Flashpoint (3 page)

    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.

    

    

    
"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 driver 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."

    The driver rose to his feet and picked up his microphone. "Go ahead, Two."

    "Call Williamson an' get the coroner an' two ambulances out here pronto." The jeep driver looked at his companions and then at the gamblers. "You got that, Four?"

    "I got it."

    "You guys never saw nothin' like what we got here. KN-five-five-eight Mobile Unit Two out."

    "KN-five-five-eight Mobile Unit Four out," the driver echoed. He depressed the microphone switch again. "KN-five-five-eight, this is Mobile Unit Four," he began.

    "Look there," a man near me said softly.

    I looked in the direction he was pointing.

    Three dust devils were advancing toward us along the same route the jeeps had taken previously. The clouds of dust materialized into two huge yellow buses led by a black limousine. When the limousine drew up near us and the rear door opened and two men in dark business suits stepped out, the jeep's occupants rose and stood stiffly, almost at attention.

    The two men were followed by a chubby man in the same uniform as Morgan, the deputy who had gone to inspect the plane, but this one had scrambled eggs on his campaign hat. The first man out of the limousine was tall and aristocratic-looking with wavy gray hair. "Where's Duke Conboy?" he asked.

    "Here I am, Tom," Duke announced.

    The tall man strode to where we were standing. "What've we got, Duke?" His tone was pleasant but carried a note of authority.

    "A bad one," Duke replied. "The plane crew's dead plus two hijackers."

    Weston frowned. "Aren't you the little ray of sunshine, though?" he said as we were joined by the other civilian and the man in uniform. "Gentlemen, this is Neal Harris, liaison with the governor's office," he continued. "He happened to be with me and I'm glad I played a hunch and brought him along. And this is Sheriff Courtney." Nods were exchanged all around. "These men were on one of our special flights, Neal, and Duke just told me that the plane crew is dead along with two hijackers."

    Neal Harris' easy-going manner changed. "Where is the plane?" he wanted to know.

    "Back a couple of miles," Duke answered.

    ''Probably at the abandoned silver mine's airstrip," Sheriff Courtney said.

    Harris looked at the sheriff. "Someone is investigating the-ah-situation at the airstrip?"

    The sheriff nodded. "Morgan, one of my deputies."

    "To this point no one else is involved except your department?" Harris' voice was crisp. "No other investigatory agency, I mean?"

    "No, sir. Not yet."

    "Here comes Morgan," someone said from behind me. A long, trailing funnel of dust from the direction in which we'd come heralded the return of the first jeep.

    "I'll do the talking," Harris said, and said nothing more until the jeep arrived. Deputy Morgan stared from the buses to the limousine to our little group, then swung down from the jeep and walked over to us.

    "This is Neal Harris, Deputy Morgan," Tom Weston said.

    "I know Mr. Harris," Morgan replied. Respect dripped from each syllable.

    "What did you find?" Harris demanded.

    Morgan drew a deep breath and flung his hands wide. "Bodies till hell wouldn't have it," he declared. "The plane crew includin' the stewardess with their throats cut, plus two foreign-lookin' guys on the ground outside, one of 'em sliced up like you wouldn't believe. I never saw-"