A splash, and the first of the logistic vessels had dropped its stern anchor, the big drum winch on the afterdeck reeling out the hawser as the ship nosed into the quay. The bow doors opened, then with a clank and a crash, the ramp dropped on to the quay. By then the second vessel was coming in alongside it and a moment later the vehicles inside the two slab-sided hulls, their engines already running, began to trundle out. They were half-tracks, each of them mounting what looked like a heavy Bofors gun, and as they came off the ramps they were joined by small detachments of the men on shore.
Behind the half-tracks came men, dozens of them, dressed in some drab uniform and loaded down with equipment, each of them pausing for a moment as they stepped on to the terra firma of the quay's concrete edge. It was as though they needed to find their feet. Some, as they stood there, arched their backs and stretched. A babble of human voices reached up to us. It was the natural reaction of men who had been cooped up in a confined space for some considerable time and for a moment the scene below us was one of disorder, almost chaos. Then somebody shouted. I think it was Evans, and the men standing around the parked trucks began splitting up and moving to join the new arrivals, the melee gradually.sorting itself out as they formed up into units and marched off to embark in the waiting trucks or climb on to the backs of the half-tracks.
It was less than ten minutes from the time the LCTs had put their ramps down to the moment when the local vehicles were all loaded and the whole convoy beginning to move off, and by then I was convinced that what we were witnessing was the start of an armed usurpation of the political power in the island. Who the men were that had landed from the two LCTs, where they had come from — that was of no importance for the moment. What was important was to alert somebody in Mahon to the danger. I saw it all in a mental flash, dissident elements, gathered from the various towns, meeting here to be given arms and then to be distributed amongst the newly arrived mercenaries, or whatever they were, to guide them to objectives that had already been decided on.
It seemed ridiculous on 'the face of it. There couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty to two hundred men down there on the quay and the military garrison of the island I knew to be somewhere around 15,000. But if what Petra had told me was correct, the effect of the previous night's violence had been a redeployment of the available forces, so that the towns, and particularly the uzbanizacionsinhabited by foreign visitors, were fully protected. As a result, the men below me had not only the advantage of surprise — essential in an operation of this sort — but also the certainty that the island's defences were thinly spread and the targets they would be aiming at that much more vulnerable. In such circumstances anything was possible.
All this passed through my mind in a flash as the vehicles moved out on to the steep road up from the port and Lennie and I flung ourselves back across the road and into the car. 'Mahon,' I told Petra. 'Lights on and drive like hell.'
She didn't hesitate. She had seen the ships, the mustering men. She swung out on to the Alayor road, her foot hard down and the elderly Beetle shaking and swaying at the rear. 'Who are they?' She was taking a bend fast, pines rushing at us. 'What are you going to do?' And when I said I had to get to the frigate, she started to argue, asking why I didn't stop off somewhere and phone the nearest Guardia Civilpost or Military Headquarters in Mahon.
'For God's sake! Who would believe me?' I started to remind her then that I was suspected of complicity in the Martinez murder. 'Anyway,' I added, 'they'll almost certainly have cut the telephone wires.'
'Alayor then. Alayor is nearer than Mahon.'
'No, Mahon,' I told her. It was Gareth I needed. He had all the means of communication there on board, the whole world at call. And then I was briefing her what to tell Soo after she had dropped us off at the Maritime pontoon, who to telephone, very conscious that it would be the early hours of the morning, everybody asleep and in no mood to believe that danger was imminent.
'You'll have to come with me,' she argued. 'Even if I can get through to somebody in authority…'
'No/ I said. 'I've got to make contact with Gareth.'
But the frigate was something too remote for her to grasp, and anyway she did not want the responsibility of alerting people locally. 'You know what they are. They won't believe a woman. I'll never get it across to them.' And even when I told her she was one of the few people outside of government they would believe, that as an English archaeologist she had the standing of a scientist and therefore would be regarded as a reliable witness, she went on arguing until the crossroads came up in the headlights and I put my hand on her knee and told her to turn left for Mahon or I'd switch the engine off, drive the car myself and leave her at the side of the road.
An angry silence filled the car after she had made the turn, the road snaking through a forest of pine, with the scent of resin all-pervading, then straightening out with no sign of lights anywhere. Something flapped across the beam of our headlights, a kite probably. We reached the turn-off to Favaritx, and still nothing on the road. In fact, we did not see another vehicle until we were running into the outskirts of Mahon. Where the road curved down the hill from the main Ciudadela highway we had to wait for a small convoy of three army trucks which swung into the road in front of us, then turned off to the left, almost certainly bound for the Zona Militar barracks out on La Mola.
'Why not try the Naval Base?' Petra said. 'Fernando likes you. He would believe what you told him.'
I had already thought of that. It was very tempting, the Naval Base so close we were almost at the entrance to it. But how long would it take me to get through to Perez? 'No,' I said. 'Gareth is a safer bet.' I was watching the tail-lights of the convoy climbing up the hill beside the Base, the white beam of their heads shining on the heath-land scrub with its pillboxes and old stone fortifications built to stand against Napoleon. Another ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, and other vehicles would be rolling up that road on to the long peninsula that formed the northern arm of the finest deep-water natural port in the Western Mediterranean, and at the end of that peninsula was La Mola with its barracks and casements and those huge guns. I had absolutely no doubt that this would be one of the main objectives, La Mola being little more than an island, the neck joining it to the main arm of the land so narrow it could readily be sealed with mines, the whole garrison then cut off. 'Keep going/ I told her. 'I haven't time to argue with the Navy guard at the entrance. Ariel Perez might be in Ciudadela, anywhere.'
We passed the turning to the Base and over my left shoulder there were lights on a freighter lying alongside the new quay, and beyond it, lights flashing green on the naval jetty. Then we were under the mass of Mahon itself, hammering along the waterfront past the commercial quay. There was a ferry lying there and out beyond Bloody Island I could see the dim shape of Medusalying broadside to the town. A minute later we had rounded Punta Maritime and Petra was bringing the car to a halt at the pontoon. I remember telling her to say something nice to Soo for me as I flung open the door and leapt out, the black, limpid water of the harbour washing lazily at the concrete of the roadway, the wooden boards of the pontoon moving under my feet. 'You reck'n they'll go for La Mola?' Lennie asked as he cord-whipped the outboard into life and we nosed out past the mooring lines of a big French sloop, the bows lifting as he increased the revs, heading to pass just north of Bloody Island where the frigate's bows were pointing towards Nelson's Golden Farm.