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 paint to glistening gold. Even before it came to a full stop near us, a man in khakis climbed out of the passenger side onto the low wing, then jumped down to the ground.
Slung across his shoulder was a machine-gun.
The man sprinted toward the rear of our plane and disappeared from my view.
There was dead silence around me for a long moment. Then there was a babel of profane complaints as the gamblers dragged themselves to their feet, clutching at various parts of bruised anatomies. "Jesus!" Duke exclaimed hoarsely. "What d'you suppose-"
"Each person is to remain in seat!" a heavily accented voice rasped over the cabin loudspeaker system. "We mean business! Man in rear of plane has Sten gun to use!"
A brrr-rrr-rrrttt of machine-gun fire punctuated the words. Someone had opened the exit in the rear of the plane, and the man with the machine-gun had climbed the lowered stairway and placed himself in charge.
The sound of machine-gun bullets ripping into the ceiling of the plane had sent the gamblers diving into their seats. Down the aisle, at a run from the rear of the plane, came the white-coated bartender with the pin point eyes. That's the little bastard who opened the rear boarding door, I decided. This goddamn situation is a hijack.
"We advance now through the plane!" the loudspeaker blared. I couldn't see into the front compartment around the bulge of the galley. Duke leaned out into the aisle, peering toward the front where the hophead bartender had disappeared. "Your money and your weapons you will put into this canvas sack!" the metallic voice continued. "We watch you closely, and the machine-gun is at the front here to protect our men coming through the plane!"
I thought of Hazel's money. I unfastened my chamois-lined shoulder holster containing my Smith & Wesson.38 and dropped it into the pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me. It sank out of sight with the airline literature and the barf bag. With the gun out of the way, I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled out the bulky envelope containing Tippy Larkin's seventy-five thousand dollars.
I tried to jam the thick manila envelope into the seat pocket, but the space was too small. The mouth of the pocket gaped open, sure to attract unwelcome attention. Tens and twenties in that amount just don't make a neat package. I tried to stuff the envelope down beside me in the seat cushion. It wouldn't fit there, either.
"Look!" Duke said excitedly, nudging me. "It's the other bartender. He's holdin' a gun on the pilot an' stewardess. The little guy is with him an'-" Duke paused "-he's got a knife in his hand. It looks-it looks- they're startin'-"
"We show you we mean business!" the loudspeaker announced.
A murmured ripple of sound ran from front to back of the aircraft.
"God, look at that!" someone exclaimed.
"— cut the pilot's throat!" a voice said clearly.
"— mos' took his head off!" I recognized Candy's voice.
Duke Conboy shrank back into his seat from his aisle-leaning position. His round face was white. "They-they killed-" he stammered.
"You saw what happened to the Jewish pig of a pilot!" the loudspeaker said harshly. "It will be the same for the Jew girl if anyone makes trouble. Each one stand up by seat as we come past and put everything in sack."
The broken-English instructions were poorly worded, but the message was perfectly clear. Another burst of machine-gun fire from the rear of the plane emphasized the order. Everyone flinched.
The girl stewardess was first into my line of vision. Her head was tilted upward by a white-coated arm under her chin, exposing the whole of her slender throat to the bloody, double-bladed knife pressed against it by the hophead bartender. The girl's eyes were bulging with terror. She was so limp it looked as though most of her weight was supported by the dark-skinned arm under her chin. Wet stains on her uniform skirt and stockings indicated she had lost control of her bodily functions.
Right behind the slow-moving pair and in step with them was the second bartender. The group paused beside each seat while cursing, snarling gamblers emptied their pockets into the large canvas sack held out by the second man. I saw knives and guns disappearing along with handfuls of bills. The man with the sack leaned into each seat and made quick patting motions to assure himself that individual pockets had been emptied of money and weapons.
They continued along the aisle with balletlike precision. The men remained back-to-back with the girl in front of them. The knife at the girl's strained, pulsating throat never wavered. Duke stood up and threw his money into the sack. I tossed Hazel's manila envelope with Larkin's seventy-five G's and my own wallet into the sack. A deft hand patted my pockets lightly. I sat down with a brassy taste in my throat. I was going to look like a prize ass trying to explain this development to Hazel.
The bizarre ballet moved into the rear compartment of the plane. Everyone twisted in his seat to watch. Men leaned out into the aisles to see the procession as it passed out of sight. "The bastards'll get better'n a quarter million on this job," Duke predicted sorrowfully.
It struck me that while the machine gunner at the rear of the stairway of the plane was a hard-and-fast reality, there couldn't be another in the cockpit as the man with the sack had said. Machine gun or not, a man in the front of the plane couldn't hope to walk down the aisle alone among sixty infuriated gamblers without a hostage like the young stewardess and hope to make it to the rear exit alive. The hijacker who had been doing all the talking was running a bluff.
I looked up at the emergency-exit handle above my head, then fumbled in the storage pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me and retrieved the Smith & Wesson I had dropped into it. I had just reached for the emergency-exit handle at the top of the window when a choked feminine scream that quickly died out sounded above a renewed babble of voices all around me.
"He killed the girl!" someone shouted from the rear compartment. "The hook-nosed sonofabitch knifed the girl!"
A rattle of machine gun fire brought silence again. Men who had started to surge out into the aisle shrank back into their seats quickly. I jerked the red emergency-exit handle, releasing the locking pins. The window section sagged, and I took hold of the handles at the top and bottom and pulled the panel toward me. I dumped the entire window section in Duke's lap as dry, hot desert air flowed over me. I crawled out the opening onto the wing, feeling as conspicuous in the bright sunlight as a snowflake on a coal pile.
On hands and knees I scrambled farther out onto the wing so I could see under the tail of the 727. The private plane was turning in a short arc, pointing back up the runway. I could see the registration number NR 81332 painted on its fuselage.
I stopped crawling when I could see the rear stairway extending from the tail section to the ground. The white-coated bartender who had held the knife at the girl's throat during the march through the plane was two-thirds of the way down to the ground. I dropped prone on the sloping surface of the wing and fired at him three times. He flew sideways off the stairway and sprawled on the sandy soil. He tried to get up, fell back, and tried again. He didn't make it, but I could see him still moving.