30 May
Dieter’s Island
Off Devil’s Backbone
North Eleuthera
Bahamas
The wind outside the stone hut was easily gusting sixty miles an hour, thought Macaulay as he watched a huge palm frond sail past the window. He glanced at his watch. The storm would reach its peak in a couple of hours. They needed to find the fossil and get back to Mike McGandy’s boat as quickly as possible.
“When we first came to this place, there was a half-burned shack built by whoever had once lived here,” said Jensen. “The next morning I found an old skiff that had been left behind too. When I felt strong enough, I rowed the wounded man over to the mainland in the dark and left him there on the dock. I later learned the place was called Spanish Wells.”
“What did you do with the glass containers that were inside the red crate?” asked Lexy gently.
“I opened the crate a few days later,” said Dieter Jensen. “It contained the bones of a man. I knew from the way they had been carefully packed in the glass containers that he had been a person someone had loved and cared about in his life.”
The old man’s blue eyes were almost young again as he looked at her. A ghastly smile exposed his almost toothless mouth.
“My father was a Lutheran minister in Dortmund,” he said. “I knew the words. I gave him a proper burial out of respect for his family. I said the words over his grave.”
Lexy remembered the crosses she had seen across the field. “Did you bury him in the cemetery near the pine grove?”
“I buried a lot of things there over the last seventy years,” he said. “I’ve had many friends, dogs, cats, birds . . . also a man whose body I found in the mangroves after the big hurricane. It’s the only dry ground on the island to bury anything.”
“Do you remember where you buried the man in the crate?”
Jensen nodded. “I erected a stout cross over the grave a few months after I got here.”
“Can you take us to it?” asked Lexy.
The old man nodded.
“Do you know who the man was?” he asked, standing up from the chair. “The man in the crate?”
“Yes,” said Lexy.
The old man started to open the driftwood door and turned to face them.
“You must follow in my footsteps,” he said. “Do not stray off the path. There was a time when I was frightened they would try to take me away from here. I put . . . obstacles in their path if they came.”
“What kind of obstacles?” asked Macaulay.
“Different things as they came to me,” he said. “Once, I found a small barge beached in the lagoon. It was carrying outdated military stores from the naval base they closed down over there after the war. Before it freed itself and drifted off, I found some . . . good obstacles.”
Taking in his words, Macaulay handed one of the machine guns to Lexy and strapped the second one over his shoulder. He found a box of bullets for the Lee-Enfield on one of the shelves and loaded the magazine before handing the rifle to Barnaby.
“Remember to use the right end if you need this,” he said.
“I was once an Englishman and a Boy Scout,” said Barnaby.
Two shovels were resting under a lean-to by the wall of the hut, and Macaulay slung them over his free shoulder as they headed out into the pelting rain. They were on the highest point of the island, and Macaulay could see a glimpse of ocean through the tree line.
Huge wind-driven rollers were pounding ashore near the northern end of the island, the foam-flecked green water surging deep inland before finally stopping to recede back. Jensen came to one of the side paths and led them down it.
Through the driving rain, the uneven row of wooden crosses that Lexy had seen on their approach to the old man’s hut emerged out of the murky grayness. There were a dozen of them, several with little wooden boards carved with lettering. The graves were surrounded by a crude fence made of mangrove limbs.
Dieter stopped at a massive fan palm within the small grove of trees that ringed the old man’s cemetery. Lexy saw a fluttering of wings above them and watched the man’s pet frigate bird land nearby on the sand.
“Sometimes I forget who and what is buried around here,” he said, “but I will always be thankful to this fan palm. I was tied to it when the big hurricane washed over the island. We survived together.”
Macaulay quickly understood why Jensen had chosen this place for his cemetery. Unlike the boggy muck that coated most of the surface of the low-lying island, the soil was loamy and had good drainage.
“Keira here,” barked a voice almost drowned out by the wind. It took Macaulay a moment to realize it was coming from the Motorola handheld radio attached to his belt.
“Back to Keira,” said Macaulay after hitting the transmit button.
“Time to go,” said McGandy while looking at the LED monitor of his Furuno radar system. “Large vessel approaching . . . definitely coming here . . . extraction now.”
“Coming,” said Macaulay, throwing down the shovel.
“We have to go,” said Macaulay, picking up his machine gun.
“Who is coming?” demanded Dieter Jensen as Lexy hurried him along behind Macaulay and Barnaby. They had reached the main path again that led back to the life raft when Macaulay heard McGandy’s voice again.
“Too late,” he said. “Two small assault boats detached from ship. One going north round the island . . . the other south toward me.”
“If you can see them, they can see you. Get out, Keira,” ordered Macaulay.
“Soon,” said McGandy, ending the call and pulling open one of the bulkhead lockers.
Macaulay gathered the others around him under the shelter of the grape arbor along the main trail.
“They obviously know we are here, and we can assume they know that Dieter’s place is on the high ground. If we hole up there, they’ll surround us right away. Our only chance is to have some mobility.”
“Mobility?” muttered Barnaby, looking at their bedraggled crew.
“There is a natural chokepoint at the mangrove swamp,” said Macaulay. “It would take hours to cut their way through it. They have to come along the path. One of us can stake out the trail where it opens up and can keep them bottled up there indefinitely.”
“There is something else waiting for them along that path,” said Jensen.
Based on the way he was shivering, Lexy thought he was coming down with fever. Barnaby saw it too.
“I’m a practiced hand now with this blunderbuss, General Macaulay,” he said, still holding the Lee-Enfield. “Just show me where I need to be lurking in ambush when they emerge.”
Macaulay quickly led him back from the grape arbor past the grove of Chrysophyllum trees. As they were about to clear the tree line, Macaulay saw a small declivity in the ground off to the right beneath the dense foliage. It was about fifty yards from where the path came out of the swamp.
Pushing through the ground vegetation, he said, “This is as good as we could hope to find. Aside from the muzzle flash of the rifle, they won’t be able to see you. Your field of fire includes twenty yards on both sides of the path in case they try to flank you.”
“How long should I try to hold?” asked Barnaby, abandoning any attempt at humor.
“The magazine is full,” said Macaulay. “Ten shots. Just try to keep track of them and save a couple for when you have to pull back.”
Barnaby unlocked the bolt to open the breech and smoothly shoved it home again to insert a round in the chamber. Macaulay extended his hand and Barnaby took it in his own.
“Don’t wait too long,” said Macaulay as they shook hands. “I’ll see you back at the ranch.”
“The good old ranch,” said Barnaby, dropping to his belly and lying behind the declivity.
Lexy and the old man were waiting for Macaulay when he arrived back at the grape arbor.
“Where do you think I should meet the group coming in from the other side?” Macaulay asked Jensen.
“Behind the beach they will have to cross a boggy place,” said the old man. “You want to move them toward the right of it after they come ashore. That row of boulders down there will give you a good firing position.”
“Barnaby and I will fall back to the stone hut if we have to,” said Macaulay to Lexy. “You stay safe until we get back.”
Lexy reached out to embrace him for several seconds. Macaulay suddenly heard what sounded like rapid fire from the south side of the island beyond the mangroves.
“That’s Mike McGandy, I think,” said Macaulay, “giving our friends down there an island welcome.”
Yanking the bolt back to arm the Steyr AUG machine gun, he headed down the slope toward the row of boulders.