With Maeve as a guide, they set off along the cliff path. Giordino packed the diminutive automatic pistol, while Pitt, now clad in the guard's uniform, carried the Bushmaster M-l6. They no longer felt exposed and helpless. Irrational, Pitt knew, for there must have been no less than a hundred other security guards standing watch over the mines and the island's shoreline. That wasn't the worst of their problems. Now that there was no returning to the Marvelous Maeve, they would have to seek other means of transport, a plan Pitt had always held in the back of his mind without the foggiest notion of how to carry it out. That wasn't a primary concern just yet. What mattered now was finding Maeve's boys and stealing them out of the hands of their crazy grandfather.
After traveling about five hundred meters, Maeve held up a hand and gestured into the thick underbrush. "We'll cross the island here," she informed them. "A road curves to within thirty meters of where we stand. If we're careful and remain out of sight of any traffic, we can follow the road into the central housing area for Dorsett employees."
"Where are we in relation to the volcanoes that anchor each end of the island?" asked Pitt.
"We're about half way between and opposite the lagoon."
"Where do you think your boys might be held?" Giordino put to her.
"I wish I knew," she said distantly. "My first guess is the manor house, but I wouldn't put it past my father to keep them under guard, in the security compound, or worse, they're kept by Jack Ferguson."
"Not a good idea to wander around like tourists looking for a restaurant," said Pitt.
"I'm with you," Giordino agreed. "The proper thing to do is find someone in authority with the answers and twist his arm."
Pitt fastidiously straightened the jacket of his stolen uniform and brushed off the shoulders. "If he's on the island, I know just the man."
Twenty minutes later, after traveling over a road that wound in a series of hairpin turns over the spine of the island, they approached the compound that housed the mining engineers and the security guards.
Keeping in the sheltered gloom of the underbrush, they skirted the detention camp for the Chinese laborers. Bright lights illuminated the barracks and open grounds, surrounded by a high electrified fence that was topped by rows of circular razor wire. The area was so heavily secured by electronic surveillance systems that no guards were walking around the perimeter.
In another hundred meters, Maeve stopped and gestured for Pitt and Giordino to drop behind a low hedge that bordered a concrete thoroughfare. One end of the road ended at a driveway that passed through a large arched gate to the Dorsett family manor house. A short distance in the opposite direction, the road split. One broad avenue trailed down a slope to the port in the center of the lagoon, where the docks and warehouses reflected a weird appearance under the eerie yellow glow of sodium-vapor lamps. Pitt took an extra minute to study the big boat tied beside the dock. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking the Dorsett yacht. Pitt was especially pleased to see a helicopter sitting on the upper deck.
"Does the island have an airstrip?" he asked Maeve.
She shook her head. "Daddy refused to construct one, preferring all his transportation by sea. He uses a helicopter to carry him back and forth from the Australian mainland. Why do you want to know?"
"A process of elimination. Our getaway bird sits yonder on the yacht," Pitt said.
"You clever man, you had that in mind all along."
"I was merely swept up in a orgy of inspiration," Pitt said artfully, then asked, "How many men guard the yacht?"
"Only one, who monitors the dock security systems."
"And the crewmen?"
"Whenever the boat is docked at the island, Daddy requires the crew to stay in quarters ashore."
Pitt took note that the other fork in the road curved toward the main compound. The mines inside the volcanoes were alive with activity, but the central area of the Dorsett Consolidated Mining community was deserted. The dock beside the yacht appeared totally deserted under the floodlights mounted on a nearby warehouse. Everyone else, it seemed, was asleep in bed, a not uncommon circumstance at four o'clock in the morning.
"Point out the chief of security's house," Pitt said to Maeve.
"The mining engineers and my father's servants live in the cluster of buildings closest to the lagoon,"
answered Maeve. "The house you want sits on the southeast corner of the security guards' compound. Its walls are painted gray."
' I see it." Pitt drew a sleeve across his forehead to wipe away the sweat. "Is there a way to reach it other than the road?"