The Intriguers mh-14

by Donald Hamilton

  "There's one on the boat. Is the rifle more or less sighted in, I hope? Never mind, it's bound to be. Mac would know I wouldn't be able to do any last-minute target shooting around here." I grimaced. "There's nothing I love like taking off on a job in the dark, with a strange guide, and an unfamiliar weapon that's been adjusted by somebody else!"

  "I can tell you one thing, son; no matter how much shooting you do with the gun, you'll do more with the spray can. At night, the bugs will eat you alive. I'll get Jarrell and the gear."

  XXVI

  For a mild-looking, middle-aged gent, Jarrel White had some fairly violent and youthful speedboating ideas. He took us out through the pass as if our little boat were an unlimited hydroplane racing for the Gold Cup on Lake Havasu, if I have the hardware and location right, which I probably don't.

  I couldn't see all the tide-rips in the dark, but I could feel every one of them through the cushioned bench on which I sat, just forward of the steering console. When we reached open water, the black man rammed the throttle all the way forward. Fortunately, it was a calm night. Even so, I had the impression that we only hit the water every fifty yards or so, and that when we did, it was hard as rock. The running lights went out.

  "Shouldn't be nobody to see us without legal lights out here except the folks we're after, this time of night," Jarrel yelled over the roar of the motor, when I looked around questioningly. "You still figure they're way ahead of us?"

  "They had a couple of hours' start," I shouted back, "but Captain Priest doesn't seem to think they'll head into the mangroves until they've got daylight to navigate by."

  "We'll go well offshore so they don't hear us passing; then we'll swing down south and come in by the back door, so to speak." He patted the steering wheel approvingly. "Don't hold much with boats looking like guided missiles, but she handles nice. Wish she wasn't quite so deep, though. Tide's ebbing; we'll maybe have to lift the motor and pole through a couple shallow spots. Well, we'll see, cap'n; we'll see."

  The title was, I knew, not a military rank. It was merely a mark of respect, indicating that I was a friend of Hank Priest, who'd given me a good buildup. There was no more conversation for a long time; just the high scream of the motor and the harsh hammering of water against the fiberglass hull. I could make out nothing but ocean-well, Gulf of Mexico-around us. Either the coast to port had dropped below the dark horizon, or it was uninhabited, or the inhabitants were sound asleep with all lights out. At last I picked up a flash off the bow. I looked up once more at Jarrel, standing at the helm behind me.

  "Tortuga Light, cap'n," he said. "Off Tortuga Pass. We'd head in there if we wanted to get where we're going the quickest way. They're probably lying in there right now, waiting for light. We'll try Redfish Pass fifteen miles south. No light there, and it's not anything you'd want to tackle in bad weather, but a nice night like this we'll make it fine. Tortuga, that's turtle, cap'n. Redfish, that's what you maybe call drum or channel bass…"

  Gradually, the flashing light drew abeam and fell astern. We ran on through the night. At last we swung east towards the coast, but it seemed a very long time until we picked it up. Jarrel had pulled the throttle back to halfspeed before I saw the loom of two islands ahead, low dark shadows off either bow, with what looked like an unbroken light sandbar between them.

  Jarrel throttled back still more, so that the boat ceased planing over the water and, settling heavily, started plowing through it instead. Suddenly I was aware of something to starboard that wasn't water: a glistening mud bank barely uncovered by the dropping tide. The boat began to shimmy and sideslip in erratic eddies and whirlpools of current. There seemed to be all kinds of channels ahead in the darkness, a wilderness of mud and water, with patches of white here and there where the outrushing tidal waters broke in the shallows. Jarrel was dodging obstructions I couldn't see. He spoke quite calmly.

  "Always remember the tide, cap'n, when you're in among the islands. Man can always find his way out if he remembers the tide. Hold on tight, now."

  I saw the opening in the seemingly solid bar, but it didn't look like anything you'd want to take a boat through: a wide, angling gap of seething water moving inexorably out to sea. I felt the beat of the engine pick up as Jarrel opened the throttle once more. We hung in the entrance while he studied the situation ahead; then the rumbling vibration increased as more horsepower came into play, and we started to gain, the boat rising and planing once more, skittering over the disturbed surface, bounced and buffeted by the crazy currents. A cresting wave dropped into my lap from nowhere. The sand slid by, sometimes close enough that I could have jumped ashore. At last we broke free of the tide race and gained speed in the still, black water inside the bar.

  "Used to take sailing boats through there when I was a boy," Jarrel said. "Course we had to wait for the right tide and a good westerly wind. You better use that Flit gun on your face and hands, cap'n. Like to be a few mosquitoes inshore here."

  I sprayed myself and offered the aerosol can to him, but he shook his head. Apparently he was biteproof like many old-timers. I put the can away, got out my handkerchief, and dried the rifle lying across my knees. I didn't even try to memorize our route. In the dark, with one island looking exactly like the next, black and formless, it was hopeless.

  There were wide, gleaming estuaries that we traversed at high speed, and slim dark passages through which we crawled with the mangroves brushing the boat and the insects attacking in force. Once I was told to stand by with the boathook, ready to pole vigorously, while Jarrel tilted up the motor until the propeller was barely submerged and worked us over some shallow flats, disturbing a number of birds roosting on a nearby islet. Several times there were heavy splashes close to the bank as we approached; perhaps fish, perhaps alligators. I didn't ask. I didn't really want to know.

  We came around a long bend, buzzed across some open water-a kind of tidal lake-and Jarrel cut the power and laid us alongside an ancient, rickety dock thrusting out from the swampy point at the end of an island that looked just like all the rest. An uneven, narrow, sagging wooden catwalk on posts led ashore over the reeds and mud.

  "Cutlass Key, cap'n," Jarrel said, over the sound of the softly idling motor. "There's a deserted cabin off to the left a hit, in among the trees; nobody's used it for years. Water's low right now, but there's six feet off the end of the pier. Time they arrive, in daylight, tide'll be starting to turn. At high water, that mud'll be covered clear to the shore, but likely they won't be that late."

  "We hope," I said, slapping a mosquito, "or the bugs will have sucked me dry."

  Grasping the rifle, I started to rise, but Jarrel shook his head. "Not here, cap'n. You don't want to go leaving sign where they can see it. There's a place around the bend of the island, to the right there, where I can put her pretty close to the bank. I'll set you ashore there, and pick you up when you're through."

  I liked the casual way he said it. It was going to be the usual, beautifully planned mission, I could see, with everything figured out to the last detail-up to the point where, having finished his job, the agent tries to get clear after kicking over the hornet's nest.

  "Where'll you be?" I asked.

  "There's a good hiding place for the boat alongside a little island down that way a quarter-mile," he said. "You can see it from where I'll leave you, and I can see you; but they can't see it from here. That's the point. Time they hear me coming, I'll have you back on board and be heading out again at forty-five knots."

  "With bullets whistling around your ears and mine," I said sourly. "Or between them."

  "Been shot at before, cap'n," Jarrel said. "Figure you have, too."

  I said, "That doesn't mean I like it." I grimaced, studying the dark mass of the island. "Where will I wait?"

  "Look up in the trees to the right. You'll see a kind of lump, that's an old osprey's nest. Birds haven't come back last two, three years, but the nest is still there. You'll be right under it, almost. It's a hundred and fifte
en yards from your blind to the end of the dock here. Figure you'll want to let them come a little way towards you along the boardwalk, just to be sure, but that's your business."

  "Yes," I said. "That's my business."

  XXVII

  It looked like one of the tree blinds used for deer in the brush country of Texas; or perhaps a machan designed for ambushing a tiger at its kill in India-not that I considered my present quarry in the tiger class, but even a domesticated pussycat can be dangerous when you're dealing with the human variety.

  As far as concealment was concerned, it was a pretty good job: a basketlike framework seven or eight feet off the ground that blended well into the surrounding tangle of branches. It wasn't the most comfortable blind I've ever occupied, but there was a sort of platform for standing and a tree limb for sitting. The only catch was that, when the time came, I'd have to rise and shoot without a rest for the rifle. There was nothing solid enough to serve the purpose. In fact, since they don't grow very big trees on those islands, the whole woven-together structure was a bit shaky. Well, a hundred yards isn't very long range for a rifle, even offhand.

  "Okay, cap'n?" Jarrel whispered from below.

  "Okay. Take her away and hide her," I said. "And, Jarrel-"

  "Cap'n?"

  "Don't be a goddamn hero, charging the flaming muzzles of the guns. If you know what I mean. I can assure you I wouldn't do it for you; don't you do it for me. If it goes sour, it goes sour, and to hell with it. Just blast out of here, tell them their fancy scheme didn't work, and hoist a beer to my memory. Okay?"

  "I'm a guide, mostly," the black man said softly from the darkness below me. "I take my sports out and I bring them back. Haven't lost one yet and don't aim to, if I can help it. Good hunting, cap'n."

  The world was full of high-principled lunatics, black and white, which was strange, I reflected, since you wouldn't think they'd last long, any of them. Well, I'd given him an out. If he didn't want to take it, that was his business.

  I listened to him making his way back down to the shore, or tried to. He was pretty good in the woods; and I didn't really hear much until a very faint splashing told me he was poling the boat back out into deeper water so he could lower the motor. Then the hydraulic tilting mechanism whined, the starter whirred, and the sound of the big powerplant, at low speed, diminished gradually in the direction of the brushy little islet he'd pointed out to me, some four hundred yards distant.

  I checked the rifle as well as I could in the dark. It was another of the bellowing, shoulder-busting Magnums that are very fashionable these days. It's getting so no hunter who values his image will even set out after rabbits without a portable cannon that will shoot through a bank vault and a couple of feet of masonry, and kill two or three innocent bystanders in the street outside, if they're lined up properly.

  This was a bolt-action Winchester rifle using the.300 Winchester Magnum cartridge, a shortened and modernized successor to the old Holland and Holland.300, with a muzzle velocity over three thousand feet per second, and a muzzle energy approaching two tons. It was a hell of an artillery piece to have to fire out of a treetop, and I warned myself that I'd better make the first shot good because the goddamned howitzer might very well boot me clear out of the blind.

  I made certain I had a round in the chamber and a full magazine, and that the floor plate was securely latched. Those big guns kick so hard they've been known to jar the floor plate open and dump out the contents of the magazine. It can be embarrassing to find yourself with only one cartridge when you thought you had four, particularly if, after the first shot, there's a hostile elephant heading your way under a full head of steam. At least so I'd been told. I've never met an elephant except in a zoo, but I have met some fairly hostile people and might encounter a few more tonight.

  The telescopic sight was of the four-power variety recommended to beginners as the best all-round choice for hunting. I was glad they hadn't given me anything stronger, considering the shaky perch from which I'd be shooting: the greater the magnification, the greater the visible shake. I removed the protective caps from the lenses and peered through the instrument to make certain a hole ran clear through it. That was about all I could determine in the dark. I hoped no target would arrive until I had light enough so that I could actually make out the cross-hairs.

  The mosquitoes were the worst part of the waiting. I thought nostalgically of the pleasant hillside in Oklahoma, cool and bug-free, where I'd lain in wait for Sheriff Rullington, but it didn't help a bit. Without the dope I'd squirted liberally on myself, plus the mud I'd applied to my face and hands for camouflage purposes, I couldn't have stood it. As it was, I had to shut off part of my mind, the part that wanted to slap and scratch and, as time passed with interminable slowness and dawn approached, even scream a bit just to let me know I wasn't really having fun.

  They came with the sunrise, well after it was light enough to see and shoot. Long before I saw them I could hear their motor approaching from the north and west. The sound faded for a while, and I wondered if Martha had lost her way in that swampy maze and what Leonard would do to her if she had, although I don't normally spend much time worrying about the fate of traitors-even young and pretty ones with whom I've slept. Then the motor noise came in again strong and increased in volume steadily. I saw them come into view, well out in the wide fairway to my left, too far for a shot even if I'd wanted to try such a fast-moving target from my unstable position.

  I watched them through the leaves and thought I really had to hand it to Mac. The crazy, complex plan was working. In spite of lack of communications, in spite of everything, he'd stage-managed everybody to the right spot at the right time. The hidden hunter was waiting and the tiger or pussycat was coming to the bait, or what he thought was the bait.

  There was the boat, a husky yellow inboard-outboard runabout some eighteen feet long with a tall whip antenna that reminded me of the houseboat, equipped with similar whiskers, that the admiral had spotted entering these waters-a communications ship of sorts, perhaps. But I didn't spend much attention on the boat, because there was the man with the white hair who'd caused everybody quite enough trouble already. Tiger or pussycat, he'd worn out his welcome. I mean, goddamn it, we do have a certain amount of professional pride, and we don't take kindly to outsiders forcing their way into our closed little undercover community, and trying to use it for their own cheap purposes. We'd tried to make this clear to Herbert Leonard the last time he'd come bucking for the title of Spymaster-in-Chief, but he hadn't taken the hint. It was, therefore-, time for him to go.

  He had the left hand seat behind the windshield-excuse me, the seat to port. To starboard, behind the steering wheel, sat a collegiate-looking youth in a blue yachting cap, with a pipe stuck jauntily into a corner of his mouth. Between him and Herbert Leonard, steadying herself with a hand on top of the windshield, stood Martha Borden, still in her light blue dress. How her bare arms and legs had survived the buggy night, I hated to think.

  She used her free hand to point out the dock. The boat slowed and dropped off plane and swung that way, but only a little, not enough to bring it within rifle shot of the shore. It was all very cute, and 1 had to hand it to Leonard, too. He was almost as cute as Mac, using himself for a decoy like that. I hadn't thought him that clever or dashing, or even that brave; but I guess there comes a time for every desk officer when he feels he must go out and prove himself in the field, just once.

  Anyway, this was one job Leonard would want to witness. He'd never be quite certain it had got done properly unless he saw it happen. AJI that now stood between him and the fulfillment of his ambitions was one man, but that man was one of the half-dozen most dangerous people in the world. Leonard would never sleep soundly until he saw Mac dead; and Mac had known this and taken advantage of it to bring Leonard here under my gun. The rest was up to me.

  It was very cute, and it got cuter when they ran the boat aground out there, still well out of range, of course. They we
nt into an act designed to show anybody watching from shore-Mac and whoever might be occupying the cabin with him-how terribly mad they were at each other for this stupidity. The words couldn't be heard at the distance, of course, but the pantomime was clear: the college boy was obviously blaming the navigator, Martha, who was obviously telling him hotly that if he'd steered where she'd pointed it wouldn't have happened. Leonard was obviously telling both of them to shut up and do something constructive. It was a fine diversion; and in the meantime the real attack was moving silently towards' the hidden cabin-at least I suppose they thought they were being silent.

  One boat was approaching along the bank just below the blind. I could hear the rhythmic, liquid whisper of the pole urging it along. It landed-a large, flat-bottomed rowboat with a small kicker on the stern-and four men in camouflage clothing disembarked at the exact spot Jarrel and I had used some hours earlier. This was not surprising since a gap in the wall of mangroves made it a logical landing spot. Having them come so close was a little disconcerting, but there was an advantage: by the time they'd all got ashore, conferred together in whispers, spread out, and sneaked inland through the tangled undergrowth, the best tracker in the world couldn't have made out the signs of our earlier landing, Jarrel's and mine.

  I watched the man on the right flank slip by only twenty yards distant, never looking up, of course. That's the advantage of a tree blind. Neither a deer nor a human being normally expects danger from above. He was another clean-cut young fellow in top-notch condition, educated to the teeth, no doubt, trained to break bricks with his bare hands, capable of picking the buttons off your vest with the machine pistol he carried, and totally useless in the woods.

  I could follow him by ear long after I couldn't see him any longer; and the others were no better, the ones moving up the other shore of the island, presumably from another impromptu landing craft. I could trace the progress of the attack quite accurately from my elevated position by the snapping of twigs, the rustling of leaves, the clink of weapons, and the breathless curses. Well, Herbert Leonard could hardly be expected to have a squad of trained jungle fighters readily available, at least not a squad of trained jungle fighters he could trust to keep their mouths shut about a curious operation like this.