"Carter," Barbara pleaded, "you're seventy-four-years old, your reflexes aren't what they used to be, your memory's good but not that of a man in his twenties, and you have no business going into the interior of this island, for what? To capture a man who's involved in drugs?"
"I'd be going in to get the son-of-a-bitch who wants to kill our daughter."
"Then hire a bodyguard for Andrea!" Barbara cried.
Andrea looked at her mother in shocked surprise. Her mother, a woman always calm, always collected, always in control. "She's right, Daddy. You could have a bodyguard here in a couple of hours and quit all the talk about going after Alessandro Cavallaro. Neither you nor Jerry should consider anything so ridiculous." She looked at Jerry and waited for his response.
Jerry eyed her sharply. "Cavallaro's trapped on this island with no way off, and you're a key witness in indicting him now that the authorities have your handbag with his fingerprints all over it, and there's drug residue inside that can connect him with an illegal transfer of money with drug payoff. If he's not caught now, he'll come after you after we leave the island because he knows your testimony is all that's needed to have him arrested and put away for life."
"Well, it's no longer your problem," Andrea said, all but admitting to her parents the that marriage was over. But beneath it she didn't want Jerry to carry through with this plan because she still loved him. That thought had a sobering effect on her, and as impossible as her father could be, she didn't want him going in either.
"It's my problem as long as you're my wife and the mother of my daughters," Jerry said, looking at her in a way that told her he'd do this thing, regardless of her wishes.
"Alright," Carter said to Jerry, "you can come too since you have some street smarts. You might even be of use helping me hack my way in there, but you'll do what I say or we won't get past those traps."
Jerry looked at Andrea's father long and hard, the muscles in his jaws flexing, his hands curved into fists at his sides, the almost identical stance and demeanor of her father, Andrea noted. If the men had been in grade school they'd be squared off for a fight. But instead of exchanging punches, Jerry's hand relaxed, the muscles in his jaw slackened, and he said, "I'll do what you say as long as you don't give me any more crap about stealing your daughter. I've provided well for Andrea and the kids, and if she decides to call it quits with me I'll make sure she's well off financially so she won't have to leave the house I gave her unless she wants to."
"You mean she won't have to move into a house I might give her—"
"Stop!" Andrea stepped between them and planted a palm against each man's chest. "You two have been playing this psychological game of chess for twenty-five years and I'm the only man on the board and I'm fed up with it. I'll be the one to decide where I live, when and if the time comes."
Jerry let out a muffled grunt, and her father responded by reaching for the aluminum tube in his lapel pocket, having second thoughts, then shoving it back in and saying, "I've got to make a phone call." He slipped his cell phone from his pocket and punched in a number, and when the line connected, he said, "I need a man. Who's available?" After listening to a voice on the other end of the line, he said, "Yeah, Howell will do. Have him at the air field in two hours and tell him he's taking a trip to the Bahamas." He signed off and slipped the phone into his pocket.
And Andrea knew her bodyguard would soon be on his way. Over the years her father enlisted the services of such men when she or her mother would be out in a crowd where they could get kidnapped and held for ransom. The Ellison fortune was ripe to be tapped. Until now, she'd always been annoyed by what seemed like an overreaction to marginal circumstances, but the circumstances at the moment were definitely not marginal, and the threat to her life was real.
Her father turned to Schribe, and said, "I'll have a man here in a few hours to stay with my wife and daughter. In the meantime, I'll need a topographical map of the island. I assume you can get one for me," he said in an authoritative voice.
Schribe seemed to take offense to that, the look on his face saying he wasn't yet ready to turn things over to a lesser man. "It's too dangerous," he said. "I'm not authorized to send anyone in with you so I can't let you do this."
"You can't let me?" Carter said. "How do you intend to stop me, inspector? Is there a law saying no one's allowed in the interior of the island except drug cartel members?"
Schribe's eyes sharpened with a kind of begrudged admiration for a man well into his later years, still forceful and fit, challenging him. "No law, but I advise against it. Even if Cavallaro himself wasn't a force to reckon with, you'd still be up against a dense forest riddled with booby traps, and Cavallaro or one of his men could be anywhere in there."
"Let me tell you a little about tracking men and finding booby traps, and how it was done in Nam," Carter said...
As her father talked about impalement devices, bamboo whips, sapling spikes, and moving silently in the jungle while uncovering booby traps, Andrea noticed Inspector Schribe looking at him with rapt attention while slowly stroking his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and as she watched the man's face, she knew precisely the moment it dawned on him that her father was his ticket to nabbing a man he'd been after for years. But the look on Jerry's face, as he watched her father, was entirely different—eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, jaws clenched—and she realized, as she listened and watched, that this whole escapade into the interior of Andros Island was not so much about capturing a man who was a threat to one man's wife, and the other man's daughter, as it was about two aging commandos in a power struggle.
Eyeing the men with a blend of worry and vexation, she said, after her father finished his spiel, "All I can say to the two of you is, even if you manage to hack your way to where Alessandro Cavallaro is hiding, what's to say you won't kill each other before you get there?"
Jerry let out a short guffaw. "It would be tempting, but your mother seems to want the man in her life, and for personal reasons I'd rather see Cavallaro dead than your father."
To which Andrea's father responded by shoving a cigar in his mouth and raising a butane lighter to it while holding Jerry's gaze. A clear challenge, which Jerry didn't meet.
Inspector Schribe looked from one man to the other, and said, "I'm going too. We won't be a team, but I can't stop either of you from going in, and you can't stop me from trailing behind, but I'll be armed."
As the men discussed the logistics of what they were about to do, Andrea paced the floor while contemplating a plan, not a brilliant one, but a viable one. Addressing Schribe, she said, "I have my own reasons for wanting to see Alessandro Cavallaro apprehended, so I'm going too. I'll act as a decoy to draw him out from wherever he is. The bodyguard and the rest of you can catch him when he comes out of hiding to see what I want. He never once threatened me in any way, so I don't believe he'd do anything to harm me when he sees me. By the time he realizes it's a trap it will be too late for him to do anything."
"Absolutely not!" Barbara said. "Carter, it's bad enough you're determined to do this thing, but you must forbid Andrea from going along."
Carter crooked a finger under his wife's chin and lifted so she was forced to look directly at him, and said, "If I thought I could forbid Andrea I would, but she's got too damn much of me in her to listen, but she'll be fine. Bud Howell's a competent man. He won't let anything happen to her. In the meantime, you'll be flying home. There's no reason for you to stay here."
Barbara held his gaze, then gave a sigh of resolve, and said, "I know better than to try and stop you from doing this, but I won't fly anywhere until I know you and Andrea and Jerry are all back safely."
She set her jaw and glared at her husband, who kissed her lightly on her tightly-pressed lips, smiled into her eyes, and said, "I didn't think you would."
It was an odd exchange between her parents, and Andrea wondered how much confrontation mixed with love play might have taken place behind the scenes while she was growing up.
It seemed out of character for both of them, her mother challenging her father, her father yielding in a loving way to her mother's concern. She'd have to think on that.
***
They set out just before daybreak the following morning, each carrying a machete for hacking brush or defending themselves if need be, all of them wearing camouflage outfits that Inspector Schribe acquired, which closely matched the colors of the thick underbrush of the tropical forest. The night before, they'd studied a topographical map of the region they'd be accessing, noting the location of several blue holes in the vicinity where the trail would be making its way through the jungle.
It was decided that Carter and Jerry would go first to locate and spring any booby traps, and following a few hundred feet behind would be the inspector, Andrea, and Bud Howell the body guard. If any of them heard someone approaching, they'd hide in the brush until the person passed. Inspector Schribe mentioned that few ventured into the interior and those who did were connected with Cavallaro's operation.
Just before dawn, Inspector Schribe had someone take them by boat to the southern part of the island and drop them off within walking distance of where they'd be entering the forest. It was barely light when Schribe led them up the beach and along a deserted road to the trailhead. There, he pushed aside a twist of vines, revealing a narrow, almost indiscernible trail cutting through the woods, a trailhead skillfully disguised by almost impenetrable brush.
They each slipped through the narrow opening, and Schribe carefully closed the brush behind them. The tropical forest was so dense little light came through the tangle of trees overhead, but it was enough to reveal a narrow trail edged on one side by a mangrove swamp and the other by a mixed forest of Madeira, pine and crepe myrtle.
After they'd gone a few hundred feet, Carter, who'd been leading the procession, turned and said, "Porter and I will go on ahead from here and spring traps. The rest of you wait a half hour before following." As Carter started up the trail, he glanced over his shoulder and said to Jerry, "Stay a good ten feet behind me, Porter. I don't want you breathing down my back."
Jerry said nothing, but as he followed the tall, white-haired man who was gripping a long machete, and who seemed not only fully capable of carrying out this mission, but eager to do so, he wondered what would happen if either had to put their faith in the other. The idea of laying down his life for Carter Ellison didn't sit too well at the moment.
They were well into the tangled forest and had been walking for over a half hour when Carter crouched to examine something on the trail. When Jerry caught up to see what it was, Carter said, while pointing with the tip of his machete, "Four tufts of grass tied in knots, each placed at the corner of what will be a pit below. Whoever did it knows what he's doing." With the tip of his machete, he lifted a network of sinuous vines, revealing a shallow pit. "Just what I thought. A punjit trap."
Jerry looked into a pit. "I'll be damned," he said, as he focused on several spikes coming up at sharp angles.
Carter prodded one of the spikes with his machete and the spike shot upward with force. "They're mounted on sapling triggers and are deployed when someone steps into the pit. The spikes can go through a boot and tear a leg apart."
Jerry stared at the brutal-looking trap. "I have to hand it to you, Ellison, I never would have spotted the thing."
"That's the idea." Carter sprang another spike and said, in a brooding voice, "Booby traps are like snakes. Where there's one, there are others." After he'd sprung the remaining spikes, Carter continued to stare into the pit.
When the silence became profound, Jerry shifted his gaze from the pit to Carter and saw a troubled, faraway look in his eyes, the look of a man recalling something he didn't want to remember, but couldn't forget. The Carter said in a morose voice, "I doubt we'll find tiger pits in a small operation like this but I'll still watch. They're six feet deep with two-foot-long spikes primed with sapling triggers, ready to impale a victim. A hell of a way to die."
"You saw firsthand, didn't you?" Jerry said, sensing that Carter had never talked about it before.
Carter nodded. "A boy about twelve. It hadn't been a quick death."
In one of the most profound moments in his life, Jerry squeezed Carter's shoulder. "Some memories don't go away," he said, knowing only too well, feeling a bizarre closeness with a man he'd hated for twenty-five years.
Carter looked up from his crouched position, and his mouth twitched in a half smile of understanding. It was an odd moment, Jerry thought, connecting with Andrea's father the way he'd once connected with Andrea. But there was one difference between them. He'd never share with Carter his own haunting memory, but he carried a photo of it in his wallet as a reminder.
Carter stood. "The most feared trap was the Bouncing Betty," he said, as if wanting to talk about something he'd held inside most of his adult life. "They weren't intended to kill, just blow off the family jewels. That's what the men feared most, which had a devastating psychological effect on them."
As they made their way up the trail, Jerry said, "Would you sign up for Special Forces again, knowing what you know now?"
"Sure," Carter replied. "I'd rather die fighting a pointless war for my country than continue boozing it up with a bunch of rich kids who didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground. I suppose that's why I'm here, to prove to myself I'm not just another rich boy who never did shit for anything or anyone. Capturing a drug king pin helps take the edge off that."
Jerry stared at the broad back of a man for which he was beginning to have a newfound respect, while contemplating Andrea's surprise on learning her father had been in Special Forces. It seemed odd that Carter had never said anything to her, if only to make her proud. "Why didn't you tell Andrea you'd been in Special Forces?" he asked.
Carter shrugged. "Girls don't need to be exposed to that. If I'd had a son I might have told him, but not a daughter."
Jerry understood. He'd treated Scott differently from the girls, his own little silver-spoon-fed princesses, but talking about those differences wasn't something he wanted to share with Carter. Maybe someday, but not now.
As they continued on, while hacking through brush that encroached on the footpath, Carter said, "At least we don’t have to contend with bamboo grass. That stuff sliced through skin like razor blades. It was hell over there." He raised his machete to slash at more brush, then caught himself and walked cautiously to where there were three tiny sticks tied together to form an almost invisible tripod, and which were placed in the center of the trail. He removed the tripod with the tip of his machete and lifted another webbing of vines to reveal another spike pit.
"It's the same as the other, just a different kind of marker," Carter said. "At least they're consistent." After he sprang the spikes he scanned the surroundings, his eyes sharpening as they caught something off the trail. "Over there. Crushed brush, like a footpath." He made his way toward what appeared to be a crude path. A short ways into it, he pointed to two sticks straddling the path and said, "Parallel sticks mean this path is clear. Let's see what's hidden back there."
Jerry followed Carter to where the path ended in a tangle of crepe myrtle trees interwoven with vines. Carter parted the brush. "I'll be damned. A blue hole."
Jerry stepped to Carter's side and looked into a hollow that was bright in comparison to the surroundings because it was open enough for light to filter through. Down a slope, about twelve feet from where they stood, was a hole about eight feet in diameter. Jerry moved around Carter and made his way down the embankment. Standing back from the edge of the hole, yet close enough to look into it, he said, "The water's not blue."
"It is from the air," Carter replied. "The reflection of the sky makes it look blue. Meanwhile, we'd better get back to the trail. I don't want the others thinking we're ahead of them and winding up in a trap."
They returned to the main trail and continued in the direction they'd been going. After springing another pit, Carter said, "Let's let the
others catch up so they can see what to look for if we get separated." He covered the pit over again and set the marker in place, a stick shoved in the ground at a forty-five degree angle, with the stick pointing to a trap. Then he lowered himself to sit on the trunk of a fallen tree.
Jerry sat beside him, and as they waited, he looked askance at Carter, and asked a question that had been nagging him from the start. "Why did you join up in the first place?"
"You mean, why did a rich kid like me join up when I could have gotten out by going to college or with the help of big daddy Ellison's connections?"
"Well, since you put it that way, yes."
Carter rested his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers together, and said, "I enlisted at a time when I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I was away at prep school when Vietnam was building up. None of us knew where it was or why we were fighting there, but it all came home to me when the son of our butler was killed in action. A Marine. He and I grew up together so it hit me hard. Then the issue of the draft came up. My family pushed me to go to college to get out of being called up, which seemed like dodging the draft, so while I was trying to figure out what to do, I graduated from the elite New England academy my father sent me to, and partied, and chased girls, and wrecked my car. Then one day I was just plain fed up with the direction of my life and I signed up." He glanced at Jerry then, and said in a voice that carried with it a touch of humor, "This may come as a surprise to you, Porter, but life can seem pretty pointless when you don't need to work because you have all the money you need to live comfortably without doing a damn thing."
Jerry laughed. "Well, I can tell you this much. When you haven't got two plug nickels to rub together you're ready to claw your way to the top if that's what it takes." He glanced at Carter, whose lips held a slight smile, and took a chance by asking, "So, how was a rich boy fresh from an elite New England academy received among the troops?"
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