Part 91 (2/2)

'Okay!

You go ahead. If he sees you, he'll know I'm right behind!” Jodi hauled the bag off the ground and looked down at Kelso. 'You got precisely three minutes and nineteen seconds! If you're not there, I'm leaving without you!” 'For chrissakes! I'm comin'!” Kelso started to clamber out of the underground store.

Jodi began a stumbling run up the track that led up through the dunes and on to the strip. Kelso knelt down with his back to her and raked a few more packs into the second zipper bag. When Jodi had disappeared from view, he reached down into the waistband of his tunic and pulled out Side-Winder's handset.

'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Rat-Catcher. Rat-Catcher to all Mother stations. Does anyone read me?

Over.”

A crackle of static. 'Rat-Catcher. This is Sky-Bucket Three. We have your Mayday five by five. Activate your Find and Fix channel for Search and Rescue or state nature of emergency. Over.”

Kelso ran back across the gra.s.s with the bulging zipper bag perched on his shoulder. Steve and Clearwater sat beneath the closed canopy, helmeted, strapped in and ready to go. Kelso gave them the thumbs-up sign, then threw his bag of goodies into the cargo hold alongside the sleeping Cadillac and slammed the hatch shut. Jodi was in the pilot's seat. 'Move over!” Jodi gritted her teeth and changed places. 'Where the h.e.l.l'ye you been?”

'I'm here, aren't I? Gimme a break!” Kelso gunned the motor and ran quickly through the take-off checks as Jodi read them off the idiot board. They saw Steve turn his aircraft and taxi to the end of the gra.s.s strip. Kelso followed, drawing up at an angle beside him. He pulled on the helmet that BLACKWELL, B. had left in the c.o.c.kpit.

The pilots had left the plane-to-plane channel switched on.

Steve's voice came through the earphones. 'This is Big Open Airways, Flight One, ready to roll. How about you?”

'A-OK,' said Kelso. 'Let's burn the hay.”

Steve looked across at Clearwater and gave her hand a rea.s.suring squeeze. 'Frightened?”

'No,' her smile was composed, enigmatic. 'I always knew that one day we would fly away together.”

Steve selected fifteen degrees of flap, opened the throttle wide and released the brakes. The Sky-Rider dipped down on its nose-wheel as it surged forward, then settled back and was soon skimming over the gra.s.s and out across the water. The eastern horizon had now turned golden yellow. Steve looked over his shoulder and saw the second Sky-Rider following him in a climbing turn to the west. For the first time in a long time he felt truly happy.

Some thirty minutes after the two Sky-Riders had left the strip at Long Point, a second pair came skimming in over the water from the south.

They landed without making a circuit of the strip, and rolled to a stop close by the three immobilised mexicans.

The first pilot to reach them was carrying a special MX first-aid case.

Opening it up, he took out a pack of pre-filled hypodermic syringes and gave each man an injection. It was the antidote to the crippling effects of the nerve gas and enabled a victim to recover fully within half an hour.

Eventually, Side-Winder and the two men tagged as BLACKWELL, B. and RITCHIE, K. were helped to their feet and, after a lot of coughing and spitting, took in healing draughts of fresh air.

'Boy,' breathed Side-Winder. 'That stuff,s a real killer.”

He reached inside his tunic and found the empty sake flask. Ho, ho...

Big joke. He tossed it away. What the runaways didn't know was that AMEXICO would have the last laugh.

The second pilot returned to his machine and spoke over an open UHF link to an orbiting signals aircraft.

'Sky-Bucket Three to Cloud-Cover. Message for Mother.

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