Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt, James Reasoner

sons o’ bitches might’ve sunk her or shot up the motor.”
    “Better check it over before you crank it,” Gabriel suggested. He didn’t think his enemies had had time to plant a bomb on the boat, but it never hurt to make sure of these things.
    “Oh, yeah, good idea,” Hoyt agreed. “Those fellas you’re goin’ up against won’t stop at much, will they?”
    “From what I’ve seen, they won’t stop at anything,” Gabriel said.
    To give Hoyt credit, the old-timer didn’t demand to know what it was all about, which was good because Gabriel still didn’t know. He just checked over the airboat, reported that nobody had tampered with it, and started the motor. They swung away from the dock and Hoyt pointed the craft back toward St. Augustine.
    The roar of the motor was too loud for conversation, which was all right with Gabriel. He used the time toreplay in his head everything that had happened and to consider what he had learned from Krakowski.
    Instincts honed by years of dealing with trouble told Gabriel that General Granville Fordham Fargo was the key to the whole thing—thoughhow that could be, more than a century after the man lived, he couldn’t say. Mariella Montez, whoever she was, had been in possession of a flag that had definitely belonged to the general, as well as an old whiskey bottle that might have. She had come to the reception to give those two items to the Hunt Foundation, prompting a gang of gunmen to try to stop her. Mariella herself had to be important, too, and not only because she’d had the flag and the bottle. Otherwise they wouldn’t have kidnapped her.
    The last place anyone had seen General Fargo was Texas, Krakowski had said, but Gabriel thought it was safe to assume that the general had made it into Mexico. Otherwise the Fifth Georgia’s other battle flag wouldn’t have wound up in the museum in Mexico City.
    Again, it was only a slender lead…but a slender lead was better than none. It was time he made it to Mexico City himself, Gabriel decided.
    “We agreed on three hundred bucks,” Hoyt protested.
    “That was before you got shot at not once but twice,” Gabriel said as he pressed five hundred-dollar bills into the old-timer’s hand and closed Hoyt’s fingers around them. “You earned this, that’s for sure.”
    “Well…I ain’t gonna argue with you. We’ll just say that some of it’s for bein’ ignorant when the cops ask me about it. I won’t know where you came from or where you’re goin’. All I know is you waved a gun in my face and made me do what you told me.”
    Gabriel grinned. “Thanks, Hoyt. If they ever catch up to me, that’s what I’ll tell them, too.”
    They were back at the Ponce de Leon Harbor marina in St. Augustine now, having made it without any more trouble. It was early afternoon, and even though Gabriel hadn’t had any lunch yet, he wasn’t going to take the time for it. He shook hands with Hoyt, bid the old swamp rat farewell, and headed to the motel to pick up his gear and the rental car.
    He kept an eye out for the cops, thinking that Krakowski might have already put them on his trail, but he didn’t even sight a police cruiser on his way to the airport.
    A short time later he was in the air, talking by radio with Michael and filling him in on everything that had happened in Florida.
    “Good Lord! They tried to kill you twice today ? ”
    “It just proves that what ever we’re dealing with is pretty important,” Gabriel said. “To someone, anyway. Of course, we knew that when they tried to kill me twice yesterday. Not to mention when they were willing to shoot up the Metropolitan Museum.”
    Michael’s voice came crackling through the radio’s static. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to try to talk you out of continuing with this.”
    “None whatsoever. And you don’t really want me to. You don’t want the bastards to get away with it, either.”
    “I suppose not. And there’s Miss Montez to consider,