Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14
Read Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 Online
Authors: The Intriguers (v1.1)
The
Intriguers
by Donald
Hamilton
(c) 1972
Table of Contents
1
The morning I got shot at, down
there in
Mexico
, I'd been out fishing in the high-powered little boat Mac had lent me,
along with a trailer to carry it and a station wagon to pull it.
Generosity with government equipment
is not my superior's outstanding characteristic; but he'd explained that the
outfit had been assembled by another agent for a job which was now completed.
As a reward for years of faithful service and for taking a bad crack on the
head in the course of a recent assignment-he put it differently, .but that was
the general idea-he was willing to let me take the rig on leave with me, since
I'd be needing a fishing boat where I was going. When I brought it back, in
good condition of course, it would be sold for whatever it would bring.
Unfortunately, our departmental budget doesn't cover the maintenance of yachts,
even fifteen-foot ones.
That morning, I'd been fishing at an
offshore island, an hour's run-some twenty-four miles at my relatively cautious
cruising speed-from where I was staying in the little resort
village
of
Bahia
San Carlos
, just outside
Guaymas
,
a good-sized port on the mainland side of the
Gulf of California
. I've had to learn a little about boats and
oceans in the line of business, but I'm still a landlubber at heart, and from a
small boat twenty-four miles of open water looks like a lot of water to me,
even when it's calm. When it starts getting rough, I want no part of it, so
when the wind began to pick up gustily around ten o'clock, I aborted my day's
fishing plans and got out of there in a hurry, leaving the big boats and the
real sailors to cope with the waves and the weather without me.
It was a hell of a frustrating way,
I reflected, to end what had been a hell of a frustrating vacation. Of course,
in a sense it had actually ended a day earlier when the girl had got really mad
at last and walked out on me. Never mind her name. She doesn't figure in this,
honest. She was just a girl I'd met on a job a few months earlier. It had been
a rough and nasty business, and we'd both wound up in the same hospital. One
thing had led to another, as it often does, and we'd agreed to do our
convalescing together, down in sunny Mexico. Since I'd been more or less
responsible for her getting hurt in the first place, I'd been pleased and
flattered by her forgiveness.
At least it had seemed flattering at
the time. What I hadn't realized was that, having had lots of time to think
things over in that hospital bed-to think me over-she'd come to the remarkable
conclusion that, in spite of my reprehensible profession, I was really a sweet
and gentle guy who just needed a good woman to reform him from his violent
ways.
It was too bad. She could have been
a lot of fun if she hadn't decided that I needed a conscience and that she was
it; she was a tall, slim, blonde kid who, in addition to her indoor talents,
which were considerable, could swim and hike and handle a fishing rod
adequately, once she got her strength back. We'd done quite a bit of fishing,
and she hadn't been at all squeamish about sticking a big, barbed hook through
a small, wiggling sardine to be used for bait; but she'd proved to have a thing
about other life forms.
I never can figure how they make
these distinctions. This one had absolutely no sentimental feelings about fish
or fishing, but she bled copiously for all little birds and animals killed by
cruel hunters. When, tired of angling for the moment, I innocently suggested
borrowing a couple of shotguns and going out after the doves that swarmed
locally, she looked at me with shock and horror-and this was, for God's sake,
the same girl who'd casually impaled a live bait fish on a hook; the same girl
who'd just hungrily cleaned up a large helping of
arroz
con polio, a rice-and chicken dish for which a good-sized bird had died. Of
course, that bird had been killed by somebody else. She hadn't had to get its
blood on her own hands. All she'd had to do was let me pay for the crime.
When I pointed out the hypocrisy of
this, or what seemed like hypocrisy to me, and asked how she could possibly
reconcile it with her fierce anti-killing convictions, she got very angry.
Apparently there was another
delicate distinction, too subtle for me to grasp, not only between fish and
birds but between birds and birds: between a dead chicken and a dead dove. I
said, sure, a dove tastes better, if you like doves. At that she really blew up
and said I couldn't possibly be expected to understand, a callous monster like
me, who carried a gun and showed no respect whatever for life, even human life.
As you'll gather, it hadn't been a
very restful leave. Being reformed is kind of wearing, even when it doesn't
take. After putting her on a plane a week early at her request, I'd decided to
spend a final day doing a little angling and exploring alone before heading
back to the US to turn in the boat and wind up my leave in other surroundings,
but the weather had just put an end to that project. I decided that I might as well
use the rest of the day getting the boat back on the trailer and hosing it down
thoroughly to wash off three weeks' accumulation of salt and fish scales. Any
time I had left over could be used for packing-but first, of course, I had to
make it back to the San Carlos marina.
It was a reasonably exciting ride,
surfing along before the mounting waves with the wind getting stronger and
gustier by the minute. The Gulf is no farm pond or stock tank. At
Guaymas
, it looks like the ocean-you can't see across to
Baja California
-and it acts like the ocean, too, upon
occasion. The Mexicans call it the Sea of Cortez and treat it with respect. I
wanted to get in before things became really rugged, so I kept the 85-horse
Johnson blasting-well, as hard as you want to blast in that size boat in that
kind of a seaway, actually not much over half-throttle with a mill that large.
It was quite a power plant. I'd only
had it wide open once in the weeks I'd been using it, and it had scared hell
out of me. I'd thought we'd go into orbit before I could get it shut down
again.
I've dealt with some fairly potent
machinery on land, but
speedboating
is not my bag,
and my only previous experience with outboard motors, to amount to anything,
dated back to an era when ten horsepower was considered pretty hot stuff.
Even at half-throttle, the boat was
a bit of a handful with the sea astern-I guess they all are.
It was a relief to conic around the
towering rocky point guarding the mouth of San Carlos Bay and feel her stop
making like a runaway surfboard and settle down to a steady
planing
attitude in quiet water. I unfastened my parka and threw back the hood. Being
designed for fishing originally, whatever my mysterious predecessor had used
her for, the chunky little blue-and-white fiberglass vessel was wide open all
around so there'd he nothing to interfere with the rods and lines. You did your
steering from an exposed
midships
console with no
windshield to hide behind. If you wanted to stay dry, you put on something
waterproof and zipped it up tight, even on a downwind run.
I'd mopped the spray off my face and
sunglasses, and I was reaching for the throttle to hasten things along, now
that the traveling was smooth and easy, when I saw the seal off to the
right-excuse me, to starboard. They're actually sea lions, whatever the
technical distinction may be, and they're fairly common down there in the
Cortez, but I was just a country boy from the arid inland state of
New Mexico
, and I still hadn't seen enough of them to
take them for granted.
I was feeling nice and relaxed and a
little triumphant at my victory over the wind and the waves, the way Columbus
or Leif
Ericson
must have felt upon reaching
America
after a stormy Atlantic crossing. I was in
no real hurry to get ashore now that I'd made it into sheltered water, so I put
the wheel hard over to get a closer look at the swimming animal. You might say
the sleek little beast saved my life, since the rifleman up on the point picked
that moment to put the final pressure on his trigger.
He must have been aiming well ahead
of me, giving plenty of lead to allow for the forward motion of the boat. It
wasn't a long shot, only a little over a hundred yards, but even loafing along
as she was, the boat was doing at least twenty miles per hour-close to thirty
feet per second-and rifle bullets do not travel with the speed of light,
although people keep trying to make them. When the hidden marksman's projectile
reached the spot where he'd expected me to be, I wasn't there. My sharp turn
away from him had thrown his calculations off just enough for a clean miss, but
not enough that I didn't hear the bullet go past or catch a glimpse of the
characteristic dimpled splash off to the left-excuse me, to port.
I suppose it's a reflection on my
life style, as it's currently known, that even before I heard the report of the
rifle from the rocks behind me, I didn't doubt that what had passed me was a
bullet, not a suicidal bird or bumblebee; and that somebody was trying to kill
me. I checked the impulse to dodge left. He'd be anticipating that. The
standard naval routine is to chase the splashes made by the enemy's shells in
the hope of confusing his attempts to correct his aim.
Instead, I kept the wheel hard
right, holding the tight turn I'd started through a full hundred and eighty
degrees and ninety degrees more. For a moment that aimed me straight at the
shore and the hidden rifleman, who wouldn't be expecting me, I hoped, to charge
straight at him.
Another bullet cracked past, off to
port again. He'd gambled that I'd straighten the boat out the instant she was
heading back out to sea and safety, instead of continuing the turn. He'd lost,
but all it had cost him was a cartridge worth a few dimes or pesos, depending
on nationality. If I lost, I'd have a large hole in my anatomy.
At the shot, I spun the wheel hard
left, chasing the splash at last, hoping he wouldn't be ready for it now. He
wasn't. A third bullet slapped the water well off to starboard. I caught a
glint of glass up among the rocks: a telescopic sight. Well, that figured. It
was time to try something new before I got too clever and dodged right into one
of his shots. Heading out to sea again wasn't too bad an idea. Under the new
circumstances, the weather was by far the least of my worries. When the bow had
swung back far enough, I checked the turn and slammed the throttle clear up to
the stop. Eighty-five horsepower came in with a roar. The instant acceleration
threw me back onto the helmsman's seat, actually the built-in battery box with
a cushion on top.
Then my borrowed little seagoing
bomb was screaming over the water, practically airborne.
I thought I heard a bullet snap past
just behind me, as if the would-be assassin, establishing a lead for a target
speed of some twenty miles per hour, had been caught flatfooted by the sudden
jump to forty and over, but I couldn't be sure because of the racket. Some
seconds passed, and it was time to dodge again before he came up with the
proper correction, but I didn't dare. We were going too fast. I'd never before
held this boat at full throttle for any length of time; I'd never before hit
this speed in any boat. I wasn't at all certain she wouldn't just flip if I
tried to turn her.
I consoled myself that a high-speed
angling target is something few riflemen can hit, and the range was getting
longer by the second. I didn't look
shorewards
; I
didn't dare take my attention off the boat that long. She felt very squirrelly
indeed at this velocity, and if she started to go haywire I wanted to be ready
for her. I did risk a glance at the instruments. The tachometer was right at
the 5500 rpm redline; the speedometer wasn't registering at all.
Apparently, skimming the surface at
this speed, the boat rode so high that the little
Pitot
tube, or sending unit, attached to the lower edge of the transom, off to one
side, was practically clear of the water, with nothing to work on but spray.
Concentrating on keeping the flying
little vessel under control, I hadn't realized that we were already getting out
beyond the shelter of the point. Suddenly, the smooth surface across which we
were racing broke up into hills and valleys of tumbling water. A cresting wave
came at us, and the boat smashed into it and was hurled skywards. I managed to
get the throttle back while she was still aloft. She hit with a shattering
crash ad plowed headlong into the next wave, which broke green over the bow. At
the same time, the wake caught up with us and came surging into the
self-bailing
splashwell
just ahead of the motor, with
enough momentum to carry a lot of it over the bulkhead and into the cockpit-a
planing
boat doesn't go very far when the power quits; she
just squats and stops.