by Glen Carter
Selena had convinced her it was safe. The money would be deposited in the Swiss National Bank in Grand Cayman. One day in – one day out. Selena had promised, even though Mercedes had told her it was too soon, that they needed to hunker down for at least another week before making their move. She only agreed when Selena told her Orlando would be flying her to George Town. Montello’s men would be concentrating on commercial airliners and couldn’t possibly cover the hundreds of private airplanes that routinely took off from dozens of airfields at every hour. Most importantly, Selena was unknown to them. Invisible.
Mercedes had relented, driven in part by cabin fever but mostly her rising anxiety. Having the bonds made them targets for many. With the bonds in their possession their lives were less than worthless.
Selena had successfully made the deposit before she was killed. She’d called. That meant Montello’s thugs had taken her on her return to Santa Marta. Mercedes was certain Selena hadn’t told them where to find her. Her friend had given her life for her – Mercedes was sure of it. It made her weep to think of Selena’s last moments and the horrible way she must have died. Mercedes didn’t care about the money anymore – it had already killed two people and Mercedes knew if she didn’t get out of Colombia, she’d be next.
She hardly slept that night. The walls at Motel Pelikan were paper thin and seemed to amplify a chorus of flushing toilets and boozy conversations. She decided against a hot bath when she saw the yellowed shower curtain. Mercedes had stared for five minutes, trembling at what appeared to be a large bloodstain on the carpet near the door.
By lunchtime the next day hunger and restlessness drove her out. She’d eaten a little and then taken a walk along the beach, shrinking at the occasional whistles and jeers she attracted from drunken tourists. The most obnoxious was a group of bare-chested Germans who saluted her by hoisting huge steins in the shade of a coconut palm. They yelled at her to join them. Mercedes walked quickly by, seriously regretting her decision to leave the motel. Then the other one caught her attention. He wasn’t rowdy; in fact he didn’t say anything at all. Though he had stared at her hard. What if he was one of Montello’s murderers? Mercedes shuddered, realizing that leaving her room might have been a deadly mistake. She rushed to her car, fumbled with the keys until she was able to start it. She was driving out of the parking lot when she spotted him again. He was thin and blond. A foreigner. Walking quickly towards her, carrying something low on his body, something threatening in his right hand. Mercedes pulled the wheel tightly, accelerating past him. Shaking, she fixed her eyes on the rear-view mirror. He was standing there, holding something in his hands. A weapon of some kind, pointed directly at her as she sped away.
FORTY
Jack knew it couldn’t be real. He had realized before: it had all the permanence of a wisp of hot breath on the morning’s chill. But he surrendered to it anyway because it brought him a small measure of comfort.
“You’re a good man, Jack Doyle.” She is smiling at him, and in that fragment of time, Jack can believe she is alive. He is relieved. But he also feels a melancholic déjà vu as their bodies turn, slowly moving, not to music but a vibration that locks them in magnetic embrace. She is whispering something into his ear that he cannot understand, but she desperately needs to tell him. Jack feels her tighten her hold, trying to draw him closer. Then her breath fades, and the whispering stops. Kaitlin is humming now. But to Jack the humming doesn’t sound like anything lyrical, or even human – more like the sound produced by a machine, a cyclic pulsing beneath his feet, becoming stronger and louder until it makes Jack regret where the damn dream is headed.
Slowly turning, his arms are wrapped around her tiny waist, and Jack can feel the softness of her breasts press harder against him. He is giving into the illusion, even though there is nothing permanent about this. He’s had the dream before, and like all the others, it will vanish.
Her smile disappears, replaced by a look of terror, and Kaitlin shrieks.
It confuses Jack. In his mind he needs desperately to quiet her. But she is slipping away from him, her lips have parted into a scowl and she continues to scream.
Jack woke with a start when the beer bottle cradled in his limp hand dropped to the floor and smashed. That was the first of three things he would regret. The second was his pounding head, and as Jack bolted upwards in the darkness he swore at his own stupidity. It wasn’t Kaitlin screaming. It was the radar proximity warning, a screech that caused Jack to leap from his berth like a jackhammer. That was the third thing he did wrong. A shard of glass stabbed his foot, and now there would be blood, lots of blood. He had no time to deal with it. A bloody foot was the least of his worries. His bare feet thumped across the deck, a base drum beating quarter notes. Up the companionway and into the night. Warm air, calm seas, and the spins, a head full of buzzing, and raw pain. Jack tried desperately to focus, to determine what was threatening his boat. He felt it first: the vibrations that came from powerful engines, then the rhythmic sound of water being cleaved under the weight of something big. Very big. Beating relentlessly closer. Jack tried to wipe the hangover from his face, the crud blocking his vision. He swung around and in the darkness he saw it – a sight that settled in his gut like hot rivets.
She was at least sixty feet abeam and four storeys high. Her bridge was a shroud of darkness barely illuminated by the fluorescent lights that ran along her monstrous deck. The freighter was advancing murderously towards him, about three hundred yards off his stern and closing fast.
Jack jumped at the starter, pushed frantically at the red button. Nothing happened. Turn the key…turn the key first!
The key wasn’t there. Where is it? On the key ring!
Jack dove for the opening that led down below, slipping in his own blood. The key ring, on the galley bulkhead.
In the dark, his hands slapped at the bulkhead until he found the key, pulled it into his clenched fist. He clambered back up, squinting through the darkness. Christ! She had to be seventy-thousand tons, and there was no sign that anyone on the bridge knew he was there. Two hundred yards at best now, at five knots, not much time before he was heading for the sea bottom.
It took Jack three tries before he could seat the ignition key and turn it, and with a trembling hand he punched the starter again.
One hundred twenty-five yards, trudging along, minding her business. Jack was dead because the goddamn watch was asleep. Pleasant dreams, buddy.
His engine turned over, but wouldn’t catch. Jack punched it again, heard it cough. Come on. Let’s go!
Jack did the math. Ninety yards now at five knots. Time for only one more try.
As calmly as he possibly could, he pressed the button. The engine caught. GO!
Jack pushed the throttle to the stops and leapt at the wheel, disconnected the automatic pilot, and spun Scoundrel hard to port. Fifty yards now. Jack could feel her, could smell the churning water cresting at her bow. Even if someone saw, it would be too late for a ship this heavy to stop.
Scoundrel crawled painfully slow out of harm’s way, and a few seconds later Jack allowed himself to believe he was going to live. Then the engine quit.
Fuck. Jack couldn’t believe his bad luck. He cursed aloud and pounded on something, teeth clenched from the stinging in his foot. Jack rubbed his face and felt muscles of cement. The life jackets! Where are the life jackets? Under the aft bench, of course. He knew that. Life jackets or the engine? No time to think about it!
Jack pounded the starter one more time. He wasn’t religious, but he prayed anyway.
The Volvo Penta turned once, then twice, and then it started. Jack yelled with relief as the boat began slowly to move. Jack measured his salvation an inch at a time. The inches became feet, and when Scoundrel was safely away with only five yards between them, Jack could feel a cold wake from the freighter’s hull sweeping by him, like a prissy debutant who never even knew he was alive.
Jack had to remind himself to breathe as he collapsed to t
he deck.
Even with binoculars pressed tight to his face, she was too far away to catch a name. But Jack could make out the large steel containers stacked high on her decks and a white phosphorous wake boiling around her hull. She was two thousand yards away.
Jack returned the Tascos to their case, swallowed another mouthful of coffee, and wiped the back of a trembling hand across his mouth. Two ships in all this ocean and they wind up on a collision course. What were the chances? Jack stroked the bandage on his foot and figured about a gazillion to one. Thank God for the gear, the electronic wizardry that kept him alive when jerks like that fell asleep on their watch. Hold on a moment, Jack. Just who was asleep? He shook his head. Never a dull moment, he thought as he took another swallow and watched her vanish on the horizon. Another little piece of the global economy headed south towards Caracas, or Rio or maybe even Havana.
Have a nice trip, Jack said to no one but himself.
He needed another cup of coffee before starting his daily ritual. Down below he topped up his mug and swallowed two aspirin before moving to the navigation station on the starboard side of the boat, just ahead of the aft sleeping quarters. It was where Jack sat for long stretches, monitoring the GPS and his radios. He listened as shrimp boat captains cajoled one another, usually a sign their holds were full.
The weather forecast said clear skies. Jack wrote that in his diary and made notations about wind speed and wave height – his heading.
The electronic chart which he’d loaded into the GPS showed he was ten miles off the Carolinas, a position he confirmed on a paper chart that included markings for water depth and the warm currents of the Gulf Stream. Then Jack checked the fuel gauge. He needed a fill-up, more water too.
Two hours later he brought Scoundrel alongside a rotting wharf in a sandy backwater with one old gas pump. It was the only sign of sea-faring commerce. Beyond the wharf, a couple dozen houses stood like hitchhikers on the road to anywhere but here. Jack saw only two other sailboats. They bobbed lazily at anchorages with grimy dull fiberglass hulls and slack mooring lines that had collected a salad of seaweed. Neither vessel showed signs of life.
Jack went below to retrieve his wallet, stuffed in his shorts, when he was startled by a face in one of the portholes. It stared at him. “Hello there,” it said, muffled.
Jack stared back, spent a bewildered moment wondering whether to grab a weapon of some kind, then laughed to himself instead as he made his way up the companionway.
The mayor and his wife were in their sixties, retired from Norfolk. A half dozen others, who might have been cousins, didn’t say or do much except walk up and down the wharf studying Jack’s fancy boat.
“How far ya going?” The mayor had a pathetic comb-over and a droop on the right side of his face that suggested stroke recuperation – or an old war wound. His hands were huge, fingers like wooden pegs. He said he was thirty years a welder up at the navy repair yard. There was a strange whistling noise when he spoke. Badly fitted false teeth, Jack guessed. Courtesy of veterans’ health care.
“Don’t know yet. Antigua at least,” Jack replied, looking at his watch.
The mayor’s wife was a big fan of polyester. She wore a pair of limegreen shorts that surrendered to rolls of fat encircling her thighs. Her name was Beth or Bess or something like that – and she was staring at him. “I know y’all look familiar.”
Jack saw a couple of rooftops with satellite dishes. “My mother used to say the same thing, whenever I came in for supper.” Jack smiled at her. All three of them laughed, then Earl, the mayor, offered to pump the gas.
“Hard to get good help these days,” he said. “Hell, any help.” They chuckled at that too.
Beth asked Jack if he’d care to join them for lunch. Jack said thanks anyway, “be heading out again before noon.” Then her husband told Jack to stay away from the point because his cousin had run aground there on a drifting sand bar the week before.
“No radio aboard,” he said. “Stuck there for ten hours, the goddamn fool.”
Scoundrel swallowed twenty gallons of diesel and twice as much water. Jack paid with cash, they said goodbye, wished him luck, and the mayor and his entourage ambled up the wharf.
Jack decided to check his e-mail. He grabbed his Globestar 2800 and hooked it up to his laptop. A minute later he was logged on to his satellite service provider. He typed in the name of his vessel and a password. All of this bounced into space where it eventually found an Inmarsat satellite positioned in a geostationary orbit above the western Atlantic. A few seconds later Jack was downloading his e-mail. There were a bunch of messages from friends wondering how he was doing and a note from his Aunt Muriel in Boston who still couldn’t comprehend the wonder of e-mail. She missed him. Was he eating enough? Write me!
Jack looked out the porthole and saw a cluster gathering, more locals who would soon make their way down the wharf to find out more about the new arrival. When he returned his attention to the computer he saw the e-mail from Seth Pollard. Jack looked at it blankly for a moment and saw that it was a couple of days old. Pollard was one of the best freelance cameramen Jack had ever worked with. The last Jack heard Seth was in Afghanistan somewhere tailing remnants of the Taliban – ballsy Brit always looking for the most dangerous assignments. Jack clicked on the e-mail. The page was blank. Strange, Jack thought. Seth was never short on bullshit. When Jack looked closer he saw the e-mail attachment. He double clicked – and waited.
It took a second for the attachment to open and when it did, Jack saw it was a video file. He pressed play and hunkered down to watch. The first thing Jack saw was movement – lots of it. Whoever was shooting the video was running with the record button on, feet stomping along with the camera jostling up and down at shoulder level. The lens of the camera was bouncing too wildly to discern anything but the fact someone was in a hurry. Jack increased the volume on his laptop and heard heavy breathing and an occasional curse. It sounded like Seth’s voice. About twelve seconds into the video the shot settled down and what Jack saw next was a dirt parking lot. That was it. A parking lot with about a dozen cars in it. It was surrounded by palm trees, which meant somewhere tropical. Beyond that there was nothing remarkable about Seth’s video. Jack continued to watch as a car backed out of a parking space and sped towards the camera. A shit box of a car, green in colour, getting the hell out of a dirt parking lot in some tropical place. OK, Seth, Jack thought. There’s got to be a reason for this. Jack bent closer.
At twenty seconds the sound of tires crunching on gravel as the car rolled closer to Seth. Pollard muttered something that sounded like another curse. At twenty-five seconds Pollard zoomed in to check his focus, pulled back out again. At twenty-eight seconds the car came abreast of Pollard and stopped. The driver’s window was open because in a car that old there would be no air conditioning.
Jack looked closer and in the shadow of the car he saw a figure. It was a woman driving, a woman alone. The camera zoomed in quickly on the open window. Still don’t get it, Seth. The car’s engine revved to match Jack’s impatience. Then at thirty-two seconds someone appeared. When Jack saw who it was he jerked upright, toppled over on his stool and landed square on his ass.
Now he got it.
Jack was stunned. Too frozen in place to get back up. He struggled to regain the air which had been sucked from his lungs while a torrent of blood rushed through his veins and crashed into his skull like waves pounding on a rocky shoreline. Did he ever get it.
A couple of moments passed before he was able to pull himself back up again. He rubbed the back of his neck where his muscles felt like glacial ice.
Not possible.
Jack looked out a porthole, at a pair of kids splashing in the water near a floating dock, gangly limbs beating up a storm to match Jack’s mood. He rubbed sweaty palms against his leg and slumped, a man paralyzed in the path of a tidal wave.
Another moment was spent in sheer denial. He clicked on the attachment again – and watch
ed in amazement. A few seconds later he stopped the video. It was the point where Seth zoomed in, the exact second when she leaned out of the car window to look back at the man with a camera. Out of the shadows now and into sunlight – her face fully revealed.
Jack blinked hard at the computer screen, his mind spinning like he was on some carnival ride, the kind that always ends in the joyless calamity of vomit. A moment later he got up and stumbled to the head where he splashed cold water on his face, stood there staring in the mirror at incredulity. A lot of people were going to be feeling the same way, he thought. “Goddamn,” Jack cursed, then pulled himself from the head and stomped back to the computer where her image now filled the entire screen. Jack took inventory of what he was staring at: her eyes, her hair, her nose, her lips. Doubt vanished, replaced by bewilderment. That, he could identify, unlike the things which at that moment he could not, the wonders which swirled around him like black magician’s smoke.
Seth had dropped a bombshell with no explanation, and at that moment Jack could have strangled him for it. He’d known the Brit for years, since their first assignment in the Balkans when Jack had called New York and told them they were crazy if they thought this freelancer was going to be able to hump a hundred pounds of equipment through a war zone. Jack was eventually amazed at Seth’s courage and determination and the speed with which he was able to edit and feed their stories to New York. “Bing, bang, bong, mate. Time for a beer I’d say.” The Brit made sure Jack never missed a deadline – or the bar tab.
They traveled light, except for his flak jacket, which had saved his life on three occasions. Seth never wore it because it got in the way of getting the “money shot.” An adrenalin fiend, that Brit. Jack was no stranger to the juice either. He and Seth had once talked their way into the compound of an Afghan warlord outside Kabul. Everything was going swimmingly until one of the lookouts spotted the contrail of a B-2 bomber. Jack and Seth were barely able to outrun the concussions when a pair of five hundred pound smart bombs reduced the place to rubble. Even still, Pollard had managed to get “the money shot.” To Jack this was the mother of all “money shots.”
