Donald Hamilton - The Menacers

I saw him smile slowly, and I knew.he was going to shoot. I could hardly complain. It was the logical thing for him to do; it was exactly what I'd done to Priscilla, for exactly the same reasons. They were still valid. There was nothing he needed me for. Any questions he had to ask, he could ask Carol.

I was just a threat, a potential danger to him and his operation as long as I was alive. Any sensible man would kill me now, and young Hartford, whatever his real name was, whatever his sexual attitudes might be, undoubtedly prided himself on being eminently sensible.

I saw the submachinegun swing and steady, and I braced myself for a last-minute dive to somewhere, not that there was any hope of escape, but I might as well take it moving as standing still. Then there was a single sharp report from down near the shore, and Tony Hartford went to his knees and pitched forward on top of his weapon. The man, with the rifle stopped and looked in the direction of the shot. He dropped his gun and raised his hands.

We turned to watch Seсor Ramуn Solana-Ruiz approach, accompanied by a couple of Mexican soldiers in khakis, one carrying a rifle with a telescopic sight.

"I'm VERY Sorry to have annoyed you by saving your life, Seсor Helm," Ramуn said in his stiff Mexican way. They insult very easily down there. "I will endeavor not to make the same mistake again."

I said, "Privately, I am very grateful, Seсor Solana. Publicly, all I can say is, it's a hell of a sentimental way to run a secret service or whatever you're running." I walked over to Tony Hartford's body and retrieved the trick automatic. "Here's your gun back. I went to a lot of trouble to plant it on that guy, so it would lead you to the right place. I hope you have an alternative solution to our problem."

He took the pistol and glanced from it to me. "So that is what the fireworks were about."

"That's what."

"You are a brave man."

I said irritably, "Jesus Christ, what is this anyway, a mutual-admiration society? So I'm brave or stupid or something, who cares? And you're a great guy, too, and in spite of how wonderful we both are, we still don't know where the hell these people are going to pull off their big show, whatever it may be."

"We have this man, here, and the pilot of the boat. A little questioning-" I said, with a glance at the lagoon, "You won't have the pilot long. He's making for the open sea at flank speed."

Ramуn laughed. "Give me a little credit, friend. There's a patrol boat hidden behind the next island that can outrun him by ten knots. As for the rest, I could not have an American agent killed before my eyes. The reports I would have had to fill out would say 'Interfered with my work for months. Besides, I had promised Mrs. Lujan that if she cooperated, she would be safe, and I was not sure how many people the man was going to shoot down, once he started. Those automatic weapons intoxicate some people." He glanced out to sea. "Here comes the patrol boat now. You see, the other boat is stopping to surrender. The pilot knows he cannot escape."

We watched the minor naval drama from the sand-. hill. Presently the two boats headed our way, bucking the sea that was still running. Below us, in the calm lagoon, even the underwater parts of the wrecked plane were dimly visible, from this height, through the,, clear water.

Carol said, "But how did you know where to come, Ramуn?"

He shrugged. "It was a matter for the experts with the charts. With the help of the electronic device concealed in the pistol, we could trace the course of your plane and extrapolate-I believe that is the right word. We knew the approximate cruising range. Unless you. changed course drastically at the last moment, you had to come down in the gulf within a certain area.. Presumably there would be somebody to pick you up. A discreet radar search gave us the location of all vessels in the lower gulf. There is not much water traffic. It was not hard to pick out a fishing 'boat that was heading in roughly the right direction at top speed, and determine its course. Somewhere near the spot where the two courses intersected, there had to be a place suitable for either landing the plane or putting it down in the water. Our experts decided that this island was the most likely choice for an experienced pilot under the prevailing weather conditions. I made arrangements to conceal myself here with a couple of men before daybreak, sent the patrol boat off to hide, and here I am."

"We're really very grateful," Carol said. "No matter what Mr. Helm says."

"Of course he is perfectly right, seсora. I did allow sentiment to interfere with duty. Now we must hope that these men will give the right answers under questioning."

"Assuming that they know them in the first place," I said grimly. "Maybe I can shortcut this inquisition a bit. It's a long gamble, but it may pay off."

Carol said quickly, "That's right, you said Priscilla had given you a hint-"

"The little girl with the big bosoms and the ready revolver?" Solana said. "I will be interested to learn what happened to her and the pilot of the plane. Later. What did she tell you, Helm?"

"Not much," I said. "Just that while their girl Vadya was showing me around Mazatlбn, she apparently took me into an area she shouldn't have. Priscilla thought this was proof of Vadya's intention to betray everything to me. Of course it wasn't. Vadya wasn't the turncoat type. She just knew she was being watched- maybe she knew she'd be condemned no matter what she did-and it suited her sense of humor to tease the bloodhounds a bit. She certainly didn't say anything to make me think the place had any special significance, except that it wasn't the kind of place a woman would normally take a man on a romantic evening on the town. Viewing the sunset from Icebox Hill, okay; but watching a rusty freighter being loaded with seeds or grain or something wasn't likely to do much for the male libido."

"The docks?" Solana said. "In Mazatlбn?"

I nodded. "I can't remember the name of the ship, if I ever saw it. But you'd better get on the air as fast as you can and check if it's still there…"

It was; and after all our efforts, the main part of the job got accomplished by the authorities in Mazatlбn before we arrived, even though we made it across Cortez's Sea by boat and plane at speeds that would have curled old Hernando's hair.

Later that day, after conferring with his local counterparts in Mazatlбn, Solana gave me the guided tour of the captured ship. The most spectacular part of the exhibit was a concealed hold up forward that had been fitted out as a kind of assembly line for the manufacture of intriguingly scorched and crumpled scraps of flying saucer-the kind of debris that might have got blown around after such an unconventional aircraft had exploded violently. As might have been predicted, a surprising number of the scraps could be identified as being of U.S. origin, one way or another.

I looked around the gloomy hold and grimaced. "You'd think," I said, "that if they were going to all this trouble and expense, they'd cook up a couple of real UFOs-I mean actual flying models. I can see that the easiest and cheapest way of spreading the rumors was to get a lot of people to lie their heads off about what they'd seen; but one or two honest-to-God saucers flying around would have helped make the hoax more convincing."

Solana laughed. "Yes, that occurred to our friends, too. The big trouble was-according to one of the prisoners who has talked-that although they tried, they could not make them fly. The saucer configuration is apparently inherently unstable at any reasonably high speed, at least as far as our technology is concerned. The Martians or Venusians may be able to design such a craft to fly fast in our atmosphere; we can't. At least, these people couldn't. They had to be satisfied with the big lie."