They emerged from the cabin to find Aoife aboard the Rose and pointing out something on the shore to McLeod.
"Right there, in the lee of that outcropping," she said, as McLeod took the glasses and began to scan. "I think I'm seeing the stern of the Rose's dinghy. I couldn't spot anyone moving around, but that probably means they've already gone into the cave - wherever that is."
As Adam joined them, McLeod handed him the glasses.
"Straight ahead at eleven o'clock," he muttered. "You can see just a glint of moonlight on the outboard at the stern."
Adam found it easily, then scanned farther along the beach and upward, searching for an opening.
"That beach looks like it disappears at high tide," he said, "which is not long from now, if I'm not mistaken. Magnus, can we get ashore? I don't see a cave, but it almost has to be in those cliffs off to the right."
"Aye, just let me get chummie below and cuff him to something," Magnus grunted, as Adam headed back to the Lady G.
"First let me have that ring he's wearing," McLeod muttered, tucking his pistol into his waistband.
"What, spoils of the Hunt?'' Magnus asked.
"Hell, no." McLeod gave his Irish counterpart a decidedly feral grin as he pulled the ring off and hefted it. "How deep is it here?"
"Oh, probably thirty feet or so."
"Deep enough, then," McLeod said - and tossed the ring overboard. Magnus chuckled, then lifted their unconscious prisoner under the arms and dragged him below. By the time he re-emerged, Aoife and Peregrine had reeled in the Lady G's dinghy and drawn it alongside, and Adam was watching McLeod climb aboard, handing down a pair of the infrared binoculars.
"I've cuffed both of them, for good measure," Magnus said to Adam, with a jut of his chin back to the Rose's cabin. "They'll not be going anywhere. Shall I come with you and Noel, or do you want to keep your team together?"
"Ordinarily I would," Adam said, "but in this case, I think Peregrine ought to stay with Aoife and you come with me. You aren't armed, Peregrine," he added, at the artist's crestfallen look. "The backup you and Aoife can give us doesn't depend on brawn or firepower."
"Take one of these, then," Aoife said, handing Adam a pocket-sized walkie-talkie. "I'll put Peregrine in charge of the link aboard the Lady G. And be careful, all of you."
Nodding his thanks, Adam tucked the walkie-talkie into an outer pocket of his waxed jacket, then climbed lightly down into the dinghy beside McLeod. His skean dubh was safely zipped into an inner pocket. Magnus handed down a pair of electric torches, then came aboard and settled in the stern. The little outboard came to life with a healthy whirr, and as Aoife and Peregrine cast off the bow and stern lines, Magnus goosed the throttle and swung the bow around to begin heading toward the shore. McLeod put the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the cliffs ahead, then glanced aside at Adam.
"You don't suppose that Lynx chap back on the boat will come to, and try to cause trouble, do you?"
"I doubt it," Adam replied. "He may come to, but he's going to have one hell of a headache - hardly conducive to any serious concentration. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I just took a bit of a precaution, that's all," McLeod said, returning to his scanning. "I tossed his Lynx ring into the drink; figured a little salt water would go a long way toward cleaning the nasties off it."
"He did; I saw him," Magnus confirmed, satisfaction in his tone.
Adam allowed himself an amused chuckle. "It's fortunate for you that our Lynx was unconscious," he said. "You both do realize, of course, that it was a valuable ring, and he's apt to scream 'Theft!' when he sees it's gone."
"Ring? What ring?" Magnus retorted. "When I arrested what I took to be a terrorist gun-runner, he wasn't wearing any ring."
McLeod did not turn, but his grim chuckle floated just above the sound of the little outboard.
They fell silent after that, though, for the air had begun to tingle with uncanny fluctuations of energy. As the dinghy neared the shore, heading for the now-visible second dinghy, Adam could feel that energy crawling over his skin like an assault of marching ants. He scanned the cliffs ahead and to the right, where an area of darkness just below the cliff-top drew his gaze like a magnet.
"Look there, Noel," he recommended, pointing. "Is that an opening?"
McLeod turned the glasses in that direction and gave a grunt.
"It's an opening, all right," he agreed, handing the binoculars back. "And I'd bet my next paycheck Raeburn's already inside."
"You won't get any takers here," Adam said, confirming with the glasses. "Magnus, let's get this thing ashore."
A rev of the outboard and an incoming wave swept them through the last of the shore-break. A moment later, they grounded on the sand mere yards from the other inflatable. At close range, they now could see a motionless form sitting hunched inside it.
"Bloody hell," McLeod muttered, drawing his pistol. "Is he dead?"
Leaving Magnus to secure their own boat, McLeod scrambled ashore with weapon at the ready, Adam following with a torch. The man in the boat was alive but unconscious, even comatose.
"Another of the legitimate crew of the Rose of Tralee, I would guess," Adam said, checking the man's pulse and peering under eyelids.
"There doesn't seem to be a mark on him," McLeod said. "Why is he not responding?"
"It appears to be some form of magical entrancement I've never encountered before," Adam replied as Magnus came to join them. "He's practically reeking of it - but I won't know how to counter it until I meet up with the person who cast the spell in the first place."
Magnus glanced nervously over his shoulder at the cliffs beyond.
"Well, he ought to be safe enough here, until we get things sorted out. Shall we?"
Back on board the Lady Gregory, standing shoulder to shoulder with Aoife at the side rail, Peregrine could see nothing of the shore party, though he could just make out the two dinghies. He lifted the spare binoculars to his eyes, but the moonlight itself confounded him, leaping fluorescently from rock to rock in some places, elsewhere leaving deep clefts of impenetrable shadow. As he fiddled with the sights, trying to get a clearer view, he became aware of the distant mechanical drone of a propeller-driven aircraft.
It seemed curiously out of place - a fugitive from some distant world of daylight and sanity. He looked up as he realized that the sound was coming closer - and glimpsed its swollen belly as it passed across the face of the moon. The shape did not register until it banked into the wind and he saw the pontoons fitted to its high wings.
"Aoife?" he breathed. "What the devil is a seaplane doing out here at this hour? You don't suppose it's going to land?"
Chapter Thirty-One
IN the cavern above which the seaplane circled, nascent lightnings crept along the hull of U-636 in a flurry of fluorescent green. Huddled far forward in the conning tower, Francis Raeburn ducked low as a javelin of light crackled down the periscope above his head. His lean face tight with tension, he darted a hand into the front of his jacket and took out a slender rod of stripped ashwood.
The rod was tipped with an iron-bound lump of rock crystal. With a muttered incantation, Raeburn used it to trace a sign of personal warding around himself, between him and the open hatch. Another lightning bolt sheered off before it could hit the railing and struck the radio antenna instead. It hung there writhing like a serpent for the space of a heartbeat, then dissipated downward through the fabric of the deck.