Free Operation Whiplash by Dan J. Marlowe Page B

protruding between my fingers. I made a deep circle around the parking lot and came up behind the little cluster of employees’ automobiles. I moved along the row until I saw a head silhouetted against the night sky.
    Noiselessly I approached the open window on the driver’s side. Rafe James was watching the corner of the building around which Spider Kern and I were supposed to appear. There was something bulky resting on James’s lap.
    I reached inside the window and jabbed the steel pin of the caster into the back of James’ neck, hard. “Don’t move!” I whispered. “Or I’ll shoot!”
    He stiffened, then froze.
    I reached down with my free hand and removed the bulky object from his lap. It was a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. It was no longer and not much heavier than an old-time dueling pistol, but fifty times as lethal. I walked around the car and got in on the passenger’s side.
    “Drive out to the highway,” I directed James. He complied numbly. He was in a state of shock.
    I knew it was a mile to the highway. “Stop here,” I said when I judged we were nearly there. “Get out,” I said to James when he stopped the car. He started to whimper. “Out,” I repeated. He climbed out slowly while I matched his movements on the other side. James looked at the shotgun in my hands and started to run. He knew what he intended doing to me, and he expected the same treatment. He started zigzagging as he picked up speed. I couldn’t let him go to spread the alarm. I was already taking a chance upon how long Spider Kern would remain unconscious.
    I couldn’t wait. I didn’t know the load in the shotgun. At twenty yards I touched off the front trigger.
Kerblamm-m-m!
The shotgun charge picked up Rafe James bodily and rolled him down into the ditch. I looked up and down the road for headlights. There were none.
    I climbed down into the ditch for a look at James. Even with the unchoked, sawed-off barrel, he must have caught half the charge, and from the look of him the charge must have been buckshot. Rafe James was no longer a part of the problem.
    I went back to the car, removed my head bandages, then took a tube of facial makeup and squeezed a gob onto my palm. I rubbed it into my face and scalp. I had seen in the hospital how the paste dulled the gloss of pink new skin. I put the wide-brimmed hat on. It shadowed my face nicely.
    Before starting off I checked the glove compartment. There were half a dozen loose shotgun shells in it. I examined one in the dash light. All were number 0 buckshot. Each pellet was the equivalent in size of a.32-caliber bullet. The condition of Rafe James’s body was explained.
    I reloaded the shotgun and drove to the highway where I turned toward Hudson. My goal was the isolated cabin there where my dead partner, Bunny, had buried the loot from the Phoenix job. With that in my hands, my horizon was unlimited.
    The drive to Hudson was without incident. I took a seven-mile detour so I didn’t have to drive through the downtown area. I parked Rafe James’s car when I was a mile away from the cabin. I picked up the shotgun and started down the dusty road on foot. Wisps of swamp fog were curling upward from the damp ground. My unbandaged head felt hot and uncomfortable under the wide-brimmed hat.
    A break in the trees lining the road announced that I was at the cabin. I started to take off my shoes, then stopped. All I needed was to put my foot down on a cottonmouth. I edged in from the roadside a careful step at a time. If Spider Kern had recovered consciousness in time to make a telephone call….
    A chill dawn breeze rustled the bushes, reminding me that daylight was too close. The blacker outline of the cabin came into view. While I studied it, there was the sound of a slap from inside. “Damn mosquitoes!” a hoarse voice muttered.
    “Shut up!” Blaze Franklin’s voice said instantly.
    “Don’t get narky,” the first speaker complained. “We’ll see his headlights