He recalled the nightmare vividly. How that dark night in the Atlantic a huge wave smashed the Tau Cross and snapped off the two weaker masts and drove the mid-ship mast down to dip into the water. Water spilled over her decks and into the cabin, the floor and the nav station awash in it. Tools, plastic bags, food, parts, computer paper and a printer and other things were left floating about. Canned goods and equipment manuals had taken flight.
Then the blackness of the storm had somehow grown even darker than Warren imagined possible, a kind of black-green both inside and outside the cabin, and Warren, terrified of dying before completing his mission in life, huddled below. He felt the pressure on his ears, his chest, his heart. He was going to die here, like this, alone, just as his dead mother’s voice had told him he would, his life unfulfilled while Mother smiled down on his pitiable situation.
Mother always had the last laugh. Suddenly a window had exploded, bursting inward with wind and water, which flooded through as it to punctuate his dark, embracing resignation of death.
Even before the w indow had blown, he had realized that his ship was over in the water farther than any ship had a right to be. But then, she righted like a cork, bobbing upright, as if to curse the powers of the ocean, to defy them. She continued to flounder about all that night, and Warren grew violently ill, but never did the Tau dip so low again into the water, and the window only took on rainwater after that.
It was as if he’d been given a sign, that he must go forth, that his own gods would not allow those of the sea-or those devils that drove Mother-to end Warren’s career; that he would give offerings and sacrifices in the form of humans to Tau, since Tau in turn protected him.
Last night’s storm which had chased Warren down the Gulf and the one chasing in from west of his position now were no match for the Tau Cross, Warren assured himself. He would, in a matter of fifteen, maybe sixteen hours, be on the Cayman Islands. Once there, he’d start over.
Mother whispered otherwise, her voice hiding in the trade winds, mewing like a grinning cat, saying, “You’ll suffer now, Warren… They’re after you, and they will catch you, and they will burn and torture you in ways I never burned or tortured you-in ways you never imagined possible…”
“ Shut up, you dead bitch! Shut up!” Warren screamed at the wind.
Jessica and Eriq’s flight to the Cayman Islands, with its detour to Miami, was clear and bright and smooth and without complication. Once they came on radar at Miami International, Don Lansing took the controls and did the honors, impressing Jessica with his nerve at bringing in such a small plane amid such giants as the 747s and wide- bodied jumbos, which looked like modern-day dinosaurs and fire-farting dragons.
While Eriq had been catching some sleep in the rear. Jessica had asked Don to tell her more about himself. He’d gone directly from high school into the military and had done a stint as a pilot in Desert Storm, he told her. She was once again impressed.
“ What kind of planes?”
“ Nothing too romantic. ARFs-Aerial Reconnaissance Flights. Photographing-low-level spying, I guess you’d call it. I didn’t see any real action, although my plane took a couple of flak hits.”
“ So, are you sorry you didn’t get to drop any bombs?”
“ No… not really… Managed to get back with a fairly clean conscience and a healthy respect for life…”
“ So, why isn’t a good-looking young man like yourself married?” she asked him.
“ Guess that’d be my fault. I keep running from any kind of real commitment, I guess. Don’t ever feel ready, mature enough, secure enough, you know, in myself.”
She nodded her understanding.
“ But there is this one girl,” he confided. “If ever I’m going to take the plunge…”
She smiled knowingly, and they heard Eriq groan as he shook himself awake, terribly uncomfortable in the tiny space they all occupied.
Once on the ground, they all had jobs to do. Don refueled and filed their flight plan. Eriq contacted the Miami bureau of the FBI to let people there know their plans, and he also gathered drinks and sandwiches for the three of them, while Jessica contacted the MPD, leaving word with the chief of police and talking to Dr. Andrew Coudriet, who had information from Moyler in England. One of Allain’s prints which earlier had been sent to Moyler had found a match with one taken for an insurance policy in England for a schoolboy named Warren Tauman. Moyler’s fax, according to Andrew Coudriet, was most definite: Allain and Tauman were one and the same.
“ Jackpot,” said Jessica over the phone to Dr. Coudriet. “Now if we can only corner the bastard.”
“ I have a feeling that if anyone can, you will. Dr. Coran.” Now, a little over an hour out of Miami International, Jessica watched Cuba appear and dissolve below them, as they had to fly above Cuban airspace in order to safely avert any problems there. Once across Cuban airspace, they descended. All of this gave Jessica a great opportunity at the controls, and Lansing seemed pleased to allow her to enjoy herself.
Below them sprawled the glittering, sun-dappled east Caribbean Sea on their southward tack for the three British islands which together formed a crown colony.
They’d stayed on this course for an additional few hours when suddenly the lush islands came into view. They were as breathtaking as when last Jessica had seen them in the company of a past love, Captain Alan Rych- man, now Commissioner Rychman of the NYPD. She recalled their having dived the crystal-blue waters off Grand Cayman, a twenty-two-mile-long island, eight miles at its widest point, located some two hundred miles northwest of the west end of Jamaica and a hundred miles south of Cuba.
Still, even the gorgeous sight of the Caymans below couldn’t dispel the fact that Jessica had become frustrated, as had Eriq, who remained silent in the rear. She could sense his seething. They had seen nothing whatever of the fleeing Tau Cross and their fugitive. Lansing, too, had gone silent, sensing that the mood inside the small space they occupied had soured considerably.
With the wind at their backs, they had made good time and fuel consumption had not been a problem. Their having had to fly over Cuban airspace at a safe distance had, however, presented one problem: It had taken them to such altitudes that their eyes were for a time useless in attempting to spot Patric Allain’s boat, if it was down there. By the time they were able to return to eye level, hundreds upon hundreds of nautical miles had gone un- searched.
There had been so much to cover the man’s tracks; so much in nature had conspired against Jessica that it angered her. The other two islands here, located approximately eighty miles northeast of Grand Cayman, were Little Cayman at ten miles long and two miles wide, and Cayman Brae, twelve miles long and one and a quarter miles wide. The islands looked like jewels spread across the satin-blue water from this distance up; created of coral, the soil was fertile, and Jessica recalled a people of grace and good cheer and beautiful features.
Jessica knew from her previous visit that fishing, shipbuilding and stock raising were the chief industries here. The place was also good for thatch rope, mahogany, turtle shells, green turtles, shark skins, cattle and ponies. She’d done a bit of research back then, learning that Genoese- born navigator Christopher Columbus had discovered the islands in 1503 and had named them the Tortugas-Spanish for Turtle Islands. The place still literally “crawled” with turtles.