Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

51

Ham Barker got into bed and turned on the TV, but he couldn’t concentrate on any program, and when he switched it off, he couldn’t sleep, either. He had listened to what was said at the meeting with Harry Crisp, and he was intrigued. He was also a little annoyed at how everybody seemed to be tiptoeing around the Palmetto Gardens problem, instead of doing something about it. “Fucking feds,” he said aloud to himself. If this had been an army problem, it would already have been solved. He lay there thinking for a few minutes, then he got out of bed, got into a bathing suit and a T-shirt, and slipped into some Top-Siders, no socks.

He walked around the cabin, picking up things, looking at them and putting them down again. Then he got a large, zippered plastic bag and started collecting what he needed. He found a waterproof flashlight and taped over most of the lens, leaving an open area about half an inch in diameter, and added that to his bag. He dug a black nylon warmup suit out of his closet, rolled it into a small, tight wad and put it into the plastic bag, along with a pair of black sneakers. Then he went to his tackle box and lifted out the plastic tray that covered the bottom. Under that were two things that he had stolen from the army: one was his standard-issue special forces knife, which was still razor sharp; the other was a small black .22-caliber pistol with a silencer attached that had been issued to him for a mission in Vietnam by a CIA field agent. When, after the job had successfully been completed, the CIA man had asked for the weapon back, Ham had told him to go fuck himself. He had never thought that he would actually need it, but he liked it so much that he’d have been willing to fight the agent for it, which hadn’t been necessary. The man had laughed and told him to keep it. He put the knife and the pistol into the plastic bag, along with a spare clip.

Ham took the gear down to his dock and tossed it into the whaler. Then he got an electric trolling motor from the back porch, clamped it to the stern of the whaler and attached it to the boat’s battery with alligator clips. He fastened his rubber diving belt around his waist, minus the weights, got into the whaler, started the engine and headed out into the Indian River, accelerating to around fifteen knots. There was a moon, occasionally covered by clouds, but it was bright enough to light his way down the waterway.

Twenty minutes of running brought him within half a mile of the entrance to the Palmetto Gardens marina. He cut the outboard, pulled it out of the water and switched on the nearly silent trolling motor. He sat on the bottom of the boat to keep a low profile, and moving silently along at around two knots, he soon reached several acres of marsh just north of the marina entrance. A little creek provided an opening in the marsh grass, and he turned into it, peering ahead into the darkness, heading toward the riverbank. After perhaps three minutes, the bow of the whaler touched the mud, and Ham switched off the trolling motor.

He sat silently in the bottom of the boat and listened for five minutes by his illuminated wristwatch. His eyes were well accustomed to the darkness, now, and he could see that he was perhaps thirty feet from dry ground. He kicked off his Top-Siders and stepped into the water, feeling out the soft mud with his bare feet. He pushed the whaler into the marsh grass, which was a good two feet tall, shucked off his T-shirt, got his plastic bag and waded slowly toward the land. It was another twenty feet to the brush, and he covered it quickly. He sat down on the ground, his back to the dense thicket, and listened again for another five minutes. Once, he heard a vehicle in the distance, but it was driving at a steady speed and soon passed by.

He grabbed some leaves and cleaned the sticky river mud off his feet; then he dressed in the black warmup suit and sneakers, fastened the rubber belt around him, slipped his knife into the scabbard, worked the action of the small pistol and stuck it into his belt, slipping the spare clip into a zippered pocket. Finally, he pulled the jacket’s hood around his head and tied it loosely, so as not to interfere with his hearing.

He walked silently along the thick brush bordering the marsh, occasionally using his hooded light for a second or two, until he found a small break in the vegetation. He pushed his way through for a good fifteen feet and emerged in a stand of pine trees that was well clear of any brush. The schmucks hadn’t bothered with a fence along the river, he chuckled to himself. They had thought the dense brush would be enough. He walked along the edge of the clearing until his flashlight picked up a hint of a trail no more than a foot wide. Deer came this way, he reckoned, and if the ground was mined or, more likely, had security sensors, the deer were not setting them off. Neither would he, on this trail.

He emerged from the trees at the rear of a large, well-lit house, where there was a party going on, to judge from the noise. He found a window and peeked in. Fifteen or twenty people were standing or lying around a large room, and loud music was pounding against the walls. At least half of the people were naked. Ham watched with interest as various couples did various things to each other while the others watched and cheered them on. Tearing himself away, he moved to the north, toward the chain-link fence Holly had told him about.

Keeping to the edge of the pines, he walked north for ten minutes until the fence loomed high above him. Following the inside of the fence, he walked in a generally easterly direction until he came to a gate, which was secured with a chain and a padlock. Looking through the wire, he saw that this was one of not two, but three fences, and the middle one had the warning of high voltage.

Ham found a wire leading from the middle fence through the inner one and then into the ground along the inner fence. He followed the fence along until he came to where the wire emerged from the ground. It ran to a small wooden shed that was not locked. He opened the door and switched on his flashlight. The wire ran to an ordinary car battery, a large one. This was clearly a backup for the security system.

He left the shed and, working from his memory of Jackson’s aerial photographs, walked south for a few minutes. He knew he was in the right place when he saw the huge satellite dish peeking up over the shrubbery. The com center was dark, except for a single light burning in what seemed to be an entrance hall. He could see a man at a desk, reading a magazine by the light of a lamp.

Ham circled the building until he came to a large live oak tree. He found footholds and climbed into its branches, one of which ran close to the top of the two-story building. He shinnied out the limb as far as he dared, then stopped. He could see three large lumps on the roof: two of them were air conditioning units and the other appeared to be a vented metal box of about the same size. He backed his way to the trunk of the tree and slowly climbed down.

There was one more place he wanted to see, and it was no more than a hundred yards from the com center, if he recalled the aerial photographs correctly. Watching for any sign of security measures, he walked silently to the southwest, in and out of shrubbery and trees. He crossed the lawn of another large house, this one dark, and went on for another fifty yards before stopping.

Ham looked around. It could be in either direction. Suddenly, he stood stock-still. Although he was in an area that appeared to be deserted, hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. He could almost smell somebody in the area. In fact, he realized, he did smell something. It was cigarette smoke, and he didn’t know from which direction it came. He stood frozen, his eyes open wide. Afraid to use the flashlight, he turned his head from right to left. Then he saw it. Not ten feet from where he stood, the end of a cigarette glowed in the dark. Then it grew brighter and revealed a head.

Ham did not move, afraid of appearing in the man’s peripheral vision. They were too far apart for the knife, so Ham slowly eased the pistol from his belt and waited. A minute passed, then two. Finally, the man dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his foot. He appeared to be dressed in camouflage fatigues.

The man moved forward a few steps and vanished. Ham blinked. Where had he gone? As quietly as he could, he walked to the tree the man had been leaning against, stood behind it and surveyed the ground on the other side of it. Perhaps twelve feet ahead, he saw a dim light on the ground. He walked very slowly toward it, keeping an eye out for the man, and stopped a pace away, looking down.

What he was looking at, he realized, was a light shining through netting. Silently, Ham lay down on the ground and put his face against the netting. He could see the light now, and it illuminated the inside of a hole in the ground. He saw a man’s foot and then a steel ammunition box. Shifting slightly, he was able to see more. The man was wearing a headset attached to a small cassette player or radio. He was sitting on a camp stool next to a heavy automatic weapon, the barrel of which protruded through the camouflage netting. Ham reckoned the ammo was larger than fifty caliber. There was nothing else to see here. He backed away from the netting, got to his feet and disappeared into the nearby woods.

Half an hour later, he was back in the water, pushing the whaler out into the creek. Half an hour after that, he was back home, with a story to tell.