“Damn it, I’m tired of being useless. Show me how to use one of these guns and let me play too.”
The girl had guts, and I was proud of her. I gave her a quick lesson, emphasizing that she had to be sure where she was aiming before she touched the trigger.
“You stay here, Tara,” I told her. “Mitzy, pick another hole. I’ll take the other side. Let the bird land and try for the men after they’re outside. We may take a ride after all.”
I watched Mitzy run for a room farther down the row. Then I dashed across the corner of the parade as the flap of props came closer and closer. I was hardly under the roof when the choppers went over, tattooing the walls and floor with fifty caliber slugs. After they passed over, I stepped out and fired at the underside of the nearest one. It went out of control and wobbled out of sight toward the jungle. I heard Mitzy Gardner’s gun chatter. She scored a partial hit but didn’t cripple the bird. Tara caught on too late and wasted half a clip on the retreating choppers.
With all the noise their cannons were making, they didn’t even realize they were being fired on. They came back to hover over us, covering the landing of the ship I’d disabled.
A slash of heavy rain drummed across the parade.
The chopper settled to the ground, touching down like a weary bird. The door opened on the side opposite me, and a machine gun sprayed the walls that hid the girls. Then the pilot climbed out and ran around the nose of the ship while a gun inside kept him covered. I heard both girls’ guns track the pilot. He sprawled on his face in a pool of blood. The man in the chopper was still shooting in our direction. From where I stood, I couldn’t see him, so I ducked out of the room and dashed toward the chopper to get a look at him. I had to stop that gun. I fired through the glass and saw the gunner’s head dissolve into red pulp.
The rain was coming down in sheets now. The sky was an ugly greenish black. Lightning flashed, and thunder deafened me. The chopper bounced in the gale winds. The other copters couldn’t fight the storm. They turned back to try to set down on the beach. I was running to get some rope to tie down the captured bird when Mitzy’s shrill scream stopped me. She was pointing dumbly into the room where Tara had been.
I knew what had happened before I got there. Tara Sawyer lay there, her beautiful body tom to shreds and awash with blood. One short look and I got out of there fast. I couldn’t stop to think. There was a plane to anchor. But I was clumsy at the job. My mind wasn’t on it. Poor Tara! She shouldn’t have chosen to fight.
Mitzy was with me, knotting lines from the chopper around big uprooted rocks. I tied one around her waist to keep her from being blown away. By the time the plane was anchored, we had to crawl back to shelter an inch at a time, hanging on to stones. The wind had to be over a hundred miles an hour.
We didn’t go to the tunnel. I didn’t want to see Tara again right away. And I had some thinking to do. I didn’t want to face Noah, either. He had asked for a hurricane, he got it. In February, no less. I wondered how.
We sat without talking, each of us filled with our own unhappy thoughts. The storm lasted an hour before it let up. There was an ominous calm. In the Southern Hemisphere hurricanes blow clockwise; in the North they blow counter-clockwise, wheeling as they move. The velocity increases from the center toward the outer edge. Unless Noah had a curve on this one, we would soon be taking a real battering from the opposite direction.
But there was still time to see what damage the first half had accomplished. The downpour had stopped, and the parade steamed. Through the hole in the wall we saw the Corvette. It was hard aground, breaking up. The choppers were roosting in trees, and the stranded patrol boat was gone. The smashed yachts and tugs had been flung ashore. The sky was empty.
Fourteen
I turned back from surveying the cove and found Noah walking curiously around the chopper, nodding to himself. But when he came toward us, his face was drawn, his eyes troubled.
I said in a voice as even as I could keep it, “You did yourself proud, and I confess I can’t explain it. You even brought us a taxi to take the doctor off.”
His lips twitched briefly, but he remained somber. “Miss Sawyer. She is a loss to us all. One art I am not capable of is resurrection. But we can give her an honored place among our heros.”
A voodoo burial for Tara? I didn’t think so. Her father wouldn’t appreciate that. I planned to take her body with us, but I decided not to discuss it then. Noah was still talking.
“The wind will come again soon. These structures,” he flapped a hand toward the quadrangle of rooms, “have been jarred by the bombs, weakened. When the storm returns, the walls will crumble. It would be best if you joined us below.”
He didn’t wait for us to agree but started toward the tunnel, then disappeared. Mitzy and I followed. I stopped for a minute over Tara. It made me sick and angry. It would be a pleasure to use every AXE technique I knew on Colonel Carib Jerome.
There were now two short candles burning on the altar, one of thanks, I supposed, and one of supplication. We were going to need all the help we could get. Noah was busy with prayer sticks, maybe clearing Tara’s way to wherever he expected her to go.
I wasn’t needed there. I felt caged and restless. I wasn’t even aware that I was pacing back and forth till Noah turned and said softly, “You need not remain just here, Mr. Carter. This is a labyrinth; there are other rooms you might care to explore.” He touched a stone that looked like part of the wall, and it swung inward, onto a passage.
His words held a hint of accusation — I was obviously disrupting his ceremonies, and I was glad enough to leave. I still had candles in my pocket, and I lighted one. Then Mitzy and I stepped through the hidden door, and Noah closed it behind us. Steps twisted downward; the corridor branched off into paths cut out of soft limestone.
We found a room with a wide well in the middle. This was where water was caught and stored for times of siege. Other rooms served as root cellars — they were cold enough to keep food for long periods of time. Still another was a “butcher shop,” filled with hanging carcasses. I had wondered how the old man had fed his hungry horde when they couldn’t safely hunt outside the walls.
For an hour we wandered from one dead end to another, yet there was always enough fresh air. I wanted to find the source. Following the angle to the candle flame, we walked along a curving passage that spiralled up toward the surface. Just when I thought we were almost at ground level, we came to a padlocked iron grille that blocked the passage. I worked at the lock with my stiletto, and it finally fell open. We moved on past the grille and up a flight of steps to the second corner turret. Air was coming in through the open gun slots.
The outer door of the turret was barred on the inside. I lifted the bar, and we continued on up a mahagony stairway up to a trap door that opened into the upper turret room. Mitzy had said it in the beginning — nobody had seen all the old faker’s surprises.
This was obviously a radio room. It was filled with sending and receiving equipment — the best.
I sat in front of the console on a bamboo chair and suddenly began to laugh. Mitzy reacted differently. She was furious.
“Why, that damned old hypocritical con man!” she yelled. “He’s given everybody the shaft. He shoos us out of his fake houmfort so he can make his chicken magic in private. Then he patters up here to pick up a weather report. No wonder he was so damned certain there’d be a hurricane.”
“And he rubbed our noses in it with that wild act.” I added. “He had me talking to myself. Jungle drums! I bet you’ll find another outfit hidden in the bushes, broadcasting up to the second news on the Port of Spain front. Let’s find out what’s happening in the world.”