One thing that did hit him was the name Becker Bank. It was a name that was familiar, one that he had run across in years past, but not with enough import to make him remember the details of what he had heard. But he had heard of the Becker Bank, and in his business even hearing of something gave reason to be suspicious of it.
Hooker grunted and very deliberately tore his pages into strips, laid them in the bottom of the galvanized pail he used for a trash basket and held a match to them. When they were all ash he stirred them up into a blackened powder and grinned at this handiwork. You’d think I was tied into some international criminal action, he said to himself.
Beside the hand-built house the metal windmill stirred in the constant breeze, pumping water when it was necessary or generating power for the electrical components. Hooker closed a knife switch and turned on his normal shortwave radio. The foreign station it was tuned to brought in the final act of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and Mako leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, enjoying the driving tempo of the music.
When the piece ended he opened his eyes and turned the dial on the set. Nothing seemed to please him, so he went to American FM stations, wasn’t satisfied there and switched to CQ. The code that came in was simple Morse, a position check from a craft named Drifter who was taking up station about twenty miles from Peolle for the night, off the course from normal sea traffic and reporting in on regular intervals.
There was no reply.
But to whom was Drifter sending? That area was well out of the shipping lanes. Unless they counted the comings and goings of the islanders’ beat-up boats.
Hooker squinted and shook his head. This was another name that should have meant something to him, but it had been a long time since he had exercised those facilities he had been trained to use. He was annoyed enough to put his mind to it, then remembered Drifter and her robot photographing two sunken ships off the Atlantic coastline, bringing back evidence of a collision that had long been forgotten.
Drifter was another research vessel, and with the Tellig the Company had a pair of them fishing for the eater of ships. Somebody or something in Washington, D.C., had a lot of power going for him, and all they had to go on was the old Bermuda Triangle theory.
At twenty-five minutes past four Hooker’s eyes snapped open and with the same motion he rolled to one side of the bed, his hand folding around the grip of the .45 he kept hung on the bed frame. The Colt was loaded with a full clip and there was a round in the chamber; his thumb pulled the hammer back in a motion so fluid that he surprised himself, and when Billy Bright burst into the room after a quick rap on the door he was surprised again that he recognized him in time to keep from shooting him.
In the dim light from the moon that angled in the window Billy saw the empty bed, then the outline of Mako’s head and the ugly snout of the .45 pointing at a spot right between his eyes.
Hooker eased the hammer down on the gun and stood up. “Damn, Billy...” He reached behind him and switched on the overhead light.
In one brief moment Billy realized just what had happened. He had thought he would have to awaken his friend, rouse him out of a deep sleep to give him the information that made his hands shake and gave his eyes a wide look. But his friend had heard him. He had the ears of a cat too and the reactions of a wild one. He had awakened to full and complete activity so finely honed he was able to stop firing his gun with just a fraction of a second to identify his target. “Sar...!” was all he could get out.
With a grin, Hooker shook his head and stood up. “Sorry, pal. I sure didn’t mean to scare you like that.” Billy nodded and gulped. “Kind of a hangover from the old days, you know?” Billy didn’t know and his expression asked for an answer.
Hooker said, “Military training. When I hear footsteps at night I react.”
All Billy could do was stare at him for a second, then he began to understand.
“Now,” Hooker went on, “what’s happening?”
“It’s Willie Pender.”
“So?”
“His launch... he sets drift nets. He... he’s caught the eater!”
“What?”
“Yes, he’s out there!” Billy pointed wildly toward the beach outside the house.
“Come on, Billy, how do you know this?”
“Willie, he’s got the CB radio. Not the VHF like we have. He call anybody. He wake up Poca and Lule Malli who leave radio on all the time. Something she hit Willie’s boat then get caught in his net. He still out there, sar!”
Sourly, Hooker said, “And you want us to go out there too?”
The sudden horror of it stiffened Billy. It was dark and they would be walking right into the eater’s mouth. They had no armament to tackle such a monster, no way of escaping its fury if they antagonized it, yet Billy’s friend needed help.
He couldn’t get the words out, so he simply nodded furiously so that his intent was clear.
“I don’t suppose you asked anybody else, did you?”
“No, sar. Nobody.”
“They’d go, you know?” Hooker reminded him.
“But first they would think. Then they would talk.”
And by then it would be light, Hooker thought, and the venture wouldn’t be quite so frightening.
“Let’s go,” he said.
When they boarded the Clamdip Hooker noticed the twinkle of lights on the other end of the island. There were others awake too, but the lights were moving between the houses, not on the dock. He flipped the blowers on, waited until any fumes were vented out of the bilge, then fired the engines, switched on the CB and VHF radios, and flicked on the running lights. Everyone on the island would know the sound of his motors and would damn well know where they were going. For a minute while Billy was throwing off the mooring lines he debated calling the Tellig, but they could be shut down for the night. He hit the throttle and slipped into the groove that took him past the coral heads and out to deeper water. Somehow Billy had gotten the coffee ready and brought him a cup. The dull light from the binnacle threw a glow over his face and Hooker saw the way it was set. Billy was scared silly, but he hadn’t backed off a bit.
Hooker didn’t plot a course. He simply followed Billy’s finger, heading in a general southeast direction. They were running under full power, and although the old Matthews was a displacement-type boat, those classic old lines and newly renovated engines insured a speed faster than most supposed.
The Malli brothers had a fifty-foot mast from an old racing sloop attached to their house, topping it with another ten feet of antennas. They could bring in a radio signal long before anybody else, but now Hooker was inside the range of Willie Pender’s transmitter and he set the indicator on the channel the islanders used.
He called three times before Willie’s excited voice came back to him and he said, “Easy, Willie, this is the Clamdip. I think I see your running lights. Are you all right?”
“Man, we got that thing! He a big one, he is. He tangled in my nets. He even bite at my boat!”
“You taking on water, Willie?” Mako kept his voice as calm as he could.
“Sure, we got water. Man, he didn’t get time for a big bite.”