Wyatt's Hurricane

I

The Super-Constellation flew south-east in fair weather, leaving behind the arc of green islands scattered across the crinkled sea, the island chain known as the Lesser Antilles. Ahead, somewhere over the hard line of the Atlantic horizon, was her destination — a rendezvous with trouble somewhere north of the Equator and in that part of the Atlantic which is squeezed between North Africa and South America.

The pilot, Lieutenant-Commander Hansen, did not really know the exact position of contact nor when he would get there — he merely flew on orders from a civilian seated behind him — but he had flown on many similar missions and knew what was expected of him, so he relaxed in his seat and left the flying to Morgan, his co-pilot. The Lieutenant-Commander had over twelve years’ service in the United States Navy and so was paid $660 a month. He was grossly underpaid for the job he was doing.

The aircraft, one of the most graceful ever designed, had once proudly flown the North Atlantic commercial route until edged out by the faster jets. So she had been put in mothballs until the Navy had need of her and now she wore United States Navy insignia. She looked more battered than seemed proper in a Navy plane — the leading edge of her wings was pitted and dented and the mascot of a winged cloud painted on her nose was worn and abraded — but she had flown more of these missions than her pilot and so the wear and tear was understandable.

Hansen looked at the sky over the horizon and saw the first faint traces of cirrus flecking the pale blue. He flicked a switch and said, ‘I think she’s coming up now, Dave. Any change of orders?’

A voice crackled in his earphones. ‘I’ll check on the display.’

Hansen folded his arms across his stomach and stared ahead at the gathering high clouds. Some Navy men might have resented taking instructions from a civilian, especially from one who was not even an American, but Hansen knew better than that; in this particular job status and nationality did not matter a damn and all one needed to know was that the men you flew with were competent and would not get you killed — if they could help it.

Behind the flight deck was the large compartment where once the first-class passengers sipped their bourbon and joshed the hostesses. Now it was crammed with instruments and men; consoles of telemetering devices were banked fore and aft, jutting into promontories and forming islands so that there was very little room for the three men cramped into the maze of electronic equipment.

David Wyatt turned on his swivel stool and cracked his knee sharply against the edge of the big radar console. He grimaced, reflecting that he would never learn, and rubbed his knee with one hand while he switched on the set. The big screen came to life and shed an eerie green glow around him, and he observed it with professional interest. After making a few notes, he rummaged in a satchel for some papers and then got up and made his way to the flight deck.

He tapped Hansen on the shoulder and gave the thumbs-up sign, and then looked ahead. The silky tendrils of the high-flying cirrus were now well overhead, giving place to the lower flat sheets of cirrostratus on the horizon, and he knew that just over the edge of the swelling earth there would be the heavy and menacing nimbostratus — the rain-bearers. He looked at Hansen. ‘This is it,’ he said, and smiled.

Hansen grunted in his throat. ‘No need to look so goddam happy.’

Wyatt pushed a thin sheaf of photographs at him. ‘This is what it looks like from upstairs.’

Hansen scanned the grained and streaky photographs which had been telemetered to earth from a weather satellite. ‘These from Tiros IX?’

‘That’s right.’

‘They’re improving — these are okay,’ said Hansen. He checked the size of the swirl of white against the scale on the edge of the photograph. ‘This one’s not so big; thank God for that.’

‘It’s not the size that counts,’ said Wyatt. ‘It’s the pressure gradient — you know that. That’s what we’re here for.’

‘Any change in operating procedure?’

Wyatt shook his head. ‘The usual thing — we go in counter-clockwise with the wind, edging in all the time. Then, when we get to the south-west quadrant, we turn for the centre.’

Hansen scratched his cheek. ‘Better make sure you get all your measurements first time round. I don’t want to do this again.’ He cocked his head aft. ‘I hope your instrumentation works better than last time.’

Wyatt grimaced. ‘So do I.’ He waved cheerily and went back aft to check on the big radar display. Everything was normal with no anomalies — just the usual dangerous situation ahead. He glanced at the two men under his command. Both were Navy men, skilled specialists who knew everything there was to know about the equipment in their charge, and both had flown on these missions before and knew what to expect. Already they were checking their webbing straps to see there would be no chafe when unexpected strain was thrown on them.

Wyatt went to his own place and strapped himself into the seat. As he snapped down the lever which prevented the seat turning he at last admitted to himself that he was frightened. He always felt scared at this stage of the operation — more scared, he was sure, than any other man aboard. Because he knew more about hurricanes than even Hansen; hurricanes were his job, his life study, and he knew the ravening strength of the winds which were soon to attack the plane in an effort to destroy it. And there was something else, something newly added. From the moment he had seen the white smear on the satellite photographs back at Cap Sarrat he had sensed that this was going to be a bad one. It was not something he could analyse, something he could lay on paper in the cold symbols and formulae of meteorological science, but something he felt deep in his being.

So this time he was even more frightened than usual.

He shrugged and applied himself to his work as the first small buffet of wind hit the plane. The green trace on the radar screen matched well with the satellite photographs and he switched on the recorder which would put all that data on to a coiled strip of plastic magnetic tape to be correlated in the master computer with all the other information that was soon to come pouring in.

Hansen stared ahead at the blackness confronting the plane. The oily black nimbostratus clouds heaved tumultuously, driven by the wind, the formations continually building up and shredding. He grinned tightly at Morgan. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said, and gently turned to starboard. Flying in still air at this particular throttle-setting the Super-Constellation should have cruised at 220 knots, and so his air-speed indicator showed, but he was willing to bet that their ground-speed was nearer 270 knots with this wind behind them.

That was the devil in this job; instruments did not read true and there was no hope of getting a valid ground-sighting because even if the clouds broke — which they never did — merely to see a featureless stretch of ocean would be useless.

Suddenly the plane dropped like a stone — caught in a down-draught — and he fought with the controls while watching the altimeter needle spin like a top. He got her on to an even keel once more and set her into a climb to regain his altitude and, almost before he knew what was happening, the plane was caught in an up-draught just as fierce and he had to push the control column forward to avoid being spewed from the top of the wind system.

Through the toughened glass he saw rain and hail being driven upwards, illuminated by the blue glare of lightning. Looking back, he saw a coruscating flash spreading tree-wise from the wingtip and knew they had been struck. He also knew that it did not matter; there would be a mere pinhole in the metal to be filled in by the ground staff and that was all — except for the fact that the plane and everything in it was charged up with several thousand volts of electricity which would have to be dissipated when landing.

Carefully he edged the Constellation deeper into the storm, flying a spiral course and finding the stronger winds. The lightning was now almost continuous, the whipcrack of the close discharges drowning out the noise of the engines. He switched on his throat mike and shouted to the flight engineer, ‘Meeker, everything okay?’

There was a long pause before Meeker replied. ‘Ever... ng fine.’ The words were half drowned in static.

Hansen shouted, ‘Keep things that way,’ and started to do some mental arithmetic. From the satellite photograph he had judged the diameter of the hurricane at 300 miles, which would give a circumference of about 950 miles. To get to the south-west quadrant where the winds were least strong and where it was safest to turn inwards to the centre he would have to fly a third of the way round — say, 230 miles. His air-speed indicator was now fluctuating too much to be of any use, but from past experience he judged his ground-speed to be a little in excess of 300 knots — say, 350 miles an hour. They had been in the storm nearly half an hour, so that left another half-hour before the turning-point.

Sweat beaded his forehead.

In the instrument compartment Wyatt felt that he was being beaten black and blue and he knew that when he got back to Cap Sarrat and stripped he would find weals where his harness had bitten into him. The stark functional lighting dimmed and flared as lightning flashes hit the plane and momentarily overloaded the circuits, and he hoped that the instrumentation held up under the beating.

He cast a glance at the other two men. Smith was hunched in his seat, expertly rolling as the plane lurched and occasionally resetting a knob. He was all right. Jablonsky’s face had a greenish tinge and, as Wyatt looked, he turned and was violently sick. But he recovered quickly and applied himself to his job, and Wyatt smiled briefly.

He looked at the clock set into the panel before him and began to calculate. When they turned in towards the centre of the hurricane they would have to fly a little over a hundred miles to get to the ‘eye’, that mysterious region of calm in the midst of a wilderness of raging air. There would be fierce crosswinds and the ride would be rough and Wyatt estimated it would take nearly three-quarters of an hour. But then they would be able to idle and catch their breaths before plunging into the fray again. Hansen would circle for fifteen minutes in that wondrous stillness while Wyatt did his work, and they would all rub the soreness from their battered bodies and gird themselves for the flight out.

From the moment they turned in to the centre all instruments would be working, recording air pressure, humidity, temperature and all the other variables that go to make up the biggest wind on earth. And on the way through the hurricane they would drop what Wyatt called to himself their ‘bomb load’ — marvellously complex packages of instruments jettisoned into the storm, some to be tossed for an hour or so in the wind before touching down, some to plunge down to float on the raging sea, others that would sink to a predetermined depth beneath the waves. But all would be sending radio signals to be caught by the complex of receiving instrumentation in the plane and recorded on tape.

He steadied himself in the seat and began to dictate into his throat mike which was hooked up to a small recording machine. He hoped he would be able to disentangle his own voice from the storm noises when he replayed the tape back at base.

Half an hour later Hansen turned in towards the centre, buzzing Wyatt as he did so. Immediately he felt a difference in the quality of the wind’s attack on the plane; there was a new set of noises added to the cacophony and the controls reacted differently under his hands. The Constellation became more difficult to control in the cross-winds which he knew were gusting at perhaps 130 miles an hour; she plunged and bucked and his arms began to ache with the constant corrective movements he was forced to apply. The gyro-compass had long since toppled out of action and the card of the magnetic compass was swinging violently in the bowl.

Wyatt and his crew were very busy. Deafened by the murderous sound and shaken like dice in a cup, they still managed to get on with their work. The instrument capsules were dropped with precision at regular intervals and the information which they immediately began to radio back was stored on the inch-wide, thirty-two track tapes which Smith and Jablonsky hovered over solicitously. In the intervals between dropping the capsules Wyatt continued his running commentary on to his private tape; he knew this data was subjective and not to be used for serious analysis, but he liked to have it for his private information and to compare later with the numerical findings.

It was with relief that he heard the racket end with almost shattering abruptness and knew they had penetrated to the eye of the hurricane. The plane stopped bucking and seemed to float through the air and, after the noise of the storm, the roar of the engines seemed to be the most peaceful sound he had ever heard. Stiffly he unbuckled his straps and said, ‘How are things going?’

Smith waggled his hand. ‘Average score. No humidity readings from number four; no air temperature from number six; no sea temperature from number seven.’ He grimaced.

‘Not a cheep of anything from number three, and none of the sinkers worked at all.’

‘Damn those sinkers!’ said Wyatt feelingly. ‘I always said that system was too bloody complicated. How about you, Jablonsky? What about direct readings?’

‘Everything’s okay with me,’ said Jablonsky.

‘Keep at it,’ said Wyatt. ‘I’m going to see the skipper.’ He made his way forward to the flight deck to find Hansen massaging his arms while Morgan flew the plane in a tight circle. He smiled faintly.

‘This one’s a bastard,’ said Hansen. ‘Too rough for this mother’s son. How about you?’

‘The usual crop of malfunctions — only to be expected. But none of the sinkers worked at all.’

‘Have they ever?’

Wyatt smiled ruefully. ‘It’s asking a bit much, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘We drop a very complicated package into the sea in the middle of a hurricane so that it will settle to a predetermined depth. It broadcasts by sonar a signal which is supposed to be picked up by an equally complicated floating package, turned into a radio wave and picked up by us. There’s one too many links in that chain. I’ll write a report when I get back — we’re tossing too much money into the sea for too little return.’

‘If we get back,’ said Hansen. ‘The worst is yet to come. I’ve never known winds so strong in the south-west quadrant, and it’ll be a damn’ sight worse heading north.’

‘We can scrub the rest of it, if you like,’ offered Wyatt. ‘We can go out the way we came in.’

‘If I could do it I would,’ said Hansen bluntly. ‘But we haven’t the gas to go all the way round again. So we’ll bull our way out by the shortest route and you can drop the other half of the cargo as planned — but it’ll be a hell of a rough ride.’ He looked up. ‘This one is really bad, Dave.’

‘I know,’ said Wyatt soberly. ‘Give me a buzz when you’re ready to move on.’ He returned to the instrument section.

It was only five minutes before the buzzer went and Wyatt knew that Hansen was really nervous because he usually idled for much longer in the eye. He hastily fastened his straps and tensed his muscles for the wrath to come. Hansen had been right — this was a really bad one, it was small, tight and vicious. He would be interested to know what the pressure gradient was that could whip up such high winds.

If what had gone before was purgatory, then this was pure unadulterated hell. The whole fabric of the Constellation creaked and groaned in anguish at the battering it was receiving; the skin sprang leaks in a dozen places and for a time Wyatt was fearful that it was all too much, that the wings would be torn off in spite of the special strengthening and the fuselage would smash into the boiling sea. He was plagued by a stream of water that cascaded down his neck, but managed to get rid of the rest of the capsules with the same well-timed precision.

For nearly an hour Hansen battled with the big wind and, just when he thought he could bear it no longer, the plane was thrown out of the clouds, spat forth as a man spits out an orange pip. He signalled for Morgan to take over and sagged back in his seat completely exhausted.

As the buffeting lessened Wyatt took stock. Half of Jablonsky’s equipment had packed up, the tell-tale dials recording zero. Fortunately the tapes had kept working so all was not lost. Smith’s tale was even sorrier — only three of a round dozen capsules had returned signals, and those had suddenly ceased half-way through the flight when the recorder had been torn bodily from its mounting with a sputter of sparks and the tapes had stopped.

‘Never mind,’ said Wyatt philosophically. ‘We got through.’

Jablonsky mopped water from the top of his console. ‘That was too goddam rough. Another one like that and I’ll take a ground job.’

Smith grunted. ‘You and me both.’

Wyatt grinned at them. ‘You’re not likely to get another like that in a hurry,’ he said. ‘It was my worst in twenty-three missions.’

He went up to the flight deck and Jablonsky looked after him. ‘Twenty-three missions! The guy must be nuts. Ten is my limit — only two more to go.’

Smith rubbed his chin reflectively. ‘Maybe he’s got the death wish — you know, psychology and all that. Or maybe he’s a hurricane lover. But he’s got guts, that’s for sure — I’ve never seen a guy look so unconcerned.’

On the flight deck Hansen said heavily, ‘I hope you got everything you wanted. I’d hate to go through that again.’

‘We’ll have enough,’ said Wyatt. ‘But I’ll be able to tell for certain when we get home. When will that be?’

‘Three hours,’ said Hansen.

There was a sudden change in the even roar and a spurt of black smoke streaked from the port outer engine. Hansen’s hand went like a flash to the throttles and then he feathered the airscrew. ‘Meeker,’ he roared. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Dunno,’ said Meeker. ‘But I reckon she’s packed in for the rest of the trip. Oil pressure’s right down.’ He paused. ‘I had some bother with her a little while back but I reckoned you didn’t feel like hearing about it just then.’

Hansen blew out his cheeks and let forth a long sigh. ‘Jesus!’ he said reverently and with no intention to swear. He looked up at Wyatt. ‘Make it nearly four hours.’

Wyatt nodded weakly and leaned against the bulkhead. He could feel the knots in his stomach relaxing and was aware of the involuntary trembling of his whole body now that it was over.

II

Wyatt sat at his desk, at ease in body if not in mind. It was still early morning and the sun had not developed the power it would later in the day, so all was still fresh and new. Wyatt felt good. On his return the previous afternoon he had seen his precious tapes delivered to the computer boys and then had indulged in the blessed relief of a hot bath which had soaked away all the soreness from his battered body. And that evening he had had a couple of beers with Hansen.

Now, in the fresh light of morning, he felt rested and eager to begin his work, although, as he drew the closely packed tables of figures towards him, he did not relish the facts he knew he would find. He worked steadily all morning, converting the cold figures into stark lines on a chart — a skeleton of reality, an abstraction of a hurricane. When he had finished he looked at the chart with blank eyes, then carefully pinned it on to a large board on the wall of his office.

He had just started to fill in a form when the phone rang, and his heart seemed to turn over as he heard the well-remembered voice. ‘Julie!’ he exclaimed. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

The warmth of her voice triumphed over electronics. ‘A week’s vacation,’ she said. ‘I was in Puerto Rico and a friend gave me a lift over in his plane.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘I’ve just checked into the Imperiale — I’m staying here and, boy, what a dump!’

‘It’s the best we’ve got until Conrad Hilton moves in — and if he has any sense, he won’t,’ said Wyatt. ‘I’m sorry about that; you can’t very well come to the Base.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Julie. ‘When do I see you?’

‘Oh, hell!’ said Wyatt in exasperation. ‘I’ll be tied up all day, I’m afraid. It’ll have to be tonight. What about dinner?’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, and Wyatt thought he detected a shade of disappointment. ‘Maybe we can go on to the Maraca Club — if it’s still running.’

‘It’s still on its feet, although how Eumenides does it is a mystery.’ Wyatt had his eye on the clock. ‘Look, Julie, I’ve got a hell of a lot to do if I’m to take the evening off; things are pretty busy in my line just now.’

Julie laughed. ‘All right; no telephonic gossip. It’ll be better face to face. See you tonight.’

She rang off and Wyatt replaced the handset slowly, then swivelled his chair towards the window where he could look over Santego Bay towards St Pierre. Julie Marlowe, he thought in astonishment, well, well! He could just distinguish the Imperiale in the clutter of buildings that made St Pierre, and a smile touched his lips.

He had not known her long, not really. She was an air hostess on a line covering the Caribbean from Florida and he had been introduced to her by a civilian pilot, a friend of Hansen’s. It had been good while it lasted — San Fernandez had been on her regular route and he had seen her twice a week. They had had three months of fun which had come to a sudden end when the airline had decided that the government of San Fernandez, President Serrurier in particular, was making life too difficult, so they dropped St Pierre from their schedule.

Wyatt pondered. That had been two years ago — no, nearer three years. He and Julie had corresponded regularly at first, but with the passage of time their letters had become sparser and more widely spaced. Friendship by letter is difficult, especially between a man and a woman, and he had expected at any moment to hear that she was engaged — or married — and that would be the end of it, for all practical purposes.

He jerked his head and looked at the clock, then swung round to the desk and pulled the form towards him. He had nearly finished when Schelling, the senior Navy meteorologist on Cap Sarrat Base, came in. ‘This is the latest from Tiros on your baby,’ he said, and tossed a sheaf of photographs on to the desk.

Wyatt reached for them and Schelling said, ‘Hansen tells me you took quite a beating.’

‘He wasn’t exaggerating. Look at that lot.’ Wyatt waved at the chart on the wall.

Schelling walked over to the board and pursed his lips in a whistle. ‘Are you sure your instrumentation was working properly?’

Wyatt joined him. ‘There’s no reason to doubt it.’ He stretched out a finger. ‘Eight hundred and seventy millibars in the eye — that’s the lowest pressure I’ve encountered anywhere.’

Schelling ran a practised eye over the chart. ‘High pressure on the outside — 1040 millibars.’

‘A pressure gradient of 170 millibars over a little less than 150 miles — that makes for big winds.’ Wyatt indicated the northern area of the hurricane. ‘Theory says that the wind-speeds here should be up to 170 miles an hour. After flying through it I have no reason to doubt it — and neither has Hansen.’

Schelling said, ‘This is a bad one.’

‘It is,’ said Wyatt briefly, and sat down to examine the Tiros photographs with Schelling looking over his shoulder. ‘She seems to have tightened up a bit,’ he said. ‘That’s strange.’

‘Makes it even worse,’ said Schelling gloomily. He put down two photographs side by side. ‘She isn’t moving along very fast, though.’

‘I made the velocity of translation eight miles an hour — about 200 miles a day. We’d better check that, it’s important.’ Wyatt drew a desk calculator and, after checking figures marked on the photographs, began to hammer the keys. ‘That’s about right; a shade under 200 miles in the last twenty-four hours.’

Schelling blew out his cheeks with a soft explosion of relief. ‘Well, that’s not too bad. At that rate it’ll take her another ten days to reach the eastern seaboard of the States, and they usually don’t last longer than a week. That’s if she moves in a straight line — which she won’t. The Coriolis force will move her eastward in the usual parabola and my guess is that she’ll peter out somewhere in the North Atlantic like most of the others.’

‘There are two things wrong with that,’ said Wyatt flatly. ‘There’s nothing to say she won’t speed up. Eight miles an hour is damned slow for a cyclone in this part of the world — the average is fifteen miles an hour — so it’s very probable she’ll last long enough to reach the States. As for the Coriolis effect, there are forces acting on a hurricane which cancel that out very effectively. My guess is that a high-altitude jet stream can do a lot to push a hurricane around, and we know damn’ little about those and when they’ll turn up.’

Schelling began to look unhappy again. ‘The Weather Bureau isn’t going to like this. But we’d better let them know.’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Wyatt, lifting the form from his desk-top. ‘I’m not going to put my name to this latest piece of bureaucratic bumf. Look at that last request — “State duration and future direction of hurricane.” I’m not a fortune-teller and I don’t work with a crystal ball.’

Schelling made an impatient noise with his lips. ‘All they want is a prediction according to standard theory — that will satisfy them.’

‘We don’t have enough theory to fill an eggcup,’ said Wyatt. ‘Not that sort of theory. If we put a prediction on that form then some Weather Bureau clerk will take it as gospel truth — the scientists have said it and therefore it is so — and a lot of people could get killed if the reality doesn’t match with theory. Look at Ione in 1955 — she changed direction seven times in ten days and ended up smack in the mouth of the St Lawrence way up in Canada. She had all the weather boys coming and going and she didn’t do a damn’ thing that accorded with theory. I’m not going to put my name to that form.’

‘All right, I’ll do it,’ said Schelling petulantly. ‘What’s the name of this one?’

Wyatt consulted a list. ‘We’ve been running through them pretty fast this year. The last one was Laura — so this one will be Mabel.’ He looked up. ‘Oh, one more thing. What about the Islands?’

‘The Islands? Oh, we’ll give them the usual warning.’

As Schelling turned and walked out of the office Wyatt looked after him with something approaching disgust in his eyes.

III

That evening Wyatt drove the fifteen miles round Santego Bay to St Pierre, the capital city of San Fernandez. It was not much of a capital, but then, it was not much of an island. As he drove in the fading light he passed the familiar banana and pineapple plantations and the equally familiar natives by the roadside, the men dingy in dirty cotton shirts and blue jeans, the women bright in flowered dresses and flaming head scarves, and all laughing and chattering as usual, white teeth and gleaming black faces shining in the light of the setting sun. As usual, he wondered why they always seemed to be so happy.

They had little to be happy about. Most were ground down by a cruel poverty made endemic by over-population and the misuse of the soil. At one time, in the eighteenth century, San Fernandez had been rich with sugar and coffee, a prize to be fought over by the embattled colonizing powers of Europe. But at an opportune moment, when their masters were otherwise occupied, the slaves had risen and had taken command of their own destinies.

That may have been a good thing — and it may not. True, the slaves were free, but a series of bloody civil wars engendered by ruthless men battling for power drained the economic strength of San Fernandez and population pressure did the rest, leaving an ignorant peasantry eking out a miserable living by farming on postage-stamp plots and doing most of their trade by barter. Wyatt had heard that some of the people in the central hills had never seen a piece of money in their lives.

Things had seemed to improve in the early part of the twentieth century. A stable government had encouraged foreign investment and bananas and pineapples replaced coffee, while the sugar acreage increased enormously. Those were the good days. True, the pay on the American-owned plantations was small, but it was regular and the flow of money to the island was enlivening. It was then that the Hotel Imperiale was built and St Pierre expanded beyond the confines of the Old City.

But San Fernandez seemed to be trapped in the cycle of its own history. After the Second World War came Serrurier, self-styled Black Star of the Antilles, who took power in bloody revolution and kept it by equally bloody government, ruling by his one-way courts, by assassination and by the power of the army. He had no opponents — he had killed them all — and there was but one power on the island — the black fist of Serrurier.

And still the people could laugh.

St Pierre was a shabby town of jerry-built brick, corrugated iron and peeling walls, with an overriding smell that pervaded the whole place compounded of rotting fruit, decaying fish, human and animal ordure, and worse. The stench was everywhere, sometimes eddying strongly in the grimmer parts of town and even evident in the lounge of the Imperiale, that dilapidated evidence of better times.

As Wyatt peered across the badly lit room he knew by the dimness that the town electricity plant was giving trouble again and it was only when Julie waved that he distinguished her in the gloom. He walked across to find her sitting at a table with a man, and he felt a sudden unreasonable depression which lightened when he heard the warmth in her voice.

‘Hello, Dave. I am glad to see you again. This is John Causton — he’s staying here too. He was on my flight from Miami to San Juan and we bumped into each other here as well,’

Wyatt stood uncertainly, waiting for Julie to make her excuses to Causton, but she said nothing, so he drew up another chair and sat down.

Causton said, ‘Miss Marlowe has been telling me all about you — and there’s one thing that puzzles me. What’s an Englishman doing working for the United States Navy?’

Wyatt glanced at Julie, then sized up Causton before answering. He was a short, stocky man with a square face, hair greying at the temples and shrewd brown eyes. He was English himself by his accent, but one could have been fooled by his Palm Beach suit.

‘To begin with, I’m not English,’ said Wyatt deliberately. ‘I’m a West Indian — we’re not all black, you know. I was born on St. Kitts, spent my early years on Grenada and was educated in England. As for the United States Navy, I don’t work for them, I work with them — there’s a bit of a difference there. I’m on loan from the Meteorological Office.’

Causton smiled pleasantly. ‘That explains it.’

Wyatt looked at Julie. ‘What about a drink before dinner?’

‘That is a good idea. What goes down well in San Fernandez?’

‘Perhaps Mr Wyatt will show us how to make the wine of the country — Planter’s Punch,’ said Causton. His eyes twinkled.

‘Oh, yes — do,’ exclaimed Julie. ‘I’ve always wanted to drink Planter’s Punch in the proper surroundings.’

‘I think it’s an overrated drink, myself,’ said Wyatt. ‘I prefer Scotch. But if you want Planter’s Punch, you shall have it.’ He called a waiter and gave the order in the bastard French that was the island patois, and soon the ingredients were on the table.

Causton produced a notebook from his breast pocket. ‘I’ll take notes, if I may. It may come in useful.’

‘No need,’ said Wyatt. ‘There’s a little rhyme for it which, once learned, is never forgotten. It goes like this:

‘It doesn’t quite scan, but it’s near enough. The sour is the juice of fresh limes, the sweet is sugar syrup, the strong is rum — Martinique rum is best — and the weak is iced water. The rhyme gives the proportions.’

As he spoke he was busy measuring the ingredients and mixing them in the big silver bowl in the middle of the table. His hands worked mechanically and he was watching Julie. She had not changed apart from becoming more attractive, but perhaps that was merely because absence had made the heart fonder. He glanced at Causton and wondered where he came in.

‘If you go down to Martinique,’ he said, ‘you can mix your own Planter’s Punch in any bar. There’s so much rum in Martinique that they don’t charge you for it — only for the limes and the syrup.’

Causton sniffed. ‘Smells interesting.’

Wyatt smiled. ‘Rum does pong a bit.’

‘Why have we never done this before, Dave?’ asked Julie. She looked interestedly at the bowl.

‘I’ve never been asked before.’ Wyatt gave one final stir. ‘That’s it. Some people put a lot of salad in it like a fruit cup, but 1 don’t like drinks I have to eat.’ He lifted out a dipperful. Julie?’

She held out her glass and he filled it. He filled the other glasses then said, ‘Welcome to the Caribbean, Mr Causton.’

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Julie. ‘So smooth.’

‘Smooth and powerful,’ said Wyatt. ‘You wouldn’t need many of these to be biting the leg of the table.’

‘This should get the evening off to a good start,’ said Julie. ‘Even the Maraca Club should look good.’ She turned to Causton. ‘Now there’s an idea — why don’t you come with us?’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Causton. ‘I was wondering what to do with myself tonight. I was hoping that Mr Wyatt, as an old island hand, could give me a few pointers on sightseeing on San Fernandez.’

Wyatt looked blankly at Julie, then said politely, ‘I’d be happy to.’ He felt depressed. He had hoped that he had been the attraction on San Fernandez, but apparently Julie was playing the field. But why the hell had she to come to San Fernandez to do it?

It turned out that Causton was foreign correspondent for a big London daily and over dinner he entertained them with a hilarious account of some of his experiences. Then they went on to the Maraca, which was the best in the way of a night-club that St Pierre had to offer. It was run by a Greek, Eumenides Papegaikos, who provided an exiguous South American atmosphere with the minimum of service at the highest price he could charge; but apart from the Officers’ Club at Cap Sarrat Base it was the only substitute for a civilized evening, and one did get bored with the Base.

As they entered the smoke-filled, dimly-lit room someone waved, and Wyatt waved back as he recognized Hansen, who was whooping it up with his crew. At the far end of the room a loud-voiced American was bellowing, and even at that distance it was easy to hear that he was retailing, blow by blow, his current exploits as a game fisherman. They found a table, and as Causton ordered drinks in perfect and fluent French which the waiter could not understand, Wyatt claimed Julie for a dance.

They had always danced well together but this time there seemed to be a stiffness and a tension between them. It was not the fault of the orchestra, poor though it was, for while the tune was weird, the rhythm was perfect. They danced in silence for a while, then Julie looked up and said softly, ‘Hello, Dave. Seen any good hurricanes lately?’

‘See one, you’ve seen them all,’ he said lightly. ‘And you?’

‘About the same. One flight is very like another. Same places, same air, same passengers. I sometimes swear that the air traveller is a different breed from the rest of us common humanity; like Dawson — that man over there.’

Wyatt listened to the raucous voice spinning its interminable fishing yarn. ‘You know him?’

‘Don’t you?’ she said in surprise. ‘That’s Dawson, the writer — Big Jim Dawson. Everyone’s heard of him. He’s one of the regulars on my flight, and a damn’ nuisance he is, too.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Wyatt. Julie was right — there could not have been a corner of the world where the name of Big Jim Dawson was not known. He was supposed to be a pretty good writer, although Wyatt did not feel himself equipped to judge; at any rate, the critics appeared to think so.

He looked down at Julie and said, ‘You don’t appear to find Causton a nuisance.’

‘I like him. He’s one of these polite, imperturbable Englishmen we’re always reading about — you know, the quiet kind with hidden depths.’

‘Is he one of your regulars?’

‘I met him for the first time on my last flight. I certainly didn’t expect to find him here in San Fernandez.’

‘You certainly went out of your way to make him feel at home,’

‘That was just hospitality — looking after a stranger in a strange land.’ Julie looked up with a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Why, Mr Wyatt, I do believe you’re jealous.’

‘I might be,’ said Wyatt bluntly. ‘If I had anything to be jealous about.’

Julie dropped her eyes and went a little pale. They danced in stiff silence until the melody was finished, then turned to go back to their table, but Julie was whirled away by the exuberant Hansen. ‘Julie Marlowe! What are you doing in this dump? I’m stealing her, Davy Boy, but I’ll return her intact.’ He swept her on to the floor in a caricatured rumba, and Wyatt returned glumly to Causton.

‘Powerful stuff,’ said Causton, holding a bottle to the light. He waved it. ‘Have one?’

Wyatt nodded. He watched Causton fill his glass, and said abruptly, ‘Here on business?’

‘Good lord, no!’ said Causton. ‘I was due for a week’s holiday, and since I was in New York, I decided to come down here.’

Wyatt glanced at Causton’s shrewd eyes and wondered how far that was true. He said, ‘There’s not much here for a holiday; you’d have been better off in the Bermudas.’

‘Maybe,’ said Causton non-committally. ‘Tell me something about San Fernandez. Does it have a history?’

Wyatt smiled sourly. ‘The same as any other Caribbean island — but a bit more so. First it was Spanish, then English, and finally French. The French made the deepest impression — you can see that in the language — although you do find the natives referring to St Pierre and San Pedro and Peter’s Port, and the language is the most mixed-up you’ve heard.’

Causton nodded ruefully, thinking of his recent difficulties with the waiter.

Wyatt said, ‘When Toussaint and Cristophe threw the French out of Haiti at the beginning of the 1800s, the locals here did the same, though it hasn’t had the same publicity.’

‘Um,’ said Causton. ‘How did an American base get here?’

‘That happened at the turn of this century,’ said Wyatt. ‘Round about the time the Americans were flexing their muscles. They found they were strong enough to make the Monroe Doctrine stick, and they’d just got over a couple of wars which proved it. There was a lot of talk about “Manifest Destiny” and the Yanks thought they had a big brotherly right to supervise other people’s business in this part of the world. San Fernandez was in pretty much of a mess in 1905 with riots and bloody revolution, so the Marines were sent ashore. The island was American administered until 1917 and then the Americans pulled out — but they hung on to Cap Sarrat.’

‘Didn’t something of the sort happen in Haiti as well?’

‘It’s happened in most of the islands — Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic’

Causton grinned. ‘It’s happened more than once in the Dominican Republic.’ He sipped his drink. ‘I suppose Cap Sarrat is held under some kind of treaty?’

‘I suppose you could call it that,’ agreed Wyatt. ‘The Americans leased the Cap in 1906 for one thousand gold dollars a year — not a bad sum for those days — but depreciation doesn’t work in favour of San Fernandez. President Serrurier now gets $1693.’ Wyatt paused. ‘And twelve cents,’ he added as an afterthought.

Causton chuckled. ‘Not a bad bit of trading on the part of the Americans — a bit sharp, though.’

‘They did the same in Cuba with Guantanamo Base,’ said Wyatt. ‘Castro gets twice as much — but I think he’d rather have Guantanamo and no Americans.’

‘I’ll bet he would.’

‘The Navy is trying to build up Cap Sarrat as a substitute for Guantanamo in case Castro gets uppity and takes it from them. I suppose there is a possibility that it might happen.’

‘There is,’ said Causton. ‘I don’t think he could just take it by force, but a bit of moral blackmail might do it, given the right political circumstances.’

‘Anyway, here is Cap Sarrat,’ said Wyatt. ‘But it’s not nearly as good as Guantanamo. The anchorage in Santego Bay is shallow — all it will take is a light cruiser — and the base facilities will take twenty years and a couple of hundred million dollars to even approach Guantanamo. It’s very well equipped as an air base, though; that’s why we use it as a hurricane research centre.’

‘Miss Marlowe was telling me about that—’ began Causton, but he was interrupted by the return of Hansen and Julie and he took the opportunity of asking Julie to dance.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me to have a drink?’ demanded Hansen.

‘Help yourself,’ said Wyatt. He saw Schelling come into the room with another officer. ‘Tell me, Harry; how did Schelling come to make Commander in your Navy?’

‘Dunno,’ said Hansen, sitting down. ‘Must be because he’s a good meteorologist, because he’s an officer like a bull’s got tits.’

‘Not so good, eh?’

‘Hell, one thing an officer’s got to do is to lead men, and Schelling couldn’t be a Den Mother for a troop of Girl Scouts. He must have got through on the specialist side.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Wyatt, and told Hansen about his conversation that morning with Schelling. He ended up by saying, ‘He thinks that meteorology is an exact science and that what the textbooks say is so. People like that frighten me.’

Hansen laughed. ‘Dave, you’ve come across a type of officer that’s not uncommon in the good old USN. The Pentagon is swarming with them. He goes by the book for one reason and one reason only — because if he goes by the book he can never be proved wrong, and an officer who is never wrong is regarded as a good, safe man to have around.’

‘Safe!’ Wyatt almost lost his voice. ‘In his job he’s about as safe as a rattlesnake.The man has lives in his hands.’

‘Most Navy officers have men’s lives in their hands at one time or another,’ said Hansen. ‘Look, Dave, let me tell you the way to handle guys like Schelling. He’s got a closed mind, and you can’t go through him — he’s too solid. So you go round him.’

‘It’s a bit difficult for me,’ said Wyatt. ‘I have no status. I’m not a Navy man — I’m not even an American. He’s the chap who reports to the Weather Bureau, and he’s the chap they’ll believe.’

‘You’re getting pretty steamed up about this, aren’t you? What’s on your mind?’

‘I’m damned if I know,’ admitted Wyatt. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a funny feeling that things are going to go wrong.’

‘You’re worried about Mabel?’

‘I think it’s Mabel — I’m not too sure.’

‘I was worried about Mabel when I was rumbling about in her guts,’ said Hansen. ‘But I’m pretty relaxed about her now.’

Wyatt said, ‘Harry, I was born out here and I’ve seen some pretty funny things. I remember once, when I was a kid, we had news that a hurricane was coming but that we’d be all right, it would miss Grenada by two hundred miles. So nobody worried except the people up in the hills, who never got the warning anyway. There’s a lot of Carib Indian in those people and they’ve had their roots down in the Caribbean for thousands of years. They battened down the hatches and dug themselves in. When that hurricane came up to Grenada it made a right-angle swerve and pretty near sank the island. Now how did those hill people know the hurricane was going to swerve like that?’

‘They had a funny feeling,’ said Hansen. ‘And they had the sense to act on it. It’s happened to me. I was once flying in a cloud when I got that feeling, so I pushed the stick forward a bit and lost some height. Damned if a civilian ship — one of those corporation planes — didn’t occupy the air space I’d been in. He missed me by a gnat’s whisker.’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘As a scientist I’m supposed to go by the things I can measure, not by feelings. I can’t show my feelings to Schelling.’

‘To hell with Schelling,’ said Hansen. ‘Dave, I don’t think there’s a competent research scientist alive who hasn’t gone ahead on a hunch. I still say you should bypass Schelling. What about seeing the Commodore?’

‘I’ll see how Mabel behaves tomorrow,’ said Wyatt. ‘I want to see if she’s a really bad girl.’

‘Don’t forget your feelings about her,’ said Hansen.

Julie’s cool voice spoke from behind Wyatt. ‘Do you really have feelings for this bad girl, Mabel?’

Hansen laughed and began to get up, but Julie waved him down. ‘I’m having my feet danced off, and I haven’t had a drink yet. Let’s sit this one out.’ She looked at Wyatt. ‘Who’s Mabel?’

Hansen chuckled. ‘One of Dave’s girls. He’s got a string of them. Dave, remember Isobel last year? You certainly had fun and games with her.’

Wyatt said, ‘She roughed you up a bit, if I remember rightly.’

‘Ah, but I escaped from her clutches.’

Causton snapped his fingers and said with sudden perception, ‘You’re talking about hurricanes, aren’t you?’

Julie said with asperity, ‘Why must they give girls’ names to hurricanes?’

‘They’re easy to remember,’ said Wyatt with a straight face. ‘And so hard to forget. I believe the Association of Women’s Clubs of America put in an objection to the Weather Bureau, but they were overruled. One round won in the battle of the sexes.’

‘I’d be interested to see your work,’ said Causton. ‘From a professional point of view, that is.’

‘I thought you were on holiday.’

‘Newspapermen are never really on holiday — and news is where you find it.’

Wyatt discovered that he rather liked Causton. He said, ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t come up to the Base.’

Hansen grinned. ‘Schelling won’t object; he’s a sucker for publicity — of the right kind.’

‘I’d try not to write any unkind words,’ said Causton. ‘When could I come?’

‘What about tomorrow at eleven?’ said Wyatt. He turned to Julie. ‘Are you interested in my hurricanes? Why don’t you come too?’ He spoke impersonally.

‘Thank you very much,’ she said, equally impersonally.

‘That’s fixed, then,’ said Causton. ‘I’ll bring Miss Marlowe with me — I’m hiring a car.’ He turned to Hansen. ‘Do you have any trouble with the island government at the Base?’

Hansen’s eyes sharpened momentarily, then he said lazily, ‘In what way?’

‘I gather that Americans aren’t entirely popular here. I also understand that Serrurier is a rough lad who plays rough games and he’s not too particular about the methods he uses. In fact, some of the stories I’ve heard give me the creeps — and I’m not a particularly shivery man.’

Hansen said shortly, ‘We don’t interfere with them and they don’t interfere with us — it’s a sort of unspoken agreement. The boys on the Base are pretty firmly disciplined about it. There have been a few incidents and the Commodore cracked down hard.’

‘What kind of—’ Causton began, but a booming voice drowned his question. ‘Say, weren’t you the hostess on my plane to Puerto Rico?’

Wyatt looked up, shadowed by the bull-like figure of Dawson. He glanced at Julie, whose face was transformed by a bright, professional smile. ‘That’s right, Mr Dawson.’

‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ roared Dawson. He seemed incapable of speaking in a normal, quiet tone, but that could have been because he was a little drunk. ‘What say you an’ me have a drink?’ He gestured largely. ‘Let’s all have a drink.’

Causton said quietly, ‘I’m in the chair, Mr Dawson. Will you have a drink with me?’

Dawson bent and looked at Causton, squinting slightly. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

‘I believe we met — in London.’

Dawson straightened and moved around so he could get a good view of Causton. He pondered rather stupidly for a moment, then snapped his fingers. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I know you. You are one of those smart-aleck reporters who roasted me when The Fire Game was published in England. I never forget a face, you know. You were one of the guys who came an’ drank my liquor, then stuck a knife in my back.’

‘I don’t believe I had a drink that morning,’ observed Causton equably.

Dawson exhaled noisily. ‘I don’t think I will have a drink with you, Mr Whatever-your-name-is. I’m particular of the company I keep.’ He swayed on his feet and his eyes flickered towards Julie. ‘Not like some people.’

Both Wyatt and Hansen came to their feet, but Causton said sharply, ‘Sit down, you two; don’t be damn’ fools.’

‘Aw, to hell with it,’ mumbled Dawson, passing a big hand over his face. He blundered away, knocking over a chair and heading for the lavatories.

‘Not a nice man,’ said Causton wryly. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

Wyatt picked up the fallen chair. ‘I thought you were a foreign correspondent?’

‘I am,’ said Causton. ‘But I was in London a couple of years ago when half the staff was down with influenza, and I helped out on local stuff for a while.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not a literary critic, so I wrote a story on the man, not the writer. Dawson didn’t like it one little bit.’

‘I don’t like Dawson one little bit,’ said Hansen. ‘He sure is the Ugly American.’

‘The funny thing about him is that he’s a good writer,’ said Causton. ‘I like his stuff, anyway; and I’m told that his critical reputation is very high. The trouble is that he thinks that the mantle of Papa Hemingway has fallen on his shoulders — but I don’t think it’s a very good fit.’

Wyatt looked at Julie. ‘How much of a nuisance was he?’ he asked softly.

‘Air hostesses are taught to look after themselves,’ she said lightly, but he noticed she did not smile.

The incident seemed to cast a pall over the evening. Julie did not want to dance any more so they left quite early. After taking Julie and Causton back to the Imperiale, Wyatt gave Hansen a lift back to the Base.

They were held up almost immediately in the Place de la Libération Noire. A convoy of military trucks rumbled across their path followed by a battalion of marching infantry. The troops were sweating under their heavy packs and their black faces shone like shoe-leather in the street lighting.

Hansen said, ‘The natives are restless tonight; those boys are in war trim. Something must be happening.’

Wyatt looked around. The big square, usually crowded even at this time of night, was bare except for groups of police and the unmistakable plainclothes men of Serrurier’s security force. The cheerful babble of sound that pervaded this quarter was replaced by the tramp of marching men. All the cafés were closed and shuttered and the square looked dark and grim.

‘Something’s up,’ he agreed. ‘We had this before — six I never did find out why.’

‘Serrurier always was a nervous type,’ said Hansen. ‘Frightened of shadows. They say he hasn’t been out of the Presidential Palace for over a year.’

‘He’s probably having another nightmare,’ said Wyatt.

The column of marching men came to an end and he let in the clutch and drove round the square, past the impossibly heroic bronze statue of Serrurier and on to the road that led to the Base. All the way to Cap Sarrat he thought of Julie and the way she had behaved.

He also thought a little of Mabel.