If he got up early and headed out again before Bragg woke in the morning the officer would never even know he’d been there. Satisfied that his sanctuary would remain unsullied, he slung his rifle across his back and went ashore.
Nature had reclaimed the beach in his absence. A thick berm of tangled seaweed and driftwood stretched along the high tide mark like a torpid serpent; dead, matted foliage carpeted the sand. Fresh shoots had overgrown the campsite. A forlorn aluminum pole covered with creepers jutted up from the collapsed tent.
The corrupt stench of mildew rose from the damp bedding inside when he pulled it out of the undergrowth, sending sand runners scuttling away. The sight of scavengers crawling from where he and Virene had once made love so passionately sent tremors of revulsion through his limbs. Terson backed away and sat down hard, resting his head in his arms until the fit passed.
Bragg’s presence was nothing compared to the blow he’d just experienced. Of all the places he might have expected a reminder of his failure to protect his wife, this was the very last. The island was his, damn it! If keeping it meant eradicating every reminder of Virene then so be it!
He got out the rake and pitchfork and scoured the beach, each furious sweep of his arms slinging refuse across the sand, mind vacant of everything but the beach, the rake, and the arms wielding the rake. A pile of flotsam grew next to the campsite. When the last leaf was swept from the sand he lit the pile on fire, dragged out the ruined tent and threw it on top with all it contained.
Smoke rose skyward over the lagoon in swirling, amorphous tendrils. The heat baked his skin dry and tight. Flames leapt free and danced like red, windblown hair before vanishing into the smoke.
Terson knew he was a fool.
He could not erase her from this place. Every touch, every word, all that he’d shared with her had blended with the aura of the ground, trees and air. His shameful, selfish attempt to wipe away the memory of their time together made him no better than the members of her dysfunctional family.
Virene deserved better than that. She deserved a husband willing to fight for her, but the one she got gave her up in favor of drunken self-pity. He’d never even visited her grave. Terson sat by the fire and closed his burning eyes, squeezing his lids tight, unable to stem the flow of tears down his face.
Lieutenant Ramos arrived at the Coast Guard cruiser’s forward observation platform and returned the lookout’s salute sharply. “What have you got, sailor?”
The lookout motioned to his Big Eye. “Have a look, sir, bearing one-one-five.”
Ramos put his eye to the huge scope. Even at maximum magnification it was hard to see the smudge as the horizon moved with the ship’s bobbing. “A cloud,” he guessed.
“Possibly,” the sailor said, “but there is a hint of pluming, and the color isn’t right. I want to call it smoke, but not bad enough to tell the Captain without verification.”
“Have we passed the NPA?” Ramos asked.
“Not yet,” the sailor told him. “Should be within the next few minutes.”
The NPA, or Nearest Point of Approach, was the closest distance a moving vessel came to a stationary point on a parallel course. Not that it did much good if that point was over the horizon, Ramos reflected, which was no doubt why the lookout wanted an officer to make this particular call.
Radar had sighted the craft briefly, heading southeast from the location specified in the message earlier. It quickly outdistanced the cruiser and the Captain ordered his ship to follow along the last known course. Diverting to chase atmospheric phenomenon would eliminate the already infinitesimal chance of sighting it again.
The tip of an island rose above the horizon as the minutes ticked by, one of hundreds of such uncharted minor landmasses sprinkled off the continent’s coast. Ramos snatched the intercom microphone. “Lookout to bridge, land ho! Smoke bearing one-one-five!” He turned to the lookout and gave credit where it was due. “Good eye, mister.”
Terson left the fire to its work and wandered across the island, following the neglected trails that he’d blazed in the months before Virene came into his life. The paths leading to their favorite spots were still discernable as such, but he avoided them whenever possible, preferring to rediscover older routes leading to places that, in many instances, she’d never visited.
One such was the summit of the larger volcano, a steep, arduous climb even for him. It was nothing but bare rock and scrubby growth, the only feature of note besides the view was a smelly, stagnant pond in the remains of the crater. He made the ascent more swiftly than any native Nivian was capable of, but the burn in his legs proved how much strength he’d lost to the lower gravity. The human body managed its resources jealously and considered the atrophy of underused musculature a fair trade for calories.
He sat down on the lip of the crater and took a long draught from his canteen. He couldn’t blame the stabbing pain under his ribs on the tough climb. It was the same one he felt when he came out of his paralysis on Algran Asta and realized that Mama and Papa weren’t coming for him.
Terson pushed that thought away before it dragged him into another spiral of grief and self-pity over the long list of people he’d lost. Thought itself was the enemy at the moment, the process that dredged up memories of unpleasant events for reanalysis which invariably uncovered his mistakes and shortcomings. He closed his eyes and cleared his mind, pinching out any spark of complex reasoning, reducing his consciousness to the moment.
Nothing in the past mattered; nothing in the future could be foreseen.
At this moment the sun was bright and hot. At this moment the dry smell of hot basalt filled his nostrils. Somewhere nearby rock expanded minutely, just enough to dislodge a few pebbles from their centuries old resting place. They dislodged a few more in their tumble and stabilized again mere centimeters from where they’d begun, where they might lie for another day, or week, or century, before continuing on their journey to the bottom of the crater.
A mere flick of his wrist would shorten their journey by thousands of years if he chose to intercede on their behalf, let human caprice interfere with the geologic progression that would eventually carry them down to the sea to be ground into sand, deposited on the seafloor, and, someday, thrust skyward again as sedimentary strata in the side of a mountain.
At this moment, over these pebbles, Terson had the power of a god.
A faint, rhythmic beat broke the threshold of conscious perception, intruding on his meditation and reminding him that, in the real world, he had power over very little. He crouched in the shadow of an outcropping and shaded the lenses of his binoculars with his hand, scanning the horizon until he spotted the profile of a ship. A helicopter flew a straight course toward the island as a second lifted from the ship’s deck to follow.
He made out Coast Guard markings on the side of the lead aircraft, a common model used for search and rescue, a huge, lumbering airframe with a belly formed like a boat hull for water landing. Not particularly fast, but powerful enough to maintain stability in weather that would knock other aircraft out of the sky.
The pressing question was what stirred their interest in the island? One by one, Terson trained his binoculars on the handful of places that a boat or raft could reach shore on the chance that his island had become the refuge of castaways of some sort or another.
He found nothing indicating the presence of other humans, but something else caught his attention as he panned past the lagoon where the hydrojet was tied up: a thin wisp of smoke rising from the embers of the bonfire. Terson hung his head with a groan. Whatever the Coast Guard’s purpose in the area, smoke was one thing they were certain to investigate.
The helicopter broke to the south and slowed as it reached shore. Terson stood to keep it in sight as it settled to the coarse pebble beach. Three armed figures in khaki fatigues leapt out and ran into the jungle.
Terson crouched behind a rock, heart thudding. This was no search and rescue team! The helicopter continued around t
he southern tip, then north along the windward side of the island, vanishing briefly behind the smaller volcanic cone. It made four more three-man troop drops and headed back toward the ship, passing the on-coming helicopter half way.
The second aircraft resembled the first in every detail but sported a gun pod in the nose and rocket tubes under its belly. It skirted the southern side of the lagoon and banked hard to the north, slowing to a hover at treetop level.
The blades beat the air like thunderclaps, but Bragg had yet to appear from inside the boat. Terson slapped the ground futility. “Wake up, you idiot!” The police officer’s civilized senses didn’t equate the sound with danger. If he woke he was more likely to offer refreshments than high tail it into the brush.
A dozen figures rappelled to the beach. Half formed a perimeter; the rest stormed the hydrojet while the gunship circled overhead. Terson waited breathlessly for the pop of gunfire that never came. After a few minutes most of the squad sauntered back to the beach where an officer or platoon sergeant divided them into three-man teams and sent them into the jungle.
The commander and two others re-boarded Terson’s boat and threw the lines into the water before vanishing inside. The hydrojet backed up in a clumsy turn and crept inexpertly through the channel toward the reef. They ventured into water so shallow Terson could almost feel the bottom scrape as they probed the treacherous coral again and again, coming ridiculously close to escape several times before being cut off, but there was only one way out and they would not find it by accident.
A glimmer of hope lifted Terson’s spirits when they gave up and anchored. He wasn’t insane enough to leap into the water from the cliffs, but there was another option if he could get off the peak while the helicopter was occupied with the shoreline.
Terson rolled in the stinking pool at the bottom of the crater, covering himself in black mud from head to toe. When the aircraft started around the windward side of the island Terson headed down the peak’s opposite slope. He leapt from rock to rock with every ounce of strength he possessed and made the tree line just as the aircraft reappeared.
He paused in the shade for a few minutes to catch his breath, and then crept into the jungle.
SEVENTEEN
West of the Humboldt Archipelago: 2709:08:24 Standard
Maalan Bragg awoke to the sound of feet pounding across the deck over his head and thudding down the steps. He sat up groggily as armed men exploded into the cabin. One of them thumped him in the forehead with the butt of a sub-machinegun before he comprehended that they were after him.
The blow flattened him again, and a crush of bodies pinned him to the bed while stars spun in his eyes. Hands stripped him of his pistol as they flipped him over and clamped manacles around his wrists. They unceremoniously dumped him on the floor to frisk the bedding for weapons, ignoring him as they proceeded to search the rest of the boat.
Maalan took advantage of the reprieve to gather his wits. He rolled onto his side and bent his knees slightly to relieve the pressure on his chest. All he could see of his assailants as they tromped back and forth through the cabin were black combat boots and khaki trousers. He also spied a single bangstick under the bench seat against the wall opposite the bed as the stars faded from his eyes. Whoever these people were, they’d failed to isolate their prisoner from his surroundings, a departure from standard procedure that could prove fatal to either party.
He made out a cliff and trees through the porthole across from where he lay, suggesting that he’d been asleep a lot longer than he thought and that Reilly had brought them back to the Archipelago. Obviously they’d been spotted, which suggested that it was the Coast Guard ransacking the boat. His theory proved accurate several minutes later when a young seaman entered the cabin to stand guard.
He shifted his weapon nervously when he noticed Bragg watching him. “Careful with that thing, son,” Bragg said as calmly as he could manage.
“Be quiet!”
“You’re Coast Guard, right?”
The kid’s eyes flitted around the room. “Stop talking!” he hissed.
“Okay, relax.” He lay back and tried to ignore the throb in his head. Where the hell is Reilly? Bragg could see the empty pilot’s seat in the cockpit from where he lay. He hadn’t heard any shots and he didn’t believe Terson Reilly could be physically restrained without a great deal of commotion. The lack of both strongly suggested that he was gone when the Coasties arrived or slipped away as they approached.
The men searching the boat were taking no chances, assuming that they’d come to the same conclusion Bragg had. The frenetic pace of the initial sweep gave way to a more deliberate investigation as they opened access hatches and rummaged through the boat’s utility lockers.
Finally, the majority filed ashore and two men—one officer, the other a senior enlisted—climbed into the cockpit. The hydrojet’s engine turned over and the impellers whined as it began to move. Ominous bangs and scrapes from beneath the boat and cursing from the Coasties filled the next forty-five minutes. Eventually the boat stopped and the engine died.
The two men in the cockpit, a chief petty officer and a lieutenant, descended into the main cabin. The officer sent the seaman out to set the anchor and eyed Bragg coldly. “Sit him up.”
The petty officer lifted him by his arms and pushed him into a seat. The manacles bit into swollen wrists and Bragg squirmed to relieve them of the added weight. “I’m a Federal Police officer,” he informed them, intending to establish his official status as quickly as possible.
“We found your identification,” the officer said. “However, a poacher is a poacher. Your occupation does not mitigate that.”
“We aren’t poaching!” Bragg snapped.
“We haven’t found any contraband—yet,” the man acknowledged, “but you’ll admit your presence here constitutes an embarrassing impropriety, at the very least.” Bragg declined the bait and did nothing of the sort. Personal experience had taught him that most people interrogated by law enforcement personnel were exquisitely uncomfortable with silence and tended to fill it with incriminating chatter when offered the opportunity. He couldn’t afford to let himself fall into the mindset of a perp—to the contrary, the course out of his predicament lay in accentuating his identity as a law enforcement officer.
“If you have done nothing wrong,” the Coastie officer continued after the protracted silence, “you will not object to answering a few questions.”
“All you have to do is ask,” Bragg smiled with as much sincerity as he could muster.
“How many others are with you?”
“One.”
“His name?”
“Terson Reilly,” Bragg said. The officer nodded, though he wrote none of it down. As a matter of fact, Bragg realized, he didn’t even have anything to take notes with.
“And what is your relationship?”
“I’m his probation officer.”
“I…see. And where is he now?”
Bragg inclined his head toward land. “I’ve been asleep for a while,” he said, “but I assume he’s ashore running some errands.” That drew an amused chuckle from the petty officer and an irritated scowl from the lieutenant. It all came together as Bragg looked closer at the shoreline and surrounding water, both vacant. Reilly had stopped at his island instead of returning to the resort.
The situation was considerably more serious and complicated than Maalan had believed. Legal constraints were different for a red-handed travel violation as opposed to investigation of an alleged misdeed after the fact. The Coast Guard was legally within its right to use deadly force to apprehend suspects in these circumstances and Reilly, being who he was, wasn’t likely to surrender. Bragg doubted that he’d seek a confrontation, but if the Coasties cornered him the kid would cut a bloody swath through them to escape if he had to. “You won’t find him,” Bragg added quickly. “He knows this place too well.”
“He would do well to come forward.”
“He doesn
’t trust you, but he’ll listen to me. Pull your men out and put me ashore.”
“So you can vanish as thoroughly as you claim he can?” the officer smiled slyly. “I don’t think so. It’s a small island and we have plenty of time.”
Like the Marines on Algran Asta, the sailors were inept woodsmen, tramping and slashing through the jungle like cattle, believing themselves stealthy the whole time. Their inexperience made Terson’s sophisticated woodcraft unnecessary, but to his perception his skills were soft and rusty, compelling him to even greater caution.
He moved in spurts and pauses, staggering his stride to avoid any pattern of sound recognizable as footsteps, wormed through the most tangled, thorny undergrowth he could find, and froze in place at the slightest evidence of approaching sailors. They nearly walked over him a number of times. He quickly realized that he could avoid them indefinitely—almost.
When night fell the island would radiate the heat it had soaked up during the day back into the atmosphere. The ground would shed enough energy to eliminate most infrared interference by two or three in the morning. One pass with a thermal imaging scanner then, and they’d have him.
Terson paused just short of his goal: an ancient, broken lava flow thrusting into the sea a few hundred meters from the hydrojet. He drained his canteen as he surveyed the blackened scabland. Seventy meters of skin splitting rock, thorn bushes and knee-high salt grass lay between him and the ocean. Where the flow met the sea, waves had broken the cliff face into a tumble of huge boulders and suck holes where an insanely desperate man might reach the water if he was lucky.
There was no overhead cover; once begun he was committed. Terson took one last deep breath and raced onto the flow. The temperature was twice that beneath the jungle canopy. The heat reflecting from the rock overpowered the sea breeze and penetrated his light footwear after only a few steps. Dry thorns tore at his exposed skin and rasp-like basalt punished every slip with bloody scrapes on hands, knees and shins. The edges of the wounds dried almost immediately, congealing the blood as it emerged, only to break open again at the next misstep.
Pale Boundaries Page 27