them and boring into the dashboard. The radio spat out sparks.
More bullets rained against the vehicle, with such frequency that the dings and chimes formed one continuous peal. Too many bullets to count entered the cabin, kicking up a confetti of vinyl bits from the dashboard along with a geyser of sparks, and turning any remaining glass into gravel. The air filled with a salty mist.
Crouched as far down as possible, Charlie kept his hands on the accelerator. He tried to steel himself by remembering that he and Drummond had escaped worse.
That reduced the odds of their succeeding again, come to think of it. Better not to think, he decided.
The Amphibus reached thirty kilometers per hour, according to the speedometer, slashing through the waves.
The hail of bullets dwindled to a sprinkle, then nothing. The ruckus of gunfire and sirens receded and was soon drowned out by the inboard engines’ hums. Charlie felt safe enough to emulate Drummond and climb back onto the bench.
Through what remained of his window, he glanced aft at the policemen standing at the water’s edge, their heads lowered.
“Now what?” Charlie asked.
Drummond didn’t reply, fully attuned to the French chatter from the walkie-talkie pressed to his ear. After a moment, he said, “They’re dispatching two Coast Guard cutters.”
Charlie looked to shore. The airport now appeared the size of a dollhouse. Other than the engines, he heard only the patter of waves against the hull and a faint cry of a seabird. The moonlit seascape could have been used by the Martinique Travel Bureau.
“How about we get out and let this thing keep on chugging to sea, so that when the cops get to it, there’s nobody aboard?” Charlie said. “We can use one of the life rafts to get back to the island.” He thought back to what Bream had said: Anybody who wants to sneak onto Martinique can pull up in a million places by boat.
“They’re also sending a helicopter.” Drummond indicated the walkie-talkie.
“Super. With a searchlight?”
As he sometimes did, Drummond massaged his temples, as if trying to trip the button that activated his memory. “Sorry,” he said in conclusion.
“Okay, how about a more basic survival question?” In this respect, Charlie thought, Drummond’s tradecraft was practically ingrained. “If you were now, hypothetically, a fugitive, what would you do?”
“Swim to shore.”
“But they’d still see you.”
“Not if I swam underwater.”
“It’s got to be a couple of miles at least.”
“Well, that would be my best course of action, if I were a fugitive.”
The distant cry, which Charlie had thought of as a seabird’s, grew louder, into a whine. He recognized it. Helicopter rotor.
He gripped his door handle. “Well, either way, we need to get out of here now.”
“This way,” Drummond said, unlatching the door to the cargo hold.
“What difference does it make?” Charlie asked.
Pushing open the door, Drummond pointed into the dark hold. The glow from the console outlined walls blooming with vests, masks, fins, and cylindrical tanks like the one that had flown out the rear door and onto the runway.
“I guess you’ve scuba dived off an amphibious rescue vehicle before too,” said Charlie, who had never even snorkeled.
Drummond pulled on a wet suit. “Maybe so.”
A minute later the whine of the rotor turned into a series of raucous thumps. The moonlight delineated the approaching helicopter from the night sky. Dressed like frogmen, Charlie and Drummond sat on the edge of the open cargo doorway.
“Some handicapper I am, thinking coming here would be simple,” Charlie said, effectively to himself.
With a splash, Drummond fell backward into the sea.
Charlie followed suit, sinking into water that was warm and, better, ink black.
14
In a preposterously small rented Peugeot, Stanley and Hadley raced to Les Trois-Ilets, a seaside village off the coast where the Amphibus had just been found.
Undercover as the well-heeled Atchisons, they checked into the five-star Hotel L’Imperatrice, a remnant of the 1960s’ embrace of garish opulence. The lobby was dominated by a lush rain forest replete with a three-story coral cliff enshrouded by luminescent mist, the result of a booming waterfall and as many filtered spotlights as a Broadway stage. At the frothy base of the fall was an emerald lagoon, populated by fish representing every shade of neon.
Stanley thought of the hotel as the perfect venue for the espionage fantasies of his youth, in which the Ritzes of the world constituted the everyday operational locale. In reality such accommodations had been far from the norm. Even in Paris, the job took him to the sorts of hotels that offered hourly rates. His agents weren’t just people willing to sell out their own countrymen; they were willing to do it for a pittance. Not quite habitues of the posh spots.
With a Serge Gainsbourg melody in his head, he walked onto the bamboo terrace that extended from the open-air lobby and overlooked the purple-black Baie de Fort-de-France.
“Hoping to spot our rabbits swimming ashore?” asked Hadley, joining him at the rail.
The inability to do anything frustrated him. “At least we’re close to the action in the event there is some.”
She checked her BlackBerry. “The local officials have come to the conclusion that Drummond Clark is an international money launderer and arms dealer named Marvin Lesser. Old cover, mistaken identity, or whatever, it’s working better as a pretext for a manhunt than anything we could have come up with.”
“So what can we do now?” Anything seemed preferable to sitting idly.
Hadley hesitated, then asked, “How about we get a bite?”
“I guess we can keep an eye on the bay.”
The hotel’s outdoor restaurant, Les Etoiles, was lit for the most part by candles and tiki torches, but also, as advertised, by the stars, beneath which the Baie de Fort-de-France was a mosaic, flickering from black to white. Along with a smattering of other late diners, Stanley and Hadley were serenaded by a calypso band in tuxedos the same turquoise as the pool. They both ate Colombo, Martinique’s national dish, a coconut milk curry of fish, served with spicy fried plantains, at a price probably close to the per capita income. Stanley would have happily quit after the salad course. Primed for a hunt, his body wanted no part of food.
Hadley set her BlackBerry on the table. “You ready for the latest?”
“I can make the time.” He ate a forkful of fish for appearance’s sake.
“Our pilot friend went straight home to his apartment in Anse Mitan, about five miles from here. He microwaved a burrito for dinner, and had”-she glanced at the BlackBerry’s display-“five
“You’ll do better with this.” Stanley tapped the leather-bound drinks menu propped between a candleholder and the pepper mill. “Red Stripe is a beer brewed in Jamaica. If our boy’s had five, he’s probably not planning to drive. Under any other circumstances, I’d say: ‘I hope not.’ ”
“Currently he’s surfing the Web. No calls, no new e-mails, two text messages, one sent to a local woman asking her if she’d be at Le Squash for happy hour tomorrow, one from a Dutch woman who tends bar at a nightclub in Fort-de-France inquiring about his plans later tonight.”
“She looking to book a ‘flight’ with him?”
“It would seem so. He didn’t reply.”
“Maybe he’s waiting to hear from two men.”