The plane was settling fast. I sat down and slid into the water, which was warmer than I'd expected. Carol hesitated a moment longer, conventionally reluctant to go swimming fully dressed. Then the plane gave a sudden lurch, and she launched herself cautiously, being careful to keep her head above water. She glanced in my direction to make sure I was coming, and started making her way towards shore in an embarrassed, gingerly manner, as if afraid her friends might see her paddling around in the Pacific-well, an arm of it, anyway-with all her Clothes on.
It wasn't much of a swim. Five minutes later we were wading up to the beach.
22
FLYING MIGHT BE fun, and swimming was all right in its place, but dry land felt very good to me as I peeled off my life jacket and tucked my wet shirt into my dripping pants. Even a lonely sandspit in the desolate Gulf of California had a lot to recommend it.
I looked at Carol and grinned. She'd made it ashore without getting wet above the neck, and her smooth blonde hair, only slightly windblown, looked ridiculously neat and civilized above her sagging sweater and wetly clinging skirt.
I said, "Ditch your waterwings and let's go."
"Go where?" She tossed the inflated vest aside, and bent over to pull the brief safari skirt away from her legs. Wringing it out by sections, she looked around the isle, and glanced at the approaching boat. "There's no place to hide, Matt. The whole island's only a mile or so long and a few hundred yards across, mostly sand. They're bound to catch us."
"Sure," I said. "But let's dress it up a bit and make it look impressive. I'd like to find a picturesque spot for Helm's Last Stand, over towards the middle there. The lower of those two sandhills, I think, so they can show their tactical genius by eventually outflanking us from the other one. We'll hold them off bravely, though, until death stares us in the face. Can you shoot a pistol?"
"No. Matt, I-"
"So much the better. They've got to be healthy to show us the way, so we don't really want to hurt them. Well, maybe just one, to make it look good. Three can handle the boat and prisoners. But by God we'll go down with a bang. A lot of bangs." I patted my weighted pockets. "They'll think they've fought the Battle of the Bulge before they capture and disarm us."
"Matt, be serious. If you start a lot of shooting..
Well, they'll shoot back, won't they? I don't think I'm a coward, but I don't particularly want to get killed just so you can make a dramatic gesture."
I said, "Don't run down dramatic gestures, doll. Dramatic gestures are absolutely essential in this business." I hesitated, and glanced at her. I still had my orders, but the situation had changed somewhat, and I said, "I will now make a confession. I really am a secret agent of sorts. Just don't tell anybody I told you, particularly my boss."
Carol smiled faintly. "Well, I'd kind of begun to suspect it."
"I even have a bit of a reputation in my line of work," I said modestly. "In fact, I have a dossier as long as your arm in certain people's files. What I'm trying to say in my diffident way is, I'm known from here to Moscow-and maybe even to Peking-as a hotshot spook, smart as a fox, dangerous as a wounded grizzly. At least I hope I am. Whether the reputation is deserved or not is beside the point. The fact is, I'm just not supposed to be the kind of guy you'd find sitting on a sandbar with folded arms, waiting to be taken prisoner."
"But, Matt-"
"Let me finish. The message I am trying to convey is that if whoever's on that boat catches me too easily, he'll know it's a trick. He'll poke and pry and ask questions, trying to discover why I'm playing mouse. He may even take a good look at the weapons he's captured with me; the weapons I was so uncharacteristically reluctant to use. We wouldn't want that, would we? Friend Solana's trick pistol has come this far unsuspected. Let's try to make sure it completes the journey-even if we don't."
There was a little silence. Carol leaned against me to slip off her boots and empty them. For such fashionable and relatively diminutive footgear, they held a lot of water. Only when she had finished did she speak, very quietly.
"What you're saying is that it doesn't really matter if we're killed, just so the pistol makes it."
I nodded. "Well, just so somebody makes it, in this case Solana. But the pistol is our contribution, as it works out. We'll have to take Solana's competence on faith. We'll have to assume that he can make it on his own, given the proper electronic guidance. He shouldn't have too bad a hangover from that stuff I gave him. I cut the dose pretty short. By now, he's been awake for hours."
"But you don't really know what's being planned, do you?" Carol looked at me soberly. "You don't really know that finding it and stopping it is… is important enough to die for, Matt."
I said, "Some people have put a lot of work and thought and time-months of time-into this flying-saucer buildup. Judging by the number of deaths they're already responsible for, what they're working up to must be pretty spectacular. And they've got hold of a good idea. As Priscilla pointed out, people aren't going to be rational about the evidence. Some, as she said, are going to believe in visitors from Alpha Centauri come hell or high water-but there are also lots of folks who are already convinced that the U.S. is covering up some big secret because of the bumbling way the Air Force has handled the whole UFO bit. Given a really gory Mexican saucer incident, presumably caused by secret American machines, piloted by conscienceless American flyers, and God knows what the international repercussions may be. We're already in trouble in Latin America; an incident like that could make it all go the way of Cuba. Certainly we won't come out of it smelling of roses, no matter how vigorously we deny everything. Hell, we've been denying everything connected with UFO's for years. Who's going to believe more of the same?" I shrugged. "But that's all kind of irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "Deciding what's important and what isn't is not my job. The man said stop it, so I stop it. Or I do what I can to make sure it gets stopped by somebody, in this case Solana."
I took her by the arm and led her towards the wider part of the island. The cruiser was standing in through the entrance now. I could see the three men on deck looking towards us, and the fourth man inside the deckhouse looking ahead to make sure he didn't hit anything.
One of the three men in the open looked familiar: a young man with streaky blonde hair. That figured. I'd never really bought the idea that Priscilla's pretty-boy sidekick, Tony Hartford, had died heroically trying to save me from Harsek in Mazatlбn. The idea had seemed even less plausible when I'd learned they were all on the same team. Now it appeared that Tony hadn't died at all. Well, he wasn't the first agent to have a phony demise staged for him so he could drop out of sight.
I recalled that some questions had been raised about his sexual attitudes, too. Administratively speaking, I suppose it made sense: if you had a number of them on the payroll, you might be better off working them together, hoping they'd understand and tolerate each other. Not that Tony's love life made much difference here. I wasn't planning to go to bed with the guy.
"Matt."
I glanced towards Carol. She wasn't looking at me; she was just watching where she put her feet as we plowed through the sand and brush and beach grass.
"Yes?" I said.
"Maybe I owe you an apology." Her voice was low. "Maybe… maybe this work of yours isn't all just tricks and lies and… and shooting unarmed women in cold blood."
"What unarmed women?" I asked. "Priscilla still had that.22 derringer with one barrel loaded, and don't think she wouldn't have used it instantly when she saw her chance. And taking time out to disarm her wasn't exactly practical up there, if you recall the circumstances."