I listened to him making his way back down to the shore, or tried to. He was pretty good in the woods; and I didn't really hear much until a very faint splashing told me he was poling the boat back out into deeper water so he could lower the motor. Then the hydraulic tilting mechanism whined, the starter whirred, and the sound of the big powerplant, at low speed, diminished gradually in the direction of the brushy little islet he'd pointed out to me, some four hundred yards distant.
I checked the rifle as well as I could in the dark. It was another of the bellowing, shoulder-busting Magnums that are very fashionable these days. It's getting so no hunter who values his image will even set out after rabbits without a portable cannon that will shoot through a bank vault and a couple of feet of masonry, and kill two or three innocent bystanders in the street outside, if they're lined up properly.
This was a bolt-action Winchester rifle using the.300 Winchester Magnum cartridge, a shortened and modernized successor to the old Holland and Holland.300, with a muzzle velocity over three thousand feet per second, and a muzzle energy approaching two tons. It was a hell of an artillery piece to have to fire out of a treetop, and I warned myself that I'd better make the first shot good because the goddamned howitzer might very well boot me clear out of the blind.
I made certain I had a round in the chamber and a full magazine, and that the floor plate was securely latched. Those big guns kick so hard they've been known to jar the floor plate open and dump out the contents of the magazine. It can be embarrassing to find yourself with only one cartridge when you thought you had four, particularly if, after the first shot, there's a hostile elephant heading your way under a full head of steam. At least so I'd been told. I've never met an elephant except in a zoo, but I have met some fairly hostile people and might encounter a few more tonight.
The telescopic sight was of the four-power variety recommended to beginners as the best all-round choice for hunting. I was glad they hadn't given me anything stronger, considering the shaky perch from which I'd be shooting: the greater the magnification, the greater the visible shake. I removed the protective caps from the lenses and peered through the instrument to make certain a hole ran clear through it. That was about all I could determine in the dark. I hoped no target would arrive until I had light enough so that I could actually make out the cross-hairs.
The mosquitoes were the worst part of the waiting. I thought nostalgically of the pleasant hillside in Oklahoma, cool and bug-free, where I'd lain in wait for Sheriff Rullington, but it didn't help a bit. Without the dope I'd squirted liberally on myself, plus the mud I'd applied to my face and hands for camouflage purposes, I couldn't have stood it. As it was, I had to shut off part of my mind, the part that wanted to slap and scratch and, as time passed with interminable slowness and dawn approached, even scream a bit just to let me know I wasn't really having fun.
They came with the sunrise, well after it was light enough to see and shoot. Long before I saw them I could hear their motor approaching from the north and west. The sound faded for a while, and I wondered if Martha had lost her way in that swampy maze and what Leonard would do to her if she had, although I don't normally spend much time worrying about the fate of traitors-even young and pretty ones with whom I've slept. Then the motor noise came in again strong and increased in volume steadily. I saw them come into view, well out in the wide fairway to my left, too far for a shot even if I'd wanted to try such a fast-moving target from my unstable position.
I watched them through the leaves and thought I really had to hand it to Mac. The crazy, complex plan was working. In spite of lack of communications, in spite of everything, he'd stage-managed everybody to the right spot at the right time. The hidden hunter was waiting and the tiger or pussycat was coming to the bait, or what he thought was the bait.
There was the boat, a husky yellow inboard-outboard runabout some eighteen feet long with a tall whip antenna that reminded me of the houseboat, equipped with similar whiskers, that the admiral had spotted entering these waters-a communications ship of sorts, perhaps. But I didn't spend much attention on the boat, because there was the man with the white hair who'd caused everybody quite enough trouble already. Tiger or pussycat, he'd worn out his welcome. I mean, goddamn it, we do have a certain amount of professional pride, and we don't take kindly to outsiders forcing their way into our closed little undercover community, and trying to use it for their own cheap purposes. We'd tried to make this clear to Herbert Leonard the last time he'd come bucking for the title of Spymaster-in-Chief, but he hadn't taken the hint. It was, therefore-, time for him to go.
He had the left hand seat behind the windshield-excuse me, the seat to port. To starboard, behind the steering wheel, sat a collegiate-looking youth in a blue yachting cap, with a pipe stuck jauntily into a corner of his mouth. Between him and Herbert Leonard, steadying herself with a hand on top of the windshield, stood Martha Borden, still in her light blue dress. How her bare arms and legs had survived the buggy night, I hated to think.
She used her free hand to point out the dock. The boat slowed and dropped off plane and swung that way, but only a little, not enough to bring it within rifle shot of the shore. It was all very cute, and 1 had to hand it to Leonard, too. He was almost as cute as Mac, using himself for a decoy like that. I hadn't thought him that clever or dashing, or even that brave; but I guess there comes a time for every desk officer when he feels he must go out and prove himself in the field, just once.
Anyway, this was one job Leonard would want to witness. He'd never be quite certain it had got done properly unless he saw it happen. AJI that now stood between him and the fulfillment of his ambitions was one man, but that man was one of the half-dozen most dangerous people in the world. Leonard would never sleep soundly until he saw Mac dead; and Mac had known this and taken advantage of it to bring Leonard here under my gun. The rest was up to me.
It was very cute, and it got cuter when they ran the boat aground out there, still well out of range, of course. They went into an act designed to show anybody watching from shore-Mac and whoever might be occupying the cabin with him-how terribly mad they were at each other for this stupidity. The words couldn't be heard at the distance, of course, but the pantomime was clear: the college boy was obviously blaming the navigator, Martha, who was obviously telling him hotly that if he'd steered where she'd pointed it wouldn't have happened. Leonard was obviously telling both of them to shut up and do something constructive. It was a fine diversion; and in the meantime the real attack was moving silently towards' the hidden cabin-at least I suppose they thought they were being silent.
One boat was approaching along the bank just below the blind. I could hear the rhythmic, liquid whisper of the pole urging it along. It landed-a large, flat-bottomed rowboat with a small kicker on the stern-and four men in camouflage clothing disembarked at the exact spot Jarrel and I had used some hours earlier. This was not surprising since a gap in the wall of mangroves made it a logical landing spot. Having them come so close was a little disconcerting, but there was an advantage: by the time they'd all got ashore, conferred together in whispers, spread out, and sneaked inland through the tangled undergrowth, the best tracker in the world couldn't have made out the signs of our earlier landing, Jarrel's and mine.
I watched the man on the right flank slip by only twenty yards distant, never looking up, of course. That's the advantage of a tree blind. Neither a deer nor a human being normally expects danger from above. He was another clean-cut young fellow in top-notch condition, educated to the teeth, no doubt, trained to break bricks with his bare hands, capable of picking the buttons off your vest with the machine pistol he carried, and totally useless in the woods.