true heading, and we went in through the inshore channel and the islands towards the wide tidal mouth of the Duza River.
There was no moon but the stars were big and the break of surf flared with phosphorescence, ghostly green in the afterglow of the setting sun.
I ran Dancer in fast, picking up my marks successively the loom of an atoll in the starlight, the break of a reef, the very run and chop of the water guided me through the channels and warned of shoals and shallows.
Angelo and Chubby huddled beside me at the bridge rail.
Occasionally one of them would go below to brew more of the powerful black coffee, and we sipped at the steaming mugs, staring out into the night watching for a flash of paleness that was not breaking water but the hull of a patrol boat.
Once Chubby broke the silence. “Hear from Wally you had some trouble up at the fort last night.”
“Some, I agreed.
“Wally had to take him up to the hospital afterwards.”
“Wally still got his job?” I asked.
“Only just. The man wanted to lock him up but Wally was too big.”
Angelo joined in. “Judith was up at the airport at lunch time.
Went up to fetch a crate of school books, and she saw him going out on the plane to the mainland.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Inspector Daly, he went across on the noon plane.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Didn’t think it was important Harry. “No, I agreed. “Perhaps it isn’t.”
There were a dozen reasons why Daly might go out to the mainland, none of them remotely connected with my business. Yet it made me feel uneasy - I didn’t like that kind of animal prowling around in the undergrowth when I was taking a risk.
“Wish you’d brought that piece of yours, Harry,” Chubby repeated mournfully, and I said nothing but wished the same.
The flow of the tide had smoothed the usual turmoil at the entrance to the southern channel of the Duza and I groped blindly for it in the dark. The mud banks on each side were latticed with standing fish traps laid by the tribal fishermen, and they helped to define the channel at last.
When I was sure we were in the correct entrance, I killed both engines and we drifted silently on the incoming tide. All of us listened with complete concentration for the engine beat of a patrol boat, but there was only the cry of a night heron and the splash of mullet leaping in the shallows.
Ghost silent, we were swept up the channel; on each side the dark masses of mangrove trees hedged us in and the smell of the mud swamps was rank and fetid on the moisture-laden air.
The starlight danced in spots of light on the dark agitated surface of the channel, and once a long narrow dugout canoe slid past us like a crocodile, the phosphorescence gleaming on the paddles of the two fishermen returning from the mouth. They paused to watch us for a moment and then drove on without calling a greeting, disappearing swiftly into the gloom.
“That was bad,” said Angelo.
“We will be drinking a lager in the Lord Nelson before they could tell anyone who matters.” I knew that most of the fishermen on this coast kept their own secrets, close with words like most of their kind. I was not perturbed by the sighting.
Looking ahead I saw the first bend coming up, and the current began to push Dancer out towards the far bank. I hit the starter buttons, the engines murmured into life, and I edged back into the deep water.
We worked our way up the snaking channel, coming out at last into the broad placid reach where the mangrove ended and firm ground rose gently on each side.
A mile ahead I saw the tributary mouth of the Salsa as a dark break in the bank, screened by tall stands of fluffy headed reeds. Beyond it the twin signal lanterns glowed yellow and soft, one upon the other.
“What did I tell you, Chubby, a milk run.”
“We aren’t home yet.” Chubby the eternal optimist. “Okay, Angelo.
Get up on the bows. I’ll tell you when to drop the hook.”
We crept on down the channel and I found the words of the nursery rhyme running through my mind as I locked the wheel and took the hand spotlight from the locker below the rail.
“Three, Four, knock at the door, Five, Six, pick up sticks.” I thought briefly of the hundreds of great grey beasts that had died for the sake of their teeth - and I felt a draught of guilt blow coldly along my spine at my complicity in the slaughter. But I turned my mind away from it by lifting the spotlight and aiming the agreed signal upstream at the burning lanterns.
Three times I flashed the recognition code but I was level with the signal lanterns before the bottom one was abruptly extinguished.
“Okay, Angelo. Let her go,” I called softly as I killed the engines. The anchor splashed over and the chain ran noisily in the silence. Dancer snubbed up, and swung around at the restraint of the anchor, facing back down the channel.
Chubby went to break out the cargo nets for loading, but I paused by the rail, peering across at the signal lantern. The silence was complete, except for the clink and croak of the swamp frogs in the reed banks of the Salsa.
In that silence I felt more than heard the beat like that of a giant’s heart. It came in through the soles of my feet rather than my ears.
There is no mistaking the beat of an Allison marine diesel. I knew that the old Second World War Rolls-Royce marines had been stripped out of the Zinballa crash boats and replaced by Allisons, and right now the sound I was feeling was the idling note of an Allison marine.
“Angelo,” I tried to keep my voice low, but at the same time transmit my urgency. “Slip the anchor. For Christ’s sake! Quick as you can.”
For just such an emergency I had a shackle pin in the chain, and I thanked the Lord for that as I dived for the controls.
As I started engines, I heard the thump of the fourpound hammer as Angelo drove out the pin. Three times he struck, and then I heard the end of the chain splash overboard.
“She’s gone, Harry,” Angelo called, and I threw Dancer in to drive and pushed open the throttles. She bellowed angrily and the wash of her propellers spewed whitely from below her counter as she sprang forward.
Although we were facing downstream, Dancer had a fiveknot current running into her teeth and she did not jump away handily enough.
Even above our own engines I heard the Allisons give tongue, and from out of the reed-screened mouth of the Salsa tore a long deadly shape.
Even by starlight, I recognized her immediately, the widely flared. bows, and the lovely thrusting lines, greyhound waisted and the square chopped-off stern - one of the Royal Navy crash boats who had spent her best days in the Channel and now was mouldering into senility on this fever coast.
The darkness was kind to her, covering the rust stains and the streaky paintwork, but she was an old woman now. Stripped of her marvellous Rolls marines - and underpowered with the more economical Allisons. In a fair run Dancer would toy with her - but this was no fair run and she had all the speed and power she needed as she charged into the channel to cut us off, and when she switched on her battle lights they hit us like something solid. Two glaring white beams, blinding in their intensity so I had to throw up my hand to protect my eyes.
She was dead ahead now, blocking the channel, and on her foredeck I could see the shadowy figures of the gun crew crouching around the threepounder on its wide traversing plate. The muzzle seemed to be looking directly into my left nostril - and I felt a wild and desperate despair.
It was a meticulously planned and executed ambush. I thought of ramming her, she had a marine ply wooden hull, probably badly rotted, and Dancer’s fibreglass bows might stand the shock - but with the current against her Dancer was not making sufficient speed through the water.
Then suddenly a bullhorn bellowed elecamically from the dark behind the dazzling battle lights.
“Heave to, Mr. Fletcher. Or I shall be forced to fire upon you.
