Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“We need a ride,” Amelia declared as they gathered with their flight gear in the lobby of the hotel.
“The reporters. Some of them are sleeping in their cars,” Pancho blurted out. Charging out the hotel entrance into the parking lot, she yelled, “Hey! Any of you reporters awake?”
A couple of car doors opened, and a few men asked sleepily what was going on.
“We need a lift to the airfield,” Marvel called out.
“I’ll take you,” one nearby offered.
Marvel started toward him, but Pancho looked inside the front and grabbed Marvel’s elbow.
“Not this car.” More doors opened, and Pancho peered briefly into each one, then ran on to the next, with Marvel and Amelia hot on her heels.
Eventually, Pancho announced, “This one. Pile in, girls.” Marvel and Amelia crawled into the back, and Pancho took the front passenger’s seat.
“Where to?” the cub reporter asked eagerly.
“The airfield,” she told him. “Drive it like you stole it! I’ll cover the cost of any damage.”
The young man hooted. “You got it!”
As the kid took the turn out of the parking lot practically on two wheels, Marvel popped her head over the back of the front seat. “Why this car, Pancho?”
Pancho reached down under the dashboard and pulled something free. She held it up and looked at Marvel. “Because this car has a shotgun.”
Pullman stuck to the shadows, sneaking toward the men working in the dark. He heard a clang. A metal cap being unscrewed.
One of the saboteurs said, “Hand me the funnel, Perkins. This oil can is heavy.”
So he’d been correct. It was oil.
He risked peeking out from behind an engine, scanning the row of planes. He spied a set of wings moving up and down slightly. He slid back into the shadows, moving more quickly now.
Ahead, he heard, “Aw jeez, Vernon. Pour slower or it’s going to overflow the top of the funnel. The jig will be up if we leave oil on the wing fabric.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” the first voice snapped. “I just want to get this over with and get out of here.”
“We don’t get paid if we botch the job,” Perkins retorted.
It was a windy night, and the clouds overhead were scudding across the sky more patchily than before.
As Pullman rounded the nose of yet another plane, a shaft of moonlight abruptly illuminated the planes.
He dived behind the aircraft closest to him.
The ground was bone-dry, and his impact sent a plume of dust into his face.
He’d sucked some of it in before he realized what had happened.
The dirt tickled his sinuses and irritated his throat and lungs.
He doubled over, fighting urges to sneeze and cough.
He crawled under the belly of the plane beside him and eased forward on his hands and knees, making sure to remain in the shadow cast by the wings over his head.
“Ready for another can,” Vernon said.
Pullman quelled an urge to stand up and shout at them to stop. He might be armed, but he was one man against two. He needed a tactical advantage, which meant getting behind them and surprising them.
He crawled under the next airplane. There was one more plane between him and the two thugs. He climbed to his feet silently and eased behind the next plane, crouching low. His weapon drawn, he peered around its tail.
One man stood beside the airplane’s nose. Behind him was the same truck from before. Another man stood on a ladder, concentrating on pouring oil into the top wing.
Pullman eased backward and crept along his plane, intent on placing himself between the truck and the men. A sound in the distance interrupted the night’s heavy silence. At first, it wasn’t more than a buzz. But it was growing louder.
“I think someone’s coming,” the man at the nose called out.
It was now or never. Pullman stepped out from behind the plane, pointing his revolver at the man on the ladder. “Freeze! BOI.”
“Holy Christ!” Vernon bellowed.
Behind him, the truck started up.
Crap. A third man, driving the truck.
Headlights came into view off to his right from the direction of the airport’s main entrance. But he ignored them, focusing on the men in front of him.
The driver laid on the horn. The sound shattered the stillness and made the two men on the ground lurch into motion. Vernon jumped off the ladder, and the other man bent and scooped up cans off the ground.
“I’ll shoot!” Pullman warned.
Without warning, another engine started somewhere behind him. Startled, Pullman glanced over his shoulder and saw the distinctive white flash of a gun firing at him.
“Pullman was right,” Pancho cried. “I see something over by the planes!” She hung halfway out the car’s passenger window. “Did you hear that pop? I just saw a muzzle flash, too. That’s gunfire!”
The kid at the wheel raced toward the women’s planes, and the car bounced and bumped on the dirt and dead grass way too much for Pancho to get an accurate shot off.
She slid back into her seat, efficiently checking that the shotgun was fully loaded.
“Go around to the front of the planes,” she told the driver.
The kid turned the wheel hard, and the car swerved sharply. Marvel and Amelia grunted in the back seat as they were thrown around. “A little warning next time?” Amelia called.
“Sorry . . . holy cow!” Pancho exclaimed as two men ran through the beams of the car’s headlights, crossing from the darkness to light and back into the shadows like coyotes. “Follow them!” she yelled. “They aren’t getting away with sabotaging our planes!”
“Sabotage?” the kid at the steering wheel echoed, grinning. “Wait ’til I tell the guys back at the hotel I struck gold by staying in the car!”
“Catch ’em, and I’ll double your monthly pay!” Pancho said urgently.
The young man hunched over the steering wheel, chasing the fleeing men.
When the pair veered to the left, heading for an orange grove, the reporter yanked the wheel hard to the left and slammed on the brakes simultaneously, which was a bad combination.
With brake pads only on the front tires, the car’s back end swung around violently to the side when the front tires stopped so abruptly.
The car tipped up on its right-side wheels and kept going, rolling onto its side.
Its momentum sent it skidding across the ground with a horrific grinding noise and the sound of breaking glass before it stopped.
Pancho disentangled herself from the reporter who’d landed on top of her and stood on the side of the front seat, popping her head out the driver’s side window, shotgun in hand.
Her adventurous early life had included learning her way around firearms, and she handled the shotgun with ease and precision.
“You, there! Freeze!” Pancho yelled, taking aim at the fleeing men’s backs.
From inside the car, Amelia declared, “You can’t shoot them, Pancho. We don’t know if they did anything wrong.”
“They’re running,” she argued. “That tells me plenty!”
Pancho felt a hand on her waist as Marvel said urgently, “We can’t shoot first.”
The men jumped into the back of a truck parked at the edge of the trees, and the driver hit the accelerator. Pancho adjusted her aim and fired off a shot. The truck swerved and traveled in a curve, the rear tire flat and dragging.
“Nice shot!” Marvel praised Pancho.
There was a bright flash from the back of the truck and a crack of gunfire.
“Duck!” Pancho shoved Marvel back down inside the car. She pulled herself up and out of the car, landing in a crouch. She planted her left knee on the ground to take another shot. She peered down the length of steel, lined up the cross hairs, and squeezed the trigger.
The recoil sent her onto her backside, but she heard the sound of breaking glass.
She’d shot out one of the truck’s windows, but it kept on going.
She lined it up in her sights for another shot, but it swerved into the orange trees and disappeared before she could pull the trigger.
“Blast it!” she exclaimed. “I hope they end up in a gully full of rattlesnakes!”
A light went on beside her. “Hold this,” the reporter said, passing the flashlight to Marvel. In its cone of light, the kid scribbled frantically on a notepad. She supposed she couldn’t begrudge him his eyewitness account. He’d done his part and gotten them there in time to chase off some bad guys.
“There’s a man down on the ground over by the planes.” Amelia’s words forced Pancho back into calm crisis mode once more. She looked where Amelia was pointing, and sure enough, there was a human form sprawled on the dirt. “Good. Someone to wring answers out of.”
“Woo-hoo,” the reporter whooped in glee as he ran off behind her.
Pancho leveled the shotgun at the prone man, who was lying face down. “Keep your heads on a swivel for more bad guys, gals. I’ll keep an eye on this guy.”
The darkness went quiet and tense around them. Were there other saboteurs out there? Pancho listened carefully, but the silence continued, undisturbed. “I think they’re gone,” she finally announced.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Marvel asked, staring at the prone man.
“I sure hope not,” Pancho answered. “After I beat the truth out of him, I want the pleasure of shooting him myself.”
“Pullman would argue against that. But I’m gonna draw straws against you, Pancho, to get the first shot,” Amelia declared.
Pancho jolted. She’d forgotten about Pullman.
Supposedly, he was out here, somewhere. Her gut knotted as she looked at the downed man again.
Surely not. She grabbed the flashlight out of Marvel’s hands and circled around to the other side of the figure on the ground.
She shone the light on his face and swore.
It was Agent Pullman lying motionless in the dirt.