Jack Higgins - Thunder Point

She was only human and terrified out of her mind. “Anything,” she pleaded.

“Right. Where would we find the wreck of U180?”

“Thunder Point,” she gasped.

“And where would that be?”

“It’s on the chart. About ten or twelve miles south of St. John. That’s all I know.”

“Dillon, the Brigadier and Carney, we saw them leave from the dock at Caneel Bay. They’ve gone to Thunder Point to dive on the U-boat, is that right?” She hesitated and he slapped her again. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’re diving at first light.”

He patted her face, closed the knife and turned to Guerra. “Lock the door.”

Guerra seemed bewildered. “Why?”

“I said lock the door, idiot.” Algaro walked past him and swung it shut, turning the key. He turned and his smile was the cruellest thing Jenny had ever seen in her life. “You did say you’d do anything?” and he started to take his jacket off.

She screamed again, totally hysterical now, jumped to her feet, turned and ran headlong through the open French windows on to the balcony in total panic, hit the railings and went over, plunging down through the heavy rain to the garden below.

Guerra knelt beside her in the rain and felt for a pulse. He shook his head. “She looks dead to me.”

“Right, leave her there,” Algaro said. “That way it looks like an accident. Now let’s get out of here.”

The sound of their jeep’s engine faded into the night and Jenny lay there, rain falling on her face. It was only five minutes later that Billy and Mary Jones turned into the drive in their jeep and found her at once, lying half across a path, half on grass. “My God.” Mary dropped to her knees and touched Jenny’s face. “She’s cold as ice.”

“Looks like she fell from the balcony,” Billy said.

At that moment Jenny groaned and moved her head slightly. Mary said, “Thank God, she’s alive. You carry her inside and I’ll phone for the doctor,” and she ran up the steps into the house.

Algaro spoke to Santiago from a public telephone on the waterfront. Santiago listened intently to what he had to say. “So, the girl is dead? That’s unfortunate.”

“No sweat,” Algaro told him. “Just an accident, that’s how it will look. What happens now?”

“Stay where you are and phone me back in five minutes.”

Santiago put the phone down and turned to Serra. “Thunder Point, about ten or twelve miles south of St. John.”

“We’ll have a look on the chart, Señor.” Santiago followed him along to the bridge and Serra switched on the light over the chart table. “Ah, yes, here we are.”

Santiago had a look, frowning slightly. “Dillon and company are on their way there now. They intend to dive at first light. Is there any way we could beat them to it if we left now?”

“I doubt it, Señor, and that’s open sea out there. They’d see the Maria Blanco coming for miles.”

“I take your point,” Santiago said, “and, as we learned the other day, they’re armed.” He examined the chart again and nodded. “No, I think we’ll let them do all the work for us. If they succeed, it will make them feel good. They’ll sail back to St. John happy, maybe even slightly off-guard because they will think they have won the game.”

“And then, Señor?”

“We’ll descend on them when they return to Caneel, possibly at the cottage. We’ll see.”

“So, what are your orders?”

“We’ll sail back to St. John and anchor off Paradise Beach again.” The phone was ringing in the radio room. “That will be Algaro calling back,” and Santiago went to answer it.

Algaro replaced the phone and turned to Guerra. “They intend to let those bastards get on with it and do all the work. We’ll hit them when they get back.”

“What, just you and me?”

“No, stupid, the Maria Blanco will be back off Paradise Beach in the morning. We’ll rendezvous with her then. In the meantime, we’ll go back to the launch and try to catch a little shut-eye.”

Jenny’s head, resting on the pillow, was turned to one side. She looked very pale, made no movement even as the doctor gave her an injection. Mary said, “What do you think, Doctor?”

He shook his head. “Not possible to make a proper diagnosis at this stage. The fact that she’s not regained consciousness is not necessarily bad. No overt signs of broken bones, but hairline fractures are always possible. We’ll see how she is in the morning. Hopefully she’ll have regained consciousness by then.” He shook his head. “That was a long fall. I’ll have her transferred to St. Thomas Hospital. She can have a scan there. You’ll stay with her tonight?”

“Me and Billy won’t move an inch,” Mary told him.

“Good.” The doctor closed his bag. “The slightest change, call me.”

Billy saw him out, then came back up to the bedroom. “Can I get you anything, honey?”

“No, you go and lie down, Billy, I’ll just sit here with her,” Mary said.

“As you say.”

Billy went out and Mary put a chair by the bed, sat down and held Jenny’s hand. “You’ll be fine, baby,” she said softly. “Just fine. Mary’s here.”

At three o’clock they ran into a heavy squall, rain driving in under the canopy over the flying bridge, stinging like bullets. Carney switched off the engine. “We’ll be better off below for a while.”

Dillon followed him down the ladder and they went into the deckhouse where Ferguson lay stretched out on one of the benches, his head propped up against the holdall. He yawned and sat up. “Is there a problem?”

Sea Raider swung to port, buffeted by the wind and rain. “Only a squall,” Carney said. “It’ll blow itself out in half an hour. I could do with a coffee break anyway.”

“A splendid idea.”

Dillon found the thermos and some mugs and Carney produced a plastic box containing ham and cheese sandwiches. They sat in companionable silence for a while eating them, the rain drumming against the roof.

“It’s maybe time we discussed how we’re going to do this thing,” Carney said to Dillon. “For a no-decompression dive at eighty feet, we’re good for forty minutes.”

“So a second dive would be the problem?”

Ferguson said, “I don’t understand the technicalities, would someone explain?”

“The air we breathe is part oxygen, part nitrogen,” Carney told him. “When you dive, the pressure causes nitrogen to be absorbed by the body tissues. The deeper you go, the increase in pressure causes more nitrogen to be absorbed. If you’re down too long or come up too quickly, it can form bubbles in your blood vessels and tissues, just like shaking a bottle of club soda. The end result is decompression sickness.”

“And how can you avoid that?”

“First of all by limiting the time we’re down there, particularly on the first dive. Second time around, we might need a safety stop at fifteen feet.”

“And what does that entail?” Ferguson asked.

“We rise to that depth and just stay there for a while, decompressing slowly.”

“How long for?”

“That depends.”

Dillon lit a cigarette, the Zippo flaring in the gloom. “What we’re really going to have to do is find that submarine fast.”

“And lay the charge on the first dive down,” Carney said.

“Baker did say it was lying on a ledge on the east face.”

Carney nodded. “I figure that to be the big drop side so we won’t waste time going anywhere else.” He swallowed his coffee and got up. “If we had the luck, went straight down, got in the control room and laid that Semtex…” He grinned. “Hell, we could be in like Flynn and out and back up top in twenty minutes.”