Alejandro held up his hand, cocking his head. "Un avion. Single-engine, I think."

He heard nothing. "A little Cessna? Can you tell?"

Alejandro had spent much of his adult life listening for Blue Thunder speedboats on the water and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency planes in the air. Like most traficantes, he claimed that he could identify any aircraft flown by man by the sound of its engine alone.

"Sí, a 182, I think, Conejo."

That name again! "No es Conejo! I am Carlos!"

The young man grinned. Yawning, he strolled to the wheel and turned his switch. "Lo siento. I forgot." The engine whined and caught.

Carlos dug into the side locker. Under a pair of Rico's skis, in a canvas fishing-rod cover, was his M14. He jerked the weapon from the cover, fumbling with the zipper.

Rico had suggested an Uzi. But an Uzi was for children on los llanos to hunt narcotics agents with. The ancient M14 was a weapon for a man. It weighed fifteen pounds and carried twenty rounds of .308 ammunition in the clip.

In his excitement he dropped the magazine.

"Careful, old man." Alejandro chuckled, tossing off his lines. The engine chortled happily. "Don't shoot off your foot. Or mine."

He still could see no airplane. He was peering into the western sky when Alejandro rounded the corner of the little basin and slammed the throttle on.

He found himself on his back in the bilges, weapon pointed at the sky. He could hear the peals of laughter from Alejandro in the bow.

He got up slowly. Nothing was broken. Slapping in the ammo clip, Carlos glared at the driver's back. He'd like to shoot him, and their youthful patrón too. But perhaps he'd better concentrate on Newcombe.

Now, at least, he could see the plane.

***

Ellen gazed sadly down through the windshield at the scalloped shore of Masthead Sound. The tiny engine droned on, making her sleepy.

She could see the diving barge in the distance, and Neptune's Folly underway, drawing a spreading emerald wake across the turquoise lagoon.

Michael's house, in its separate cove, and the others closer to town, baked whitely in the morning sun. The cays were a series of picture postcards laid end to end.

She glanced at Hoagie. He suddenly seemed intent on the Folly and what it was doing. He looked at her swiftly, then looked away.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing, Ellen. Nothing at all."

A strange and reticent man. She had not spoken to Hoagie about his visitor the previous night. She had no idea what was in the packet and imagined the worst: cocaine. She hoped it was not in the plane; she imagined that if it was, it was in the scruffy, oversize briefcase in which he carried his charts and weather data.

She imagined herself in the Prince George jail, with Michael raising hell. This was awful. Suppose he was carrying it?

"Hoagie?" she began, "there's something I have to ask."