No, Carter decided, she had come this way. Which meant there was a path down to the sea.
Keeping low, he stepped out from the jungle, crossed to the edge of the cliff, and looked over. Twenty or thirty yards to the west, and far below on the rocks, he just caught a glimpse of Gabrielle as she disappeared beneath a wide overhang.
There was a narrow stretch of beach farther west, and he waited, expecting to see her appear down there. But she did not. After a while he understood that she was either waiting down there somewhere beneath the overhang, or there was a passage within the cliff. He had a fair idea which it was.
He took out his Luger and worked his way along the cliff until he found the partly natural and partly man-made path, and he started down.
A hundred feet below, the sea moved in huge swells into what appeared to be one of the larger natural caves cut into the face of the cliff. The path he was on crossed over the top of the cave, then came down on the western edge where it twisted around beneath the overhang.
Just before he eased around the corner, which would put him in full view of the cave, Carter hesitated and listened.
At first he heard nothing, but then he thought he heard a snatch of conversation over the roar of the surf.
He moved a little closer, crouched down, and listened again. He heard a voice. There was definitely someone around the edge. Talking. In Chinese.
This was evidently the entrance to the Chinese base. It explained to Carter why the previous naval shore parties here had failed to turn up anything other than natives and native villages. Before they arrived, the dish antennae had been taken down, and there would be nothing topside to indicate that a base was located here.
Carter turned and started back up the path, holstering his Luger. He would hike farther west now, down into the valley and around the island on the beaches if need be, until he found an outrigger. When the storm abated in the morning, he would take off for Hiva Faui. The Starfish would be there by then, and they could come back here and close this place down. Afterward the governor and his wife would be arrested and shipped back to Paris for trial.
Halfway up the path someone above shouted something in Chinese, and several other men laughed.
Carter froze where he was. Below, around the twist that led beneath the overhang, were a couple of guards. Above, boxing him in, were are least three or four men.
He figured he could probably take them out, but then whatever element of surprise he would have tomorrow would be gone. They would know he had been here. They would know he had discovered the entrance to their installation.
The patrol above was nearly to the path when Carter finally accepted his only alternative. He looked over the edge, down fifty or sixty feet to the big swells roaring like freight trains into the cave. It would be hell swimming back out of there, if swimming were possible. But it would be better than remaining where he was.
Someone above shouted something else — it sounded like a joke — and the others laughed uproariously as Carter shook his head, then stepped cleanly away from the path, his body plummeting toward the dark water below.
As he fell he tried to listen for any sounds of an alarm from above, but then he hit the water cleanly at the trough of a swell, plunging deeply, the sea surprisingly warm. He could feel the powerful current pushing his body into the cave as he fought his way back to the surface.
Then he was clear, and he took deep breaths of the warm, moist air, the incoming swell shoving him up and farther inside the wide cavern.
Twenty yards away and less than ten feet above the surface of the water within the cavern was a catwalk. Carter was being shoved past two guards leaning over the rail and smoking cigarettes as they stared at the water. They would see him!
He sank beneath the surface of the water and struggled out of his boots, then swam with the current, his strokes powerful.
When he came to the surface, he was well past the guards and even the catwalk. Here the ceiling of the cave sloped abruptly down to the water, so that each swell that crashed in from the open sea threatened to smash Carter against the rocks. He could feel the current tugging against his body, pulling him down and toward the inner wall when it should have been rebounding and shoving him back out toward the opening.
He managed to swim to one side of the cave and clung to the rocks.
Several yards from the front of the cave the catwalk ended. There was a doorway, and Carter supposed it led back into the hillside.
He stopped and held his breath, suddenly conscious of a low-pitched hum, more like a deep-throated vibration, through the rocks and the water. Was that what Gabrielle had been listening for? Even from miles away? Then he remembered the rhythmic rumblings he had heard with Tieggs from the helicopter.
There was something… some machinery just on the other side of the wall forming the back of the cave. That was why the current was acting the way it was. There was another way inside, Carter realized. By water.
As soon as he felt he was rested enough, he swam back out to the middle of the cave, the current very strong there.
If the underwater passage was too long, or if it branched off, he would be dead, he realized. There would be no swimming against this current until the tide changed. From what he was able to see from where he swam, the tide was still coming up. He could see shells, algae, and other growth another foot or so up the cave walls.
But there had been a lot of good people killed on these islands over the past couple of years. And this was his job.
He took several deep breaths, held one, and dived deep, swimming as strongly as he could with the current toward the back of the cave.
The current became much stronger at one point, propelling him very fast beneath an opening in the back wall of the cave. There definitely would be no turning back now, he thought.
He had the impression that the water was very deep beneath him and that the opening was very wide.
His heart was pounding in his ears and his lungs were beginning to ache when he saw a glow through the water ahead and above him.
He angled upward toward it, forcing himself to slow down so that when he broke the surface of the water it would not be with a splash.
His head broke the surface, and he took in great lungsful of air, his mouth wide so that he would make as little noise as possible.
He had started to sink back into the water when he suddenly focused on two huge shapes floating at the far end of the cave, both of them bathed in lights and swarming with uniformed men.
Two nuclear submarines were tied to a long cement dock, the big gold star faced by the four smaller gold stars of Communist China painted on the sides.
One of the submarines was being unloaded. A growing stack of crates was piling up on the dock as two cranes pulled what probably were supplies for this base from the hold of the sub.
It explained the secrecy. Somehow the Chinese had discovered a natural cavern here in the rocks. Coming in with their construction equipment and supplies, they had built this place.
Either that, Carter thought, carefully treading water as he caught his breath, or it had been a Japanese installation during World War II. Possibly a sub pen.
The gallery he was in was very long in comparison to its width. He was facing the subs bow on. They had evidently come in here bow first and then had been warped around so that they faced out again.
There was nothing to the left. To the right there was only a single narrow catwalk that led, presumably through some passage through the rocks, to the outer cave. Somehow the catwalk in the outer cave would have to be concealed, Carter reasoned, so that the natives did not stumble on it.
At the far end of the gallery, beyond where the subs were being unloaded, was a large glassed-in area above the level of the docks. It looked like some sort of a control booth. Evidently the subs' operations were directed from there. Directly in front of the glassed-in area was a long balcony upon which several uniformed men were lounging.