Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

“Do that first, and then get hold of Gentry. An oil sheik is visiting somebody in Boca Raton, probably Harvey West. I want a woman in his party. I don’t know her name, but she has a mouse under one eye, and it’s recent. They may be about to leave. I want her arrested, it doesn’t matter for what. If I’m a casualty down here, I don’t know how anybody’s going to put this all together, but that’s all I have time for now.”

They passed a sign welcoming them to Homestead Air Base. Instead of continuing to the main gate, they turned off along a side road paralleling the security fence.

“I heard you mention a combat bonus,” Coddington said.

“Five hundred if any shots are fired. Five hundred for each wound. In case of death, five thousand to your widow. That’s if I’m still alive myself to sign the check.”

“You’re so encouraging, Mike. But I accept. This is a novelty for me, because I haven’t fired my revolver once in the last nine years. And that time was a mistake, I hit an innocent woman in the ankle. Tell me how I’m going to know the good guys from the bad guys.”

“The bad guys have the submachine guns. We’ll be ad libbing most of this. If it looks too rough we can leave it to the Air Force.”

“Who’re in the business. Who have the fire power.”

“But who may be taking a nap after lunch.”

“True.”

There were side gates along the perimeter at half-mile intervals. As they came to each, Coddington jumped down and examined the fastenings. The big gate at the extreme end of the field, like the others, was secured by a heavy chain, but one of the links had been burned through, and the pieces had been fastened back together with copper wire. Coddington unwound the wire, and opened the gate. Shayne had moved behind the wheel. He drove through. Coddington rewired the chain.

“If anybody asks,” Coddington said, getting in, “what are we doing driving down a runway in a civilian Buick?”

“Let’s hope nobody asks. The only unit still operating here is the Caribbean Patrol. But you’re right, they can see us from the tower. There’s a clip board in back. We’d better be making an inspection.”

He stopped. Coddington found the clip-board, walked out in front of the car and stamped on the concrete. He pretended to jot something down, stepped off ten paces and stamped again.

Shayne was laughing when he came back. “What the hell was that?”

“Testing the surface. I want to see how it’s holding up after all that rain.”

They continued toward the hangar area, stopping again to allow Coddington to repeat his little ritual. Two airplanes were parked on taxi-strips near the control tower, but there was no activity around them, and no other planes were going out or coming in. There was a hum of insects.

“This place is dead,” Coddington said.

Approaching the hangars, Shayne drove more slowly. The ribbed buildings, blank-faced, crouched in the weeds-including Shayne noticed, a stand of marijuana, not quite ready for harvest. The whole place seemed abandoned, like a mining town after the ore is gone.

“The second one?” Coddington said.

A thin gap showed between the electrically-operated doors. A block of wood kept them from closing all the way.

Coddington entered by an unlocked door. He looked out in a moment, and made a V sign with spread fingers.

The doors rolled back. As soon as the Buick was inside, Coddington reversed the controls and they closed again, but again they were prevented from engaging by the wooden block.

In the gloom, four enormous four-engined cargo planes were parked nose-to-tail. Shayne left the Buick in the darkness beneath one of the wings. A medium-sized airplane, with two engines, had been pulled out of line. A power cart was in position under its starboard engine, lines and air hose already hooked up. The plane was an unfamiliar type to Shayne, probably an attack-bomber, with rocket tubes hanging from the wings, bomb-bay doors, a cannon in the tail.

Coddington craned up at it. “If we can find some ammunition we won’t have to worry about submachine guns.”

Shayne checked their armament. He had two pistols of his own, a. 357 and a. 38. Coddington had a. 38. Then there were the two. 38’s Shayne had taken from Artie Constable, the two extra guns he had found in the Pinto, and the double-barrelled Winchester.

“Not enough,” Coddington said. “We’re outgunned. Take your time. Work out something tricky.”

Using a pencil flash, Shayne opened the power cart and examined its electrical system. There were four heavy batteries, powering a blower which would force air into the airplane’s turbine starter, activating a compressor. After the engine took hold, connection with the power cart would be maintained until the airplane’s own generators were charging. Shayne loosened the connections and reversed the cables. Then he climbed into the plane.

On a combat mission, it probably carried a five-man crew. Shayne looked it over thoroughly. The clutter in the main compartment was carefully organized. The communications man had a corner, the navigator another. Off the narrow companion-way leading to the tail gunner’s station, he found a stainless steel lavatory. He examined the layout again, and made his preparations. He emptied a canvas map case and replaced the maps with five of his hand-guns, retaining only the. 357. He hung the case from a bracket over the navigator’s table. He ripped out a length of wire from the communications board, attached one end to the map case and threaded the wire along the bulkhead to the lavatory, where he had decided to conceal himself.

He returned to the open hatch. Coddington, below, was waiting for instructions.

“They’ll have to divide up when they start the engines,” Shayne said. “Two men on the ground, the rest in the plane. Find a place where you can cover the power cart. Let me make the first move. The two outside men are yours. When the shooting starts, try to get them both.”

“To kill?”

“Damn right to kill. One tommy gun in action is too many.”

The child-size coffin, set crosswise in the back of the hearse, separated the Jews from their armed captors. The Jews were sitting hip to hip in two rows, with those in front holding the legs of those behind. There was a carpet, but the steel floor was directly beneath it. It was a jolting ride. It had started badly, and was likely to end badly.

Andrew Weinberger, after the killing in the hotel room, had been sure that if they did as they were told, they would all die. For an instant, blinded by rage, he had almost lunged for the killer’s gun, to kill the man with it or be killed himself. But the room was full of people; others would have been killed as well. He caught Lillian as she fell, and some of her blood was still on his clothes and hands. She was already dead, he thought, when he laid her on the sofa, wishing-it was a strange wish, one he knew he would never forget-that it was his wife lying there, not this stranger. Ten minutes earlier, he had been inside her. She had enjoyed it, as she enjoyed most things in her life. When the Arabs entered, she had looked years older. He realized that he had never seen her without a smile. Their relationship had been based on pleasure and shared jokes. He regretted bitterly that he had never seen her real face until a moment before she died.

At first, hardly aware of what was happening, he went where the guns pointed him. In the hotel basement, he began to return to life. He saw the gleam of contempt in the Arab’s eyes, the sneer, when he spoke of the multi-million dollar ransom. The sneer, translated, said: “A million apiece. To Shylocks like these, it would be inconceivable that anyone could throw away a chance to obtain such magnificent sums. But we are men of the desert. Money is unimportant to us. We’ll talk about ransom, and rub thumb and forefinger together in the old gesture, and keep the Jews docile and quiet so we can kill them at our convenience.”