Flashpoint (2 page)

    Once when I woke, Duke was counting bills beside me with a satisfied look on his cherubic face. The gamblers plied their trade steadily with never a thought to their surroundings. My nose and throat were beginning to get the dry, stuffed-up feeling associated with prolonged high-altitude flights.

    It was the loudspeaker that woke me from my next catnap. "-as I say!" a harsh voice demanded. There was a thudding noise followed by heavy breathing and a gurgling sound.

    "You-you knifed him!" a girl's voice said tremulously.

    I sat up and blinked the sleep from my eyes.

    "Fly it in where I said!" the same harsh voice commanded. "And get away from that mike button or I'll-"

    The loudspeaker went dead.

    Duke Conboy was staring up at it curiously. I couldn't see that anyone else was paying attention. Duke looked at me and shrugged. "Thought I heard somethin' about a knife."

    "I heard it, too."

    "They got a movie goin' up in the cockpit?" Duke glanced at his watch. "Only about twenty minutes to go. It must've been somethin' about landin' instructions. Yeah, there we go now."

    The steady rumble of the engines had eased off. The squeal of fluid rushing through the hydraulic lines was followed by a series of vibrations. The trailing edge of the wing outside my window dropped away as the flaps began to lower. "Wonder why they didn't tell us to put our seat belts back on?" Duke speculated. His clumsy-looking but nimble fingers refastened his belt.

    Heavier vibrations shook the plane. Thumping sounds indicated that the landing gear had been extended. The back of my seat pushed me forward as the plane took a nose-down attitude and began a rapid descent. I could see barren ground moving upward.

    The aircraft banked steeply as it rushed toward the earth. Under the trailing edge of the wing I saw a black macadam landing strip move backward. At that height it looked no larger than a burnt matchstick, but it grew in size rapidly as we continued to descend in a sweeping turn.

    I had never flown into Las Vegas, but I was sure there must be a complex of landing strips as at every major airport. From where we were I could still see only the single runway. I pressed my face against the cool window-glass to extend my view, searching for the sprawling, gambling city. Beyond the wing tip, in a shallow valley a few miles away, I could see a small town. Its three-block business district was bisected by a ribbon of straight, pale, concrete highway paralleled by a single-track railroad. Both appeared to come from nowhere and lead off over the beige desert to an uninterrupted horizon.

    The engines surged with added power and the plane leveled out. We were so low I could see plainly thin shadows cast by stubby mesquite that dotted the arid ground bordering the runway. The pilot banked again, grinding down more flaps. I had another glimpse of the landing strip as the wing dipped. It looked terribly short. At its near end the twin propellers of a small private plane sent flashes of reflected sunlight from spinning propeller blades. I'd missed seeing the plane before because its dune-yellow color blended it into the parched landscape.

    I turned to Duke. "Where do these flights generally land? Do they have a private strip-"

    There was a jarring jolt followed by a loud
BANG!
We were on the ground before I realized we were that close. A cloud of brown dust and sand came up over the forward edge of the wing. He's missed the runway, I thought. Then we lifted as the engines burst into a crescendo of noise. I decided that the pilot intended to go round again, but we hit the macadam with a severe jolt for the second time. I was pitched forward against the seat in front of me before I realized that the pilot had reversed the engine thrust and was applying full power to slow us down.

    Shouts, yells, and curses filled our section of the plane as the unprepared gamblers were stacked in heaps in the aisle. I forced myself back into my seat so I could look out the window again. There was a sharp, explosive noise beneath the plane. A circular metal object flew off to one side from under the edge of the wing and spun away. Trailing it was a black tubular ring. I had to look again before I realized that it was the blown-out tire that had been blasted loose from the dual-wheel landing gear when the retaining rim tore loose from the shock of the hard landing.

    I could feel the brakes being applied in quick jabs as the deep-throated engines tried in vain to check us. "What the hell happened?" Duke yelled beside me. The brakes went on again as the jets kept working at full pitch. We yawed back and forth as brakes and reverse thrust took effect. Then the plane veered hard to the right. It left the macadam and bounced violently over softer, sandy ground. We bobbed across the uneven earth, and I was rammed forward into the seat ahead of me again.

    My shoulder banged into Duke Conboy sitting ashen-faced beside me. The plane sounded as though it was breaking to pieces. It swerved and hit the macadam again, spun around, and finally came to a stop with a long shudder. It was cocked sideways across the last few feet of runway. Forced against the window again, I found myself staring up the airstrip in the direction of the private plane whose glinting propellers were taxiing it rapidly toward us. The plane's pointed nose and defiantly upright tail glittered as the setting sun turned its dune-yellow paint to glistening gold. Even before it came to a full stop near us, a man in khakis climbed out of the passenger side onto the low wing, then jumped down to the ground.

    Slung across his shoulder was a machine-gun.

    The man sprinted toward the rear of our plane and disappeared from my view.

    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 the strip in what looked like less than six hundred yards.