Copp in Shock by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton [Pendleton, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-07T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

i was rolling clear of the target area with all possible haste. Lancer was aware of my predicament. He yelled, "Joe!" and slid his gun across the pavement toward me. This guy must have had a great bowling average. The gun slid right into my outstretched hand. He had a fresh clip in the .45. I popped off the safety, slid the hammer back, and chambered in a round. Just in time, too. The other guy was still having some trouble with the strobes; the lights were giving him fits and I suspected that he was firing almost blindly. My line of sight was perfect and I felt that I must have hit the guy with one of my first few rounds because he quickly lost heart for the fight. I heard him gunning the engine of the Jeep and trying for a hasty withdrawal. The way the Jeep was lurching forward I had the impression that this guy had never driven a stick shift and it was giving him a problem. He had to restart the engine twice and was kicking up a cloud of dust in his frantic attempts to get away.

I immediately anticipated the guy's intent to break toward the Owens River Road leading back to U.S. 395, which parallels the airport runway. I went off on a dead run, expecting to intercept him before he could reach the highway, which was pure faith on my part because at the time I had only the vaguest idea of the surrounding terrain. I guess I just got lucky. Twice I lost my footing on the uneven turf as I scrambled to beat him to the intersection with the highway. Fortunately I was not the only one having difficulty. The Jeep was still jerking along the road in first gear when I broke clear of the airport proper. I could see the panic in this guy's response as he spotted me beside the road—he was a dead duck and he knew it, but still he tried to just blow on through. He was fighting to get his rifle in position when I massaged a single deadly round from the .45. The big bullet blew the guy out of the vehicle and beneath it as it heeled abruptly, climbed the shoulder, and flipped over.

I discovered later that it was not the gunshot that was directly responsible for his death; he had suffered a broken neck when the Jeep rolled over him. Also, there was a nick from another bullet, which confirmed my earlier suspicion that I had winged him before his withdrawal.

The important thing from my point of view was that the shooting had ended with the plane still intact. Of course it had suffered quite a bit of damage.

Vehicles from two police agencies, the Sheriff's Department and the Highway Patrol, arrived on the scene while I was returning to the airport proper. An ambulance was dispatched for Tom Lancer. Janice had been made comfortable in the front seat of the sheriff's unit and seemed to be none the worse for the experience.

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