The Picture Kills (The Quintana Adventures)

by Ian Bull

  I slide it on my shoulder and climb the rest of the way down my sheet. I pass Xander’s office window, reach the ground, push through the foliage and find the blue plastic bin exactly where I told Bernard to put it. I pop the lid and inside is the snorkel gear.

  “Good boy,” I whisper to myself.

  “Julia?” she whispers.

  I grab the masks and fins and step out on the patio as Trishelle steps out of the darkness.

  “Are you ready?” I ask.

  Three more silhouettes step into the light. Bernard, Remi and Rolando. Trishelle cries as my heart sinks. “I’m sorry, I thought it would work,” she says.

  I look at Bernard. “You told him,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Sorry, Julia. I can’t act forever, and I need some kind of retirement.”

  I look down. Remi has a gun pointed at me.

  “Okay, I won’t fight anymore,” I say. “It’s over.”

  “It’s not over, Julia. We have a movie to finish. And the ending will be a real surprise,” Rolando says.

  Chapter 37

  Steven Day 11: Sunday

  At 1:00 a.m. my eyes open after exactly one hour of sleep. How I managed that, I don’t know; it’s a residual talent from my Ranger days. Time to move. I creep down the tile roof, get to the edge and look at the balcony under me. I hear nothing, but I know it’s her room below me. After nightfall, I watched with binoculars and saw her on this balcony staring at the party on the patio.

  There really is no way for me to prepare. I just have to leap in and be ready for whatever happens, knowing that I do have a slight advantage of surprise on my side. I exhale, dangle my feet, grab the edge of the roof with both hands and swing down. I land softly. The curtains and sliding glass windows are open and I stare into her suite.

  Lights and a movie camera fill one side of the room. I step inside but don’t see Julia. Instead, I see Constantinou standing naked in the middle of the room, fists on his hips and admiring his physique in a full-length mirror. He’s sporting a pink hard-on that pokes past his paunch like a flesh colored bird perch.

  He senses me and turns, and when he spots me he grabs his crotch and falls to his knees next to the bed. We stare at each other for five seconds, both frozen in confusion.

  I finally draw my firearm and aim it at him. “Where is she?”

  He points at the bathroom.

  I open the door to the bathroom and see a sheet and an open window and know that she’s already disappeared, so I run past Constantinou out onto the balcony and look down.

  Twenty feet below I spot Julia Travers in a white robe, surrounded by three men; Caballero, who is twisting the arm of a brunette woman I can’t see, an actor type guy I don’t recognize, and the French Smoker, who has a gun aimed at Julia.

  “Diego!” Constantinou yells, finally getting his wits. “Get in here!”

  I look back into the suite just as the Angry Poker bursts in with his gun out. I look down and everyone on the patio looks up at me at the same time, and I make a choice; I vault over the edge of the balcony and aim my body like a flying squirrel so that I land right on the French Smoker.

  I hit him square on the shoulders and collapse my knees, hips and upper body and roll into a tumble like an infantry parachuter. The Smoker’s gun goes off when I hit him, then it skitters across the tile, the metal dancing on the ceramic. Meanwhile, I keep rolling like a curled up armadillo on hard cement.

  After two full rotations, I bounce to my feet. The French Smoker is down and out, the actor guy is gone, and Caballero just stares at me in shock.

  “Run, Julia!” someone shouts.

  Julia bolts across the patio with her white robe flapping, swim fins in one hand and a canvas bag in the other. She slows to pick up the French Smoker’s gun and then leaps over the first wall.

  I feel a bullet whizz past my cheek and then hear the gunshot. I jump over the wall as more shots ring out. People shout as I disappear into the trees.

  I have to move fast, both to escape Caballero and his friends but to also catch Julia.

  The shouting continues for a bit and then stops, but I hear enough branches cracking and electronic chirps to know that four men are behind me. I keep searching for Julia while evading them. I notice a flash of white and head for it, and find her robe stuck in a tree. Smart girl, I think. I toss it in the high grass so they can’t find it.

  Her trail is easy to find now. I pause every hundred yards and wait until I hear a small thud or crack in front of me, and then I head there until I find her trail again.

  Then I reach the fisherman’s hut and the bent grass blades tell me she went inside. Not such a smart girl after all.

  Creeping around the side, I find the closed door. “Julia,” I whisper.

  There’s no answer, so I push the door open and step inside. It’s pitch black. I pull a glow stick out of a pocket in my camo pants and crack it, letting the light leak through my knuckles.

  Crouching in the corner next to the open window, she’s wearing a bikini, a man’s suit jacket and deck shoes that are too big, and her legs are scratched from running through the woods. She has her canvas bag in one hand and the French Smoker’s gun in the other.

  She’s breathing hard, and then our eyes lock and she gasps. In five seconds a half dozen emotions flash across her face: fear…slight recognition…then confusion…then she really remembers who I am…and her face fills with anger.

  It’s the same anger I saw ten days ago when I last stared at her eye-to-eye, when she knocked out my tooth with her foot. She raises the gun and aims it right at my heart.

  “I hate you, you asshole.”

  “Wait!” I yell.

  The door next to me bursts open just as she pulls the trigger.

  Chapter 38

  Julia Day 11: Sunday

  I pull the trigger and catch the new intruder in the hip and he spins and falls. The paparazzo drops his little glow stick and I see that my bullet hit Levi, the Jamaican guy, and he’s writhing on the floor. I stare at him and then the gun. Did I just do that?

  I look at the paparazzo again and see more than just his face now. He’s dressed up like some Army surplus military soldier with the full-on camouflage getup, including backpack.

  He grabs the gun from my hand, aims it out the window and shoots it six more times in different directions, then runs at me. I think he’s going to hit me but instead he dives headfirst through the opening and vanishes with no noise—just the grass rustles. His face comes back in the open window and he offers his hands.

  “Come on,” he says, gesturing that he’ll help me out.

  I don’t move.

  “I’m good at two things,” he says. “One is taking photos and the other is hiding. Come on.”

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Steven,” he whispers.

  I push my canvas bag farther up on my shoulder and jump up into the open window so he can grab me under the arms and lift me out. He pulls me down onto the ground with him, and now I’m crawling on my belly in a bikini and a jacket. I feel rocks, stones, twigs and branches scratch against my stomach and legs. We crawl two hundred yards and I have no idea where we’re going. I just follow him as closely as I can, his boots and ass inches from my face.

  Behind us, I hear men kicking in the door to the fisherman’s hut. Levi shouts out in pain and voices yell for him to be quiet. I’m glad I didn’t kill him.

  Men walk nearby, close enough for me to hear their whispers. I wonder if one of them is Rolando, which makes my heart beat even harder in my chest. Steven motions for me to lie flat, and I obey. I’m glad we’re in high grass. He rolls onto his back and holds the pistol next to his chest and stares straight up. I watch him for a minute, five minutes, and he does not move. I’m aching—I want to move so badly, but I fight to stay as still as he is.

  The voices fade away, but Steven stays motionless for another five minutes. Finally he rolls on his side and eases up to listen more. There’s gunfire
in the distance. Steven still doesn’t move. I hear more gunfire, but then it stops.

  He gets to his feet and motions for me to follow him. We sneak over behind a thick tree trunk and he gestures for my canvas satchel on my shoulder and I hand it over. He pulls out the swim fins and mask and snorkel and nods. He pulls out my roll of gaffer’s tape and candy bars and nods again. He finds the straw hat and the spy glass and tosses them. He then looks at my feet and examines the oversized men’s shoes I’m wearing. He sniffs a little, but nods. He takes off his pack and jams my satchel of stolen goods inside a hidden compartment at the bottom of his bag.

  Then he touches some small cell phone thing on his hip and clicks it two times, and waits. Nothing happens, so he clicks it again. He doesn’t look happy. He looks at his watch and then whispers close to my ear, “We’re going to move fast. Stay right behind me.”

  I nod and then we’re off, running fast through the grass.

  I stay as close to his heels as I can. I don’t know how he does it, but he ducks every branch, dodges every rock and skirts every ditch, all at full speed. As long as I copy him, I’m fine.

  We run that way for fifteen minutes. I’m dying and I can’t help gasping for air. I hope to God there’s a boat out there somewhere and that Steven is leading us there. Then we can get the police and come back for Trishelle.

  He stops and clicks the device on his hip again and touches his ear as if hoping to hear something through his earbud. He shakes his head, and then keeps running.

  I know we are close to the beach because I can hear the small waves on the rocks and I can see the light of the flashing beacon ahead of us and then to our left as we run past. The island is shaped like a crescent moon, and the beacon is at the tip, so we must be at the top of the island.

  I notice something else—a yellow glow through the trees. Steven sees it too, and when we finally reach the beach, he steps out onto the open sand to see it better. He doesn’t stop me, so I follow him.

  A quarter mile to the north, alongside the next cay, flames rise high out of the water, like someone lit a match. A boat is on fire and the glow lights up the sky like a Hollywood premiere. The boat is so far gone that only a vague shape within the flames tells you what it once was.

  Steven gets his wits back and pulls us into the trees. If he’s worried about the boat, he’s not letting on.

  He sips water from a tube coming out of his pack, and then gestures for me to sip as well, but he doesn’t let me drink too much. He then pulls out a small plastic package, tears off the top and motions for me to eat it.

  I taste it and know what it is immediately; it’s a high-energy food substitute goop, and I slurp it down. I diet with it to lose weight for shoots, and it tastes like chocolate chemical toothpaste. He also eats one, then digs a hole in the sand and buries both plastic containers.

  He pulls the device off his hip and examines it closely. It glows like the front of a smart phone, but it’s something else. He looks at his watch, looks at the sky and then points to his right—inland, away from the beach and back into the trees.

  He nods at me, I nod back and we’re running again but even faster. He’s not giving me any breaks, but I don’t care. I know how serious this is—our escape boat is burnt and gone. I stay close as he moves through the trees and grass.

  Steven slows down and stops. He listens. I can smell the water again and realize we’re farther down the crescent, below the beacon again. In front of us is the beach I could see in the distance from my balcony, and the waters of the Bahama Bank. Cuba is out there somewhere, and even further is Mexico.

  He turns back into the trees and clicks his device again, and I hear from his earbud one click back. He looks down at his device, creeps forward, looks down again, creeps forward and then stops. He snaps the device back on his belt and pushes the grass aside as if he’s trying to find something, then moves another five yards and pushes the grass again. He reveals a shape—a human shape.

  Steven pulls out a weak flashlight with a yellow filter on the front that barely lets light escape and aims it down. It’s a man, dressed in the same army outfit Steven has on, with a backpack, and a pistol resting on his chest just like Steven was doing a few minutes ago. The man is wet with seawater and there’s a rifle lying next to him. Steven’s light reveals that he’s bleeding from a wound in his left thigh.

  His face is grey and I can’t tell if he’s alive or dead—until he opens his eyes.

  “What the fuck took you so long?” he whispers at Steven.

  Chapter 39

  Steven Day 11: Sunday

  “You have to start taking better care of yourself,” I whisper at Carl, and he smiles. I find Carl’s hat and put it on Julia’s head and motion for her to tuck in her hair. Her blonde strands are like a reflective beacon out here in the darkness.

  I empty the French Smoker’s Beretta and put it aside, then take Carl’s loaded Taurus 92 and hand it to Julia. “Shoot at anyone you see.”

  Her eyes widen, but she nods and puts both hands on the weapon and looks out at the darkness and concentrates.

  I take off my backpack, pull out my first aid kit and unroll it. I’m glad I checked it six times on the boat, because I know exactly where everything is. Carl raises his head to look down at his leg, but I gently push his forehead down. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him nervous, and I send as much calm confidence through the palm of my hand as I can.

  “It’s a lot worse than getting shot in the ass,” he says.

  “You’ll be fine. Let me handle it,” I whisper, and he leans his head back.

  I pull on my night vision goggles which provide just enough clarity to work. I pull on sterile gloves, pull out scissors and snip off the top of his pant leg and expose the wound. There’s a small burnt cavity where the bullet went in, and it pulses up a tiny gurgle of blood every time Carl’s heart beats. It’s already weak and rapid. He’s losing blood pressure.

  The bullet didn’t hit the femoral artery, thank God, but it ripped up his muscle and he’s been bleeding awhile. I soak up the excess blood with a wad of sterile gauze and find no exit wound. I need to clean this wound and then wrap it and give him some antibiotics. The bullet was so searing hot when it went in that it’s sterile and deep in his leg. The problem is, the bullet dragged dirt and clothing into the wound along with it. That’s the stuff I have to clean out, otherwise he’ll get an infection and a fever that will cloud his brain so he can’t function. If he goes into shock, I won’t be able to move him at all.

  I wash the outside of the wound first. I grab a bottle of sterile fluid, pour it on and wash away the blood and grime, then wipe around the wound with alcohol. I find the pre-filled syringes of Lidocaine and inject him with two shots on either side of the wound opening.

  I stick a piece of plastic in his mouth and he bites down hard. I stick my index finger into the wound and his eyes roll back as more blood gurgles out.

  Julia then surprises me by putting the pistol down and holding his face in her hands to comfort him. Smart girl, I think, but he doesn’t need comfort right now, he needs to stop bleeding. I motion I want her to put her hands somewhere else—on the pressure point at the top of his leg, right next to his groin. “Push right here, and push hard. It helps slow the bleeding,” I whisper.

  She allows me to place her fingers in just the right spot where his leg meets his groin and she pushes. I stick my finger back in the wound and already there’s less blood.

  If one of Constantinou’s men found us right now it would be over for all of us, but there’s no turning back now. I feel a sharp bone fragment and pull out two femur chips, shaped like tooth picks, then I slip my finger back in and pull out what I really want—a quarter-size burnt piece of dirty denim from his pants. Now I pour alcohol into the wound to really clean it.

  “You can’t pass out yet,” I whisper to him and he nods.

  I stick gauze into the wound, and watch the white material turn red within seconds. He needs sur
gery to sew up blood vessels and suture the deep muscle tissue back together, but if I bandage him up enough we can stop the bleeding. I apply direct pressure.

  “Put on some gloves,” I whisper to Julia. She rips open a bag and puts on a set of sterile doctor gloves and looks at me.

  “In that first pouch, pull out two bags that say ‘Quik Clot.’ Open both and be ready to hand them to me. They’re going in the hole in his leg,” I tell her.

  Julia finds the packages and rips them open. Inside are two small white bean bags full of amazing little beads that are going to stop his bleeding. I take my hand away and pull out the gauze and gobs of coagulated blood. His wound is open and gaping, but it’s not gushing. I take the bean bags and place them gently in the wound and then apply pressure again.

  Minutes pass. Julia looks around. The wind rustles in the trees and waves crash on the Atlantic side. Carl’s breathing is rapid and shallow. He’s lost a lot of blood, which isn’t good. I want to run an IV to get his fluid volume back up, but I may not have time.

  Then I hear voices. They are coming.

  Julia picks up the pistol again and looks out. My eyes stay on Carl. After three minutes of direct pressure I pull my hand away, and the bleeding has stopped. Small victory number one. I have to tape him up next, with just one small roll of medical tape. If he has to move or get wet, that amount of tape won’t hold.

  Instead, I pull out the best tool ever invented by man—the duct tape that Julia stole. I pull a long piece from the roll, which makes a loud enough noise that all three of us wince.

  “Lift his leg,” I whisper to her, and when she does he moans and bites down hard, but it gives me enough space to quickly wrap the tape around his thigh, snug enough so that the pressure stops the bleeding, but not so tight that it’s an artery-killing tourniquet that will cost him his leg. I motion for her to take the knife and cut the roll, and she does.

  “You’re good at this,” I whisper.

  “I played a nurse once on TV,” she mutters back, which makes Carl laugh.