Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (26 page)

           
There was only one catch. The
admiral had also had a few words to say, to wit: Of course, it's expected that
you'll have your job done before you signal for help.

           
Still wide open, my little boat
approached the watery intersection. There was a man on the roof, upper deck, or
whatever you want to call it, of the onrushing houseboat. He had something
shiny and metallic in his hand, a pistol perhaps, but he wasn't even trying to
use it yet; we had room to spare. 1 saw the white object-it was a dead fish-to
port, and if that wasn't indication enough, there were some pink birds wading
in the right hand channel which could not, therefore, be much over a foot deep.
With prop down, my vessel drew over twice that at rest; over ten inches even
while
planing
. I drew a long breath and turned the
wheel sharply to the right.

           
"No! Hard a port! You're
turning the wrong way! Port your helm, Matt!"

           
That was the girl, aroused, standing
forward. The pink birds rose in panic as the boat roared at them. Their legs
were even shorter than I'd estimated. There was a crash astern as the big
motor, striking, was pivoted violently upwards; then the hull hit hard.

           
I awoke tied hand and foot, but I
was alive enough to wake up, which was the important thing. Breathing hurt my
chest, but it beat not breathing. 1 remembered being hurled against the
steering wheel as the boat came to an abrupt, grinding halt; and seeing the
girl kind of sailing over the bow. Hunched over the console, gagging, with 'the
wind knocked out of me, I'd been aware of men wading' alongside and of
Leonards's
voice calling: "No, no, don't shoot him.
Not yet. There are some questions I want to ask him first. . .

           
Good old Herbert Leonard, predictable
as always. He'd had a small, feverish touch of professionalism back there at
Cutlass Key, but he was recovering nicely. Hundreds of overconfident characters
have failed in their missions, many have died, from keeping dangerous prisoners
alive for questioning instead of shooting them on the spot, but the message
never seems to get through. People like our white-haired
Herbie
are never satisfied with simply winning. They want their victories and
information, too.

           
You can count on it always, I'd
reflected happily; and somebody had hit me over the head with something,
probably a gun-barrel. Now I was here, wherever that was. They'd taken my gun
and knife, of course, and also my belt-Leonard would know about the trick belts
we're issued-but I still had my clothes and shoes on.

           
"Matt. Matt, are you awake? Are
you all right?"

           
I opened my eyes and looked up at
the low, white-painted ceiling of a largish cabin, at the end of which a couple
of steps led up to a kind of louvered door that presumably opened-when it
opened-to the main living spaces of the houseboat, if that's what I was on.

           
"Matt, can you hear me?"

           
Turning my head was painful, and the
view that rewarded me was hardly worth it; although

           
I guess it was mildly interesting to
learn what a nicely dressed young lady looks like after wading through swamps,
fleeing through jungles, and being pitched off ,a boat into muddy shallows. I
noticed that, grimy and bedraggled as she was, she was practically dry,
indicating that I'd been unconscious for some time.

           
She was lying on a bunk across the
way, tied hand and foot just as I was. I caught her eye, and shook my head
quickly as she started to speak.

           
I formed the words with my lips
soundlessly: "Come here."

           
After a moment, cued by a beckoning
finger, she got the idea and heaved herself awkwardly off her bunk and onto
mine. Leaning close, she whispered, "Matt, what-"

           
"Figure they're listening out
there," I breathed, indicating the ventilated door. "Figure they're
waiting for me to come to, and for us to hold an interesting conversation about
something. When they've heard enough, the fun will begin. So keep acting as if
you're still trying to bring me around."

           
She nodded. "Matt!" she
said aloud. "Oh, Matt, please wake up. I'm so scared!"

           
"That's the idea," I
whispered. "Now. Inside my left shoe you'll find a gadget looking like a
short mechanical pencil, damned uncomfortable to walk on. I think you'll
recognize it and know how it works. Twist the heel of my right shoe and you'll
find what goes with it. Real secret agent stuff; how about it?" I grinned
at her in an encouraging way. I'm not a superstitious man, and I don't believe
much in ESP, but under tricky circumstances like that I prefer to avoid calling
important items by their right names, even in whispers. I mean, I just don't
want those particular vibrations floating around to give the wrong people
ideas. Why take chances? I went on, very softly:

           
"Thread one into the other, you
know how, and hide it on you somewhere, but remember,

           
I'm giving it to you to use when I
give the word, not to wave around and threaten with like in the movies. When
the opportunity comes, if it comes, our lives will depend on instant action. If
you waste time talking, we're both dead. Okay?"

           
She hesitated, studying my face. She
was smart enough to realize approximately what I was asking of her, and her
face was pale under the streaks of mud. Then she nodded abruptly.

           
"Okay, Matt." Hitching
herself back along the bunk, she raised her voice: "Matt, you've just got
to wake up, they're going to kill us both, I heard them talking! They think I
was in on the whole thing with you. They won't believe you and Daddy and Uncle
Hank just used me as an innocent, stupid dupe to decoy Mr. Leonard to that
place. They just laugh at me when I try to tell them I was quite sincere. Matt,
can you hear me? Open your eyes. Say something."

           
It took her a while, babbling like
this, to get at the concealed equipment with her bound-together hands, twisting
painfully to see how the work was progressing behind her.

           
"I suppose I ought to hate you
all!" she went on breathlessly. "Particularly Daddy and you!

           
Think of it, my own father and a man
I. .. . I've slept with taking advantage of my. . . . my principles and using
me to set a man up for murder. But you didn't shoot. Why didn't you shoot,
Matt? Just because I was in front of him? Why did that stop you? You're
supposed to be the ruthless, sentimental, cold-blooded
manhunter
,
aren't you? Was it because. . . . because we'd made love a little, or just
because you're Daddy's friend and didn't want to face him after putting a
bullet through his idiot daughter? Which was it, Matt? Oh, don't just lie there
like a log, damn you! You're awake, I know you're awake! Say something!"

           
My shoes had been returned to my
feet. She was hiding something under her scanty, dirty, damaged blue dress. She
bobbed her head at me to let me know she was ready for the next phase of the
operation. There was a little gleam in her eyes that said she hoped her monologue
had made me at least slightly uncomfortable, and maybe it had; but it was no
time to discuss the question of who had been taking advantage of whom.

           
I licked my lips and said thickly,
aloud: "Port your helm!"

           
"What?"

           
"A big girl," I said,
forming the words with a difficulty that was only partly feigned, since my
throat was pretty dry, "a big girl like you ought to learn right from
left. Port your helm, she said, and there went the whole damned ballgame!"

           
She played up instantly. "But
port is left, and that was the way we were supposed to go-"

           
"And helm means tiller,
sweetheart; and when you shove the tiller to the left, the boat goes to the
right."

           
"But you didn't have a
tiller!"

           
"What difference does that
make? You're supposed to figure the way a tiller would go and steer
accordingly, even when you're using a wheel. Where did you learn your
seamanship, anyway?"

           
Martha said, with real indignation,
"But you're crazy, Matt! When you port your helm with a wheel, you go
left, I'm sure you do! It wouldn't make sense otherwise!"

           
I said, "What really wouldn't
make sense would be to have a command mean one thing on a boat that steers with
a wheel and exactly the opposite on a boat that steers with a stick. Just how
confusing do you want to get? What if the wheel breaks down and you rig a jury
tiller, do you right away start giving all steering commands the opposite way,
on the same damned ship-"

           
The door opened, and in they came,
figuring, I guess, that they weren't going to learn anything significant from
technical argument about seamanship, and we didn't seem to be getting around to
any interesting subjects. There were two of them, nice, clean-cut, American-boy
types- well, actually they were in their thirties, but they'd never outgrow it.
They both had smooth
Florida
tans. They were both wearing short-sleeved jersey sports shirts, light
slacks, and the kind of expensive seagoing sneakers that are designed to get a
death-grip on the wet, slanting deck of a hard-driven sailing yacht.

           
They were real pretty, all except
the guns they kept brandishing in a very self-conscious way. They untied our
ankles, set us on our feet, and used their firearms to prod us up the steps and
through the low, ventilated doors into the houseboat's galley, a symphony in
stainless steel.

           
There we made a full
hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and climbed another short stairway-I guess the
nautical term is ladder-into a pilot house with lots of windows all around,
located directly above our recent prison cell.

           
A big steering wheel and a lot of
motor controls and instruments dominated the far end of this elevated
greenhouse. To one side was a bank of electronic equipment being monitored by a
young black man with less hair than most, these Afro days. He had headphones on
and was perched on a stool in front of the closed sliding door, half-glass,
that gave access to the deck to starboard. The man-groves were right there,
just beyond the railing. We were tied up against the bank in a small cove.

           
To port was an L-shaped settee and a
card table holding a lot of official-looking papers. The settee held my heavy,
scope-sighted rifle, and Herbert Leonard. He'd washed off the mud he'd picked
up diving off the dock and combed his hair. He was wearing clean light slacks and
a flowered sports shirt. He looked up at our entrance, seeming annoyed.

           
"No, no, I don't want them up
here!" he said irritably. "Take them into the rear cabin. I'll be
along in a minute."

           
We were poked with the firearms once
more, escorted back down the stairs-excuse me, ladder-and aft through the
galley into another well-windowed compartment with a dinette to starboard and a
kind of built-in sofa or lounge to port. Another sliding door led out to the
short stern deck, but this door was also closed, presumably to keep the
mosquitoes out and the air conditioning in.

           
Off the stern of the houseboat lay
my little craft. She seemed to be floating all right, but I doubted there was
enough left of her propeller, after hitting bottom at full throttle, to make
her very useful for getaway purposes. There was a spare wheel on board, of
course, but I'd never changed props on a motor that big, and it would take me
some time to figure out the drill. Well, escape was not the immediate problem.
If all I'd wanted to do was escape, I could have been safely on board the
Frances II this minute.

           
The yellow runabout was not in
sight, and I had seen nothing of its pilot. There were no other small craft
visible, either, or any of the camouflaged pseudo-commando characters who'd
participated in the attack on Cutlass Key. Apparently Leonard's amphibious
forces had withdrawn, with their casualties.

           
"Sit down!"

           
That was my guard, shoving me onto
the lounge. He seated himself on the end of one of the dinette benches across
the way and showed me his gun once more. It was a perfectly ordinary Smith
& Wesson, in no way unique. He seemed to be quite proud of it, however.

           
"If you want to try
something," he said, "go right ahead, you dirty professional
assassin!

           
After the way you murdered Patterson
down in
Mexico
and March and
TolIey
in
Arizona
, not to mention all the good men you shot
down in cold blood this morning, all I need is an excuse, just one little
excuse!"

           
I looked at him more sharply,
alerted by his blustering voice, and realized that he was scared. It always
surprises me a little. I mean, I never feel particularly scary; and I felt even
less so than usual that morning, with my chest aching, the back of my head
throbbing, the camouflage mud still coated on my face and hands, and my hands
tied behind me. But dirty or clean, healthy or unhealthy, tied or untied, I
apparently frightened him. His companion, facing Martha from the end of the
other dinette seat, didn't seem very happy, either. It told me what attitude to
employ. I fell into the spirit of the occasion and became the deadly,
bloodthirsty old pro annoyed by a couple of ineffectual novices.

           
"What did you boys do," I
asked lightly, "flip a coin or something?"