embarrassment. He was carrying a pistol in each hand. He was followed immediately by an older man in dark glasses and a tall pretty girl in a white blouse. Both the girl and the man had shotguns. Montgomery took a backward step, crossing his fingers.
“Continue what you’re doing,” the girl said pleasantly. “You will not be hurt.”
The army helicopters passed in staggered formation, like four ponderous geese, heading for Miami Beach. And that meant, Shayne knew, that the security of the airport was now in the hands of sixty-odd uniformed guards under the command of Teddy Sparrow, eked out by a few Miami police on traffic duty near the interchange.
The radio crackled with a warning from the tower that they were entering a closed zone. They were to ascend at once to seven hundred and fifty feet and await landing instructions.
“Do what they tell you,” Shayne said.
He was using Berger’s binoculars. Nothing unusual was happening in the terminal area. A black Port Authority sedan, traveling fast on the perimeter road inside the big fence along the southern boundary of the airport, turned in among the warehouses. He followed its progress through his binoculars until it stopped abruptly and a man wearing the black uniform of the security guards jumped out and ran into a warehouse.
Sweeping the area, Shayne picked up a swirl of activity involving two planes on the loading apron. Several fork-lift trucks worked back and forth between the nearest warehouse and the planes, moving large container pallets. He tightened the focus and studied the scene until he realized what bothered him about it. These were not ordinary warehouse workers. They were working too fast.
“Take it down, McSorley,” he snapped. “Pick an open place in the south parking lot.”
“Around here we do what the tower says. That way we stay healthy.”
“Goddamn it-”
“All right!” McSorley said hastily. “But under duress.”
They dropped rapidly. The tower radio squawked: “Bell one-forty, maintain elevation. Hold for instructions.”
McSorley answered, “Approach control, emergency, out of fuel. Request permission to land on parking ramp.”
He was ordered to use the docking apron near Gate 1. By that time they were already down, on an unoccupied patch of concrete near the pumping station. Shayne leaped out and raced to his Buick. He grabbed up the phone in the front seat and signaled the operator.
She took a moment to answer. Continuing to call her frequency, he took a flask out of the glove compartment, unscrewed the cap and drank.
“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
