Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

Helen put her hands on his. “I’ll go back with you, John.”

He looked at her and then looked quickly away as though he were ashamed, his eyes filling with tears. “I know what I’m doing to you,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t.”

“But it might be meaningless. They might — do what they’ve promised anyway, Helen.”

“Ben doesn’t have to go back too, does he?”

“They want you, Helen.”

Ben felt a shameful relief, knowing he wouldn’t have to go up in the plane. His hands had begun to sweat when he had first heard the plane. Cassidy said, “Don’t say anything to the police, Ben. They might move too fast. They might force those men’s hands.”

Cassidy stood up. “I’ll find Walther and ask him if I can leave the car here for a few days.”

Helen turned to Ben. “Thank you for everything you tried to do.”

He looked into her eyes. “I’m coming along — for the ride.”

“Stay out of it, Ben. Please!”

“Just for the ride, honey. For kicks.”

“I won’t let you come.”

“Then listen to what I tell Walther.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Okay, so you haven’t any choice. I’m coming along.”

She looked at him for a moment and then smiled in a timid way and turned and followed Cassidy. He watched her go, head high and her shoulders back and her stride long and free. There was a gallantry to her that made him feel ashamed and envious. And then he remembered the little silver ship again, and felt as though his teeth would chatter.

Walther was shaking hands with John Cassidy when he and Helen came outside. The three of them left and walked across the wide lawn and through a gate in the pasture fence. A man sat on his heels near the small cabin plane. He wore a sport jacket and a shirt open at the throat.

Helen stopped abruptly and Ben caught up with her and took her hand. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s the one that held her — Denny. His name is Brath. Paul Brath.”

Brath stood up and flipped his cigarette away and said, “Hello, dearie.” He had lean hips, and the thick shoulders of a pug. “Nice going, dad,” he said to Cassidy. Then he studied Ben Morrow for a moment. “You the fly boy, eh? What’s with the white-horse routine?”

“He doesn’t have to go,” Helen said firmly.

“He didn’t, but now he does. I’m in it just as much as the boss, dearie. And I’m getting tired of being out in the boondocks. I heard you tell him my name, and now he’s seen me, so he comes along. Pile in, people.”

They climbed up into the plane, using the single folding step. The plane could carry five at a pinch, Ben saw. When the four of them had got in, Brath took the wheel. The engine kicked over and he gunned it, then wrenched it into a tight taxi circle. The craft lumbered across the uneven field and he hauled it around again, into the wind. He gunned it and it picked up speed rapidly. Ben shut his fists as tightly as he could. He felt the sweat on his face. The tail lifted and Brath jerked the ship into the air. It wavered, headed directly for the building they had just left, and then Brath made a careless, low-altitude bank across the highway. Ben’s hands did not loosen until they had better than a thousand feet of altitude. Brath had a plumber’s hands on the wheel, no respect for the aircraft. He bullied the ship. Ben started to get up. Brath said, “Put it back in the seat, fly boy.”

“Is this Eric Gorman’s ship?” Ben shouted over the engine sound.

Brath sat loose in the seat, smoking a cigarette. “It is — with some new numbers. We had it stashed in the shrubbery up near Malone, handy to the border. Lemon got the information on you and put in a call last night. So we come down. Got to Cassidy’s place about nine this morning. Lemon did a good job. He’s got a bonus coming — right in the back of the neck.” He laughed and said again, “Right in the back of his thick neck.”

“Where’s Gorman?”

“At Cassidy’s place, with Lemon and Cassidy’s old lady and the kid.”

Ben put his lips close to Helen’s ear. “I don’t want John to hear this,” he said. She nodded. “You heard what he said about my coming along. That means the same treatment for me as for you. Helen. Figure it out. And the same for Cassidy and his wife and the boy.”

She turned toward him and shook her head and formed the word, “No!” with her lips.

“Figure it out. The penalty for killing one person is the same as the penalty for six,” he said. “What difference does it make to them?”

Cassidy leaned over and said, “The one they call Davey came with two others in a car last night. The other two took the car and left Davey there, after they got us tied up. Davey made a phone call then. We were tied up all night. Mike kept crying in his sleep, and then he’d wake up and apologize.”

Helen put her mouth close to Ben’s ear. “We can’t let it happen to them, Ben,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“There’re three of us. Tell him what’s going to happen. Tell John.”

“He won’t believe it.”

“Make him believe it.”

Ben turned and looked at John Cassidy. He sat with shoulders bowed, hands folded, chin on his chest. Ben moved close and began talking in a low earnest tone. Cassidy gave no sign of hearing him, made no movement. The ship droned steadily southeast through the early afternoon sunlight, and the air was bumpy as they crossed the low hills.

John Cassidy’s hard brown hands tightened. Finally he said, so softly that Ben could hardly hear him, “The big one, that Gorman, he got gas cans out of the barn and had Lemon filling them from my hand pump in the door-yard. For the airplane, he said. They put them near the house. I didn’t know why it bothered me. Now I know. That’s the way they’ll do it, isn’t it? A fire tonight. For all of us.” He started to stand up, staring at the back of Brath’s head.

Ben pulled him down. “Easy. Not now, John.”

“What are you all yammering about back there?” Brath called out.

“When?” John whispered to Ben.

“Wait until he starts to let it down. Then he’ll be busy.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. We’ve got to take over the controls first. Then we’ll think of something.”

“But they’ll do something to—”

“They’re going to anyway. Isn’t that pretty clear? This will give us at least a small chance. I’ll tell you when. Just try to yank him out of that seat and hold him.”

He turned back to Helen and told her what they were planning to do, and told her to keep out of the way when it started. She nodded, and he noticed that though her mouth had a pinched, fear-stricken look, she seemed calm.

Brath began to lose altitude when they crossed the blue-and-silver ribbon of the Hudson. There were two large commercial liners off in the distance, and a small red plane was following the river north far to their right...

Ben saw that Brath was checking his gauges. Ben took one long deep breath and got his feet under him and nodded at John Cassidy. They dived for Brath at the same moment. Something warned Brath, perhaps some flicker of movement half seen from the corner of his eye. He yanked the nose of the ship up steeply. Ben fell, scrabbling with his hands at the aluminum flooring, aware that John had staggered backward, aware that neither of them had touched the hard neck, the thickset shoulders, and his disappointment was more vivid than fear.

He caught at a brace and looked up and saw Brath’s hand, the hairy wrist, the theatrical look of the aimed gun. The sound of the shot was lost in the engine sound. Ben let go of the brace and reached up and clasped both hands on the hard wrist and yanked it downward as hard as he could, levering the thick arm against the back of the pilot’s seat. He felt the bone give and saw the gun fall to the floor and begin to slide toward the back of the cabin. Brath made no sound that Ben could hear. Ben snatched the gun, got up onto his knees and slammed the flat of the gun against the side of Brath’s head.