“Wee Beastie!” Zaidee cried out, dropping down on the ledge. The creature lifted his head for her to pet him, and she rolled the huge striped bass into the water for him. His teeth flew at it, shredding and eating it in seconds. “Isn’t he cute?” she asked Sarah.
Sarah looked at Zaidee like she was out of her mind. “If I ever saw cute, this is it.”
“We have visitors,” Zaidee told Loch, tossing Wee Beastie another fish.
“Where?” Loch asked.
“Listen,” Zaidee told him, pointing up toward the ridge. “I was also able to tune them in on the CB. Sounds like they’re zeroing in on something.”
Loch and Sarah pulled themselves out of the water and yanked off their fins. Loch had figured Cavenger would eventually get men to check out the lakeshore just as he had done, but he hadn’t thought it would be this soon. They could hear the voices floating down to them from the lake. Men’s voices. The sound of boat motors. Splashing. “You guys keep feeding Wee Beastie,” Loch instructed, dumping the fish into a pile on the rock. “I’ll check it out.”
Loch ran across the spillway from the pond and onto the path next to the grid. He started up toward the bunker, his bare feet digging into the mixture of small stones and clay. The sounds and voices of the men grew louder as he climbed. At the top of the ridge he saw them. The converted PT boat was anchored offshore above the area where Loch had seen the bottom scrapings. Two of the smaller fleet boats idled close by, with John Randolph and Cavenger’s dive master shouting instructions to a half dozen motley frogmen who were diving, searching the area. There were shouts from other men on the shore where pines and thick brush blocked Loch’s view. He knew they had found the set of smaller scrapings and the underground spillway.
Loch raced back down the hill as fast as he could.
“What’s going on?” Sarah wanted to know when she saw him coming.
“Your father’s got Randolph with divers,” Loch said, working to catch his breath. “They’ve closed in on the trail. We’ve got to get Wee Beastie out of here.”
Zaidee and Loch looked at Sarah to see if she was with them. “All right,” Sarah said, “what should we do?”
“Get him into the jeep,” Loch said.
“No,” Zaidee cried. She pointed down the hill. “Look!”
A trail of dust was rising from the curving, narrow dirt road. Another company jeep with more of Cavenger’s men in it was heading up. Loch looked toward the grid, then to the pool. The creature’s head was out of the water. It was making cheerful sounds out of the breathing holes on its snout and staring at the rest of the big pile of squid and fish. Loch grabbed a bluefish and held it out to the creature. “Come on, fellah, you’ve got to come with us.” Loch moved around the edge of the pond to the spillway. Wee Beastie followed Loch, swimming along the rim of the pool. Loch tossed him the fish.
“The spillway is too shallow for him,” Loch shouted. “We have to help.”
Loch jumped into the pool next to Wee Beastie, as the creature snapped up the last morsels of the largest bluefish. Loch tried bracing his legs against the side of the pool to lift Wee Beastie into the flow of the spillway, but the creature was too slippery and heavy. Zaidee and Sarah rushed to get a grip, carefully sliding their arms under Wee Beastie’s two front fins. Wee Beastie didn’t seem to mind. He kept making cheerful noises and looking longingly over his shoulder at the pile of fish as they eased him up. Finally, he was out of the pool and into the shallow spillway.
A cry came from the top of the waterfall. They looked up to see the first frogman being washed over the falls and plunging downward. Two more terrified-looking divers were swept over after him.
Loch was out of the pool now. He pushed Wee Beastie along the wash, while Sarah and Zaidee continued to help glide him along by his fins. In another few feet the spillway was deeper and steeper, and they were able to move the creature faster.
“Let go,” Loch ordered Zaidee. “Delay them!”
Zaidee understood and turned away as the water rushed over her ankles. She headed back to the jeep, while Sarah and Loch slid quickly with the creature into the shin-deep top waters of the grid.
The frogmen surfaced in the pool. Zaidee knew it would take them a few moments to get their bearings. Finally, when they looked to the shore, all they could see was a small girl with short bobbed hair sitting in the back of a company jeep. She had her feet up and crossed, and was munching from a box of Fruity Pebbles.
“Hi.” Zaidee waved to them. “Nice day for a swim.”
The frogmen swam to the edge of the pool and pulled themselves out onto the granite ledge. They saw the pile of wet snorkel equipment thrown into the back of the jeep. “Who’s out here with you?” one of the frogmen demanded to know.
“A couple of friends. We’re having a picnic.” Zaidee smiled. “They’re in the woods looking for firewood. Would you like some Fruity Pebbles?”
They noticed the pile of squid and fish on the rock. “What’s that?”
“Oh, you know,” Zaidee said, “we always say, what’s a picnic without roast fish!”
Randolph’s voice came roaring from the top of the ridge. He was running down from the bunker, clutching a walkie-talkie and pointing downstream. “Get them!”
The divers turned and spotted Loch and Sarah splashing their way down the grid with a strange black creature. In a second, the frogmen were after them.
The water on the second level of the grid was knee-deep, sufficient for Wee Beastie to propel himself along beside them like a seal. Loch kept urging him on. “Don’t worry, fellah, we’re going to make it. Just hang in there. You’ll be okay.”
But the end of the grid steps looked too far away.
Sarah looked over her shoulder as she pushed ahead. “They’re coming!” she yelled. Loch turned and saw the frogmen already in the top of the grid. More men were racing down from the bunker to join Randolph. Loch could only think that if somehow Sarah and he could get Wee Beastie to the last grid step, he would make it over the last obstacle and escape into the deep, swift stream to Lake Champlain.
The frogmen were gaining on them.
“I’m getting exhausted!” Sarah yelled when the water grew still deeper near the end of the fourth step. Here a steel barrier forced the powerful surge of water to cascade down to the next step, a drop of several feet. Wee Beastie couldn’t make it over alone. The creature tried to turn from the barrier, to go back toward the pursuers, but Loch and Sarah got behind him again and started to lift him. With a great fluttering of his front fins, finally Wee Beastie went splashing over into the next grid step.
“What is that?” Sarah called as she and Loch dropped down to the lower grid. A rippling of white water lay directly ahead.
“Artificial rapids,” Loch called back.
“They look real enough to me!” Sarah gasped as the current pulled her along.
“Look!” Loch yelled, pointing ahead. Beyond the end of the last grid, coming up the stream, was a skiff carrying a crew of armed men. Cavenger must have had a second team searching downstream, and Randolph had ordered it into position with his walkie-talkie.
They were trapped; men were closing from upstream and down.
Back at the waterfall, Zaidee continued to relax in the backseat of the jeep, eating her Fruity Pebbles. Randolph was yelling at her, asking her about the black creature, what it was, what her brother and Sarah were doing with it.
“It’s an otter,” Zaidee told him, “a big old mutant otter.” The more Randolph yelled at her, the more she kept her attention on two things: the sight of her buddies trapped in the grid and the keys hanging in the jeep’s ignition. The second company jeep made it up the hill and screeched to a halt next to Randolph. Four burly men in fatigues leaped out to join in the chase. It was getting very unfair, Zaidee felt. Then the huge military helicopter lifted over the ridge with a roar. As far as Zaidee was concerned, that was downright mean. That was overkill.