The Kremlin File

Eight

The porters carried the dynamite from the truck. They took the open half box into the fortress and left one full crate for planting above the shore road. Before I left the truck, I took the rotor out of the distributor so no one else could start it.

I mined the trail with dynamite, rigging fuses so a single man could explode each charge independent of the others. While I worked, I heard drums within the fortress; these were not messages but deep-throated ceremonial sounds. Noah, I suspected, was drumming up courage in his entourage.

It was broad daylight by the time I finished. I was out of steam and starved when I dragged in through the gate. There was indeed a ritual in full swing.

The sacrificial fowls were already killed and boiling in a pot. Dancers were circling it with spears and painted shields. They had great gear to face a bazooka with. Noah came out, saw me and sent women to tug me to a drumhead table. They sat me on a stump of pulpy wood and brought food, half an avacado stuffed with wild papaya and shredded pineapple soaked in lime juice, a gourd of shellfish, a cocoanut filled with white rum, sugar syrup and more lime. It was subtle going down, but in my depleted condition the mixture would knock me out soon.

Trying to stay awake long enough to finish eating, I concentrated on what I was supposed to be doing here. My job was to put Fleming in the presidential chair and keep him there unharmed. There was no doubt of his popularity with the people, he could win an election hands down. But most of them had no arms or military training. They might be willing to fight for him, but they were no match for Colonel Carib Jerome and his professionals. And Russia’s Big Brother stance didn’t help.

I don’t know when I blanked out. Next thing I knew Noah was shaking me awake. I lay in a cool, dim room; the shadow line at the door put the sun at mid-afternoon. I had left a man on the trail as a spotter. He would hear approaching cars a long distance off, with plenty of time to warn us. He was here behind Noah now, excited.

When I sat up, the old man said, “The army has reached the truck.”

I was wide awake now. “How many?”

“He can’t count,” Noah spoke for the spotter. He says “Many. Many.”

I got up and trotted to the gate. They must have started up the trail by now and I wanted to be sure they hadn’t discovered or evaded the dynamite. The war dance was over and people who had gone to their caves were hurrying back to the fort.

Passing Dr. Fleming’s room I hauled up short. He stood in front of the door between the two girls, on one foot, the splintered leg bent back in a hammock. There were no angry red streaks snaking up his bandaged arm, no gray under the rich chocolate of his face. There wasn’t time to look into it further now, but Fleming’s recovery amazed me. I put it out of mind and went on, listening for sounds as I turned down the path. If they were advancing fast enough, I might walk into them.

I hadn’t heard a thing by the time I reached the fuses. This was in a natural clearing and over the trees I could see the truck at the bottom of the ravine a quarter of a mile below. The thirty or so men lounging around the truck had not yet started up. I wondered why. Then I heard a sound behind me and Mitzy was there with the explanation. Just what I needed.

“There’s another attack, Nick. Boats are coming into the cove, a lot of them.”

That at least answered why the bunch below wasn’t on its way. It was a pincer move, radio-controlled to start on the fortress from two directions at the same time. I put an arm around the girl’s shoulder.

“Can you obey orders?”

“It’s been my life’s work. What do you want me to do?”

I pulled her down to the ground, showed her the fuses, and gave her my lighter, explaining what to do.

“The path is mined between those two points.” I pointed to them. “The fuse on the right will blow the lowest charge three minutes after it’s lit. The progression moves to the left, with the charges twenty feet apart. When the advance group reaches the turn, start the first bum. I hope that’s all you’ll need but some soldiers are pigheaded. Take your time setting them off. But stop them.”

“A bloody pleasure.” She gave me her lips and I got the notion she was saying goodbye. “Good luck with the armada.”

I grinned. “Well make it. Just keep the faith with Noah.”

I sounded far better than I felt. We were not equipped to stand off a prolonged siege on two fronts. I would do what I could with the realities, but my bones told me it would take a miracle for any of us to survive the day.

I got back to the gate as fast as I could. The scene inside had changed in the short while I’d been away. The tribe was busy. A bucket line passed stones the size of a skull from a stockpile and up the ladders set against the low continuous roof. Other bucket lines led into rooms at the two outer corners of the fortress. They were setting up concentrations of firepower at those points.

There was a fever of excitement about the rhythmic side-to-side swaying of black arms, receiving and passing material on. And, oddly, there was also an air of absolute confidence in these men and women who had never in their lives fought a flesh-and-blood army.

Noah himself while still serene, seemed less secure than his people. He was arguing with Dr. Fleming in an island of quiet near the gate, away from the activity. Fleming leaned on a crutch, sputtering, insisting.

“Very well, Noah, I accept Jerome’s duplicity. But I cannot permit you and your people to throw your lives away on my account. If Jerome is so power hungry, I must submit as I did to Hammond. I will surrender, allow myself to be exiled to the United States. Jerome is a competent man and this island has survived under military rule before. Perhaps I can even guide him. Send him my message.”

Sending Jerome a peace message would signal my death. Even if the colonel would be satisfied to call off his hounds from Noah, I wouldn’t last one minute.

Looking at failure eyeball to eyeball was bad enough. I hated it like hell. But it was worse imagining what would happen to my hide with Jerome as vindictive as I believed. It was a good hide. There were some patches on it, but the seals were tight. So far. I waited sourly for the patriarch’s reaction to Fleming’s offer. It came in a weary tirade.

“Doctor, I respect your idealism but it is blinding you. When General Hammond deposed you, the people still believed his promises to keep Grand LaClare Island for the islanders. He could afford to exile you. Carib Jerome cannot be so generous. He is as unpopular as he is ambitious. You are a threat to him so long as the population could be rallied to you.

“It is not only your life that’s at stake but ours too. If Jerome succeeds, he plans to use this place as a missile site, drive us away and move our enemies in. He cannot hold power without Communist backing. This mountain has been our sanctuary, our home, for centuries. Our people will die fighting for it.”

The old bastard was glorious. He got to Fleming too. The doctor showed his guts, squared himself, and said, “I can’t fault your logic, Noah. I have dreamed too long. Hope is a seductive temptress, isn’t she? Well, I can throw stones with one hand.”

He touched Noah’s arm in a lingering gesture of affection, then turned and hobbled toward the stairs leading to the sea.

Noah winked at me.

I climbed to the roof and looked through a crenel to the mouth of the cove. The fleet coming through it reminded me of the one that had evacuated the British from Dunkirk in World War II. I think every fishing boat from Port of Spain, anything that would float, was massed around the headland, waiting for room to come through the channel. There were little boats with lateen sails designed to take tourists into the big harbor at the capital to watch the natives dive for coins. There was the lubberly craft in which vacationing anglers went after the wahoo, that brilliant fish that lost its bright colors almost as soon as it came out of the water.

There were yachts and outboards leading the pack, more than fifty in all, all crowded with men in uniforms.

I daydreamed of a couple of U.S. destroyers and of some air cover showing up over the horizon. It was a nice daydream.

The lead boats were well into the cove now, a rank of them making toward the shore at wide intervals. Those farthest away would make it. The rest had a surprise ahead. They came at full speed, unbelievably innocent of the breakwater they would run into. Noah’s reputation must have kept everyone away from this small harbor so that knowledge of the stone teeth under the surface was lost.

I watched two yachts running neck and neck. Even without binoculars I could see the bazookas and machine guns cradled by the men on deck. They hit the breakwater at the same time with a grinding shriek of metal. The prows heaved into the air. The hulls shuddered, the sharp bottoms rolled, the impact shooting men and weapons high and flinging them into the sea.

As if to punctuate that grand slam, Mitzy’s first charge of dynamite roared from the trail.

Behind the yachts two tugs with too much momentum to stop in time struck the hidden wall. They rammed onto the rock and hung there, balanced on their mid sections, men tumbling overboard to flail in the water. Some of them sank, weighed down by boots and guns. Others found the stone and hung to it, stunned. The next line of boats hove to, veered back toward the middle of the cove and lay there. But three scows heavily loaded with soldiers chugged close along the base of the headland, probing with poles and came against the breakwater where it joined the steps leading to the fort. The men from the first boat started up. The third scow backed off and threw a screen of lead at the top of the parapet.

I hadn’t seen Noah scramble up a ladder, but there he was beside me now, crouched to keep his head low one eye against a bamboo periscope built with an extra mirror to look directly down. He had one hand raised to signal. All along the wall brown figures waited, watching him, each man holding a stone.

I heard the soldiers’ boots, the noise growing above the machine gun fire from the scow. Then I heard a wheezing grunt beyond the wall, and the soldiers were just below us. Noah slashed his hand down. There was flurry at the crenels. Men ignored the guns shooting at them, bent over the three-foot-thick wall, slammed their stones down and slipped back to shelter. Three fell back, bloodied. Others dragged them away and took their places.

The covering fire stopped abruptly. I looked through the crenel at the head of the steps. I was in time to see soldiers flying through the air, falling toward the sea — a domino ripple of bodies knocking each other down the stairs. They piled up at the bottom or rolled off to the water.

Noah’s men picked up more rocks, ready for another attack. The shock that had stopped the firing wore off and lead again sailed through the apertures and slapped into the wall.