by Dale Mayer
Sandrine heard voices and peered through the wooden slats of the door to the cavern, not even sure why she was hiding. But, when Keane didn’t return, she’d slowly grown more and more terrified. Instead of sounding worse, Brenda seemed to be sleeping much deeper, but she wasn’t responding to any verbal suggestions or reacting to any physical stimuli. And that worried Sandrine too. She watched, looking for anybody to go with the voices. She wanted to rush out and exclaim they were saved, but, at the same time, she was damn afraid it would be another container of fish from that soldier guy, who had no intention of helping her and Brenda leave this island.
Worse than that was if he didn’t come with more fish.
She didn’t know where Keane and his buddy were, but she hoped they were still alive.
Her hands started to sweat as she sat curled up in an awkward position, leaning so she could see through a small hole near the bottom of one of the doors. As she stared out, she could finally see two men coming toward the shelter, one moving a little slower than the other. Keane.
He carried a large bag on his back, which is why she hadn’t recognized him as the same man she had seen earlier. But he was talking to somebody beside him, so she assumed it was his friend.
She stood, relief washing over her. She stepped out and called to him. He looked over and raised a hand in greeting. She raced toward him, and, not even giving herself a chance to think, she threw herself into his arms. She blubbered as she cried out, “You didn’t come back. I was so worried about you.”
His arms wrapped around her and held her close. “I came back,” he said. “I ran into a few problems, but I’m here.”
Keane’s voice was so reassuring and his body so strong and solid that he made her feel so much better yet again. She wiped her eyes, feeling hot tears burning in the corner of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually this much of a wreck.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s a stressful time right now.” He motioned to his friend. “This is Lennox.”
She smiled up at him, until she saw the blood on his head and on his shoulder. “Oh, God, did you fall?”
“No,” he said. “I was hit from behind and shot—or vice versa. I’m not quite sure.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” she cried out. “He tried to kill you?”
“Maybe,” Lennox said. “He didn’t stick around and finish the job, for which I’m mighty thankful.”
Keane motioned for the three of them to move into the small shelter. “That rain will break again,” he said, “and we’ll get another deluge.”
She looked up at the sky and nodded. “I’ll catch more rainwater, if so.”
“Have you seen the same man at all?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen anybody,” she cried out. “Absolutely no one. That’s why I’m so grateful to see you.”
“Hey, I said I’d come back,” he said gently.
She tossed him a wry look. “So you did. But I expected you back hours and hours ago.”
He nodded. “I know. I had some trouble, and I had to find Lennox too.”
“Where’s the boat?” she asked as they reached the shelter. “When the storm clears, do you think we can get off of this island?” She hated the urgency in her voice and the anxiety. But, between Brenda and herself and now Lennox, she just wanted to get away.
“Well, we would if we could,” Keane said, but his voice was grim.
She turned slowly to look at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that’s possible but not immediately. Whoever attacked Lennox also slit the pontoons on the Zodiac.”
All her hope slid away. “Seriously? He destroyed our way off this island?”
“Which means he has another way off,” Lennox said. “We’ll just have to find it.”
She stared at him in shock. “We can’t even get around the corner with the way the ocean’s splashing up on the rocks. How will we possibly find any other way off here?”
“If one guy’s here,” Keane said, “then he has a way to get on and off. This is too inhospitable a place to stay long-term, unless he’s got helicopter drop-offs or something else.”
She nodded slowly. “That makes sense,” she said. “But I don’t understand what kind of a boat he could have that we wouldn’t have noticed.”
“He could have any kind,” Keane said. “Look at how narrow your view is from here. You have the whole ocean out there, but you see just a sliver of it.”
“Did you see anything when you were up above though?” she challenged him.
He grinned at her, loving her feistiness. “No, I haven’t had time yet.”
She paced the small space under the shelter. “But it’ll get dark again,” she said, “and we can’t see anything until tomorrow.”
“Which is why I’m leaving you with Lennox to help stand guard while I go up there to take another look around.”
Immediately she protested. “What happens when you can’t come back because somebody shoots you and hits you over the head?”
“Not going to happen again now that we’re all aware of someone on the island who’s unhappy with us,” he said cheerfully. “And Lennox has weapons and comm devices. So, as soon as it’s possible, he’ll contact the coast guard, who is waiting to hear from us. And at 2000 hours, eight p.m. tonight, if they haven’t heard from us, they’ll set up a rescue.”
She stared at him hopefully. “But they still can’t come in while there’s a storm, right?”
“Right,” he said. “We were sent here for a purpose. To find you and Brenda. So somebody will come after us.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “Well, thank God for that,” she said. “So why do you even want to look for this guy then?”
“Because he’s already attacked us, Lennox in particular,” he said. “So I don’t want him coming along and causing trouble for the coast guard either. The last thing we need is for a crew to come in, trying to rescue us, only to have this guy shooting them.”
“No,” she said faintly. “We don’t want that at all.” She dropped down beside her friend.
He squatted alongside her and asked, “How’s she doing?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “She seems to be sleeping easier, yet it’s deeper, like she’s not even asleep, but—I don’t know,” she said brokenly. “If you nudge her and try to wake her, she doesn’t do anything.”
“Well, at the moment, she needs to sleep as much as possible,” Lennox said. “I do have some thermal blankets in our bag. They’re made for these emergency scenarios.” He motioned at the pack on Keane’s back. “Let’s get that off and get some of this stuff set up.”
Keane dropped the large duffel bag and straightened, rolling his shoulder blades back and forth.
“Is it heavy?” she asked.
He looked at her, and a smile kicked up the corners of his mouth. “See if you can lift it.”
She frowned and walked over. She considered herself very fit, but she didn’t know what weight was when it came to carrying it on her back. She thought forty pounds was a lot. As she tried to lift the duffel bag, she realized she couldn’t even get the damn thing off the ground. She stared at him as Lennox bent to open it. Everything from food rations and water were in there, plus some electronic gear.
With great joy she accepted an emergency blanket, which she immediately wrapped her friend in. “This will make a huge difference for her,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You may want to make up a bit of a pillow with the sand,” Keane said, showing her how to do it.
With her friend hopefully much more comfortable, Sandrine returned and stared at the food. “Any chance of a little bit of food?” she asked hopefully.
“Absolutely,” Keane said. Then he gave her a protein bar to start with and said, “When I get back, I’ll go fishing too.”
“I can set up something once I
get this done,” Lennox said.
“Okay, thanks,” Keane said. “Just make sure you don’t overdo it.”
He laughed. “I’ve been fishing since I was a tadpole,” he said. “I can do it in my sleep.”
“Good enough,” Keane said, then faced Sandrine. “I don’t have much time before I lose the sunlight, so I’ll leave,” he said. “I want to check another quadrant of this island, and I’ll need a couple hours, so it’ll probably be dark when I get back. Okay?”
She bit her lip and stared at him. “I really don’t like the idea of you leaving.”
“I don’t like the idea either,” he said with a smile. “But I don’t want to get ambushed or have somebody come in here with a machine gun and shoot us all dead.”
She took a huge deep breath and slowly let it out. “I really didn’t need that image in my head.”
“Neither did I,” he said. “So let me make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Unable to help herself, she gave him a hug and said, “Please hurry back.”
“Will do,” he said, as he stroked his thumb across her cheek and whispered, “Give Lennox some help if you can.”
She nodded. “We’ll be fine,” she said, but she knew she was trying to reassure herself as much as him.
“Listen. Lennox has an extra gun, so, if a situation arose where you needed to look after yourself, make sure you use it.”
“Right,” she said. “We’ll be fine. Go so you can get back again.”
“Right. I’m gone.” With that, he turned and walked down to the beach.
Lennox stared up at her from the ground.
She frowned at him. “Is it safe for him to go alone?”
“As safe as it is for any of us right now,” he said. “Come on. Help me unpack some of this stuff and set up the comm unit. Then I’ll go to the beach and set up a fishing line.”
“You’ll have to ensure that asshole’s not watching us,” she said. “That’s how he chopped the rope that Keane was on.” She pointed to the rope and watched as Lennox’s face became a little more drawn and serious as he studied the coiled-up rope on the ground amid the rocks that had fallen.
“Keane is lucky to be alive,” he muttered. “We can’t have assholes like this running around.”
“Exactly,” she said. “It’s been a pretty trying day. But some food would help.”
“The bar not doing much for you?”
“No,” she said. “It seems pretty sucky to complain when I’m healthy otherwise, but maybe because I’m healthy is why I’m also hungry,” she said with a smile. She watched as Lennox sorted through the materials he had on hand and then asked him, “What will you use to catch fish?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. He had a small amount of wire that he cut and formed into hooks, then tied onto some line. He smiled and said, “I’ll go try my luck. Otherwise, I’ll set out a line on a stick and see if we can find a place to set it securely amid the rocks. Not to mention find something to use as bait.” And he laughed obviously looking forward to the challenge.
“Good luck with that,” she said. “I kinda want to come with you because I don’t want to be left behind, but, at the same time, I don’t want to leave my friend.”
“Your friend is fine,” he said. “Come with me if you want, but let’s get going while the fish are moving. Once that storm comes in, they’ll be gone.”
She nodded and smiled. “Okay, I’m sold,” she said. “Can I carry anything or help somehow?”
He bent down and picked up a stick off the ground. “Let’s see if we can find more of these. I can tie a bunch together, but, if any decent-size fish are out there, I’ll need something stronger for a fishing pole.”
She nodded, and, as they hit the beach, she almost wanted to smile at the churning waves. It was too dangerous to leave now, even if they had the Zodiac. No way they’d get over these swells. Mother Nature was cranky right now; however, she was tossing them some long sticks. Sandrine walked out into the waves a little bit and grabbed several.
Lennox nodded and tied his line with the hooks onto the end of the bundle of sticks and cast it out into a small shoal on the right-hand side. “If anything’s around, we should find something here.”
She shook her head and said, “Never thought I’d be doing this today.”
His grin was bright and cheerful as he flashed it in her direction. “We must be open to all opportunities in order to change the way we live,” he said. “Sometimes change is good.”
“Not today,” she said darkly. “Not today.”
Keane knew he didn’t have much time before sunset fell, and he didn’t want to go over the same ground, but he had to retrace his steps to a certain point in order to return to the first of the plateaus. Instead of circling around, he headed straight across to the trees on the far side. He hadn’t mentioned anything to the others, but he thought he saw something in the back of the trees. It would make that plateau the most sensible location for the installation because it was the closest to the sea, yet still had a huge grassy area for camouflage.
With the descent of darkness coming soon, he had maybe an hour of fading daylight left. As soon as he hit the trees, he immediately melded into the shadows. He stopped and waited, listening for the sounds of anyone approaching. He’d crossed that pasture deliberately, hoping that someone would see him and would be forced to make a move. He couldn’t understand why they would be here. Earthquake monitoring stations alone didn’t wash. No way any of the monitoring was done manually.
No, this was something entirely different.
It could just be some guy was all alone and wanted to stay that way, but it was definitely odd. Sandrine had said he wore military fatigues, but she didn’t know what kind, what country or whether they were real military uniforms or just some of the commercial-made gear often sold as army surplus. Everything was available online these days. Much to his disgust. He could get the plans for making bombs and all the components from various vendors without a problem. Huge online companies would deliver it to your front doorstep so you didn’t even leave your house. Talk about enabling the psychos of the world.
When no sounds came from the trees around him, he crept a little bit farther into the expanse of trees—a band that appeared to be a couple hundred yards deep and a good one-quarter-mile long. He was right smack in the middle of it, and, in order to search it, he would check both sides, and that would be so easy. He kept walking right through until he hit the cliff face on the other side.
But, just when he thought he was at a dead-end, he saw another one of those tiny rock-face fissures. He walked through it to the other side to find another meadow plateau a little bit higher up as it climbed all the way through the fissure. As soon as he got outside again, he thought he heard a voice. Stepping behind the rock formation a little bit, he realized the voices were coming closer. Shit.
He quickly ran back to the trees and found himself a hiding spot off to the right and in the middle of the thickest of the bushes. There he sat and waited. From the sounds of those voices, two men headed toward him.
“The girls should be okay still,” the one man said.
“You shouldn’t have given them any food,” the other one said, his voice harsh and caustic.
“Well, until we decide what we’re doing with them,” he said, “no need for them to suffer.”
“A bullet would stop the suffering.”
“We said, no killing,” the first one snapped.
“What did you expect when you cut that rope?”
At that, the man groaned. “What the hell are they even doing here?”
“You know what they’re doing. They’re looking for the women. If we let them find the women, they’ll take them and leave. Now you’ve made this a big incident.”
“We’re not even supposed to be here.”
“And we aren’t staying,” he said. “It was just shitty timing.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do? Just let them drown
?”
“Hell, yes. Then we wouldn’t be in the position of killing them now,” the second man snapped. “Just because we were out in the boat at the time, you didn’t have to point them out, and we didn’t have to find them,” he said. “We smashed up on the rocks ourselves. Our boat is useless now. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but I did find them. We did bring them in, and we did save them. It would feel wrong to kill them now.”
Keane’s eyebrows shot up as he listened. He had his phone on Record, ensuring he had an accurate accounting of whatever was said.
“Killing is not in my nature. You knew that at the beginning. We didn’t come here to kill people. We’re supposed to just be scoping out the island to see if it would work or not.”
“Well, the answer is yes. It would have worked, but now it won’t because too many people know about it.”
“We haven’t done anything though,” the first man protested. “We didn’t get a chance to set up repeating stations or anything. Besides, who gives a crap about these islands? They are completely deserted.”
“Sure, but, without a boat, you’re stuck,” he said. “I suggest we signal our ship and leave.”
“And let them die?” the first man asked cautiously. “We could just as easily tie them up and take them back to the mainland and dump them somewhere.”
“Like in the ocean,” the second man argued. “If you think I’m letting them go once they’ve seen my face, you’re dreaming. No way in hell.”
“Well, they’ve already seen me,” the first man said, “so I don’t think it makes much difference.”
“No,” the second man said. “It means that you made the mistake. You’re the one who picked them up. You’re the one who let them see you, so you’re the one who needs to pop them one.”
“What about the guy you shot?” the first man said. “What about him? He won’t live, you know.”
“Maybe we should check to make sure he’s still there,” the other man said. “I didn’t get off that good of a shot.”
“We’re just supposed to be checking out the system to see if we could pick up those satellites and bounce the signals as planned,” the first guy said. “Just because we’re trying to set up a communication system that will operate on the US satellites doesn’t mean it’s top secret or anything.”
