by Gregg Loomis
Now here were these men, just as dark, just as grim, and just as big and muscular, who wanted Charlie to fly them over to Grand Turk in the charter service’s aging Piper Aztec just as soon as they had recovered their baggage from the airport’s sole carousel.
Odd. Their only luggage appeared to be one briefcase apiece, leather attache cases that could easily have been carried on board. Why check such little luggage? Hard question, unless maybe there was something in the cases they didn’t want scanned by security before the boarding gates. What would somebody bring here like that?
Willie said his customers carried only briefcases, too, ones they never relinquished once they took them from the baggage claim. Strange, too, that they were willing to pay to charter the Aztec, because Turks and Caicos Air had a flight to Grand Turk that left in a little over an hour. The Twin Otter, a ten-passenger job, was a lot roomier than the Aztec, but Charlie guessed they were in a hurry, something no native ever was.
In these islands, people in a hurry usually got angry when things didn’t move fast enough for them, and these men looked like they were angry about something the minute they got off the international flight and walked into the charter office. Charlie wasn’t sure what, but they spoke back and forth between themselves in a language he had never heard before, one that seemed as angry as they did.
Another thing they had in common with those others, the ones Willie had taken to North Caicos: although they wore golf shirts and jeans like any visitor to the islands might, all the clothes were new. Wherever they had come from, apparently they didn’t wear golf shirts and jeans.
Of course, wanting to go to Grand Turk explained a lot, Charlie guessed. Most people who went to Grand Turk weren’t going for fun. That might explain why they carried only the briefcases.
Well, it wasn’t any of Charlie’s business. They paid him in cash, crisp new dollar bills. Providenciales and Grand Turk were only about seventy miles apart, a distance even the old Aztec could cover in a half an hour, including climb-out. In thirty minutes or so, he’d be on the ground, waiting to take his big, unhappy passengers back.
At the same time seventy miles away, Jason was rubbing eyes he had fought to keep open all night. If he was being held here for interrogation about the fire on North Caicos, no one seemed in a hurry to ask the first question. The only official he had seen had been the white-haired old man who had brought him supper and now stood outside his cell with breakfast. As though serving an animal, the old man stooped without a word and slid a steaming bowl under the bars of the door. If last night was the standard, he would return to collect the empty cheap plastic container and fork in a few minutes.
Jason was more interested in the ring of keys jingling on the jailer’s belt than in the meal he had brought.
From the bones sticking out of the steaming dish, Jason guessed he was getting another serving of bonefish and grits, a strong-smelling yet bland native dish. It was a meal to be eaten carefully and slowly. Swallowed, one of the sharp bones would likely puncture something vital on the way down the throat.
The thought gave Jason an idea.
Cautiously probing the grits with the fork, Jason extracted a four-or five-inch section of bone with a wickedly sharp point at one end. He finished his meal and listened to the conversations shouted between cells. He was unable to understand most of the words, either because of dialect or because they were in the Spanish of the Dominican Republic, or in Creole, the combination of French and African peculiar to Haiti, both less than a hundred miles away.
***
At fifteen hundred feet, Grand Turk was visible from ten miles out. Charlie squinted into the morning’s haze for the airport. Constructed as a part of the Atlantic Range recovery station during the early days of the United States’ space program, the runway was unusually wide, built to accommodate cargo aircraft, a broad black asphalt belt across the island’s southern tip.
“Got the field,” Charlie said into his headset, noting that he was the only aircraft on the frequency this morning. “We’re out at fifteen hundred.”
With the prevailing if fitful southeast breezes, the landing clearance that came back almost immediately was no surprise. “Cleared to land runway niner, wind light and variable, one-two-oh to one-four-oh, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight.”
He and his passengers would be on the ground in a few minutes. If he was lucky, Charlie would have time to go over to the TCA office and see how his application was coming along. Flying for the charter service beat fishing for a living, but the airline paid a lot better.
The seals in the windows and doors of the Aztec were worn, making Charlie raise his voice to a near yell to be heard over the engines and airstream as he asked the man next to him, “How long you reckon you’ll be ‘fore you wants to go back?”
His question provoked a chilly stare from eyes like brown ice. “You’ve been paid enough to wait.”
Chapter Seventeen
Grand Turk
The jailer reached an arm through the bars to accept the plastic bowl Jason was handing to him. The bowl clattered to the floor as Jason moved with the speed of a striking snake. In a single movement, the old man was snatched up against the bars and the daggerlike point of the fish bone pressed against his throat.
“Nice and easy,” Jason said calmly. “You take those keys off your belt and unlock the door. Do like I say and you don’t get hurt.”
The men in the cell opposite Jason’s saw what was happening and began to shout. Although he couldn’t understand the words, Jason guessed they were clamoring for their freedom, too. It wouldn’t take many minutes before someone came to investigate the disturbance. The jailer was fumbling with the ring of keys.
Jason pressed the bone harder against the man’s throat. “I got nothing to loose, mon. Somebody come before you get this door open, you die.”
Either the threat was effective or the old man had already found the right key. The door swung open with Jason still holding his captive through it. He let go of the arm long enough to snatch the key ring. He shoved his former jailer into the cell and slammed the door shut before turning the key. He was gratified to hear the lock’s bolt click into place.
Jason tossed the key ring into an adjacent cell as he sprinted down the hall. He could hear other cell doors opening amid excited voices. The escapees wouldn’t get far, not on a twenty-five-square-mile island, but they would provide the distraction Jason needed.
At the end of the cell block was a steel door. Jason shoved but it didn’t move. It was locked from the other side.
Curious, Charlie watched his passengers carry the attache cases into the sole taxi parked outside the one-room terminal. He was almost certain he had heard the one who spoke English ask to be taken to the jail.
Surely not.
He shrugged. None of his business. He looked at his watch. There was nowhere on the island that would be more than ten minutes away by cab. Figuring in, say, ten minutes for his passengers to go wherever they had business, another ten to do that business and another ten to return, he had at least a half an hour to spend at the TCA office, trying to get his application moved to the top of the pile.
For some reason, he was thinking about those briefcases as he crossed the street. Maybe they had business papers in the little cases and were planning on flying back to Miami that day. Except the Delta flight on which they had arrived was the only departure today, now long gone.
He shrugged. Mon wants not to carry fresh clothes in this heat, that be his problem, not Charlie’s.
Jason turned from the locked door and dashed back down the cell block behind the last group of prisoners to escape their cells. He stopped long enough to snatch a thin mattress from a cot before joining the rush to the prison yard.
Outside, the dozen or so prisoners overpowered two guards. As a leaderless mob, they seemed unclear as to what to do next. With a few quick steps, Jason was at the base of the wall. Grabbing the mattress by one end, he swung it up and across the t
op of the glass-encrusted stone. Taking a few paces back, he got a running start and jumped, his fingers digging for purchase but finding none.
He slid back to the dusty yard and tried again just as truncheon-swinging reinforcements surged out of the jail and began clubbing the unfortunates within reach. As Jason made his second attempt, six or seven prisoners were beginning what looked like some sort of organized resistance.
This time Jason got high enough to hang one arm across the mattress and get a grip on the rough stone on the outside of the wall. With his feet scrabbling against the rocky surface, he managed to propel himself upward and over, dropping onto the ground below with an impact that buckled his knees.
He stood, turned, and looked straight into the shock-widened eyes of a woman carrying a huge bowl of mangoes on her head.
He nodded politely. “Mornin’, ma’am.” Then he bolted for the police station in front of the jail.
It was unlikely, he reasoned, that the police would anticipate his return after escaping. The emptiness of the building verified his assumption. It took him less than a minute to empty several open lockers in the room with a coffee machine and two worn Naugahyde couches. As he had hoped, neither of the two officers who had taken his money belt had trusted the other enough to allow its removal from where it was hidden under a pile of odoriferous laundry. A quick glance satisfied him that most, if not all, the bills were still there. More important, so was his passport.
Now he was good to go. The question was, where?
From the sounds coming from the prison yard, there wasn’t a lot of time before the would-be escapees’ resistance collapsed and the police on duty returned.
As calmly as he could manage in shoes with no laces, he sauntered outside, hands in his pockets to support beltless trousers, and merged with the foot traffic. He could easily walk to the airport; it was less than a mile away.
He had gone one, perhaps two blocks when the squeal of rubber against asphalt split the air. He turned just in time to see four men spilling out of an eighties-model Lincoln on which a faded taxi was still legible. Jason’s attention was not drawn to the passengers themselves as much as the briefcase each was opening. He didn’t have to look twice to recognize the collapsible-stock Uzis. It was the same gun, carried the same way, as the Secret Service’s presidential detail.
He had hoped to get the hell out of Dodge before Eco’s disciples, Eglov or others, arrived for their revenge. A few more minutes and he would have made it.
Jason ducked into an alley along the back of Front Street, trusting the shade to make him difficult to see by the gunmen standing in brilliant tropical sunlight. He never knew if the theory worked. A string of shots showered him with concrete fragments as they dug into a wall above him.
He tried to pull his head into his chest like a turtle into its shell. In these narrow confines, the ricochets and cement chips could be deadly.
There was screaming from behind him, a terrified woman in shock, mixed with shouts in Russian that were getting closer.
The alley was only a couple of blocks long, ending in an open park just off the beach where Jason would have no cover at all.
Desperation made a decision for him.
He snatched at a door leading into one of the buildings, finding it locked. He had better luck with the second, pulling it open only wide enough to slip inside and locking it behind him.
He was in a well-lit, air-conditioned corridor lined with offices. In those with the doors open, Jason could see guayabera-clad solicitors and consultants advising clients or speaking softly on telephones as they conducted the financial affairs of those who did business where income and property taxes were only nightmares. From the voices he heard, both blacks and whites had spent time in England. There wasn’t a native accent among them. A couple of heads came up with curious stares. Jason made himself walk slowly and calmly, as though looking for someone in particular.
“Can I help you, sir?” a well-dressed native woman asked in Oxfordian tones. “Is there someone you wish to see?”
Jason tried to push his pursuers from his mind long enough to remember the name of the Irish-born solicitor who had handled the purchase of the property on North Caicos. “O’Dooly, Seamus O’Dooly. Is he in?”
One eyebrow twitched in what might have been annoyance. “I believe Mr. O’Dooly has his offices next door.”
Jason gave her the best imitation of embarrassment he could manage as he headed toward the front of the building. “Thanks.”
He stood in the reception area for a moment, trying to see past the four or five people plastered to the plate-glass window that looked out onto Front Street and the beach.
“What’s going on?”
“A shooting,” someone said without turning around. “Some idiots just started firing guns in the middle of the street and looks like someone’s hurt.”
Edging closer, Jason saw ten or so people gathered in the middle of the street. Behind them, its doors still open, was the Lincoln. The gunmen were nowhere to be seen, no doubt checking each door off the alley behind him.
Soon enough they would come around front to check on those they couldn’t enter. Jason didn’t intend to wait.
With purposeful steps he strode into heat made all the more intense from his brief exposure to air-conditioning. He hardly noticed that his shirt was instantly sweat-plastered to his back. He kept his face away from the buildings and alley, fighting the urge to look around for men with guns. He gave only a cursory glance at the crowd gathered in the middle of the street. Shielded from view by the morbidly curious, a woman was wailing. From the few words Jason heard, her child had caught a stray bullet.
He should, he supposed, have felt some degree of guilt. Had he not been here, there would have been no blameless victim. The child lying on the pavement had been no more deserving of that bullet than Laurin had been of a hijacked airliner. His well of remorse was long dry.
Besides, he did not have the luxury of debating hypothetical fault. If he didn’t make the right moves, any guilt he might bear would become academic.
The Lincoln was empty, its doors open and the engine running. Jason cast a thankful glance skyward. As usual, luck was going to play a stronger hand than skill. No one noticed as he shut all but the driver’s door and climbed in behind the wheel. The interior stank of stale tobacco smoke, the headliner had long ago been replaced with some sort of ragged and gaily colored cloth, and the seat’s loose spring was trying to castrate him.
Whatever amenities the car lacked were more than compensated for by the opportunity. At the moment, he would gladly have settled for a garbage truck.
As he slipped the balky gear into drive and eased away from the center of town, he could hear a siren. He crossed his fingers that the ambulance from the island’s only medical facility got there in time.
He might be fresh out of guilt but he had a full tank of hope.
In minutes, the stubby control tower was visible above the low brush along the road. Jason pulled into one of the three parking places outside the small cement-block passenger terminal. The absence of other cars told him no arrivals were imminent. Getting out of the Lincoln, he walked past the terminal and onto the tarmac of the general aviation area, that part of the airport reserved for private aircraft.
Under the shade of the only tree nearby he recognized a familiar face and walked over to where a young native in a white shirt and dark, well-pressed pants was sipping the last swallow from a drink can.
Jason extended a hand. “Charlie, how you doin’, mon?”
Charlie looked up with a smile showing perfect, brilliant white teeth. “Doin’ fine, Jason.” He shook the hand briefly. “Sorry t’ hear ‘bout that fire over to yo’ place, though. Folks say you gonna leave.”
In these latitudes, custom required polite conversation before coming to the point. Jason opted for brevity instead. “Charlie, some men are after me. There’s already been some shooting in town.”
Charlie’s s
mile was replaced by confusion. “Mens? Mebbe four big guys, carryin’ briefcases?”
“Those are the ones, yeah. I-”
“But dey can’t,” Charlie protested. “I mean, can’ nobody bring guns into the Turks ‘n’ Caicos, not ‘less you gots a permit.”
Jason just stared, thinking of the collection of firearms that had gone up with his house, weapons that had sailed through local customs when accompanied by a liberal “gift” for the inspector. Charlie, like anyone else who lived here, knew full well that a few dollars placed in well-connected hands bought the right to do just about anything.
Capitalism was alive and well in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Charlie turned his head to look down the road toward town. “That noise I heard…”
“Gunfire, shots aimed at me.”
What Jason was about to ask suddenly dawned. “Listen, Jason, I got me a charter, gotta wait on ‘em to come back. They kill me, I go off an’ leaves ‘em.”
Jason pulled his shirt out of his pants and dug into the money belt. He slowly counted out ten one-hundred- dollar bills. “Tell you what, Charlie: you go back to the terminal, buy yourself another cold drink, take your time. You hear a departure, you just finish refreshing yourself there in that nice air-conditioned terminal. You come out, your plane’s gone… well, you walk-don’t run, walk-over to the police and report it.”
Charlie’s eyes flicked between the money and the Aztec parked fifty or so yards away. The door was open in the vain hope of a breeze to cool the interior. “Jason, I can’t…”
“Can’t what, Charlie? You know how many planes were stolen in the Caribbean last year, snatched just to make a single dope run, then abandoned? Hell, look how many old dope wrecks you see in the water ‘tween here and Provo! Your plane gets stolen and it’s unfortunate but not even unusual.”
“But in the daylight, right here at Grand Turk?”
Jason began to slowly fold the bills up as though to return them to the money belt. “I’d thought theft was the reason the man who owns your charter service paid for insurance. But that’s okay, Charlie. I understand you can’t take a risk to save my life from those men with guns. I understand…”
