It was an impossible demand, and McAuliff realized he could not prolong
it more than a few days. Alison had work to do; minor over the coastal
area, a great deal once they started inland. But all beginnings were
awkward under pressure; he could not separate this particular
concentration that easily, nor did he wish to.
Very rapidly your own personal antennae will be activated automatically.
Their function will be second nature, as it were. You will fall into a
rhythm, actually. It is the connecting link between your divided
objectives. You will recognize it and build a degree of confidence in
the process.
Hammond.
But not during the first few days; there was no confidence to speak of.
He did grant, however, that the fear was lessening … partially,
imperceptibly. He thought this was due to the constant physical
activity and the fact that he could require such men as Sam and Barak
Moore’s “special forces” to take up posts around Alison. And at any
given moment he could turn his head and there she was-on the beach, in a
small boat-chipping rocks, instructing one of the crew in the
manipulation of a drill bore.
But, again, were not all these his antennae? And was not the lessening
of fear the beginnings of confidence? R. C Hammond. Supercilious son
of a bitch. Manipulator. Speaker of truths.
But not the whole truth.
The areas bordering Braco Beach were hazardous. Sheets of coral overlay
extended hundreds of yards out into the surf. McAuliff and Sam Tucker
crawled over the razorsharp miniature hills of ocean polyps and set up
their geodometers and cameras. Both men incurred scores of minor cuts,
sore muscles, and sorer backs.
That was the third day, marked by the special relief of Alison’s somehow
commandeering a fisherman’s flatbottomed boat and, with her two
“escorts,” bringing a picnic lunch of cold chicken out to the reef. It
was a comfortable hour on the most uncomfortable picnic grounds
imaginable.
The Jamaican revolutionary, Floyd, who had guided the boat into its
precarious coral mooring succinctly observed that the beach was flatter
and far less wet.
“But then they’d have to crawl all the way out here again,” Alison had
replied, holding onto her wide-brimmed cloth sun hat.
“Mon, you have a good woman!” This observation came from Floyd’s
companion, the huge, quiet Jamaican named Lawrence.
The five of them perched-there was no other description-on the highest
ridges of the coral jetty, the spray cascading up from the base of the
reef, creating faint rainbow prisms of color in its mist. Far out on
the water two freighters were passing each other, one heading for the
open sea, the second aiming for the bauxite docks east of Runaway Bay. A
luxurious cabin cruiser rigged for deep-sea fishing sliced through the
swells several hundred yards in front of them, the passengers pointing
in astonishment at the strange sight of five humans picnicking on a
reef.
McAuliff watched the others respond to the cruiser’s surprised riders.
Sam Tucker stood up, gestured at the coral, and yelled, “Diamonds!”
Floyd and Lawrence, their black, muscular bodies bared to the waist,
roared at Sam’s antics. Lawrence pried loose a coral stone and held it
up, then chucked it to Tucker, who caught it and shouted again, “Twenty
carats!”
Alison, -her blue jeans and light field blouse drenched with the spray,
joined in the foolish game. She elaborately accepted the coral stone,
presented by Sam, and held it on top of her outstretched hand as though
it were a jeweled ring of great value. A short burst of breeze whipped
across the reef, Alison dropped the stone in an effort to hold her hat,
whose brim had caught the wind. She was not successful; the hat glided
off and disappeared over a small mound of coral. Before Alex could rise
and go after it, Lawrence was on his feet, dashing surefootedly over the
rocks and down toward the water. Within seconds he had the hat, now
soaked, and effortlessly leaped back up from the water’s edge and handed
it to Alison.
The incident had taken less than ten seconds.
“You keep the hat on the head, Mis Aleesawn. Them sun very hot; roast
skin like cooked chicken, mon.”
“Thank you, Lawrence,” said Alison gratefully, securing the wet hat over
her head. “You run across this reef as though it were a golf green!”
“Lawrence is a fine caddy, Mis Alison,” said Floyd smiling, still
sitting. “At the Negril Golf Club he is a favorite, is that not so,
Lawrence?”
Lawrence grinned and glanced at McAuliff knowingly.
“Eh, mon. At Negril they alla time ask for me. I cheat good, mon. Alla
time I move them golf balls out of bad places to the smooth grass. I
think everybody know. Alla time ask for Lawrence.”
Sam Tucker chuckled as he sat down again. “Alla time big goddamn tips,
I’d say.”
“Plenty good tips, mon,” agreed Lawrence.
“And probably something more,” added McAuliff, looking at Floyd and
remembering the exclusive reputation of the Negril Golf Club. “Alla
time plenty of information.”
“Yes, mon.” Floyd smiled conspiratorially. “It is as they say: the rich
Westmorelanders talk a great deal during their games of golf.”
Alex fell silent. It seemed strange, the whole scene. Here they were,
the five of them, eating cold chicken on a coral reef three hundred
yards from shore, playing children’s games with passing cabin cruisers
and joking casually about the surreptitious gathering of information on
a golf course.
Two black revolutionaries-recruits from a band of hill country
guerrillas. A late-middle-aged “soldier of fortune.”
(Sam Tucker would object to the cliche, but if it was ever applicable,
he was the applicant.) A strikingly handsome … lovely English
divorcee whose background just happened to include undercover work for
an international police organization. And one forty-four-year-old
ex-infantry man who six weeks ago flew to London thinking he was going
to negotiate a geological survey contract.
The five of them. Each knowing that he was not what he appeared to be;
each doing what he was doing … she was doing . . . because there
were no alternatives. Not really.
It wasn’t strange; it was insane. And it struck McAuliff once again
that he was the least qualified among these people, under these
circumstances. Yet because of the circumstances-having nothing to do
with qualifications-he was their leader.
Insanity.
By the seventh day, working long hours with few breaks, Alex and Sam had
charted the coastline as far as Burwood, five miles from the mouth of
the Martha Brae, their western perimeter. The Jensens and James
Ferguson kept a leisurely parallel pace, setting up tables with
microscopes, burners, vials, scales, and chemicals as they went about
their work.
None found anything exceptional, nor did they expect to in the coastal
regions. The areas had been studied fairly extensively for industrial
and resort purposes; there was nothing of consequence not previously
recorded. And since Ferguson’s botanical analyses were closely allied
with Sam Tucker’s soil evaluations, Ferguson volunteered to -make the
soil tests, freeing Tucker to finish the topographies with Alex.
These were the geophysical concerns. There was something else, and none
could explain it. It was first reported by the Jensens.
A sound. Only a sound. A low wail or cry that seemed to follow them
throughout an entire afternoon.
When they first heard it, it came from the underbrush beyond the dunes.
They thought that perhaps it was an animal in pain. Or a small child in
some horrible anguish, an agony that went beyond a child’s tears. In a
very real sense, it was terrifying.
So the Jensens raced beyond the dunes into the underbrush, thrashing at
the tangled foliage to find the source of the dreadful, frightening cry.
They had found nothing.
The animal, or the child, or whatever it was, had fled.
Shortly thereafter-late in the same afternoon-James Ferguson came
running down to the beach, his face an expression of bewildered panic.
He had been tracing a giant mollusk fern to its root source; the trek
had taken him up into a rocky precipice above the shore. He had been in
the center of the overhanging vines and macca-fats when a vibration-at
first. a vibration-caused his whole body to tremble. There followed a
wild, piercing screech, both highpitched and full, that pained his ears
beyond-he saidendurance.
He had gripped the vines to keep from plummeting off the precipice.
Terrified, he had scrambled down hysterically to firmer ground and raced
back to the others.
James had not been more than a few hundred yards away.
Yet none but he had heard the terrible thing.
Whitehall had another version of the madness. The black scholar had
been walking along the shoreline, half sand, half forest, of Bengal Bay.
It was an aimless morning constitutional; he had no destination other
than the point, perhaps.
About a mile east of the motel’s beach, he rested briefly on a large
rock overlooking the water. He heard a noise from behind, and so he