The Albatross. Someplace in Mako’s memory it rang a bell. But hell, it was a common name for a lot of ships. Even the carving could be the fantasy of a bored seaman with nothing to do. But he didn’t put it in his woodpile. He dropped it back on the sand and turned it carving-side down so that he could find it again if he wanted to. Anyway, he had enough for what he wanted to do.
The two of them laid the fire up well, bedded down in the sand below the ball-shaped metal. When everything was ready and Billy had the Johnson outboard started up, Mako lit his match and touched it to the wood. He didn’t need a second match at all. The kindling caught immediately and whatever chemicals had seeped into the wood still held their potency; the flames licked out like huge, snaky fingers and Mako got out of there. Billy backed the inflatable off while Mako was still climbing in and shoved the gear into forward, steering away from the beach.
A quarter mile offshore they watched while a roaring fire churned up a thick streamer of black smoke, pulling it skyward and to the east. They didn’t have to wait long. The gigantic blast wasn’t a bit like the one Chana had set off. This one threw sand and debris soaring into the sky and pieces of it spun uncontrollably in the sun, splashing down in water, one landing so close to them they heard it hissing as it sank.
Mako said, “Damn!”
“That one,” Billy remarked, “she could sink a boat.”
All Mako could do was nod. There was no way of telling how much force was left in those out-of-date explosives unless you blew them, and doing that in less than completely controlled situations would be dangerous.
One thing was for sure... they couldn’t just stay there. Whether the government liked it or not, this was going to become a naval exercise in recovery or demolition.
Chana hit the off switch on the radio so hard that she hurt her finger. Charlie Berger and Lee Colbert sat across the room in quiet contemplation, seemingly placid, but with edges of a smile touching their mouths. Too often they had seen Chana lose her cool when something didn’t live up to her expectations, and now she was going through a wild display of mental pyrotechnics at the Company because they had reaffirmed Hooker’s statement about the ownership of Scara Island. It did, indeed, belong to a native government who had the power to keep anyone off it if they so chose.
“They wouldn’t dare try to stop us,” she stated harshly. “It’s a damned collect-all and the next thing you know they’ll be asking us to sweep it off for them. “
“I doubt it,” Lee told her quietly.
“You doubt everything,” she snapped back. “Whenever they ask anything from the U.S. they get it. Who knows what they’ll want next?”
“Maybe they’ll want us to get out of here,” Charlie Berger pointed out. “Every time foreigners come in here they bring trouble. We dropped a war on them, our economy grabbed their output at rock-bottom prices and now we’re salting their islands with mines from another age.”
“Maybe they’ll get to understand progress.”
“Maybe they’ll get to hate it too,” Charlie said. “You heard about the explosion on Scara early today!”
Chana’s jaw clamped tight. “Only what the kid said. Nobody else heard anything. The kid wasn’t about to go looking to see what happened.”
“What did they say at the naval operation?”
“Nothing. They had blown five underwater obstacles about the same time and weren’t listening for anything out of their area.”
Lee Colbert said, “Do you believe the kid, Chana?”
That muscle moved in her jawline again, but she didn’t say anything.
“Those mines,” Lee said, “can be as hot as when they were being delivered. They were made to be watertight and time may not have had as much erosion factor going for it as we might expect. Me... I’d just as soon keep away from them. But, if one did get washed up and turned when the tide went out from under it, the weight of the mine coming down on one of the spurs, it’s conceivable that the crust of coral could have broken away and the plunger went in igniting the mechanism.”
“Then we’d better see about it,” Chana told him.
“Why?”
“It could happen again.”
“So it would blow sand all over the place,” Lee parried.
“If there are any U.S. markings on the wreckage the Company will want to know about it.” Chana looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. Before she could answer, the incoming message light on the radio flashed and she flicked the switch, easy this time.
The message came out of the printer in less than ten seconds. They all read it together. Very simply, it stated, COORDINATE ACTIONS WITH HOOKER. END.
This time Chana almost broke her forefinger hitting the off switch. It did break her fingernail and it hung like a tiny crescent moon from her fingertip, and the “Damn!” she spit out had the hatred of a dozen cobras in it.
Both the men hid their grins and got started readying the boat to leave the dock.
“That louse contacted the Company,” she hissed.
“So he wasn’t retired,” Lee said. “He was on a leave of absence.”
Chana’s mood suddenly changed. Some degree of admiration shone in her eyes. “They’re smarter than we think. They saw this situation coming on a long time ago and set it up.”
Colbert and Berger looked at each other quickly. In a very small way it could make sense, but the logic wasn’t there. “This wasn’t planned, Chana,” Colbert said.
“No, but it was anticipated,” she said. “They had a contingency plan.”
“Baloney. This was sheer coincidence. You don’t plan for happenstances.”
“The Company did, Lee. While everybody thought all those fiascoes in the nineties meant the end of us, the Company was working far ahead. Damn, they are smart!”
Hooker looked at his watch, and when he had two minutes to go he switched on the radio, flicked his ball point pen and let the point hover above his pad. Right on time the CQ message started to tick in his ears and he copied the letters down as he got them. When the end came he tapped in his own signing-off code and turned off the set. He decoded the message into English and read: PALLATZO LEGITIMATE WITH LOTUSLAND PRODUCTIONS. NO OUTSTANDING WARRANTS. NO CONNECTIONS WITH FORMER ASSOCIATES. STILL UNDER SURVEILLANCE BY FBI. ONE PARKING VIOLATION IN NEW YORK CITY. MARCUS GREY ARRANGED FINANCING FOR MIDNIGHT CRUISE LINES THROUGH THE BECKER BANK. BECKER SAID TO HAVE EUROPEAN CONNECTIONS. FIRST BECKER PARTNER, MARSHALL PODREY, MURDERED IN STREET MUGGING IN LONDON, MAY 3, 1992. MIDNIGHT CRUISE LINES LEGITIMATE OPERATION UNDER U.S. REGISTRATION. CHANA STERLING IS TO COORDINATE WITH YOU. END.
For a full two minutes Mako read and reread the message. The casual tone seemed strange, the wording different from what he had experienced in the old days. Maybe they had a new kid on the keyboard, he thought, who hadn’t looked at the full picture?
Marshall Podrey, a European banker, the kind who would always have assistants, who would drive in chauffeured limousines, who would never wander on streets where he would be a target, gets hit by a mugger. And Arthur Durant got hit by a mugger too. But in Arthur’s case, he wasn’t doing anything he never did before. Miami was like a front porch to him.
A little feeling of uneasiness tightened the muscles in his shoulder. Two coincidental muggings in the same overall situation would make you think twice. Like Tony Pell being a born-again businessman. He just wasn’t the type to take to legitimacy when there was a dirty way out. Oh, it was possible, all right, but the probability just wasn’t there. Then again, Tony Pell had seen plenty of his old buddies wind up doing big time in federal or state pens, and he could have had smart thoughts and gone straight, or at least straight enough to survive in Hollywood.