by Jim Case
Braddock made up his mind and started smiling.
“Willie Bob, go get the coon. And keep your gun out, otherwise he just might tie you in a knot.”
“Yes sir, Sheriff,” Willie Bob nodded, and he scampered to the back.
A moment later, Rufe Murphy came through the door, hands on his head.
A yard behind him, his gun pointing at Rufe’s back, came Willie Bob.
Rufe saw Cody and Hawkins and almost smiled. Almost.
“Well, well,” Hawkins grinned, “if the contest was for ugly, this black motherfucker would win hands down.”
“Who these honkies?” Rufe growled, not missing a beat.
“No matter to you, boy,” Braddock snarled. “You gonna win me some money. Drop your pants.”
Murphy blinked.
“Say what?”
He looked at Cody.
Cody nodded very faintly, so faintly had Rufe not been looking for a sign, he wouldn’t have noticed it.
Rufe sighed. He unbuckled his trousers.
“You white breads sure are a fun-loving bunch.”
“Shorts, too,” Braddock ordered. “We’re going to measure your dick.”
“The hell you are, shit-for-brains.”
“It’s either that,” Braddock said, “or Willie Bob here is going to shoot it off.”
Rufe frowned at Hawkins and Cody.
They smiled back.
Rufe sighed again and lowered his shorts.
“Good godalmighty,” Braddock said, looking at Rufe’s tool. “To think something like that’s wasted on a spade. Guess that’s what Ellie seen in you, huh, boy?”
“It didn’t hurt her feelings none,” Rufe conceded with a smile, and he placed his hands on top of his head again.
“Well, fellas,” Braddock invited, stepping back, “Measure away.”
“Uh-uh.” Hawkins shook his head. “You’ve got to do your own measuring. Them’s the rules. We just validate.”
Cody pulled a cloth measuring-tape from his jeans pocket and tossed it to Braddock. “There you are, Sheriff. I’ll get the picture.” And he began adjusting the knobs and dials on the Pentax.
“Picture?”
“Of his thang,” Hawkins said. “Lot of money changing hands here, Sheriff, we can’t just have our say so that your prisoner’s hung like a bull moose. We’ve got to have proof. Need a picture of the tape on the meat, so to speak.”
“Willie Bob)—” Braddock started.
“Nope,” Hawkins said. “Got to be you, Sheriff. Them’s Sheriff Tywater’s conditions on this little deal or it’s no go.”
“I don’t see what it matters who measures the damn thing,” Braddock whined, regarding Rufe’s principle male tendon as if it were a snake that might leap up and bite him.
“But them’s the rules,” Willie Bob added hastily.
“You shut up,” Braddock snapped at his obviously relieved deputy.
“That’s right,” Hawkins said. “Them’s the rules. I didn’t make ’em. I’m just helping enforce this little bet, to make sure it’s done right. I’m getting twenty bucks and a half day off to see it’s done the way it’s supposed to be.”
“I’m getting cold,” Murphy grumbled. “It gets small when it gets cold.”
Braddock sighed, then shook the measuring tape out.
“Oh, all right, but I sure don’t like it. I might have to touch it.”
“That is a problem,” Hawkins admitted.
Braddock circled Rufe like a shark, frowning at the instrument of the contest. Finally, he settled on his knees, slightly to the side of Rufe, and measured.
“Godalmighty,” he marveled, “it…it ain’t human.”
“Ought to see me when I’m happy,” Rufe grinned.
Cody snapped a series of pictures with the Pentax, moving from left to right to get them.
“You, uh, getting it?” Braddock asked.
“Oh yeah,” Cody said. “Guess that about does it, Sheriff.”
Braddock handed Cody back the tape measure.
“When’ll I know if I’ve won?”
“We’ll get back to you,” Hawkins promised. “And soon.”
“Hey,” Rufe called, “what about me?”
Cody smiled at him.
“Well, prisoner, if I were you, I’d start by pulling my pants up.”
Two hours later, Cody and Hawkins returned, Caine accompanying them this time. Cody had a large manila envelope under his arm. When they came into the sheriff’s office, Braddock turned and looked over his shoulder at them. He was nailing a framed photograph on the wall. It was a photo of him holding an extremely large catfish on a chain. Braddock was smiling, the catfish wasn’t.
Deputy Willie Bob was nowhere in sight.
“Well now,” said Braddock. “Back already. Who’s your friend?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cody said. He took the envelope from under his arm, opened it and tossed some enlarged photographs on the sheriff’s desk. “That photo service in town here, it does prints just as fast as they say. Faster when you pay them a little extra.”
Braddock looked confused. He picked up one of the photos.
It showed him down on his knees beside Rufe. Rufe had his hands on his head and was smiling in a satisfied way. From the angle the photograph had been taken, you couldn’t see the measuring tape. In fact, it looked as if Braddock were…
“My God!” Braddock exclaimed. “You boys can’t use these! You can’t see the tape!”
“No shit,” Hawkeye smiled.
Braddock colored as realization seeped into him. He snatched the pictures up, tore them to pieces furiously.
“You missed a piece,” Hawkeye offered, handing Braddock a large corner of one snapshot that had drifted to the edge of the desk.
Braddock tore that up too.
“You dumb asshole,” said Hawkeye, still smiling. “You think those are the only copies we’ve got?”
Braddock eyed the three of them evenly.
“There wasn’t no contest, was there? You just wanted to get them pictures, to make it look like—”
He couldn’t finish.
Hawkins finished for him.
“Like you’re tooting Rufe’s horn, Sheriff. Yeah, that is what it looks like, don’t it?”
“You…you bastards know that nigger, don’t you?”
“Bingo,” said Cody. “And I’d forget putting your hand on that gun, Sheriff. We might be forced to hurt you. We don’t want to do that.”
“These pictures are going to hurt you bad enough,” Caine put in, “if you don’t listen to reason.”
“I got no money,” Braddock told them. “I ain’t got nothing you’d want.”
“You’ve got one thing we want,” Cody corrected. “You’ve got Rufe Murphy. 1 want you to let him go.”
“But I can’t do that! Man’s in here on grand theft auto.”
“He didn’t steal a thing and you know it,” Caine countered. “We know about the mayor’s wife, mate, and we know that’s why Rufe’s in this pigsty you call a jail.”
“But 1 can’t just let him go!”
“Let me outline this for you,” Cody said. “We’ve given copies of these pictures to some people here in town. And we’ve told them if anything happens to us, or Rufe, they send copies to certain individuals. People see these, and…you figure it, Sheriff.”
“Dick-honking sheriffs are frowned upon highly,” Hawkins offered, his smile right in place.
“You goddamn sonofabitches,” Braddock snarled without moving from behind his desk.
“Three of the biggest,” Caine agreed.
“Now,” Cody said, “here’s what you do, Sheriff. You go back there and bring Rufe out. Then you’ll just have to do something about that grand theft auto stuff. Drop it. Say it was a mistake.”
“The mayor—” Braddock started.
“The mayor wouldn’t want those pictures flashed around either,” Cody said. “Could prove to be extremely embarrassing for your town, don’t you think?�
��
“Yeah, Sheriff,” Hawkins said, “If you’re going to play the skin flute, you’re going to have to learn not to have pictures taken of you doing it. Not smart at all.”
Braddock’s mouth opened and closed a few times but nothing came out, as if the words were too thick and had lodged in his throat.
“You know,” Hawkins continued easily, “we could send you one of these framed and you could put it up there next to your fish picture. Be kind of nice, I think, you showing how you caught a couple of big ones.”
“I ought to blow your heads off,” Braddock hissed.
“You do,” Cody said, “and those pictures get sent.”
“Besides, my good man,” Caine interjected, “it would be to your considerable disadvantage to try. We’d be forced to cripple you.”
“At the very least,” Hawkeye added.
“Enough.” All the humor had gone out of Cody’s voice. “You go back there and get Rufe. I’d like it best if you’d put that revolver on the desk before you do. If you don’t want to do that I’ll take it away from you.”
Braddock eyed the three of them, not seeing a gun among them, but there was something about the way they stood, the confidence they radiated. Slowly, he placed his service revolver on the desk.
“Good man,” Cody nodded. “Now bring Rufe out.”
Braddock opened a desk drawer, slowly, and got out a ring of keys. He went to the back, returning with Rufe Murphy.
The huge black man looked very happy.
“Howdy, boys.” He moved quickly away from Braddock to stand by his friends from ten years ago, then said, “Sheriff, baby, looks like you’ve just had your ass stung, but don’t feel too bad. It was done by the best.”
Braddock’s cheeks were hopping about as if infested with jumping beans, but he didn’t say anything.
“And remember,” Cody said. “Clean slate for Rufe here. And you try and stop us, push this matter in any way, your wife gets a copy, the mayor gets a copy, just about everybody gets a copy. Got it?”
Braddock nodded, glowering.
“Let’s hear it,” Cody snapped.
“Got it,” the sheriff said, biting off the words.
“Bye now,” Rufe said.
They turned to go out the door, Cody watching Braddock, as first Caine, then Hawkeye, left the building. Rufe was almost out, then stopped and turned to Cody as if he had been fighting a battle inside himself and just lost.
“Sorry, Sarge,” he told Cody, “but I gots to.”
And he crossed over quickly, before Braddock could scuttle out of the way, and delivered a backhand slap that was hard enough to lift the sheriff off his feet and pitch him back over his desk, to where he balled up in an unmoving, loudly snoring heap in the corner.
“Damn, that felt good,” Rufe sighed.
He and Cody got out of there.
They drove by the park in the town square on their way out of town, and Cody parked idling at the curb at Hawkeye’s request.
Hawkeye took a package off the car seat, got out, and went up to the bench where Old Joe—as usual—was seated.
The oldtimer looked up.
“Fifty bucks again?” he asked hopefully.
“Something better,” Hawkeye chuckled, opening the package. He took out a framed, glassed picture of Sheriff Braddock and Rufe, Rufe’s head having been strategically scissored out of the picture. “Keep this for insurance, pard. Never know when you might need it.”
Old Joe looked over the photograph and laughed so hard he nearly fell off the bench.
“Goddamn, boy, you got him, didn’t you? You got him good.”
“Yep,” Hawkins said. “You take care, Old Joe.”
“I will,” the oldtimer promised between laughs.
Hawkins shook hands with the old man and went back to the car, smiling all the way.
Cody slipped the car into gear and drove them out of town and no one tried to stop them.
After several miles Cody said, “Rufe, I’ve got a proposition for you…”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Captain Tom Ward completed the shutdown procedure.
The 727’s massive jet-engine power whistled, hummed and vibrated away to nothing, leaving Flight 766 from Athens to Tell Aviv sitting all by its lonesome on the tarmac fronting the north side of the Beirut airport terminal.
The 727’s flight deck crackled with tension and body odor, and the plane’s air conditioning did nothing for the sweat Ward felt beading his forehead and upper lip. He restrained himself from making even the slightest move to wipe away the perspiration.
He did not want to make the woman holding the pistol to the nape of his neck anymore nervous than she already appeared to be.
Larry Jenks, the copilot, flashed Ward another secretive sideways glance, awaiting some sort of indication of what to do, but Ward ignored him, as he had from the beginning of this ordeal, a long sixty minutes ago when Flight 766 had been cruising routinely, halfway to its destination, high above the troubled lands of the Middle East. The endless expanse of the blue Mediterranean flowed by far beneath as if there were no such thing as terrorists and hijackings, something that was always on the mind of pilots and crew in this part of the world these days. But for all the hijackings that had occurred in the past few years, the total was but a minute fraction of the daily air traffic in and near the trouble spots, and a job was a job. Flying was a profession Ward loved, and all you could do was hope and pray that your luck would hold.
Ward knew their luck had run out.
The flight navigator, Yamir, lay stretched out dead on the floor of the flight deck, where he had fallen when he reacted in the first moments of the takeover.
It had been an A-B-C, by-the-numbers operation all the way: the first thing Ward had known of anything being wrong was the frantic knocking on the cockpit door and a woman shrieking something frantic, unintelligible.
Ward had nodded for Yamir to open the door, thinking perhaps one of the passengers was panicking from some sort of air-flight phobia and had come forward. This happened from time to time.
The door to the flight deck had slammed inward then, knocking Yamir off his feet, and then Ward had known instantly what was happening when he saw the dusky, Arabic features and the guns the man and the woman both held.
Yamir had started to get up, to protest.
The man had kneed him brutally in the face and the kick had jammed his nasal cartilage up into his brain.
Then the woman had aimed her weapon at Ward’s head, where it had remained except for the brief time during the landing.
Ward had followed the man’s orders and landed the jet here on the rough, uncared-for runway of Beirut International.
Every pilot’s nightmare.
Passenger’s nightmare, too.
He had not gotten much of a look at the woman, but one glance at the man had been enough to make him do as he was told and fly the plane and not cause trouble, which is also why he had not encouraged his copilot to take action, either. He had not only his own but the lives of all his passengers dependent on how he reacted.
The man—the woman terrorist had referred to him as Abdel—had about him the look of a born killer. Ward had flown in Vietnam and had seen some men like this before; men who had lost their souls to what they had been through and lost even their reason for fighting on, and had begun to enjoy the killing.
Abdel strutted back into the cockpit, now that they were landed.
Ward did not twist around to look out into the passenger section, but he knew other terrorists would have that part of the plane secured. He didn’t know how they could have gotten these weapons aboard the flight, but it didn’t really matter now, anyway. Athens security was a joke. His gut region burned to do something, but the woman had not removed the gun snout from his neck.
Abdel stepped over the sprawled form of Yamir, leaned forward past the pilots and picked up the cockpit radio.
“Attention, tower. This is Flight
766, do you read me?”
“We read you,” the radio crackled back. “Go ahead.”
Ward looked out and down at the group of people standing in the early morning light in front of the terminal. He could see cameras and some uniforms, but no one from there came forward.
“This plane is now in the control of the Palestinian Liberation Guerrilla Force,” intoned Abdel without inflection.
“We demand the release of seven-hundred revolutionary heroes now held by Israeli forces in the prison camp outside Tel Aviv within the next forty-eight hours. What is to happen is intended to prove we mean what we say. If our demands are not met, we will commence executing the passengers aboard this plane one per hour. Allah wa-akbar! God is great!” Abdel replaced the headphones and stepped back, turning to the woman. “Watch them closely,” he instructed, then he glanced at Ward. “I would advise you and your crew not to attempt anything, Captain. We needed you to land this plane. We don’t need you now. Understood?”
“I understand that,” Ward grunted. “What I don’t understand is why you people always bring God into it when you’re getting ready to massacre innocent civilians.”
The terrorist hissed and delivered a short, swift chop with his Uzi to Ward’s forehead, making the world seem to spin around with a burst of pain inside Ward’s head.
Ward righted himself to keep from falling, shaking his head to clear it, turning in time to see Abdel leave the cockpit.
The woman stepped away from Ward now so she could keep both him and copilot Jenks covered with her pistol and riveting, dark eyes.
Ward looked back at the woman and thought about trying to say something, but he caught his tongue.
If Abdel had looked like a man who would enjoy killing, this one had about her the look of the haunted, the damned, like she had a mad-on for the whole damn world; as though she had just lost her best friend and was only waiting for the right opportunity to let the anger and hate inside of her boil over so she could start pulling the pistol’s trigger.
Something about her scared Ward even more than Abdel had, and the only thought Ward had at that moment was, God help us all….
Farouk Hassan had positioned himself and Hallah in the rear of the jet’s passenger section, while Abdel and Tahia had found seating toward the front.