Age of Voodoo (24 page)

Then came the task of reassembling the Zodiacs—inflating the air chambers, installing the transoms, thrustboards and deckplates, lodging the outboards onto the sterns. All while balancing on the Turbo Beaver’s floats, which made the process more protracted and precarious than it would normally have been. A leatherback turtle came nosing up to the seaplane to check out what was going on. Deeper in the water, sinister slim silhouettes circled: barracuda. The nearby reefs formed a perfect hunting ground for the predators, with huge shoals of small fry milling about, ready to be picked off. Lex watched the big silvery fish glide by. They were unhurried, confident in their top-of-the-food-chain status. At one time, he had felt like that himself—untouchable, a force of nature, dead-eyed, inhuman. He did not welcome the idea of a return to that state of mind. It had served him well as a wetwork specialist, but that was another time, another self, another world. He preferred who he was now, by far. This mission might require him to draw on his old skill set, but not, he hoped, he prayed, on his old persona. He wasn’t going back there again, not if he could possibly avoid it.

The Zodiacs were ready. Team Thirteen transferred their bags, and themselves, into the boats.

Albertine gave Wilberforce a parting hug and stepped smartly off the plane. As Lex made to follow her, Wilberforce stopped him.

“Take care of my cousin, man.”

“Of course, Wilb.”

“I mean it. We fight like cat and dog, her and me, but we’re family. And take care of yourself, too.”

“Always. See you after.”

The first Zodiac chugged away from
Puddle Jumper
with Lex, Albertine, Morgenstern and Pearce on board. Pearce was at the helm, gripping the outboard’s tiller arm.

Buckler’s Zodiac set off after Pearce’s. When it caught up, the two boats accelerated away in tandem.

Looking back, Lex watched
Puddle Jumper
and its pilot recede into the distance. He couldn’t help envying his friend. Wilberforce got to sit in his plane twiddling his thumbs, while the rest of them...

Well, whatever the rest of them had to face in the coming hours, it was unlikely there would be much thumb twiddling involved.

TWENTY-TWO

ISLANDFALL

“W
HISPER, THIS IS
Big Chief Dirty.” Buckler, on the comms. “We’ll skim the coral. Go for flank speed and ship the outboard at the last second. Momentum should do the rest. Copy?”

“Copy,” said Pearce.

“Everyone, you might want to hold on to something,” Buckler said. “This could get bumpy.”

There was nylon safety rope strung along the Zodiac’s gunwales. Lex twisted a loop around his wrist and motioned Albertine to do likewise.

Pearce gunned the motor to maximum, and the Zodiac’s bow lifted, hydroplaning. Ahead, the sea seethed across the coral. Lex estimated a clearance of six to nine inches. It was going to be tight.

The instant they hit the strip of boiling white, Pearce canted the outboard forwards so that the propeller sprang clear of the water, and twisted the throttle down to zero. The Zodiac scudded forwards, rudderless. Lex glimpsed coral fronds and spars rushing by below, branching extrusions and brain-like lumps, all colours, all textures. So fragile-looking, yet it could ground the boat and tear it to shreds.

They had nearly made it to the other side when something snagged on the hull and all at once the Zodiac was sent spinning, pivoting violently round and round and slewing across the sea at the same time. The boat yawed and the bow started to rise alarmingly, catching the air like a kite. The Zodiac was in peril of capsizing and pitching its occupants out.

Almost instinctively, Lex loosened his hand from the safety rope and lunged forwards, hurling himself into the front of the boat. The sudden shift brought the bow back down flat with a
thump
. The rate of spin slowed, allowing Pearce to reinsert the propeller and regain control. A burst of reverse thrust halted the boat in its tracks.

“Everyone all right?” Buckler asked as his Zodiac drew alongside.

“Still afloat,” said Morgenstern. “No damage to any of the main chambers as far as I can see. Think we may have lost a speed skag, though.”

Speed skags were narrow tubes running lengthwise along the underside of the hull, aiding stability.

“We can manage without,” Morgenstern went on. “It’s just going to be a little less smooth of a ride. But props to the English guy. That was some quick thinking there. If it wasn’t for him, we’d all be swimming right now.”

Pearce touched an index finger to his forehead, then pointed it at Lex.

Albertine shot him a look of gratitude, which was heartfelt.

“Onward,” said Buckler.

His Zodiac zoomed off, and the other trailed in its wake.

The seabed shelved upwards, an incline of ribbed sand dotted with clumps of softly waving turtle grass. Within metres of the shore, Buckler ordered Pearce to hold back.

“We’ll put ashore first, establish a perimeter. You come in when I give the okay.”

Buckler rammed the Zodiac up onto the beach, and before it had even stopped moving Sampson and Tartaglione were out and sprinting left and right through the shallows. Each was carrying a CAR-15 carbine, fitted with an underslung M-203 grenade launcher. At the promontories the two SEALs turned inland and performed a converging sweep along the top of the beach, meeting each other midway.

“Jersey Shore, clear.”

“Penetrator, clear.”

Buckler waved to Pearce, who engaged the idling motor and beached the Zodiac prow-first as his CO had done. He and Morgenstern piled out and started unloading bags. Buckler was already doing the same.

“I’d love to say that’s the worst part over,” Lex remarked to Albertine, “but it undoubtedly isn’t.”

Team Thirteen lugged the duffel bags up to the vegetation line, where marram grass, inkberry and sea lavender grew in shaggy clumps. Undoing the zips, they produced a fine array of ordnance: more CAR-15s, M-60 machine guns, Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine pistols and MK23 semiautomatics, and plenty of ammo. In addition there were KA-BAR fighting knives, hand grenades, flashbangs, and socks of C-4 explosive. The guns and explosives were shared out among the SEALs, holstered, sheathed, clipped to webbing belts and bandoliers, until the five of them were festooned with weaponry. Lex, armed with only his SIG Sauer, felt underdressed for the occasion, like someone who had turned up in jeans for a black tie party.

But that wasn’t all. From out of one of the bags came phials of clear liquid, with crucifixes etched onto the glass. Flashlights fitted with what appeared to be ultraviolet bulbs. Stubby wooden stakes. Silver pendants in the shape of ankhs and other arcane sigils, which the Thirteeners hung around their necks. A tub containing some kind of herby-smelling unguent, which they smeared on their faces like insect repellent. Assorted amulets and talismans—clay, wood, metal—which they strapped to their wrists and arms.

“What are you staring at?” Tartaglione demanded.

“You,” said Lex, “and all your weirdo bling.”

Tartaglione shook his head wonderingly. “Anyone would think you’d never seen guys tooling themselves up with mystical protection before.”

Sampson smirked. “I swear, the ignorance of some people...”

“True dat.”

“Tartag?”

“Yeah?”

“What have I said about using phrases like ‘true dat’?”

“You said I should always use them.”

“I said the exact opposite.”

“But we have this whole two-tone, brother-from-another-mother thing going on between us, don’t we?”

“We do,” said Sampson. “But you take it too far.”

“Aw man, you know I’m just a white guy who wants to be black.”

“And that’s a one-way street right there.”

“Enough,” Buckler barked. “Fun time’s over, people. From here on in we are icicles. Installation entrance lies three hundred metres inland. Penetrator, Jersey Shore, you’re on point. Whisper, you’re our tail-end Charlie. Chatter to a minimum. Let’s roll, crew.”

TWENTY-THREE

AN AVATAR OF DEATH

I
T WAS A
low cinderblock structure, not much larger than a double-wide trailer home, situated smack dab in the middle of the island. It had a single tiny window on each side—lookout apertures—and a broad, sturdy door made of galvanised steel. The palm trees encircling it cast a rippling, dappled shade. A balmy, pleasant spot, it seemed. Nothing to be afraid of here. No reason to be on edge.

Except that the door hung ajar and askew. The lock bore a starburst pattern of scorch marks.

“Signs of forced entry,” Tartaglione said. He and Sampson were closest to the building.

“That’d be the Marines,” said Buckler. “They knocked, no one answered, they busted a hole. Jersey Shore, you and Penetrator move in. Be careful.”

At the doorway Sampson went down on one knee, carbine to his shoulder. He nosed the barrel between door and jamb and used it to widen the gap gently. Tartaglione slipped through. Sampson covered his teammate as he checked out every corner of the building’s interior.

“Empty, Big Chief Dirty,” Tartaglione said. “But there’s something you ought to see.”

Buckler padded across the strip of open ground between the trees and the building and disappeared inside. Moments later, his voice came over the comms: “White Feather? Bring Guardian Angel over. We need to consult her on this.”

Lex ushered Albertine to the building. Inside, the air was oppressively thick and smelled of sea damp and machine oil. As Lex’s eyes adapted to the gloom, he made out a caged-off section containing a heavy-duty diesel-powered generator, a hulking great device that surely dated back to the installation’s original construction. Judging by the amount of dust and corrosion on it, it hadn’t been operational in decades. Opposite lay the entrance to a freight elevator. The sliding doors were stuck part-way open, revealing a profound, impenetrable blackness beyond.

Beside the doors was a symbol. It had been finger-daubed on the wall in some kind of dark sticky substance, and it took the shape of a crude headstone—a cross perched on a pedestal, with diamond patterns adorning its upright and arms. On one side of the headstone the artist had added a miniature coffin and an uncapped bottle, on the other a skull-and-crossbones and a shovel.

“A
vévé
,” said Albertine, her voice hushed and containing the faintest of tremors.

“Yeah, thought as much,” said Buckler. “And I’ve sniffed up close and it’s painted in blood, just like it looks. The question is: which loa’s
vévé
is it?”

“His. The Baron’s.”

“Had a bad feeling you might say that.”

“This is Baron Samedi’s realm,” Albertine said. “It has been claimed in his name.”

“‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’”

“That and more. You might expect to find a
vévé
like this marking the gatepost of a graveyard. This one is telling us that if we go any further, we’re as good as corpses.”

There was a moment’s silence while that sank in.