Abruptly he stopped rowing.
Think a minute, he told himself. You can't risk using the inlet. No way.
On the right and left sides of the harbor, steep crags of white granite speckled with scrub cypress guarded the shore, while the towering cliffs of the north mirrored the coastline of a thousand Greek islands. Unlike the postcard photos for sale everywhere on the tourist islands—featuring topless Swedish blondes and trim Italian playboys, gold chains glinting—this was the real Greece, harsh and severe. Only a few seabirds swirling over the near shore, adding their plaintive calls to the silence-breaking churn of surf pounding over the rocks, broke the silence.
He studied the island, trying to get his bearings. Just as Bill had said, it appeared to be about three miles long, maybe a couple of miles wide. As though balancing the radar-controlled mountain at one end, at the opposite terminus stood the launch vehicles, now just visible as the tip of two giant spires, gleaming in the early sunshine like huge silver bullets. And somewhere beneath this granite island, he knew, was the heart of the Cyclops, SatCom's computer-guided twenty- gigawatt laser. . . .
There was no sign of anybody monitoring his approach. The early light showed only pristine cliffs, cold and empty.
Careful now. First things first.
He rowed under a near cliff, then slipped off the yellow raft and into the knee-deep waters of the near shore, still dazzlingly clear. It reminded him again of the Caribbean. Maybe Bill unconsciously had an island there in mind when he decided to move everything here.
The water was cold, refreshing as he moved in. He collected what he needed from the raft and stood a minute wondering what to do with it. Then inspiration struck. It only weighed sixty-five pounds, so why not use it?
It was a standard Switlik, which meant inflation had been automatic. The deflation would take a while, so he started it going as he hefted the heavy yellow hulk and headed up the hill. He wanted it empty, but not entirely.
The security Dimitri Spiros had installed was high-tech and good. He had not gone to the trouble of burying cables all around the place with magnetic anomaly detectors. That would have required blasting through a lot of granite and did not really seem worth the tab. Instead he had surrounded the place with a chain-link fence and topped that with free-spinning wheels of razor wire known as Rota-Barb, which prevented an intruder from smothering the cutting edges with cloth. Then, just to make sure, across the top and at several levels below, he had added lines of Sabretape with an enclosed fiber-optic strand. A pulse of light was transmitted through the length of the tape, and if it was disturbed, detectors at a central guard location would know immediately when and where.