It was a giant metal cylinder that fitted between the masts with only a little to spare. A missile came to mind- people are always mislaying the things nowadays, or letting them go astray-but this object didn't look as if it were intended to move under its own power. Slightly rounded at both ends, it looked just like a big cylindrical tank for water or liquefied gas, except that if it had been full of any kind of liquid, big as it was, it would probably have rolled the boat over. It just couldn't be that heavy or they couldn't have managed it.
On the other hand, it was heavy enough that the crew was making elaborate preparations for unloading it. The main boom, sail removed, had been angled high into the air for use as a cargo boom, and there seemed to be considerable shipboard activity with ropes and slings and tackles.
On shore, work was also being done. A couple of long cylindrical pontoons with pointed ends, and considerable lumber, had been unloaded from the six-wheeler, and men were assembling these ingredients into a raft of sorts, at the water's edge. Other men were laying planks behind the wheels of the truck to keep it from getting stuck in the sand. As I watched, the big vehicle backed cautiously closer to the water. Some planks were transferred from front to rear; and the truck moved another few feet down the beach and stopped, apparently located to everybody's satisfaction. Obviously, I'd been wrong about it. It hadn't come to Bahia San Agustin to deliver a mysterious load for Warfel's boat to pick up, quite the contrary.
Off to one side, by the jeep, stood two men watching critically. One, roughly dressed, seemed to be Willi Keim alias Willy Hansen, although I couldn't be absolutely certain at that distance. The other, taller and much stouter, in neat city clothes, didn't have the right shape to be Frank Warfel. I thought I could detect a moustache on a bland Oriental face, even in the poor light, but that could have been because I was kind of expecting to see a moustached Oriental. I was expecting the Chinese, Charlie Chan-type character with whom, I'd heard, Beverly Blame had made contact in San Francisco-at the meeting that had been watched by Jake and his assistants, who'd lost the man afterwards in the streets of Chinatown.
I was expecting this particular man because I knew just such a man-although he had not been wearing a moustache when I'd seen him last-and because this was just the kind of secretive scientific monkey business in which he specialized. He was known to us only as Mr. Soo, and I'd encountered him twice before. The first time had been in Hawaii where I'd saved his life, more or less out of necessity, 4long with my own, and then turned him loose because he might have proved an embarrassing prisoner-we'd had some turncoat trouble with one of our agents that we didn't particularly want publicized. The second encounter, if you could call it that-I'd seen him but he hadn't seen me-had taken place in Alaska where I'd again let him go free, this time because we'd gone to considerable trouble to plant some false data on him, or, more accurately, on a handsome lady who had his confidence.
I'd wondered, from time to time, just what had happened to the attractive woman known as Libby, when our deceit was finally discovered, and to Mr. Soo. Apparently, I need not have worried about Mr. Soo. He'd overcome the professional setback somehow, and here he was-if it was he-doing business as usual, presumably for his old firm, the one with headquarters in Peking. The question was, what business?
I frowned at the dim scene for a moment longer, but I was wasting time. My curiosity would just have to wait. Warfel might he coming ashore at any moment, and although the project didn't particularly appeal to me, it was my job to keep him safe. I crawled left towards the peak of the ridge until I was high enough that, looking back along it, I could see all of it. Tillery was easy to spot from up there. He was lying among some rocks industriously using night glasses. Beside him was Sapio, with the Thompson.
Well, it was nice to have them located, but the guy who really concerned me was Jake. He was undoubtedly the man who'd do the actual job, with his big rifle and its odd-looking sight. Tillery and Sapio were present only in an executive capacity, I figured, to give instructions and make sure they were carried out successfully, and perhaps to take a hand in discouraging pursuit, with the tommy gun, afterwards.
Anyway, Jake was the only one who worried me a little, as competition or opposition or whatever you choose to call it. He was a working pro in more or less my own line of endeavor. The other two might have been tough once, but they were desk slobs now or the syndicate equivalent. Well, in a dark alley or a vacant city lot they might still be formidable, but out here in the open – in the kind of terrain I'd grown up in-I didn't figure they'd give me much trouble once I'd managed to take care of Jake.
I caught a hint of movement farther down the curving rim of the old crater, if it was a crater. Moonlight glinted on a rifle barrel, and there he was. He'd picked a spot that was within easy rifle shot of the landing area, at least by daylight, but it was fairly low, one of the few places where the ridge looked easily climbable from the beach. I didn't get it at first, and then I realized that I'd underestimated Tillery's sense of strategy. The rifle would fire, Warfel would fall, and after a moment of shocked surprise, the gang on the beach would rush the tempting low spot from which the shot had come. That would place them on the steep slope with hardly any cover, cold meat for the chopper on the crest. A couple of raking bursts from the flank, and the few who remained alive would become too interested in staying that way to think about further pursuit.
Well, there was my pigeon and it was time to get at plucking it. I headed down into the brush, working my way slowly and silently-well below the spot where Sapio and Tillery lay-and almost ran into a man leaning against the trunk of a tree with a carbine slung on his shoulder, presumably another of Warfel's lookouts, but what the hell was he doing way down here where he couldn't look out at anything?
It worried me, but I had no time to brood about it. I sneaked by him silently and kept going until I figured I was directly below Jake's position; then I moved upwards very carefully, to discover I'd gone a little too far. I was out in the rocks and brush to seaward of him. From here I could hear the beat of the surf on the promontory off to my right. I could hear another, less reassuring sound: the put-put racket of a small outboard motor in the bay. It could be driving a dinghy bringing Warfel ashore.
I could see Jake quite plainly. He lay between two rocks, screened, from the bay side, by some of the coarse grass that grew in tufts here and there along the ridge. He had not yet put the rifle to his shoulder. If his target was approaching, it was, apparently, still out of range. From my side, he had little protection. It would have been an easy shot if I'd been allowed to make the noise. I yearned for a silencer, dart gun, death ray, or bow and arrow; but wishing was getting me nowhere. There was no easy way of sneaking up on him where he lay; the ground was too open around him. I'd have to make him come to me.
I picked a suitable ambush site behind and below him. It took me some time to work my way to it, long enough for the outboard to cross the bay and fall silent, but Jake still did not lift the rifle. Either Warfel hadn't come ashore this trip, or he wasn't offering a good enough shot yet. I laid the jack handle from the Chrysler where I could grab it fast, and tossed a small rock down the hillside to land far below me.