What was going on up in that area?"
Jones shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "I just got a flash from Frost that said some people in the area saw a gang of about twenty guys in uniforms pulling something out of the lake at just about the same time the attack on Yarmouth was happening. The local constable became suspicious, so he followed them back down from the lake. But he lost track of them as soon as he saw the village had been snuffed out."
"You mean the attack on Yarmouth could have been just a diversion?" Yaz asked.
Again, Jones shrugged. "That's hard to tell," he replied. "But we have to assume that if the same people who leveled the village also sent an advance party up to drag God-knows-what from a lake, then they probably could have made an all-out assault on the prison if they had wanted to. My gut tells me they didn't realize they were so close to Kejimkujik."
Crunch took a swig of his beer and lit up a cigar.
"Sure is strange though," he said through a cloud of smoke, "especially when you consider that these bandits-or whatever you want to call them-really pulled off quite a disappearing act."
A sudden silence enveloped the table. Each man knew that Crunch was referring to the most puzzling aspect of the Yarmouth massacre: that despite the several military investigative teams that had combed through the destroyed town and the surrounding area, not one solid piece of evidence had been found as to how the mystery troops had arrived in the village or how they had left.
In fact, the only clue left behind by the marauders were the hundreds of footsteps found on the beach at Yarmouth. Strange as it seemed, they indicated that the raiders
65
had literally walked out of the sea the night of the raid and withdrew the same way.
Yet no one had seen a single ship in the area.
"It couldn't have been a standard amphibious landing," Jones said, verbalizing what was on everyone's minds. "They would have needed three to four hundred troops to carry out that raid. But that bay is just chock-full with fishing boats, as is the entire coastline. The people in that area live out on the sea, for God's sake. Any ship large enough to carry four hundred assault troops would have been spotted from a hundred miles away."
"Plus no one saw or heard any choppers," Yaz added. "No seaplanes, hovercrafts, nothing. Just a bunch a footprints walking into the sea."
Fitzgerald took a swig of beer and let out a long, gloomy whistle.
"The attack on the village, these guys at the lake, then disappearing-it's all very weird," he said. "And I mean in a dangerous kind of way."
"Exactly," Jones replied, reaching for another beer. That's why I have the feeling that it's going to get worse-and weirder, if that's possible."
66
Chapter Thirteen
Jones's prophecy came true the next day.
It arrived in the form of a videotape. Grainy, shaky, and out of focus, the footage contained on the tape had nevertheless captured a bizarre event that had occurred off the northern coast of the old state of Massachusetts, near a resort area known as Plum Island.
Quite simply, the videotape appeared to show a sea monster.
The tape-the crucial part being only three seconds long-had been sent to Jones by the head of the local militia of the nearest city to Plum Island, a place called Newburyport. The footage had been shot by two of his men who had been routinely patroling the ten miles of beach on Plum Island several days before.
The day in question had been windy, cold, and rainy, typical for the north shore of Massachusetts under the spell of a summer nor'easter. The men had just stopped for a smoke break when they spotted something about a half mile off the beach. At first it appeared as a blurry black form to them, its color barely distinguishable from the cold, dark gray sea. But after having been apprised about the massacre in Nova Scotia several hundred miles to the north, and asked to keep an extra eye for anything unusual off the coast, the soldiers
Jones shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "I just got a flash from Frost that said some people in the area saw a gang of about twenty guys in uniforms pulling something out of the lake at just about the same time the attack on Yarmouth was happening. The local constable became suspicious, so he followed them back down from the lake. But he lost track of them as soon as he saw the village had been snuffed out."
"You mean the attack on Yarmouth could have been just a diversion?" Yaz asked.
Again, Jones shrugged. "That's hard to tell," he replied. "But we have to assume that if the same people who leveled the village also sent an advance party up to drag God-knows-what from a lake, then they probably could have made an all-out assault on the prison if they had wanted to. My gut tells me they didn't realize they were so close to Kejimkujik."
Crunch took a swig of his beer and lit up a cigar.
"Sure is strange though," he said through a cloud of smoke, "especially when you consider that these bandits-or whatever you want to call them-really pulled off quite a disappearing act."
A sudden silence enveloped the table. Each man knew that Crunch was referring to the most puzzling aspect of the Yarmouth massacre: that despite the several military investigative teams that had combed through the destroyed town and the surrounding area, not one solid piece of evidence had been found as to how the mystery troops had arrived in the village or how they had left.
In fact, the only clue left behind by the marauders were the hundreds of footsteps found on the beach at Yarmouth. Strange as it seemed, they indicated that the raiders
65
had literally walked out of the sea the night of the raid and withdrew the same way.
Yet no one had seen a single ship in the area.
"It couldn't have been a standard amphibious landing," Jones said, verbalizing what was on everyone's minds. "They would have needed three to four hundred troops to carry out that raid. But that bay is just chock-full with fishing boats, as is the entire coastline. The people in that area live out on the sea, for God's sake. Any ship large enough to carry four hundred assault troops would have been spotted from a hundred miles away."
"Plus no one saw or heard any choppers," Yaz added. "No seaplanes, hovercrafts, nothing. Just a bunch a footprints walking into the sea."
Fitzgerald took a swig of beer and let out a long, gloomy whistle.
"The attack on the village, these guys at the lake, then disappearing-it's all very weird," he said. "And I mean in a dangerous kind of way."
"Exactly," Jones replied, reaching for another beer. That's why I have the feeling that it's going to get worse-and weirder, if that's possible."
66
Chapter Thirteen
Jones's prophecy came true the next day.
It arrived in the form of a videotape. Grainy, shaky, and out of focus, the footage contained on the tape had nevertheless captured a bizarre event that had occurred off the northern coast of the old state of Massachusetts, near a resort area known as Plum Island.
Quite simply, the videotape appeared to show a sea monster.
The tape-the crucial part being only three seconds long-had been sent to Jones by the head of the local militia of the nearest city to Plum Island, a place called Newburyport. The footage had been shot by two of his men who had been routinely patroling the ten miles of beach on Plum Island several days before.
The day in question had been windy, cold, and rainy, typical for the north shore of Massachusetts under the spell of a summer nor'easter. The men had just stopped for a smoke break when they spotted something about a half mile off the beach. At first it appeared as a blurry black form to them, its color barely distinguishable from the cold, dark gray sea. But after having been apprised about the massacre in Nova Scotia several hundred miles to the north, and asked to keep an extra eye for anything unusual off the coast, the soldiers
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