Island of the Sequined Love Nun

red air collision warning lights were flashing. Tuck scanned the sky for another plane, then, seeing nothing, put on the headset to see if the Palmar tower could tell him what was going on.
    Before he could key the mike someone said, "Darlin', I'll be whitewashed if stink don't follow you like a manure wagon in summer." A familiar, melodic Texas drawl, probably the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
    "Mary Jean," Tuck said. "Where are you?"
    "Out your window at eleven o'clock."
    Tuck looked up and saw a brand-new pink Gulfstream running parallel to them.
    "If you'd a been wearing your headset, you would have known I was here fifteen minutes ago."
    "What are you doing here?"
    "Jake called me from Hawaii and told me what you was doing. We cooked up a little plan. I'm gonna get your tail out of the fire one last time, Tucker Case, but you owe me."
    "Boy, have I heard that before."
    "Do you remember the corporate address in Houston? The number?"
    "Sure."
    "Well, you dial that up as a frequency and I'll give you the skinny. It's unladylike to broadcast your personal matters over the same frequency the tower's using."

    They were Lying in the jungle near the runway when the Learjet landed. Sebastian left Beth sleeping under some banana leaves and crawled to where he could see. The jet taxied to the gate and stopped with the engines still running. The guards came out of different buildings and converged on the plane. They'd stacked duffel bags near the gate.
    "What's going on?" Beth crawled up behind him. The effects of the Valium were obviously wearing off.
    "I think they're leaving."
    "Not without us, they're not. I am the Sky Priestess and I won't allow it." She started to get up and Sebastian pulled her back down.
    "They were coming to kill us, Beth. You were out."
    "Right. If you ever drug me again -"
    "You're insane," he said.
    She reared back to slap him and he caught her hand. "Keep it up, Beth. I'm telling you that if they find us, they'll kill us. Do you understand that?"
    "They're grunts. I won't…"
    Suddenly there was a huge explosion from across the runway and they turned to see a mushroom of fire rising from where the clinic used to be.
    The guards had loaded onto the jet and Nomura was taxiing to the end of the runway.
    The guards' quarters went off next, then the hangar, the barrels of jet fuel throwing a column of flame five hundred feet in the air.
    "Where did they get explosives?" Beth said. "Did you know they had explosives?"
    "They're destroying the evidence," Sebastian said. "Orders from Japan, I'm sure."
    The Learjet started its run for takeoff as Sebastian's bungalow went off like a fragmentation grenade, followed by Tuck's old quarters and Beth's bungalow. Fire rained down across the island.
    "My shoes! All of my shoes were in there. You bastards." Beth pulled away from Sebastian and ran out on the runway just as the Learjet passed.
    "You rotten bastards!"
    The Sky Priestess stood in the middle of the runway and screamed herself mute as the Lear disappeared into the clouds.

66 – If They'd Only Had Her at
    the Alamo
    Mary Jean brought the pink Gulfstream in right on the tail of the 747. Tuck kept the speed over eighty in the taxi, turning it away from the terminal, where police jeeps and a hundred men in riot gear waited. He also noticed a half-dozen TV news trucks there as well.
    "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Costa Rica, the new home of the Shark People. The temperature outside is 85 degrees and it's clear that things are going to get ugly. I hope everybody's ready."
    The police jeeps were speeding across the tarmac toward the two jets. Mary Jean fumed the Gulfstream so that it was facing back toward the runway.
    Tuck turned to Malink. "Where's Roberto?"
    Malink pointed up. Roberto hung from the handle of the emergency hatch. There was a spring-loaded spool of steel cable attached to the ceiling next to the hatch. "Mary Jean, you ready?"
    "Sweetheart, we'd better git while the gitten's good. We stirred a homes's nest out here."
    Tuck grabbed Roberto and stuffed him inside his shirt. "Stay," he said. Then he opened the hatch and looked back at Malink. "I have to go now."
    Malink took Tuck in his big arms and squeezed until the bat screamed. "You will come back."
    "If you say so, Chief." Tuck flipped the intercom switch and picked up the headset. "Go!" he said and climbed up into the hatch.
    The six doors on the 747 all sprung open at once and the yellow emergency slides inflated and extended