They climbed up out of the port and through the reside areas on the hillside; children looking up from their play at the roadside and gaping at the great red form that hurtled through their midst. They bobbed through the craterlike potholes and veered onto the better paved highway, then picked up speed.
“Slow down when we get back to the shore again,” Tony called out.
Higginson nodded, eyes on the road, the car a carmine thunderbolt hissing around the bends, narrowly missing bullock carts and burro riders. A flicker of emerald blue was visible through the trees off to the left, then a tiny bay with jutting headlands opened up to view.
“This place looks ideal,” Tony said. “And that looks like a road leading down to the water.” He pointed to the dusty track among the trees.
“But no boats here,” Billy piped.
“We’ll go on,” Higginson decided and stamped on the accelerator.
Tony looked back regretfully as they rushed away. If his theory were true this was the ideal spot. Close to the city, yet isolated enough for clandestine arrival and departures. They should have looked closer, but there was not much time. They turned a bend and he had a last fleeting glimpse of the bay before it vanished behind the screen of trees again.
“Stop the car!” he shouted.
Higginson hit the brakes and, being power brakes, they locked and the car skidded wildly across the road, spinning uncontrollably under the cruel corrections of the power steering. Higginson fought the careening red whale every foot of the way until it ended up on the far side, its nose buried in the red earth and rich mosses of the embankment there. Higginson turned about slowly, unclamping his fingers from the wheel, and glared coldly at Tony.
“And why did you say that?”
“Just before we turned, I had a glimpse of something coming into the bay, a bow, a boat of some kind.”
With the rear wheels spinning and smoking on the tar, Tony, Billy Schultz and Stocker braced and, pushing the bumper, the Lincoln managed to pull itself back on the road. They hurtled off on the return leg and, once over the rise, saw that indeed a boat had entered the bay. A high-powered, high-bridged, pole-bedecked sports fishing boat with its name, Tiburon, prominent on its wide stern when it spun about and dropped anchor. Then the trees intervened again. Billy shouted into the handy-talky. This time they turned off onto the unpaved track through the trees, bobbing and thudding over the spring-destroying uneven surface. As they drove down, the long car scraping the brush on both sides as they negotiated the sharp turns, they had tantalizing glances of the water below.
Man climbing down from boat into dinghy.
Dinghy pushed off.
Dinghy proceeding toward shore.
Then the road emerged from the trees onto the summit of a vine-covered bluff that ran down to the beach. There, waiting on the shore for the rapidly approaching rowboat, were three men standing next to a small pile of luggage.
Sixteen
Until they were clear of the trees the dense tropical jungle had swallowed the sound of the engine, but when they reached the bluff the rumble of the exhaust sounded clearly on the beach. As though pulled by the same string the three heads turned about as one, staring up at the sudden apparition. Then one of the men began waving to the dinghy, a second scrabbled at the luggage, the third, who supported himself on two canes, began to hobble to the water’s edge.
“Get down there!” Tony shouted. “We have them.”
The CIA man needed no urging. The big car flew down the slope, hurling itself around the sandy curves, negotiating with a great grinding sound the last turn that brought it back in the direction of the beach below. A pink jeep was parked where the road debauched onto the beach and there was no way around it. Scarcely slowing, the Coronel Glanders Chicken wagon smashed into it with a great crashing of glass and screech of torn metal. The jeep bounced forward, its rear wheels locked by the handbrake, skidding in the sand but urged on by the churning horsepower behind it. Once it had been pushed out onto the beach, Higginson spun the wheel and shot around it.
Other than a few discarded suitcases, the shore was empty. The dinghy was halfway back to the boat, low in the water with its heavy load, paddles flashing brightly in the sun.
“We must stop that boat!” Tony shouted.
“If y’ll let me out ah’ll be glad to,” Stocker said. He had dug a long-barreled revolver from an inside pocket and was now removing a plastic stock from a sling under his arm. This clicked into a slot in the revolver’s butt to make a short but sinister-looking rifle.
Stocker jumped from the car, cracking open the revolver as he went, jamming in a long-nosed bullet. “Armor piercing,” he said as he leaned his elbows on the hood. Someone in the dinghy was firing a pistol at them now but the aim was erratic, though one bullet hit the sand close by and screamed away. Stocker ignored this completely, letting his breath out, sighting, squeezing off a round.
It had no apparent effect. The dinghy was almost to the fishing boat now, waiting hands reaching down, when he fired again. And again.
Angry shouts could be heard as the thudding of the engine slowed and grated into silence. Stocker was not through, however. From another of his lumpy pockets he extracted a canister a the size of a beer can which slipped over the muzzle of the gun. This time he dug the butt into the sand and, estimating the distance, aimed the gun barrel into the air almost vertically. There was a dull bang and the canister shot into the sky in a high arc to splash into the water beyond the boat. There was a much louder explosion and a geyser of water shot into the air; the boat rocked dangerously.
“A mite over. Just correct by a hair.”
“You’re not going to blow them up?” Tony asked, wide-eyed.
“First shake em up. Now some tear gas to quiet em down.”
“But how do we get them back. Look—they’re beginning to row.”
“That headland, those rocks,” Billy called out, pointing, “They’re beyond the boat. We can swim in from there, head them off.”
“I don’t swim,” Higginson said.
“Tony and me will be enough,” Billy said. “Let’s go.”
“Hand tuh hand,” Stocker said. “Take this.” He produced a combat knife which he handed to Tony, and a second for Billy Schultz. They were triangular bladed, very sharp, with knuckleduster hilts studded with sharp spikes.
“Get that tear gas in and keep us covered,” Higginson ordered, gunning the car to life.
“Clothes off,” Billy ordered, and they did a struggling Laocoon disrobement in the back seat as the Lincoln bounced down the beach. Higginson did not spare the car, going at full speed over the gravel and boulders, dodging the largest so that the men in the back fell into each other, pants caught on feet, shirts flapping, revolvers tumbling. With a final last grinding thud the Lincoln impaled itself on a fang of rock and would go no further.
Billy led the way, bounding from rock to rock like a demented mountain goat, tastefully clad in orange undershorts and combat knife. Tony followed, wincing at the sharp ridges, peeling down to more proletarian white shorts as he went. There was much shouted activity from the boat as well as a number of shots, some of which came close. Another explosion showered water on the craft as well as engulfing it in a white cloud. Billy seized the knife between his teeth, pirate fashion, and dived into the water. There were rocks under the surface that he barely missed so Tony entered more hesitatingly, climbing in, then biting onto the knife which promptly cut the corner of his mouth, swimming after Billy’s muscular back and thrashing arms.
A great deal of coughing and multilingual cursing could be heard from the boat as they came close, a metallic hammering followed by the sound of an electric starter. The engine gasped twice, then subsided. The high wooden side rose above them and Tony followed Billy around to where a ladder was built into the stern. Billy Schultz surged up it—then dropped quickly back as a bullet dug a chunk of wood out of the transom.