Read Parker 01 - The Hunter for Free Online Page B

slit the old man's throat. Otherwise, despite his protestations, he might have gotten on the phone and changed the whole plan.
    East of the city, up in the hills, there was a private estate currently unoccupied, the former residence of a movie star. She had owned an airplane, a Piper Cub, and the estate included a small landing strip. The rented plane was there. They drove up there in a stolen Volkswagen Microbus, and Lynn waited in the empty main house while the others boarded the plane and took off for the island.
    They found Keeley's Island on the second pass, and landed to gunfire from the rotting control shack. Parker grabbed up one of the machine guns, jumped out of the plane and, while the others kept up a distracting return fire, made a dash for the nearest storage shed. He worked his way around the shed, and raked the control shack until his ammunition was used up. He waited then, and there was only silence. When he pushed his way into the shack, the two defenders were dead.
    Ryan maneuvered the plane out of sight, into one of the still-standing hangars, and they sat down to wait. They had arrived at sundown. The dead men had set out small tin cans filled with gasoline along the runway edges, to be lit as markers for the South American planes when they would arrive. Ryan and Sill went out and lit them a little after midnight, and the first plane roared wide-winged into their flickering light at twenty minutes past one. It rolled to a stop on the taxiway off the end of the strip, and the second plane sailed down after it a couple of minutes later.
    In the control shack, the five men watched. Mal kept licking his lips and Chester kept studying his rifle to be sure it was really loaded, but the other three waited unmoving.
    Three men came out of the first plane, twelve out of the second. Among the twelve were two men carrying bulging briefcases. These two stayed behind the others. The groups met, and came across the field toward the control shack.
    "Wait," whispered Parker. "Wait."
    The first one was reaching for the doorknob before Parker started firing. He had one machine gun at the window to the left of the door, and Sill had the other at the window to the right. Chester and Mal had rifles at the windows farther away on either side. Ryan was in a barracks, the nearest building to the right, with the third rifle. They each also had a sidearm.
    The initial burst of gunfire dropped seven of the fifteen. The rest scattered, the pilots and the men carrying the briefcases scurrying back toward the planes. Parker got one of the briefcase-carriers and Ryan the other. They lay out on the cracked tarmac, the briefcases beside them.
    Four of the South Americans ran at the barracks where Ryan was holed in. He got one of them, Sill got two more, and the fourth managed to get into the building, where Ryan hunted him down and finished him.
    The battle was brief and one-sided. The last South American took refuge in a storage shed. He had two pistols, and they finally had to burn him out. Then they checked the briefcases to be sure they contained the money, and boarded their own plane. By morning they were back in California, landing on the field behind the estate. There they counted the take, which came to ninety-three thousand, four hundred dollars. After deducting the bankrolling expenses, they were left with just over ninety thousand dollars.
    They had already decided on the split. Chester, as the man who had made the job possible, was to get a third: thirty thousand dollars. Mal and Parker each were to get a quarter: twenty-two thousand, five hundred. And Ryan and Sill were to split the last sixth between them: fifteen thousand, seven and a half thousand each. Parker intended to take Mal's slice, too, which would give him a total of forty-five thousand -- fifty percent of the take. That was the way it should be.
    In the deserted mansion, they made the count and the split, and they were to spend the night there -- they were all