Flashpoint Read Free Page A

Tens and twenties in that amount just don't make a neat package. I tried to stuff the envelope down beside me in the seat cushion. It wouldn't fit there, either.
        "Look!" Duke said excitedly, nudging me. "It's the other bartender. He's holdin' a gun on the pilot an' stewardess. The little guy is with him an'-" Duke paused "-he's got a knife in his hand. It looks-it looks- they're startin'-"
        "We show you we mean business!" the loudspeaker announced.
        A murmured ripple of sound ran from front to back of the aircraft.
        "God, look at that!" someone exclaimed.
        "-cut the pilot's throat!" a voice said clearly.
        "-mos' took his head off!" I recognized Candy's voice.
        Duke Conboy shrank back into his seat from his aisle-leaning position. His round face was white. "They-they killed-" he stammered.
        "You saw what happened to the Jewish pig of a pilot!" the loudspeaker said harshly. "It will be the same for the Jew girl if anyone makes trouble. Each one stand up by seat as we come past and put everything in sack."
        The broken-English instructions were poorly worded, but the message was perfectly clear. Another burst of machine-gun fire from the rear of the plane emphasized the order. Everyone flinched.
        The girl stewardess was first into my line of vision. Her head was tilted upward by a white-coated arm under her chin, exposing the whole of her slender throat to the bloody, double-bladed knife pressed against it by the hophead bartender. The girl's eyes were bulging with terror. She was so limp it looked as though most of her weight was supported by the dark-skinned arm under her chin. Wet stains on her uniform skirt and stockings indicated she had lost control of her bodily functions.
        Right behind the slow-moving pair and in step with them was the second bartender. The group paused beside each seat while cursing, snarling gamblers emptied their pockets into the large canvas sack held out by the second man. I saw knives and guns disappearing along with handfuls of bills. The man with the sack leaned into each seat and made quick patting motions to assure himself that individual pockets had been emptied of money and weapons.
        They continued along the aisle with balletlike precision. The men remained back-to-back with the girl in front of them. The knife at the girl's strained, pulsating throat never wavered. Duke stood up and threw his money into the sack. I tossed Hazel's manila envelope with Larkin's seventy-five G's and my own wallet into the sack. A deft hand patted my pockets lightly. I sat down with a brassy taste in my throat. I was going to look like a prize ass trying to explain this development to Hazel.
        The bizarre ballet moved into the rear compartment of the plane. Everyone twisted in his seat to watch. Men leaned out into the aisles to see the procession as it passed out of sight. "The bastards'll get better'n a quarter million on this job," Duke predicted sorrowfully.
        It struck me that while the machine gunner at the rear of the stairway of the plane was a hard-and-fast reality, there couldn't be another in the cockpit as the man with the sack had said. Machine gun or not, a man in the front of the plane couldn't hope to walk down the aisle alone among sixty infuriated gamblers without a hostage like the young stewardess and hope to make it to the rear exit alive. The hijacker who had been doing all the talking was running a bluff.
        I looked up at the emergency-exit handle above my head, then fumbled in the storage pocket on the back of the seat ahead of me and retrieved the Smith & Wesson I had dropped into it. I had just reached for the emergency-exit handle at the top of the window when a choked feminine scream that quickly died out sounded above a renewed babble of voices all around me.
        "He killed the girl!" someone shouted from the rear compartment. "The hook-nosed sonofabitch knifed the