Ames shook his head. "Too obvious. They'd suspect a trap." Tom agreed.
"Wal, then, how about truckin' him along the highway hereabouts, as if you all were sendin' him down to Washington?"
This, too, was vetoed on the grounds that a shrewd espionage agent would guess that such a valuable prize would never be entrusted to a slow and vulnerable method of transport.
"Then what about an air flight?" Hank Sterling suggested.
"Brand my six-guns, that'd be jest beggin' to git yourself shot down!" Chow fumed.
"Not if we used a plane like the Sky Queen, equipped with jet lifters," Hank argued. "If any hijack planes jumped us, they'd have to let us come down safely in order to get their hands on Exman. We could land on the water or just hover while they made the transfer."
"And after they had it safe aboard their own plane, they'd blast yours to smithereens!" Chow retorted.
Tom, too, thought a plane flight unwise, but for different reasons. It might look suspicious to the Brungarians after the Swifts had been warned by one aerial hijack attempt. Also, they might be deterred by fear of war, thinking that the United States Air Force would doubtless be alerted to the possibility of attack.
"So right," Ames agreed. After a thoughtful pause, he added, "Tom, what about transporting Exman by submarine? We know that every spy apparatus in this hemisphere is constantly trying to probe what goes on at Fearing Island, where our subs are based."
"No doubt about that," Tom conceded.