The By-Pass Control Page 20

  I crawled out, stood up, and saw the glint of light from a broken flask on the floor. Next to the pieces legs lay sprawled limply, half hidden by the top of a metal lathe bench. I found the light switch, flicked it on and twisted the gooseneck down to one side.

  Claude Boster lay there almost unrecognizable, his face bloodied and swollen beyond belief, fingers disjointed and broken back, jutting out at odd angles. A wide piece of surgical tape still hung from one cheek where it had been used to muffle him while the job was done.

  But he was still alive. There was a flutter to his eyelids and somehow he had managed to knock over that flask when he heard me at the door.

  I said, “Claude?”

  His mouth moved and blood spilled over his lips. I saw his apron front then, torn and powder-burned directly over the heart. Gently, I felt the area, probed the heavy canvas and picked out the flattened lead slug that had smashed into him from a .22 Magnum.

  Someday Claude Boster would realize how lucky he had been. In the top pocket of the apron he had dropped three small steel crescent wrenches that had absorbed the murderous impact that would otherwise have torn his chest inside out. They lay in my hand, bent and split, but lifesaving armor against a shot fired to silence him permanently.

  “Can you hear me?”

  A small nod indicated that he could.

  “I know you’re hurting, but you’ll be all right. Now even no matter what it takes, don’t pass out. I have to talk to you.”

  Boster nodded again and said weakly, “Yes ... but ... hurry. I can’t ... stand it.”

  “What happened?”

  For a second he closed his eyes and I thought he had drifted off, then he opened them and looked at me, pain showing through the slits. “There ... was a knock ... on the door. I thought it ... was a policeman. He ... came in ... hit me.”

  “Who, Boster?”

  “Thin. He was ... tall. Face was ...”

  “What? Come on, snap out of it!”

  Boster spat out blood from his crushed mouth, eyes pleading with me to stop, but I couldn’t. He said, “Right side ... scarred. Glass eye. He had a ... funny gun.”

  “What was he after?”

  The pain receded then, horror taking its place as he remembered. His jaw came open, trembled, and he moaned and tried to turn his head.

  “What was it, Boster!”

  He rolled his head back slowly. “I ... told him,” he said, his voice accusing nobody but himself. I waited, knowing there would be more. Finally he moved his mouth again. “I had remembered ... a place Louis ... mentioned. Leesville. He beat me ... did things to me ... and I told him.” His eyes squinted shut and a tremor went through his body. One hand twitched with the terrible agony in it. “I ... couldn’t help myself.”

  I tried to keep my voice quiet. “When, Boster? How long ago?”

  “Right ... after daylight.”

  That gave Niger Hoppes a few hours’ start!

  “Leesville ... where is it?”

  He tried to talk but wasn’t going to make it. One hand reached out feebly as if it were pointing. A glassy stare was coming into his eyes again. He made one final attempt and got out, “Map ... pinhole,” then relapsed into total unconsciousness.

  Like that the pain was gone into the darkness the body reserves for such moments and there was nothing I could do for him that couldn’t wait. I straightened up, shoved the gun back and scoured the room for a map. I tore the place apart, throwing drawers on the floor, slamming papers and blueprints from the shelves, looking for the thing and finding nothing. Boster had tried to point, but where?

  I went back to the inert form wanting to yell at him, make him tell me, then I saw the bulge in the lower pocket of his bench apron. It was just a standard East Coast roadmap issued by a big gasoline company, but it covered the area from Florida to Maine, and in the southlands there could be hundreds of Leesvilles that were no more than intersections of county roads. I spread the map out, checked the important cities listed in the corner without finding any reference to a Leesville.

  But Claude had said a pinhole.

  I stretched the map face down on a bench and ran my hand over the surface, feeling for any raised edge from a perforation. When my fingers came away empty I held it up to the light, let my eyes roam over the area inch by inch, concentrating in the lower quarter.

  It took five minutes, but I found it, buried in the crease of a fold, just the tiniest pinprick as if someone had looked at the map once and absently touched the spot with a pin. That’s what Louis Agrounsky had done, and Boster had seen him do it.

  Alongside the minute hole in fine blue letters identifying a blue dot near the coastline was the legend, Leesville.

  I shoved the map in my pocket and picked up the phone, waiting impatiently for Charlie Corbinet to answer. I heard the phone connection open and the hum of voices in the background before he said, “Yes?”

  “Tiger, Charlie. Can I talk?”

  He recognized the urgency in my voice and kept his friendly and disarming in case anyone else was listening. “Certainly,” he said cheerfully.

  “I have the spot located.”

  Then his tone was forced and his breathing was hard. “Yes, yes, go on. I’ll be glad to help.”

  “No thanks. We haven’t got time. I don’t want anybody moving in or we’ll scare our boy off. You get the information firsthand the way I did. Niger Hoppes reached Claude Boster somehow. It wouldn’t have been much trouble to do ... the grounds were patrolled and he came when the cop was on the other side of the building. Boster needs help and fast.”

  “Fine ... I understand.” He knew it was useless to argue at that point and didn’t try. But he could try a different approach just to keep me there and said, “Your ... friend has been trying to call you.”

  “Dave?”

  “That’s the one. You’re to call your ... fiancée. Apparently it’s important.”

  “You trying to keep me here, buddy?”

  “It’s for your own good.” he said, but he didn’t mean it at all. They wanted me out of the way.

  I grinned at the phone mirthlessly and said, “I’ll leave the name of the place on the workbench. Let’s see you find it ahead of me. You’ll have the same chance as Hoppes, only he’s got a bigger start.”

  I hung up, scribbled Leesville on the desk pad for him to find and went over to the door. The chain hung there, but the other two automatic locks were still in place, pulled shut from the outside. Niger Hoppes had had it too damn easy.

  Not now though. Right then he was activating every source at his command to locate the possible sites of Leesville along the route Louis Agrounsky took and the faceless underground was going to find it for him.

  I ran to the car, got in, and backed out of the drive. By the time I reached the corner, went down a block and reversed my path I heard the moaning wail of the police car’s siren in front of Boster’s house as they got the call to intercept me.

  There wasn’t time for explanations. Camille could see it on my face and stared straight ahead. I took the back roads, picking my direction carefully, heading continuously toward the airport on the other side of town. They’d be out in full force now, knowing I knew the actual location of the place, ready to tear it from me any way they could. I couldn’t blame them. Their concern was as great as my own, but I had been there at the beginning and I was going to be there at the end. I was closer than they were and at this point better prepared.

  Beside me Camille sneezed into her handkerchief, sniffling hard as she fought the cold the rain drenched her with. Her eyes were watery when she looked at me through a forced smile and said, “Can I help somehow?”

  “Keep watching those side roads. I can’t see too well.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The airport.”

  She spotted an intersection and cleared me with a nod. “You found ... your friend?”

  “Yeah, I found him. He was supposed to be dead.” I described the
scene briefly to her and her shoulders shook with some inward revulsion. “I’m ... sorry. I’m not very ... good about these things.”

  “Forget it. We’re almost on target.”

  She took the handkerchief away from her mouth and wiped at her eyes. “Tiger ... I’m frightened.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I can’t help it. Maybe it’s silly ... but I haven’t ... before I haven’t been part of anything....”

  “You did fine, kid.”

  “I wasn’t any help.... You’ll leave me here?” she asked.

  “I have to.”

  “But ...”

  “Nobody’ll bother you. The action’s left this place. It’ll be in Leesville now.”

  “Where?”

  “A spot on the map in North Carolina near the ocean. The killer I want has a few hours’ start, but it won’t do any good.”

  “Hours?”

  “I have an F-51 waiting, honey. It can bore right through this weather ahead of any transportation he can pick up. Even if it only took him an hour to locate the right Leesville I can beat him in. The benefits of the Martin Grady organization.”

  The wind shifted, bringing the crosshatch patterns of the sirens coming from my left as cars toured the main roads in their futile searching. Twice, I had to follow a sandy side road too close to the highway, but each time another strip heading south showed up and I took it, plowing past rough holes and shoulders that fell off into drainage ditches. All I had was a rough idea of my position, but it was enough. A white arrow nailed to a tree read AIRPORT, and I cut sharply, took the branch road and stayed on it until I reached the fringe of the field, then turned into the first opening, picked up a runway and laid on the gas as I tore down the paved surface to the hangar area.

  Mason Armstrong was inside with a steaming cup of coffee, idly reading the NOTAMS posted on the wall when I walked in. He put the cup down and said, “Going somewhere?”

  “What’s the weather?”

  “N.G. They’re holding everything down. All commercial flights are canceled.”

  “Can we move?”

  Mason shrugged and grinned. “Not unless you want trouble.”

  “A little more won’t matter,” I told him.

  “A Piper Comanche took off a while ago. They raised hell in the office, but the pilot had a happy look like whatever he was paid was worth losing a license for.”

  That cold, bleak feeling traveled up my back again. “You see who rode with him?”

  “Just from the back. Tall skinny guy, but I didn’t see his face.”

  I pulled the map from my pocket and opened it. “Check your sectionals. See if you can get down someplace close to here.” I pointed out the dot that was Leesville. Mason gave me a strange look, shrugged again and went over to his mapcase.

  Down on the far end of the wall was a public phone. I dropped in a dime, gave the operator two numbers Rondine could be reached at and waited while she tried to connect me. Neither one answered. I gave her Ernie Bentley’s and waited again, knowing that if a call to Newark Control had gone in from Rondine it would reach him too.

  Ernie was there, his voice choppy. I identified myself and said, “Rondine call?”

  “Damn right, but she wouldn’t talk to Newark. Virgil contacted me but I couldn’t put him on you when I didn’t know where you were.”

  “No message at all?”

  “Nothing. She was pretty well shook up about something ... said it was absolutely imperative that you reach her, but she wouldn’t talk. All I gathered was that she found something. She said she’d be at the place you told her to stay at three this afternoon.”

  “I just called there.”

  “It isn’t three yet.”

  “Okay, I’ll make the call. That’s the roominghouse you quartered me at. Get some of our people over there and have them stay put with her until I call in. But in any event, get her to talk, damn it. Hell broke loose down here.... I have the spot Agrounsky’s holed up in but Hoppes is ahead of me. Anything that can rush things, do.”

  “Get him with the Bezex?”

  “Sorry, buddy. This time your gimmick was no good.”

  I hung up and turned back to the counter Mason had his maps spread out on. “What’s there?”

  “Nothing but farmland. The nearest strip is ten miles away and all dirt. This weather would have turned it into a mudhole. Nothing’s getting in there.”

  I pushed his maps toward him. “We are,” I said.

  “You’re nuts, Tiger.”

  “So I’ve been told. But we have no other choice. That Comanche was heading for there too.”

  “He’s light enough to make it in the strip with that but we can’t.”

  “Ever come in with your wheels up?”

  “Not when I didn’t have to, friend. I hope you’re not thinking what I think you are.”

  “You’ll be right if you do.”

  “Look ... ,” he started.

  I cut him short. “There won’t be a world worth flying in if we don’t.”

  He took two seconds, no more. He had been around with us before. He saw my eyes and the set of my face and said, “What are we waiting for?”

  I pulled out the keys to the car and went over to where Camille was sitting quietly, coughing into her handkerchief, and handed them to her. “Stay here an hour, honey, then check into a motel until it clears. There ought to be flights leaving in the morning to New York and you be on board. I’ll see you there.”

  She turned her eyes up to me, a sad, tired expression emanating from their beautiful depths. “Will you really?” she asked with no inflection in her voice at all.

  I reached out my hand. She took it and stood up facing me, her hands touching my waist with a gentle pressure. “Maybe,” I said.

  Her smile had a little-girl quality. “No ... it’s over. My web ... wasn’t strong enough.” She let her smile brighten a little. “But I tried, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “And it was worth it. I only regret one thing.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t get to paint me with the oiled feather.”

  My mouth touched the wet spots on her cheeks and brushed away the dampness that clung to her eyelashes. Under my hands she began to tremble again and her lids half closed as she choked out a tiny sob I stifled with my lips, fanning the fire in her to immediate and violent life. Her mouth was a wild thing, sucking hungrily, tasting quickly to absorb the present and the future in the few seconds left to us, then I pushed her away when I didn’t want her to go at all.

  “Be careful, Tiger.”

  I nodded.

  “Will you see me ... sometime, perhaps?”

  “Sometime. It has to happen again.”

  “Then I’ll weave a new web,” she smiled. “Be careful, darling.”

  Behind me Mason said, “Ready, buddy?”

  “Coming,” I told him.

  The Mustang was chocked and tied on the ramp area at the end of a short line of private planes, its WWII fighter silhouette towering over the other craft, the menacing nose pointing skyward as if sniffing out an enemy hidden there.

  Mason had pre-flighted the plane earlier, part of his normal routine, so we were ready for immediate take off barring any interference. The rain solved that problem nicely. The field was officially closed and anyone present was behind closed doors sipping coffee near electric heaters that took the bite out of the air.

  I climbed in, strapped on the shoulder harness and seat belt while Mason pulled the chocks, then put on the headset and plugged it in while he was getting set. With the canopy closed and the rain obscuring us, no eyes caught the preparations until Mason flipped the starter switch and the four great paddle blades whipped into life.

  No other sound in the world is like it. The twelve massive cylinders of the Merlin coughed once, then roared alive with a snarl of gratitude for being awakened, and as the radio suddenly took on life with the startled voice of the tower operator ques
tioning us, Mason pulled out to the taxi strip, went downwind to the runway where he checked the mags, then kicked the tail around and gave the Mustang full take off power into the wind. He went on instruments fifty feet off the ground, broke out of traffic and started to climb, saying the things softly to himself all pilots say when they’re hoping there are no other chunks of metal in the sky ahead.

  At thirty-five hundred feet we broke out into a bright, beautiful day that was like turning on a switch. Beneath us the rolling clouds that had been dangerously black from the inside took on the soft mounds and valleys of hilly country under a fresh snowfall. The shadow of the plane was encircled by a tight spectrum, a rainbow in full, that rode the crests and dipped into the recesses of the whiteness that capped the hell going on below.

  Mason had estimated the time en route at an hour, forty minutes, carefully ignoring the fact of what we might find when he tried to let down. Those things he could think about when he got there. One bridge at a time. Somewhere up ahead another plane and other people were facing the same situation. Mason’s calculated voice told me the answers he had worked out on his computer. The Comanche’s start was a good one. There was a probability he could find a hole in the overcast and make the field. Maybe not. Leesville would have to be selected by dead reckoning and both planes would face the same difficulties. The best he could say was that it looked like a tie. We could overcome the time lag, but getting on the ground was going to be the big problem.

  Time, always that time element, always pulling it up to the last impossible second. I closed my eyes and sat back, letting Mason do the worrying until the time came, and thought about Rondine.

  What would she tell me she wouldn’t reveal to the others? What was so important? Her assignment was simple and could have given me a lead if the right answer hadn’t broken under my nose. She couldn’t have made contact with anyone out of the ordinary, but there was always that outside chance that it happened. The Soviets weren’t playing this one on a solo basis. Their teams were in there the way our own were, every man alerted, every possible phase of action being explored regardless of how remote it seemed. They had their own experts, their own killers ready to move when necessity demanded it and were forced to do what they had to do to win this crazy game.