Welcome aboard, partner.
I suddenly hated him, as the guys I'd once flown for must have hated me when I failed them. I felt superior to Coates now; not better, just different. I needed whisky so I could endure living among people on the ground. I needed whisky so I could live with myself while I accomplished nothing. But when I had a goal, a chance to do something, to go somewhere, I had all the excitement I needed and a bottle didn't interest me. I even wondered: if I get down there to South America with Greenie and I'm busy thirty hours a day with problems that have to be sweated out, will I… And then I shook that out of my mind.
I glanced at Coates gulping down the straight whisky and I laughed a little to myself. Partner, I thought.
Hail, partner.
Clark was right about Sid and me. We made a great pair.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I followed the black lane of the causeway west across Sun Bay.
Only a few cars used the bridges and approaches at this hour. From up here the bay was a dark tongue of water licking between the mangrove swamps and the dredged fills, flat and white, like desert sand and growing nothing but low-priced subdivisions. Far ahead, the strip of peninsula between bay and gulf was laid out in orderly streets stacked tightly with retirement homes and trailer parks. Beyond this was a strip of courtesy islands and the flat green gulf. I looked for thunderheads out on that horizon. I saw none.
I circled over the small airport inside the city limits of Bay City. It was six A.M. I had hoped to make it earlier, but I saw no movement down there and felt better. With even the beginnings of the promised overcast, none of the Sunday fliers would think of flying their planes this morning. Would they risk it now, in bright and sunny skies? Maybe not. I had believed the weather forecast, hadn't I? Well, then, a lot of the other fliers should be influenced by it, and stay grounded.
I had to hope for that. I laughed to myself, looking down at the neat rows of private planes lined up like sitting ducks beside the runways, the single hangar and the field office sitting forlorn and quiet a city block from the last two-place.
"What you laughing at?" Coates asked.
"I'm pleased with myself, friend. I'm a genius, and I never realized it any more than when I see things working smoothly just as I said they would."
"You sure as hell didn't get the weather you ordered."
"You can't have everything."
"Without that, we got nothing."
"You're clucking, chicken."
He took a pull on the bottle, frowned down at the parked planes.
"Which one of those babies you want?"
I shook my head, putting the nose of the Cessna into a long silent glide into a runway.
"It doesn't matter which plane I want. It's the plane we got to take, the job that's farthest away from the field office. The less attention we attract right now, the better."
I couldn't help smiling to myself, thinking how clever this thing was. We picked up a plane here and when we flew out of Fort Dale, the plane that the state police would report would have no connection with the silver Cessna job that Coates and I had borrowed for a training flight south to Verona City.
I let the Cessna roll to within a few feet of the two-place job at the end of the line of privately owned sports jobs.
"You want me to take it up?" Coates said.
"No. You keep this baby running. But remember this-something might go wrong." I glanced toward the field office. There was still no sign of activity over there even though we were on the ground, motor idling.
"What could go wrong?" Sid wanted to know.
"Maybe nothing. But you stay on the ground until I'm in the air. I'm not about to have you take off and leave me grounded."
Sid laughed and took over the controls of the Cessna.
"I'll follow you up, baby, like a mama eagle."
He took one more long pull at the bottle.
"Watch that stuff, too," I told him. I stepped out on the ground, flexing my muscles, watching the field office and the half-closed hangar.
I sauntered around the Cessna, keeping it as casual as I could. I wanted it to appear from the distance that our cabin plane might have developed some minor defect and I was out kicking tires like a used-car customer.
I took another quick half-glance at the field office. The whole field was flat and deserted, still slightly damp early in the morning. The sun glistened like tiny lights in dew. When I was between the Cessna and the larger job, I ran a little, swung into the cockpit. I set controls, pressed the starter, waiting without breathing. A strange plane didn't worry me. I knew them from jennies to jets. This plane rated with the Cessna, with perhaps slightly more horsepower.
The engine growled, sputtered, almost turned over, but spat instead. I felt the sweat break out on my forehead. This couldn't happen to me. Damned if I was going to be balked by a Sunday afternoon crate.
I jerked my head around, still pressing the starter. Coates was
framed in the window of the Cessna, like a tableau of fear, like something done by Dali. His face was stark, whiter than his eyebrows. He was begging without words for me to tell him what was wrong.
And I didn't know.
Suddenly Coates yelled at me. "Buz!"
My face was filmed with sweat by now. I studied that instrument panel and everything checked out, gas, oil, everything.
But all I got was that whine, the increasing growl until it almost caught. But it didn't catch. It spit at me instead, almost as if it were emitting some kind of mechanical laughter.
"Buz!"
"What you want?"
He waved an arm, pointing toward the hangar. "Forget that damned plane. Let's get out of here. Look over there. One of those greasemonkeys has spotted you!"
Frustration knotted inside me. I kept my gaze fixed on that mechanic. He came out of the hangar, stared down the runway toward us. For a moment he couldn't make up his mind, and then probably because the Cessna was a stranger to him, he decided against us. He ran along the cement, yelling. He was too far away for me to hear what he was saying and I didn't care anyway. I gave that starter one last nudge, got nothing.
I ducked down, slid out of the plane and ran across to the Cessna. I leaped and scrambled inside. Coates had the plane in motion as I slammed the door and secured the catch.
We were going upward into the wind as we passed the mechanic. He yelled something at us but this boy just wasn't getting through. I lifted my arm and waved at him.
He gawked after us, and then he waved back.
When we were airborne, Coates turned the plane inland. The sun was rising now, a white-hot morning ball.
"What now?" Coates said.
I was still sweating, and swearing inwardly. I had been stopped by a sportman's play toy, a ground-hopper's pogostick.
I grabbed the bottle of Echo Springs. I held it for a moment thinking how badly I needed a drink.
I didn't answer Coates. The hot fumes of the whisky burned my nose. Sid was grinning. This kind of trouble was a charge to him. Right now he didn't need the extra thrust that whisky gave him.
The hell with it. I wasn't going to start it, either. That was the story of my life: forget every setback in a fifth of whisky. I pushed the bottle away and Sid laughed. The hell with him, too. I looked around restlessly.
There wasn't a cloud in the whole state.
***
I took the controls. Keeping us airborne was no job at all; we were birds with a full tank of fuel. But I needed even this little chore. I felt emotion surge through me like the white-hot burn of electricity.
I glanced again at the bottle of Echo Springs. I didn't want to start hitting that thing just because I was full of frustration and
disappointment. I might out-drink Sid unless I kept busy. But suddenly all the old rages broke loose and began to boil-the rage against Judy and her Johnny, against Greenie, and Clark, and every blasted hurt I'd absorbed in the past fifteen years. It was a wild green bile of rage and I could fee
l it bubbling up inside me, thick and nasty.
The sky was still playing hell with our plans. No thunderheads showed anywhere and the sun kept on climbing hot and undisturbed. But I was dark and overcast inside, disgusted with myself for failing the simple task of starting that plane we needed so desperately and just as disgusted with that toy for failing me. I felt cold fury against Coates who was hitting the bottle now as if he wanted to pass out before we even found another plane. I hated the small town airports that we cased in the next two hours because people were moving around on them and they were too near to Bay City anyhow. Word might go out from that airport if those boys woke up and got to thinking about what happened-or what hadn't happened. Anyhow, it wasn't our fault we hadn't stolen that plane.
"What do we do now, pappy?" Coates said. His words slurred slightly, just enough to raise the boiling point in me.
"We find a plane." I said it coldly, clipping it, because I didn't want to talk to him. I was caught up in my own rage and it had to burn itself out, or I'd start to drink and I wouldn't stop until I had forgotten the whole mess.
"What's sweating you?"
There were too many angles bothering me to even discuss. "That plane back there," I said. "I ought to have gotten that thing."
He snickered. Where he was, there were no worries, or if you did have any, they were pickled. "We'll get a plane. Only you better choose a spot soon. Every field we see now is alive with people."
"All right." I yelled it at him. "I'm doing the best I can. You just keep nursing that bottle and let me alone."
I located an accumulation of black-tinged clouds to the east and headed toward them. The wind rose slightly and the world darkened as though I was suddenly looking through colored glasses, not stormy yet, but darkening. I had to hope for something. I felt better when we could sense the tickling of turbulence, and my disposition improved when single, large raindrops began to splat against our windshield.
"It's about time," I yelled at whoever is in charge of the weather up there.
Infinity seemed to close in on us, darkening; the rain increased, battering us in a fine brisk way. I could no longer see anything below us but moving treetops. We flew seventy miles in this overcast. Below us I saw the Spring Haven city airport, Greta Field. This was slightly larger than the field at Bay City, but the rain had chased even the pigeons. Puddles stood black in the runways and the close clipped fields. The wind sock dripped dispiritedly.
I glanced at my watch. It was almost nine A.M. We had been in the air a long time. We were off-schedule. The time of the robbery itself had to remain flexible. We would move in on the bank when we hit Fort Dale, but I had hoped to exchange this first plane for a second at another airfield. At the rate we were moving, the Fort Dale bank would close before we ever got there.
I flew over Greta Field once, checking it out. The rain had dampened all the ardor in the afternoon pilots. The field looked wet and deserted. I knew better, there would be knots of men grumbling about the rain in all the hangars, in all the offices and the coffee shop. But our luck wasn't going to improve and this had to be good enough. I nosed the Cessna in for a landing.
"This is it this time, Coates. We don't make a score this time, we'll kill for today. Time is running out and we're not going to find a better deal than this."
"You'll make it, baby." He sounded confident, but I knew where his confidence came from. From the comer of my eye I saw him sucking at the fifth.
" Another slip like that one in Bay City-"
"You nuts? We've had our bad luck for today. It's raining ain't it? What more you want?"
I pinpointed the Cessna to a spot beside a bright green Aeronca parked beside a Greta Field runway. I looked the Aeronca over, glanced toward the distant hangars, nodded at Coates.
He took over control of the Cessna, sat idling it, watching me. I swung out to the cement and struck it running. I crouched low and raced across the runway and slid into the Aeronca. I set the controls, did all those things I ought to do, and said a swift prayer. I didn't expect much from this; they wouldn't even know where it was coming from. But the way it is, sometimes a prayer is all you need. The Aeronca sputtered into life, caught and purred with contentment as if it had been sitting here all this time waiting for me.
I turned my head, waved at Coates and moved the Aeronca out on the runway. It did not even cough. I headed into the wind, hearing the rain slap against the fuselage. I revved it hard, setting it for the quick run and then moved out, listening to the sweet purring of the engine, the whine of the wind lifting me.
I was airborne in seconds. I glanced back toward the ground being jerked out from under me like a wet, dirty carpet. There was no sign of any life on that field.
I checked on Coates across my shoulder. He was bringing the Cessna up on my tail. He was a shaky flier and the Cessna didn't truly behave for him, but probably with all that whisky in him, he believed he was smoother than the gulls.
I didn't have time to worry about that. Time was becoming a precious element in this business. I gave up any hope of trading the Aeronca. I liked the feel of it, the way it responded. The tension grew in me. I thought ahead to Fort Dale and the overcast skies and the bank and beyond all that I was thinking about Judy, and the money I needed so desperately, and the way the money would make all the difference for Buz Johnson. This was my last chance on this earth for any happiness.
I flew westward again and into clearing skies, but they no longer troubled me. I could see what I really wanted out there in front of me. I could see the jackpot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I circled the abandoned strip near Berry Town without wasting too much time for a close check. Time that had been in our favor could turn like a tide and run against us. We'd cased this deserted strip. It was in an isolated section and we couldn't fool around any longer. I was still cobbed about being unable to start that plane in Bay City. Not even the way I had put this baby in the air from Greta Field really made me feel any better. It would have been so much smarter if we could have abandoned that first stolen plane in Spring Haven in exchange for this Aeronca. That would have covered our trail, and it was the way I had carefully planned it.
I signaled Sid I was putting down on the black asphalt strip. He waved, but I ignored him. He had been belting that bottle so hard that likely the whole field seemed overrun with little green men.
From the corner of my eye I saw something move near the weed grown rim of the abandoned strip. There was a rain ditch over there that had been chewed out originally for irrigation or to make this field usable in wet weather. The work had been done a long time ago. Grass and fern covered the sides of the ditch, concealing the yellow scars of the bulldozer, and elder and small bay trees grew close to the edge, bending over the rain-swollen stream of water. I didn't bother about the ditch. The movement must have been made by a small animal. Sometimes the least movement like that will grab your eye when the earth is rushing up at you.
Too late I saw that the black strip was potted even worse than I'd allowed for. I had put down planes in bombed-out fields, but it wasn't any trickier than this was going to be. I eased back, kissing the ground, seeing a million chugholes in one glance, all of them brimmed with rainwater. They might be inches deep, a foot deep, bottomless. I leveled it, cutting to as short a run as possible. The whole plane quivered with the beating it was taking.
I shivered to match the plane. All we had to do was wreck the landing gear, blow a tire or break a shock, and we'd had it. We didn't have time to fly away somebody else's plane and I wasn't about to fly near Fort Dale in that Cessna, either.
The plane shook itself to a halt. I cut the engine and sat there a moment. Then I remembered something that pulled me taut. If this field had been a landing problem for me, then Sid was sure to wreck the Cessna. He couldn't make a decent landing on a dry field when he was cold sober.
I slapped the door open and jumped out of the Aeronca.
I stood on the ground with my
legs spread apart, bracing myself for the instant one of his wheels hit a chug-hole and bowled him tail-over. The weeds came up around my knees, wet and thick. The broken runway wore rain cracks like pockmarks. I whispered at Sid under my breath, wanting to close my eyes as he brought the plane down, shakily, the wings dipping first to one side and then the other.
The man who first said that God protects fools and drunks was a perceptive cuss. Sid brought the Cessna down, wings wobbling, the whole plane seeming to hang back in protest, fear showing in the very way one wing quivered, tipping, and then the other.
His wheels touched the black asphalt, bounced, slipped and water sprayed out both sides from beneath the tires. He touched again and the plane tilted to the starboard, then settled too squarely on both wheels, the tail going down too hurriedly. He rolled it along toward me, still gunning it too much, seemingly unaware of the million potholes gaping at him with wet eyes.
I breathed for the first time since I jumped out of the Aeronca.
Then, just before he taxied within thirty feet of where I stood, Sid suddenly wheeled the Cessna off the runway and went tail-dragging through the weeds toward a stand of trees opposite the rain ditch.
I yelled and ran after him.
He taxied in under some oaks at the rim of the field and was sitting there, grinning smugly, when I panted up to him. Oak limbs scraped the cabin roof, dripping along the fuselage.
"What the hell are you doing?" I managed to say.
His white eyebrows wriggled up and down. "We better hide this baby, Buz. No use taking a chance on it being spotted from the air while we're gone."
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