me. Hell with Boots, who needs him?”
The funnel Shayne was caught in reversed direction. Perhaps the plane was turning. The noise intensified.
He could feel the accumulating pressure. Every muscle was tense. Something happened, and he discovered that he could raise his hand. He waved it gently, feeling the strength flow into his fingers. Then he took Ramon by the throat.
The movement carried them both off the couch. Ramon croaked and tore at Shayne’s fingers. Shayne’s weight held him down.
A JetStar, Shayne thought. Two men at the controls. As soon as they climbed to cruising level, one would come back to make sure the passenger was giving no trouble. A quick series of events leaped into Shayne’s mind. He would find the key to the handcuffs, then Ramon’s gun. He would carry the gun into the cockpit and issue orders for an immediate return to ground. Frightened by the light in his eye, they would obey him at once.
But he knew it was beyond him. He could make only the basic moves, and only one at a time.
He realized that Ramon had stopped struggling. He began feeling through pockets to find the key, his mind wheeling and dipping. He gave up finally and raised his head. A red notice on the window over the wing caught his eye. He lurched to his knees. To his surprise, the plane was still on the ground. It was coming about. He dragged Ramon to the window and peered out.
They were on the furthest runway. An oily haze shimmered above the blacktop. On the other side of the field, a cluster of 707s blocked the view of anyone watching the takeoff from ground level. Another fantasy began to unreel in Shayne’s mind.
Flopping, he resumed his search for the key. The plane completed its turns and began to roll forward in a straight line. To Shayne it was a weaving, rocking motion. He raised his head again, and saw a fence sliding rapidly past the window. Suddenly the jets cut loose.
The scream and the sudden forward surge whirled Shayne across the cabin. With his free hand he slapped upward at the rod holding the emergency window. The rod snapped up, the window fell away.
Dragging the unconscious Ramon, Shayne jumped onto the sloping surface of the wing. The engines screamed insanely. The forward rush of the plane pulled the wing out from under the two men, and Shayne had his first clear thought. Drunks survive falls that would kill or cripple them when sober.
He embraced Ramon loosely. They reversed in the air. He landed, completely relaxed, with Ramon beneath him to break his fall.
They rolled twice.
After the runway stopped heaving around Shayne, he lay still for a long moment. The air was foul with the jet’s exhaust. He raised his head slowly and watched the plane leave the ground and go into its slow climbing turn.
It was only when he went back to looking for the handcuff key that he understood that Ramon was dead.
He wasted a moment scrabbling for a pulse, but gave that up when he saw what had happened to the back of Ramon’s head. He tried to rise, and was reminded again of the handcuffs. A plane whispered past high overhead, perhaps waiting for clearance to land. He fumbled desperately in the dead man’s pockets. Another plane approached, much lower, uttering its terrible scream. Then all at once he was slipping the key into the lock. The handcuffs sprang open.
He dragged Ramon into the tall weeds between the runway and the fence. All this time, he realized, he had been waiting for a siren. He looked across the field at the terminal. The planes and the buildings danced in the hot haze. A baggage truck moved out to a newly arrived plane. Everything seemed peaceful.
He started for a gate. He was almost there when the cognac closed its fist. The wild jet scream rose in intensity and pitch and sucked Shayne with it. The weeds around him swayed violently in the wind.
CHAPTER 4
Shayne woke up in a darkened room.
He was wearing only his shorts. When he raised his head from the pillow there was a blinding explosion and he had the distinct sensation that the ceiling had come down on him.
Later, he was awakened by the sound of a key. A light flashed, and Jackie Wales was standing beside the bed looking down at him.
“Mike, you’re awake.”
He blinked slowly, reached out and touched her.
“Boy!” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be communicating again for days.”
“Timesit?” He cleared his throat raspingly and tried again. “What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty in the evening. Everything under control.” She came down on the bed beside him. “I was scared out of my wits when you opened the door and fell in. Mike, you looked like death-your clothes ripped, oil on your face, your wrist bleeding. I called a doctor and he said not to worry. You’d been drinking.”
“I had a few. Now I need some coffee. Hot, black-lots of it.”
She kissed him lightly. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
As soon as he was alone, Shayne slid his legs out of bed and worked himself into a sitting position. There was an arrow of pain behind his right eye. Gathering himself, he came to his feet and zigzagged to the bathroom, where he turned on the hot water in the shower and sat on the closed toilet while the room filled with steam. Soon he was running with sweat. He switched on the cold water and stepped into the icy stream, which shocked him fully awake for the first time. Then he switched over to hot again and steamed out more cognac.
The door opened and Jackie groped her way to him with a container of hot, bitter coffee. He drank it all, and then steamed some more. After two more hot-cold cycles, he came out into the bedroom, a soggy towel about his waist, moving almost normally. But his head still felt as fragile as glass.
Jackie had more coffee for him. He waved it aside.
“What’s been happening?”
He dropped into a chair and tried to make the other furniture stay in place while she told him. Two of Gregory’s men had taken her and Tim Rourke to an isolated farmhouse, refusing to say why. Half an hour later there was a phone call. They were driven back to town and set free, still with no explanation.
They returned to Tim Rourke’s motel. Soon afterward there was a knock on the door, and when they opened it, Shayne pitched headlong into the room, muttering something about Gregory. Before putting him to bed they had taken the precaution of changing motels.
“Which wasn’t exactly easy,” she concluded. “You’re heavy, Mike.”
Shayne grunted. “Where’s Tim?”
“He has a plan for getting into Sam Rapp’s party. He said if you woke up to tell you he’s taking care of everything.” She hesitated. “I’m worried about him. It seems a lot more serious than it did this morning, but Tim thinks they’re just going to let him barge right in-”
Bearing down, Shayne had been able to keep abreast of what she was telling him. “Go over it again. This party. It’s at Judge Kendrick’s fishing camp and Sam Rapp is giving it. Who’s going to be there?”
An hour later, in a Hertz Chevy, Shayne was driving west on the winding two-lane road to Lake Talquin. Jackie had marked the route for him on a road map; Shayne had never worked in this part of the country. He drove carefully, concentrating on keeping all four wheels on the highway. A tiny jet engine still screamed faintly inside his head, and if he looked too long at anything it began to revolve. But he had come a long way.
Whenever the highway began to slide he felt in his pocket for a benzedrine inhaler and breathed in deeply. After that, for a time, everything sharpened.
He slowed, knowing from Jackie’s directions that he was approaching the turnoff. He passed a stationary car with its parking lights on, pulled off on the shoulder near a closed gate. The name on a small marker leaped out at Shayne: Kendrick.
He continued until he found a place to leave the car, and used the inhaler again before getting out. He checked the fence around the Kendrick property, using a powerful three-cell flashlight. It was heavy-duty wire,
