Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

The Brazilian, seeing what was coming, tried to shield his face from the needle, and Shayne injected him in the back of the wrist.

“We’re all friends,” Shayne told him. “Follow me and don’t say anything. Do as I tell you. Ten minutes from now we’ll be having a drink to celebrate.”

The Brazilian asked a puzzled question in Portuguese. Shayne repeated his instructions, but the man still didn’t understand. One effect of the drug had been to knock all the English language out of his head.

“Send Christa back here,” Shayne told Ward. “Then, for God’s sake, get rid of that clerical collar.”

Christa hurried down the aisle.

“Do you speak Portuguese?” Shayne demanded without preliminary.

“Mike!” she exclaimed. “You know-I wondered when I saw those shoulders. Portuguese, yes. Well enough.”

“Tell this guy I want him to do exactly what I say. To stick close to me and keep his mouth shut. When I want him to do something, I’ll use sign language.”

She nodded. “But I don’t want to make any mistakes. I’d better understand what you’re doing.”

“Making it up as I go along, as usual,” he said abrasively. “We’re being met. I want to find out where they take us. He’s tranquilized, but I want him to understand that I’m the boss. And ask him if he has another mask. He must have brought one for Thompson.”

She nodded again, thought for a moment, and broke into a stream of Portuguese. The Brazilian, looking up at Shayne, beamed with pleasure. “Sim, sim.” He pulled another monster mask out of his pocket. “Thompson. Pois sim.”

Shayne tossed it to Ward when he came back, wearing a black turtleneck.

“Hang on, boys and girls!” Lassiter yelled over the public address.

Shayne saw Naomi Savage watching him, her eyes narrowed. The plane touched down, bounced high in the air, and came down again. Shayne gestured to the Brazilian, who leaped to his feet, eager to start cooperating. Shayne took a loop in the neck of the mail bag and brought it with him.

The plane skidded the last fifty feet with locked wheels, slewing around and coming to a stop less than half a length from the end of the asphalt. Lassiter met Shayne at the head of the aisle.

“You may not know it, but that was a pretty piece of flying.”

“Not bad at all,” Moss agreed, behind him.

Shayne pushed the door open. A battered pickup was racing down the strip.

“Moss,” Shayne said crisply. “Everything’s going to go just the way you planned it. Who’s in charge of the truck?”

“Guy named Nikko. A Greek. And talk about wild men.”

The truck skidded under the wing and pulled up below the open door. Three men burst out of the front seat. All three were dressed in splotched green-and-brown coveralls, with full beards and wraparound dark glasses. One of them began unloading a ladder.

“Viva the NLF!” one of the others yelled, waving his submachine gun, a battered German Schmeisser.

Ward said in a low voice, “That’s a lot of fire power there, Mike. I think we ought to stop it.”

“Too late,” Shayne said as the ladder dropped into place.

He motioned to Moss. After an instant’s hesitation, Ward followed Moss out the door. Naomi Savage, running up the aisle, stumbled against Shayne before there was room for him on the ladder. As he thrust her off, she pressed a crumpled piece of paper into his hand.

Two of the bearded men were unloading luggage containers while the third, a big, smelly man with a broad chest and powerful bare forearms, hurried them along with sweeps of his submachine gun. Shayne threw the mail sack into the back of the truck.”

“That you, Nikko?” he said. “We had a little trouble. I think they got off a radio message before I smashed the set.”

“Christ,” Nikko said hoarsely. “Then we hurry, eh?”

Shayne’s men, Ward and the two tranquilized hijackers, jumped in the back of the truck to load the pods as they came out of the plane. One of the guerrillas yelled something in a language Shayne didn’t understand, certainly not Spanish.

“Only two containers?” Nikko said. “There were to be three.”

“I don’t know about that,” Shayne said. “I do know we’d better get the hell out of here.”

Nikko signaled and the men mounted.

“In front, Thompson,” he told Shayne.

Two cars were parked beside a bulk-gas pump in front of a long wooden shed. As the truck careened onto an unpaved road running at right angles to the strip, Shayne saw two bound and gagged figures lying in the dust in front of the shed.

“I’m not Thompson,” he said. “Thompson had an accident in St. Albans and he missed the plane. They brought me in at the last minute and nobody explained anything. What’s this Liberation Front crap?”

Nikko laughed. “To throw pepper in their eyes, you understand? Where does she want us to land you?”

Shayne hesitated a fraction of an instant. “So long as it’s near a commercial airport.”

“That will be easy. Is there something the matter with Moss? He has a strange look.”

“The sauce head-he’s been hitting the booze all morning. We came down just in time. Half an hour more and he wouldn’t be able to navigate.”

“A crazy, that one. He steals gold. Sells it at seventeen dollars an ounce. Then steals it again. For the last time, I hope!”

The driver had been told to hurry, and he was doing sixty on the rough road. Bulldozed through the jungle by an American oil company, it ran as straight as a rule. When they reached the coast they passed rapidly through a fishing village and started west. Minutes later Shayne saw a modern hydrofoil launch drawn up on the sand between the road and the water. The driver swung off the road and kept going until he mired down in the sand.

In a moment the mail bag and the two luggage pods were loaded. Heaving together, they ran the hydrofoil down the hard sand into the water.

Ward pulled at Shayne’s arm as the motor started. “Now!” he said urgently.

Shayne counted heads. Moss and Sanchez, the Brazilian, had dropped onto the padded seats to enjoy the feeling of the wind in their face. They would be neutral. The three make-believe guerrillas still wore their tommy guns. Nikko, on the stern bench smoking a small brown cigarette, held his gun cradled easily in his arms, one hand stroking the trigger assembly.

When Ward gestured again, Shayne shook his head.

They were traveling very fast on their cushion of air. It was a smooth ride but a noisy one. Nikko pointed ahead after a time, and Shayne saw a big yacht, riding easily in the long swell. The gap between the boats closed rapidly. Soon Shayne was able to read the legend on the stern: the yacht was the Paladin, out of Monte Carlo.

Two sailors in striped jerseys waited at the rail, ready to drop the yoke as soon as the hydrofoil coasted alongside. After an exchange of signals, the smaller boat was hoisted aboard.

Nikko leaped down lightly. “It worked like a clock! Smooth. Easy.”

He yelled a command. Shayne ripped off his mask and tossed it overboard. Ward’s came off more slowly. The Greek’s smile faded as he noticed the Negro. He looked indignantly at Shayne.

“Nobody told me I would have a Neg-”

“You’ll have to bear up,” Shayne told him. “It’s in a good cause-money. Let’s have a drink.”

Nikko called to one of the sailors, who ran for a bottle and glasses. The sea anchor had been drawn in smartly and the yacht was heading east. The guerrillas peeled off their beards and jungle camouflage, emerging in the same striped jerseys and white shorts worn by the rest of the crew. Counting the unseen sailor at the wheel, the Paladin carried a crew of six.