Malink, who had gone to the back to reassure his people, came up the steps and climbed into the flight officer’s chair. “We are going down?” he said.
“You’ll like it,” Tuck said. “The weather here is the same as Alualu. There are beaches and jungles just like home.”
They could see the coast now, extending into the distance to the north and south, the rainforest running from beaches to mountains. “This island much bigger than Alualu.”
“It’s not an island.” Tuck realized that Malink had never walked more than a mile without having to turn. “Your people will be fine.”
“Are there sharks here?”
“A lot of sharks,” Tuck said.
Malink nodded “My people will be fine.” He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Will you come with us?”
“I don’t think so, Chief. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble when we land.”
“But didn’t Vincent tell you to do this?”
“Sort of. Why?”
Malink sat back with a self-satisfied smile. “You’ll be fine.”
An alarm went off in the cockpit and Tuck scanned the instruments to see what had gone wrong. The red air collision warning lights were flashing. Tuck scanned the sky for another plane, then, seeing nothing, put on the headset to see if the Palmar tower could tell him what was going on.
Before he could key the mike someone said, “Darlin’, I’ll be whitewashed if stink don’t follow you like a manure wagon in summer.” A familiar, melodic Texas drawl, probably the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
“Mary Jean,” Tuck said. “Where are you?”
“Out your window at eleven o’clock.”
Tuck looked up and saw a brand-new pink Gulfstream running parallel to them.
“If you’d a been wearing your headset, you would have known I was here fifteen minutes ago.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Jake called me from Hawaii and told me what you was doing. We cooked up a little plan. I’m gonna get your tail out of the fire one last time, Tucker Case, but you owe me.”
“Boy, have I heard that before.”
“Do you remember the corporate address in Houston? The number?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you dial that up as a frequency and I’ll give you the skinny. It’s unladylike to broadcast your personal matters over the same frequency the tower’s using.”
They were lying in the jungle near the runway when the Learjet landed. Sebastian left Beth sleeping under some banana leaves and crawled to where he could see. The jet taxied to the gate and stopped with the engines still running. The guards came out of different buildings and converged on the plane. They’d stacked duffel bags near the gate.
“What’s going on?” Beth crawled up behind him. The effects of the Valium were obviously wearing off.
“I think they’re leaving.”
“Not without us, they’re not. I am the Sky Priestess and I won’t allow it.” She started to get up and Sebastian pulled her back down.
“They were coming to kill us, Beth. You were out.”
“Right. If you ever drug me again—”
“You’re insane,” he said.
She reared back to slap him and he caught her hand. “Keep it up, Beth. I’m telling you that if they find us, they’ll kill us. Do you understand that?”
“They’re grunts. I won’t…”
Suddenly there was a huge explosion from across the runway and they turned to see a mushroom of fire rising from where the clinic used to be.
The guards had loaded onto the jet and Nomura was taxiing to the end of the runway.
The guards’ quarters went off next, then the hangar, the barrels of jet fuel throwing a column of flame five hundred feet in the air.
“Where did they get explosives?” Beth said. “Did you know they had explosives?”
“They’re destroying the evidence,” Sebastian said. “Orders from Japan, I’m sure.”
The Learjet started its run for takeoff as Sebastian’s bungalow went off like a fragmentation grenade, followed by Tuck’s old quarters and Beth’s bungalow. Fire rained down across the island.
“My shoes! All of my shoes were in there. You bastards.” Beth pulled away from Sebastian and ran out on the runway just as the Learjet passed.
“You rotten bastards!”
The Sky Priestess stood in the middle of the runway and screamed herself mute as the Lear disappeared into the clouds.
66
If They’d Only Had Her at the Alamo
Mary Jean brought the pink Gulfstream in right on the tail of the 747. Tuck kept the speed over eighty in the taxi, turning it away from the terminal, where police jeeps and a hundred men in riot gear waited. He also noticed a half-dozen TV news trucks there as well.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Costa Rica, the new home of the Shark People. The temperature outside is 85 degrees and it’s clear that things are going to get ugly. I hope everybody’s ready.”
The police jeeps were speeding across the tarmac toward the two jets. Mary Jean turned the Gulfstream so that it was facing back toward the runway.
Tuck turned to Malink. “Where’s Roberto?”
Malink pointed up. Roberto hung from the handle of the emergency hatch. There was a spring-loaded spool of steel cable attached to the ceiling next to the hatch. “Mary Jean, you ready?”
“Sweetheart, we’d better git while the gitten’s good. We stirred a hornet’s nest out here.”
Tuck grabbed Roberto and stuffed him inside his shirt. “Stay,” he said. Then he opened the hatch and looked back at Malink. “I have to go now.”
Malink took Tuck in his big arms and squeezed until the bat screamed. “You will come back.”
“If you say so, Chief.” Tuck flipped the intercom switch and picked up the headset. “Go!” he said and climbed up into the hatch.
The six doors on the 747 all sprung open at once and the yellow emergency slides inflated and extended to the ground as if the jet was a huge insect suddenly growing legs. The Shark People piled
down the emergency slides and Mary Jean spooled up the Gulfstream for takeoff.
Tuck climbed onto the roof and reached back into the hatch for the loop of nylon webbing that attached to the spool of cable. The police jeeps were pulling up on the sides of the two jets; men with rifles stood in the back trying to figure out what they should be shooting at. The Shark People crowded in between the jets, making a human corridor. Tuck took a deep breath and leaped off the top of the jumbo jet. The spring-loaded coil of cable did exactly what Boeing had designed it to do: It lowered the pilot safely to the ground from four stories up. Once on the ground, Tuck ran under the cover of the Shark People and leaped into the open door of the Gulfstream. “Go!” he yelled.
The Shark People scrambled away and Mary Jean released the ground brakes. The jet shot forward. Tuck slammed the door and got to the cockpit just as a jeep swerved out of the jet’s path and flipped over.
“Don’t try to play chicken with me, snotnose,” Mary Jean said grimly. “I knew James Dean his own self.”
“Think they’ll let you get this thing in the air?”
“I’d like to see ’em try to stop me.”
The police jeeps seemed to part for the jet as it headed back to the runway. For all the guns there, no one seemed interested in firing a shot. Tuck looked back and saw the Shark People waving as Mary Jean made her takeoff run.