Deadman's Cay

by Boyd Craven

  The old airfield was a long narrow strip of broken concrete and sand. It ran most of the length of the island. The path had led us here, and almost directly across from the old hanger. It was corrugated steel, rust colored. Two generators were chugging along happily, making me turn and motion to the guys. Donnie made his way over to me, motioning for me to be quiet.

  He pointed to my pouch and pulled out a red taped magazine. I nodded, understanding. I switched magazines, working the action to eject the ball ammo, and putting in a red tip. They had explained to me that if these were military, and they probably were by the stamping on the bottom of the rounds next to the primer, that they were either incendiary or tracers. We hadn’t been planning on them having two generators going at once, so when Irish John took his shot, there was potentially one more there to run their communications gear. I gulped and handed the rifle to Donnie.

  “You sure, bro?” he asked.

  “You’ve got lots more practice.”

  He nodded and we settled down for Irish John to take the shot, and to watch where the rest of the guys were. I hoped some more would come one by one into the sea grapes looking for their friends.

  When the shot went off, it was like God clapped right over our heads. The shot completely knocked over one of the generators, and the fuel leaking from the tank ignited. Donnie popped to his feet and started firing my AK, and that was when things got even noisier. He hit the other generator with his second shot, sending a stream of fire into the air as he punched the engine and fuel tank before tossing me the gun. I changed magazines quickly, but not wanting to send any more fire in the direction of the kids.

  Two men came running out from the darkness of the hanger, old M16s in their hands, screaming. Donnie and Serf opened up at once. Probably a dozen rounds from two guns flew downrange as fast as I realized they were pulling the trigger. The men danced, their guns going off at their feet as they fell, twitching in pain, probably not realizing they had been shot with less than lethal.

  “Move,” Mark bellowed.

  We followed. I stayed a little back from the guys, watching, scanning, doing what they had told me to do ahead of this. Trying not to lose my peripheral vision. They’d told me about tunnel vision. Apparently on this trip, I was the guy who knew nothing. Irish John should have probably led this assault as he had the most experience once the boys were done measuring dicks, but he was also in his seventies. He was a badass of legendary status, all hundred pounds of him soaking wet in his bowler hat, but this wasn’t a sneak attack the way the stilt shack had been.

  Another man came running out as a loud crack came from our west and the man’s head just sort of… ceased to exist. As he fell, I realized he held something in his arms. Something small and trying to get away from the corpse that had fallen on her. I almost dropped my rifle and ran all out. Everything they told me about tunnel vision left my head as I focused on the little girl. She was maybe three or four if I had to guess, light skinned, with her blond hair pulled into short pigtails, wearing a blue dress. Her screams of fear were all I heard, and she was all I saw.

  I got to her a heartbeat before Serf and rolled the body off of her. That was when I noticed the handgun he’d had in his right hand, his left having been the one holding the girl. I pulled her away from the grisly embrace, dropping my rifle.

  “Shhh honey, we’re here to help,” I said softly.

  “I’ve got her,” Charles said coming up behind me, breathing heavily. “I can’t keep up with you younger bucks. Go, make sure…”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I handed over the squalling girl to him, picked up my AK and shook it in case any sand had gotten into the barrel, and then ran. I knew there was something I was supposed to do, some technique to prevent me from getting tunnel vision and doing something stupid, but I suddenly could hear again, and I heard the screams of little kids. Girls. Donnie and Serf were shouting, and I heard another sonic boom as Irish fired off his cannon from somewhere.

  I had eyes for the hanger, and I reached it before anybody else. There was a group of girls, from incredibly young all the way to late teens, all huddled together. The older girls were holding and comforting the younger ones. The ones in the middle were trying to do the best they could but were both held and holding the smaller ones. It was a blessed moment, there wasn’t any sign of the cartel’s men in sight. I heard the huffing and wheezing behind me as the rest caught up with me. I could even hear as Donnie whistled back to Charles, and the girl trying to quit crying. Somebody came up beside me, and I handed over my rifle. After a moment they took it.

  I took a dozen steps toward them, the older girls making crying sounds, others whispering prayers or assurances to the little ones. I fell to my knees, my hands down on the cracked concrete of the floor. These kids had been obviously abused and tortured with horrors even grown adults would cringe at. Many were in tattered clothing, some in nothing at all. All of them were battered, bruised, cowering away from us. Something broke inside of me and I let out a sob, tears pouring down my face. I never took my eyes off of them. Charles came up beside me, the little girl now mostly calm and put his hand on my shoulder, gripping it tightly, anchoring me in place.

  “It’s ok, big guy,” he said, “I think we got them all.”

  “Let me down,” a little voice said behind me.

  Charles let me go and soon the little girl he had been carrying was walking forward, and the rest of the girls who had been huddled in fear were now watching us, watching me. All their pain, every bad experience they endured, I suddenly wished I could take it all away. A month ago, I had been king of the hill, beautiful girlfriend, a small fishing boat, a life I absolutely never knew existed and loved. Seeing the depravation in front of me though, I saw how thin the veil of humanity was and I wasn’t ready for it. For any of this.

  “Keisha,” the little girl said, pulling on the hands of another little blond girl one of the young teens was holding.

  “’Manda,” the little girl said as everyone around us went quiet.

  The little girl pulled Keisha to her feet and both walked my way, hand in hand. They were twins, I realized. They both had endured this. Where were their parents? The emotions I sucked at holding in wouldn’t stop. They both stopped in front of me. The girl called Keisha put her hand up on my cheek. ‘Manda did the same on my other.

  “See?” her sister asked.

  “Yes,” Keisha said softly. “You too?”

  “I’m sure,” the little girl said.

  “What?” I asked, my voice unsteady.

  They walked back to the group of girls and they spoke to what looked to be an almost adult teen girl. She stood up, handing the smaller girl she had been holding to another teen, and walked over to me, holding hands of each of the twins. She knelt down in front of me, the twins on either side of her.

  “Why does it hurt so much?” she asked me.

  “This never should have happened. I didn’t know it was this bad. I was selfish, and I only wanted the guy who hurt my girlfriend. I never knew it was this bad, “I repeated. “I’ve been horribly selfish and I’m so sorry I didn’t know, I didn’t come sooner, that I didn’t help before...”

  Sobbing, for a guy, hurts. For a guy like me who’d only cried as many times as he could remember on a few fingers… it was agony. Parts of me felt like they were getting torn off and thrown out as I sobbed, the tears flying.

  “Do you know why God doesn’t make all of his angels pretty?” the older girl asked me, taking one of my hands in both of hers.

  “No?”

  “Because some of them have to be warriors. They have to be fierce looking, in the face of their enemies. That doesn’t mean they have smaller hearts than the prettier ones. Usually it’s the opposite. I prayed for God’s best. He sent us you.”

  Going.

  Going.

  Gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  Keisha, Amanda, and their older sister Sunny were the three who broke the ice when I wa
s losing my shit.

  We had immediately radioed the Coast Guard as we made our way back to Florida. Mark had a satellite phone stashed in his gear and, between him and Charles, they made dozens of calls with their contacts. My foresight to get cases of snacks, pop, and Gatorade had almost been a divine blessing as none of the kids had had decent food or drink in over a week while they’d been held there. The two girls who had been kidnapped, that Donnie and Serf had been contracted to find, had also been there among the twenty-three we had saved.

  Twenty-three.

  Say that again with me please. Twenty-three. Why wasn’t there a national news alert? The kids had gone missing up and down the East and West coast, from Florida to the Carolinas. We’d filled the boat with the kids and, almost as an afterthought, the cartel members we’d left alive. We had blindfolded them, and they didn’t get Cokes and Fritos like the rest did. They got to drink piss-warm water from Irish John’s water maker.

  The girls and prisoners filled my big boat so much it felt tiny. The older girls sat nearer to the starboard and port side railings to keep the little ones safe in the middle while Irish John cooked all of the tuna, the dolphin, and king mackerel he could, to go with the rice, beans, and snacks. Nobody refused food, not even the littlest ones, Keisha and Amanda. I drove the boat. I was so emotionally raw I was almost mute. There were kids sacked out on the back deck, the hammocks doubled up with sleeping forms, and if the cops hadn’t been sleeping in front of the cabin where the prisoners were, we would have had kids down there as well. Irish John told one hilarious story after the next while handing paper plates of food out.

  We were ten miles from the coast of Florida when the first big helicopter came in overhead. The radio crackled, and Mark took over. In another ten minutes, we had a Coast Guard escort. Ten minutes after that, we had smaller ‘copters buzzing overhead. I tried to ignore it all and let the cops handle the radio communications. I was too busy watching boat traffic, depth charts, my GPS and course corrections because of the tide and currents. At some point, somebody had put Irish John’s bowler hat on my head. I didn’t complain.

  Getting to shore was insane. It was a literal media frenzy on the outskirts of the cops’ cordoned off area, between the children’s services workers, and looky-loos. I tried to hide below decks, vowing to re-paint the name of my boat as soon as I was out of sight. Irish John and three of the girls stayed below with me as I nursed a beer.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Sunny told me.

  “You’ve been through so much, and you’re trying to comfort me? Make me feel better?” I said, all cried out finally. I was angry at myself, at the human filth we’d captured, the world.

  “You just learned about this. Nobody can blame you. Even when it happened to us, I was in disbelief. We saw them shoot my mom, toss her in the road, and drive away with us,” she said softly. “I didn’t believe it then, and I have a hard time believing it now. My sisters avoided anything,” she said, dropping her eyes. “And I can deal. You too. You can deal. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t nice, but I didn’t give up. I always had hope. You answered my prayers. I asked God to send me a warrior angel, and you showed up. You were the first. I saw you rushing the man who… had my sister…” her words went quieter for a moment, “…and you…” She paused again and took a deep breath. She was about to speak again when what seemed like the one thousandth children services workers came below the deck to talk to us.

  “Mister Delgado?”

  “Yes, ma’am?” I said, tired, exhausted, and ready to fall over.

  “Do the twins and Miss Sunny have any contacts you know of?” she asked.

  “We’ve got an uncle in Colorado,” Sunny answered. “But both of our parents are… gone.”

  “’Dey need not go nowhere on ’dis night,” Irish John said as softly as he could.

  One of the twins was sleeping in my arms, the other in Irish John’s. The day had been so busy that night had fallen by the time we had made it to the docks.

  “We can’t just…”

  “Miranda,” Serf said, coming downstairs behind the children services worker, “we couldn’t have done it without these guys. If you won’t let the girls stay with them, I’m still licensed,” he said. “And you know it.”

  The woman blinked back tears. “But you live in Tampa, and we need placement tonight.”

  “You’re licensed foster care?” Irish John asked him.

  “For fourteen years,” Serf replied, mussing the hair of Sunny who stuck her tongue out at him. “If I stay here tonight, let the girls have the cabin and the bench bed, will you hold off on doing an emergency placement so we can get ahold of an uncle?”

  “I… Oh farkle snoop,” she said, turning red in the face. “I don’t suppose you have your license number with you, do you?” she asked.

  “Farkle snoop?” I asked, confused, as Sunny snickered.

  “She’s even more ultra-religious than you three trolls,” Serf said, bopping Sunny on the nose, “but yeah, I memorized it.”

  Raspberries in response from Sunny, smiles from Miranda.

  “And where will you two gentlemen be?” she asked the question directed at me and Irish.

  “If ‘da lady has no objections, Irish John be happy to sleep on ‘da deck in a hammock. ’Tis my favorite spot on ’dis boat. On my life, no harm shall happen while I am here.”

  “Ditto,” I said, “but we do have funds to grab hotel rooms in case that’s a problem.”

  “No, no, that’s fine, but I’ll need your full names and date of births. All the things the police have seemed to have overlooked for some reason.”

  “It’s because they’re contractors like us, and we’re under contract,” Serf said.

  “Now that you mention it, where’s your partner?” Miranda asked. “I mean, for a while I thought you were married to him.”

  Sunny snickered while Amanda stirred slightly in my arms.

  “He called his wife. She’s coming downstate to pick him up. He’s got a big high rise to tech out, and now the action is done, he needs some downtime.”

  “I don’t think I’m ever going to understand folks like you, and I meet all kinds,” Miranda said. “Now, sir,” she turned to Irish, “what’s your full name, date of birth, etc.?”

  “Isiah Johnson, born—”

  “Son of a—”

  My words were cut off as first Sunny, then the rest cut up at my surprise, laughing loudly and washing away my sadness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” I asked Carly.

  “Yes, we’ve talked about this,” she said, walking slowly.

  “But we don’t have to—”

  “I want to!” she snapped back, the redhead in her flaring up.

  Her and her parents had decided to sell the pawn shop. I had returned the firearms and all the gear I had been loaned. I’d tried to turn in the badge to Sheriff Mark, but he had told me to keep it and consider myself at an on-call status. Carly? She had been released from the hospital and had been working on her PT for the last month or so. Her hip more than her guts had been the hardest to heal, which made no sense to me. She’d lost a lot of weight, so much so that seeing her walking down the dock made my heart hurt. She was almost elfin already, but losing another ten or fifteen pounds in the hospital she couldn’t afford to lose… But she was gaining it back, and her spirit was undamaged.

  “Irish John shall be your tour guide until Deadman’s Cay,” he said, shirtless, shoeless, wearing nothing but dirty shorts and a bowler’s cap. “’Den Irish John shall be on call. When Tony needs me, he needs only come and get.”

  “I dig,” Carly said with a goofy grin, plopping into a lounge chair I had bought at Home Depot for her to sit and lay on while on the boat.

  “You… oh my… girl make jokes? You know what Irish John does to ladies who make fun of Irish John? Boy, Tony, does this womenz have a hat?”

  Carly started giggling, holding her stomach.
>
  “If she doesn’t,” I grabbed his hat off his head, “she does now,” I said, plopping it on her head.

  She looked at us all serious like, then straightened it up.

  “Carly ’tinks Irish John should deliver una cerveza por favor, ’den he drives ‘da boat,” she said in a perfect imitation of his accent.

  “Devil woman, ’dats what she is!” he said, pointing.

  Carly laughed, holding her stomach again. It still hurt when she laughed hard, but she was doing it more and more. She was healing. And truth be told, so was I.

  “What are we going fishing for?” Carly asked once we had motored out into the river proper, headed out to the bay.

  “Bluefin tuna,” I told her, “or anything that’ll bite between here and there.”

  “So no plans?”

  “Nope, just you, me, and the deep blue sea.”

  “I think I’d like that,” she said softly, settling in.

  “Me too,” I muttered.

  “If Anthony and Miss Carly get bored, you can always come back and find Irish John. If he no be at Deadman’s Cay, dial up Miss Josephine.”

  “Irish John, are you going to make an honest woman out of her yet?” Carly asked tartly.

  “I… oh shit. Go… Gimme my damn hat back,” my best friend stuttered.

  We laughed, motoring west, into the setting sun.

  -The End-

  About the Author

  Boyd Craven III was born and raised in Michigan, an avid outdoorsman who’s always loved to read and write from a young age. When he isn’t working outside on the farm, or chasing a household of kids, he’s sitting in his Lazy Boy, typing away.