The By-Pass Control Read online

  Their philosophy for winning was better, too. It was the combat philosophy that the end justified the means and no matter how softly they talked or broadly they smiled in those conclaves at the U.N. they treated the play as war and geared their moves to fit it.

  And now they found themselves right on the goal line because we had fumbled the ball through the fault of a player, and they were going to take every advantage of their position and try for the touchdown strategy even if they had to sacrifice their players to do it.

  I was the safety man.

  Great.

  The wind was at their back and the dirt was in our eyes. We couldn’t afford to lose, but neither could they. In one sense, we could lose by winning, so if the laws of luck and circumstance turned back to us again it would all be a game played in front of a blindfolded audience. They’d only know the score if they won.

  Twice, Mason let down through the overcast, feeling his way on the instruments. The second time he waved and pointed toward the ground and I saw the bleak rain-drenched expanse of a field, but there were no identifiable landmarks.

  He switched to intercom and said, “The crosswind was stronger than I thought. We’re too far west.”

  “What now?”

  “We’ll turn east, pick up the ocean and beat up the coast until we locate ourselves. Ceiling here is too low to mess around in. Hundred feet tops and goes right down to the ground in places.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  It took another fifty minutes before he found a small summer resort nestled in the sand dunes and circled it, then, satisfied, picked a southwest heading and hugged the treetops at minimum altitude, tensed for anything that might jut up out of nowhere. Once he hurtled a power line, then followed it to a road, banked ten degrees away from it until he reached another highway and stayed with the dull white concrete ribbon several minutes before starting a slow turn to the left.

  I looked down, following his glance. Directly below us was the outline of an airstrip, the tracks of three wheels gouged into it before slithering off to one side where the Comanche sat mired in the mud.

  There was something else, too.

  Face down beside it, half covered by a pool of water, was the body of a man.

  Mason said, “They beat us, Tiger. That pilot knew the area too well.”

  “Can you get in?”

  “No chance in that slop. We’d do better grinding in on a paved road.”

  “Any around?”

  Mason shook his head. “None on the map. All dirt roads between here and Leesville.”

  “Then let’s get as close as we can. Our boy would have gotten transportation one way or another. It’s ten miles between here and Leesville and he’s had the time to do it in. We haven’t.”

  “Ever tried this before?” Mason asked me flatly.

  “There’s always a first time for everything.”

  “Sometimes it’s the last. It’s a good thing I’m a company man,” he said. “Damn.”

  Leesville was only a cluster of stores, a gas station and a few houses at a crossroads. We went over it, flaps down at traffic pattern speed, looking for any cleared area that gave a reasonable chance of a landing, both of us trying to fight the restricted visibility that was turning the whole thing into a joke.

  I saw Mason nod and his eyes met briefly with mine in the mirror. “Button up.”

  I yanked the harness as tight as I could, set myself as he picked his spot, dumped full flaps and came in nose high over a grassy pasture that had taken on the appearance of a lake.

  He made a beautiful job of it, the tail dragging first, then the fuselage pancaking down with a heavy thud as a crazy scream came from the engine as the prop bit into the earth and the blades bent back in despair. The roar of the Merlin was wiped out almost instantaneously, replaced by water and mud tearing at the metal, biting out pieces and spewing them back into our faces. The seemingly interminable slide came to an end at the rise of a drainage ditch embankment and both of us were out of the cockpit in a second, running for cover in case something blew.

  We stopped fifty yards away and Mason looked back ruefully. “What a hell of a thing to do to a lovely airplane.”

  “Grady’ll buy another,” I said.

  Overhead the sky chuckled with a faint roll of thunder. Mason pointed the direction out and we started walking toward Leesville a half mile away.

  The old guy in the jeans and flannel shirt at the gas station took the twenty dollar bill from my fingers, looking at it suspiciously a moment before tucking it in his pocket. He had a languorous drawl that couldn’t be pushed and an attitude that any strangers walking in the rain were open to question before they got any answers. I simplified it by saying we were stuck down the road and he agreed with that, though what we were doing there at all puzzled him.

  “Come to think of it now,” he said, “a car did go by some time ago. Old pickup truck. Used to belong to Henny Jordan. Sold it last year though. New feller on the Dexter Road bought it.”

  “Near the airfield?”

  The man made a surprised grimace and nodded. “That’s the one. The crop dusters use his place sometimes. Not much business so he runs a farm on the side.”

  “He ever come over here?”

  “Never see him outside his own place. He deals at the Dexter stores.”

  I looked at Mason and saw by his face that he knew what had happened too. I took out a cigarette, lit it and said, “There’s supposed to be a fish house around here....” The old man cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Only open in the summer. Guy who runs it has a shack in the woods right back of it. You know him?”

  “No, but I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Well now, you might just do that. He’s there, all right. Stocks up for the whole year with groceries and magazines right after Labor Day and just sits it out nice and cozy.”

  I reached in my pocket and took out the photo of Louis Agrounsky. “Ever see this man before?”

  His eyes got cagey and he barely glanced at the photo until I dropped another twenty in his palm, then he studied it carefully. “Lot of tourists come to fish here in the summer. Surfcasters.”

  “How about this one?”

  He held the picture closer to his face. “Could be. Yep, could be he was around. Not that many I shouldn’t remember, but I saw this one, all right.”

  It was coming now.

  “Does he own a place around here?”

  He held the picture back with a friendly smile. “Now that, mister,” he told me, “I can say no to. Been living here thirty years and there ain’t a dirt farmer or registered voter I don’t know about.”

  “Any property change hands?”

  He shrugged, spreading his hands. “Does that lots. Good years a man lays in more land, maybe even builds a new house or adds a few rooms. If you mean has your friend in the picture moved in, then it’s nope. Three tourists got beach shacks they bought ‘bout five years ago ... come down summers and fish. Nice people. Never see ’em ’cept when they spend money.”

  I stuck the photo back in my pocket. “Where’s this fish house?”

  “Mile and a half down the road. Not far from the beach. You figuring on walking?”

  “No. I’m figuring you have a car to rent for a price. How does fifty suit you?”

  “Suits me fine,” he said. “She’s sitting outside, that black Ford.” He took the bills from my hand and fondled them a moment and as we left he grinned and said, “Hurry back.”

  The fish house, with the sign that read Wax’s Fish made nearly illegible by wind-driven sand, was buried behind scrub pines, shutters propped across the windows and a plank holding the door shut. No paint had ever touched the bare wood, and except for the smell that was part of it, the place was perfectly camouflaged. But anybody who could survive a year with two months’ work had to do a good business—the pile of clam and oyster shells, almost covered with pine needles at one side, were mute evidence of it.

  The shack
was behind it, similar in appearance except for the tendril of smoke that came from the brick chimney and the faint glow of light from one window. I knocked on the door, waited, then pushed it in impatiently. Over at the far end, stretched out on a cot and reeking of whiskey, was a bearded old fat guy in dirty long underwear, his breath wheezing from his mouth in drunken monotones while a calico cat perched on the wrinkled newspaper he had draped over his mountain of a stomach. A pair of empty bottles lay on the floor beside him, the remains of a sandwich being attacked by a mottled kitten who looked up at us and growled at the intrusion.

  We reached him together, tried to shake him awake, then doused him with a glass of water from the hand pump beside the sink. Mason said, “Hell, he’s out.”

  The guy stirred a moment, grunted something unintelligible, and tried to roll over. I got my hand behind his neck and jerked him upright. “Wax! You hear me?”

  “Get him on the floor on his stomach and I’ll make him toss his cookies.”

  “Hell, we haven’t got time to fool with him, Mason.”

  “Let me try anyway.”

  Both of us pried him off the cot, rolled him on some papers, and Mason went to work with his fingers. In a second Wax was gagging and coughing, trying to push himself up, bleary eyes searching for his tormentors. I turned on a gas jet, put a pan of water over the flame and found instant coffee that I loaded into a chipped cup, and when it was hot enough, forced it down Wax’s throat.

  It was thirty minutes before he was alive enough to say, “What ... the dickens you think ... who you people?”

  Money makes the loudest sound in the world. I let him see a fifty dollar bill in front of his eyes, feel it, then look up through a dreamy haze and nod. “I need information. You up to talking?”

  Mason handed him another cup of steaming coffee and he drank half of it greedily, then made a face and looked around for a bottle. “Maybe ... if I had a drink ...”

  “Talk first.” I held Agrounsky’s photo out in front of him. “Ever see this man?”

  He leaned forward, glanced at it once, and nodded again. “Buys fish from me.”

  “Where does he live?”

  His mouth gave a negative twist. “On the beach someplace ... I guess. Never said. Hardly comes down. Saw him ’bout three, four times. Sick man.”

  “Do better than that, Wax. Where on the beach?”

  This time he shook his head decisively. “Dunno. Maybe he camps like some do. Couple shacks there, few houses.”

  “But he’s from the beach ... you’re sure?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  Wax gave me a silly grin like I should know better and said, “Come in with sand spurs on his pants like the rest. No sand spurs this far in. Always droppin’ the damn things where I step on ’em. He’s from the beach. But not now. Nobody there now.”

  I didn’t wait to argue. I nodded to Mason and we got back to the car and headed toward the ocean. Sometime in the last half hour the rain had let up and holes were showing in the clouds, big patches of incongruous blue against the dirty gray. The sandy road had drained quickly, the coquina base firm under the wheels. Barely visible were tracks partially filled with water, but the car that made them, having taken the center of the road, could have been going in either direction.

  Somewhere above the cloud layer a flight of jets screamed by, cut out to sea, then circled back, challenging the thunder of the broken storm front.

  The road began to bear to the left, then angled sharply and intersected a rutted strip that paralleled the beach. Once past it we would lose the cover of the tree line, so I braked, backed into an opening in the pine grove, and cut the engine. South of us we could see the boxlike shape of the beach houses perched on the dunes, abandoned now for the season.

  Mason said, “How do you figure it?”

  “Agrounsky could have bought one of those places from a summer resident. The transaction wouldn’t have gotten any attention if he didn’t use it often. My guess is he stocked it with groceries and equipment he needed and let it sit until he was ready to use it.”

  “Which one?”

  “That we find out the hard way.” We reached the end of the road and I looked at the line of poles running in both directions. “They’re all power serviced. Any not being used will be shut off at the meters, so we’ll see who’s using juice. Don’t you stick your neck out.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  The jets roared by again and somewhere the deep growl of thunder talked back to them. The hole in the sky overhead closed in menacingly and the soft blanket of rain moved in from the ocean like a heavy fog, cutting off sight of all but the first beach cottage.

  Aside from the dunes there was little natural cover and we made use of every hillock and the weaving fronds of sea oats that crested them. The rain was a veil of protection, but an enemy in itself because it could work to shield another as well as us.

  We reached the first house, checked it thoroughly, and satisfied it was unoccupied, started for the next one a hundred yards away. We stayed split up, separate targets if shot at, ready to build an effective crossfire if anybody showed.

  It was Mason who spotted it first, a beat-up old pickup mired in the sand off the road where it had been forced after hitting a pothole, leaning into the trees and brush, obscured from any angle until you were right on it.

  “He’s here,” Mason said.

  I nodded. “Go see if any tracks lead from it. I’ll hit the next house and keep going until there’s a contact. If you spot anything, cut back to me and we’ll take him together.”

  “Hell, Tiger ...”

  “Look, buddy, this is a pro. He’s a killer, you’re a flier. He’s ready for anything and knows we’re behind him. This is one guy you won’t slip up on from a blind spot. He hasn’t got any.”

  “So you’re going in and...”

  “I don’t have any either. Now move on out.”

  He threw me a mock salute and grinned, then drifted off into the rain toward the car while I went back to the dunes. Two minutes later we had lost each other in the haze of rain, but up ahead in fuzzy outline was the squat shape of another weatherbeaten house that leaned a little to one side as if it were tired of it all.

  I got to it, flattened against the side, and hugged my way around it looking for any indication of its having someone inside. The electric meter was silent and still, covered with fine sand, both doors partially ramped by drifts. Nobody had used the place for months.

  For five minutes I scanned the area, trying to locate the thing that was wrong. Neither at the first place nor this had there been any tracks. For some reason Niger Hoppes had a definite direction in mind. Why? He had no more information than I had.

  Then I saw it and cursed myself for being stupid. The poles bringing in the electric power had another service wire below them, one that hadn’t cut off to the other house yet, a phone line. Louis Agrounsky wasn’t there on a vacation. He was there for a reason and had provided for it. He was a man used to the immediate conveniences and would have installed a communication system without thinking twice about it.

  I couldn’t wait for Mason to show. I lowered my head against the rain, holding the .45 in my fist, the hammer back and my finger nestled against the trigger, running in ankle-deep sand as hard as I could, picking my way through the valleys in the dunes while I watched the faint threads between the poles that marked the power lines.

  A full minute before I reached the last weary looking building that sat there on spindly pile legs I heard the crack of a shot that hung heavy and muffled on the air for a full second before losing itself in the rain. I tried to place its position, but it was impossible and there was no time to waste in locating it.

  Around the house the sand dunes crept in away from the sea and I crawled face down behind their cover. I went as far as I could without exposing myself to direct fire from the house, ready to pull the trigger if there was any movement at all.

  That wa
s when I saw Mason. He was belly down in the sand, head twisted to one side, blood streaming from one side of his head. Somehow in falling he had rolled into a gully the wind had etched out behind a mound of clam shells and one hand moved feebly in an unconscious gesture.

  But I couldn’t go for him. Hoppes would be waiting for that. I’d be out in the open and he’d never miss. Not killing Mason was a deliberate act, designed to bring anyone else into view who might have been with him. He could afford to wait, not too long, but enough to make sure he could do what he came to do.

  Niger Hoppes was thinking wrong. Sometimes you had to sacrifice somebody when the necessity was great enough. Mason was down where he wouldn’t be hit again unless you stood almost over him from the front and he’d have to stay right there until I could get to him later.

  If I could.

  I inched backward into the vee of the dunes. Hoppes would have picked his position carefully, commanding the area that led to the house. I could see across the four-foot-high emptiness that was between the sand and the floor of the house and no dark splotches of a hidden figure behind the pilings were visible. The couple of steps that led off the front porch facing the ocean seemed unlikely because anyone there would have had a blind side.

  He had to be in the dunes.

  There was little necessity for being quiet, the sand giving off no telltale sounds, the rain and the dull roar of the surf not far off obscuring any small noises completely.

  How many times had he done this? How many times had I? Somewhere there was always a crossroad where you eventually met and only one would take the path leading away. No matter how good you were, there was always someone better. Both of us had beaten the leading contenders and now it was a playoff game to pick up the big prize. No factor would be left out of the winning potential.

  I nearly hit the thread before seeing it and grinned at the trap. It wouldn’t lead to him. It would trigger the movement of one of the sea oats in the sand and he’d know I’d be closing in and would be ready. Without touching it, I rolled over the fine strand, crawling toward the water. It wasn’t the logical move. An approach through the dunes would have afforded greater protection, but it could put me there too fast. A man moving couldn’t get ready as fast as one entrenched watching the approaches.