Relentless (9 page)

The plane had to circle for ten minutes while three more cars and trucks went by. Then Walker had climbed for an altitude search, swept the highway in both directions with his inspection, and put the Apache into a fast nose-down descent. He made a quick low S-turn to come in final on the pavement and set the Apache down in a short landing which jarred the passengers but took the minimum time. He had judged the distance well; standing on the brakes he had the speed down sufficiently to make the nose-wheel turn into the gap in the fence and taxi straight across the flat, around the edge of the grove and into the little hidden pocket in back.

Baraclough had been standing beside the Buick with his palm out, knowing they'd be disturbed by sight of the unfamiliar car. When the rest of them climbed out of the airplane they had twenty minutes to spare before starting for town so Baraclough had told them his story.

11

On the leg into town Walker drove. He stopped a block short of the bank and Burt and Major Hargit got out, each carrying a B-4 satchel containing the stocking masks and weapons they would use inside the bank. Walker checked his watch and stayed put for seven minutes, giving the Major time to neutralize the armored-car guards. Waiting in the car, Hanratty fidgeted nervously, hawking and snorting with catarrhal barks, and Baraclough chatted amiably about inconsequential things. Walker sat tight-lipped and sweating, one eye on his watch.

If everything was on schedule the Major and Eddie Burt were at the back of the bank by now, standing unobserved in the alley pulling the stocking masks over their heads and arming themselves with pistols and Mace. When they had cased the bank on two previous pay Fridays they had determined that the bank's rear door was not locked: the bank depended on the eight armored-car guards and the armed driver, and since the guards often went out one by one to cafés and shops, the door was left unlocked for their convenience. With the highway situation as it was, the bank felt secure. Hargit and Burt would have about five minutes to surprise the guards, disable them with the chemical spray, paste X's of adhesive tape over their mouths and lock them in.

When six minutes had elapsed Walker grunted and put the car in gear. Baraclough and Hanratty slipped stockings over their heads and bowed their faces until Walker rolled up in front of the bank and waited for two pedestrians to go by and gave an all-clear; then they exploded out of the car with shotguns, Baraclough dragging the empty duffel bags, and Walker watched them jump the steps three at a time and push inside.

He drove down the half block to the alley, backed the car into it and pulled out into the street again, heading the way he had just come. Pulled up by the corner in a twelve-minute metered space and got out of the car; went to the back of it and unlocked the trunk lid, but didn't raise it. He left it ajar barely an inch, went back and got in and revved the engine a bit to keep it warm. From the sound of it there was a bad sparkplug on one cylinder.

He couldn't see inside the bank. It was a sturdy brick structure with small windows set high up, covered with bar grillwork. The main entrance was set into a semicircular brick abutment like a medieval fortress tower jutting from the corner of the building: you couldn't see inside unless you were standing on the curb corner.

The shotgun blast was muffled but it made him freeze. His glance shifted up to the bank door and lay against it, riveted, alarmed. Time was stretching: he knew it would take about four minutes for the local cops to get down here—four minutes from the time the bank turned in the alarm. The alarms were wired direct to a panel in the local police station. Walker looked at his watch, sweating, and was amazed to see that only three minutes had gone by. Two people walked by, not hurrying; he had visions of the others charging out of the bank and crashing into the pedestrians. The gunshot echoed in his head: he had a sudden impluse to clear out—run for it, to hell with the rest.

Then they were coming out, tumbling across the curb, Baraclough first. Yanking the trunk lid open, heaving the heavy duffel bag in; coming around the driver's side—“Shove over, that's a good boy.” Walker slid across to the middle of the front seat and Baraclough got in, tossing a handful of rumpled trousers over the back of the seat, bashing Walker's ear with them.

Burt was coming around the side of the bank. Hargit backed out the door prodding Hanratty ahead of him. Hanratty was dragging two bulging duffel bags like cement sacks along the ground, bumpety-bump down the bank steps, walking backwards; the Major had a duffel bag over his shoulder and a shotgun braced in the crook of his elbow. In the stocking masks they looked like sinister creatures out of science-fiction films. The Major waited in the doorway, covering the room with his gun until Hanratty had dragged the two big sacks around behind the car, lifted them into the trunk and slammed the lid. Then the Major took the steps in one leap, tossed the last duffel bag into the back seat and crowded in beside Walker in front. Hanratty got in back, with the duffel bag between him and Burt. Doors slammed. Baraclough had already popped the transmission into Drive and run the engine up against the footbrake to prevent stalling; now the Buick squealed away from the curb and lurched wildly toward the head of the street. Under the mask Baraclough seemed white. He hurled a glance at Hanratty in the mirror. “You stupid fucking son of a bitch.”

The Major said, “Everybody keep your gloves on.” They didn't want to leave prints in the Buick.

The burn scar on Baraclough's wrist, on the wheel by Walker, seemed livid and pulsing. Baraclough uttered a snarl. “It was a piece of cake and you had to blow it.”

Walker twisted his head toward the Major. “What the hell happened? Will somebody please tell me what happened?”

“You bought a ticket. You'll find out. Sergeant, where's the bag of nails?”

It was Baraclough who answered: “Somewhere on the floor back there.”

“I've got it,” Burt said. He twisted down the rear window on the left side of the car. They crested the last hill and swooped toward the flats. Hargit was twisted around in the seat, head low, looking for pursuit.

Hanratty's mouth flapped open and shut a few times, and finally he squeaked, “Shit and shinola, I didn't mean …”

“Shut up,” Burt said; he was lifting the heavy canvas sack, pouring the twisted spikes out onto the road. He had his arms far out, spraying the tire-breakers from side to side to cover the width of the pavement.

Baraclough said with bitter contempt, “The smaller the man the bigger the gun, ever notice that? Hanratty, for two cents I'd …”

“At ease,” the Major said mildly.

“Nuts. We could all take a fall for murder.”

“Nobody is going to take any falls,” the Major said. “Everything's right on schedule. Just keep calm.”

“Schedule may get shot up a bit,” Walker said. “Have a look at that weather up ahead.”

“Nonsense,” the Major said.

The bag of nails was empty. Burt discarded it. “So how'd we score?”

“Nobody's counted it,” Baraclough said, “but it's big.”

“As big as we figured?”

“I think so.”

Walker felt a hard constriction in his gut. It was real: they had done it. He looked over his shoulder at the duffel bag on the seat between Burt and Hanratty. Hanratty had swept the crumpled men's trousers away and laid both hands on top of the duffel bag as if he wanted to make sure the money wouldn't get away from him. His eyes were fever bright and he was breathing through his mouth.

Walker said, “Look. Somebody got killed, is that it?”

Baraclough told him what had happened. It took a few sentences and then the Buick wheeled in through the gap in the fence. Spewed dust and bucketed toward the grove. Baraclough concluded, “There was no excuse. He got rattled and he blew the whole thing.”

“That's a crock,” Hanratty said. “He was trying to pull his gun—he wanted to be a hero.”

“Stick it up your ass, Hanratty,” Baraclough said.

The Buick half-skidded around the trees and stopped beside the plane with a jerk, its tail going up. The doors popped open and Hargit said, “Get the engines running. We'll carry the things.” And Walker slammed into the Apache and reached for the controls. It was no time for a by-the-book preflight check; he started to flip levers, switched things on and fed fuel. The engines started with belches of smoke and he ran them up against the brakes while the fuselage bounced and sagged with the weight of equipment and money and men coming aboard. He heard the passenger door slam and felt the crack of a hand against his shoulder as the Major settled into the copilot's seat. “Go.”

12

… Now they had turned to run before the storm, reaching for altitude to get above the mountains and never mind the Nellis radar. The weather front was uneven and when they crossed patches of it they were pitched violently around. Somebody—Hanratty?—was retching. The magnetic compass was not pointing at much of anything. A sudden downdraft, like the flat of a palm, pressed them sickeningly toward the ground and Walker's stomach surged up into his chest. He had maximum power now, rich mixtures, but in this air and with this deadweight the Apache was heavy, sluggishly responding to his control. The downdraft had knocked them down more than fifty feet; the altimeter bobbed and flickered and began once again to climb through the “7” on the thousands dial but that was seven thousand feet above mean sea level, disregarding the variants in air pressure caused by the front, and up here the plateau was more than four thousand feet high and the mountains loomed eight thousand feet above that; Walker still had to pick up several thousand feet of altitude before it would be safe to turn across the razorback summit of the mountain range. With all this weight aboard he wasn't sure the Apache could attain or keep that kind of ceiling but it was that or turn south instead of north, and south was where the highways were, where the airports and Nellis AFB and the police were.…

He glanced at the gauges; the tanks were out of balance—there was more fuel in the starboard wing tank than in its mate—so he reversed the flow switches to close off the port tank and draw on the starboard one. Momentarily he recalled that the threads of the starboard filler cap hadn't looked good when he'd screwed it on after topping up the tanks this morning in Reno. But it would have to do. What the hell, another three or four hours and the whole plane could collapse for all he cared. But to make sure he leaned as far forward as he could without pushing the elevators down and peered around past the Major's shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the tank cap on the starboard wing—and saw a plume of grey-white liquid pouring straight back from the wing.

Baraclough, at the window behind the Major, was rubbing at the pane and talking in a taut voice thinned by fear: “We're losing fuel.”

The Major twisted around. “
What?
”

“That does it,” Walker breathed. His hand shot forward. Switch back to the left-hand tank. Close off the leaking starboard tank. Bring up the trim.

He leaned forward to look out again. The Major was barking, at him: “What is it, man?”

But the fuel was still streaming out. It would: the low pressure of fast-moving air over the wing would pull it out. And with high-octane flowing straight across the hot exhaust system …

It was no good. He flicked switches again—cut all starboard power flow, switch off magneto, feather starboard propeller: the sudden drag pulled her severely around to the right and he had to stand on the rudder and crank the wheel left to keep her flying.

Hanratty was bawling and Eddie Burt exploded in oaths and Walker saw the Major's hands gripped white on the edge of his seat

She was flying on one engine and the mountains were a looming threat off the port wingtip. The gasoline was coming out of the tank in a fine spray now and that was likely to keep up for a long time.

The Major grabbed him by the arm. “Captain …”

“Shut up.” He shook off Hargit's hand. He was tipping her over on one wing to look at the ground below.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a place to land.”

13

“You're out of your mind!”

“Major, it's not as if we had any choice.”

“You're panicking. Any twin plane will fly on one engine—every schoolboy knows that.”

“And every schoolboy knows what happens when you run high-octane vapor over a hot exhaust pipe in low-pressure air that's charged full of storm electricity. If we can get on the ground before that wing catches fire we'll be lucky.”

And because it would have been anticlimactic he didn't add that the fuel remaining in the port wing tank would be hardly enough to carry them fifty miles single-engine.

The earth tilted away beneath the wing and then rose again, swooping, making Hanratty cry out. The ground was all buckled up—foothills. Walker made a tight economical turn to starboard without adding any unnecessary power and headed for the flats. Behind him Baraclough said, “What about that highway?”

“Too far. We must be forty miles north of it.”

“No highway,” the Major snapped. “Use your head.”

He had about two thousand feet and the Apache was noseup to the horizon, struggling, beating a jagged track through the turbulence; the stall-warning light was flickering a wicked red. He had to shove things forward to pick up a little airspeed. Flaps down full. “See those handles?”

The Major followed his pointing finger. Walker said through his teeth, “When I tell you, pull.”

“What is it?”

“Landing gear. I'm going to have my hands full.”

The hills were flattening out underneath. Nothing in sight but scrub. Cutbank gullies ran out onto the flats from groined foothill canyons and there were house-sized boulders scattered around like Easter Island statues.