Nobody liked to believe in coincidences, especially when he was right on the spot where somebody was taking down ships. Hooker made a mental note to pick up some stateside newspapers and see what position was being taken by the pundits at the big desks.
Tomorrow at half past three he’d know. Base had great researchers and great connections. Right now he needed some sleep. He woke up twice. Each time, Judy had crept into his subconscious fantasies and jarred his eyes open. When he finally slept it was a welcome relief.
At sunup all the village fishermen were on the Clamdip. It was Billy’s day to make the communal coffee and he threw in his own homemade biscuits to go with it. For a half hour Mako joined the morning festivities, then with a ceremonial crushing and tossing of the paper coffee cups in the metal trash can, everybody got off the Clamdip, went to their own boats and started up the engines.
Hooker let them all leave before he pulled away from the dock. They had serious fishing to do and every minute in their selected areas meant money. He was only going on an exploration trip to Scara Island.
This morning the wind and tide were in their favor and the tip of Scara showed on the horizon in forty minutes. No other boats were anchored off the shore and that was as he expected it to be. As the Clamdip closed in Billy and Hooker could see the trunks of trees newly washed up on the sand and the wreckage of an old dinghy. Through his glasses Mako spotted the blast area where Chana had blown up the mine, but in front of the hole was another spherical shape covered with barnacle encrustation, but clearly identifiable by the studlike trigger mechanisms protruding from its body.
“You see she, sar?”
“When are you going to quit with that ‘sar’ business, Billy?”
“Right away, sar.”
“Great,” Hooker muttered. “And yes, I see she. That’s a new baby up there.”
“You think she could wreck a boat, sar?”
“Billy, that old ordnance can still be pretty hot. It may not do what it was supposed to do, but it sure could put a hole in anything around here.”
“And now you want for me to put in the inflatable?”
“Would you rather swim?” Mako put to him. “That old shark he might still be around.”
“He be your brother, sar, not mine.” He didn’t wait for any more talking. They dropped and set the anchor. Then Billy wrestled the inflatable over the side, lowered the small Johnson outboard down, got in and fitted it on the bracket and waved to Hooker. He came down the boarding ladder carrying a bag of tools, pulled the starter cord and headed for the beach.
At first glance there wasn’t much to see on Scara. The windblown sand had laid a blanket over the rubble, but here and there protuberances jutted through the silicon cover, some identifiable, others not. There were old hatch covers and broken spars from ancient sailing ships, and as if they were dropped haphazardly from the skies above, there were cut timbers from a wrecked cargo of home-building supplies. Now they were fuzzy and warped and of no use except for burning.
Mako and Billy dug around the base of three of the mines, and occasionally they chipped at the coral encasing the metal. Finally Mako found what he wanted. A metal plate was attached to the casing, giving identification numbers and place of origin. Hooker scrutinized it carefully and nodded. “It’s American, all right. The U.S.A. is heading right into a big international garbage pit.”
“Sar... this I do not understand. There is no garbage pit...”
“It’s political, Billy.”
“Bad?”
“Very bad.”
“We can’t blow them like the sailor lady did?”
“There will only be more, Billy.”
Billy thought about it a moment, then said, “You think, sar, she sink those boats?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“But sar... how does she make the teeth marks?”
“Beats me, Billy, but somehow I have the feeling that when we know that we’ll know the answer to all of this.”
“For sure, sar?”
“For sure, Billy.”
“Peter-from-the-market, he say you don’t have to see the shark who bite you to know who he is. The marks from his teeth, they tell you.”
“He’s got that right, pal.”
“We both see the marks from the teeth on the Soucan. You remember she?”
“I remember.”
“They were very big, sar.”
“Huge.”
“In mainland books is picture of shark mouth. Four men are standing there and they do not touch the jaws. That mouth could swallow one whole automobile.”
“When do you read these books, Billy?” Mako looked at him incredulously.
The Carib made a noncommittal face. “Sometimes when I clean stateside people’s big boats. They have books on shelves.”
“That was a prehistoric great white shark that could grow to a hundred feet. The smart men refer to it as Carcharodon megalodon.”
“What do you call him, sar?”
“I may call him by your front name if you don’t quit giving me the ‘sar’ stuff.”
Horrified, Billy drew back, stiffening. “Oh, no, sar, please don’t do that! I do not want Mr. Shark to have my name.”
“Billy...,” Mako said, “sharks don’t speak our language.”
Very solemnly Billy replied, “But Mr. Shark... he know. Just like big mako shark down there know you steal his front name too. He know, sar.”
Mako grinned back. It was almost useless to argue with his friend on matters like these.
He watched Billy’s eyes taking in his expression. “What’re you thinking about, mate?”
Billy turned his head and stared at the old relics nestling in the sand. “These have to come up on the big tide, sar. Unless a great wind she blow, only when the moon is full does the tide come high enough to push them to here.”
“What are you getting at, Billy?”
“Big month tide was three days ago.”
Mako saw what he was getting at. The drop-off at the edge of the beach was sharp and deep now, and those mines with so little buoyancy couldn’t float up that slop at all. They would need the flood tide on the full moon to lift them up here.
“Then there has got to be a lot of them out there somewhere,” Mako said.
“Yes.” His word was clear, but there was a question in it.
“Nobody heard any explosions, did they?” Mako put to him.
“Nobody he say nothing,” Billy confirmed. “They hear something, they tell. Make big story out of it.”
“But if they were too far away...”
A spark of interest brought a crease to Billy’s mouth. “You want to make one pop like Tellig lady did?” Hooker nodded. “We got no big gun,” Billy added.
“Got matches?”
“Got that,” Billy told him, with a frown.
“Then get a piece of lumber or something and scrape away those barnacles and that coral. I’ll pick up some timbers and we’ll blaze that baby apart.”
Neither one had far to look. The beach was covered with old, dry lumber, some well tarred, some smelling of turpentine, but all ready enough to turn the cast-iron shell of a mine into a red-hot bubble of destruction.
While Billy was ripping into the white hulls of oversize barnacles, Mako gathered up the kindling, then went back for the heavier pieces that jutted out of the sand. They all came free easily enough, but the last one needed some hard prying to break loose. The end that had been exposed to the sun was weathered into gray fuzziness, but the other end had been well secured from the ravages of sunlight and salt spray, and what he had pulled loose was a hand-crafted beam from an ancient sailing ship. Carved into it by the knife blade of a seaman who had a lot of idle watch time was a beautiful image of an albatross in flight, wings fully outstretched, clutching in its feet a skull-and-crossbones emblem typical of those old pirate vessels. Beneath the carving was the date 1782.