Free Bond Movies 03 - Licence to Kill by John Gardner Page A

entrance to Coy Sol Bay. In the darkness, a couple of hours before dawn, it changed direction slightly, seeing pinpoints of light moving towards it, then continued on its stately way, passing four scuba divers, torches lit to guide themselves, heading in the direction from which the manta had come.
    A little further on the manta saw a very bright light, slicing through the water, as though searching. The light held on the huge fish for almost a minute, then began to turn away.
    Aboard Wavekrest the crewmen on duty had spotted the shape in the water. They had the probe, Sentinel , out in a matter of minutes, guided by a specialised operator and attached to Wavekrest by an umbilical cord of electronics and wires. When Sentinel spotted the manta its powerful light sought out the big fish, and the cameras sent back pictures to the mother ship, Wavekrest . It was the periscope of Sentinel that Bond had spotted before he and Sharky had run for the cover of the headland that very morning.
    ‘Only a manta,’ the senior man on the bridge watched the creature on its monitor, fascinated, and a little repulsed by the protruding horns of flesh, like a beetle’s antennae, curving out from its head. The officer in charge of the bridge picked up a telephone and called the probe operator. ‘Bring Sentinel back in,’ he said.
    Sentinel looked like some futuristic model submarine, about four feet in length and three feet high, with an oblong rising higher above the centreline of the fish-shaped hull. The oblong was a watertight compartment which contained the thing’s eyes – its merciless searchlight, cameras and stubby periscope. Behind the oblong compartment, another watertight box slanted back towards the stern. This was obviously some kind of storage container, for its flat top clearly showed hinges and a securing lock.
    Now, it turned away from the giant manta ray and began to move swiftly back towards Wavekrest . James Bond put out his hands and hitched a ride on Sentinel – the name was clearly embossed on the rear, above a U-shaped handle to which he could cling.
    The black tarpaulin, fashioned over a wire and bamboo frame that had been the manta, fell away and drifted to the bottom. Bond and Sharky had worked for several hours to make the manta: bending wire and some of Sharky’s fishing poles; sewing with line, tying down and cutting the tarpaulin, to make James Bond’s ‘fancy dress’. It was a job well done, for when Bond put on a wetsuit and scuba pack the tarpaulin mantle covered him, even allowing him to move his arms, and so imitate the action of the fins.
    ‘Very lifelike,’ Sharky had said. ‘Just hope you don’t meet a male manta down there who takes you for a likely mate.’
    ‘Or an amorous female,’ Bond laughed. He had roughly an hour’s supply of air, and considered he could reach Wavekrest well within that time.
    Now, as he clung to the rear of Sentinel , his fancy-dress party was over, and the real job would be getting on board Wavekrest . If Sanchez was aboard, the security would be very tight, but he had abandoned the camouflage in favour of speed.
    Sentinel began to slow in the water and Bond, still clinging on, allowed his body to sink from view. He could see they were being drawn towards the stern of the ship, and realised why there was such an overhang. A pair of doors, big enough to take at least three men, opened up just below the waterline. Sentinel was gradually being pulled into what was virtually a dock within the mother ship, Wavekrest . He still hung on, remaining under water as the doors closed and the probe started to move upwards, presumably lifted by an electronic winch.
    Sentinel broke surface, but Bond stayed below water and behind the craft. There was plenty of bright light in the dock, and, just above the waterline, he could see the refracted image of a man leaning over the probe, attaching other lines to it. As he came to the rear, the rippling figure bent down, as though to