Donald Hamilton - The Menacers

I took the guns and looked at them. The plane was flying along docilely, no hands, at three thousand feet and a hundred and forty miles per hour. I could afford to take my attention off it for a little. I looked at the big, slim-barreled Luger with which Harsek had made his reputation, checked the loads, and dropped it into the coat pocket that already held Priscilla's Colt.38. I glanced at the compact Browning I'd taken from Vadya's purse, it seemed a long time ago. I rechecked that, since it had been out of my possession, and put it in the other coat pocket. I hefted Solana's very similar automatic and started to dispose of it the same way, but stopped, frowning.

For a gun almost identical to the Browning, it had a startlingly different balance. Well, that happens. Take two shotguns of the same general type and weight but different manufacture, and one will feel light and alive while the other feels heavy and dead, depending on how the weight is distributed. The same can be true of pistols, if you've had experience enough to recognize it in the smaller weapons. But here the difference was so marked that a little investigation seemed indicated.

I removed the clip. It appeared to be fully loaded. I jacked the remaining cartridge out of the chamber, and it seemed to be an ordinary.380 round. I picked up the clip again, to reload, and realized belatedly that it was much too light for the five or six cartridges it was supposed to hold.

Studying it, I began to laugh. It was a very simple arrangement. There was a perfectly good cartridge in the chamber, and another in the top of the clip, so the gun would fire two shots just like any other gun. It would seem fully loaded to anyone who made a routine check. However, the lower part of the clip held no cartridges, although it was carefully camouflaged to show a gleam of brass wherever it was supposed to. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what was inside it, and it wasn't powder and lead.

"What is it?" Carol asked. "What's the matter with it? What's so funny?"

I grinned. "Our friend Solana's simpleminded plot wasn't quite as simpleminded as it seemed. Here's his real tracking device. The one you were carrying was just f6ol-bait."

She flushed. "Well, I think that's… kind of disgusting! You mean that whole act he had us go through was… wasn't really supposed to convince anybody?"

"Well, Priscilla was obviously supposed to see through it. She was supposed to search you, and find that gadget in your boot, and relax. And all the time the real beeper was in the gun. Solana knew no pro would leave a loaded gun behind." I laughed again. "Not bad! Hell, I could get real fond of that tricky little greaser!"

"Matt!" Carol had all the usual nice-girl horror of derogatory racial terms.

"He called us gringos, why can't I call him a greaser? In an affectionate way, of course. But I'll call him a clever Castilian gentleman if you prefer. Anyway, that should mean we're not alone up here." I looked around at the blue morning sky. "There must be a plane up there somewhere, tracking us. Well, let's hope the pilot is on the job." I looked down at the half-dismantled weapon in my hand, and began to reassemble it. "It means, also, that I've got to..change my plans a bit. I've got to figure out how to get this damn electronic firearm into enemy hands under very convincing circumstances, preferably without getting shot in the process "Matt, look! There's a boat down there, heading this way. And there, off to the right, is an island shaped like a new moon. Is that the one you wanted?"

It was the island, all right, but saying that I wanted it was putting things a little too strongly. Now I had to live up to my brave words and get us down somehow, preferably alive.

As we PASSED over the black power boat, it was swinging around to follow us back towards the island. Obviously it had headed off to chase the plane when it appeared to be in trouble. Now the boat was out of position for the pickup, which could be good or bad, depending on how things worked out.

If I managed to land us in one piece, I would be happy to have a little '6~reathing space before the opposition arrived. On the other hand, if I cracked us up badly, it would be nice to have somebody-anybody-standing by to haul us out of the wreckage before it sank.

There were three men visible on deck, looking up. That meant a probable total of four, I reflected, figuring one steering. Of course there could be another at the radio, trying to make contact with us. In fact, the boat could be crammed with concealed, hostile manpower like a Barbary pirate, but it was hard to see what the point would be. A crew of four seemed like a reasonable working assumption.

They were having it rough down there, I saw, hammering into the big seas as they turned, with spray flying high. We passed over them at several times their speed, steady and comfortable, proving, I guess, that there's something to be said for progress.

I dismissed them from mind, temporarily, and concentrated on the island coming up ahead. There had to be something good about that island; Harsek had presumably picked it carefully. It was undoubtedly far enough from civilization that there was no chance of having some public-spirited Mexican citizen report seeing a plane go down into the drink; but it was also, presumably, a safe place to ditch with the wind in this direction. Well, I hoped the Czech had made a good choice, because I was stuck with it.

One of my few authenticated pieces of aeronautical information said that a plane must land into the wind. I lined things up carefully, therefore, while I was still several miles out. No windsocks were available, of course, but the waves below served just as well. At least I hoped they did.

When the island was dead upwind from us, I made a cautious, clumsy turn and headed in, gradually throttling back the motors and shedding altitude-so gradually that we were still some eight hundred feet up when we passed over the target area. Well, it wasn't a bad idea to take a look at what I was getting myself into, I told myself.

Two slim, curving, sandy promontories formed the outer ends of the scrap of land below. The center was wider and rose, I estimated, to some twenty or thirty feet above sea, level. It looked pretty barren. There were hints of stuff growing here and there, but it wasn't a tropical garden by any means, just an overgrown sandbar, with a couple of lumps in the middle. You could call it a fat new moon, or you could call it a skinny crab with claws embracing a sheltered bay or lagoon. Obviously I was supposed to come gliding in between the claws and make my splash in the calm water beyond.

I made another of my shaky turns and headed back downwind, taking the time as we passed the island, just to be systematic. I gave us a good two minutes, and made another one-eighty. This time, after getting lined up properly, I pulled the throttles back more decisively, letting the speed drop significantly as we headed back in, descending.

The airspeed indicator said we were going slower, but the water seemed to go by much faster as we neared it. Suddenly the entrance to the bay was flashing past and we were still much too fast and much too high. I had a momentary, suicidal impulse to shove the controls hard forward and dive her in and get it over with; then I put on full power instead, and climbed out of there.

When I had enough altitude to feel safe-well, moderately safe-I made my downwind turn again. At least I was getting that technique under control. Four or five miles out, by my watch, I turned again, like an expert.

"Okay," I said aloud. "That's enough practice. Hold your hat, we're going in."

I didn't look at Carol as I said it. She was a smart girl; I probably wasn't kidding her a bit. This time I forced myself to put it down faster and run the throttles back even farther-so far that suddenly I realized we weren't going to make it. The airspeed was dropping fast; the controls were getting heavy and unresponsive; and the island was still a good mile ahead. The big, white-capped waves were reaching up for us, and if we hit here, away from the shelter of land, the plane would probably break up and sink too fast for us to get clear, assuming that we lived through the impact..