The tip of the cape was actually bifurcated into two smaller peninsulas, a narrow inlet curving in between them. The cliffs on either side of the inlet were of uniform height and coloration: Given a little distance and heat shimmer, the passage between them was all but invisible from sea level.
The Bugis vessel was slowing and nosing into the inlet now, its skipper lifting one hand from the wheel to sound the air-horn in a sharp long-short-long.
“There’s plenty of water here as well. We’re in a dredged channel.”
“A dredged channel. Who dredged it, and why?”
Harconan only smiled.
The passage might be four hundred feet wide, the channel itself extending perhaps a quarter mile into the heart of the peninsula before coming to a dead end at yet another cliff. The muttering idle of the schooner’s engines reverberated between the inlet’s walls, and the muggy heat was magnified with the loss of the sea breeze. Lost also was the smell of the sea, replaced totally by the musty organics of the landside jungle.
Amanda looked up from the open wheelhouse windows and studied the looming cliffs. She started as a human figure seemed to materialize on cliff edge, dispassionately looking down at the passing ship.
He wasn’t Bugis. Amanda could tell that even from here. He was tall and slender and almost as dark as the lava rock of the cliffs, a Melanesian, one of the true New Guinea natives. He appeared naked save for a bandolier and an automatic rifle.
So, Harconan and his pirates had land-based allies.
As her perception adapted to the terrain, she began to make out other irregularities along the cliff edge: stacked lava-rock fortifications, deeply concealed in the vegetation, and the telltale straightness of gun barrels under camouflage netting.
“Look ahead.” It was a two-word command from Harconan.
Amanda obeyed, glancing forward. And the hair on the back of her neck stood up as again the rock began to move.
Once more it was an optical illusion. This time a man-made one. Beneath a rocky overhang at the head of the inlet, the “cliffside” was parting like a theater curtain.
It was a curtain — a huge, masterfully painted camouflage tarpaulin retracting on a set of powered overhead tracks. Its parting revealed a rectangle of shadow marked with sparks of artificial light.
As the schooner drew closer, Amanda began to make out shapes within the shadow.
“Damn, damn, damn!” she murmured. “That’s a ship in there!”
“Very much of a ship.” Harconan agreed.
No mere pinisi, either, but at least three hundred feet of modern oceangoing transport. Amanda could make out a massive slab-sided stern house, the stern drive-through gate of an LST- or LSM-type amphib, and a distinctive flat-topped bow structure.
“The MV Harconan Flores, I presume,” Amanda said with rueful respect. “No wonder we couldn’t find her anywhere.”
Harconan rested his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t know the right rocks to turn over.”
The radar mast had been folded flat to permit the ship’s entry into the cavern. Amanda noted another alteration as well — a restoration, actually. The ex-East German amphib’s gun turrets had been remounted on their hardpoints. Twin 37mm autocannon stood bore-sighted down the inlet approaches.
The pinisi slid into the shadow of the cavern. Looking overhead, Amanda could make out a network of rusted cross girders helping to support the lava-rock ceiling. The cavern was apparently a combination of man-made and natural work, a sea cave almost as large as the Sea Lion Caves of the Oregon coast.
Wooden docking piers ran down either side of the cavern. The pilings were dark and ancient, but the deck planking showed the golden sheen of new wood. The Harconan Flores was moored on the right-hand dock, leaving a gap adequate for the pinisi to fit between its steel hull and the lefthand pier.
A second schooner already lay alongside that dock, leaving space astern for Amanda and Harconan’s vessel. In a masterful display of ship handling, the Bugis skipper worked his craft into the remaining cramped slot. With a final burst of reversing power, he rang her down and brought her to a halt with her bowsprit overhanging the stern castle of the craft ahead and the flank of his ship just brushing the pier fenders. Mooring lines were passed off between the pinisi’s deckhands and the pier-side stevedores.
There were several dozen people visible within the cavern confines. Bugis, darker Melanesians, and even a few paler-skinned Caucasians. Cargo was being unloaded from the other docked schooner, deck work and maintenance was under way aboard the Flores, and a number of heavily armed guards prowled in the shadows. A sandbagged emplacement also stood at the head of the left-side pier. Amanda recognized the quad .50- caliber barrels of an old American-made M-55 antiaircraft mount supplementing the Flores’s guns in the defense of the stronghold.
The coaster’s diesels clattered to a stop. Replacing the sound was the grinding whine of electric motors drawing the camouflage curtain closed, walling out the daylight. A chill touched Amanda as the cavern basalt leached the warmth out of the puff of tropic air that had entered with the pinisi.
“I am impressed, Makara,” she said softly. “This is incredible. An old Japanese installation, isn’t it?”
He nodded in the half-illumination of the cave’s scattered work lights. “It was intended as a submarine pen but it was never used as such. The cape was cut off and isolated during the Allied counterinvasion. It was forgotten by the Japanese and never discovered by your forces. Come, let me show you around. The story is more incredible than you could even imagine.”
They descended from the wheelhouse to the schooner’s deck, Amanda’s guard still trailing them wordlessly. A portable power crane had already moved into position at dockside and the first slingload of fuel drums was being lifted off the pinisi’s deck.
Harconan swept his hand toward the landing ship moored at the opposing dockside. “I’ll have us moved into the master’s cabin of the Flores tonight. Electric lights, a shower, and all the hot water you wish — and a real bed. Captain Onderdank won’t be pleased, but after all, I am the owner.”
“It sounds very nice, Makara.” Amanda hooked her thumb back over her shoulder at her guard. “Will he be standing behind me in the shower too?”
Harconan grimaced and spoke a quick phrase to the guard. The seaman uncocked and slung his machine pistol and withdrew.
“I gave you my parole, Makara.” Amanda didn’t push to the point of trying to sound hurt, but she did soften her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“No, you are not. You are literally at the end of the world here, Amanda. Above and beyond my garrison here, you have better than a hundred kilometers of lethally inhospitable jungle between you and the nearest civilization. You wouldn’t last a day.”
Gauging carefully, she hardened her response. “I said I gave you my parole.”
He sighed. “You have my apologies. But please recall your own rather formidable reputation.”
“Well, I suppose you have a point there. But I assure you, I’m not Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.” With ground won and with a hint more freedom of action gained, she disengaged blades with a smile. “Now, what’s the story about this place?”
“Ah, as I said. the Japanese engineering unit constructing this facility was apparently cut off in 1943. Yet, they continued to work, constructing the tunnel complex and enlarging the main cavern, awaiting the day when they would reestablish contact with other Imperial Japanese forces.”
Genuinely interested, Amanda listened as they descended the gangway to the cave-side pier.