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Raw fish! At the very moment Paris mentioned the subject, Willy Armitage and Barney Collier were enveloped by the smell of them. The rancid, oily odor was more than ripe as it emanated from every seam and paint blister of the scabby old boat.
"Guy with a weak stomach couldn't breathe aboard this tub. Phew!" Willy mumbled in the darkness. "My hat's off to the fellow who's got to work it every day."
He and Barney were bobbing five miles out in Bahia La Junares. Lights of the harbor were a scanty sprinkling of glittering needle points in the distance. The resplendent orb of a mellow tropical moon was touching the ragged black shadows of the Andes Mountains.
Willy was a dark mass at the stern, his hand on the tiller holding the boat steady as the tide moved them slowly seaward, with the power off.
Barney felt his own unspoken brand of outrage that any man should have to labor at sea in such a craft. It was but one detail in a picture of poverty that Fulco Rodriguez could change---if his chance weren't cut short.
The tiller creaked as Willy fought the boat's tendency to wallow in the gentle swells. It was a tricky craft, badly balanced.
An ambitious old Conuerian, whose imagination had substituted for engineering know-how, had put the craft together, wedding a battered jeep engine and a discarded lifeboat. The leaky, balky combination had, thus far, got him out to the grouper banks and back again each working day.
This night unbelievable good fortune had descended upon the fisherman. Two strangers, Willy and Barney, had appeared at his bayside hovel. They wanted to rent the boat.
To himself, the old man had questioned their purposes. Their appearance had struck him as strange.
In smelly rags, the heavier stranger could have passed for a swarthy waterfront denizen, but the lean young Negro wore spotless, zippered coveralls. Maybe to cover a very different outfit? Keen old ears had caught the whispered skreak of rubberized material when the young man shifted a duffel bag of gear on his shoulders. The keen old brain whipped away the coveralls and visualized a skin-diver's suit.
Then the fee had been offered, and where was the room for fears and questions?
The gnarled old hands had trembled from the touch of so much money. Was it possible? He had struggled, torn between need, greed, and honesty.
With a sigh, as if in self-defeat, the old man had said, "Senores, for one night's rent---is too much. More peotacas than I have invested in the pitiable collection of junk."
"Pops," Willly said, "it was your enterprise that put it here. It's worth that to us."
"Then so be it!" With a warning about the way she handled in a following sea, the old man had happily helped them shove off.
Now, bracing the tiller, Willy looked at Barney's shadow in the prow. He was nearly invisible in the skin diving gear. As the boat rolled, a stiletto of moonlight reflected from the antenna of the compact UHF radio Barney was holding.
He was saying nothing, sitting there and waiting for a voice to break the soft hum of empty static.
Willy glanced over his shoulder. The lights of the Haigui were almost a half-mile astern. Willy wished the tide would slow; they must row back, approaching the giant submarine from seaward, and the distance was already backbreakingly far.
He broke off his study of the spy sub's sleek silhouette. Barney sensed his increasing concern.
"They can't drive that interior road like it was Indianapolis," Barney offered as a prop to Willy's patience. "The others will stay on schedule."
Willy's face was taut beneath his coarse, tattered sombrero. His grimy, threadbare shirt---half the buttons were missing---rose and fell with the movement of his powerful chest. "I know," he admitted. "But I wish they'd say something. You sure that radio's working okay?"
It was a useless question, a murmured venting of a little inner pressure. Both men knew it.
Barney looked at the luminous, waterproof chronometer on his rubber-sheathed wrist. "The way I make it, Paris and Molly have done their Pau-Angela bit, faded from the guerilla camp, and rejoined Jim. They should be passing through Balgas just about now, heading back."
"Or somebody's offering them a blindfold at the firing wall," Willy moaned. "This waiting is what gets a guy down."
The drifting boat rolled in a shallow trough. Willy grunted, swinging the tiller. Barney braced himself and grinned. "Yeah, down to the bottom of the drink with a landlubber like you....."
He snapped off as the radio in his palm crackled.
"Bass calling," Jim said from a moving car somewhere on the south road.
Barney jerked the radio to his mouth, thumbing a switch. "Tadpoles here. How'd it go?"
"How'd you expect?" Paris and Molly yelled a laugh from the back seat of the car.
"From that," Phelps said, "you can interpret. Their communication frequency is 102.6 megacycles. Got it?"
"Confirming," Barney said. "Century plus one point six, communications frequency, Haigui-guerillas."
"Good luck, tadpoles." Phelps broke the radio contact.
Willy was already fitting the emergency oars into the locks. They rattled metallically. The grips were worn smooth as glass. Dipping them and pitting the power of his back against the pressure of the sea, Willy wondered how many nights the old man had rowed in after the antique jeep engine stalled out.
Changing direction with steady, long sweeps of the oars, Willy watched Barney make final preparations. He stripped off sneakers and snapped swim fins onto his feet. The face mask came out of the duffle bag. Then the belt pack of tools. Barney stood, braced, spread-legged, as he snapped it on.
"I don't," Willy grunted between rhythmic, body-wrenching pulls, "exactly dig what you're going to do on board the Haigui."
"It's basically very simple," Barney said. "Once aboard, I slip into the radio room, snap a cover off a chassis, and retune a frequency oscillator, while you and keep 'em busy."
"You've gotta be kidding! That'll take all night to do."
"Not if you know where to look and what to do inside the electronic innards." Barney's laugh couldn't hide the tightness gathering in him. It helped to be talking. "As a matter of fact, on that night high frequency they've chosen, I can change a calibration just about by breathing on it. Comprende usted, senor?"
"No comprendo." Willy reared against the oars. "Tell you the truth, I got lost on the first curve, when you and Jim dreamed up this gimmick to intercept and rebroadcast."
"Let's put it this way," Barney said. "Pau Saldana and Law Zongxian are in a room. They can't talk with sign language because both are blindfolded. They can't yell back and forth because their ears are stuffed. Now suppose each man has a guitar with several strings. They've agreed to set the E string on each guitar at precise, perfect pitch."
"Okay," Willy agreed. "Saldana is the base camp and Law is the sub. The guitars are radios."
"Right. If either man plucks his E string, it'll echo a vibration to the other."
"Any schoolkid knows that." Willy glanced across his shoulder, noting the distance to the Haigui's light. "So the guys are communicating."
"But a 3rd fellow enters the room. He's also got a guitar."
"The Seaview and its radio," Willy quickly fitted the factor into the equation.
"Bueno! The third fellow has found out the other two are talking on their E strings. It won't do him much good just to listen in. He's got to break in and call some signals of his own. And the other two mustn't find out. So what does he do?"
"Caramba! Willy's face was suddenly wreathed in a smile. He missed a stroke. "I got it! This 3rd guy secretly pulls Law's E string up to, maybe, F. Law still thinks he's plucking an E string."
"Bingo."
"But it won't react on Saldana's E string because now there's a gap."
"You're right on track, Willy."
"But this 3rd guy---that's us---he knows about the gap, having put it there. So he listens to Law on the F string and to Saldana on the E String."
"You're rounding 3rd base, Willy!"
"That way, this 3rd guy---which is us---is smack in the gap. The other two think they're still talking direct, on the E string. But, actually it's all being piped in to us, and we're rebroadcasting with touches of our own."
"Class dismissed!"
Willy blew a drop of sweat from his rhythmically rising and lowering face, hands outstretched on the dipping and pulling oars. "Not so fast!"
"What now?"
"You gimmick the frequency of 102.6 megacycles up to, say, 121, like tightening the guitar string from E to F."
"Why not? All I have to do is retune a frequency oscillator in their radio to Seaview's frequency."
"Yeah. If you get aboard and into the radio room without being seen."
"I'll count on your help there, Willy."
Willy slipped the oars for a brief rest. "It'd still spill the beans all over Boston."
"How? Nothing in the outward appearance of the radio will tip Law off. He walks in and thinks he's talking with the base camp, in the security of the assigned frequency. How can he know we're sitting off yonder in the gap, receiving then resending, as if we're either the base camp or the Haigui, as the case might be?"
Willy shook his head. "It might work if he doesn't talk to anybody else. But maybe he wants to chat with his high-and-mighties at his overseas base. The minute he tries, won't he tumble that somebody's been in the innards of his radio?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because I won't touch the other bands," Barney said. "Just this frequency assigned to the guerilla base camp. Law can yak all over his other channels without interference."
"How 'bout that!" Willy grinned.
"Just get me in the water on the darker side of the Haigui. Then go around and start your act."
"Sure." Willy picked up the oars. "Soon as I sweep the rest of the Pacific out of this basin." He resumed rowing silently.536Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVQ3po17Md1
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Law Zongxian was seated at his bleached wood desk, surrounded by the modern decor of his luxurious, air-conditioned quarters. Minor-key Ming Dynasty music, turned down low, filtered all around him in stereo. The wild, savage murmuring helped him to think.
In a hunched posture of concentration, Law could've passed for a college senior who belonged to a reserved, pro-Establishment fraternity. His trim seaman's form was clad in knit shirt, slacks, and Italian loafers. He looked as if he'd been working for a few hours. His boyish face had a line here and there, and little crimps of strain narrowed the corners of his eyes. A lock of soft, very black hair had spilled across his high forehead.
Before him lay a map of nearby Conuerian waters. He'd pored over it with more than a mere sailor's eye. His keen brain had juggled distances, time lapses, all the known factors.
Law was more disturbed by the reported presence of NATO agents than he'd let on to Cidd Menendez. Menendez, on first impression, was a cool aristocrat who regarded rulership as his birthright. But Menendez's years of nerve-wracking intrigue and chicanery had whittled away too long at the inner man. The remainder was a shell. He would be easily cracked when the time came. Meanwhile, Law thought, soothe his fears, brace him up, string him along, use him.
Law rose slowly, continuing to look down at the map.
Well, someone on the other side was suspicious. It didn't matter how or why. You always planned total secrecy in international espionage, but rarely did you ever get it. Leaks happened with humdrum frequency. In this instance, his own movements might have sparked a wary question in the wrong quarters, or one of Saldana's guerillas could have boasted into the wrong ears.
The trick (always) was to expect leaks and never lose balance. Plug the dike before the leak became a flood.
It reduced to such simplicity. Nothing must impede the swift rush of his people into the vacuum of crisis he was about to create in San Gonzalo.
His mind went back to yesterday's sonar contact. Now, having learned the enemy agents had been slipped into the country, Law was convinced that the object was a submarine, not just an ancient wreck.
The agents were still ashore; so it was a good bet the sub was hanging around. Where had the agents gone ashore? Where was the submarine now?
The charts, the time elements, the disturbances, the terrain of the country and its shores all added up to fairly good answers. The sub, Law had convinced himself, was lurking somewhere north of here. The porous jumble of mountains formed sheltered lagoons, natural small harbors rather than exposed beach. From there, Chiguanada and La Junares were reasonably accessible. There were even a few primitive logging roads, used at various times by companies that found little profit in taking San Gonzalan timber out of the foothills.
But if the lagoons were made-to-order hiding places, they were also bottles, Law reflected. He nodded to himself. I'm just the man, he completed the thought, to shove in the stopper.
He turned, frowning sharply as a distant clanging vibrated through his sub. It sounded as if someone were banging on the Haigui's steel hull with a stout plank. Wondering what it the hell it could mean, Law crossed his cabin with swift, purposeful strides.536Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKcusWEjKsF
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Invisible as a wet, black seal in his scuba gear, Barney Collier bobbed to the dark surface on the Haigui's port side. He grinned to himself, listening to the commotion Willy was raising. Leave it to Willy to do a chore up brown. He was banging the starboard plates with an oar as if he meant to knock a hole in the other side of the submarine.
Barney reached out a hand to cushion himself as the water tossed him against the hull. Despite its massive bulk, the Haigui rode easily in the water. Her crisp paint emitted a dim shimmer of white, a suffusion of moonlight towering pale against the black.
A startled, angry voice drifted down, snapping a question, demanding to know what the racket was all about. Hurrying footsteps clicked on the polished deck. A shadowy human form swept along the rail and vanished across the prow.
A dry-throated gathering for action raced through Barney. He ached for more time, a chance for greater caution. But it was now or never. Willy couldn't distract them all night. If the portside hull isn't empty, Barney thought, so much for Mrs. Collier's boy and the best laid schemes of mice and men...
Floating on his back, Barney lifted what might have been an underwater spearing pistol. He took aim, squeezed the trigger. The taut spring released with a soft rasp. A foot-long dart, trailing a nylon line unreeling from the pistol butt, shot upward toward the sub's conning tower.
The dart burst apart in midflight, dividing itself into a three-pronged, rubber-sheathed grappling hook. It seemed to hang a moment, waggling the line that connected it down to Barney's hand. Then it fell onto the top of the conning tower with a cushioned thud.
Treading water with his fins, Barney gently played in the line until the hook snagged the conning tower's top. He pulled up until his torso was out of the water, testing with his weight. His muscles quivered, keeping his movements smooth. Three quick snaps on the line would release the spring mechanism and collapse the hook. This would allow him to disengage the grapple when he was through topside and back in the water, leaving no evidence of an intruder's having been there.
He began climbing smoothly, hand over hand, rolling his shoulders up for each fresh hold, easing the burden on his arms. A circus acrobat would've envied him for his climbing technique!536Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3339tlrrew
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When Law quickly opened the hatch and burst onto the aft deck, he saw that the second officer had turned up a portable searchlight. The officer, two sailors comprising the evening watch, a disheveled ship's cook, and the signalman were clustered at the starboard rail, yelling orders at someone on the sea below.
Yet another sailor stumbled onto the deck from the crew's quarters. The racket had obviously jarred him from his bunk. He was blinking deep-puffed eyes as he dressed on the run.
Seeing Law's hurrying figure, the sailor stopped long enough to snap a salute. "Comrade? What is it?"
Law shook his head, grim-lipped. "We'll found out before the bloody greaser wakes up half the coast, I'm sure."
His presence fell across the group at the rail. The second officer was the first to notice him, glancing back when he heard Law's approach.
"Ten-shun!" the officer barked.
The group turned, shoulders squared up, heels clicking.
Law ordered them at ease with a quick motion of his hand. He stepped to the rail in the space they'd made for him.
The pounding had ceased. The sea was relatively quiet. The signalman returned the beam of a powerful flashlight to the scene below.
Law saw a heavily wallowing, decrepit old lifeboat. A big, dirty fellow was standing aft, just behind the now-silent, oil-grimed inboard engine. He was laboring with an oar to bring his crude craft back against the hull of the Haigui.
Law gripped the rail and leaned forward. "Ahoy! Ahoy there!"
The ragged San Gonzalan fisherman---clearly that's what he was---recognized the tone of authority in the voice. He pulled in his oar, stood gripping it with one hand while he looked up and shaded his eyes against the electric glare from above.
"Senor," Willy pleaded. "Mercy, please, a thousand mercies!"
"What do you want?"
"Help, Senor. I sink!"
Law couldn't help but laugh. There was a touch of pathos in the scene. The tattered fellow cut such a woebegone picture down there, so earnestly hopeful and apologetic. His plight was apparent. He was standing ankle deep in a wash of oil-scummed water, the gunwales of his old tub sloughing perilously. Little wonder he had come clinging to the Hangui and banging for attention.
"That flotsam would be better on the bottom," Law said, "rather than cluttering the bay."
"Is true, Senor. Only a fool would take to sea in such as this."
"Then be off!"
"But, Senor, I swim bad, almost as bad as my boat. And the shore is a long way off. If you would but take me aboard....."
"Out of the question!"
"Then a bit of caulk and canvas, Senor, to plug the crack in the hull until I can get ashore."
Beside Law, the second officer cleared his throat. "Comrade," he muttered.
Law glanced at him. "Yes?"
"I suggest we get him on his way. Otherwise he will raise a ruckus until he drowns."
"I suppose so," Law said.
The second officer murmured an order to fetch materials from the ship's stores for a temporary repair. The sailor to whom he spoke nodded and ducked from the rail.
Below, Willy stood in humble supplication, watching the faces peering at him from the height of the Haigui's deck. In his mind, Willy was constructing quite different scenes, picturing Barney's shadow flitting, Barney's hands and tools moving with expert precision among the maze of a radio chassis.....
Law rested his elbows on the bar of polished steel. "We will help you," he called down.
Willy swept off his ragged sombrero and bent in a bow of gratitude. "May your name go into the book of heroes, Senor! I will patch and bail and be on my way."
"You can believe you'd better," Law said. "If you come near this submarine again, you'll have more to bother you than just a crack in your hull!"
"Senor!" The shift in Willy's tone held Law, who was about to turn away from the rail.
Barney needed all the minutes he could get.
"Senor, I disturbed you because you were my only hope, the nearest ship after the collision."
"What did you collide with," the second officer inquired, "a wave with a hard crest?"
Men along the upper deck joined his laughter, welcoming any sport, any break in the long boredom of ocean crossing and shipboard routine. The group made no move to break up.
"That's very good, Senor," Willy conceded, unruffled. "I wish it was so simple. You wouldn't believe it. I don't believe it myself."
"Maybe you ran over a mermaid," a sailor needled.
Balanced on widespread legs, Willy reached overside with the oar and worked it to steady his leaking craft. "That is somewhat close. I was running without lights, as always, because I have none. Suddenly in the moonlight I see the wet back of some giant thing. A word bursts from me, a remembrance of myself to all the saints. I think I am about to strike a sea monster. Then, bang! I have tried to fight my boat away, but it is too late. There is the noise, as if I have splintered my hull against a metal tank. I am almost thrown into the sea. There is angry water and much fear and confusion in my mind. I battle to stay afloat. When I settle my head, I am still in the boat, but the other thing is gone. Only the leak in the hull convinces me I have not dozed and dreamed it all. I think I can make port, but after awhile, the strain of the sea parts the seam a little more. I raise the lights of La Junares, but they are too far away, much too far. Then---all honor to you, senores---I see your ship."
A hush settled and tightened over Law and the men flanking him.
Law's fingers were like this, strong serpents constricting on the ship's rail. "Could it have been a submarine you struck, a ship like mine?"
Willy stared up. Then it was his turn to whoop a big laugh. "Never, Senor! Everyone knows you are the only submarine in these waters. Even so, why should it lie at night like that, without lights, mostly under the surface?"
"To remain undetected while it took on air and recharged the batteries, idiot!" Then, realizing he was explaining himself to a mere peon, Law bit back the effect Willy's words had had on him. He lifted a hand and wiped the corner of his mouth with his knuckles. "Anyway, of what interest to us are your troubles?"
"None, Senor. Only to myself."
"Where did you fish today?"
"I didn't, Senor. Do you see any fish? My wife's cousin wished to go and nurse a sick uncle who..."
"Oh, spare us your trivial troubles! So you ferried someone up the coast and were on your way back. Where did the accident happen?"
Willy lifted the oar, pointing northward. "The creature was off yonder, Senor. Standing to from Carcayos."
Law and the second officer exchanged sly grins.
The sailor dashed up from his trip to ship's stores, a loose bundle in his hands. Law turned from the second officer, took the bundle, and held it over a rail.
"Here is some resin and some fiberglass," he said, dropping the package in the general direction of Willy's hands. "Now, be on your way!"
Scrambling for the package, Willy shouted up a thanks. He tucked the bundle beside the engine and picked up a rusty bucket.
The tide carried him out from the Haigui while he bailed manfully. Fine thing, he thought, first I fill 'er with water so she looks like she's sinking, then I bail 'er out again.
In a reasonably dry craft, he dropped the bucket, puttered a few minutes wiht the resin and fiberglass, knuckled sweat from his face, and seated himself on the plank that served as a cockpit.
For once, the old motor caught on the first grunt of the starter. The boat chug-chugged a course that kept the Haigui's lights well off his starboard.
The giant submarine slipped 100 yards astern, 200.
Willy throttled back to an inching crawl. Something cold began to form inside him. The sea remained an undulating sheet of black oil.
Then he saw the rustling disturbance a few yards to his right, off the starboard bow. He inched the tiller over.
In a few moments, a black-sheathed arm reached out of the sea and draped itself across the freeboard at the beam. The boat tipped as Barney slithered in with the streaming grace of a dolphin, leaving behind on board the Haigui, a frequency oscillator returned to perfection.
Willy fed gas. The engine---and his heart---began beating again.
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