had been startled to see her check the clip with such expertise, releasing it from its chamber, pressing the spring, and reinserting it with a heel-of-the-palm impact that would have done justice to Bonnie and Clyde notoriety. She had smiled at him and mentioned the fact that the weapon had been in the water.
There were eight minutes to go. Two units of four; the thought was not comforting.
He wondered if there would be any short cries in the night. Or whether a measured silence would signify an extension of the nightmare.
Was any of them good enough? Quick enough? Sufficiently alert?
'Alex!' Alison grabbed his arm, whispering softly but with sharp intensity. She pulled him down and pointed into the forest, to the west.
A beam of light flicked on and off.
Twice.
Someone had been startled, in the overgrowth; some thing perhaps. There was a slapping flutter and short, repeated screeches that stopped as rapidly as they had started.
The light went on once again, for no more than a second, and then there was darkness.
The invader was perhaps thirty yards away. It was difficult to estimate in the dense surroundings. But it was an opportunity. And if Alexander Tarquin McAuliff had learned anything during the past weeks of agonizing insanity, it was to accept opportunities with the minimum of analysis.
He pulled Alison to him and whispered instructions into her ear. He released her and felt about the ground for what he knew was there. Fifteen seconds later he silently clawed his way up the trunk of a ceiba tree, rifle across his back, his hands noiselessly testing the low branches, discomforted by the additional weight of the object held in place inside his field jacket by the belt.
In position, he scratched twice on the bark of the tree.
Beneath him Alison whistled - a very human whistle, the abrupt notes of a signalling warble. She then snapped on her flashlight for precisely one second, shut it off, and dashed away from her position.
In less than a minute the figure was below him - crouched, rifle extended, prepared to kill.
McAuliff dropped from the limb of the ceiba tree, the sharp point of the heavy rock on a true, swift course towards the top of the invader's skull.
The minute hand on his watch reached twelve; the second hand was on one. It was time.
The first cry came from the river. An expert cry, the sound of a wild pig.
The second came from the southwest, quite far in the distance but equally expert, echoing through the jungle.
The third came from the north, a bit too guttural, not expert at all, but sufficient unto the instant. The message was clear.
McAuliff looked at Alison, her bright, stunningly blue eyes bluer still in the Caribbean moonlight.
He lifted his rifle in the air and shattered the stillness of the night with a burst of gunfire. Perhaps the ganga pilot in the grasslands would laugh softly in satisfaction. Perhaps, with luck, one of the stray bullets might find its way to his head.
It did not matter.
It mattered only that they had made it. They were good enough, after all.
He held Alison in his arms and screamed joyfully into the darkness above. It did not sound much like a wild pig, but that did not matter, either.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THIRTY FIVE
They sat at the table on the huge free-form pool deck overlooking the beds of coral and the blue waters beyond. The conflict between wave and rock resulted in cascading arcs of white spray surging upwards and forwards, blanketing the jagged crevices.
They had flown from the grasslands directly to Port Antonio. They had done so because Sam Tucker had raised Robert Hanley on the aeroplane's radio, and Hanley had delivered his instructions in commands that denied argument. They had landed at the small Sam Jones Airfield at 2.35 in the morning. A limousine sent from the Trident Villas awaited them.
So, too, did Robert Hanley. And the moment Sam Tucker alighted from the plane, Hanley shook his hand and proceeded to crash his fist into Tucker's face. He followed this action by reaching down and picking Sam up off the ground, greeting him a bit more cordially but explaining in measured anger that the past several weeks had caused him unnecessary anxiety, obviously Sam Tucker's responsibility. The two very young old reprobates then drank the night through at the bar of Trident Villas. The young manager, Timothy Durell, surrendered at 5.10 in the morning, dismissed the bartender, and turned the keys over to Hanley and Sam.