Flashpoint

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