Fletcher stood on the concrete apron near the ruined control tower of the airfield on Rivière de la Paix Base and watched the helicopters come in from the sea in a straggling and wavering line. Commodore Rodriguez had been quick off his mark---the aircraft carrier under his command must've been idling just on the outskirts of Magda and he had sent off his helicopters immediately the weather was fit for flying. And this was just the first wave. Planes would soon pour into Esperance, bringing much-needed medical aid.
He looked at the little cadre of officers surrounding Sorel and grinned. The Yankees were due for a surprise---but maybe not just yet.
Sorel had been quite clear about it. "I am going to occupy Rivière de la Paix Base," he said, "Even with only a token force. This is vital."
So a platoon of men had made the dangerous trip across the flooded mouth of the Ochoa and here they were, waiting for the Americans. It all hinged on the original treaty of 1907 in which Sorel had found a loophole. "The position is simple, Mr. Fletcher," he said. "The treaty states that if the American forces voluntarily give up the Base and it is thereafter claimed by the government of Esperance, then the treaty is null and void."
Fletcher raised his eyebrows. "It'll look like a pretty shabby gesture," he said. "The Americans come in to bring you unstinting aid, and you reciprocate by taking the Base."
"The Americans will bring us nothing they do not owe us already," said Sorely dryly. "They have rented 8 square miles of valuable real estate for 60 years at a pittance, on a lease forced at a time when they occupied Esperance as if it were an enemy country." He shook his head seriously. "I do not want to take the Base away from them, Mr. Fletcher, but I feel I will be in a position to negotiate another, more equitable lease."
Fletcher snatched a notebook from his pocket and refreshed his memory. "One thousand, six hundred and ninety-three dollars per annum. I think it's worth more than that, and I think you ought to get it."
Sorel grinned cheerfully. "You left out the twelve cents, Mr. Fletcher. I think the International Court at The Hague will give us just judgment. I would like you to be at the Base as an independent witness to the fact that the Esperancean government has assumed control of Rivière de la Paix."
So now he was watching the first helicopter touch down on the territory of the sovereign nation of Esperance. He watched men climb out and saw the gleam of gold on a flat cap. "My God, I wonder if that's Rodriguez," he muttered, and started walking across the apron. He saw Sorel move forward and watched the two men meet.
"Welcome back to Rivière de la Paix," said Sorel, offering his hand. "I am Laron Sorel."
"Rodriguez---Commodore in the United States Navy."
The two men shook hands and Fletcher wondered if Rodriguez knew about the flaw in the treaty. If he did, he showed no awareness of his changed position, nor did he evince any shock as he flicked his eyes upwards at the sodden green and gold flag of Esperance which hung limply from an improvised mast on the control tower. He said, "What do you need most, Mr. Sorel, and where do you need it? Anything we've got, all you have to do is ask for it."
Sorel shook his head sadly. "We need everything---but first, doctors, medical supplies, food and blankets. After that we would like some kind of big-scale temporary housing---even tents would suffice."
Rodriguez indicated the helicopters landing on the runways. "These boys are gonna check the airfield to see if it's safe for operation. We'll set up a temporary control tower over there. When that's done the big planes can start to move in....they're already waiting for a signal in Miami and Puerto Rico. In the meantime, we've got five choppers full of medics. Where do you want 'em to go?"
"Up the Ochoa. They will have plenty of work."
Rodriguez raised his eyebrows. "The Ochoa?! Then you got your people out of Trois Fourches?"
"With the the help of your Mr. Martin. That is a very forceful and persuasive young man."
They began to move away. "Yep," said Rodriguez. "I wish I had...." His voice was lost to Fletcher as they walked up the runway.
Bowman caught up with Riley when he was nearly at the top of the hill. "Take it easy," he gasped. "You'll bust a gut."
Riley kept quiet, reserving his breath to power his legs which were working like pistons. They reached the crest and he looked around, his chest heaving and the muscles of his legs sore with the effort he'd made. "I don't---see---a gully."
Bowman looked over the other side towards the sea and saw a line of welcome blue sky on the horizon. He turned back. "Suppose they had come up from the coast....where would they go from here?"
Riley shook his head in irritation. "I don't know."
"My inclination would be to edge in towards Trois Fourches," said Bowman. "So I wouldn't have far to go home when it was all over." He pointed to the left. "That way. Let's have a look."
They walked a little way along the crest of the hill, and Riley said, "That's it---I suppose you'd call that a gully."
Bowman looked down at the cleft cut into the hillside. "It's our best bet so far," he said. "Let's go down."
They climbed down into the ravine and looked around. Pools of water lay trapped among the rocks, and Riley said, "There'd be quite a bit of water coming down here during the hurricane. That's what Mrs. Moore meant when she talked about a river on the top of a hill." He filled his lungs with air. "Davon!" he shouted. "Davon! Cubbins!"
There was no answer. Everything was quiet save for the distant roar of a helicopter landing at the bottom of the valley.
"We'll go a bit further," said Bowman. "Maybe they're lower down. Maybe they've left already---gone down to the valley."
"They wouldn't do that," objected Riley. "Ellison knows that the St. Simon road is easier."
"Okay, maybe they've gone that way."
"We'll look down here first," said Riley. He began to climb among the tumbled rocks at the bottom of the ravine, wading through pools, heedless of the water. Bowman followed him, and kept a careful watch all around. From time to time Riley shouted, and then they paused to listen but nobody heard an answering cry.
After a while Bowman said, "That Moore bitch said something about a waterfall. You see anything that could've been a waterfall?"
"No," said Riley shortly.
They went further down the ravine and found themselves enclosed within its sheer walls. "This would be as good a place to sit out a hurricane as any," commented Bowman. "Better than the goddamn holes we had."
"Then where the hell are they?" demanded Riley, his temper flaring.
"Cool it, man," said Bowman. "We'll find 'em if they're here. Tell ya what; you carry on down the ravine, I'll go up on the hillside. I can move faster up there and still see most of what there is to be seen down here."
He climbed up the ravine wall and regained the open hillside, and as he thought, he was immediately able to keep up a better speed. Although he was hampered by fallen trees, they were easier to negotiate than the jumble of rocks in the ravine. He carried on down the hill, outstripping Riley, and returned to the ravine's lip frequently to scan the bottom very carefully. It was quite a while before he found anything.
At first he thought it was some kind of animal moving very slowly, and then his breath hissed as he saw it was a man crawling painfully on his belly. He climbed down to the bottom and stumbled across the rocks to where the crawling figure had stopped. When he turned the man over he lifted his head and yelled, "Riley---come here---I've found Cubbins!"
Cubbins was in a bad way. Her face was deathly pale, accentuating the blood streaks on the side of her head. Her right side appeared to be completely paralyzed and she made ineffectual pawing motions with her left arm as Bowman gently cradled him. His eyes flickered open and her lips moved but she made no sound.
"Take it easy," said Bowman. "You're safe now."
Cubbins's breath rasped. He whispered, "I'm having---a heart---heart---heart attack."
"Don't worry," said Bowman. "Relax."
Small stones clattered as Riley came up, and Bowman turned his head. "The poor guy's had a heart attack. He's not too good."
Riley took Cubbins's wrist and felt the faint thread of pulse and then looked into the glazing eyes which seemed focused an infinity away. The gray lips moved again. "Waterfall---tree---tree...."
Cubbins suddenly sagged and lay in Bowman's arms, gazing vacantly at the sky, his jaw dropped down.
Bowman eased him down onto the rocks. "He's gone."
Riley stared down at the body and his face looked haggard. "Was he crawling?" he whispered.
Bowman nodded. "He was going down the ravine. I don't know how he expected to make it."
"Davon would never have left him," said Riley in an over-controlled voice. "Not if he was sick. Something must've happened to her."
"He said something about a waterfall, too---just like Moore."
"It must be higher up," said Riley. "By Jove, I think I know where it is!" He rose to his feet and stumbled away, moving much too fast for the broken ground and reckless of twisted or broken ankles. Bowman followed him more cautiously and found him beneath an outcrop of rock too hard and stubborn to be worn away. He stopped and picked up something from the cleft in the rock base. It was a woman's handbag.
"This was Moore's," he said. "This is the waterfall." His head jerked upwards to the tangle of tree roots above his head at the ravine's edge. "And that's the tree---he said 'tree,' didn't he?"
He scrambled up the side of the ravine and then turned to give a hand to Bowman. "Let's take a closer look at this bloody tree."
They walked around the tree and saw nothing, and then Riley pushed in among the branches and suddenly gave a choked sound. "Found her," he said brokenly.
Bowman pushed his way through and looked over Riley's shoulder, then turned away. He said heavily, "Like I said -- we've found her."
She was lying with the trunk of the tree across her legs and hips and a branch across her right arm, pinning it to the ground. The fingertips of her left hand were scraped bloodily raw where she had scrabbled at the trunk in her efforts to move it. Her face, smudged with dirt, was otherwise marble-white and blood-drained. The only thing about her that moved was a strand of her hair that waved gently in the wind. Riley stepped back away from the tree and looked at it calculatingly. He said in a repressed voice, "Let's move this tree. Let's shift this damned tree."
"Riley," said Bowman quietly, "she's dead."
Riley turned in a flash, his face furious. "Who the hell made you the coroner?! he shouted.
Bowman fell back a step, intimidated by the controlled violence emanating from this man. He said, "All right, Riley, I'm sorry. Let's move the tree."
"And do it carefully, do you hear?" said Riley. "Very carefully."
Bowman looked at the tree dubiously. It was big and heavy and awkward. "How do we start?"
Riley attacked a broken branch and wrenched it free by sheer force. He stepped back panting. "By taking the weight off her . . . her body, then one of us can draw her out."
That did not look so easy to Bowman, but he was willing to give it a try. He took the branch that Riley offered and walked around the tree looking for a convenient place to wedge it under the trunk. Riley then collected some rocks and followed him. "There," he said abruptly. "That's the place." His face was very white. "If we're not careful....."
Bowman rammed the branch beneath the trunk and cautiously tested the leverage. He doubted if the trunk would move but said nothing. Riley pushed him out of the way and swung his weight on to the branch. There was a creak, but otherwise nothing. "Come on," he said. "You can push on this, too."
"Who's gonna push the stones under?" asked Bowman reasonably. "Neither of us can do it if we're both heaving on that branch."
"I'll use my foot to do it," said Riley impatiently. "Come on!"
Both of them leaned heavily on the branch and Bowman felt the agony of pain in his hands. The trunk of the tree moved fractionally and he set his teeth and held on. Slowly the trunk lifted, inch by inch, and Riley, both his feet off the ground, nudged one of the rocks with the tip of his shoe until it slid underneath. Then another, a larger one, went under, and he gasped, "That's all -- for now."
Slowly they released the branch and the trunk settled again, but it was slightly raised on the rocks. Bowman staggered back, his hands on fire with pain, and Riley looked up and saw his face. "What's the matter?" Then he caught on. "Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I didn't realize...."
Bowman suppressed the sickness that welled up within him and grinned weakly. "Aw, hell with it," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "There's nothing to it. I'm all right."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm fine," he said nonchalantly.
Riley turned his attention back to the tree. "I'll see if I can pull her out now." He crawled under the branches and was silent for some minutes, then said in a muffled voice. "It needs one more swing." He came out. "If you can get under there and pull her out while I lift this damned tree, I think we'll do it."
He carefully chocked in the rocks he'd already inserted under the trunk while Bowman got in position, and when Bowman shouted that he was ready he swung again on the lever. Nothing happened, so he swung harder, again and again, leaning his whole weight on the branch and pushing down until he thought his skeleton would break and fall apart. The thought entered his mind dizzily that he had gone through all this before in the prison cell. Well, he had done it before and he would do it again.
But the tree-trunk did not move.
Bowman called a halt and came out from under the branches. He had been close to Davon's body and felt sure that she was indeed dead, but whatever he privately thought of the uselessness of all this did not show on his face for one moment. He said, "What we need here is weight -- not strength. I'm 60 pounds heavier than you are -- it may not be all muscle, but that doesn't matter. You pull her out while I do the lifting."
"What about your hands?"
"You just never mind about my hands. Get the hell under there!"
He waited until Riley was ready, then leaned on the branch and thrust down with all his force and weight. He almost screamed at the cruel torment in his hands and sweat beaded his forehead. The trunk moved and Riley gave a shout. "Keep it up! For God's sake, keep it up!"
Bowman went through an eternity of purgatory and for a fraction of a second he wondered if he would ever be able to use his hands again -- say, on a typewriter. Hell! he grunted to himself, I can always dictate -- and pressed down harder. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Riley backing out, drawing something with him, and it was with beautiful relief that he heard a faint and faraway voice say, "Okay, you can let it go."
He released the branch and flopped to the ground, thankfully feeling the flaming hell centered in his hands dying to a welcome numbness. With lackluster eyes he watched Riley bend over Davon, rip open her shirt and apply his ear to her chest. And it was with something approaching shock that he heard him shout exultantly, "She's alive! She's still alive! It's faint, but it's there."
It took a long time for them to signal a helicopter, but when they did action was swift. The chopper hovered over them and swirled the dust while Riley lay over Davon to protect her from the blast. A man was lowered by a winch and dropped to the ground, and Bowman lurched up to him. "We need a doctor."
The man gave a brief grin. "I'm your guy -- who's the patient?"
"This woman." He led the way to where Davon was lying and the doctor dropped to one knee beside her and produced a stethoscope. After a few seconds he fumbled in a cartouche at his waist and drew forth a hypodermic syringe and an ampoule. While Riley watched anxiously he gave Davon an injection. Then he waved back the helicopter and, speaking through a microphone at the bottom of the dangling hoist, he gave terse instructions.
The hoist was reeled in and presently another man came down, bearing a folded stretcher and a bundle of splints, and the helicopter retreated again to continue its circling. Davon was tenderly bound in a complex of splints and given another injection. Riley said, "How is ... will she . . .?"
The doctor looked up. "Relax, we got to her in time. She'll be all right if we can get her off this hillside real fast." He waved to the helicopter which came in again, and Davon was hoisted up on the stretcher.
The doctor surveyed them. "You coming?" He looked at Bowman. "What's wrong with your hands?"
"What hands?" asked Bowman with tremulous irony. He thrust bandaged claws forward. "Look, doc, no hands!" He began to laugh hysterically.
The doctor said, "You'd better come with us." He looked at Riley. "You, too; you look half beat to death."
They were hoisted up by the winch one at a time, and the doctor followed and tapped the pilot once on the shoulder. Riley sat beside the stretcher, looking at looked at Davon's pale-white face. Would she would consider marrying a man who had failed her, who had let her go into the storm to die? Probably not -- but he knew he would ask her.
He stared down blindly at the receding hillside and at the broad waters of the flooded Ochoa and felt a touch on his hand. He turned quickly and saw that Davon was awake and that her hand was touching his. Two tears ran down her cheeks and her lips moved, but all sound was lost in the roar of the aircraft.
Quickly he bent down with his ear to her lips and caught the faint thread of sound. "Riley! Riley! You're alive!" Even in the thin whisper there were overtones of incredulity.
He smiled at her. "Yes, we're alive. You'll be back in the States today."
Her fingers tightened weakly on his hand and she spoke again. He missed something of what she said, but caught the gist of it. ". . . come back. I want house . . . overlooking sea ... Trois Fourches."
Then she closed her eyes but her ringers still held his hand and he felt half his burden taken from him. She was going to be all right and they were going to be together.
And so he went back to Rivière de la Paix Base and into fame and history, unaware that the headlines of the world's leading newspapers would blazon his name in 100 languages as the man who saved a whole city's people -- as the man who had destroyed an army; unaware of the honors that awaited him, to be bestowed by lesser men; unaware that one day, when he was a very old man, he would be the one who was to show the way to the taming of the big wind -- the hurricane.
He knew absolutely nothing of all this. All he knew was that he was very tired and that, professionally, he was a failure. He did not know how many soldiers had died in the trap of Trois Fourches - -- many hundreds or many thousands -- but even if only one had died it would serve to proclaim to the world his failure in his work and he felt miserable.
Riley Martin was a dedicated scientist, unversed in the world's ways and very young for his years.
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