For a moment Ben stood wondering if he should drop to the ground and risk firing the moment he saw Eric Gorman.
Gorman spoke and his voice was startlingly close. “Both of you get out and walk directly away from the plane.” It was a command, an order given in strength and calmness.
Ben looked quickly at Helen and held his finger warningly to his lips. He knew the stalemate could be quickly and easily broken if he could reach the controls. He shifted his weight. The metal floor creaked. The sound of the shot was close, and it had a metallic sound. The slug punched a clean hole through the floor, and a ragged hole through the roof inches from Ben’s head. Distorted by impact, it made a fading whine into the quiet air. Ben fired at the floor, guessing Gorman’s location. There was silence. Ben could hear his own heart.
Gorman said, “I’ll fire at the first sound I hear. And if I hear the starter. I’ll put three shots up through the seat.” He was moving as he spoke. Ben heard the rustle of the grass. He could not judge Gorman’s location. He did not want to risk movement. The next shot might rip up into John Cassidy, or hit Helen.
She gasped suddenly and he looked out and saw, helplessly, that Lemon had rolled over. The man’s face was distorted with pain but he held a gun pointed through the open doorway aimed at Ben’s middle.
“Drop it, baby.” Lemon said in a thin strained voice. There was a dark stain on the shabby sport jacket, high on the right side of his chest.
It was Helen who spoke. “If you’re Davey Lemon, Brath told us they’re going to kill you too.” She spoke quickly and sharply, and then took a quick silent step to one side, nearer the doorway instead of away from it, and stood with her chin up, looking directly at Lemon.
“Hold him right there, Lemon,” Gorman said. “I’m coming out.”
Ben, watching Lemon closely, saw the man’s eyes shift toward Gorman, saw the uneasy flick of tongue along the lower lip, saw the wavering of the muzzle. When Lemon looked back at Ben. Ben nodded agreement to what Helen had said.
“Lemon!” Gorman said sharply.
The muzzle direction changed with a painful slowness and was aimed under the plane. “Let’s talk a little,” Lemon said.
The answering shot slammed Lemon back so that his gun pointed almost straight up. Lemon rolled back with painful slowness to aim again, and as he did so. Ben made a lunge for the controls. He hit the starter, punched the throttle. The prop turned with a slow whining and caught and blasted hard. He swung the plane hard to the left, hearing the door slam shut. Lemon lay still in the grass. Gorman leaped up and ran toward the farmhouse, looking back over his shoulder. Helen had fallen and she was getting up. He throttled down, left the prop turning, went back and shoved the door open against the wind from the prop.
“Get out,” he told her.
“No, I—”
“Quick!” He pushed at her and she jumped down. Then she saw what he was trying to do. She held the door. He slid John Cassidy over and eased him down onto the grass. There wasn’t time to unload Brath too. He latched the door and got back into the seat.
Gorman was making good time. Ben got the tail up before he’d gone a hundred feet. The running man see me I to be running backward, growing larger and larger. He looked back, veered abruptly to the side and dived for the protection of the white fence. Now the farmhouse was growing large, too quickly. Ben wrenched the plane off the ground as Paul Brath had done. It settled for a moment and then began to climb too slowly. He saw he couldn’t clear the house. He dropped the left wing tip and banked steeply and waited for the wing tip to hook the ground and pinwheel the ship, waited for the crash of the undercarriage against the corner of the building. The earth tilted and dropped away, and at a hundred feet he pulled the plane around like a stone on the end of a string. Gorman had turned and was racing back out across the field toward Helen and the two prone figures. Ben saw the glint of metal in the sun in Gorman’s hand as he ran with the ponderous momentum of a big man.
He knew he had to keep them apart. He slanted over and dived at the open ground between Gorman and Helen. He pulled out, knowing that he had flubbed it and had dived too soon. Yet as he roared up again he turned and saw Gorman pick himself up, stand for a moment and then race back to the shelter of the fence. As Ben swept over him again he saw the gun come up. Ben thought he heard a faint metallic impact somewhere in the ship. He checked the gauges quickly. Gorman ran crouched along the fenceline.
Ben lost Gorman as he turned, and while trying to spot him again, he saw the station wagon begin to move. It was headed down the long drive toward the highway.
He saw then what he had to do and how it could be done. And he felt the skill, the assurance he needed in his hands. He held the wheel delicately. It was as though, in that instant, all his senses had become sharpened. And the plane felt the way the 86s had felt before he had been shot down, felt like an extension of himself.
He passed the station wagon a dozen feet above it and roared to the end of the driveway, banked high across the startled traffic on the highway and came hurtling back, streaking up the driveway with full throttle, not over a foot off the gravel, headed point-blank for the oncoming station wagon. He felt complete and absolute control. He held the plane steady, and at the last improbable fractional part of a second he yanked the wheel back hard, hurling the plane high.
He banked and saw the station wagon on its side in the ditch, one front wheel spinning. The door was pushed up and Gorman climbed out. Ben made another pass and the man dropped flat in the ditch; then he began to crawl back toward the farmhouse, using the ditch for protection. Ben laughed aloud. Gorman fired again as he made another pass. Ben turned and came back up the driveway, flying as low and slow as he dared, his left wing tip over the ditch. As he reached Gorman he tilted the left wing tip delicately into the wide shallow ditch. There was a slight thud, more felt than heard.
When Ben was able to look back he saw Gorman spread-eagled in the shallow ditch, perfectly still. He twisted the plane and put it into a flat glide. He landed it cross-wind and taxied it toward Helen. Her hair was bright in the sun. He cut the motor.
He looked at his hands. They felt numb and heavy. The brief life had gone out of them...
After the formalities were over, Detective Lieutenant Davis took them across the empty New York street for coffee. It was midnight and a misty rain was falling. There were beads of it in Helen’s hair. They got the coffee at the counter and took it back to a booth.
Davis put in four teaspoons of sugar and stirred it slowly. “Nobody.” he said, “but nobody could ever call that one on purpose, so it has to be labeled accidental death. Nobody goes around rapping skulls with a wing tip except by accident. Once a long time ago I watched a guy at an air show. He had a hook on his wing tip, or a needle or something, and he broke balloons. Not skulls.”
“I was trying to make him stop running,” Ben said.
Davis’ smile was mirthless. “You did that. Unless, of course, he was able to run with his head tucked under his arm, like that Sleepy Hollow character.” Helen, beside Ben, shuddered visibly. “Forgive me, Mrs. MacLane,” Davis said.