The Intriguers

I

The morning I got shot at, down there in Mexico, I'd been out fishing in the high-powered little boat Mac had lent me, along with a trailer to carry it and a station wagon to pull it. Generosity with government equipment is not my superior's outstanding characteristic; but he'd explained that the outfit had been assembled by another agent for a job which was now completed. As a reward for years of faithful service and for taking a bad crack on the head in the course of a recent assignment-he put it differently,.but that was the general idea-he was willing to let me take the rig on leave with me, since I'd be needing a fishing boat where I was going. When I brought it back, in good condition of course, it would be sold for whatever it would bring. Unfortunately, our departmental budget doesn't cover the maintenance of yachts, even fifteen-foot ones.

That morning, I'd been fishing at an offshore island, an hour's run-some twenty-four miles at my relatively cautious cruising speed-from where I was staying in the little resort village of Bahia San Carlos, just outside Guaymas, a good-sized port on the mainland side of the Gulf of California. I've had to learn a little about boats and oceans in the line of business, but I'm still a landlubber at heart, and from a small boat twenty-four miles of open water looks like a lot of water to me, even when it's calm. When it starts getting rough, I want no part of it, so when the wind began to pick up gustily around ten o'clock, I aborted my day's fishing plans and got out of there in a hurry, leaving the big boats and the real sailors to cope with the waves and the weather without me.

It was a hell of a frustrating way, I reflected, to end what had been a hell of a frustrating vacation. Of course, in a sense it had actually ended a day earlier when the girl had got really mad at last and walked out on me. Never mind her name. She doesn't figure in this, honest. She was just a girl I'd met on a job a few months earlier. It had been a rough and nasty business, and we'd both wound up in the same hospital. One thing had led to another, as it often does, and we'd agreed to do our convalescing together, down in sunny Mexico. Since I'd been more or less responsible for her getting hurt in the first place, I'd been pleased and flattered by her forgiveness.

At least it had seemed flattering at the time. What I hadn't realized was that, having had lots of time to think things over in that hospital bed-to think me over-she'd come to the remarkable conclusion that, in spite of my reprehensible profession, I was really a sweet and gentle guy who just needed a good woman to reform him from his violent ways.

It was too bad. She could have been a lot of fun if she hadn't decided that I needed a conscience and that she was it; she was a tall, slim, blonde kid who, in addition to her indoor talents, which were considerable, could swim and hike and handle a fishing rod adequately, once she got her strength back. We'd done quite a bit of fishing, and she hadn't been at all squeamish about sticking a big, barbed hook through a small, wiggling sardine to be used for bait; but she'd proved to have a thing about other life forms.

I never can figure how they make these distinctions. This one had absolutely no sentimental feelings about fish or fishing, but she bled copiously for all little birds and animals killed by cruel hunters. When, tired of angling for the moment, I innocently suggested borrowing a couple of shotguns and going out after the doves that swarmed locally, she looked at me with shock and horror-and this was, for God's sake, the same girl who'd casually impaled a live bait fish on a hook; the same girl who'd just hungrily cleaned up a large helping of arroz con polio, a rice-and chicken dish for which a good-sized bird had died. Of course, that bird had been killed by somebody else. She hadn't had to get its blood on her own hands. All she'd had to do was let me pay for the crime.

When I pointed out the hypocrisy of this, or what seemed like hypocrisy to me, and asked how she could possibly reconcile it with her fierce anti-killing convictions, she got very angry. Apparently there was another delicate distinction, too subtle for me to grasp, not only between fish and birds but between birds and birds: between a dead chicken and a dead dove. I said, sure, a dove tastes better, if you like doves. At that she really blew up and said I couldn't possibly be expected to understand, a callous monster like me, who carried a gun and showed no respect whatever for life, even human life.

As you'll gather, it hadn't been a very restful leave. Being reformed is kind of wearing, even when it doesn't take. After putting her on a plane a week early at her request, I'd decided to spend a final day doing a little angling and exploring alone before heading back to the US to turn in the boat and wind up my leave in other surroundings, but the weather had just put an end to that project. I decided that I might as well use the rest of the day getting the boat back on the trailer and hosing it down thoroughly to wash off three weeks' accumulation of salt and fish scales. Any time I had left over could be used for packing-but first, of course, I had to make it back to the San Carlos marina.

It was a reasonably exciting ride, surfing along before the mounting waves with the wind getting stronger and gustier by the minute. The Gulf is no farm pond or stock tank. At Guaymas, it looks like the ocean-you can't see across to Baja California-and it acts like the ocean, too, upon occasion. The Mexicans call it the Sea of Cortez and treat it with respect. I wanted to get in before things became really rugged, so I kept the 85-horse Johnson blasting-well, as hard as you want to blast in that size boat in that kind of a seaway, actually not much over half-throttle with a mill that large.

It was quite a power plant. I'd only had it wide open once in the weeks I'd been using it, and it had scared hell out of me. I'd thought we'd go into orbit before I could get it shut down again. I've dealt with some fairly potent machinery on land, but speedboating is not my bag, and my only previous experience with outboard motors, to amount to anything, dated back to an era when ten horsepower was considered pretty hot stuff.

Even at half-throttle, the boat was a bit of a handful with the sea astern-I guess they all are. It was a relief to conic around the towering rocky point guarding the mouth of San Carlos Bay and feel her stop making like a runaway surfboard and settle down to a steady planing attitude in quiet water. I unfastened my parka and threw back the hood. Being designed for fishing originally, whatever my mysterious predecessor had used her for, the chunky little blue-and-white fiberglass vessel was wide open all around so there'd he nothing to interfere with the rods and lines. You did your steering from an exposed midships console with no windshield to hide behind. If you wanted to stay dry, you put on something waterproof and zipped it up tight, even on a downwind run.

I'd mopped the spray off my face and sunglasses, and I was reaching for the throttle to hasten things along, now that the traveling was smooth and easy, when I saw the seal off to the right-excuse me, to starboard. They're actually sea lions, whatever the technical distinction may be, and they're fairly common down there in the Cortez, but I was just a country boy from the arid inland state of New Mexico, and I still hadn't seen enough of them to take them for granted.

I was feeling nice and relaxed and a little triumphant at my victory over the wind and the waves, the way Columbus or Leif Ericson must have felt upon reaching America after a stormy Atlantic crossing. I was in no real hurry to get ashore now that I'd made it into sheltered water, so I put the wheel hard over to get a closer look at the swimming animal. You might say the sleek little beast saved my life, since the rifleman up on the point picked that moment to put the final pressure on his trigger.

He must have been aiming well ahead of me, giving plenty of lead to allow for the forward motion of the boat. It wasn't a long shot, only a little over a hundred yards, but even loafing along as she was, the boat was doing at least twenty miles per hour-close to thirty feet per second-and rifle bullets do not travel with the speed of light, although people keep trying to make them. When the hidden marksman's projectile reached the spot where he'd expected me to be, I wasn't there. My sharp turn away from him had thrown his calculations off just enough for a clean miss, but not enough that I didn't hear the bullet go past or catch a glimpse of the characteristic dimpled splash off to the left-excuse me, to port.

I suppose it's a reflection on my life style, as it's currently known, that even before I heard the report of the rifle from the rocks behind me, I didn't doubt that what had passed me was a bullet, not a suicidal bird or bumblebee; and that somebody was trying to kill me. I checked the impulse to dodge left. He'd be anticipating that. The standard naval routine is to chase the splashes made by the enemy's shells in the hope of confusing his attempts to correct his aim. Instead, I kept the wheel hard right, holding the tight turn I'd started through a full hundred and eighty degrees and ninety degrees more. For a moment that aimed me straight at the shore and the hidden rifleman, who wouldn't be expecting me, I hoped, to charge straight at him.

Another bullet cracked past, off to port again. He'd gambled that I'd straighten the boat out the instant she was heading back out to sea and safety, instead of continuing the turn. He'd lost, but all it had cost him was a cartridge worth a few dimes or pesos, depending on nationality. If I lost, I'd have a large hole in my anatomy.

At the shot, I spun the wheel hard left, chasing the splash at last, hoping he wouldn't be ready for it now. He wasn't. A third bullet slapped the water well off to starboard. I caught a glint of glass up among the rocks: a telescopic sight. Well, that figured. It was time to try something new before I got too clever and dodged right into one of his shots. Heading out to sea again wasn't too bad an idea. Under the new circumstances, the weather was by far the least of my worries. When the bow had swung back far enough, I checked the turn and slammed the throttle clear up to the stop. Eighty-five horsepower came in with a roar. The instant acceleration threw me back onto the helmsman's seat, actually the built-in battery box with a cushion on top.

Then my borrowed little seagoing bomb was screaming over the water, practically airborne. I thought I heard a bullet snap past just behind me, as if the would-be assassin, establishing a lead for a target speed of some twenty miles per hour, had been caught flatfooted by the sudden jump to forty and over, but I couldn't be sure because of the racket. Some seconds passed, and it was time to dodge again before he came up with the proper correction, but I didn't dare. We were going too fast. I'd never before held this boat at full throttle for any length of time; I'd never before hit this speed in any boat. I wasn't at all certain she wouldn't just flip if I tried to turn her.

I consoled myself that a high-speed angling target is something few riflemen can hit, and the range was getting longer by the second. I didn't look shorewards; I didn't dare take my attention off the boat that long. She felt very squirrelly indeed at this velocity, and if she started to go haywire I wanted to be ready for her. I did risk a glance at the instruments. The tachometer was right at the 5500 rpm redline; the speedometer wasn't registering at all. Apparently, skimming the surface at this speed, the boat rode so high that the little Pitot tube, or sending unit, attached to the lower edge of the transom, off to one side, was practically clear of the water, with nothing to work on but spray.

Concentrating on keeping the flying little vessel under control, I hadn't realized that we were already getting out beyond the shelter of the point. Suddenly, the smooth surface across which we were racing broke up into hills and valleys of tumbling water. A cresting wave came at us, and the boat smashed into it and was hurled skywards. I managed to get the throttle back while she was still aloft. She hit with a shattering crash ad plowed headlong into the next wave, which broke green over the bow. At the same time, the wake caught up with us and came surging into the self-bailing splashwell just ahead of the motor, with enough momentum to carry a lot of it over the bulkhead and into the cockpit-a planing boat doesn't go very far when the power quits; she just squats and stops.

For a moment I thought we were swamped; then I sat, still clinging to the wheel, with water around my ankles and the motor idling softly behind me. Another wave came at us, no tidal wave or tsunami, but plenty high enough to impress a shorebody like me. The boat rose to it nicely, however, and the wave passed underneath, sending only a ripple of spray aboard. I heard a humming sound and looked astern to see a steady stream of water being ejected by the automatic bilge pump. Already, the cockpit was almost clear as the water we'd shipped streamed aft to the sump in the stern.

She was quite a little ship. I paid my silent respects to the unknown fellow-agent who'd selected the pieces and put them together. He'd probably saved my life. I shoved the lever forward cautiously to get us moving again, working to windward slowly through the confused seas off the point. Glancing towards the rocks to starboard, I saw that we were still within long rifle range, but it didn't matter. We'd turned the corner, so to speak, and this seaward face was too steep for a man to cling to, let alone shoot from. Anyway, at three hundred yards, nobody's going to hit a target bobbing erratically in six-foot waves.

One of the big party boats I'd seen at the island earlier that morning passed a quarter-mile to seaward, rolling heavily, with an imperturbable Mexican skipper at the helm, and a bunch of seasick Yankee fishermen in the cockpit. Making the turn into the bay, they stared at the crazy jerk in the fifteen-foot motorized bathtub who didn't have sense enough to come in out of the spray, but this close to harbor the wind didn't bother me. I knew I could make it in from here, but there was something I had to do first. There was something I had to find.

Then I saw it on the beach at the head of the smaller bay that had opened up beyond the point: a small white boat pulled up on the sand. He'd have conic by water, of course. He wouldn't have risked being seen and remembered as he carried that scope-sighted rifle through the hills from the nearest road, A conventional plastic case designed for a couple of husky salt-water fishing rods would, with a little modification, easily accommodate a long gun, and it could be loaded into a boat right at the dock without causing any comment whatever.

I got out the binoculars I'd been using on sea lions, whales, porpoises, and sea birds, and checked the beached craft as carefully as the distance and the motion of my boat would permit. It was a light aluminum skiff with a small motor, probably around ten horsepower. Although only a foot or so shorter than my fiberglass job, it was much narrower, shallower, and lighter; probably less than one-third the weight, with less than one-eighth the horsepower. He might have me outgunned, but I had him out-boated.