The feeling of weird dislocation wasn’t as bad this time. I’m getting used to it, he thought grimly.
“We’re right on the place they filmed Baywatch,” Tully said reverently, and Sandra giggled. “And thereabouts is the carousel they used in The Sting….”
“Roy,” Tom said, with warning in his voice. It was scarcely the time to indulge one’s old-movie fixation.
The other man chuckled quietly and subsided, shrugging. They all went down to one knee beside the inflatable, unslinging the rifles they wore across their backs and scanning the darkness through their night-sight goggles. They gave good vision, but it wasn’t quite like normal sight—there was a bright, slight flatness to their surroundings that made it harder to judge distances. Adrienne pushed hers up and used a pair of powerful binoculars instead for a moment. He recognized the instrument from the square, molded look and the digital controls on the top; it was a cutting-edge FirstSide military model, with automatic light compensation and a built-in range finder. The GPS system wouldn’t work here, of course.
“Right on target,” she said quietly. “That’s the Versfelds’ home place—Hendricksdorp, their equivalent of Rolfe Manor or Colletta Hall.” She pointed to the lights, shining from around the curve of the bay and a little inland, just beneath the deeper darkness of the mountains.
“Nobody but Versfeld’s people will be wandering around here—and Piet can talk his way past them. Better to keep out of their way, of course.”
“Speaking of the devil,” Tom said.
The cliff sloped down to ground level nearby. A horse whickered quietly from that direction, and several men came toward them—two tall men, and a slighter one of average height; he could hear the crunch of their boots in the sand. A little closer, and he could recognize the gorilloid shape of Piet Botha. The younger man beside him resembled him enough to be his son, and almost certainly was. And Henry Villers. The black man was standing a bit aside from the Afrikaners, and there was something in their body language that spoke of strained politeness all around.
My sympathy is underwhelming, Piet, Tom thought. I’ll work with you, but I don’t have to like you.
Like the four from the sea, the three men waiting for them were dressed in Commonwealth militia uniform—stone-gray bush jacket and trousers of tough cotton drill with plenty of accordion-pleat pockets and leather patches on elbows and knees, and a floppy-brimmed jungle hat; the outfit faded into the background well. They also wore the webbing harness, which seemed to be based on the Israeli design, one he’d always envied: broad belt with adjustable lacing and many carrying attachments, padded straps over the shoulders, and load-bearing pouches in the small of the back. Tom was willing to bet that the designer had suffered through a couple of campaigns in the sort of stuff rear-echelon types thought up for field men to wear.
“Miss Rolfe,” Botha said; she nodded acknowledgment.
Adrienne and Sandra kept watch with rifles ready; the men slung their weapons, bent in unison and lifted the boat, with Botha and Tom opposite each other at the rear, where the boxes were stacked. It wasn’t all that heavy itself, but the crates of weapons and gear weighed more than twice what any of them did, even Tom or the still more massively built Piet. The soft sand made for bad footing, and it churned under their feet as they panted upslope; he leaned away from the weight, teeth fixed in a grimace of effort and sweat stinging his eyes. The going went easier as they came to rock and dirt held by coarse dry grass; they were all sweating, but the night was pleasant, no more than sixty degrees and with a fresh breeze off the water that made it seem cooler.
“Here,” Botha said, indicating a deep pit about the size of a grave; a pick and shovel leaned against a boulder near it.
Thank you, O taciturn man of the veld, Tom thought sardonically.
They lifted the cargo free and stacked it, then deflated the boat with a hiss and smell of synthetic-tinged air. He and Tully rolled it into a compact bundle, stuffed it into the predug hole, slid the silenced outboard engine into a tough canvas sack and dropped that in as well. A few minutes’ work buried the whole under sand and tumbled rock; he stopped and carefully memorized the lay of the land, turning in a complete circle and taking a bearing on conspicuous landmarks as best he could in the dark. He noticed that the others did likewise, in their different ways—it was appallingly easy to lose something completely, in trackless country, even if you knew the general location.
I’m glad everyone seems to know their business, Tom thought, as they carried the boxes up a narrow pathway to the crest of the higher ground inland; he slung two on his shoulders and trotted easily under the hundred and eighty pounds of weight.
This wasn’t like an op in the Rangers, where he was working with people he’d spent years beside and whose strengths and weaknesses he knew inside out. He and Roy had been together long enough in the SOU to develop an instinctive rapport too. Depending on so many relative strangers made him a little nervous, but there was nothing he could do about it except hope they’d shake down quickly.
The younger Afrikaner went up the slope and returned with a string of mules. Sandra came forward and the two of them oversaw the loading; Adrienne and Botha cut stalks of brush and went back down the beach, sweeping over their footprints. A normal night’s breeze would obliterate most traces that didn’t remove, and a few days would take care of the rest. While they were about it Tom went a little into the thick brush and crouched on guard with his back to a small sycamore tree; what he could see of the landscape was a lot more densely grown than he’d expected, the vegetation dry and dusty enough in high summer, but plenty of it, ranging from knee level to more than his six-three of height.
“And it’s noisy,” he murmured to himself, relaxing into a hunter’s absolute stillness that let all sounds in, only his eyes moving, and his chest as he breathed.
He could hear the beat and hiss of the waves as the tide went out, like the heartbeat of the world when you were near the shore. There were plenty of insects, too; not many mosquitoes, thank God, since there wasn’t a freshwater swamp close by. But a fair swarm of other types, chirping and rustling and buzzing and shrilling and hopping and flying through the darkness. He moved his head occasionally in a slow arc, because the goggles cut off peripheral vision, and more than once he saw a bat twisting through the air in pursuit of some bug or other. There were birds in plenty—nightjars, and he saw a great horned owl whip by at only twice head-height, swerving and jinking like a fighter plane and intent on something inland; then he heard the harsh scream-click-hiss of a barn owl not too far away. A couple of black-tailed jackrabbits passed him, hopping and then landing and coming erect with their tall ears swiveling like radar dishes; one landed near enough for him to reach out and touch it if he’d wanted to. It gave a bulge-eyed double take and a squeal as it realized there was a human at arm’s length, and thumped the earth in alarm before it tore off.
Can’t be easy to be small and tasty, he thought.
Something larger went through the brush a hundred feet to his north; he couldn’t tell exactly what and didn’t care to guess, not in the crazy mixed-up ecology John Rolfe’s importations had produced, but whatever it was it snorted as it caught their scent and crashed off. A coyote went yip-yip-yip and howled occasionally, answered by others across the huge stretch of wilderness—but then, song-dogs had survived here even when it was all built solid; they were as adaptable as humans, and nearly as clever.