The Skeleton Coast Contract, page 15
In Burma, driving a renegade Chinese Nationalist division into Communist China, I had reentered the damp realm of the monsoon, where fungus growths crept across everything. Five months later I was still sweating, but in a Caribbean island republic where drought caused other types of fungi to attack.
The worst weather of all had come during my last contract, in South-West Africa. There, off the grim Skeleton Coast, I had seen tornados and waterspouts breeding in clusters, whistling fury through the darkened air.
Each of these ill winds had cost me something. Something more enervating than the actual violence of clashing with real or supposed enemies—It was the relentless attrition of always being where the ill winds blew.
Before noon I was in St. Louis and took the keys of my estate to the Forest Park Zoo office. Perkins was off somewhere filming a television show, and the man who would watch my tigers was not available, so I left the keys and instructions with a nice secretary and drove to Lambert Airport.
I had been told that I was traveling commercial, but when I applied at the airline counter, there was a flurry of discussion. A car took me around the field to a hangar that belonged to an air-freight line. Parked on its apron was a huge Air Force jet tanker, and I was hustled aboard. We went nonstop to Oakland, were refueled, and took off immediately for Tokyo.
I was the only passenger, and as the plane rustled high over the Pacific I reflected that somebody was in a hellacious hurry to get me in trouble. Where I was going this time they had an ill wind called a typhoon.
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About the Author
Philip Atlee (1915–1991) was the creator of the long-running Joe Gall Mysteries, which is comprised of twenty-two novels published in the 1960s and 70s. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Atlee wrote several novels and screenplays—including Thunder Road starring Robert Mitchum, and Big Jim McLain starring John Wayne—before producing the series for which he is known. An avid flyer, he was a member of the Flying Tigers before World War II and joined the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Copyright © 1968 by Philip Atlee
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-6583-2
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Philip Atlee, The Skeleton Coast Contract
