"I'll keep it brief," Erikson said. "I'm on temporary loan to two government agencies who have overlapping intelligence interests. The names don't matter. I'm supposed to act as liaison between them and a special group of Israeli intelligence people who have been warning the State Department about Arab fedayeen operations in this country, operations aimed at pulling coups to raise money in the U.S. to finance their guerilla activities in the Middle East. Up to now, I'm afraid, no one took their warnings seriously enough."
He sipped at his coffee again. "We have feelers out all over the country, of course, and when we heard a rumor about a supposed hijack of an airliner near Las Vegas, I started to check into it. I found that powerful influences in the state had clamped such a tight lid on the affair that no one could produce a proper list of the plane passengers for me to follow up on."
He accepted Hazel's offer of a cigarette. "It looked like a dead end, but we always have ways and means to widen a crack. We came up with a tip finally that the hijackers used a private plane to make their getaway, so we took a look at all FAA flight-plan records for that particular day, looking for nonscheduled flights within a thousand miles of the scene. And we found that all flight plans had been closed out except one from the Colonial Airport near Tucson."
Erikson set down his coffee cup. "That was enough to bring me out here yesterday morning. Last night I learned that the missing private plane had been found with the pilot alone in it. He'd been shot in the back of the head. Then I learned that an inquiry had been made of the White Pine County's law enforcement office about a plane with the registration number NR eight-one-three-three-two, the number of the dead pilot's plane. Imagine my surprise when I found that the inquiry had been initiated from the Rancho Dolorosa in Ely, Nevada. Naturally I thought of my old friend, the Shoot-'Em-Up Kid."
Erikson's rocklike features were creased in the closest they ever came to a smile.
"Naturally." There was going to be no talking my way out of this one.
"You were on the hijacked plane?"
"Yes."
"You may not be accident-prone, but you sure as hell are incident-prone," Erikson observed. "What happened?"
I told him.
"And you said you got a good look at the one who got away," Hazel reminded me when I finished.
I'd left that out deliberately because I could see complications ahead. Hazel kept on talking, explaining to Erikson about Tippy Larkin's money and how I happened to be on the gamblers' chartered flight. Erikson kept nodding, but his eyes were still on mine. "You'd recognize the man?" he asked me when Hazel stopped.
"I might."
"Good," he said briskly. "You'll have a chance to recognize him if we get a break in Tucson."
"Now wait a minute. I'm not volunteering for your campaign. I'm not-"
"You'd like to get Hazel's money back, wouldn't you?" he interrupted me.
"Well, sure, but I don't need you hanging around my neck to get it back. If I can find out who hired that plane-"
"Do I need to remind you that you'll get a lot more information if I'm with you?" Erikson said it confidently as he rose to his feet. "Let's get going. My bullet holes won't stand the long drive down there, so we'll go to the airport in Ely and charter a flight."
I looked at Hazel.
"You bring him back here with you afterward," she told me.
It seemed that I was a minority of one in regard to a chaperoned trip to the Colonial Airport in Tucson.
3
There were two reasons why I eventually agreed to fly to Tucson with Karl Erikson.
One was forthright: I wanted a shot at recovering Hazel's money. And my own. I wasn't about to overlook the possibility of a bit of interest, either.
The second reason was more subtle.
When I first visited Hazel at her ranch after I escaped from the prison hospital, I was on the run from the law as I had been all my adult life. It didn't make any difference to Hazel, who hadn't been brought up in a vacuum, but I didn't want to bring her any trouble. Then her stepfather, a nice old guy who wouldn't act his age, was killed on the ranch by a bunch of vicious kids who went further than they intended in trying to scare him.
I got into the tail end of the act, and I sickened the kids of the idea that they were running things in that part of the county. Afterward, though, I had to leave the ranch in a hurry because I couldn't afford to hang around and answer lawmen's questions about what had happened. Or about my background.
Erikson knew about the background when he recruited me for Cuba, but he needed me for what I could do for the operation. When he finally got back to Florida with the bundle that turned out to belong to the State Department and wasn't partly mine as I'd expected, in partial recompense Erikson gave me his word that no law-enforcement agency would bother me at the ranch.
I could have kicked myself that I hadn't inserted a stipulation that Karl Erikson couldn't bother me, either. Not that it would really have done any good. There weren't three other men in the world I'd rather have watching my back in a tight spot; but Erikson was a dedicated, hard-nosed government agent who let nothing and nobody stand in the way of getting his job done. I didn't want him twisting my arm in front of Hazel, threatening the removal of my umbrella. I didn't want her upset, but she'd let the cat out of the bag about me getting a good look at the escaped hijacker, and as far as Erikson was concerned, this made me essential to his trip to Tucson.
I'd much rather have gone alone. Erikson was an ex-Navy commander, a specialist in communications. He was also used to giving orders. I wasn't used to taking them. We'd hung up several limes on the Cuban caper-long before I had any idea who he really was-because of his insistence upon doing things his way. He was an odd mixture of practicality and chivalry. I had to keep pointing out to him in Cuba that we weren't in a chivalrous part of the world.
So we landed at the Tucson Municipal Airport and Erikson hired a car. He drove north, after asking directions, clear across town, out past the Rillito Racetrack. He had to ask directions twice more before we found the Colonial Airport tucked away a mile down a dirt road leading off U.S. Highway 80–89.
The field had a single, hard-packed, dirt landing strip, two slant-roofed sheds open to the elements on either end under which three small planes were staked down, and a rickety-looking administration building too small for a game of Ping-Pong. From under one of the sheds came the ringing sound of metal on metal as Erikson cut the engine and we sat there watching heat waves shimmering.
"No rush to welcome visitors," I said. Erikson grunted. "If the hijackers were members of an Arab fedayeen group, that could be why they were so rough on the Jewish plane crew," I voiced a thought that had occurred to me previously.
"And if they weren't, they just might have wanted to give that impression," Erikson said.
"You have a devious mind," I complained. "Who are we going to talk to here?"
"Anyone."
He opened the car door and led the way across the sun-seared parking lot. The clang of metal on metal ceased, and a stocky figure in oil-stained work pants appeared from under one of the planes. His features were so dark I took a second look at him, but his was a young, frank, open face in contrast to the strong-featured mask of violence I had seen behind the machine gun.
"I hope you don't want to fly, gents, because we don't have a pilot," the boy said as he walked toward us. I could see that he had Mexican blood in him. There was grease halfway up his powerful forearms.
"What about Frank Dalrymple?" Erikson asked.
"If you know Frank, brace yourself. He's dead."