Jack Higgins: Thunder Point

To Bob Carney, fast asleep in the house at Chocolate Hole on the other side of Great Cruz Bay, it was the sound of distant guns. He stirred in his sleep, and suddenly it was the same old dream, the mortars landing everywhere, shaking the ground, the screams of the wounded and dying. He’d lost his helmet, flung himself to the ground, arms protecting his head, was not even aware of being hit, only afterwards, as the attack faded and he sat up. There was pain then in both arms and legs from shrapnel wounds, blood on his hands. And then, as the smoke cleared, he became aware of another Marine sitting against a tree, both legs gone above the knees. He was shaking, had a hand outstretched as if begging for help, and Carney cried out in horror and sat bolt upright in bed, awake now.

The same lousy old dream, Vietnam, and that was a long time ago. He switched on the bedside lamp and checked his watch. It was only two-thirty. He sighed and stood up, stretching for a moment, then padded through the dark house to the kitchen, switched on the light and got a beer from the icebox.

He was very tanned, the blond hair faded, both from regular exposure to sea and sun. Around five foot eight, he had an athlete’s body, not surprising in a man who had been a ship’s captain and was now a master diver by profession. Forty-four years of age, but most people would have taken seven or eight years off that.

He went through the living room and opened a window to the veranda. Rain dripped from the roof and out to sea lightning crackled. He drank a little more of his beer, then put the can down and closed the window. Better to try and get a little more sleep. He was taking a party of recreational scuba divers out from Caneel Bay at nine-thirty, which meant that as usual he needed his wits about him, plus all his considerable expertise.

As he went through the living room he paused to pick up a framed photo of his wife, Karye, and his two young children, the boy Walker and his daughter, little Wallis. They’d departed for Florida only the previous day for a vacation with their grandparents, which left him a bachelor for the next month. He smiled wryly, knowing just how much he’d miss them, and went back to bed.

At the same moment in his house on the edge of Cruz Bay at Gallows Point, Henry Baker sat in his study reading in the light of a single desk lamp. He had the door to the veranda open because he liked the rain and the smell of the sea. It excited him, took him back to the days of his youth and his two years’ service in the Navy during the Korean War. He’d made full Lieutenant, had even been decorated with the Bronze Star, could have made a career of it. In fact they’d wanted him to, but there was the family publishing business to consider, responsibilities and the girl he’d promised to marry.

It hadn’t been a bad life considering. No children, but he and his wife had been content until cancer took her at fifty. From then on he’d really lost interest in the business, had been happy to accept the right kind of deal for a takeover, which had left him very rich and totally rootless at fifty-eight.

It was a visit to St. John which had been the saving of him. He’d stayed at Caneel Bay, the fabulous Rock Resort on its private peninsula north of Cruz Bay. It was there that he’d been introduced to scuba diving by Bob Carney and it had become an obsession. He’d sold his house in the Hamptons, moved to St. John and bought the present place. His life at sixty-three was totally satisfactory and worthwhile, although Jenny had had something to do with that as well.

He reached for her photo. Jenny Grant, twenty-five, face very calm, wide eyes above high cheekbones, short dark hair, and there was still a wariness in those eyes as if she expected the worst, which was hardly surprising when Baker recalled their first meeting in Miami when she’d tried to proposition him in a car park, her body shaking from the lack of the drugs she’d needed.

When she’d collapsed, he’d taken her to the hospital himself, had personally guaranteed the necessary financing to put her through a drug rehabilitation unit, had held her hand all the way because there was no one else. It was the usual story. She was an orphan raised by an aunt who’d thrown her out at sixteen. A fair voice had enabled her to make some kind of living singing in saloons and cocktail lounges, and then the wrong man, bad company, and the slide had begun.

He’d brought her back to St. John to see what the sea and sun could do. The arrangement had worked perfectly and on a strictly platonic basis. He was the father she had never known, she was the daughter he had been denied. He’d invested in a cafe and bar for her on the Cruz Bay waterfront called Jenny’s Place. It had proved a great success. Life couldn’t be better and he always waited up for her. It was at that moment he heard the jeep drive up outside, there was the sound of the porch door and she came in laughing, a raincoat over her shoulder. She threw it on a chair and leaned down and kissed his cheek.

“My God, it’s like a monsoon out there.”

“It’ll clear by morning, you’ll see.” He took her hand. “Good night?”

“Very.” She nodded. “A few tourists in from Caneel and the Hyatt. Gosh, but I’m bushed.”

“I’d get to bed if I were you, it’s almost three o’clock.”

“Sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not. I may go diving in the morning, but I should be back before noon. If I miss you, I’ll come down to the cafe for lunch.”

“I wish you wouldn’t dive on your own.”

“Jenny, I’m a recreational diver, no decompression needed because I work within the limits exactly as Bob Carney taught me, and I never dive without my Marathon diving computer, you know that.”

“I also know that whenever you dive there’s always a chance of some kind of decompression sickness.”

“True, but very small.” He squeezed her hand. “Now stop worrying and go to bed.”

She kissed him on the top of his head and went out. He returned to his book, carrying it across to the couch by the window, stretching out comfortably. He didn’t seem to need so much sleep these days, one of the penalties of growing old, he imagined, but after a while his eyes started to close and sleep he did, the book sliding to the floor.

He came awake with a start, light beaming in through the venetian blinds. He lay there for a moment, then checked his watch. It was a little after five and he got up and went out on to the veranda. It was already dawn, light breaking on the horizon, but strangely still, and the sea was extraordinarily calm, something to do with the hurricane having passed. Perfect for diving, absolutely perfect.

He felt cheerful and excited at the same time, hurried into the kitchen, put the kettle on and made a stack of cheese sandwiches while it boiled. He filled a thermos with coffee, put it in a holdall with the sandwiches and took his old reefer coat down from behind the door.

He left the jeep for Jenny and walked down to the harbor. It was still very quiet, not too many people about, a dog barking in the distance. He dropped into his inflatable dinghy at the dock, cast off and started the outboard motor, threaded his way out through numerous boats until he came to his own, the Rhoda , named after his wife, a thirty-five-foot Sport Fisherman with a flying bridge.

He scrambled aboard, tying the inflatable on a long line, and checked the deck. He had four air tanks standing upright in their holders; he’d put them in the day before himself. He opened the lid of the deck locker and checked his equipment. There was a rubber and nylon diving suit which he seldom used, preferring the lighter, three-quarter-length one in orange and blue. Fins, mask, plus a spare because the lenses were correctional according to his eye prescription, two buoyancy jackets, gloves, air regulators and his Marathon computer.