by Ian Bull
I move on to the real work, which I haven’t done in years—assembling and prepping two M4 assault rifles. I pause to wonder if I can still do it, then my muscle memory kicks in and my hands move quickly.
My old rifle was once such a constant companion that she had a name: Tina. Carl called his weapon Mary. Tina is in my life again, which churns my stomach more. I wonder if I’ll have to use her.
There’s a set of dark camouflage outfits for each of us, along with helmets, pistols, flak jackets, night goggles, food and water, an emergency medical roll and a change of socks. It all has to fit in two “three-day” packs.
It takes me an hour to finish. When I stand up, my hamstrings cramp, my stomach heaves and I fall forward and retch over the side. My body screams from exhaustion. I haven’t slept since my night with Nicole.
Carl hears my primitive yakking and pulls back on the throttle. The drone of the engine drops away and I hear the ocean around me again and smell clean air, thank God. Carl comes out on the back deck and hands me a peeled banana, which I wolf down, then a bottle of water, which I sip lightly. I know enough not to add too much liquid to my belly when I’m seasick. He motions for me to come inside the front cabin.
It’s an all wood fishing boat with a powerful engine. The inside is sparse and simple; a wheelhouse with a radio and GPS, padded benches, a small kitchen with a table, and a sleeping area in front. The boat is motoring forward via GPS navigation, our speed about one knot.
“What’s the story with the boat?” I ask.
“It’s a Gollywobbler 38.”
“A Golly what?”
“A Gollywobbler, thirty-eight feet long. It’s a hand built wooden fishing boat from the Northwest, they use it a lot in Puget Sound. There’s a sail we can raise above the engine house and it holds a ton of fuel, so we can be out to sea for a while in this thing.”
“What’s it doing in the Bahamas?”
“Chief Andrew, who arrested us, is also a fishing buddy of mine. We bought it together in Seattle, then motored it down from Washington and brought it through the Panama Canal.”
“When we climbed aboard it was already stocked with food and water, fuel, supplies and gear. Like he knew we were taking the trip before he even arrested us,” I say.
“He was about to take his monthly fishing trip, but we interrupted it,” Carl says.
“I see. Weird coincidence,” I say, but don’t ask how his gear got on board.
“How’s the gear?” he asks.
“Ready for you to check.”
“Good. Do you still have that weird skill?” he asks.
“Which skill is that?”
“Seeing something once and remembering every detail,” he says.
“I’m a little rusty, but I think so,” I answer.
Carl spreads out a large map of the Bahamas on the table. He stabs at tiny islands at the bottom. “This is the Ragged Island Chain. His is Elysian Cay, which is the second island from the top.”
He opens a cabinet and throws more maps and books on the table.
I leaf through them: Boating in the Southern Bahamas, The Island Survival Guide, Flora and Fauna of the Caribbean and Bahamas and Game Fish of the Gulf Stream.
“You have to memorize the map and go through these books. I’ve been in the Bahamas four years. You have four hours to know as much about them as I do. Then I want you to sleep for eight hours. By then we’ll be at Elysian Cay.”
I look at him and he stares back, waiting for me to ask the question. “You changed your mind. Why?”
“The night in Colombia, Caballero saw my face in that flashlight beam.”
“I remember,” I say.
“Five years later, that taxi driver sends him photos of a tourist asking too many questions about Elysian Cay, then sees photos of me saving your ass in a street fight…and it’s my face he sees and remembers.”
“I’m sorry I brought you my problems,” I say.
“Well, they’re mine now too. Maybe they always have been,” he says brushing my apology away with a wave of his hand. Then he leans closer. “The bigger question now is, do you think he’ll stop? What do you remember after he shot the boy?” Carl asks.
“I remember you shot off a burst and we rolled under the fence and into the bushes. I remember running zigzag down an incredibly steep hill dodging trees. Then I got shot. It was like a sledgehammer slamming into my right shoulder and I pitched forward and rolled downhill for a while before I landed on my back with my shoulder on fire. I remember touching the front of my shirt with my left hand and I could feel the blood and the torn fabric where one bullet had gone clean through,” I say.
“And then you got up and kept moving. Do you remember that?” he asks.
“Sort of. I remember thinking I wasn’t that hurt, except everything was in slow motion. I remember colliding head first with a tree but my face didn’t hurt that much, it just felt sticky. I’m pretty sure that’s how I got this scar in my eyebrow,” I say, and touch the small red line on my forehead.
“The rebels were chasing us and spraying gunfire. We couldn’t outrun them with you hurt, so I pulled you down so that you were lying flat down next to me,” he says.
“I barely remember. I was losing it by then,” I say. That’s because I was hallucinating, but I don’t tell him that. My clothes felt cold and wet from losing blood, so my mind morphed it into something that made sense. I was back with my brother Robert camping at Kirby Cove campground across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and I was wet and cold in my sleeping bag from the thick ocean fog that was rolling in. I even heard the foghorn under the bridge and tried to sit up hoping to see the lights of the city, but the fog has already blanketed it. Robert then pushed my forehead back down, and when I looked over, he morphed back into Webb again.
“I remember you pushing my forehead down. I remember hearing two men come closer. One even stepped on my hand as he passed us. Then I felt you sit up and heard two pops as your Beretta went off. I remember people shouting higher up on the hill and then you pulling me to my feet and lifting me into a fireman’s carry. I remember a lot of blood squishing out of my shirt, and then I passed out.”
“What you don’t know is that even after I took out two of them, Caballero and the others kept pursuing us for three hours, even when they knew the Colombian army was coming to extract us and to chase them down,” he says. “After I clipped us into the extraction rope and the helicopter started to rise, they popped off a shot and got me in the ass,” he says, and he slaps his right butt cheek.
“We got lucky,” I say.
Carl leans on the map with both hands and looks at me with his blue lasers. “We did that time. So let me ask it again. Knowing him, do you think he’ll stop chasing us?”
I look at Carl. “He won’t stop,” I answer.
“And neither will I,” Carl says. “If I let someone else handle this, he’ll escape and come after me again. We do this now, while we can get the jump on him.”
Carl’s face hardens until his forehead lines pop out. He grips the table and the muscles in his arms and chest harden. I’ve seen this transformation before.
“What’s our time frame?” I ask.
“Two days. Everybody thinks we’re in jail in Clarence Town. That gives us a day to surprise them. Caballero and Constantinou know we are on to them though, so they’ll be expecting something. Whatever happens, Chief Andrew is alerting the Bahamian Coast Guard, which is coming to look for us in forty-eight hours.”
“Game on,” I say.
“Time for a plan, Stan. Let’s get busy,” he says.
A rush of adrenaline hits me and I enter a zone of heightened awareness. My vision, hearing and thinking—even my sense of smell—have a new acuity, and the world seems vivid and alive. I used to feel this shift before every mission, and it would stay with me for days until the job was done. It’s been years since I felt this way, and I realize how much I miss it.
A mental checklist appears
in my brain, and the first thing on it is to eat and drink, and I grab another banana and more water. Carl must see the change in me because he grins and leans in, the air between us crackling again.
“Let’s start from the beginning. What do we know?” I ask, my mouth full of banana.
“I may know more than you. The research came in.”
“When?” I ask.
“My people called back yesterday morning while you were passed out,” he says.
“So yesterday on the sailboat you had intel you weren’t sharing?”
“Yesterday was different,” he answers.
“What did you find out?”
“Caballero was part of FARC until that night we saw him, and then he disappeared. He popped up in several places over the years, including working for Gaddafi in Libya. That’s because Fuzzhead helped fund FARC for years, and then hired them as assassins and snipers to kill his own people during the uprising against him. When his government fell, Caballero disappeared again and popped up in Greece. That’s when Xander Constantinou hired him as his head of security.”
“Security. That’s rich. No one is safe with that guy around.”
“And Constantinou isn’t Greek, he’s Egyptian. He comes from a wealthy family with deep ties to the Egyptian military, and they made a fortune selling weapons. But times are tough since the regime change. The new government froze most of his assets. He was previously worth 250 million, and now he’s worth 30 million, if he’s lucky,” explains Carl.
“Having 30 million doesn’t seem like much of a problem,” I counter.
“Not to you and me, but to someone like him, losing that much tweaks you. And his lifestyle is way above 30 million. Just maintaining his island is probably a million bucks a year, and that’s just one property. He’s probably leveraged and bleeding money to creditors. If that’s the case, he can burn through 30 million easy, unless he has a plan.”
I look at the pile of maps and books on the table in front of us and shake my head. “It doesn’t make sense. If you’re desperate to turn 30 million back into 250 million, you buy companies, you invest, or sell weapons. Or he can smuggle drugs or blood diamonds or nuclear fuel. Instead, he kidnaps his ex-girlfriend?” I ask.
Carl doesn’t answer, so I point at his little island on the map for emphasis. “I think his motive is revenge, not money,” I say. “It’s about her.”
“But there are a few new wrinkles since your arrival in the Bahamas. Tuesday he flew twenty people to the island. A film crew and actors.”
“What for?”
“To shoot a movie. Just like the tabloid article says.”
“It’s got to be bullshit,” I argue.
“Twenty people and their gear left Miami by seaplane. It all checks out.”
I shake my head. “But that first article is a perfect cover. Caballero can kill her and they can stage it like a boating accident or a drowning. Then he has his revenge. But a film crew? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Which brings us back to my favorite motive. It’s about money, not revenge. And movies make money, right?” he asks.
“Most don’t. Gambling in Vegas is safer,” I say. “And if he’s forcing her? Once that hits the Internet it’ll be bigger gossip than anyone can control.”
“Unless she wants to do it,” Carl says. “Is there any chance of that?”
“She doesn’t. The photo doesn’t lie,” I answer.
Carl nods. “A friend with the RCMP in Canada contacted Julia Travers’s parents. They admit that she’s changed since she’s moved to Los Angeles, but her decision to go to this island without telling anyone is out of character. They also insist that she ended the first affair with Constantinou and that she fears him, which makes them even more suspicious of what’s going on. But they have no way to reach her,” Carl says.
“The RCMP should tell the FBI and the Bahamians,” I insist.
“I’m sure they have, but they won’t do anything. It’s only been four days, and there’s no evidence of a crime. So far your photos have worked—everyone thinks they’re in love and finishing a movie,” Carl says. “Except for her parents and us.”
“What about last night?” I ask. “Caballero sent four guys to kill us.”
“We can’t prove it was Caballero. If we had died, they’d assume it was a drug smuggling deal gone bad, or one of my cases came back to bite me,” Carl says.
“A movie?” I ask, shaking my head. “It doesn’t add up, there’s no way he can make that kind of money.”
“Don’t assume that,” Carl says. “He’s got a plan, and he’s willing to kill us to keep his plan going. We just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Carl checks the GPS, starts the motor and pushes the throttle back up to six knots. The water is flat as a bathtub and the boat slices through it without any chop.
“Memorize that map,” he says, while checking the horizon “Know where we’re going and where we’ve been, in case you have to get back.”
I look at The Bahamas spread out on the table in front of me—several groups of small islands between the massive peninsula of Florida and the huge island of Cuba. The deep ocean is to the east, and the shallow Bahama Bank and the Gulf of Mexico is to the west.
Long Island is at the bottom of one curve of islands, and now we’re following the next big curve south—the Jumento Cays, Torzon, Flamingo Cay, Man of War, Jamaica Cay—and then there is open water until the Ragged Island Chain pops up last. Carl leaves the helm and points to a spot of open water on the map.
“We’re about here right now. We’ll stay far west, and then when we’re past Elysian Cay I’ll turn and head in from the southwest. I want to arrive just before dawn.”
“I like that. Safer for us, more surprise for them,” I say.
“It won’t be Club Med. There will be well trained bad guys. We have the jump on him, but we did last time too, and we know how that turned out. He may even be thrilled when we show up.”
I stare closer at the Ragged Island Chain and suck in the details. The depths, the reefs, the beacon lights, which islands have landing strips, anchorages and blue holes which may hold fresh water.
“I’m going to check the packs you prepped,” Carl says and goes on the back deck.
I open the books he gave me and leaf through the pages. I read quickly. I learn that Elysian Cay has coconut palm trees, part of a plantation that failed years ago. It is less than a quarter mile south of Nurse Cay, which has low scrub trees and no water. Elysian Cay has a small blue hole on its north end, which is an eroded limestone cave filled with water that’s linked to the sea, but may have fresh rain water on top. I keep going through more books. I learn about limestone caves, land crabs, ocean fish, edible scrub trees and curly tailed lizards.
Carl touches my shoulder, making me jump. “You’ve been at it three hours,” he says.
“I’m almost done,” I answer.
“Eat something and sleep. I’ll wake you up at two in the morning. Then you can take the helm.”
I almost salute him, but grab a power bar and a banana instead, devour it all with water and crawl into a sleeping cabin under the foredeck.
Carl pushes the boat up to twelve knots.
I don’t think I can relax over the drone of the engines, but my team leader told me to sleep, so my training kicks in and I fall unconscious as commanded.
Chapter 28
Julia Day 10: Saturday, Before Dawn
It’s one in the morning; all is quiet and I’m awake. My call time is 6:00 a.m., five more hours of rest, and then day five begins. Three more days of shooting, including today.
Then what? What happens to me? Xander feels I’m gradually moving back to him. Once the movie is done, there’s no more gradual. He’ll have kept his “promise” to me, and he’ll expect me to close the gap between us.
My heart pounds, making my chest hurt. I have to get out of this room, out of this building, and off this island. But how? I jump out of bed and pace to
keep from hyperventilating, but too much air still rushes to my head, making me dizzy.
I flash back to when I was a teenager with so many learning disabilities that I thought I’d never finish school or amount to anything. Life was an intense pressure cooker that got worse every day, until I saw no escape...like now. I had a trick that helped me when my despair became too much for me to bear. Maybe the same trick can help me now.
I grab a towel, sit on the floor, stick it against my mouth with both fists, and scream. The sound echoes in my brain, but the towel muffles my cry, so there’s no noise in the room. I screamed this way at night growing up and no one heard me, and no one can hear me now. I scream silent howls until I can scream no more.
Next I cry. I let loose with deep sobs of hopeless desperation. I can’t fight and I can’t flee, all I can do is weep this hopeless fear out of me.
After an hour of screaming and crying into my towel, something magical happens. I become calm. There is no emotion left. I am empty. I look at my watch. It’s 2:00 a.m.
I open my curtains and step out on the balcony. There is no moon and the Milky Way is splashed across the sky above me with so many stars I can’t even pick out the constellations. A star slowly moves across the sky—it’s a distant plane or satellite. Another streaks past, a true shooting star.
The sea breeze draws my eyes back to the horizon. With no moon I can’t see the water, just the beacon light on the distant point flashing every four seconds. The warm breeze rustles the leaves and palm fronds, but otherwise there’s no noise at all. The veranda is dark and I only see the shapes of film carts and tents below. I peer out, hoping to see something. A minute passes. Nothing.
“Julia?” It’s Trishelle. I feel relief and excitement at the same time—and then fear.
