My old trusty survival kit was somewhere in the deep six, and the Mauser had a debilitating case of the rusts at the bottom of some reef. But I was confident we had everything two itinerant cylinder redeemers needed to pull it off. Rounding up our supplies made Mookie even more nervous than he had been when talking about Zercher's stronghold.
"For Christ's sake, Elliott, whatever you do, don't let your guard down for a minute."
It was dark, going on 9:00, when Hannah and I crept into the village. Twice I had to stop the wheezing little Honda Civic while kids hustled goats out of our path. Our plan had been too hastily constructed to be convoluted. We were simply going to leave the wheezer at one of the local watering holes and trek the half mile or so back to where I remembered the airstrip was located.
That had been accomplished, and we were now confronted with the foreboding fence.
''Mookie was right," Hannah admitted. "Our friend Zercher takes his privacy seriously."
Fences are probably the last thing that an old country boy like me takes seriously. I showed Hannah how to "pop a stay" with a set of car keys, then demonstrated the fine and subtle art of the forward butt shimmy, and we were in.
Zercher's Portamaine compound was decidedly more elaborate than the facilities at Deechapal. There were two single-story units that appeared to be used for housing or barracks and an assortment of outbuildings ranging from a small hangar to several that looked as though they were being used for storage. A cannibalized DC-3 was sitting next to the hangar, and two single engine seaplanes, nomenclature unknown, were moored about 30 yards off shore. There were lights in only one of the buildings, the small shed down by the pier where Marshal Schuster's old tub was tied. The single guard didn't look all that efficient, leaning up against a dusty old Buick and smoking a cigarette. From where we were, it took us another ten minutes to maneuver ourselves into position.
"You sure this is going to work?" Hannah asked.
"I saw every movie Alan Ladd ever made. He always had some girl use it. It never fails."
"Can I tell you something? You're no Alan Ladd."
"Never mind," I groused.
Hannah shrugged and began unbuttoning the blouse of her jumpsuit. She had worked all the way down to the two above the belt when I stopped her.
"Hold on, the guy's imagination has to do some of the work."
"Well, Elliott, how do I look? Think he'll go for it?"
"If we didn't have more important things to do, I'd jump you myself," I assured her.
Hannah stepped out of the shadows and started toward the guard. It took him even less time to spot her than I anticipated.
"Hey!" he shouted.
Hannah stopped. "What's with you? I was just walking down to the beach to take a look at the water."
"How the hell did you get in here?" the guard sputtered.
"Look, bonzo," Hannah snarled, "don't hassle me. I've had enough hassling for one night."
The guard picked up his rifle, casually eased the sling up over his shoulder and started toward her. "How the hell did you get in here?" he repeated.
"I walked in," Hannah said, smiling sweetly, "just like this." She began to walk around the man, twirling her purse in a burlesque of what she thought must have worked for Alan Ladd. From where I stood, her act still had a few wrinkles in it. "Through that gate back there."
The guard's head darted nervously back toward the entrance. He was obviously trying to remember the last time he had checked it.
"What's the big deal?" Hannah purred. "It's a public beach, ain't it?"
"This is a restricted area," the man fumed, still sputtering.
"What do you mean, 'restricted'?" Hannah shot back at him. If it hadn't been for that hokey little circling routine, I would have given her an "A" for her performance. She jerked her thumb up and back over her shoulder. ''Look. There's the town, and there's the beach. What's to restrict?"
The man with the rifle finally made the mistake she was waiting for. He moved in closer. The inviting, unbuttoned bodice of Hannah's jumpsuit was too much for him. When he took the second step, it was too late. Hannah moved in and buried her lovely knee a good six inches in the unsuspecting man's crotch. He let out an abbreviated grunt, the wind gushed out of him, and he pitched forward, face first, in the sand. By the time he rolled over, Hannah had applied the second blow, a deft maneuver that restyled the side of his skull with a short chunk of steel pipe supplied by our friend Mookie.
"You can come out now," Hannah purred.
I've always considered it one of the constant, yet tragic, truisms of the ongoing human comedy that a well-endowed lady can deal the enemy more of a mortal blow by unbuttoning a few buttons on a well-filled bodice than an expert rifle squad can with a volley of strategically placed bullets. Hannah had just proved it. And to think my mother used to give me hell for watching all those old Alan Ladd movies.
"He'd have shot my ass if I'd tried it," I said defensively.
Hannah probably understood that but didn't acknowledge it. Instead she began scanning the complex. "Okay, fearless leader, where do we start?"
"We split up. You take those two buildings over there, and I'll check out the hangar and the dock area. Young Marshal just may have figured that with us out of the way there wasn't any need to hustle the cylinders off somewhere."
Hannah nodded and headed for the warehouse.
The hangar wasn't much of a challenge. The judicious application of a little brute force snapped the cheap lock, and I was in. The first thing that caught my eye was a large wall map that took in all of Central America, the Gulf area, Mexico, the Caribbean and the southwestern quadrant of the United States. It was dotted with multicolored pins. Interestingly enough, not one of the pins was located in a major metropolitan area. Of equal interest was the fact that there were only two pins located in Jamaica, one in Deechapal and the other in Portamaine. Under the circumstances, it wasn't difficult to figure out what the pins stood for.
Ten minutes later I was satisfied Marshal Schuster hadn't stored the cylinders in the hangar or the adjacent operations building and went back out on the beach to look for Hannah. The search hadn't gone any better for her. She was standing in front of the second of the two buildings looking slightly perplexed.
"They're both empty," she complained. "Nothing on the cylinders, nothing on Zercher's other activities." She had found time, though, to rebutton the top of her jumpsuit.
"On to bigger and better things," I said bravely. "Let's check out the dock area."
"Surely he didn't just leave those things lying down there on the dock."
"Why not? I'm convinced now that our buddy Schuster's only real interest in those cylinders was keeping them out of his father's hands. If he has any other interest in them, it's purely secondary."
"There's always that long shot possibility that Bachmann's process works," Hannah protested.
"Our job is to get Bearing his little metal playthings," I reminded her, "then we tell him what we think Bormann actually put in those cylinders. The rest is up to him."
Before we were halfway down to the old scow, I could see the two cylinders still lying on the bow deck right where Marshal and his men had stacked them when they took them off the Sloe Gin.
Hannah stared at the long metal objects in disbelief. "If that don't beat all. The son-of-a-bitch steals the cylinders, scuttles our boat, leaves us for shark bait, then leaves them lying on the beach like an empty six pack." She put her hands on her hips and walked back and forth assessing Schuster's handiwork. "Okay, skipper, now that we've found 'em, what do we do with 'em?"