The beacon light swept by again and this time outlined a dark bulk in the road in time for me to slow down. A tractor had been abandoned in our path and there wasn’t room to cut around it. I opened the door, shoved Sable out and followed him.
In a way it was a lucky break. There might have been a guard posted at the gate up ahead and time was too short to have to fight my way through it. The hood of the tractor provided easy access over the fence and when I dropped down I turned and caught Sable as he jumped, made sure he was all right and got on the macadam taxi strip.
What planes hadn’t been hangared were all choked and tied down in the grass off the runway, sitting there like frightened giants, quivering gently in the wind. Four aged DC-3’s and a pair of converted B-25’s with military insignia were side by side, relics of another war but still active, a symbol of the power and authority that had held the country in submission.
I told Sable to wait, ran to one of the B-25’s and climbed in. I didn’t have to scrounge very hard to find what I wanted. I disregarded the back packs still in the pilots’ bucket seats and dug out one of the, emergency chest-pack chutes and harness, stuffed it into a canvas bag that was lying in the corner and got out of there.
Sable was waiting nervously, his back to the wind, and was relieved to see me appear out of the darkness. I wanted to leave my hands free, so I handed him the bag. “Keep this,” I said. “And don’t lose it.”
He hefted the bag curiously, wondering what it was. “Important?”
“You’ll never know,” I said.
In the east the cloud layers had taken on the dull glow of a false dawn, black entrails of turbulence like mean streaks rolling in its midst. I said, “Let’s go,” and we broke into a trot to cover the last quarter mile.
The buildings around the control tower and administration complex were all but deserted. Even the skeleton crew was taking off for the shelter of safer places. A gasoline truck moved out, its headlights picking up the gate, and I saw it stop to be inspected by uniformed guards carrying rifles and tommy guns who scanned the occupants before letting them pass on.
Whenever the beacons flashed by overhead we flattened to the ground, then got up to cover more ground between its sweeps, hoping that nobody saw us outlined against the lights of the buildings. Each time I hit the grass I tried to pick out the shape of the Queenaire against the formless jumble of shapes in the semidarkness.
And then I saw it parked at a forty-five-degree angle into the wind, at the end of the runway, and grabbed Victor Sable’s arm and ran toward it. We were too close to the end of it all and I didn’t smell the danger until I got that warm feeling in the small of my back again and saw Sable trip and go down. I grabbed him under the shoulder and went to haul him to his feet and almost fell over the same obstacle.
Joey Jolley was lying there, a vicious slash across his forehead, a low moan choking out of lips drawn back in pain. His eyes opened, recognized me, and his lips moved in warning, but it was too late.
A voice said, “I’ve been waiting for you, Morgan.”
They were there in the partial shadow under the wing of an old Stinson, and Marty Steele had Kim’s arm wrenched up behind her back and was holding a gun against her head.
The beacon swept by again and in its light I could see his face, cut and bloody from the wreckage of when he had smashed into the cart on the road. But the lacerations had done something else, too. They had released the tension on artifically tightened skin, put his features back into recognizable contours and I knew who he was.
I said, “Hello, Dekker. It’s been a long time.”
His tone was almost friendly. “It won’t be much longer, Morg.”
“Why’d you wait all this time for?”
I saw his grin. “I had to be sure, old buddy. I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out. You’re losing the old edge. You used to be the bright boy in the group.”
“It finally began to figure out.”
Once again the beacon light hit him and his face had a wild look of controlled insanity, the expression Bernice Case had described, filled with hatred and kill lust.
I said, “When you picked Whitey Tass off I knew it had to be you. He didn’t even know you were here, but had he seen you and he could have identified you.”
“You play it safe when the stakes are big enough, Morgan.”
“Are they, Dekker?”
He chuckled flatly, the sound humorless and cold. “You’re damn right. Forty million bucks’ worth of high stakes and its’s all mine. When you got nailed for the job I nearly laughed my head off. I used the same technique you taught me and you get rapped for it.”
“Why, kid?”
He wasn’t laughing now. “Something you idiotic patriots wouldn’t understand. You didn’t get blown apart by a lousy mine. You didn’t get shafted by the government and stuck in a hospital to rot with a frigging little pension and some medals for thanks. You know what happened when a broad looked at my face? I saw one of them vomit once. Well, piss on that. I couldn’t even stand the country. I got the hell out and saved my money until I got a new face and a new name and came back to make the good old U.S.A. pay me what I earned.”
“Whose body did they bury under your name, Dekker?”
I got that chuckle again. “I’ve killed too many to worry about him. He was just a stupid Australian sheepherder named Marty Steele if it matters to you.”
“Too bad you didn’t get to spend all that dough, Sal.”
“Oh, I will, old buddy. I will. I got it hidden right where your namesake, Captain Henry Morgan himself, kept his little pile and I’m the only one who can get to it.” He paused a few seconds, then said, “You should have moved in quicker, Morg.”
He had said all he was going to say and I saw his hand tighten around the gun he held at Kim’s head. He was going to take her out first, then me, and I had to stop him. I said, “I wasn’t on your back, Dekker.”
Curiosity stopped his trigger finger. “Get off it, buddy.”
“You knew I was on the run,” I told him. “You knew Old Gussie ran a hideout spot and you should have figured my checking in there after you cut out was only accidental. It’s a crazy coincidence, but it happened.”
“Nothing’s coincidental in this world. Don’t feed me that crap.”
“So a hunk of coal dust from Pennsylvania gets in your eye in New York and it’s all part of a plan, is that it?”
“You showed up here,” he accused.
“I was on another deal, Sal. It was nothing to do with you at all. I knew Ortega and Russo had their men on me, but they wouldn’t have taken a shot at me with a.38. You know, that was the first time I ever knew you to miss one that close. I moved just in time. If you had tried for the body instead of a head shot you would have gotten me.”
“You think…”
I cut him off, playing for seconds. “It was you outside my door that night in the hotel, you watching me all the time, you who followed me into the restaurant and saw me contact Rosa Lee. You were the only one who could have figured out the possible exits from the hotel nobody else would ever use and cover it until I came out. You’re the only one who could have tailed me without being seen, Sal.”
His chuckle had satisfaction in it this time.
“Why’d you bump Rosa Lee, Sal?”
Dekker’s voice still tasted the pleasure of the kill. “I bought my way into this country, Morgan. Ortega and Sabin were making me pay plenty for the privilege. Any one of the natives could have been onto the pitch and ready to set me up for a hit. Don’t tell me she wasn’t putting you onto me.”