by Dale Mayer
“No,” she said. “Of course not.” But she wasn’t exactly sure what she wasn’t supposed to blame him for. Of course this was ridiculous. He had been trying to kill her, but he agreed to back away. “Thank you,” she cried out.
“Whatever,” he said. Just when she thought he was done, he stopped, then turned around and fired into the wooden doors.
She cried out and moaned. Then all of a sudden she went silent. She looked down at Lennox, who had one shot lined up. He took a slow and deep breath and popped off one shot. As she watched through the slats of the wooden doors, the gunman stood still for a long moment, then slowly fell to the ground. She glanced at Lennox and whispered, “Is he dead?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s dead.”
She curled up in a ball and burst into tears. “Thank God,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” he said, “but we have to move the body.”
“I know,” she said. “I know, but I’m too damn tired.”
“I got it,” he said and hopped up and headed out with his handgun still at the ready.
When he got to the body, she realized that she couldn’t let him move it on his own. Not with his shoulder injury. He’d likely start bleeding again. Quickly she raced behind him. A pool of blood was under the guy, and the bullet hole in his forehead was unmistakable. She gasped when she saw that half his head had blown away.
“Don’t look,” Lennox said, as he reached down with one hand and grabbed the guy by the back of the collar, lifting and dragging him toward the shelter.
“Why are we taking him here? Why not over in the corner and just bury him?”
He stopped, and a look of realization crossed his face. “I guess if we’re here for a while, we don’t want this guy getting smelly beside us.”
“No,” she said. “We don’t.”
Looking around, he found a little bit of a depression, a short distance from the shelter. He dragged the dead man over there, dropped him in and then kicked sand over him. Sandrine followed suit, and, using the lid from the container as a little shovel, before long they had a mound over him. Then she went back to the cavern’s doors, and, using the same lid, she swept away the drag marks and footprints. She wiped away all the footprints back to the water, and then, with Lennox standing and watching her, she slowly returned to him. “I don’t know where Keane is,” she said, “but he needs to come back. It’s getting very dark out.”
“He will,” Lennox said. “He will.”
Keane’s jump was clean, but the other guy had that sixth sense and looked up just as Keane landed on him. The guy roared as Keane’s weight hit him on the top of his head and crushed him into the ground. There was no room to fight, and they were both on top of each other in a very narrow space. The guy tried to back up, but Keane got one hand free and pounded him in the face. The guy shook his head, backing up a little bit from the blow.
“Who the fuck are you?” he roared.
Keane tried to get another fist punch in, but there was no room. The other guy backed up a little bit more, trying to get his handgun up, but Keane got a sideways kick in, sending the gun flying harmlessly behind him. The guy swore, then turned and tried to race toward the gun. Keane followed and jumped him, sending the guy flying to his gut down in the pathway. There Keane pounded the stranger’s face into the rock underfoot, once, twice, three times. After the third punch, the guy didn’t move again. Keane quickly pocketed the handgun, then grabbed the guy by his arms and dragged him onto the narrow pathway where he had more light.
There he stopped and took a look at him. He checked for ID and found his name was Wilson. Keane didn’t know the name. He laid everything out and took several photographs of it, then put it all back in the guy’s wallet. Wilson had a hefty stack of cash with him too. Keane checked his other pockets and found a little notebook filled with names and phone numbers.
All good. Keane put that into his pocket too and then, dragging the guy farther inside, tied him up with rope he found with the guy’s gear. Keane waited, hoping the guy would wake up, but Wilson wasn’t showing any signs of stirring. Keane went through everything in his stash, finding a lot of gear that would send out a signal—similar to a lighthouse. But once it was triggered by a boat close by, it looked like it could probably turn on a light. He thought about it and shrugged. “Looks like a smuggler’s deal.”
“Not quite,” the other guy murmured.
Wilson was awake. “So, what is it?”
“We were hired by them to set up a repeating station. They wanted to use it for signals. Sometimes, with the storms that come out here, it’s really hard to find these rocks.”
“Did you crash into them?”
The guy stayed silent for a bit. Finally, he asked, “Who are you?”
“Well, I’m not involved with smugglers,” he said. “I came looking for the two women.”
“Ah, shit. Those damn women,” he said.
“Yeah, those damn women. People care about them. All you had to do was help them,” Keane added, “and nobody would have given a shit about what you were doing here.”
“Maybe so, but we couldn’t take the chance. The people we accepted the contract from are not exactly friendly.”
“Well, if you hadn’t killed our Zodiac,” he said, “I’d have been out of here with the women already.”
“That idiot, Adam,” he said. “he wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“You guys could have taken it yourself.”
“Exactly. Like I said, he’s an idiot.”
The last thing Keane wanted to do was take this Wilson guy back to where the others were, but Keane couldn’t take the chance of Wilson escaping and coming up behind them and causing trouble. Keane really wanted answers, but some of the answers would be found in their gear. He studied what was here and went through their personal stuff. “We’ll pool resources.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what he should take with him, but Keane would need that bag of food supplies for sure. He quickly assembled what he could into one bag and left several other bags tucked under the rock face, in case he needed to come back for them. And then, walking over to his tied-up prisoner, he said, “Get up.”
“I can’t go anywhere if you keep me tied up,” he said. “This island is treacherous.”
“Well, you were planning on killing those poor women,” Keane said. “Why should I give a shit if you live or die?”
The man closed his eyes. “This has been a shit deal from the beginning.”
“Why’d you take it then?” Keane asked. He kept glancing toward where his group was, knowing that time was running out and that it would be even more treacherous in the dark. “Come on. We need to join the others.”
“What others?” he asked. “My buddy already went ahead and shot them. You missed him.”
“Well, my guy that you shot is down there with the women, and he’s armed, so I wouldn’t count on it,” Keane said brutally. When he saw the look in the man’s eyes, Keane nodded and said, “So right about now your buddy is probably dead.”
His prisoner swore and closed his eyes. “Adam always was an idiot. He should have gone in quietly, seeing the lay of the land, and then shot the guy first.”
“Yeah. Well, maybe he did. But Lennox isn’t exactly a fool when it comes to this stuff.”
“The problem is, we don’t have our boat and can’t get a ride out until morning,” Wilson whined.
“Neither can we,” Keane said. “So let’s get everybody down in one place,” he said. “You won’t fare so well out in the elements here overnight.”
“It’s just rain,” his prisoner growled. “No predators are on this island. It’s fucking uninhabitable.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of them,” Keane said. “They’re just all on two legs.”
With that, the guy groaned and stood. His hands were tied in front of him. He looked at his feet and said, “Unless you’re carrying me,” he said, “no fucking way I can go up and down these paths.” Lookin
g at the bag Keane carried over his shoulder, Wilson asked, “And you’re taking our fucking gear too?”
“Remember that part about pooling our resources to get through the night?” Keane said. “You’ve got food. Those women need it.”
“It’s not much,” he said. “I know that idiot Adam already delivered biscuits and fish.”
“One meal for two women every second day is not enough.”
“It’s never enough,” he said, yawning. He sagged back onto the rocks. “Just leave me here.”
“And then what?” Keane said. “You want me to come back for you while you’re sitting in your own shit in the morning?”
The prisoner’s eyes snapped wide open, and he glared at him.
“You didn’t have to order the women to be shot either,” Keane said, completely unsympathetic. “Now let’s go.” He kicked him again to the ground, facedown.
The guy snorted. “What do you expect me to do like this?”
But Keane was already carefully working at his ankles. He changed the ropes, and, by the time he stepped back, got Wilson to stand again, the guy had two feet of slack in the rope between his legs, which would allow him to maneuver. “Now walk.”
The guy looked at the ropes, surprised. “Not bad, but it won’t help when it comes to climbing though those rock pathways,” he said, “but I can at least walk a bit.” He took several small steps, then said, “This will take us fucking forever.”
“Well, I don’t have forever,” he said, “so I’ll leave you to work your way down there on your own.” And he walked past the guy.
As soon as he disappeared from sight, the guy called out, “Wait for me!”
“Hurry up then.”
Keane waited in the darkness for the other man to catch up. Wilson moved really slow. Keane could adjust the rope and give him an extra six inches, but the more room he gave him, the more dangerous it was too. Keane turned and kept on walking the pathway. When they finally got to the other side, he walked out into the trees and stepped to the side, so that he could walk beside his prisoner. “What the hell are you guys even doing here?” he asked.
“Just setting up a repeating station,” the guy said in a noncommittal voice.
But Keane had already heard an awful lot before. “For the smugglers?”
The guy just shrugged.
“That really doesn’t make any sense.”
“They’re around here all the time,” he said. “This band of islands is well known on the maps, but they’ve still had several crashes. They just thought it would help if they had a repeating station here. Plus they’d have better telecommunications, and it would give them a way to track the islands.”
“I’m surprised no lighthouses are out here.”
“I know. Lots of islands in this area are treacherous,” he said.
“You ever come on these islands?”
“No,” he said. “Never. I’m not a boat guy. We ended up crashing our boat into the rocks when Adam saved those women.”
Keane looked at him with interest. “Well, it was nice of you to save them.”
“We should have let them drown anyway. We would have had our boat, gotten our work done and been gone. Instead we’ve got the goddamn women to deal with, no boat, and we have to wait for a pickup. Not to mention you asshats.”
“Will the smugglers be pissed about the boat?”
“With our luck, they’ll probably take our damn paychecks for it.”
“That’s a possibility too,” Keane said with a nod. “Presumably it wasn’t very big if it capsized with the extra women.”
“Capsized trying to get the women in,” he said. “I was on the back end with the motor, but it wasn’t very stable. Once he got the one halfway in, and he tried to help the second one, it completely unseated us. When I went over to help—”
“A bad wave hit you broadside, and the whole thing went over.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And then all Adam would talk about was saving them.”
“Which was the right thing to do.”
“But they became a problem, and, without that boat, we couldn’t get off here.”
“Unless you’d been smart enough to take our boat,” Keane said.
“That wasn’t me. That was Adam again.”
“Are you sure Adam didn’t have ulterior motives, keeping you guys on the island?”
His buddy looked at him in shock. “No. Why would he?”
“Well, why would you intentionally sabotage a Zodiac with a big powerful motor on the back end, knowing that you needed a boat to get off this island yourself?” Keane asked, studying the other man’s face.
“I don’t know why he did that,” Wilson said reluctantly. “He gets into these weird moods where he thinks he’s like some Rambo guy. And, if he got into some mind-set like that, he would have taken that knife he has and just plunged it into the hilt.”
“Exactly what he did,” Keane said. “It just doesn’t make any sense, considering you guys were stuck on the island yourselves.”
“Well, I don’t know what the hell sense that guy makes,” he said. “He’s the one who made the deal for this whole thing anyway.”
“So he just hired you to come along?”
“More or less. I’m the one who does installations like this one all over the place. But I’ve never done one on an island like this.”
“So, it’s all different for you.”
“Absolutely. I can’t say I’m terribly impressed either.”
“And you did check on all the little details with your buddy?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” he said.
“I’m just wondering if the deal really is the way you said it was. That’s all.”
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Who the hell knows?” Keane said. “I’m just making conversation.” But he was also making his prisoner think. He didn’t know what Adam was up to with any of this deal. “Does your ship out there know that you guys need a lift?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Interesting,” he said, “and what did they tell you?”
“Basically that—I hope you’re not suggesting that Adam wanted us to stay here overnight,” Wilson said slowly.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” he said. “It just made no sense to damage the Zodiac.”
“I know,” Wilson said, but his voice was thoughtful.
They crossed the meadow as soon as they came out of the trees and headed to the steep stairs. As they got there, he said, “Let’s see if you can walk down the stairs at all.”
Wilson took a few hesitant steps and then hopped down one, using the wall to help. Moving slowly, they made it to the last two stairs, where he slipped and fell. He swore as he landed on the hard rock and sand below. “I didn’t need that,” he said, shuffling himself into a sitting position.
Keane reached down, picked him up and helped him to stand. “Maybe not,” he said, “but we’re down here now.” They continued until they came around the cove edge to see the wooden structure. He pointed at it and said, “Did you guys make that?”
He shook his head. “No, it was already here.”
That response added to the disquiet in Keane’s consciousness. “Are you sure Adam cut up the Zodiac?”
“No, but he did mention it.” Wilson looked at Keane and glared. “I gave him shit for it, and he didn’t deny it or anything.” Keane just nodded. “Why? What are you suggesting?”
“Another party may be here,” he said. “Why the hell would anybody put up this shelter?”
“Maybe somebody else was stranded here too,” Wilson said.
“If Adam had said he hadn’t done in the Zodiac, would you have believed him?”
“I didn’t know it was punctured,” he said, “until I came and saw it myself.” He stared around, worry creasing his face. “Besides, if another group’s here,” he said, “that’s bad news.”
“True enough,” Keane sa
id. “That’s one of the reasons I’m asking.”
“I don’t know who it would be.”
“I’m afraid it could be some of your own guys,” he said. “What are the chances you two have become redundant?”
“Hell no,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
“Why not?” Keane asked.
“Well, they would have taken us out before now, if that was the case.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe they couldn’t find you. Maybe they only found one of you.”
“Do you think Adam’s dead?” His voice had turned harsh. “If he is, it’s probably you guys who killed him.”
“Well, if he came shooting at my buddy or those women, Adam would be dead,” Keane said.
“He didn’t want to get rid of them, but, once he makes a decision, it’s like a switch goes off in his head, and he heads into this other zone.”
“And he’s not really a soldier, is he?”
“No,” he said. “He just likes all that gear. He’s a wannabe soldier.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Why?” Wilson asked.
“Because those are the worst kind.”
“Whatever,” he said. “It’s not like you’re a fucking soldier. What do you care?”
“I am a soldier,” he said. “Navy. And I do care.”
“Again, whatever. Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. He’ll be up there with everybody else.”
Keane didn’t argue the point, but he’d already seen the small mound off to the side, and, as far as he was concerned, a body was likely there. He kept Wilson moving forward at a steady pace, and, when they got nearer, Keane called out, “Hey! You guys there?”
When no answer came, he frowned and pulled the handgun from his pocket.
“What’s the matter?” Wilson asked. “Don’t you think your friends will be there?”
“No. I don’t know that they are,” he said, feeling his gut twist. He looked at his prisoner, who was grinning. “What did your friend plan to do?”
“He was just supposed to take them out,” he said. “How he did that, I don’t know. He does have a decent imagination though.”
As they made it to the front of the enclosure, he looked inside at the gun at the ready to see that it was empty. “Shit.” Where were they? Then he heard a hoot. Turning, he hooted back. Moments later he saw Lennox and Sandrine coming around the far side, where they had just entered via the beach.
