Abruptly awake, Hooker said, “It’s still dark.”
“The sun, she will soon be seeing you.”
With a nod, Hooker sat up and rubbed his face. He could smell the coffee brewing and heard fat sizzling in the pan, so he knew he could shower and shave before breakfast. A good man, that Billy Bright, he thought. Each day he was bringing him closer into the native ways until there would come a time when he would almost be the equal of Billy himself. Hooker let a small grin crease his face. Wouldn’t be too bad at that, he reflected.
On the way down to the boat Hooker asked, “What did you pack for lunch, Billy?”
“I don’t think you’d be pleased to know, sar.”
“Then why did you make it?”
“Because, sar, you will be pleased with the taste.”
“Gonna be one of those days,” Hooker said under his breath.
“What was that, sar?”
“A nice day,” he told him.
“Yes, a very nice day.” There was that lilt in the Carib’s voice and Hooker knew that Billy had heard what he said.
Guy’s got ears like a deer, he mused, silently this time.
An hour after they left the dock the cooler box at the transom was packed with fish, carefully iced down. Their catch would hold them for a full week, including a few cookouts for the friends in the area.
Times like this Billy fully appreciated his boss. He was not one to waste a resource like some of the other city people did. No fish would be hung on nails to be photographed, then discarded to the crabs under the pier. It wasn’t just sport. What they caught, they would eat.
“How’d you know these fish would run today, Billy?”
“It is something they do the same day every year, sar.”
“Since when do you own a calendar?”
Billy simply shrugged. “I can tell,” he said.
“Native intuition,” Hooker said, smiling.
Somehow, Billy grasped the meaning and smiled back. “Something like that, sar.”
“Then how about the others? We’re out here all alone.” He saw the little scowl of consternation on Billy’s face and let out a laugh. “Okay,” he told him, “I get it. These are fish for us city types. You only eat them when you douse them in that crazy sauce.”
“But they make good bait too, sar.”
“For what?”
“The great bill fish.”
“And what would you do if you caught one?”
“We would have a mighty feast, sar. All the village would come. We could invite the lady from the other side of the island...”
“Billy...”
“Okay, sar, I knock it up.”
“Knock it off, Billy.”
“There is a difference?”
“Yes. A very big difference.”
For a full thirty seconds Billy had been scanning the horizon, now his eyes were fixed on one area. Hooker squinted, trying to see what he was looking at, then finally spotted a pinpoint of a dot where the ocean met the sky. He was reaching for the binoculars when Billy said, “She be the Tellig, Mr. Hooker, sar.”
When he had focused the glasses, Hooker nodded. “How’d you know that?”
“Her name is on the stern, sar,” Billy said jokingly.
Hooker didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“Know where she’s heading?”
“Scara Island. Only place in that direction.” He walked to the wheel, made a twelve-degree correction to the east and locked it in place. “You want to go see,” he stated.
“Why?”
Billy shrugged again and simply said, “Lady on board. You know her.”
So, anything that went on in the bar was now public knowledge whether anyone was there or not. He wondered whether they had ESP or were all mind readers. He hoped it wasn’t the latter.
There were eight of them in all, four-foot-high spheres with equally spaced protrusions over their surfaces, completely covered with a coral formation from long years under the water. They nestled in soft beds of sand where the tides had deposited them, as far beachward as nature could move them. All around were pieces of wreckage and odd flotsam that had followed the sea drift to this one place. Palm trees, ripped from their islands by storms, lay like matchsticks the full length of the beach, and higher up wooden hatch covers from old sailing ships lay like white, feathery skeletons on the sand.
Chana finished photographing the last of the relics and put the camera back in the case. Talbot had carefully chipped away the coral in an area Lee Colbert had indicated until the identifying numbers were exposed. “They’re ours,” he said.
“I wonder how long they’ve been here,” Chana said.
“Considering how they’re sitting on top of other wreckage, they seem to be the latest stuff to arrive. There’s not much sand buildup around them at all.” He paused, thought a moment, then, “There was a full moon two weeks ago. If they came in on a flood tide, then it would account for their position. They were just set down nice and gently.”
“Not hard enough to jar those fuses?”
“That coral formation was heavy enough to stop that. Besides, there’s probably a good rust seizure around the base of those spurs where they enter the main body.”
“Maybe,” Chana said.
“Yes. Maybe.”
“You think they’re capable of detonation?”
“I wouldn’t want to be sitting on one if you hit it with a sledgehammer.”
“What about Berger’s theory of blast attrition?”
Lee gave her a curious stare and got right to the point. “If you want to set one off, let’s do it. We haven’t got the equipment to fire at one from the ship, but we do have the makings for our own detonator.”
Chana tapped the large camera bag she was carrying. “I’ve already brought the plastic and fuses.”
“I thought you would,” Lee said. “C-4?”
“A low-intensity variant. The activator is on the ship. We can blow it from there.”
“Then let’s get on with it. That one at the south end is the farthest away, so there shouldn’t be a concussion effect on the others.”
“Suppose a hunk of shrapnel hits one?” Talbot asked.
“That would answer the other question. Do the fuses still work.”
It was a full hour before they were satisfied with the placement of the plastic explosive. Sand had been carefully piled up around the aged mine to constrict any outward force, and all debris pulled as far back from the charge as they could get it. When the fuse was finally set and the tiny antenna checked, the three of them got back on the dinghy, started up the fifteen-horsepower Johnson outboard and headed back to the Tellig.
From a mile offshore they watched the beach while Chana went up to the bow, held out the electronic activator and flicked the switch to on.
All they saw was a small puff of sand onshore as the mine reacted with a miniature explosion whose noise, coming seconds later, was little more than a dull plop.
“Looks like Berger was right,” Chana told them.
Lee Colbert switched off the power to the long-lensed video camera and pulled out the tape. “Want to see it close-up?” He slid the tape into the viewer and turned it on.
Distance meant nothing to modern technology. The camera put the viewer directly in front of the sand-packed mine so that every detail was visible. They could see the plastic with its fuse and antenna plastered to the coral, the scattered wreckage around the area and a lone fiddler crab that had wandered too far from its shoreline burrow.
And then it went off. There was no startling explosion, just a silent eruption of sand and metal, with the big steel ball seeming to break apart into dozens of chunks in the middle of a rain of sand. It all settled down quickly, lay there a moment, then the screen went blank.
“I guess Berger was right,” Lee said. “It’ll make an interesting report.”