Donald Hamilton - The Menacers

I started to reach for the throttles once more, and drew my hand back. To hell with it. There are times when you can repair your mistakes, but there are also times when you'd damn well better just live with them. If I started to horse around now, at this low altitude and sluggish speed, I'd probably lose control altogether and make the crash worse. I concentrated on keeping the damn bird straight and level as it sank towards the water. Anyway, my line was good, and every second brought us closer to the entrance.

Suddenly the two horns of the crescent were welcoming us, and I realized that, far from hitting short, we were probably going to overshoot and crash into the island. I reached out and cut the ignition switches and flipped a mental coin. It seemed better-or at least slower-to flop in tail first than to dive in. I yanked the controls brutally back into my lap. All kinds of things happened at once. The nose went up, the right wing dropped, the tail bit the water, and the whole plane came crashing down on its belly, hard. The low wing dug in, and we went plowing blindly across the lagoon.

Then everything was very quiet, and we lay there rocking gently, with water draining from the windows and windshield. I looked at Carol, who lifted her head and looked at me.

I grinned. "A good landing is any landing you can walk away from-as we birdmen say."

"Walk?" she said shakily. "Swim, you mean. Let's get out of here!"

She unbuckled her seat belt. The door opened easily, which was a relief; I'd had a sudden fear that it might have jammed somehow. Then she was out of there, and I was scrambling after her, but I stopped for a moment to look around. After all, there was some sentiment involved: this was my first aircraft command. Now that it was over, I realized that it had been kind ~f fun driving the thing around the sky.

I looked at Harsek, huddled behind the seats, and felt less happy. It was a hell of a way for an experienced agent to go, shot by accident while acting as window-dressing for an operation being conducted by some vicious kids with odd sexual appetites. Harsek, the Mad Czech. I wondered how he'd come by the name; he'd seemed sane enough to me. Well, as sane as they come in this racket.

I wondered if, perhaps, as in Vadya's case, there hadn't been a little more to Harsek's story than we'd been told. Perhaps somebody'd had some doubts about him, too, to send him here in a subordinate capacity. Maybe he'd been disciplined for making an error of some kind during the recent Mid-Eastern disturbances…

"Matt!" It was Carol's voice. "Matt, hurry, it's sinking!"

I gave Harsek a salute, as one pro to another, and squeezed my six-feet-four out through the door. Carol, her life preserver inflated, was crouching on the half-submerged wing. I paused to yank the tab, and felt my rubber vest fill, which was just as well. With all the firearms in my pockets, I'd have sunk like a rock without the extra buoyancy. I looked out to sea and saw that the black power. cruiser was only a mile or so out, heading straight for the entrance.

The plane was settling fast. I sat down and slid into the water, which was warmer than I'd expected. Carol hesitated a moment longer, conventionally reluctant to go swimming fully dressed. Then the plane gave a sudden lurch, and she launched herself cautiously, being careful to keep her head above water. She glanced in my direction to make sure I was coming, and started making her way towards shore in an embarrassed, gingerly manner, as if afraid her friends might see her paddling around in the Pacific-well, an arm of it, anyway-with all her Clothes on.

It wasn't much of a swim. Five minutes later we were wading up to the beach.

FLYING MIGHT BE fun, and swimming was all right in its place, but dry land felt very good to me as I peeled off my life jacket and tucked my wet shirt into my dripping pants. Even a lonely sandspit in the desolate Gulf of California had a lot to recommend it.

I looked at Carol and grinned. She'd made it ashore without getting wet above the neck, and her smooth blonde hair, only slightly windblown, looked ridiculously neat and civilized above her sagging sweater and wetly clinging skirt.

I said, "Ditch your waterwings and let's go."

"Go where?" She tossed the inflated vest aside, and bent over to pull the brief safari skirt away from her legs. Wringing it out by sections, she looked around the isle, and glanced at the approaching boat. "There's no place to hide, Matt. The whole island's only a mile or so long and a few hundred yards across, mostly sand. They're bound to catch us."

"Sure," I said. "But let's dress it up a bit and make it look impressive. I'd like to find a picturesque spot for Helm's Last Stand, over towards the middle there. The lower of those two sandhills, I think, so they can show their tactical genius by eventually outflanking us from the other one. We'll hold them off bravely, though, until death stares us in the face. Can you shoot a pistol?"

"No. Matt, I-"

"So much the better. They've got to be healthy to show us the way, so we don't really want to hurt them. Well, maybe just one, to make it look good. Three can handle the boat and prisoners. But by God we'll go down with a bang. A lot of bangs." I patted my weighted pockets. "They'll think they've fought the Battle of the Bulge before they capture and disarm us."

"Matt, be serious. If you start a lot of shooting..

Well, they'll shoot back, won't they? I don't think I'm a coward, but I don't particularly want to get killed just so you can make a dramatic gesture."

I said, "Don't run down dramatic gestures, doll. Dramatic gestures are absolutely essential in this business." I hesitated, and glanced at her. I still had my orders, but the situation had changed somewhat, and I said, "I will now make a confession. I really am a secret agent of sorts. Just don't tell anybody I told you, particularly my boss."

Carol smiled faintly. "Well, I'd kind of begun to suspect it."

"I even have a bit of a reputation in my line of work," I said modestly. "In fact, I have a dossier as long as your arm in certain people's files. What I'm trying to say in my diffident way is, I'm known from here to Moscow-and maybe even to Peking-as a hotshot spook, smart as a fox, dangerous as a wounded grizzly. At least I hope I am. Whether the reputation is deserved or not is beside the point. The fact is, I'm just not supposed to be the kind of guy you'd find sitting on a sandbar with folded arms, waiting to be taken prisoner."

"But, Matt-"

"Let me finish. The message I am trying to convey is that if whoever's on that boat catches me too easily, he'll know it's a trick. He'll poke and pry and ask questions, trying to discover why I'm playing mouse. He may even take a good look at the weapons he's captured with me; the weapons I was so uncharacteristically reluctant to use. We wouldn't want that, would we? Friend Solana's trick pistol has come this far unsuspected. Let's try to make sure it completes the journey-even if we don't."

There was a little silence. Carol leaned against me to slip off her boots and empty them. For such fashionable and relatively diminutive footgear, they held a lot of water. Only when she had finished did she speak, very quietly.

"What you're saying is that it doesn't really matter if we're killed, just so the pistol makes it."

I nodded. "Well, just so somebody makes it, in this case Solana. But the pistol is our contribution, as it works out. We'll have to take Solana's competence on faith. We'll have to assume that he can make it on his own, given the proper electronic guidance. He shouldn't have too bad a hangover from that stuff I gave him. I cut the dose pretty short. By now, he's been awake for hours."

"But you don't really know what's being planned, do you?" Carol looked at me soberly. "You don't really know that finding it and stopping it is… is important enough to die for, Matt."