Shock Wave(174)

Now that Giordino steered the craft with the outboard, Pitt lowered the sails and removed his kite from the deckhouse. He deftly looped a coil of thin line on the deck of the boat. Then he tied a small grappling hook, found at York's campsite, to the line slightly below where it attached to the kite. Then he sat and waited, knowing in his heart of hearts that what he had in mind had only one chance of succeeding out of too many to count.

"Steer port," warned Maeve, gesturing to her left. "There is a pinnacle of rocks about fifty meters dead ahead."

"Turning to port," Giordino acknowledged as he pulled the steering handle of the outboard toward him, swinging the bows around on a twenty-degree angle toward shore. He kept a cautious eye on the white water swirling around several black rocks that rose above the surface until they were safely astern.

"Maeve, see anything yet?" asked Pitt.

"I can't be certain. I never had to find the bloody inlet in the dark before," she replied testily.

Pitt studied the swells. They were growing steeper and closer together. "The bottom is coming up.

Another thirty meters and we'll have to turn for open water."

"No, no," Maeve said in an excited voice. "I think I see a break in the cliffs. I'm sure of it. That's the inlet that leads to the largest beach."

"How far?" Pitt demanded.

"Sixty or seventy meters," she answered, rising to her knees and pointing toward the cliffs.

Then Pitt had it too. A vertical opening in the face of the palisades that ran dark in the shadows out of the moonlight. Pitt wetted his finger and tested the wind. It held steady out of the east. "Ten minutes," he begged under his breath. "All I need is ten minutes." He turned to Giordino. "Al, can you hold us in a steady position about twenty meters from the entrance?"

"It won't be easy in the surge."

"Do your best." He turned to Maeve. "Take the tiller and aim the bow head-on into the swells.

Combine your efforts with Al's on the outboard to keep the boat from swinging broadside."

Pitt unfolded the struts on his homemade kite. When extended, the Dacron surface measured nearly two and a half meters high. He held it up over the side of the boat, pleased to see it leap up out of his hands as the breeze struck its bowed surface. He payed out the line as the kite rose and dipped in the predawn sky.

Maeve suddenly saw the genius behind Pitt's mad plan. "The grappling hook," she blurted. "You're trying to snag it on the top of the bluffs and use the line to climb the cliffs."

"That's the idea," he replied as he focused his gaze on the obscure shape of the kite, just slightly visible under the half-light from the moon.

Adroitly jockeying the throttle of the outboard and the Forward/Reverse lever, Giordino performed a masterful job of keeping the boat in one spot. He neither spoke nor took his eyes off the sea to observe Pitt's actions.

Pitt had prayed for a steady wind, but he got more than he bargained for. The onshore breeze, meeting resistance from the rising palisades, curved and rushed up their steep face before sweeping over the summit. The big kite was nearly pulled from his grip. He used a sleeve of his battered leather jacket as a protective glove, holding it around the line to keep the friction from burning his hands. The immense drag was nearly pulling his arms out of their sockets. He clamped his teeth together and hung on, mentally plagued by any number of things that could go wrong, any one of which would end their undertaking a sudden shift in the wind smashing the kite against the rocks, Giordino losing the boat to the incoming surge, the grappling hook unable to find a grip on the rocks, a patrol appearing at the wrong time and discovering them.

He brushed off all thoughts of failure as he taxed his depth perception to the limit. In the black of night, even with the moon's help, he could not begin to accurately judge when the grappling hook had risen beyond the top of the bluffs. He felt the knot he'd tied to indicate when the fine had payed out a hundred meters slip under the leather jacket. He roughly figured another twenty meters before loosening his grip on the line. Released from its resistance to the wind, the kite began to seesaw and fall.

Pitt felt as if a great pressure was released from his mind and body as he gave a series of tugs on the line and felt it go taut. The grappling hook had dug its points into the rock on the first attempt and was holding firm. "Take her in, Al. We've got our way to the top."

Giordino had been waiting for the word. His struggle to keep the trimaran in a fixed position under the steady onslaught of the waves was a study in skill and finesse. Gladly, he eased the motor into Forward, opened the throttle and threaded the Marvelous Maeve between the rocks into the eye of the cove under the cliffs.