Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

Some of this had been orchestrated; some of it had not. From the way that Yackle put his fingertips together I sensed that Enoch had brought the meeting back to the prearranged program. There was a general chorus of approval in the saloon, with Gertrude loudly insisting that if the attack on the Pen failed, the raiding party must dissociate itself completely from the Settlement to avoid bringing Federal retribution down on the Believers waiting in Fairhaven.

The fog shrouded us, wet and thick. In the wheelhouse of Aurora I could see no farther than the for’rd hatch. Enoch was concentrating on the radar screen and the cluster of bright blips which marked the positions of the other four boats.

The sun was setting somewhere in the west but only the lighter obscurity to port showed that a sun existed. I had been warned about these Fundy fogs, and soon after my arrival in Sutton Cove I had learned their reality. Sculling a dory from the wharf to a boat anchored only a hundred meters across the cove I had not bothered to take a compass. I had lost sight of the wharf after three strokes with the scull, and only regained it an hour later when I ran into the end of the jetty. I had never found the boat whose radar I was supposed to be fixing. That day I had cursed the Fundy fog and my own foolishness in equal measure. Watching the fogbank roll over us as we headed north I thanked the Light—or whoever was responsible—for sending it.

We were moving at ten knots toward Jona’s Point, now clear at the top of the radar screen. The echosounder ticked off confirmation of our position as it read the depth of the water and the profile of the seabed beneath us. Astern the radar showed Ranula and the rest of the fleet heading toward Fairhaven. To port the Coast Guard cutter was drifting helplessly while her divers were struggling to free a thousand meters of chronon line from her screws. At the rate the tide and current were taking her northeast she was likely to ground before her props were free. We had listened to Lieutenant Jenson’s radio calls for aid; calls that had gone unanswered. There was no other Coast Guard cutter within two hundred kilometers; there were probably none still operational north of Boston. Nobody was moving to help the unfortunate Lieutenant or to intercept us. If indeed anybody knew where we had gone.

My spoiler was aboard Barbara’s boat just ahead, and working well. Any standard radar more than a few kilometers away would show us as a localized rainstorm. Unless the operator was familiar with Fundy weather, he or she was unlikely to wonder how a localized rainstorm could be moving north on an evening when the sea was calm and the fog thick.

I watched Jona’s Point creeping down the screen. The whiteness around us faded through gray to black as the day waned. Ahead was the Pen; the place I must capture with five boats and forty rifles. When the Couneil had accepted Enoch’s suggestion of a “hit team,” a term more appropriate to gangsters than Believers, it had also accepted Yackle’s proposal that I lead it My protests had been brushed aside. I wasn’t a sailor or a Believer, but the Council knew that I had once been a member of the Special Strike Force; an organization of which it disapproved but for whose efficiency it had an exaggerated respect. I had been a Trooper; therefore I knew how to conduct a seaborne raid. Nobody else did, so I must be the leader sent by the Light for that specific purpose.

During the next hour I discovered that Enoch and his friends had prepared more than a proposal; they had a plan already in operation. The raiding flotilla, five boats which included Enoch’s Aurora and Barbara’s Sea Eagle, were lying alongside Ratiula. The volunteer rifles, ten women and thirty men, were going aboard. Barbara, as the only helmsman who had actually taken a boat into the Point would lead the flotilla. I would be with Enoch in the command vessel. Everything was planned up to the time when the boats put us ashore. Thereafter I would direct the action. Barbara had told them I knew the inside of the Pen; nobody had asked where and how I had gained that knowledge.

I had had command thrust upon me and, unable to avoid it, I was beginning to feel easier in it What we were attempting might be crazy, but I knew what I was doing and how to do it—if it could be done at all. It was the kind of thing I had done too often in the past. But this time, for the first time, I knew it was worth doing.

“Should be hearing the foghorn at Jona’s soon,” I said to Enoch.

He shook his head, his eyes still on the radar screen. "She don’t blow no more, Mister Gavin. Broke down last winter and they never fixed her.”

Old Groaner had been allowed to die. For some reason I found that the most ominous of portents. The foghorn at Jona’s Point had been warning mariners of danger for over two centuries. Its silence prophesied the chaos to come more clearly than any statistic.

The blip marking the Point crept closer and when we were about twelve kilometers south of where the wharf should be I called the other four boats. “This is a last check. At ten clicks we’ll be within com range of the Pen. Anybody ahead who’s listening will know we’re here, even if they don’t understand what we’re saying. So after you’ve reported only use the com in an emergency.”

Martha, Jehu, Adam, and Barbara reported in turn that they understood. Then I made my own modification to their plan. “I’m shifting to Sea Eagle, so I’ll be first on the wharf. After Barbara’s put me ashore all boats hang off until I call you in, boat by boat.”

“Mister Gavin—” Barbara started to protest.

“I’ll be coming over Enoch’s bows.” I cut my com and looked at him. “Can you nose up to Sea Eagle’s stem?”

“If you say so!” He looked up from the radar and smiled at me. “Go for’rd and call back when I’m touching.”

I gripped his shoulder, eased past the men and women crowding the wheelhouse, and groped my way along the fore-deck toward the bows. For minutes I was alone in palpable darkness—the fog pressing in like a wet wrapping. Then, suddenly, the stern light of the Sea Eagle was directly beneath me and I called back for Enoch to ease off. He and his daughter must have been in telepathic communication for Aurora’s stem only nudged her boat. I jumped down onto the afterdeck as Enoch dropped back into the fog. Somebody grabbed me. “Welcome aboard!” It was Judith.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be with the kids in Ranula.”

“I’m more use here. I know the Pen too!” She led me for’rd. “If you get hit I’ll be able to take over guidance.” She stopped at the wheelhouse door. “Please—give me your Jeta. In case I have to shoot somebody!”

Judith was like all the rest. Act first—ask afterwards. I gave her the dart-gun and went into the wheelhouse to join Midge, Sam, and Barbara. Midge welcomed me, Barbara ignored me, and Sam grinned.

I moved beside Barbara at the wheel. “Got a fix?”

She nodded. “We’re five clicks southwest of the Point. I’m about to change course and run up to the channel marker.”

We stood silent, the night and the fog heavy around us. The only sounds were the low rumble of the turbine and the slap of the waves on our forefoot. The radar showed the other boats taking up line astern. I stared into the murk. Presently Midge said, “The Pen’s over there.”

I could see nothing until I used the night-sights of my Luger and picked out the silhouette of our target. Barbara called softly, “We’re at the channel buoy. Shall I go on in?” “Can you see where to go?”

“Sonic rangefinder’s bouncing well. There’s the wharf!” She pointed to the tube and though I couldn’t tell what the ul-tracoustic beeps were bouncing from, she seemed confident it was the metal pilings of the pier.