Montezuma’s Revenge

Sones looked back and forth from one of them to the other, eyes red with suspicion. “This is a combined operation and leave us not forget that. Schultz, you go with them as well.”

“Take one of these,” Timberio said, digging two civilian band handy-talky radios out of the cupboard. “Let us know if you find anything. We will call you about developments at this end.”

“What is happening?” Lizveta Zlotnikova called out from the Cadillac as they passed. “I am told nothing.”

“No time,” Tony called back. “In the restaurant, ask them.”

The bright red Lincoln Continental was parked around the ner. It had a portrait of a bearded octogenarian painted on the door and was labeled in gold leaf coronel glanders Mississippi fried chicken. The engine surged to life under Higginson’s touch when they climbed in, then squealed about in a sharp turn and headed north.

“There’s the sign,” Tony called out, “to highway 200.”

They climbed up out of the port and through the reside areas on the hillside; children looking up from their play at the roadside and gaping at the great red form that hurtled through their midst. They bobbed through the craterlike potholes and veered onto the better paved highway, then picked up speed.

“Slow down when we get back to the shore again,” Tony called out.

Higginson nodded, eyes on the road, the car a carmine thunderbolt hissing around the bends, narrowly missing bullock carts and burro riders. A flicker of emerald blue was visible through the trees off to the left, then a tiny bay with jutting headlands opened up to view.

“This place looks ideal,” Tony said. “And that looks like a road leading down to the water.” He pointed to the dusty track among the trees.

“But no boats here,” Billy piped.

“We’ll go on,” Higginson decided and stamped on the accelerator.

Tony looked back regretfully as they rushed away. If his theory were true this was the ideal spot. Close to the city, yet isolated enough for clandestine arrival and departures. They should have looked closer, but there was not much time. They turned a bend and he had a last fleeting glimpse of the bay before it vanished behind the screen of trees again.

“Stop the car!” he shouted.

Higginson hit the brakes and, being power brakes, they locked and the car skidded wildly across the road, spinning uncontrollably under the cruel corrections of the power steering. Higginson fought the careening red whale every foot of the way until it ended up on the far side, its nose buried in the red earth and rich mosses of the embankment there. Higginson turned about slowly, unclamping his fingers from the wheel, and glared coldly at Tony.

“And why did you say that?”

“Just before we turned, I had a glimpse of something coming into the bay, a bow, a boat of some kind.”

With the rear wheels spinning and smoking on the tar, Tony, Billy Schultz and Stocker braced and, pushing the bumper, the Lincoln managed to pull itself back on the road. They hurtled off on the return leg and, once over the rise, saw that indeed a boat had entered the bay. A high-powered, high-bridged, pole-bedecked sports fishing boat with its name, Tiburon, prominent on its wide stern when it spun about and dropped anchor. Then the trees intervened again. Billy shouted into the handy-talky. This time they turned off onto the unpaved track through the trees, bobbing and thudding over the spring-destroying uneven surface. As they drove down, the long car scraping the brush on both sides as they negotiated the sharp turns, they had tantalizing glances of the water below.

Man climbing down from boat into dinghy.

Dinghy pushed off.

Dinghy proceeding toward shore.

Then the road emerged from the trees onto the summit of a vine-covered bluff that ran down to the beach. There, waiting on the shore for the rapidly approaching rowboat, were three men standing next to a small pile of luggage.

Sixteen

Until they were clear of the trees the dense tropical jungle had swallowed the sound of the engine, but when they reached the bluff the rumble of the exhaust sounded clearly on the beach. As though pulled by the same string the three heads turned about as one, staring up at the sudden apparition. Then one of the men began waving to the dinghy, a second scrabbled at the luggage, the third, who supported himself on two canes, began to hobble to the water’s edge.

“Get down there!” Tony shouted. “We have them.”