They followed these somewhat autocratic instructions without comment, Plunkett breaking out the electric lanterns and handing one each to Raeburn and Dillon before hefting the cutting equipment onto his shoulder and scooping up the bag with the flares. As they began trudging up the beach, heading for the cliffs with Raeburn in the lead, the tiny radio in his pocket beeped.
Plunkett stopped dead in his tracks, and Dillon said, "What's that?" as Raeburn pulled out the radio and lifted it to his mouth.
"Go," he acknowledged, also drawing the Walther as he turned.
"Rose secured," came the terse reply, even as the moonlight glinted off the gun-metal in Raeburn's hand.
"Stay where you are, gentlemen," Raeburn murmured, before lifting the radio to his mouth to acknowledge. "Roger."
"What the devil's going on?" Plunkett demanded, as Dillon glanced back at him in alarm.
Raeburn moved aside and gestured with the gun for the two to come on past him.
"Please take the lead, Mr. Dillon," he said quietly. "There's still a great deal of work to be done this evening."
As Dillon sidled on past, keeping a wary eye on the gun, Plunkett followed, tight-jawed - and balked in his tracks as two outlandish human forms stepped suddenly between him and his first mate, out from behind an outcropping of rock. The pair had shaved heads, and were wearing what looked like bright orange sarongs. Though these men were old, Plunkett vaguely remembered seeing kids dressed like this in Galway one summer, amiably dispensing meditation tracts to passers-by.
But there was nothing amiable or meditative about the way these two moved briskly forward, each bearing a strange triple-edged dagger. As Plunkett uttered a croaked cry of dismay, one of the monks raised his blade in warning, pointed straight at Plunkett, while the other tapped Dillon's forehead with the point.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DILLON went rigid, quivering convulsively as if struck by an electric charge, his lantern glowing momentarily brighter before tumbling from his hands. Plunkett backpedalled frantically, slamming into the side of the cliff behind him and dropping his duffel bag. When Dillon's spasms abated, he crumpled to his knees in the sand, staring blindly ahead. The man who had touched him caught him easily under one elbow to keep him from falling over.
"Jayzus, Mary, and Joseph!" Plunkett muttered, and hastily crossed himself.
The gesture did not escape Raeburn.
"I doubt that will avail you very much, Mr. Plunkett, unless you are a man of far greater depth than I take you for. And I wouldn't even think about trying to run. I doubt my associates would take it kindly. Mr. Dillon, please leave your satchel, and go back and get into the dinghy. I shouldn't want you to drown when the tide comes in."
Plunkett blenched visibly as Dillon shouldered out of the strap on the satchel and got to his feet, oblivious to anything around him as he walked back to the beached inflatable and got in, sitting statue-like amidships. Running a dry tongue across his lips, Plunkett managed to whisper, "Who the devil are you people?''
Raeburn disdained to answer the question, only tucking his pistol into his waistband as he turned back to the two Phurba priests.
"I see you got here in good time," he said in German. "So, which way is this cave?"
The two Tibetans traded glances. Then Kurkar silently turned and pointed with his Phurba toward a shadowy section of the cliff fronting the cove. Frowning, Raeburn directed the beam of his lantern upward, where its glare lit up a jagged hole in the cliff-face, with the edges showing raw like a newly opened wound.
Smiling faintly, Raeburn turned back to Plunkett and gestured toward the satchel Dillon had left. Nagpo had retrieved the fallen lantern.
"All right, pick that up and come with me."
Plunkett's gaze flicked to the pistol in Raeburn's waistband, but at his captor's pointed glance back at the nearest Phurba priest, he bent to obey, awkwardly slinging the satchel alongside his bag of flares, then reshouldering the duffel bag. He staggered a little under the combined weight as Raeburn directed him toward a tumbled rockfall at the cliffs base.
"I can't climb that," he protested, faltering to a standstill. "Not carrying these."
"My associates believe that you can," Raeburn informed him. "And you will - unless, of course, you prefer to find out precisely what happened to your man. Personally, I would advise against it. I'm told that he will suffer no permanent harm - but I am never entirely certain, when dealing with another language and culture, whether the vocabulary is exactly equivalent. Start climbing, Mr. Plunkett - and do be careful. You're carrying explosives."
"What the - "
"You did indicate to Mr. Kavanagh that obtaining explosives on such short notice would be impossible - something about government red tape intended to foil would-be terrorists. Fortunately, Mr. Kavanagh is extremely resourceful. Climb, Mr. Plunkett."
As he gestured upward with his lantern, Plunkett made a noise between a groan and a sob, now convinced that Raeburn himself was one of those terrorists, but he was already readjusting the weight of the satchel and the flares, to counterbalance the duffel bag, and began immediately, if laboriously, to climb.
The rockfall had made a rude stairway leading up to a diagonal ledge. Soon puffing and panting under his burden, Plunkett scuffed his way sideways along the ledge, now and then casting nervous glances over his shoulder at the moonlit beach below. Raeburn followed hard on his captive's heels, shining the electric torch onto the path ahead, his own thoughts carefully screened behind a mask of professional inscrutability. With Nagpo and Kurkar keeping close behind him, shadowing his every move, he knew he was as much a prisoner of the present situation as Plunkett. But with any luck, he might succeed in altering the circumstances in his own favor.
The threshold to the opening was choked with fresh rubble. Squeezing past Plunkett, Raeburn shone the lantern inside and then entered, bidding Plunkett to follow. With the two Phurba priests following after, the skipper of the Rose needed no further encouragement, though he stifled a curse as he stumbled on rough footing and nearly fell.
The opening became a passage that wormed its way into the fabric of the cliff. After a couple of tight, zigzag turns, the party arrived at the mouth of a second opening, where light from Raeburn's lantern dispersed into open space beyond. Peering ahead and past his captor, Plunkett gasped and nearly dropped his burden.
"Sweet Mother of Mercy!"
Even Raeburn had to admit that the submarine made an impressive sight. Framed by the vault of the surrounding cavern, it slumbered half-in, half-out of the shadows like some giant, armor-plated prehistoric creature. Leaning out from the entryway. Raeburn let the lantern-light play over the long, streamlined hull as Nagpo did the same. Bracketed between the deadly bristle of fore and aft gun-turrets, the conning tower reared up above the straddling swell of the fuel tanks like the dorsal fin of a hunting shark.
The incoming tide was being channelled into the cavern through an underwater rift. Already the sub was partially awash amid a gentle roil of greenish-black swells. The air stank of spilt oil and rotting kelp. The vibration of the surf, pounding at the cliffs from outside, sent echoes bouncing round the walls like the mutter of phantom voices.
There in the cavern mouth, with Nagpo and Kurkar looking on, Raeburn bade Plunkett put down his burdens and break out the flares. After planting one to either side of where they stood, he had Plunkett toss half a dozen more among the rocks opposite the conning tower to provide general illumination. The harsh, actinic glare sent monstrous, magnified shadows leaping toward the cavern roof as Plunkett reclaimed his somewhat lightened load and reluctantly followed Raeburn down toward the bow-end of the sub. Smoke from the flares hung wraith-like on the stale air as the four men sprang across onto the foredeck and made their way carefully aft, pausing beside the forward hatch.