"To hell with that!" he told them. His mouth, though bruised by Scarface's fists, grinned at them in a way that was not at all reassuring, and his tawny eyes met theirs with a new confidence born of secret knowledge. "We can send a search party later. Right now we're concerned with—"
"In other words," Burley broke in, unsmilingly, "you insist on having the meeting?" About fifteen officers and servicemen silently closed in around the periphery of the group, but this did not appear to bother Weston, although Sceranka kept looking at them nervously.
"Yes," Weston answered. "Let's have the meeting!"
"Then you are out of order!" snapped Burley. "We will follow those rules of order which are befitting to a deliberative assembly. Captain Merman is our Chairman. We have an agenda for discussion, which will be introduced in proper sequence. Anyone wishing to speak will first recognize the Chair."
"Oh can it!" fumed Weston. "That's why I'm here—to tell you we're going to cut all the red tape and get down to facts—"
At a sign from Merman, two M.P.s stepped forward and tapped Weston on the shoulder. Each carried a club. They smiled through their teeth.
"We are the Sergeants at Arms," said the largest of the two, who was at least within twenty pounds of Weston's brawny mass. "Do you want to be nice or be made to stand in a corner?"
Weston appeared to swell like a toad. When his eyes met Sceranka's, over the M.P.'s shoulder, he nodded almost imperceptibly. Whereupon Sceranka threw his hat into the air.
Within three seconds, six G.I.s on the outside of the circle yelled in pain and fell to the ground. Protruding from their backs were crude but sturdy arrows. Standing on the beach sand just outside the jungle were twelve bowmen, all from Weston's gang. Two were Spaniards. One was a Filipino law student who had flunked out of Oxford. One was a pale, continental type, a non-descript foreigner traveling on a French passport whom Merman had suspected of being a Communist spy. The rest were American construction stiffs—not the ordinary kind who signed up on a year's contract to save up and come home again, but the camp drifters who had roamed the world since adolescence, men actually without a country, uneducated, but capable of running heavy equipment for American tax dollars. It was strictly a "cost-plus" crew, thought Burley.
Women screamed. Men cursed. And there were cries of "Murderers!" "Assassins!"