Free Aground by Charles Williams; Franklin W. Dixon Page A

returns.”
    Ingram caught himself, but too late. He’d already turned to look. He saw Morrison’s jocose grin, and was filled with a dark and futile rage. That swept the series; he’d been made a fool of by all three of them—Hollister, Morrison, and now Ruiz.
    But it hadn’t been a deliberate trick; the plane was turning and coming back. “Hit the dirt!” Morrison barked. He grabbed the gun and ducked down the hatch after Ruiz. Ingram watched it silently. Maybe Avery did suspect something. But it was turning again now, in a steep bank only a few hundred feet above the water some miles to the north of them. It was as though Avery was trying to see something below him. At that moment the radio blared in the cabin. Morrison spoke from the hatchway. “Get on the horn. He’s calling you.”
    He ran down the ladder. Morrison had already started the transmitter. He passed over the handset and stood to one side, holding the gun. “Careful what you say, and watch me.”
    He pressed the transmit button. “This is the Dragoon back. What is it? Over.”
    Avery’s voice filled the cabin. “There’s something in the water down here. Hold it a minute. I’m coming over it again.”
    They waited in tense, hot silence unbroken except for the scratching of static in the loudspeaker. Rae Osborne watched from the hatchway. Then Avery’s voice came on again. “It’s a body, all right. Probably one of your thieves. Seems to be naked except for a pair of shorts. If you bring the raft, I can land and get him aboard.”
    He glanced at Morrison. “Tell him you’ll pick him up,” the latter ordered, “and take him into Key West.”
    He repeated this.
    “Very well,” Avery agreed. “Might save a bit of international red tape, at that. I make the position about three miles north-northeast of you. If you get here while the water’s still flat, you won’t have any trouble finding him. There are some birds sitting on him.”
    He saw Mrs. Osborne shudder at the image. Morrison gave a curt gesture that said: Get rid of him. He signed off, and replaced the handset. When they went on deck again, the plane was fading away in the northeast.
    Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse once more. “Now, how many of those guns do we have to unload?”
    Rae Osborne stared at him. “But what about the man?”
    Morrison shrugged. “So what about him?”
    “Aren’t we going to do anything at all?”
    “Like giving him artificial respiration, maybe? He’s only been dead for three days.”
    She took a step toward him, the green eyes blazing. “I’ve got to see him.”
    “A waterlogged stiff? Honey, you need help.”
    “Listen,” Ingram said, “it won’t take more than thirty minutes to row out there and see if she can identify him. She may know who Hollister was.”
    Morrison shook his head. “Fall back, Herman. I couldn’t care less who Hollister was, and we’ve got more to do than stooge around the ocean looking for him.”
    “I’m going out there,” Rae Osborne said. She started past him toward the raft, and violence erupted in the sunlit morning like the release of coiled steel springs.
    Morrison caught the front of her pullover, yanked her toward him, and slapped her back-handed across the face. She gasped and tried to hit him. Ingram lunged at him just as he drew back his arm and shoved, sending her sprawling along the deck. Ruiz’ arm flashed down, swinging the slablike automatic. Pain exploded inside his head and he fell forward against Morrison, who stood up, pushed him off with the BAR, and chopped a short and brutal right to the side of his jaw. His knees buckled and he fell beside Mrs. Osborne. When he tried to get up, the deck tilted and spun, and there was no strength in his arms. He dropped back. Blood trickled down across his forehead and fell to the deck in little spatting droplets just under his eyes.
    “Don’t ever try that again, Herman,” Morrison said. “You’re a big boy, but we’re in the