the Tom Weston who's the lawyer for the Frontenac?" the driver asked cautiously.

  "That's the Tom Weston I mean. Just tell him our plane's down an' we're stranded here."

  The driver conferred with the other men in the jeep in low tones. "What was that again about a hijack?" the driver asked Duke after a moment.

  "That's why we're here," Duke said patiently. "You just call Tom Weston. He'll straighten everything out."

  "Reckon I should without Morgan's okay?" the driver asked his companions.

  "I reckon," another man said. "Since it's Weston."

  The jeep driver picked up a microphone from a hook on the dashboard. "Mobile Unit Four to KN-five-five-eight," he said.

  "Go ahead, Mobile Unit Four," a static-jumbled voice said after a ten-second wait.

  Duke strolled back to the watching gamblers. "Nothin' to it now," he said comfortably.

  "I'm glad you think so," I told him. "When that first deputy finds what's left at the plane-"

  "Nothin' to it," Duke repeated. The jeep driver waved to him to indicate that the message had been sent. Duke waved back in acknowledgment. "Might as well get as comfortable as we can, boys," he said to the others. "There's buses on the way to pick us up."

  "What about that deputy?" Sal wanted to know.

  "I just pulled his teeth."

  "I hope he knows it," Sal grunted.

  The gamblers seated themselves awkwardly on the ground. The twilight shadows were lengthening but the earth was still warm to the touch. The occupants of the jeep got out and sat with their backs braced against the jeep's wheels while they chain-smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. There was no fraternizing between the two groups.

  Thirty minutes passed. There was a preliminary squawk and then a voice from the jeep's dashboard speaker. "KN-five-five-eight Mobile Unit Two to KN-five-five-eight Mobile Unit Four," it said. "Come in, Mobile Unit Four."