“I don’t know what he’s up to. But I’m not going to run full speed into any trap.”
“It looks as if he’s heading for the strait,” Detweiller said.
“I might have known that,” Sam said. i The mountains were curving in, their arcs on both sides almost meeting a mile ahead. Here the black, white, and red-streaked walls formed straight-up-and-down precipices out of which The River boiled. The Rex, though it must be under full power, was only making twenty miles an hour. Its rate of progress would be even less if it entered the towering and dark passage.
“Do you really suppose John’s going to take her to the other side?” Sam said. He pounded his left palm with his fist. “By thunder, that’s it! He’s going to wait for us on the other side, catch us when we come out!”
“You vouldn’t be that thtupid, vould you?” Joe Miller said.
Sam ignored him. He strode to the radio operator. “Get me Anderson!”
The pilot of the Goose spoke with a broad Lowland Scots brogue. “Aye, we’ll go over and see what this skurlie is doing, Captain. But it’ll take some time to climb over the pass.”
“Don’t climb over the mountains; go through the pass,” Sam said. “If you see your chance, attack!” Then to Byron, “Heard anything?”
A slight annoyance passed over Byron’s face. “I’ll tell you as soon as I do.”
Sam laughed and said, “Sorry, John. But the idea of somebody planting explosives down there… well, it concerns me. Carry on.”
“Here it is,” Byron said as the warrant officer of Station 26 spoke. Sam swung around to stand by Byron.
“Ensign Santiago left about half an hour ago, sir,” Schindler said. “He put me in charge, said he was suffering from nervous diarrhea and he wanted to clean himself out so he wouldn’t disgrace himself. He said he’d be right back. He didn’t show up until ten minutes later, but I didn’t think much about it, sir, since he said he just couldn’t stop.
“He looked like he’d just had a shower, sir, was dripping wet. He said he’d fouled himself and so had to take a quick shower. Then, just after we heard the general call to report by the numbers, he excused himself again. But he hasn’t been back.”
“Station 27, report!” Byron said. He turned his head to Sam. “He might not be the only one.”
All thirty-five stations reported that no one else had been missing even for a minute.
“Well, he’s either hiding some place or went overboard,” Sam said.
“I doubt he could leave the boat without someone seeing him,” Byron said.
Sam called de Marbot. “Get all your marines, all, to search for Santiago. If he resists, shoot him. But I would like to talk to him if possible.”
Sam turned to Byron. “Santiago’s been with us from the beginning. John must have planted him, though how John knew about the laser I don’t know. We didn’t even think of it until after he stole the boat. And how in God’s name did Santiago find out about the laser? Even Queen Victoria’s sex life wasn’t a better secret.”
“He’s had plenty of time to dig around,” Byron said. “He’s a sly one. I never did trust the dago.”
“I liked him,” Sam said. “He was always congenial, very good at his duties, and a hell of a good poker player.”
Santiago was a seventeenth-century Venezuelan sailor who had captained a warship for ten years. Shipwrecked off an unidentified Caribbean island, he was speared by Indians as he struggled onto a beach. However, this only hastened his death a little. Syphilis had almost finished tearing him apart anyway.
“Of course,” Sam added, “he was awfully jealous of his women and he had his stupid Latin machismo. But after one of his women, a twentieth-century jukado expert, beat him up, he reconsidered his ways and treated the ladies as if they were worth their weight in gold.”
There were more pressing things to consider than Santiago’s ego. For one, how would John know that his agent had succeeded? John was unaware of the laser. He would have originally charged the Venezuelan with blowing up some vital part of the boat. That command had not been carried out, since the generators and electromechanical control centers were too well guarded.
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