Flashpoint

1

Hazel had given me almost too many errands to do for her in New York. I was late getting to Kennedy, and then I couldn't find the gate from which the chartered flight was to leave. By the time I asked directions twice and then backtracked the length of the terminal, I had three minutes left before flight time.

Duke Conboy was waiting when I finally arrived at the correct lower level. Duke is a jowly, impressive-looking man with silvery gray hair. "You really cut it close," he commented from around a cigar stub. "I was just gonna get aboard." He waved at someone behind me. "Glad you could make it, Candy."

I turned to see a smiling black man approaching us. He wore a lime-green suit, lime-green suede shoes, and a lime-green derby hat. His ruffled shirt was shocking pink as was his wide silk tie. "Candy Kane, Earl Drake," Duke introduced us.

"Pleased to meet you, mon," the dapper Candy said with a pronounced British accent. We shook hands.

"Let's go," Duke commanded. He led the way past an unmanned desk where an airline clerk would ordinarily have been checking boarders against a passenger manifest. We passed through a doorway that led to a carpeted ramp. Six feet along the ramp a man in a battered felt hat overflowed both sides of the three-legged stool on which he was sitting. He must have weighed three hundred pounds. He had the cauliflower ears and lumpy brows common to ex-fighters. "Earl's with me, Tim," Duke said as we edged our way past him.

"Right, Duke," the big man said. He nodded to Candy.

From the ramp we moved into the interior of the Boeing 727 I had seen from the observation window on the terminal level above. A stewardess greeted us pleasantly. Her hair was blonde but she had Jewish features. Behind her a hard-eyed man with a gold chain looped across the front of his scarlet weskit stepped into the aisle in front of me. "Earl's with me, Sal," Duke repeated. The hard-eyed Sal moved aside.

A subdued roar of male voices floated outward from the plane's interior to the forward, first-class compartment where he was standing. We moved along the aisle, past the galley where the stewardesses assemble the meal trays. I had a quick glimpse of two white-jacketed, dark-featured men juggling ice cubes and pouring drinks. "That mean-faced little bartender is on something," Candy commented from behind me. When I turned to look, Candy was smiling. "He looks higher than this plane is going to be." The green-ensembled black man sounded amused.

We passed the galley section before I was able to take a better look at the man Candy had been talking about. The aisle seats of the usual three-abreast seats had been removed in the tourist section, making a wider-than-usual passageway. Even so, we had to step over and around men on their knees with bunched money in their hands. Spinning dice riveted the gamblers' attention, and among the loose bills I could see on the carpeting, twenties and fifties predominated. Four separate crap games were going full blast at intervals along the widened aisle.

Ahead of me, Duke had to wait for a piece of plywood to be removed from across the aisle where a hand of poker had just been completed. There was no silver on the makeshift table, and the smallest bill I saw was a ten. The traffic grew even thicker as we approached the center of the plane. "Tail section's full up, Duke," someone called. "Max is dealin' blackjack." Duke motioned me to slide into the window seat of a pair of empty seats above the port wing of the plane.

We had lost Candy, and I looked back along the aisle. The lime-green suit was hunched down at the first crap game. The lime-green derby hat was on the carpeting with a sheaf of bills in its bowl, and Candy's white teeth gleamed as he joked with the man beside him while his quick hands scattered bills as he covered bets.

"Where'd Candy pick up the British accent?" I asked Duke as we sat down.

"Candy's from Nassau," Duke replied as he settled his bulk into the thick-cushioned seat. "He flew in for this junket. You'd be surprised how far some of the guys came for this flight. I just saw Bottles Lamoreaux from Quebec. How about a drink?"

"Bourbon," I said. I had to raise my voice to be heard. The noise level was fantastic. There must have been at least sixty men on the plane. Duke stood up and bellowed an order for two bourbons to someone I couldn't see. The plane lurched and began to move along the taxiway. I hadn't even heard the engines pick up tempo.

I looked out the double-paned window along the length of the swept-back, tapered wing. The terminal flowed by as we taxied down the ramp. Sunlight glinted off the bright metal surface of the smooth wing, and the glare made me squint. I swallowed to clear my ears as the cabin pressure suddenly increased. The air vent above my head hissed and blew cool, fresh air over my damp face. The thick haze of cigar and cigarette smoke eddied wildly.

The voice of the stewardess came over the intercom, but the noise inside the plane drowned her out. She was standing between the compartments, a professional smile on her pretty face. She persisted in her effort to make herself heard until the din subsided. "We will not take off until everyone is seated with his seat belt fastened," she warned.

The games broke up one by one, and the reluctant gamblers slid into their seats. The girl ran through the usual procedure of demonstrating the oxygen mask and pointing out the emergency exits. I noticed a red panel above my window. There was an emergency locking lever recessed behind it. The section of the fuselage next to my window seat was an emergency exit which led out onto the wing's broad surface. I thumped on the section with the butt of my fist. Its solid feel was reassuring. I didn't even like to think about its blowing out four miles up while cruising at six hundred miles an hour.

We reached the end of the taxiway and then waited so long I began to think something had gone wrong. Around me the gamblers profanely protested the delay in getting back to their games. Then a sleek United Air Lines 707 flashed past my window, its landing wheels searching for the runway. Blue smoke spurted as the motionless tires bit into the abrasive concrete. The plane rose again in a long, graceful bounce. The tires touched down a second time with blowing puffs of smoke as the plane settled down and disappeared behind the tail of our aircraft.

The quiet hum of the jets behind us picked up volume and intensity. We started to move, and the plane gained speed quickly, the steady acceleration pushing me firmly into my seat. The horizon tilted to a thirty-degree angle and stayed there as the nose of the plane lifted and sighted on a piece of sky dotted with white streamers of cloud.

The ground dropped away rapidly. By the time we reached the cloud wisps, Manhattan was far behind and obscured by a dirty layer of smog. Above us there was nothing but blue space. The plane leveled off, and the SEAT BELTS and NO SMOKING lights went out. The stewardess hadn't tried to enforce the latter. There was the metallic clashing sound of released belts as the gamblers poured out into the aisle to resume their interrupted action.

Duke leaned forward in the direction of the eight-handed poker game. "I'll take half anyone's action," he announced. "Speak up."

"You got half of mine," growled a sallow-faced man with a funereal expression. He counted the bills in his hand. "Thirty-four hundred, Duke."

"I'm in, Toby." Duke removed a wallet from his inside jacket pocket and counted out seventeen hundred-dollar bills. He handed them to the sallow-faced man who added them to half his own roll. Duke grinned at me as he sank back into his cushioned seat again. "Why don't you put Tippy's seventy-five thousand into action?" he asked.

"The only action Tippy's seventy-five thousand is going to get is when it moves from my pocket into his hand," I told Duke.

"You could've just given it to me to give to him," Duke said. His tone was injured. "Everyone knows we're partners. Then you wouldn't have had to make this flight."

"You weren't partners when Tippy was in the gow, doing seven to ten. Anyway, I'm just following orders." I sought for a change of subject. "How come we weren't checked aboard against a manifest?"

Duke winked. "Officially, we were. Plenty of John Does an' Richard Roes, though. Nobody's under his right name, not even a square like you. Nobody wants any publicity about these gamblin' flights to Vegas."

He returned his attention to the poker game. I watched Toby raise behind the opener with two pair and make them stand up. On the next hand he ran three jacks into a full house and sat there with a brooding look on his jaundiced face.

I turned at a tap on the shoulder. One of the white-coated bartenders was dumping a miniature of bourbon into a glass on his tray. He managed to spill a third of it in the process. His eyes were positively pinpoints, and I recalled Candy's remark.

"Candy thinks that one is on junk," I said to Duke when the dark-faced bartender moved along the congested aisle toward the front of the plane.

Duke glanced in that direction. "Him?" He shrugged. "Could be. Neither of this pair is part of the reg'lar crew we usually have on this chartered flight."

"What happened to the stewardess?"

"Prob'ly up in the cockpit with the crew, out of reach of the grabby-handed types," Duke said wisely.

"How often do they put on these flights?"

"For the pros, about twice a year. Vegas is gonna see seventy-two hours of real action when this bus hits the ground."

"How long does it take us to get out there?"

"About four hours."

"What burns me is that if Tippy had only told Hazel he was going to be in Vegas, she wouldn't have sent me to New York with his money," I complained. "I was only a couple hundred miles from Vegas when I started this round trip."

"Somethin' came up unexpected," Duke explained. He peeled the cellophane from a fresh cigar. "How's Hazel these days?"

"Never better."

"I remember when Blue Shirt Charlie Andrews first brought her around," Duke reminisced. "That Andrews was a gamblin' fool, an' even as a kid Hazel was a swinger. Party all night an' then kick your hat off at the breakfast table." He reflected for a moment. "She must still be okay. Not many broads would turn loose seventy-five big ones so easy, even if they knew Tippy Larkin had given it to Andrews to hold while Tippy was doin' time. Hazel always was on the level, though. An' full of hell. I remember one time in El Paso she got the bartender to slip a Mickey to an obnoxious-type who was pesterin' her while Andrews was gamblin' upstairs. Then she boxed the guy in the booth so he couldn't get out without crawlin' over her, an' let nature take its course. Which it did. She-"

"Good afternoon, gentlemen." The loudspeaker came on over our heads. "This is your pilot, Captain Bernstein, speaking. We are flying at our assigned altitude of thirty-three thousand. Weather ahead is clear. Our estimated time of arrival is five-twelve P.M., Nevada time. Ground temperature is eighty-two degrees. Limousines will be waiting at the airport. Mazel tov."

The metallic voice stopped. Duke was again watching the poker game. Up the aisle I could see Sal's red weskit clashing with Candy's lime-green suit as money changed hands furiously at the largest crap game. There were few aboard the plane who sat like me with a drink in hand.

Despite the noise around me, I dozed off. I woke a couple of times and glanced out the window. The ground beneath us had changed from green-and-black agricultural squares to rocky, gray-brown, desolate-looking terrain with few signs of habitation.

Once when I woke, Duke was counting bills beside me with a satisfied look on his cherubic face. The gamblers plied their trade steadily with never a thought to their surroundings. My nose and throat were beginning to get the dry, stuffed-up feeling associated with prolonged high-altitude flights.

It was the loudspeaker that woke me from my next catnap. "-as I say!" a harsh voice demanded. There was a thudding noise followed by heavy breathing and a gurgling sound.

"You-you knifed him!" a girl's voice said tremulously.

I sat up and blinked the sleep from my eyes.

"Fly it in where I said!" the same harsh voice commanded. "And get away from that mike button or I'll-"

The loudspeaker went dead.

Duke Conboy was staring up at it curiously. I couldn't see that anyone else was paying attention. Duke looked at me and shrugged. "Thought I heard somethin' about a knife."

"I heard it, too."

"They got a movie goin' up in the cockpit?" Duke glanced at his watch. "Only about twenty minutes to go. It must've been somethin' about landin' instructions. Yeah, there we go now."

The steady rumble of the engines had eased off. The squeal of fluid rushing through the hydraulic lines was followed by a series of vibrations. The trailing edge of the wing outside my window dropped away as the flaps began to lower. "Wonder why they didn't tell us to put our seat belts back on?" Duke speculated. His clumsy-looking but nimble fingers refastened his belt.

Heavier vibrations shook the plane. Thumping sounds indicated that the landing gear had been extended. The back of my seat pushed me forward as the plane took a nose-down attitude and began a rapid descent. I could see barren ground moving upward.

The aircraft banked steeply as it rushed toward the earth. Under the trailing edge of the wing I saw a black macadam landing strip move backward. At that height it looked no larger than a burnt matchstick, but it grew in size rapidly as we continued to descend in a sweeping turn.

I had never flown into Las Vegas, but I was sure there must be a complex of landing strips as at every major airport. From where we were I could still see only the single runway. I pressed my face against the cool window-glass to extend my view, searching for the sprawling, gambling city. Beyond the wing tip, in a shallow valley a few miles away, I could see a small town. Its three-block business district was bisected by a ribbon of straight, pale, concrete highway paralleled by a single-track railroad. Both appeared to come from nowhere and lead off over the beige desert to an uninterrupted horizon.

The engines surged with added power and the plane leveled out. We were so low I could see plainly thin shadows cast by stubby mesquite that dotted the arid ground bordering the runway. The pilot banked again, grinding down more flaps. I had another glimpse of the landing strip as the wing dipped. It looked terribly short. At its near end the twin propellers of a small private plane sent flashes of reflected sunlight from spinning propeller blades. I'd missed seeing the plane before because its dune-yellow color blended it into the parched landscape.

I turned to Duke. "Where do these flights generally land? Do they have a private strip-"

There was a jarring jolt followed by a loud BANG! We were on the ground before I realized we were that close. A cloud of brown dust and sand came up over the forward edge of the wing. He's missed the runway, I thought. Then we lifted as the engines burst into a crescendo of noise. I decided that the pilot intended to go round again, but we hit the macadam with a severe jolt for the second time. I was pitched forward against the seat in front of me before I realized that the pilot had reversed the engine thrust and was applying full power to slow us down.

Shouts, yells, and curses filled our section of the plane as the unprepared gamblers were stacked in heaps in the aisle. I forced myself back into my seat so I could look out the window again. There was a sharp, explosive noise beneath the plane. A circular metal object flew off to one side from under the edge of the wing and spun away. Trailing it was a black tubular ring. I had to look again before I realized that it was the blown-out tire that had been blasted loose from the dual-wheel landing gear when the retaining rim tore loose from the shock of the hard landing.

I could feel the brakes being applied in quick jabs as the deep-throated engines tried in vain to check us. "What the hell happened?" Duke yelled beside me. The brakes went on again as the jets kept working at full pitch. We yawed back and forth as brakes and reverse thrust took effect. Then the plane veered hard to the right. It left the macadam and bounced violently over softer, sandy ground. We bobbed across the uneven earth, and I was rammed forward into the seat ahead of me again.

My shoulder banged into Duke Conboy sitting ashen-faced beside me. The plane sounded as though it was breaking to pieces. It swerved and hit the macadam again, spun around, and finally came to a stop with a long shudder. It was cocked sideways across the last few feet of runway. Forced against the window again, I found myself staring up the airstrip in the direction of the private plane whose glinting propellers were taxiing it rapidly toward us. The plane's pointed nose and defiantly upright tail glittered as the setting sun turned its dune-yellow paint to glistening gold. Even before it came to a full stop near us, a man in khakis climbed out of the passenger side onto the low wing, then jumped down to the ground.

Slung across his shoulder was a machine-gun.

The man sprinted toward the rear of our plane and disappeared from my view.

There was dead silence around me for a long moment. Then there was a babel of profane complaints as the gamblers dragged themselves to their feet, clutching at various parts of bruised anatomies. "Jesus!" Duke exclaimed hoarsely. "What d'you suppose-"

"Each person is to remain in seat!" a heavily accented voice rasped over the cabin loudspeaker system. "We mean business! Man in rear of plane has Sten gun to use!"

A brrr-rrr-rrrttt of machine-gun fire punctuated the words. Someone had opened the exit in the rear of the plane, and the man with the machine-gun had climbed the lowered stairway and placed himself in charge.

The sound of machine-gun bullets ripping into the ceiling of the plane had sent the gamblers diving into their seats. Down the aisle, at a run from the rear of the plane, came the white-coated bartender with the pin point eyes. That's the little bastard who opened the rear boarding door, I decided. This goddamn situation is a hijack.

"We advance now through the plane!" the loudspeaker blared. I couldn't see into the front compartment around the bulge of the galley. Duke leaned out into the aisle, peering toward the front where the hophead bartender had disappeared. "Your money and your weapons you will put into this canvas sack!" the metallic voice continued. "We watch you closely, and the machine-gun is at the front here to protect our men coming through the plane!"

I thought of Hazel's money. I unfastened my chamois-lined shoulder holster containing my Smith & Wesson.38 and dropped it into the pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me. It sank out of sight with the airline literature and the barf bag. With the gun out of the way, I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled out the bulky envelope containing Tippy Larkin's seventy-five thousand dollars.

I tried to jam the thick manila envelope into the seat pocket, but the space was too small. The mouth of the pocket gaped open, sure to attract unwelcome attention. Tens and twenties in that amount just don't make a neat package. I tried to stuff the envelope down beside me in the seat cushion. It wouldn't fit there, either.

"Look!" Duke said excitedly, nudging me. "It's the other bartender. He's holdin' a gun on the pilot an' stewardess. The little guy is with him an'-" Duke paused "-he's got a knife in his hand. It looks-it looks- they're startin'-"

"We show you we mean business!" the loudspeaker announced.

A murmured ripple of sound ran from front to back of the aircraft.

"God, look at that!" someone exclaimed.

"— cut the pilot's throat!" a voice said clearly.

"— mos' took his head off!" I recognized Candy's voice.

Duke Conboy shrank back into his seat from his aisle-leaning position. His round face was white. "They-they killed-" he stammered.

"You saw what happened to the Jewish pig of a pilot!" the loudspeaker said harshly. "It will be the same for the Jew girl if anyone makes trouble. Each one stand up by seat as we come past and put everything in sack."

The broken-English instructions were poorly worded, but the message was perfectly clear. Another burst of machine-gun fire from the rear of the plane emphasized the order. Everyone flinched.

The girl stewardess was first into my line of vision. Her head was tilted upward by a white-coated arm under her chin, exposing the whole of her slender throat to the bloody, double-bladed knife pressed against it by the hophead bartender. The girl's eyes were bulging with terror. She was so limp it looked as though most of her weight was supported by the dark-skinned arm under her chin. Wet stains on her uniform skirt and stockings indicated she had lost control of her bodily functions.

Right behind the slow-moving pair and in step with them was the second bartender. The group paused beside each seat while cursing, snarling gamblers emptied their pockets into the large canvas sack held out by the second man. I saw knives and guns disappearing along with handfuls of bills. The man with the sack leaned into each seat and made quick patting motions to assure himself that individual pockets had been emptied of money and weapons.

They continued along the aisle with balletlike precision. The men remained back-to-back with the girl in front of them. The knife at the girl's strained, pulsating throat never wavered. Duke stood up and threw his money into the sack. I tossed Hazel's manila envelope with Larkin's seventy-five G's and my own wallet into the sack. A deft hand patted my pockets lightly. I sat down with a brassy taste in my throat. I was going to look like a prize ass trying to explain this development to Hazel.

The bizarre ballet moved into the rear compartment of the plane. Everyone twisted in his seat to watch. Men leaned out into the aisles to see the procession as it passed out of sight. "The bastards'll get better'n a quarter million on this job," Duke predicted sorrowfully.

It struck me that while the machine gunner at the rear of the stairway of the plane was a hard-and-fast reality, there couldn't be another in the cockpit as the man with the sack had said. Machine gun or not, a man in the front of the plane couldn't hope to walk down the aisle alone among sixty infuriated gamblers without a hostage like the young stewardess and hope to make it to the rear exit alive. The hijacker who had been doing all the talking was running a bluff.

I looked up at the emergency-exit handle above my head, then fumbled in the storage pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me and retrieved the Smith & Wesson I had dropped into it. I had just reached for the emergency-exit handle at the top of the window when a choked feminine scream that quickly died out sounded above a renewed babble of voices all around me.

"He killed the girl!" someone shouted from the rear compartment. "The hook-nosed sonofabitch knifed the girl!"

A rattle of machine gun fire brought silence again. Men who had started to surge out into the aisle shrank back into their seats quickly. I jerked the red emergency-exit handle, releasing the locking pins. The window section sagged, and I took hold of the handles at the top and bottom and pulled the panel toward me. I dumped the entire window section in Duke's lap as dry, hot desert air flowed over me. I crawled out the opening onto the wing, feeling as conspicuous in the bright sunlight as a snowflake on a coal pile.

On hands and knees I scrambled farther out onto the wing so I could see under the tail of the 727. The private plane was turning in a short arc, pointing back up the runway. I could see the registration number NR 81332 painted on its fuselage.

I stopped crawling when I could see the rear stairway extending from the tail section to the ground. The white-coated bartender who had held the knife at the girl's throat during the march through the plane was two-thirds of the way down to the ground. I dropped prone on the sloping surface of the wing and fired at him three times. He flew sideways off the stairway and sprawled on the sandy soil. He tried to get up, fell back, and tried again. He didn't make it, but I could see him still moving.

The second man started down the ladder. He had the canvas sack slung over his shoulder, and its bulk concealed nearly all of his body. Right behind him on the stairway was the machine gunner. I snapped off a shot at the first man's fast-moving feet, but nothing happened.

At the sound of my shot the machine gunner stopped on the stairway. He raised his weapon above the handrail and aimed it in my direction. I squeezed off another shot at the man with the sack. He did a stutter step, then plunged to the ground. The sack rolled away from him.

The machine gunner let go a burst at me. I had an indelible impression of a bronzed, strong-featured face with an eagle-beak nose above the winking snout of the machine gun as slugs chewed up the wing between me and the emergency-exit window.

I pulled back farther onto the wing's broad surface. When the sound of the machine gun died out, I inched forward again. The machine gunner had slung his weapon over his shoulder by its sling when he hit the ground, had grabbed up the canvas sack, and was running for the waiting plane. I crossed my right hand over my left wrist to try to sight in on him with my.38. I let go the shot, but at that distance I might as well have tossed a pebble. The man threw the sack into the plane and jumped aboard it. The plane roared down the runway and cleared the strip in what looked like less than six hundred yards.

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.