Donald Hamilton: The Intriguers

All joking aside, I didn't really think he could have known I'd be shot at down here in Mexico. He's not omniscient, not quite. But he had obviously known, I reasoned, that there was trouble brewing at sea, or at least as far out at sea-some sea, somewhere-as you'd want to take a fifteen-foot outboard. He'd hoped to persuade me to spend my leave in the neighborhood of the potential danger spot, wherever it might be, bringing with me the disguised little seagoing rocket the department had just acquired for the job. I was rapidly losing faith in that mysterious agent who was supposed to have used it before me. Thinking back, I realized that there had been a good many indications, which I'd been too preoccupied to take seriously, that neither boat, trailer, nor tow car had seen any strenuous use before I got them.

When my thorny attitude had spoiled his plan-for some reason he'd been reluctant to give me direct orders over the phone-Mac had lent me the boat anyway and let me take it down here and play with it so I'd at least know how to handle it when the time came for him to summon me to action. And somebody had come clear down into Mexico to take care of me with a scope-sighted rifle before that summons could reach me…

I could be reading too much into a simple little murder attempt amid a camouflaged 125-lip motor. Nevertheless, the safest course was to act on the assumption that I was entangled in one of Mac's complicated spiderwebs of intrigue, amid figure out, since my vacation was all washed up anyway, what he'd want me to do next. That wasn't hard. I was already working at it. Obviously, the first thing required was to deal with any would-be murderers in such a way that they couldn't hamper my future activities.

By the end of the day, I'd finished the beer and the bait and was fishing, if you want to call it that, with a bare hook. It was a long, dull afternoon in one way; but they're never really dull when you're waiting like that in a duck blind, or by a deer trail, or in a promising ambush. There was always the possibility, of course, that my quarry had escaped in some other direction; but the most likely theory was that he'd been working out of San Carlos like me, behaving like just another tourist and keeping an eye on me.

And if he'd come out of San Carlos, he'd want to check back in there, because they keep track of the craft using their marina facilities. I considered it a good enough theory that I was willing to wait until sunset and at least an hour longer, if I had to.

I didn't have to. At six-thirty, with the sun just starting to dip behind the spectacular rock formations to the west, his patience ran out, and he came. I first glimpsed a flash of spray well out beyond the point; then I saw the white skiff driving along with the whitecapped waves that threatened to overwhelm it. I was already reeling in my fishing line. This late in the afternoon, I saw, in this weather, we had the whole Sea of Cortez to ourselves.

Laying the rod down, I quickly lowered the motor and turned the key. The big mill began to rumble behind me, shaking the little fiberglass hull. I hauled up the anchor, dumped it aboard, and backed the boat out of its hidey hole very cautiously: this was no time to bend the propeller on a rock. Then I shoved the go-stick forward, and we took off flying.

He saw me coming. He turned, as soon as the waves would let him, and tried to flee. It was kind of pitiful, actually; just about as pitiful as me innocently chasing seals with his telescope crosshairs tracking me. I shot down the bay at flank speed, mostly airborne; but this time I throttled back in good time before hitting the heavy stuff out past the point. He was plunging through it, or trying to, heading hack the way he'd come. Actually, his light boat wasn't making much progress against the waves and the wind. The extra weight and freeboard of my craft, not to mention the extra horsepower, made it no contest. I simply walked up on him as if his little motor had stopped running.

I don't mean to imply that it was smooth and easy. It was a rough, wet chase while it lasted, with a lot of spray flying; but the big crested rollers out of the northwest turned out to be more frightening to look at than dangerous to ride. At fifty yards he went for the rifle. This was ridiculous. He couldn't even hold the thing to his shoulder for managing the boat, and he couldn't have found me in the big sniper's telescope if he had, the way the seas were tossing him around. He fired a couple of times, kind of one-handed and from the hip. I never saw or heard the bullets. While he was working the bolt for a third shot, a wave threw him off balance and he almost fell overboard. The firearm went into the sea as he grabbed the gunwale with both hands to catch himself. So much for that.

The rest was simple. The most vulnerable spot of his boat was the low stern, cut down to accommodate the outboard motor. On larger boats like mine, that motor notch is protected by the splashwell inboard that I've already mentioned, that catches a boarding wave and lets it drain back out again, but his little tub had no such protection. Anything that came through the motor cutout wound up right in the boat with him.

On my first pass, he kicked his stern aside at the last moment by yanking desperately at the motor's control handle. I swung around with him, using all the throttle I dared in that seaway, and he took in some twenty gallons of my wake in spite of his evasive maneuver. The next pass was a clean miss as a rogue wave threw us far apart at the last moment, but I came right around and had a beautiful shot past his stern as he hit the next sea too hard, shipped more water over the bow, and almost lost headway completely, throttling back to keep from driving his little boat clear under.

I had a good look at him as I came up on him fast: a tallish man, not old, not Mexican, clean-shaven, kind of boyishly handsome, with a tanned face amid wet brown hair cut short enough to put him well into the ranks of the squares. It made no difference to me. Square or hip, he'd tried to kill me. To hell with his haircut.

I gave a quick burst of power and roared past at planing speed, missing his stern by less than two feet. Looking back, I saw the white curling wake roll clear over his motor and transom, right into the boat. An oncoming wave finished the job. I got my bucking and plunging little nautical projectile under control, turned her like a cutting horse between waves, and charged back there. He was clinging helplessly to the swamped skiff that was still afloat, of course-they're all loaded with plastic flotation these days so you can't really sink them-but when lie saw half a ton of speedboat coming at him own the face of a wave, he kicked himself clear and dove. I don't know what he thought I was going to do, run him down, I suppose, or brain him with a boathook. Anyway, he submerged and presumably swam off, making my job that much easier.

I didn't even bother to look for him. I simply slowed down, swung around, and grabbed the braided nylon painter trailing from the bow of the skiff. Then I headed for shore, towing the swamped boat with me, leaving him swimming out there in the oncoming darkness.

According to the marina records, his name was Joel W. Patterson. At least that was the name written down opposite the registration number of the boat I'd towed in. He came from San Bernardino, California. He had arrived in San Carlos two days after I had. He'd been staying in a pickup camper at the trailer court across the road.

"Yes, senor, I remember him a little," said the young lady behind the counter in the marina office, where you could buy bait and tackle, arrange for dock space, and hire anything from a single rod-and-reel outfit to a large fishing vessel complete with captain and crew. She went on, "He was expecting to meet a friend here, someone from Arizona, I think. He looked through my book of registration here. But I do not think the friend ever came. I never saw him with anyone. He was quite a~ handsome young man, but alone, always alone."