The waves were barely thigh high. Nick landed easily and unloaded his little craft. He deflated the boat and buried it and the paddle in the sand. Perhaps some beachcomber would find it and wonder. Would get a few pesos for it. It did not matter.
When he had buried the boat and smoothed the sand, Nick picked up the heavy musette bag and slung it on his back. It contained the worldly possessions of Jamie McPherson, his cover identity. He had a tattered, stained turista card in that name, and also a bedraggled passport, both badly out of date. The passport had been cleverly aged and sweat stained until it was barely decipherable.
Nick reached a line of low dunes and slogged up them, sinking in the drifts to the tops of his high-laced shoes, both of which had holes in the soles. He had no illusions about what would happen if the Mexican police got him. A jail cell. And Mexico is not famous for its prisons, nor for its treatment of prisoners. The police must not get him. And he did not want to kill any policemen if it could be helped.
He left the beach and plunged into thick scrub, stunted sea pines and tall saw grass and maguey plants. Presently he came to the highway, a black double-laned ribbon stretching north and south. The roadway brooded, silent and deserted, with no hint that a car had ever passed over it, or ever would. Nick crossed the road and flopped into the ditch for a breather. Only ten minutes, he told himself. He must be well inland, near the tiny village of Cosala, before the sun came up. He lit a cigarette, not his gold tips now, but the cheapest of Mexican, and inhaled the harsh smoke and considered. The mission was well enough begun. His cover should prove adequate — if he could stay out of the hands of the Mexican police. If they got him, the cover would actually work against him — he was in Mexico illegally, for one thing, and he was a drifter, sort of a bindle stiff, a “gold tramp” who was panning illegally. The day of the free-lance gold hunter was long past in Mexico. One had to have a license and you had to split the take with the government. Nick had no license and he could hardly split a non-existent take. He didn’t think he would have much time to devote to actual panning. Yet he must make it look good, set up a crude camp and pretend to be looking for gold.
His clothing, Killmaster admitted now, was a thing of beauty from the AXE viewpoint. He looked exactly as he was supposed to look — a down and outer trying to pan enough gold for a new stake, a new try at life. His hat, battered, stained and torn, was an old Army campaign hat such as American soldiers had worn when they chased Villa across the Rio Grande. God only knew how the CIA had come up with it!
His shirt was Army, too, out of surplus, and he wore ragged corduroys tucked into the high boots. Beneath these he wore a dirty singlet and a pair of filthy long johns. His socks had holes in them and stank, though he did have a fresh pair in the musette bag. Also in the musette bag were a pair of high-powered binoculars — they would take some explaining if the police got him — and an ancient Webley revolver made before the first World War. It was a huge gun, heavy and awkward — Hawk had suggested that it needed wheels — and he had only a few spare rounds for it, but it was the sort of gun that a man like Jamie McPherson might carry. Nick had admitted, rather reluctantly, that his Luger would be out of place. As would have his stiletto, Hugo, and the deadly little gas bomb, Pierre. He felt a little naked without his old companions, but the CIA had insisted that he go in “clean” and Hawk and he had had to defer in the end.
His beard, which was black and coarse when he let it grow, was already itching. Nick scratched it a moment, then picked up the musette bag and climbed out of the ditch. It would be light now in four hours or so and he must make the most of the darkness. He got his bearings, plunged into a little copse of ash trees, and began to climb a long ridge that would lead him into the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental where it pushed down into Durango.
Nick maintained a steady, rapid pace to the east. Always climbing. He crossed one secondary road and beyond it the country got wilder, the terrain slashed with deep ravines and steep cliffs and long glissades of shale. As a line of pearl began to show in the east he saw traces of mining, old shafts gaping like blackened teeth in the cliff faces, a mountain stream where a rotten flume was falling apart. Several times he passed cabins and shacks, all lonely and sagging and rotting away, but he did not stop. But the shacks gave him an idea. Nick Carter was not one to sleep on hard barren ground if he could help it.
He had been told there was a mild rainy season in this part of Mexico at this time of year. Now his information proved correct. Misty gray and white clouds gathered quickly, ignoring the golden rim of sun pushing up in the east, and soon a warm silvery shower was falling. Nick trudged on, enjoying the soft damp drops on his face.
He came suddenly to a cliff overhang. Below him was a long, narrow valley, a lush green barranca gouged out of the hills. He sensed immediately that it was what he sought. He eased off the musette bag and sat down, his boots dangling over the cliff edge, and studied the ground below. A narrow stream ran gushing and hurrying along the floor of the valley, spewing itself around boulders and rock formations in a white frenzy. Should be good panning there, Nick told himself.
He glanced about him, his sharp eyes missing nothing. Off to his right, near where the valley began, was a mountain with a flat, rock-strewn summit. It would, he thought, overlook everything in the vicinity. From it, in the shelter of the rocks, he should be able to see the coast and as far again inland. He would have the same vantage north and south. While on the valley floor he would be safe from other prying eyes. Yes. This was it.
Nick began to skirt the edge of the cliff, looking for a way to get down without breaking his neck. It was not going to be easy. The cliffs on his side of the valley were precipitous, falling away nearly sheer to a depth of two hundred feet in places. Had he approached the barranca from the other side it would have been easier; there the valley floor sloped up at an easy forty-five degrees to merge into a tree-studded mesa. Nick cursed under his breath. All very fine — but he wasn’t on the other side!
The cliff angled sharply just then and he saw the bridge. He approached it and regarded it with some distaste. Neither Hawk nor the CIA would appreciate it much if he got his brains bashed out on the bottom of the gorge. A dead agent isn’t much good. Nick tested the end of the bridge with one foot, which action immediately set the frail structure to swaying.
It was, Killmaster thought, the sort of bridge you saw in movies about adventure in the high Andes. It was narrow, with passage for only one, and drooped perilously in the middle. The floor was of wide-spaced boards interlaced with wire cable. There was a hand rope on either side, connected here and there to the floor by wooden stanchions.
A sudden gust of wind whirled down the barranca and the little bridge danced like a dervish. Nick said to hell with it and stepped out. The bridge swayed, plunged, bucked and swung beneath his two hundred odd pounds, but it did not break. He was sweating when he reached the far side, and his beard was itching fiercely. But when at last he reached the floor of the valley he was content. It was the perfect spot.
At this, the lower end of the barranca, the rushing stream had been dammed. Rotting balks and ruined planks were all that was left of a sluiceway, evidence that the spot had once been placer-mined. The sizeable pond was drained by a break in the middle of the crude dam. The pond itself looked a cool inviting green and appeared to be deep. Nick promised himself a dip as soon as he was settled in.