In twenty minutes, even less, aircraft would be up and looking for him. He should have put the radio out of action, he thought, and given himself more time. He had to get to Sky Ranch airport before he was spotted on the road.
With the gas pedal flat on the boards, he sent the car racing along the road at over eighty miles an hour.
The guard was dead, he thought, his hands gripping the driving wheel until his knuckles turned white. It was murder. If they caught him he'd go to the chair. If he had known this was going to happen he wouldn't have been so crazy as to risk his life for fifty thousand dollars. When he had planned the robbery he hadn't thought it possible that it would end in murder. He had been a fool not to have asked for two hundred thousand. Delaney would probably clear two million on the deal, and he was taking no risk.
He was sitting pretty. Two million dollars!
Harry reached out and put his hand on the steel box. If only he had Delaney's facilities for getting rid of the diamonds, he thought, he wouldn't part with them. Delaney could damn well whistle for them, but they were useless to him. He wouldn't dare try to sell them. He knew no one to whom he could go.
Well, at least he was getting something out of it. Borg's threat of no diamonds, no dough, didn't apply now. His mind shifted to the paragraph in the newspaper he had read. No diamonds, no honour.
He very nearly swerved off the road. He wrenched at the wheel, straightened the car and slowed down. What a dope he was! Of course, Takamori! He might do a deal with Takamori!
Takamori had been fighting for eighteen months to get the diamonds. He was to be received by the Emperor who was going to honour him. Money meant little to a guy like that, Harry thought, but the honour did. He might ask for a million and a half. Takamori would be a fool to pass up such an offer. He'd probably never be allowed to export more diamonds. It seemed to Harry he had Takamori where he wanted him. The deal would be a tricky one, but it had a good chance of coming off. It would take nerve, but the risk was worth it. He would be gambling on Takamori wanting the diamonds so badly he would go behind the backs of the police and not give him away.
He heard Franks groan. The sound jerked him back to his present position. He was rushing towards Borg, and Borg was now the last person he wanted to run into. He slowed down and stopped the car. He hadn't much time to make a plan. In another ten minutes or so aircraft would be setting out to rescue the passengers and crew. The police would be alerted. Every road would be watched.
Dare he continue in the car? It had been standing in the shadows and none of the passengers nor the crew had gone within two hundred yards of it. They couldn't possibly give the police a description of it. He had to take the risk and keep it. Without it he was sunk.
There was Franks. . .
He turned and looked at the wounded man as he sat slumped in the back seat. Franks stared at him.
“What are you stopping for?” he mumbled. “What's the matter?”
Harry saw he still had his gun in his hand. Even though he was in a bad way, Franks could still be dangerous.
“We've got a flat,” Harry said.
Franks grunted and shut his eyes. His head lolled forward.
Leaning over the back seat, Harry grabbed at his gun. He had expected Franks' grip on the gun to be light, but instead, he found his grip like a vice. As Harry jerked at the gun it went off.
The bang and the flash stunned Harry, but he somehow kept his grip on the gun and dragged it out of Franks' hand.
Franks heaved himself up, cursing. His fist struck Harry in the face, but there was no bite in the punch.
Sweeping aside his upraised arm, Harry hit Franks on the top of his head. Franks slumped back.
Dropping the gun, Harry scrambled out of the car, opened the rear door and lugged Franks on to the sand. He tore off his trench coat, then, taking out his pocket-knife, he levered off the extra sole he had nailed to his shoe to give him a limp. He then began to strip off his disguise. In a few minutes
Harry Green had disappeared and a somewhat wild-eyed Harry Griffin had taken his place.
Rolling the disguise inside the trench coat, he carried the bundle over to a nearby sandhill. He dug feverishly with his hands until he had scooped out a hole large enough to take the bundle. When he had buried it, he stamped the sand flat, then he went back to the car. He put the steel box in the glove compartment, then slid tinder the driving wheel and drove away fast down the desert road.
III
Ten miles of furious driving brought Harry to a fork in the road. A finger post indicated to the right was Sky Ranch airport and to the left Lone Pine. Without slowing speed, he swung the car on to the left fork, and stormed up a climbing, twisting road that led over the foothills and away, from the desert.
A few miles further on, he slackened speed. Traffic was beginning to appear on the road. He didn't want to call attention to himself by driving too fast. He felt safer as he overtook the big oil trucks that were fighting their way up the steep incline. He was back in civilization, where the lone car was no longer suspect.
After he had driven another five miles, he saw ahead of him a long line of red tail-lights, and he braked, slowing to a crawl.
Ahead of him he could see at least eight cars and two trucks at a standstill. Crawling towards them, he leaned out of the car window. His heart skipped a beat when he saw there was a crash barrier across the road. A number of speed cops, lit up by the headlights of the cars, were standing behind the barrier.
He pulled up behind a truck, his mouth dry, his heart thumping. Reaching down, he groped on the floor of the car until he found Franks' gun. He wedged it between the two front seats.
Then he opened the car door and got out. He walked up to the truck in front of him. The driver, a squat, fat man, his cap pushed back off his forehead, was leaning out of his cab, staring down the road.
“What's cooking?” Harry asked.
The driver glanced at him and shrugged.
“Search me. I've been stuck like this for the past ten minutes. The bright boys are playing cops and robbers, I guess.”
A cop was coming towards them, a flashlight in his hand.
“What's biting you, pal?” the truck driver shouted. “Lost something or are you just doing this for the hell of it?”
“Button up,” the cop said. His voice sounded tough. “You'll get going in a minute.”
Harry saw the cars ahead of him were on the move now, and he returned to his car, but he didn't get in. He wanted freedom of movement if he needed it. His hand rested on the butt of his gun in his pocket. He tried to keep calm, but his nerves jangled and he felt sweat on his face. ,
The cop climbed up the side of the truck, flashed his torch into the interior, grunted and stepped down.
“Okay, get going,” he said to the truck driver.
Three more cars had pulled up behind Harry. The drivers were leaning out of their windows.
“What goes on?” one of them shouted.
“Take it easy,” the cop said. “Just wait, will you?”
He came up to Harry, swung the beam of his torch on his face.
Harry wanted to run, but he controlled the impulse. The cop flicked the light from Harry to the car. He satisfied himself there was no one in the car, then he said, “Seen two guys in a big six-seater coming this way?”
“I've seen plenty of cars,” Harry said, “but I don't remember any two guys.”
The cop grunted.
“No one remembers anything,” he said bitterly. “What beats me is why any of you've got eyes. Don't you ever use them? Okay, beat it.”