As we ran past the eastern point of Tortuga Lyda watched the compass. “Another ten miles and we turn south. That will put us about 15 miles off the coast and our rendezvous point.”
I had Sea Witch throttled down, purring along, and I translated miles into knots and when the time came I arced her into a long turn to the south and then cut her speed to a creeping five knots. There was no moon and it was clouding up to rain. The night was cool, even chilly, but I was sweating a little. When Lyda wanted to smoke I forbade it. I had hooded the instrument board.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said. “You’re sure this old dock isn’t watched? Seems to me that Papa Doc would keep a special guard on a place like that — he isn’t stupid, you know.”
We were headed for a lonely spot on the coast where the U.S. Fruit Company had once maintained a dock and a cluster of buildings. The place was long disused and falling into ruins, and Lyda swore that she had used it several times to enter Haiti and had never encountered trouble.
She laughed softly, with a hint of the old mockery. “What’s the matter, darling? You sound like you’re nervous in the service.”
“Being nervous has kept me alive a long time,” I said. This kid was ready to go to war. This slim brown girl who had been crying not long before.
“That’s the beauty of it,” she went on. “The place is so damned obvious that Papa Doc and the Tonton Macoute overlook it. It never occurs to them that anybody would dare to use it. So we use it. Clever, yes?”
“Luck. I hope it holds.”
We were running slowly for the coast, rolling a little in the current setting through the gut. I glanced at my watch and said, “Better get your flashlight now and go forward. If everything is okay we should be seeing their signal within half an hour.”
She leaned to kiss me. Her breath was hot and sweet and smelled of booze. She patted my arm. “I’ve got a good feeling about this. Everything is going to be all right, Nick. Just be sure you remember your new name and don’t goof it I sold them a real bill of goods on you and it wasn’t easy. Duppy is as smart as they come, and he is going to be very unhappy that I’ve postponed the invasion again. But I can handle him as long as you don’t cross me up.”
No use telling her how many roles I had played in my years with AXE.
“I won’t cross you up,” I said. “Get forward. Be sure their signal is right. Exactly right!”
She laughed again and went off humming to herself.
My new name was Sam Fletcher. I was using it because I knew the real Sam Fletcher was in Africa fighting for the Biafrans. If he was still alive. Fletcher was one of the last of the old style soldiers of fortune. Though at times he fought for money he was not strictly a mercenary; when he believed in something he would fight gratis and even spend his own money. He did odd jobs for AXE from time to time, which made it easy to keep tabs on him. I didn’t think Sam would mind me using his name.
Lyda had told me a little about this Duppy we were going to meet. In Haitian dialect, in voodoo jargon, duppy means spirit or ghost. A man may die, but sometimes his duppy has the power to come back from the grave. Sometimes the duppy does not even go, but remains on earth and actually; takes the dead man’s place.
Duppy was a nom de guerre, of course. Lyda would not tell me his right name, even if she knew it. “The blacks call i him Duppy,” she had explained, “because of the way he moves in the jungles and mountains. Like a ghost. They say that you never hear him, or know he’s coming — you just look up and suddenly there he is. They’re all afraid of him, the blacks.”
Then she laughed and added, “That’s odd, in a way. Duppy is one of the blackest blacks I’ve ever seen.”
I throttled down still more until Sea Witch was creeping. I barely had way on her. My bearing was due south and somewhere off in that gloom was the coast of Haiti. I snapped her over on gyro and went to the rail and peered forward. I had put a “box” on the flashlight so it couldn’t be seen from the sides, only from dead ahead, and as I leaned over the rail and strained into the darkness I wondered if Lyda was signaling yet. That was one of the hazards. We had to signal first. Our engines were well muffled and, when throttled down, gave off a bare whisper of sound. We couldn’t count on the shore party hearing us.
There it was. A pin prick of white light from the shore. It flitted brilliant in the night, swift and questioning… — . Question mark. Who?
The light vanished and though I couldn’t see Lyda’s signal I knew she was sending:….—.-.- SWAN. I hoped she was getting it right. I had made her practice it enough.
She must have because in a couple of seconds the shore light came back with a — .-. K, okay, come in. Then blackness I again.
Lyda came running back from the bow, tense and choked with excitement. “It’s all right, Nick! They’re waiting for us.”
I switched off the gyro and motioned her to the wheel. “I know. I saw. Here, you take the con until I get up on the fly bridge. I can’t take her in to that dock from down here. Just hold her steady for a minute.”
Lyda had given me an exact description of the dock I was making for. It had been built for ocean going vessels, and it rammed a long, now decaying, finger out from a deep scallop of cove. It had the usual piles and stringers, but for some reason it had been covered on the sides, like an old-fashioned covered bridge. Lyda insisted that we could run Sea Witch in under the dock and it would be like hiding in a long wooden tunnel. We could forget camouflage.
I wasn’t so sure. And I was worried about ripping off the fly bridge as we went in.
I called softly down to her. “Okay. I’ve got her. Go forward and con me in. Keep your voice down.”
I notched her down almost to stop and listened to the soft burble of the engines as she inched along. Ahead of me it was like the inside of a tar barrel. Good in a way, because if I couldn’t see neither could Papa Doc’s coast patrols.
I was wearing the Luger in the belt holster and the stiletto in the sheath on my right forearm. My sweater and jacket covered both. Outside I had the Colt .45 strapped on, and I cozened a machine gun in my lap as I peered and waited for the guide lights.
They flicked into life, dim, sallow, barely seen. One on each side of the open end of the dock. All I had to do was put Sea Witch squarely between them.
It wasn’t easy. I had almost no way on her and the rudder was slow to answer. The current ran fast in so close to shore and the trade breeze, pushing me from the east, didn’t help much. Sea Witch kept falling off to starboard.
Lyda’s voice came whispering back to me. “To the left, Nick. Left. LEFT!”
I had to goose the engines a little to get her back to port. When I throttled down again she was shoving her bow squarely between the lights. They went off. I shoved her into reverse for a second, then cut the engines and ducked and reached up with a hand to feel for clearance, if any. My fingers brushed the splintery underside of the dock boarding. I had six inches of clearance.
A trap door opened in the dock just over my head and a white shaft of light blazed down at me. A deep voice, speaking in Haitian Creole, said, “Bon jou, Blanc.”
Hello, white man.
I shifted the machine gun so he couldn’t miss seeing it, but kept my finger away from the trigger assembly. “Who are you?”