The mountaineer’s name was Isaac Kendall. He was tall and gray, with a long bulbous nose and big ears and the suspicious watchfulness of a lonely man. A crude, bloody bandage held his left arm in a makeshift sling. He paid no attention to the cutting wind that whistled down from Piney Knob.
Huddled in the sagging doorway of the cabin were Kendall’s wife and three small children. The wife held an ancient long rifle. Three men in city clothes waited uncomfortably for Durell and Wittington, and when they entered the dooryard, the nearest man, stockily built with silvery hair and an aggressive, rolling gait, came toward them. He was Garry Fritsch.
“Hi, Sam. Mr. Wittington.”
Durell nodded. They didn’t shake hands. “What happened to Kendall’s arm?”
“Got a slug in it.”
“Yours?”
Fritsch looked at Wittington. “Not mine. Not from any of my men, either.” He finally looked at Durell again. Durell waited. “It’s a crazy, off-beat story,” remarked Fritsch.
Wittington spoke. “Tell us.”
“Let him do the talking,” Fritsch said, jerking a gloved thumb at the mountaineer. “He got there fustest.”
“Don’t rib his language,” Durell said to him sharply.
Fritsch said, “Hell, these inbred, idiot people don’t—”
“Shut up,” Durell said.
Fritsch took a step backward. His overshoes made brittle, crunching sounds in the snow. He had a blunt, square face, and the hard, unforgiving eyes of a man who has seen too much of the wrong side of human nature. He tended to be overbearing and biased, from what Durell had seen of him in past encounters, and although no man had a better reputation as a cop, Durell didn’t like him. Angrily, Fritsch started to speak, then turned to Wittington and shrugged. Durell moved over to the mountaineer.
“Suppose you tell us just what happened.”
“Didn’t see much, mister.”
“Just tell us what you saw when you were shot.”
Isaac Kendall looked at Fritsch and then at the cabin, where the woman huddled with the small children.
“Heard the airplane, is all. Motors were makin’ a kind of outrage noise and then she came down.”
“Did you see anybody jump before the plane crashed?”
“Could be. Saw something yonder.” He pointed toward the tumbled wasteland of mountains to the south. “Six, eight miles away. It’s right nice and wild over there.”
“Did you see their parachutes open?”
“Saw two things in the sky, that’s all. They floated down. It was dark of the moon, mister. Just starlight to see by.”
“You’re sure you saw only two?”
“I said it.”
Durell turned to Wittington in inquiry. Wittington said, “There was a crew of three only. The CP-2 is an experimental model. If two men jumped, that leaves the pilot still aboard when the crash came. Apparently Duncan tried to bring the ship down in one piece after giving bail-out orders to his crew.”
“Have the other two men been located?”
Fritsch said, “As your friend says, it’s nice, wild country. No roads in there. I’ve got some cars and crews out hunting in a pattern. Nothing yet.”
“What time did all this happen?” Durell asked the mountaineer.
“About midnight or so. I ain’t got a watch, mister.”
“And when did you notify the authorities?”
“Soon as I could. Went over to Parker’s place, he’s got a telephone. It was a long walk. Made it about an our before dawn. Then I sent Pleasure—she’s my oldest—for the doctor to look at my arm.” The man shook his narrow head suspiciously. “She ain’t back yet.”
“Tell me how you got shot,” Durell suggested.
“Went over there myself, to Piney Knob. See if I could help. Some strangers were already workin’ on the wreck, mister. Three men, with a truck, unloadin’ stuff out of it. Soon as I showed up and hollered if they needed help, they put lead in my arm. Asked me no questions, and I didn’t stay in sight for more of it. They loaded out the plane and went down Piney Knob to the Slatersville road toward Nashville, over beyond.”
Kendall paused. “So I come back and sent Pleasure for the doctor and went to the telephone.”
“Was the pilot one of the three men working at the cargo?”
“Couldn’t say, mister.”
“Would you recognize any of the men if you saw them again.”
Kendall shook his head. “Didn’t get close enough.”
“Did you see the license number on the truck?”
Again the mountaineer shook his head. “Didn’t pay no mind to it. Not with a bullet in my arm.”
Fritsch shifted his stocky weight and breathed heavily. “We’ll stop that truck, don’t worry.”
"You had better,” Wittington said dourly. “They’ve had a long start.”
“What was the cargo?” Durell asked.
Wittington thinned his Puritanical mouth. All at once his craggy face looked exhausted, paper-thin.
“Tacticals,” he said. “Lightweight tactical atomic bombs. Twenty of them. Just one would take the top off Piney Knob. It looks as if the government has been hijacked.”
Chapter Three
Durell felt a shock of disbelief. He drew a deep breath and reached a cigarette out of his coat pocket and lit it. His dark blue eyes were opaque, almost black.
“You could have told me sooner, Mr. Wittington. “I didn’t know that I’d have to tell you. I borrowed you from K Section once before, Sam, and now I m doing it again. You and Fritsch will work on this together. We must get those tacticals back.”
“Let Fritsch handle it,” Durell said. “It’s not my line.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“I don’t want to work with Fritsch.”
Wittington looked annoyed.
“You met Duncan’s wife, you said?”
“A few times. A Latin-American woman, Carlotta Cortez. Her father, the General, is in exile in New York.”
“You’re going to have to talk to her. Fritsch won’t do it as well as you.”
Fritsch looked sullen. His face was red in the wind, and his pale eyes watered. It was plain that he didn’t like the arrangement any more than Durell. “Who makes decisions?” he asked. “This thing is going to need organization and the cooperation of local police. What do we tell them?”
“As little as possible. Not the truth, certainly,” Wittington said. “You’re on top with the organizational work, Fritsch. Durell, you do what you can with Duncan’s wife and that end of it.”
Durell said, “You seem pretty sure that this accident was part of a deliberate design of theft.”
“We’re fairly sure,” Wittington said.
“If so, how could the hijackers know where the plane would crash?”
“We think the crash was deliberate. They knew where it would take place, and when.”
Durell dragged at his cigarette. “If the hijackers were waiting around Piney Knob for the plane to be crashed, they knew within a matter of a few miles where the CP-2 would come down. That doesn’t seem possible, unless you accept one factor. It could only be effected with the cooperation of a member of the crew. Somebody aboard the CP-2 was subverted. Since the pilot brought it down, that points to Major Johnny Duncan.”
“We think so,” Wittington said. “Unless we find him dead.”
Fritsch said, “We figure Duncan didn’t quite have the guts to ditch with the crew still aboard, so he faked engine trouble and gave the others the bail-out order. After he was alone in the plane, he headed for Piney Knob and set her down.”
“You’re working on thin suppositions.”
“It will turn out the way I say,” Fritsch said confidently. “I’ve been in this business a long time, Sam. You’re not dry behind the ears when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“I knew Duncan pretty well. I can’t believe he’d do this.”
“Let’s get over to the wreck,” Wittington su
ggested. “We can tell more about it then.”
They took one of Fritsch’s cars parked behind the cabin, and one of Fritsch’s men acted as chauffeur. The road was a rutted, twisting path that wound toward the summit of Piney Knob.
Another of Fritsch’s cars had come here since the helicopter had passed over, and it was parked hub-cap deep in the snow. Durell saw that there had been no fire aboard the CP-2. The ship’s crumpled fuselage glittered strangely, slick and shining, against the dark background of splintered pines it had left in its wake. Two men in heavy overcoats were poking around in the wreckage and one of them, with a walkie-talkie radio, came toward them as the car halted in the clearing.
“We’ve got two of them, Mr. Fritsch.” The man was young and alert, unmindful of the cold, cutting wind. “One was a flight-sergeant, Les Humphries. Broke his leg when he parachuted down, but a milk truck spotted him took him to Spencersville. He’s at the local pill-jockey’s now, getting the bone set.”
“Why did he bail out?” Fritsch snapped.
“On orders, he said, from Major Duncan. The engines were missing. Duncan yelled over the intercom that he was going to ditch.”
“Did he see anyone else jump?”
“Only Lieutenant Camp. He came down all right, near a railroad siding about ten miles southeast of here. Landed like a feather. We’re bringing him in to Nashville, along with Humphries as soon as he can be moved, for more questioning. But neither of them saw what happened to Major Duncan.”
Durell turned to Wittington. “What was this flight supposed to accomplish, anyway?”
The old man shook his head. “Emergency exercise. A test to see how quickly a cargo of—the cargo could be transported from Base A to Base B. There was no expectation of danger. Even in a crash like this, the cargo wouldn’t detonate unless it was properly armed by someone who knew what he was doing.”
“Who would want them?” Durell asked.
“Who, indeed? We don’t know. But we’ve got to find out. And do it quickly.”
Fritsch said, “We’ll get the bastards, don’t worry.” He looked deliberately at Durell. “It seems your trusted pal, Major Duncan, has the answers. Nobody saw him jump, so he rode the ship down to where his friends, waiting around, could get at the bombs. Then he took off with them. There’s no trace of him around.”
Durell didn’t reply. He walked around the wreckage, sinking into the deep snow, not heeding the clammy wetness that clasped his ankles. He remembered a weekend long ago in the Litchfield Hills, in Connecticut, when he and Duncan had both been freshmen at Yale. They hadn’t been quite twenty then, and it was the first time Durell had ever seen snow. The bayous were behind him, and New England was a fascinating experience, a new land of strange people and a climate as remote from what he had known as a boy as any place could be. He remembered Duncan’s home, where he had been a guest that weekend, feeling awkward in the gracious white house with its Palladian window and polished, gleaming Duncan Phyfe furniture. Duncan had been tall, blond and laughing, graceful on skis, at home in that snowy, hilly environment, his prep school accent cutting at strange odds with Durell’s bayou drawl. Durell had long ago lost his Cajun accent and his feeling of strangeness in different lands. But he had always remembered the graciousness with which he had been introduced to Duncan’s people.
There were deep ruts made by chain-borne tires circling the wreck, and Durell saw that Fritsch’s cars had carefully avoided crossing or obliterating them. The truck had been backed up to the fuselage, where the cargo hatch stood open, and then had retraced its way down the mountain road. He looked around the clearing through the splintered pines as if, by wishing for it, he would see Johnny Duncan. But there was no sign of him. That still didn’t mean that Duncan was a part of the hi-jaeking plan. Maybe Johnny had been taken prisoner by those who had unloaded the bombs and vanished into the hills with them. Maybe. Durell didn’t believe that either. It was too pat, this crash landing, with the waiting truck, the armed crew who had shot at the mountaineer.
He wished he could get a decent description of those men.
He lit another cigarette against the frosty bite of the wind. This one didn’t make sense, he decided. Tactical A-bombs were of no use to an ordinary, or even extraordinary, domestic criminal. And there were enough in depots abroad so that no ally or pseudo-ally would take this means of acquiring them. Nor would the Russians bother—they certainly had enough of their own at this point.
Then why?
And who?
He snapped away the cigarette and walked back to Wittington.
“I had a check run on John Duncan while waiting for you at the airport, Sam,” Wittington said. “Might as well tell you, it doesn’t look good for him. He was right at home in this neighborhood, you know.”
“Dunk came from Connecticut,” Durell objected.
“But he spent a year in training during the war near here. We know he drove through a few times on his way home on leave, later, too. He knew some local girl for a while, we think, but her name isn’t on the dossier. What we’ll do, we’ll leave Fritsch in charge here to control the roadblocks. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll nab the truck with the bombs before it gets through the net.”
‘You can’t count on luck in this business,” Durell said.
“I know that. And if they had all this planned to this point, they also planned their escape route. All I know is that there is this load of tacticals loose in the country. And it looks like your friend John Duncan has them.”
Durell was silent.
“We also know he was in debt to his father-in-law, the General, to the tune of thirty thousand dollars,” Witting-ton added blandly. “How well do you really know his wife, Sam?”
“Not too well. They have a house near Washington Square in New York. It’s the focal point for a lot of exiles from Cortez’s country.”
“You go to see her. If we stop this thing fast, I’ll call you back and you can return to K Section. Keep in touch with me from New York. I’ll have more information on Duncan for you by the time you get there.”
“Why not let Fritsch handle everything?” Durell said. “I can’t see it properly. I knew Dunk. He wouldn’t pull a stupid thing like this. Not for any amount of money.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for money. Perhaps it was for his wife.”
Durell said, “If you have more on it, give it to me now.”
Wittington shook his bald head. “You try to get along with Fritsch, hear me? If the roadblocks fail, he will join you in New York. We’ve got to recover those A-bombs, and do it quickly.”
“What about the newspapers?” Durell asked. “It will make quite a splash, if there’s a leak.”
“What are you thinking about?” Wittington said. “It occurs to me that creating panic might be the objective of this whole thing.”
Wittington thought about it, shook his head, and looked at the wrecked plane. “No good. There’s more to it than that. I can smell it and I don’t like it. You get along with Fritsch, hear?”
“If I have to. I don’t like his methods.”
“Just take it easy,” Wittington repeated. “He’s forgotten more about routine police work than you know.”
Chapter Four
Durell moved away from the scene of the wreck. A sense of uneasiness rankled him. Part of it was the unpleasant and persistent feeling that time was running out for him. He resented being plucked out of K Section by Wittington, who headed the super-secret Special Bureau—an agency which, as Wittington himself defined it, got all the off-beat problems.
This one smacked of big trouble. He tried to remember everything he could about Johnny Duncan, and there was something in the back of his mind that kept eluding him. He hadn’t seen Dunk for well over a year. He had felt uncomfortable with Duncan’s gorgeous Latin wife, Carlotta Cortez, when he had dropped in on them once when he was in New York. The smell of that much money always troubled him. And Dunk hadn’t been himself at all. He’d changed. He looked hand
some in his major’s uniform, but somehow harassed and out of place in the middle of that Spanish-speaking party Durell had barged into. He had left as quickly as he decently could.
One of Fritsch’s men was driving back across the snowy valley to the mountaineer’s cabin, and Durell, on impulse, went with him. There was nothing he could do at the scene of the wreck that Fritsch couldn’t do as well or better.
The thing he was trying to remember about Duncan kept escaping him.
Isaac Kendall was in the cabin when Durell returned. A smoky, sputtering fire in a huge stone fireplace burned feebly. The cabin was roughly divided in two, although the lower floor was open as a community room, with an ancient kerosene stove in the kitchen area intermingled with mail-order house furniture. Someone had made an attempt to brighten up the place with dotted chintz curtains at the small windows. The same individual had obviously bought the cheap but bright new braided rug that lay on the worn pine floor. A kind of loft, or gallery, was built over the kitchen end of the cabin, and Durell saw the ancient gleam of old brass bedsteads up there. The children were peering down at him from above. Isaac stood before the fire, his arm still in the makeshift sling. His wife was standing beside him. Durell heard them talking, and they broke it off abruptly when he knocked and entered, closing the door behind him.
Durell smiled. “How is your arm, Isaac?”
The smile was not returned. “It’s all right.”
“What make of gun do you figure it was?”
“Hand gun. A big one. Like one of them Army Colts.”
“Hurt much?”
“I ain’t complainin’.”
Assignment Carlotta Cortez Page 2