Climbing it, he decided, was pretty easy if you were in any condition at all and took it easy. He did find, near the top, that they’d slightly underestimated the height and that the last twenty feet or so were accomplished by walking up the rope and through some irritating brush, but at the top he felt a strong hand take his and Sadrach pulled him over the top.
“Nothing to it,” the Sikh whispered.
“If you say so,” he responded, and sat for a few moments.
Next up, to their surprise, was the Bishop, puffing a little but not seeming to have much of a problem. Then came the Lebanese woman, code named Meshach, and the Nigerian.
To their great surprise, the Nigerian was actually carrying Maria on his back as if she were nothing at all.
“Had to do it,” he whispered. “She’d never had made it any other way.”
It was several minutes more until Frawley made it, sounding horrible and looking almost too ill to move. The man was nasty, ill-tempered, and callous towards everyone and everything not exactly his way, but there was no denying his will power or his guts.
“I’ll be all right,” he gasped, lying on his back and sounding as if he were going to die. “I’ll last another twenty-four hours.”
Now the Sikh was back down the ladder in a flash, unsecuring it except at top and bottom, then risking a single tiny signal with his flashlight.
The two at the top and MacDonald busily undid the packs they’d come up with, and the Canadian and the Bishop quickly assembled a basic military ranger winch as the Lebanese and the Nigerian picked up sub-machine guns and established a guard post.
It took almost four hours to winch and haul all the equipment up; an hour longer than the plan called for, but barely within tolerable limits.
The winch was now disassembled and repacked into one large backpack, and it was time to separate. MacDonald looked at the pack, which he was to carry back down, and then the company, just shadows in the near blackness.
They strapped the pack onto his back and he looked at them and he had a strange feeling of unreality about the moment. Somehow he could clearly see the Bishop, Frawley, and Maria standing there, looking back at him. He wanted to say something, anything, but no words would come.
He went over to the rope and grabbed hold, and for some reason he just couldn’t move. He just stood there, frozen, in a very stupid position.
Shadrach came over to him. “You go now! We need the dark and we must be away!”
He tried again, and his muscles just wouldn’t obey, almost like it was back in the motel with the Dark Man. For a moment he wondered if they’d been spotted after all, if some spell now held him, but he knew that it was not the case. Finally, realizing that the clock was ticking and that all their lives depended on keeping as much of a schedule as possible, he got back up and sighed and look off the backpack. “This may be the stupidest thing any North American has done since he stepped across the line at the Alamo, but I’m staying, too.”
Maria gave a little gasp and whispered, “No. You don’t have to.” The Bishop, however, gave a soft, wry smile.
“Yeah. I know I’m going to regret this, but I have to. Shad, can you get this pack back down?”
The Sikh picked it up and put it on expertly. “Don’t leave without me,” he said lightly. “I’ll be back.”
And, with that, he vanished down the mountainside.
It cost another twenty-seven minutes for the round trip, but he was soon back. “They think you are crazy, but they want to leave,” he told MacDonald.
“I guess I am,” he sighed, then helped untie the rope from its tree base. They winched in the ladder, then cut the rope and backed out. Three short flashes on a light, and those up top let the rope itself go. It fell all the way, coiling and snaking, and crashed into the water below. Expert eyes, aided by infra-red viewers, checked and moved back in, untangling the rope from a few places where it had hung itself up on vegetation, then let it sink to the bottom of the small inlet. With that, they moved out and made ready to get as far away as possible from Allenby Island.
Only when the rope went over the side did MacDonald feel the crushing implications of what he’d done, and the finality of it. Frawley had managed a sitting position and seemed to be recovering, although he had never looked so frail. He stared at MacDonald in disgust. “Why?” he croaked.
“I really don’t know,” he responded. “That’s a fact. I really don’t know…”
MacDonald made their first priority locating and disabling the basic electronic monitoring gear in the area. Using the rushing water of the creek to mask sounds, he located two microphones and one camera pretty much where he thought they’d be. As long as Ross was in charge of security, he felt confident that he could almost exactly predict placement and type of equipment and so far he was justified.
Locating the wires, they patched in a small extra loop with alligator clips and then removed a section of wire well away from the microphones themselves. A tiny tape recorder with a continuous loop tape and a battery life of at least thirty-six hours was used to record just what the mikes should have been hearing. Then it was patched into the line and the mike was disconnected. This was done with both, which allowed them to move about fairly freely within the heavily overgrown area. The two cameras they would simply have to avoid; although some thought was given to doing the same thing with videotape, the inability of such a tape to reflect changing shadows, weather conditions, and night and day pretty much ruled that out.
Because of her experience with Angelique in the same area, Maria was able to guide them around in the undergrowth and around the cabin area, which they all avoided. There were both sound and visual monitors inside and out on the cabin and they had no wish to get near the place. The stream had provided them with full canteens of water, and that and dried foods would have to do.
MacDonald had always identified this area as one of the most vulnerable on the island, and so far he’d seen nothing to indicate that they had made any real changes.
Still, it was daylight before they had everything in place. The lava tube entrance was easily identified, but they elected to set up a small camp above it, giving them first look and helping them to avoid any messy complications, should anyone come out. MacDonald used the monitoring gear to check for any electronic listeners or motion sensors, and found none in the immediate area although every time he pointed it towards the cave the needle went off the scale. He’d known from the beginning that a nice direct way in was impossible, but he still felt some disappointment.
Frawley seemed newly energized by the mere fact that he had made it up the cliff and that they were finally on the island. He spent some time working with his heavy equipment, which took three of them to lift and carry. The object inside was imposing, but looked more like a piece of very bad plumbing than a bomb. MacDonald was certain that there would be a security sweep with human agents down the tube after dark, and it was decided that until those agents arrived and had done their work the bomb wouldn’t be moved down and in front of the cave where it would do the most blast damage. Still, Frawley had the thing armed and activated by mid-morning, but not with the dead man’s switch. It was agreed that if they were discovered at any time before their own deadline, he would blow it where it was.
Setting up a guard schedule, they settled back for the long wait and tried to get some rest. It wasn’t easy, though. MacDonald settled back and tried to keep his mind on the job, telling himself it was just another security test, but he couldn’t really do it.