Brett Halliday - Six Seconds to Kill

“Shayne,” he said when she came on. “Put in some calls for me. Will Gentry. General Turner-somewhere around the St. Albans. Abe Berger, Secret Service, same place.”

“I’ve got that.”

“Latin American guerrillas are raiding the airport. They hold the control tower. Guns being loaded aboard two planes. Get the troops back in a hurry and alert the air force. Fast, baby.”

He threw the phone onto its cradle and ran for the helicopter. Halfway there he veered toward an outdoor Coke machine, fumbling coins out of his pocket. An instant later a cold Coke clanked into his hand. He opened the bottle while the machine delivered a second, and emptied both bottles as he ran across 20th Street to a gas pump inside the entrance to the big Delta Airlines maintenance facility. He unhooked the hose and began filling the bottles. A mechanic in greasy coveralls came toward him. “What do you think you’re up to, mac?”

“Helping myself to some gas,” Shayne said savagely.

The mechanic stopped. “Why, yeah. I see that. Go right ahead, man.”

Shayne left the hose running. He raced back to the helicopter, which sprang up from the concrete even before he closed the door.

“Remember I’m not getting combat pay,” McSorley said nervously.

The radio was shouting again. “Bell one-forty from tower. Do not proceed over runways. Emergency incoming traffic. Category-two emergency procedures. All aircraft hold, repeat hold.”

The helicopter cleared Concourse 1, rising at a sharp angle.

“The warehouses,” Shayne said curtly.

“But what if there really is-”

Shayne handed him the binoculars. “Look at the tower.”

They were now on the level of the control cab, and they could see straight through from window to window. Even without binoculars Shayne could see the clear outline of a man with a gun.

“Jesus,” McSorley said.

“Tower to Bell one-forty, make an immediate right turn, heading zero-eight-one, and land at once. Acknowledge.”

McSorley thumbed the transmit switch. “Bell one-forty to Air Traffic Control. Up yours.”

He hung the mike back on its hook. “I always wanted to do that. But you know this isn’t recommended, Shayne. If any of those planes are actually coming down-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Shayne told him. “They’re clearing everything out of the way so those cargo planes can take off.”

One of the two planes in the warehouse area was coming about slowly. It headed along the taxi strip into the east-west runway. Shayne picked up McSorley’s torn shirt and ripped off a long strip. Tearing this in two, he rolled each portion into a tight cylinder and stuffed it into the neck of one of the gas-filled Coke bottles. He upended the bottles to let the gasoline soak into the rags.

“You aren’t thinking of destroying any aircraft, are you?” McSorley said.

“Yeah. Come right up over it. As soon as I’ve dropped the bottles, land on the railroad track. Make the turn fast because they’re carrying ammunition and it’s likely to blow.”

“Great. I’d rather not have any part in this, but I don’t suppose I have a choice?”

“No.”

“I had a date to play golf this afternoon. I don’t suppose-”

They skimmed across the crosshatched field at an altitude of fifty or sixty feet. Shayne told McSorley to climb. The plane ahead was approaching the end of the runway, ready to turn to come back.

“More to the left.”

He unlatched the door and forced it open. He leaned out, but as long as the helicopter was moving forward there was too much outside pressure on the door; he couldn’t hold it open and expect to throw accurately at the same time.

“I’ll go up ahead and hover,” McSorley offered.

“Fine.”

The plane on the ground began a long loop into the end of the runway. McSorley picked a spot where it would pass beneath them. He cut their forward momentum.

Shayne braced the bottles between his legs and lighted the rags. The cargo plane rolled toward them, picking up speed.

“Hey, somebody’s shooting,” McSorley said, surprised.

“Can you cut down the goddamn vibration?”

Shayne leaned out and lobbed one bottle, then the other. He swung back inside and slammed the door.

The helicopter shot toward the General Aviation Center. He felt the explosion through the soles of his feet. He had led the plane too much with the first bottle, but the second had hit it squarely. One wing was a sheet of fire.

The helicopter swung back and around. McSorley, very excited, yelled, “Now what?”

Shayne, from the window, gave him hand signals. The cargo plane slewed off the runway, and the burning wing crashed into a lighting stanchion. Men were spilling out of the side door.

The helicopter touched down, kicking up swirls of dust, between the last warehouse and the Seaboard Airline siding. An instant later Shayne was out and running, Berger’s automatic in his hand.

He raced around the corner of the warehouse and along 4th Street toward the remaining plane. At the next intersection a young guerrilla armed with a hunting rifle fired from a warehouse platform. Shayne threw himself face down and rolled, reaching the opposite platform before the other could fire again. In the darkness beneath the platform, Shayne scrambled backward and out again five feet away. A bullet buried itself in the edge-beam above his head. He fired. The youth went backward and lost the rifle.

Shayne ran across to him and snatched it up. The main siren was going, the big one that was saved for major calamities. Fire apparatus, salvage trucks, pumpers and ambulances were on their way from the fire and rescue station at the center of the field. Shayne worked his way to the end of the platform.

His view of the field was partly blocked by a Port Authority sedan and two trucks. The second plane was beginning to stir. Armed men from the disabled plane were running toward it. Others, working desperately, pulled the big pallets into the plane’s belly.

There was a piercing whistle. A man appeared on the opposite loading platform. He had a pistol strapped to his side and carried a submachine gun. As he turned in Shayne’s direction, Shayne saw the heavy-lidded eyes, the deep mark above the nose, the pale olive skin of the magazine photographs-Gil Ruiz.

A dead cigar was clamped between his lips. He relighted the stump as several unarmed men coming out of the warehouse passed him and jumped down onto the apron and ran toward the moving plane. Shayne brought his rifle around to bear on Ruiz. He waited a moment, his finger grazing the trigger. He raised the barrel without firing. He wanted this man alive.

Ruiz saw someone Shayne was unable to see, frowned and half shook his head. There was an explosion from the burning plane, and Shayne didn’t hear the shot. Ruiz was struck in the chest. Like Eliot Crowther in the hotel corridor fifteen minutes earlier, he looked surprised, a little indignant. He staggered sideways and tumbled off the edge of the platform.

Another booming explosion blew the burning plane back onto the runway. A big pumper was pouring chemical spray on the fire. Shayne could feel the heat.

An unlikely vehicle raced across the field from the terminal-a motorized ramp. One man was at the controls, another man and a dark-haired girl were behind him, clinging to the steps. As it turned into a cross taxi-strip, Shayne put a bullet into one front tire. It careened away, out of control, and tipped over on the grass. In a moment the two men were running.

Shayne left cover and darted forward between the two trucks. Hands reached down from the plane’s belly to haul the two men aboard. Shayne, on one knee, took careful aim at the big tire. The hammer clicked down on nothing.