Free The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson

than a shallow scrape. Another blob of lead wrought minor havoc in the box that held Long Tom’s electrical equipment.
    It was Doc who saw the sniper ahead of all the others, thanks to an eye of matchless keenness.
    “Over behind that fallen palm!” he said.
    Then the rest perceived. The sharpshooter’s weapon projected over the bole of a fallen royal palm that was like a pillar of dull silver.
    Rifles leaped magically into the hands of Doc’s five men. A whistling salvo of lead pelted the palm log, preventing the sniper from releasing further shots.
    The plane dug its pontoons into the mud beach at this point. It was not a moment too soon, either. They were filling rapidly with water, for some of the bullets, striking slantwise, had opened sizable rips. Indeed, the floats were hopelessly ruined!

    SWIFTLY, grim with purpose, three men bounded out of the plane. They were Doc, Renny, and Monk. The other three, Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham, all excellent marksmen, continued to put a barrage of rifle lead against the palm log.
    The log lay on a finger of land which reached out toward a very small cay, or island. Between cay and the land finger stretched about fifty yards of water.
    The sniper tried to reach the mainland, only to shriek and drop flat as a bullet from the plane creased him. Meantime Doc, Renny, and Monk had floundered to solid ground and doubled down in the scrawny tropical growth. The smell of the beach was strong in their nostrils—sea water, wet logs, soft-shell crabs, fish, kelp, and decaying vegetation making a conglomerate odor.
    To the right of the friends lay Belize, with scraggly, narrow streets and romantic houses with protruding balconies, brightly painted doorways, and every window as becrossed with iron bars as if it were a jail.
    The sniper knew they were coming upon him. He tried again to escape. But he had not reckoned with the kind of shooting that was coming from the plane. He couldn’t make it to the mainland.
    Desperately, the fellow worked out toward the end of the land finger. Stunted mangroves offered puny shelter there. The man shrieked again as he was creased.
    In his circle of acquaintances, it must have been customary to shoot prisoners—give no quarter—because he didn’t offer to surrender. Evidently he was out of ammunition.
    Wild with terror, he leaped up and plunged into the water. He was going to try to swim to the little island.
    “Sharks!” grunted Renny. “These waters are full of the things!”
    But Doc Savage was already a dozen yards ahead, leaping out on the land finger.
    The sniper was a squat, dark-skinned fellow—but his features did not resemble those of the Mayan who had committed suicide in New York. He was a low specimen of the Central American half-breed.
    He was not a good swimmer, either. He splashed a great deal. Suddenly he let out a piercing squawl of terror. He had seen a dark, sinister triangle of fin sizzling through the water toward him. He tried to turn and come back. But so frightened was he that he hardly moved for all his slamming of the water with his arms.
    The shark was a gigantic man-eater. It came straight for its prospective meal, not even circling to investigate. The mouth of the monster thing was open, revealing the horrible array of teeth.
    The unfortunate sniper let out a weak, ghastly bleat. It seemed too late for anything to help the fellow. Renny, in discussing the affair later, maintained Doc purposely waited until the last minute so that terror would teach the sniper a lesson—show the man the fate of an evil-doer. If true, Doc’s lesson was mightily effective.
    With a tremendous spring, Doc shot outward and cleaved head-first into the water.

    THE dive was perfectly executed. And Doc, curving his powerful bronze body at the instant of impact with the water, seemed to hardly sink beneath the surface.
    It looked like an impossible thing to do, but Doc was beside the unfortunate man even as the big shark shot in with a last burst