5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 89: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WINGS OF THE DARK ANGEL crete. Mead lifted him, with a good grip, by the hair and smashed his head down again. Then he rose and drove the point of a shoe against Choo-Choo’s jaw and broke his neck. He bent and picked up the submachine gun. “Thanks for the memory—baby,” Sam Mead said to the recumbent killer and sprinted for the cover of the fence, knowing that Choo-Choo’s cries must have been heard in the house. The distant front door opened. Light flared through. It was blotted out again, and a man’s footsteps came running. Then they suddenly faded out into dead silence, and only the howl of a distant Mexican coyote could be heard in the night. “IT should have known Choo-Choo might get careless, Mead,” Joe’s voice called. “But you forgot one thing. Night patrol work is my specialty.” Vil be seeing you among the rose bushes,” Mead answered. Then he turned and sprinted back to- ward the twin-engined plane. Chapter IV EAD made it and went around to the metal door, opened it, and crawled inside to the pilot’s compart- ment. He clicked on the instrument panel lights, knowing their glow couldn’t be seen from without. In their low glow, he examined the submachine gun, never having fired one. On the left side, a small thumb lever lay toward the stamped word Auto. Op- posite was the word for single fire. That was simple enough. He set it for single fire. That was simple enough. He set it for single fire. Two other words, Safe and Fire, covered another thumb lever. That was simple. You pushed it from Safe to Fire, Mead cradled the gun and looked out through the windshield, hand on the landing lights switch. He’d come back to the plane because he’d remembered that the pilot had blasted the tail around to the hangar, leaving the nose of the ship facing the iron gate. Mead switched on the bright flood lights. White beams poured in through. the grilled iron gate and flooded the whole section of the lawn 89 and one side of the house. He ducked out, grinning hard at the sudden burst of cursing that came from somewhere within the yard. That, he thought, is‘no way for even an ex-Army officer gone bad to curse. He ducked out of the lighted area, cut- ting a running circle for the west end of the fence. The pilot and Duval, locked in the hangar shop, had better remain there. Duval was useless, and the pilot was unarmed. Better let them stay where they were. Sam Mead circled all the way to the northwest corner of the estate’s fence before climbing over. He dropped inside into darkness with a grunt. Two small cottages were near by and, close to them, what must be the tool shed. Keeping to cover, Mead slipped into the tool shed. He chose two short-handled shovels, carrying them so that they made no sound. Then he melted past the kitchen and lost himself among the yard’s flower beds and vines on the east side, where a trained killer with a German machine- pistol lay waiting. Two white stone cougars, mounted on concrete pedestals, loomed up. Mead dropped behind one of them, straining his eyes. “As they say in the movies,” he mut- tered, his stomach tight, “thzs is it.” “Hey, Mead. I heard you come over the wall,” Joe’s voice called. “I know you’re in the yard. What happened to Choo-Choo ?” About forty yards away. Just down below. Mead shifted the gun’s mecha- nism to full automatic fire and let off the safety. He’d have to be careful. At five hundred a minute, that little magazine holding a dozen or more shells—sixteen, to be exact—would squeeze out fast. He lined the gun under the cougar’s stone body and, with his left hand, gripped a spade. He half rolled and threw it into a group of rose bushes twenty feet away. A burst of burp-burp machine-gun fire answered amid lurid flashes Mead let go with a quick squeeze of about five shots and then ducked as a startled yell came from Joe. Suddenly Joe’s laughter, bitter and sardonic, filled the night. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he called out CoOMmiclooo S (C(O)