and he could screw things up one way or the other, before, during or after. But Chester was sold on him, and he did have a prior claim to be in the deal, so there was nothing Parker could do about it, except plan to get rid of him as soon as the job was done. Blowhards and cowards were liabilities and Parker had evaded the law this long by systematically canceling his liabilities as soon as possible.
One thing he could do to offset Mal was bring in a couple more men. He convinced Chester that they’d need at least five men to run the operation successfully, and then he contacted Ryan and Sill, good men both, who had also bowed out of the job he’d come to see about and were still in Chicago.
They had three weeks and during that time Parker gradually took over as leader of the string. He arranged for the bankrolling of the job, and set them up with the rental of a small plane. Whether the money was to change hands at Angikuni Lake or the Pacific island, they would need an airplane to get at it. Ryan could fly, and had the necessary licenses. Parker also arranged for the arming of the group.
Less than a week before the exchange was to be made, they boarded the rented plane at Chicago and flew to San Francisco. Once in town, Ryan and Sill shadowed the lawyer, Bleak, until they knew the general pattern of his movements. Then, with one day to go, they hit his apartment at two in the morning.
Bleak was an elderly man, a widower whose financial interests, aside from law practice and munitions trading, included real estate, stock speculation and a piece of an airplane manufacturing concern. He lived alone in his hilltop apartment, except for a Filipino houseboy who slept in and who was killed in his sleep by Ryan.
Bleak didn’t want to talk, and Parker put Mal to work on him on the theory that cowards make the best torturers. Mal worked with enthusiasm, and before dawn Bleak had told them all they wanted to know.
The money, he told them, was to be brought north by planes from South America to Canada. Two men from the sellers’ group were to be at the island fueling point. The money would be turned over to them there, and they would be guarded by a group of revolutionaries until the planes took off from Canada with the second and last load of munitions. One of the pilots would then radio to the island, and the two men would be allowed to leave with the money.
This part of the operation was tricky, involving radio conversations between individuals on both sides of the transaction, and both sides had worked out code signals to warn of any treachery. Neither group trusted the other very much.
The island, Bleak told them, was a small uninhabited chunk of rock named Keeley’s Island, about two hundred miles southwest of San Francisco. During the Second World War, the Coast Guard had maintained a small base there, from which they had operated sub-hunting planes, but for the last fifteen years the place had been deserted. The airfield was still usable, and the necessary gasoline had already been brought out to the island and stored. The two men from Bleak’s group were already on the island, and the planes, carrying the money, were due at one o’clock the next morning.
Before they left the apartment, Ryan slit the old man’s throat. Otherwise, despite his protestations, he might have gotten on the phone and changed the whole plan.
East of the city, up in the hills, there was a private estate currently unoccupied, the former residence of a movie star. She had owned an airplane, a Piper Cub, and the estate included a small landing strip. The rented plane was there. They drove up there in a stolen Volkswagen Microbus, and Lynn waited in the empty main house while the others boarded the plane and took off for the island.
They found Keeley’s Island on the second pass, and landed to gunfire from the rotting control shack. Parker grabbed up one of the machine guns, jumped out of the plane and, while the others kept up a distracting return fire, made a dash for the nearest storage shed. He worked his way around the shed, and raked the control shack until his ammunition was used up. He waited then, and there was only silence. When he pushed his way into the shack, the two defenders were dead.
Ryan maneuvered the plane out of sight, into one of the still-standing hangars, and they sat down to wait. They had arrived at sundown. The dead men had set out small tin cans filled with gasoline along the runway edges, to be lit as markers for the South American planes when they would arrive. Ryan and Sill went out and lit them a little after midnight, and the first plane roared wide-winged into their flickering light at twenty minutes past one. It rolled to a stop on the taxiway off the end of the strip, and the second plane sailed down after it a couple of minutes later.
In the control shack, the five men watched. Mal kept licking his lips and Chester kept studying his rifle to be sure it was really loaded, but the other three waited unmoving.
Three men came out of the first plane, twelve out of the second. Among the twelve were two men carrying bulging briefcases. These two stayed behind the others. The groups met, and came across the field toward the control shack.
“Wait,” whispered Parker. “Wait.”
The first one was reaching for the doorknob before Parker started firing. He had one machine gun at the window to the left of the door, and Sill had the other at the window to the right. Chester and Mal had rifles at the windows farther away on either side. Ryan was in a barracks, the nearest building to the right, with the third rifle. They each also had a sidearm.
The initial burst of gunfire dropped seven of the fifteen. The rest scattered, the pilots and the men carrying the briefcases scurrying back toward the planes. Parker got one of the briefcase-carriers and Ryan the other. They lay out on the cracked tarmac, the briefcases beside them.
Four of the South Americans ran at the barracks where Ryan was holed in. He got one of them, Sill got two more, and the fourth managed to get into the building, where Ryan hunted him down and finished him.
The battle was brief and one-sided. The last South American took refuge in a storage shed. He had two pistols, and they finally had to burn him out. Then they checked the briefcases to be sure they contained the money, and boarded their own plane. By morning they were back in California, landing on the field behind the estate. There they counted the take, which came to ninety-three thousand, four hundred dollars. After deducting the bankrolling expenses, they were left with just over ninety thousand dollars.
They had already decided on the split. Chester, as the man who had made the job possible, was to get a third: thirty thousand dollars. Mal and Parker each were to get a quarter: twenty-two thousand, five hundred. And Ryan and Sill were to split the last sixth between them: fifteen thousand, seven and a half thousand each. Parker intended to take Mal’s slice, too, which would give him a total of forty-five thousand — fifty percent of the take. That was the way it should be.
In the deserted mansion, they made the count and the split, and they were to spend the night there — they were all short on sleep — before heading back to Chicago and separating. Parker planned on getting rid of Mal that night, but he hadn’t counted on a double cross, not one involving his wife.
