Blood risk

his knees, weaker than ever now, his head swimming back and forth and his vision too blurred to take good aim, he clenched his teeth and let go a long, rattling burst of fire.
        Down there, where bullets were plowing up the grass like rain, the gunman turned and ran, dived for cover behind a cement flower planter a hundred yards out from the house.
        Tucker looked at Shirillo, saw the kid was just stepping onto the ladder with the second suitcase in hand.
        "Move!"
        Shirillo couldn't make the ladder operate any faster than it was doing now, and he couldn't very well climb it while carrying the luggage, but Tucker couldn't repress the shout. His calm facade was cracking, his carefully cultured composure slipping away. It had been one hell of an operation, and it mustn't go bad now because of one gorilla with a rifle, one punk out to impress the boss with his bravery.
        The man behind the concrete planter stood up long enough to aim and take a shot at Tucker.
        The bullet tore across the shingle two feet on Tucker's right, spraying chips of tarry fabric.
        He loosened a chatter of machine-gun fire, chipping the cement all to hell.
        Shirillo picked up the third suitcase and started up the ladder again, jerked as the man behind the planter got him in the thigh.
        Son of a bitch, Tucker thought. His weariness and dizziness flopped over and were anger on the other side, anger enough to bring him into sharp, fast movement. He pulled hard on the Thompson's trigger and was rewarded with the sight of the gunman stepping frantically backward out of the way of a line of dancing bullets.
        The man turned and ran, the rifle on the lawn where he'd dropped it, darting this way and that, seeking the shelter of shrubbery.
        You dumb bastard, Tucker thought. I could have killed you, and what percentage would have been in that?
        Everyone seemed anxious to die, as if they couldn't wait for it, like this man and the man he'd wounded on the promenade earlier in the evening. And like Baglio, ready to take a beating rather than tell where Bachman was. Of course, in this business you took a blood risk, because you worked with dangerous men at dangerous times. But a risk should be reasonable, the chances of success greater than the chances for failure. Otherwise you were no better than a fool.
        "Hey!" Shirillo called down, breaking Tucker's reverie. He'd gotten the last suitcase into the chopper and had followed close behind it.
        Strapping the Thompson around his chest, Tucker got to his feet, almost fell, almost lost it all right there, grabbed desperately for the rope ladder, caught it, jerked as the device began to draw up into the hovering aircraft.
        A blood risk: he'd taken it, and he'd won.
        Harris leaned out of the open door, reaching for him, grinning broadly. He said, "Been waiting for you," and he took Tucker's hands to pull him the rest of the way. Tucker noted that Harris hadn't added "friend."
        

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        Dr. Walter Andrion was a tall, slim, white-haired gentleman who wore tailored suits and fifty-dollar shirts, drove a new Cadillac and traveled in the fastest social circles. He was married to Evanne Andrion, a black-haired, blue-eyed lovely thirty years his junior, a young lady with incredibly expensive tastes. When Junior called him, he dropped everything and came out to the airfield right away, carrying two heavy bags instead of one, for he had long ago learned that he should meet any such call as fully prepared as he could be. This was not orthodox medicine by any means. He worked fast and was clean, bored out wounds, flushed away clotted blood and dirt, stitched the men up as well as they could have been in a hospital. He didn't speak, and no one spoke to him as he worked. He had made it abundantly clear to Tucker three years ago that he did not want to have to hear anything about the origins of such wounds and that he wanted these sessions to be terminated as rapidly as possible. When he was done, he insisted on taking Merle Bachman back to his clinic for a couple of weeks' rest and recuperation, enough time to have his entire mouth rebuilt as well. He accepted two thousand dollars from Tucker in fifties and hundreds, tucked this into an already fat wallet, helped Bachman into his Cadillac and drove away.
        "We'll take the doctor's fees from the suitcases," Tucker said. "Before