Flashpoint

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.

2

'Hey, there's a road!' Sal called out as I rejoined the group.

The 'road' consisted of time-worn ruts overgrown with tangled bunch grass and scrubby cactus. Duke studied it doubtfully. He was carrying his jacket over his arm, but in the stifling heat large patches of perspiration had already broken through his white shirt. 'Where d'you figure we are?' he asked me in a low tone after drawing me to one side.

'We can't be too far from Vegas,' I answered. 'You said yourself we were only twenty minutes away just before the hijack started. And if the hijack gang planned everything else as well as they did the hijack itself, they probably took into account that the Seven-twenty-seven couldn't disappear too soon from radar screens by changing course without drawing attention to itself. I'll bet we're as close as thirty miles. Maybe closer.' I lowered my voice. 'This hike to town isn't going to work, Duke.'

'It's not?'

'No. You saw the size of the town. You've got sixty men here. That means you need ten cars to move them. In a town like that you couldn't round up ten extra cars with a gun.' Duke swiped at the moisture on his upper lip with a chubby forefinger while he considered this. 'But there's something else. Once our plane was overdue in Vegas, every law enforcement agency in the state was alerted to be on the lookout for it. And even in that little town we saw from the air, someone must have noticed a plane as big as ours trying to land just a few miles away. The natural thing for them to do would be to call the sheriff's department.'

'So?'

'We're going to meet a reception committee before we ever make it to that town.'

'If we do, I've got a hole card.' Duke said it confidently.

'You're going to need it,' I warned.

Duke raised his voice to address the waiting gamblers. 'Okay, boys. Follow the track. It's easier goin', anyway. An' if anyone shows up, let me do the talkin'.'

The men started out in a struggling line along the rutted road. 'Whaddya s'pose that jazz was on the plane about Jewish pigs?' Duke asked as I fell in beside him.

'I've been wondering about that. If this was the Middle East, I'd say that the Arabs had just conducted a raid on the Israelis.'

'Them two sonsabitches we left by the plane sure looked like Ay-rabs,' Duke said thoughtfully.

'So did the one who got away.'

'You got a good look at him?'

'I sure did.'

After that we saved our breath. It was hot, dusty walking. Loose stones rolled underfoot, endangering equilibrium and ankles. There wasn't a tree visible with even a promise of shade. Nothing seemed to grow taller than waist-high in this desert country. We were lucky the plane had come down so close to sundown. If it had been in the middle of the day, some of the poorly-conditioned gamblers would have been in real difficulty.

'Hey, Duke! Cars!'

The shout was raised from the head of the procession where-improbably enough-the ex-boxer Tim was among the leaders. He pointed at two dust clouds advancing toward us along the rutted trail we were following.

'Let me handle it when they get here!' Duke called. 'Out of the road, boys. We'll wait for them.'

The gamblers moved off to one side. They bunched into groups from which an uneasy bzz-bzz of conversation rose during the five minutes it took the cars causing the dust clouds to reach us. Both were jeeps, and in the lead one a big man in a deputy's uniform with numerous stripes on one sleeve sat beside the driver. The men in the jeeps stared curiously at the city-dressed gamblers against a background so obviously inhospitable to city types.

'I'm Morgan,' the uniformed deputy announced. 'Where's the plane?'

'Back at the landin' strip,' Duke answered.

'Where's the crew?'

'With the plane.'

'I'm a doctor,' a man in the second jeep said. 'Does anyone at the plane need first aid?'

Duke looked at his watch. 'I doubt it.'

'You doubt it? You don't know? What kind of answer-'

The deputy's heavier voice drowned out the doctor's. He was looking directly at Duke. 'What happened to the plane?'