Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (2 page)

           
For a moment I thought we were
swamped; then I sat, still clinging to the wheel, with water around my ankles
and the motor idling softly behind me. Another wave came at us, no tidal wave
or tsunami, but plenty high enough to impress a
shorebody
like me. The boat rose to it nicely, however, and the wave passed underneath,
sending only a ripple of spray aboard. I heard a humming sound and looked
astern to see a steady stream of water being ejected by the automatic bilge
pump. Already, the cockpit was almost clear as the water we'd shipped streamed
aft to the sump in the stern.

           
She was quite a little ship. I paid
my silent respects to the unknown fellow-agent who'd selected the pieces and
put them together. He'd probably saved my life. I shoved the lever forward
cautiously to get us moving again, working to windward slowly through the
confused seas off the point. Glancing towards the rocks to starboard, I saw
that we were still within long rifle range, but it didn't matter. We'd turned
the corner, so to speak, and this seaward face was too steep for a man to cling
to, let alone shoot from. Anyway, at three hundred yards, nobody's going to hit
a target bobbing erratically in six-foot waves.

           
One of the big party boats I'd seen
at the island earlier that morning passed a quarter-mile to seaward, rolling
heavily, with an imperturbable Mexican skipper at the helm, and a bunch of
seasick Yankee fishermen in the cockpit. Making the turn into the bay, they
stared at the crazy jerk in the fifteen-foot motorized bathtub who didn't have
sense enough to come in out of the spray, but this close to harbor the wind
didn't bother me. I knew I could make it in from here, but there was something
I had to do first. There was something I had to find.

           
Then I saw it on the beach at the
head of the smaller bay that had opened up beyond the point: a small white boat
pulled up on the sand. He'd have conic by water, of course. He wouldn't have
risked being seen and remembered as he carried that scope-sighted rifle through
the hills from the nearest road, A conventional plastic case designed for a
couple of husky saltwater fishing rods would, with a little modification,
easily accommodate a long gun, and it could be loaded into a boat right at the
dock without causing any comment whatever.

           
I got out the binoculars I'd been
using on sea lions, whales, porpoises, and sea birds, and checked the beached
craft as carefully as the distance and the motion of my boat would permit.

           
It was a light aluminum skiff with a
small motor, probably around ten horsepower. Although only a foot or so shorter
than my fiberglass job, it was much narrower, shallower, and lighter; probably
less than one-third the weight, with less than one-eighth the horsepower. He
might have me outgunned, but I had him out-boated.

           
It took me a while to set it up.
First I had to get back into San Carlos Bay, working on the assumption that
he'd left from the same marina as I had-there weren't too many to choose from
in that corner of Mexico- and would be coming back there eventually. I went far
offshore and swung very wide around the point, this time, to emphasize how
gun-shy I'd become. Then I had to find a place to lie in wait for him.

           
He'd seen me going by, I figured;
he'd seen me entering the bay once more and disappearing around the next point,
steering purposefully in the direction of the sheltered yacht harbor inland. I
knew he wouldn't worry about my reporting the shooting to the Mexican
authorities. If he knew enough about me to want to kill me, he knew I wasn't
the type of citizen who'd ask for police protection. The thing he wouldn't be quite
sure about was whether or not I was really slinking ashore with my tail between
my legs, satisfied-for the moment, at least-just to be alive, or whether I was
being tricky and dangerous, with immediate and violent retaliation in mind.

           
He had a problem, all right, and it
took him most of the day to solve it to his satisfaction.

           
Meanwhile, I'd found the ideal spot
in which to wait him out, holding my course until I was well out of his sight,
and then swinging over to the north shore of the narrowing bay-his shore-and
sneaking back cautiously through the shallows below the cliffs to a little
rocky cove just around the promontory that blocked his view. Here I dropped the
patent anchor overboard in eight feet of water.

           
It was, as I said, ideal. The surrounding
rocks hid the boat from seaward, but from a standing position I could see over
them, out towards the headland from which he'd done his target practice. I
doubted that my face would be visible at that range, even through strong
glasses. I broke out the bottom-fishing rig, stuck a dead sardine on the hook
since by this time I had no bait left alive, threw it overboard, and set the
rod into the starboard of the two holders near the stern. This made me, I
hoped, as far as passing boats were concerned, just an innocent fisherman who'd
been driven off the open gulf by the wind and was trying to find a little
action inshore.

           
Then I opened the cushioned battery
box that also served as helmsman's chair, storage bin, and
toolchest
,
containing a little bit of everything from Band-Aids to emergency flares. I got
out the waterproof packet of instruction books and other informative literature
that had come with the boat. Something was bothering me, a discrepancy that I
might have investigated earlier if I hadn't had the girl and her missionary
attitudes to distract me: the fact that a craft that was, according to a plate
attached to the seat, rated for a full ninety horsepower, should be so nervous
at high speed with a mere eighty-five. Of course Chrysler, the manufacturer,
specialized in fast automobiles. Maybe they just hadn't learned how to build
fast boats yet, but it didn't seem likely.

           
I tipped up the motor so I could
look it over carefully. A switch on the console did the job for me
hydraulically, since the giant mill weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds.
Aside from being larger than any outboard motor with which I'd ever associated,
it looked perfectly normal. The horsepower was plainly marked on the cover; it
also figured in the model number stamped on a plate attached to the mounting
bracket.

           
Searching for a clue, I frowned down
at the big three bladed propeller, just clear of the water. According to the
factory literature I had available, this V-4 motor block came in several
different standard configurations ranging from 85 to 125 horsepower, depending
on bore and carburetion. The least powerful motor in the series, the one I was
presumably looking at, normally turned a prop with a pitch of some fifteen to
seventeen inches. The motor at the stratospheric top of the line swung a wheel
with considerably more pitch-with that much extra power, you could drive a boat
considerably farther with each turn of the screw.

           
It took some acrobatics to read the
figures marked on my propeller without falling overboard, but when I saw them I
had my answer. The pitch was a healthy twenty-one inches, enough to take a real
bite of ocean. What was hanging on my transom was apparently not a normal 85-hp
motor at all, since such a mild power plant couldn't possibly have got that
steeply pitched wheel up to maximum rpm. Either I had a specially
souped
-up 85 on my hands or, more likely, somebody had
simply taken a 125-hp model and switched covers and identification plates. No
wonder the little boat had felt
squirrely
wide open,
I reflected grimly, propelled by almost fifty percent more than her rated
horsepower. .

           
The wash of a passing vessel made me
look up quickly, remembering what I was there for.

           
Several boats were heading into the
channel, but they were all larger craft, refugees from the offshore fishing
grounds I'd deserted earlier. A fast runabout with some kids on board-a
scow-shaped job with an inboard-outboard propulsion unit-came buzzing out from
the yacht basin, stuck its blunt nose out into the rough stuff, turned quickly,
and came back in again. Each boat that passed sent its wake across the narrows
to rock my little vessel and break against the nearby shore.

           
I reeled in my line and found that
something had stolen my sardine. I replaced it and tossed it out again. I
lifted the cushion off the bench seat just forward of the steering console and
procured beer and sandwiches from the built-in icebox underneath. All the
comforts of home, I reflected wryly; all the comforts and conveniences
including a reserve of sonic ten knots that
nobody'd
expect the little bucket to produce, looking at the markings on the motor-forty
camouflaged horsepower that Mac had neglected to mention, describing the craft
over the phone, when I'd called him from the hospital where I'd been sweating
out the mild concussion I'd acquired in the line of duty.

           
"
Guaymas
,
Eric?" he'd said, employing my code name as usual. My real name is Matthew
Helm, but it doesn't get much use inside the organization. "What's so
attractive about
Guaymas
, if I may ask?"

           
"Fish, I hope, sir," I
said. "And a nice, warm, sunny beach."

           
"You can find good fishing and
warm sunny beaches in this country. I should think you'd be a little tired of
Mexico. You've been spending quite a bit of time there recently."

           
I frowned at the wall of the
hospital room from which I was being evicted for being too healthy. Mac had
promised me a month's convalescent leave, but he has a sneaky habit of trying
to get a little government mileage out of our vacations by spotting us where
we'll be handy in case he needs us.

           
I said, "Would you rather have
me in California, sir? Or Texas, or Florida, or the Sea Islands of
Georgia?" I mean, the only way to stop him when he starts getting subtle
is by direct frontal attack. "Just name the spot, sir, and I'll be on my
way. Of course, I'll expect to get my month's leave later, when you don't
require my services any longer."

           
"Oh, no, you misunderstand me,
Eric," he said hastily, two thousand miles away in Washington, D.C. I
could visualize him sitting at his desk in front of the bright window he liked
to make us squint at: a lean, gray-clad, gray-haired man with bushy black
eyebrows. He went on, "No, indeed, I have no special place in mind. I was
just curious about the fascination Mexico seems to hold for you. You say you
plan to do sonic saltwater fishing'?"

           
"Yes, sir."

           
"Then you'll be needing a boat,
won't you?"

           
"I was planning to rent one
when I got down there."

           
"Rental boats are seldom very
satisfactory. As it happens, we have a fairly expensive little fishing craft
lying idle in Tucson, Arizona, not very far from where you are. We're going to
have to dispose of it soon, since it has served its purpose. In the meantime,
you might as well get some use out of it."

           
In one of the clumsy rented tubs
from the marina, with a rusty old kicker on the stern, I'd have been a helpless
target just now, I reminded myself. I'd had some luck, sure, but essentially it
was the speed and maneuverability of my borrowed vessel that had saved me. It was
an interesting coincidence. I didn't believe it for a moment.

           
I didn't even try to sell myself the
foolish notion that, when an attempt was made to murder me, I'd just
accidentally been sitting at the controls of a boat lent me by Mac that just
accidentally happened to have the power and agility to get me away unharmed.
Things like that just didn't happen accidentally when you were dealing with
Mac. I didn't even put it past him-well, not very far past him-to have sent
that sea lion to turn me off course at precisely the right moment to save me
from a bullet, if he needed me alive and healthy for an impending mission.

           
All joking aside, I didn't really
think he could have known I'd be shot at down here in
Mexico
. He's not omniscient, not quite. But he had
obviously known, I reasoned, that there was trouble brewing at sea, or at least
as far out at sea-some sea, somewhere-as you'd want to take a fifteen-foot
outboard. He'd hoped to persuade me to spend my leave in the neighborhood of
the potential danger spot, wherever it might be, bringing with me the disguised
little seagoing rocket the department had just acquired for the job. I was
rapidly losing faith in that mysterious agent who was supposed to have used it
before me. Thinking back, I realized that there had been a good many
indications, which I'd been too preoccupied to take seriously, that neither
boat, trailer, nor tow car had seen any strenuous use before I got them.

           
When my thorny attitude had spoiled
his plan-for some reason he'd been reluctant to give me direct orders over the
phone-Mac had lent me the boat anyway and let me take it down here and play
with it so I'd at least know how to handle it when the time came for him to
summon me to action. And somebody had come clear down into Mexico to take care
of me with a scope-sighted rifle before that summons could reach me. . .

           
I could be reading too much into a
simple little murder attempt amid a camouflaged 125-hp motor. Nevertheless, the
safest course was to act on the assumption that I was entangled in one of Mac's
complicated
spiderwebs
of intrigue, amid figure out,
since my vacation was all washed up anyway, what he'd want me to do next. That
wasn't hard. I was already working at it.

           
Obviously, the first thing required
was to deal with any would-be murderers in such a way that they couldn't hamper
my future activities.

           
By the end of the day, I'd finished
the beer and the bait and was fishing, if you want to call it that, with a bare
hook. It was a long, dull afternoon in one way; but they're never really dull
when you're waiting like that in a duck blind, or by a deer trail, or in a
promising ambush.

           
There was always the possibility, of
course, that my quarry had escaped in some other direction; but the most likely
theory was that he'd been working out of
San Carlos
like me, behaving like just another tourist
and keeping an eye on me.

           
And if he'd come out of
San Carlos
, he'd want to check back in there, because
they keep track of the craft using their marina facilities. I considered it a
good enough theory that I was willing to wait until sunset and at least an hour
longer, if I had to.

           
I didn't have to. At six-thirty,
with the sun just starting to dip behind the spectacular rock formations to the
west, his patience ran out, and he came. I first glimpsed a flash of spray well
out beyond the point; then I saw the white skiff driving along with the
whitecapped
waves that threatened to overwhelm it. I was
already reeling in my fishing line. This late in the afternoon, I saw, in this
weather, we had the whole Sea of Cortez to ourselves.

           
Laying the rod down, I quickly
lowered the motor and turned the key. The big mill began to rumble behind me,
shaking the little fiberglass hull. I hauled up the anchor, dumped it aboard,
and backed the boat out of its hidey hole very cautiously: this was no time to
bend the propeller on a rock. Then I shoved the go-stick forward, and we took
off flying.