THE MISS FROM S.IS. Book 3 - RING-A-DING UFOs by Bob Tralins - Chapter 01
Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Lady Spies
THE MISS FROM S.IS. Book 3 - RING-A-DING UFOs by Bob Tralins was originally published in 1966.
Read the entire scanned copy of this vintage paperback at the official Gardner Francis Fox Library website.
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS?
WORLD TAKEOVER!
BRAIN WAVE RECORDINGS?
SUPER-SECRET AGENTS?
CYBERNIAN INVADERS FROM OUTER SPACE?
BUBONIC PLAGUE?
MAD CHINESE SCIENTISTS?
Would you believe Lee Crosley—that wild, pure, swinging, pristine MISS FROM S.I.S. has gotten herself involved in another impossible situation? This time Lee bursts headlong into a town condemned from the rest of the world—a town under the control of unknown sinister forces (horrors!). Would you believe UFOs, Cybernian invaders...
Listen to the audio version of Chapter 01
CHAPTER 01
The darkness of the tropical night concealed the pair in the rubber boat from the watchful eyes of the armed guards who were patrolling the bridge to the island. As David Dudley carefully dipped his paddle into the water at the mouth of the river just east of the Everglades, Lee Crosley kept her eyes peeled for the first sign of the shore where they were stealthily headed.
"Easy does it, David. Whatever you do," she whispered, "don't splash that paddle now."
He looked at her in the starlight and grinned, his eyes focused on her shapely figure so voluptuously revealed in the black skintight mino-tard she was wearing. But Lee Crosley could not see David's eyes because of the thick-lensed glasses he wore, and also because she was suspiciously watching some floating debris and logs upon a mud flat they were slowly going round.
"What is it, Lee?" he said in a low whisper.
Without turning round, she held up a hand, cautioning him to stop paddling. At that moment there was a loud hissing noise.
Lee frantically began to lean over the boat, then she stopped and pushed herself up to a kneeling position, facing David. "Now we've done it. It's low tide and we've ripped the bottom out of this boat on a submerged stick or something."
"How deep is it? Maybe we can wade in?"
She returned his whisper with a sigh. "Too much mud. And besides, if those logs out there are what I think they are ... "
"What logs?" David gasped, peering into the inky night.
Lee pointed. Several of the logs were slowly moving toward them, slithering upon the surface of the water.
The center of the rubber boat began to sink lower and lower as the air continued to escape through the puncture. Lee turned and pointed at a piling that loomed up five feet above the surface of the water a few yards from them, but several hundred feet from the bridge. "I think we'd better get over there quick and climb that pole."
David began to paddle furiously, but before the boat had traveled a yard, it collapsed and they arose, standing in waist high water. Before either of them could say anything there was a splash, then another and another.
Lee seized David's hand. Her fingernails dug into his flesh. "David," she whispered. "I've news. Those are alligators and they see us!"
They broke into a desperate run, wading through the water as fast as they could, their feet sinking into the mud and sand. After a wild scramble they arrived at the piling. David boosted Lee up. She then stood upon his shoulder and shimmied up to the top where she balanced herself on the flat of her stomach and extended her arm. He grabbed her hand for his life and clawed his way up, unmindful of the barnacles and slime clinging to the pole.
Ten seconds later two of the reptiles arrived at the base of the pole and began leaping up, snapping their powerful jaws. David and Lee drew themselves up to the top. After a few moments, they regained their wind and tried to get as comfortable as possible.
"Now what?" David asked.
Lee's face was only an inch from his. She nodded.
"I've just looked at the watermark on this pole. In a few minutes the tide will be changing and rising."
David swallowed audibly. "Then those 'gators will have us for lunch."
'Worse than that, David," she whispered. "Alligators have wide heads and rounded snouts. Those things aren't just ordinary alligators—they're crocodiles!"
"You're kidding?"
"I wish I were. Notice their triangular heads and pointed snouts?"
"Yeah," David nodded. "I didn't know you were an expert on reptiles too."
Lee smiled painfully. "I wish I were. I learned quite a bit about them from June who works at the Miami Serpentarium when I was writing a travel article about the attractions in Florida several years ago."
"I hope you also learned how to convince them not to eat you. That one down there's got his beady old red eye on me and I don't like it."
"I'm trying to remember what else it was that June told me," Lee mused, while shifting her position slightly in order to get more comfortable in her awkward posture. "Seems that she told me that crocodiles only penetrate salt water and brackish water."
"That cinches it," David said. "Out there is the Gulf of Mexico and this is sure enough brackish water and those crocs are sure keeping their eyes on us."
"Keep quiet, David," she whispered. 'Tm trying to think."
He peered at her and nodded. "How can you think at a time like this? We're on the menu."
Lee ignored him. She glanced at her watch. A sly smile crept across her pretty face. She turned and looked around them, trying to appraise their situation from a different aspect.
"It's too bad we lost all our gear in the boat," David said grimly. "Otherwise, we might have been able to kill off some of those crocs and—"
"Give me your glasses, David."
"Huh?" he said, gaping at her.
She did not explain. She removed his spectacles and then examined them. "These will do fine."
"What are you talking about?"
"Be patient, David."
He focused his eyes on her and tried to see what she was doing. Even at that close range he had difficulty making out what she was up to. Lee had managed to pry loose from the pole a four foot length of splinter. She felt around the pole for David's hand and whispered, "Here, hang onto this."
After she shimmied around the piling and locked her feet into place, she removed one of the lenses from David's glasses and carefully smashed it.
"Hey?" he protested in a loud whisper, "why'd you do that?"
Lee returned the glasses to him and put them on his face. "You've busted out one of the eye-pieces."
"Headquarters will reimburse you."
"Yeah, like when we get out of this mess alive and get back to collect."
"Like when," she smiled, busily working with the broken splinters of glass.
David shimmied up and tried to see what she was doing, but he kept sliding down. Their awkward positions on the pole were becoming painfully tiresome.
Lee took the long stick sliver from David and affixed a piece of the lens in the end of it.
"Now what's that supposed to be?"
Lee bit her lip and peered at her watch. "It's almost three a.m. When the tide changes and starts to run, I'll tell you then."
David grumbled and tried to get comfortable on the pole. "Why don't we just yell for help and somebody from over there on the bridge will come out in a boat and get us?"
Lee looked at her watch again and without looking at David, said, "Because those guards have been suspected of killing others who were caught out here trying to get on the island. We're not the first S.I.S. team who's been sent here. The last two were found adrift in a boat, dead, riddled with bullet holes."
Clenching his teeth, David cursed, then looked from the crocodiles below to the silhouettes of the armed men patrolling the bridge several hundred yards away. "I knew today wasn't going to be my day," he growled. 'Whenever my bunion acts up I always know things aren't going to go right. Now here we are, up the proverbial tree with hungry crocodiles snapping their teeth at us, armed guys with machine guns ready to use us for target practice and orders from headquarters not to go in with weapons or do anything that might alert the people on that island that someone is curious and wants to infiltrate."
"Now that you've made your little speech, David dear, would you do me a favor?''
"Sure. Just name it. You want me to toss them my shoes for an appetizer?''
"What a marvelous ideal" she whispered. "Yes, do that."
David frowned, but kicked loose first his right shoe, then holding it out above the hungry jaws of a particularly huge crocodile, he glanced at Lee and asked, "I think that one needs the appetizer more than the others. Look at the size of him."
"Yeah," Lee shuddered, hugging the pole tighter.
"Just look at how those others get out of the way for him. He's a big one, isn't he? The biggest fish in the pond."
David turned again to peer at her. He knew she was up to something and it annoyed him to be kept guessing for so long; but, that was Lee's way. Only when she was certain of a plan did she let David in on it.
"Drop your shoe to him and let's see what happens."
David permitted his shoe to drop between the jaws of the crocodile. The beast swallowed it whole and there was a flurry of activity as the others seemed to vie for a better position and try to ease the big one out.
Lee counted twenty-nine crocodiles at the base of the piling. She anxiously looked around, then a smile came to her face as she felt a fresh breeze beginning to blow. The wind was coming from the east, blowing out toward the Gulf. "David, the title's changing."
"Whoopee," he said in a sour voice. "Now those creatures will be able to reach us."
Within ten minutes the water began to rise as it flooded into the Gulf from the river's mouth. Lee then pulled the stick down from the top of the piling and held it like a spear.
"All right, David, let's see what happens when you feed your other shoe to that big one. Hold it out and dangle it just above his mouth. Keep teasing him until I tell you to drop it."
Suddenly David got the idea. A broad grin spread across his square face. "You think you can kill it with that spear while its head is raised?"
"No David, I'm not going to try to kill it. His buddies are going to do it for us."
David painfully stretched his arms to get the circulation going again and then removed his other shoe. He held it by the laces and dangled it over the yawning jaws of the creatures snapping at it below.
When the big crocodile returned to the midst of them and bullied his way up upon their backs, David swung the shoe lower until it was a scant few inches above its cavernous jaws.
“Work him over that way a little, to your right."
David swung out and the crocodile drove the others out of his way trying to reach it. "Hold it," Lee whispered tensely, getting set with her makeshift spear.
She waited until the crocodile's jaws were almost vertical before she thrust down, aiming the sharp glass at the tender underside of its throat. Her aim was true. She succeeded in wounding the reptile.
Almost before she had withdrawn the makeshift spear blood began to spurt from the laceration. The other crocodiles began to rush their wounded fellow, incensed at the scent of fresh blood.
In minutes the water below them had become a churning inferno of thrashing beasts, bent upon devouring the biggest creature of all who had suddenly come to a fitting end, no longer the feared ruler, no longer the dreaded nemesis who cheated them out of the juiciest morsels.
David looked around at Lee and shuddered. "It won't be long before—"
"Don't say it, David."
"I'm sorry," he said, thinking that she was becoming sick at the thought of being devoured like that.
Lee smiled and pinched David's cheek. "Don't take it so hard, dear. Everything's going to be all right now. Look."
He followed the direction of her gaze. Everything looked the same to him and he had no idea whatsoever of what she had meant.
After a while Lee patted his cheek. "The tide, darling. Isn't it wonderful?"
David looked down at the rising water. He gritted his teeth and shivered in the wind which was chilly now, blowing upon his wet clothing and exposed flesh. "I wish I knew what in hell you're talking about."
"Look down there," she laughed, pointing at the dark shapes of the crocodiles. "What do you see?"
And then it dawned on David. The crocodiles were swimming away. He looked at her with incredulity.
"How come? You mean they ate their fill and—?"
Lee laughed. "In five or ten minutes as more of that fresh river water Hoods this area those creatures will all have swum out to the salt water. Crocodiles can't tolerate fresh water, you know. And that's when we swim for it. I figure we'll still have enough time to make it to the mainland before dawn."
David shook his head in wonder as the last few crocodiles circled the piling and then one by one, began to swim away, their pointed snouts cutting through the water.