“Lost ’em for a minute,” he said. I winced; we hadn’t even left the fairgrounds yet. “But there they are, four little glowworms on parade. Can’t let that happen again, can we, now?”
A little while later I had to admit that he knew what he was doing. His trailing method amounted to guessing where the cars were going next, dropping back out of sight, then circling on ahead and getting there ahead of them. It wasn’t even necessary to keep them constantly in sight, just so long as we were able to guess where they would go next.
In built-up areas this still amounted to fairly close pursuit, since the motorcade might turn off onto another route at any time. We were still out of their sight almost all the time, and the generally high noise level in those sections, plus the screening effect of buildings, kept us concealed. The cars worked their way around the city and struck out northeastward. Once they hit open country, they were easier to follow than a juggler on the Orpheum Circuit. There was one main road and they stayed on it for miles. We would lay doggo behind them, make a wide sweep to the left or the right, hover until they came into view, then cut off to the side again. There was always the chance that they would pick up a side road, but our fearless leader assured us he could locate them easily enough if they did. The branch routes were few and far between, and the Cuban convoy, four identical cars doing a steady sixty-plus miles per hour and spaced five car lengths apart, would be virtually impossible to miss on a lightly traveled minor highway. Especially at night, with their lights visible miles away.
As it turned out, we didn’t even have to play hide-and-seek. We were in full view of them when they made their turn onto a narrow dirt road curving off to the northwest.
“And now we’d best play ’em a trifle tighter,” said our hero. “Pass the bloody bottle, eh?” Glug, glug; burp. “’K you. Don’t want to let ’em out of sight. That’s not a road they’d take to get to another road. They’ll be stopping somewhere along it, and once their lights are out on a road like that, we’d have not a chance of finding ’em. I’ll keep us about this far to the rear of ’em and… there, we’ll fly without lights. Been giving me a touch of a headache anyway. I shouldn’t think they’ll hear us at this distance. Keep the glasses on them, why don’t you? Once they cut their lights, it’ll be as though the earth swallowed them alive, and you’ll want to have the spot pinpointed.”
I nodded, watching the last car’s taillights through the binoculars. I wondered where the hell they were going. Before they skirted the city, I would have guessed they’d head straight for the Cuban consulate. Instead they were off in the woods, out in the middle of nowhere.
“I say, Tanner? What do you do when they go to ground?”
“Rescue Arlette and Minna, that’s the little girl, and get out of the country in a hurry. This thing’ll hold two more passengers, won’t it? The girl’s very tiny, she can ride in my lap.”
“The other can ride in mine,” he said, chortling. “How do you mean, rescue them?”
“When you go fishing, what do you use for bait?”
“Depends what’s in the water.”
“Uh-huh. What we do depends on what kind of setup they’ve got. I can’t tell until I see it.”
“Got a bit of firepower, have you?”
“Two pistols.” I had two seven-shot clips for the Marley. Claude’s revolver was a snub-barreled.38 with five shells in it. The chamber under the hammer was empty. We had nineteen shots, which didn’t constitute much under the heading of firepower.
“Handguns,” he said. “Look in the gearbox there and you’ll find a third one. About as accurate as spitting on a windy day, but hit a chap in the finger with it, and it’ll take his whole arm off.” I believed that when I saw the gun, a.44 Magnum with a muzzle hole big enough to walk through. “And take the shooter’s arm off with the recoil,” he went on. “Won it off a trapper up near Keewatin playing high, low, jack, and the game. Then, wouldn’t you know he’d have to insist on another game, staking this little Eskimo girl of his against the gun. Lost her to me and hadn’t a thing left to wager for her, and don’t you know he tried to welsh on the bet. No offense, by the way, I’m a fourth Welsh myself on my mother’s side.” Glug, glug. “So here I was with a gun I’d not owned for more than half an hour, and what could I do but blow his brains out with it? Never shot the ruddy thing since. That Eskimo girl” – burp – “the smell of her was enough to curdle reindeer milk, but warm as a fire on a cold night.” He smiled fondly at the memory. “But that’s three guns instead of two, for what small good it does. You’d do well to have a tommy gun.”
“I know.” If only there had been a way to bring along the Bertons’ machine gun.
“Still, when they don’t know you’re coming, they won’t have the table set, will they now? The old element of surprise. Sneak in fast and spirit out the woman and Devil take the hindmost. Then you’ll want me to put you over the border, eh? Would it do to set you down just over the Vermont line?”
“I think so. Will you have enough fuel?”
“Might or might not. Could be close, but if it runs tight, we’ll just set her down somewhere and fill up with gasoline. Silly thing doesn’t fuss about fuel. Would run on rock salt if you could get it to burn. Whoa, now, where have they gone to? Did you spot it?”
“Yes.” I pointed. “They swung left just past those trees and cut the lights.”
“Got it. Got the spot fixed firm enough and won’t forget it. Off we go.”
He took us around to the right, explaining that he would give them time to leave their cars and go wherever they were going before coming in tight for an aerial survey. We sailed off to the right, spun lazily around, and headed back. I had already lost my bearings, but he seemed to remember the spot I’d pointed to. He brought us down low and let the copter skim over the tops of the trees. For a while we saw nothing but trees. Then the trees came to an abrupt halt and we were out over a long, flat clearing. I made out the four cars, a truck, a long low building of concrete block with a flat roof.
“Well, now,” he said suddenly. “A flock of cars is one thing, but you can’t expect a little egg crate like this to trail one of those.”
I didn’t understand at first. I thought he meant the truck, and wondered if he might be making a joke, and if I perhaps ought to laugh at it.
Then I looked out at the clearing and got the joke but didn’t laugh. Because it wasn’t just a clearing. It was an airstrip, and there was one hell of a big silvery jetliner perched on it.
“Now in this particular sort of water,” said the Jolly Aviator, “I don’t know that I’d use bait at all. I think I’d drop some dynamite and see what came to the surface.”
“Shhh.”
“Did you see the size of that bird, though? You could put the chopper in its luggage compartment.”
“Shhhh.”
We had landed the chopper about a quarter of a mile from the landing strip, and now we were walking back along the dirt road in a reasonable facsimile of silence. Arlette’s entrance had shaken them up, all right. Unless I was very far off the mark, they were about to fill up the plane with all the people they had snatched and beat it out of the country in a hurry. If we didn’t do something, Arlette and Minna would be spending the rest of August in Havana.
It wasn’t surprising that they were shook up. Arlette and I had dropped in on them once when nobody was home, and whatever traces we had left behind was enough to put four men on guard duty all night. Arlette’s second visit, combined with the general hysteria we had created throughout Montreal, must have nudged them over the edge. They wouldn’t be kidnaping anybody else now. They’d just put the last load of prisoners on the plane and send all the evidence home to Fidel.