Talia had been pulled into the sea by a tiger shark and nearly drowned, but not ten seconds after being pulled to safety, she was back on task. The woman was a force of nature.
“I, ahh, I did the haka.”
Talia’s eyes went wide. As an anthropologist with an interest in the world’s tribal traditions, she would know the haka’s origins. Knowing Talia, she probably had the chant memorized. “That…isn’t a bad idea. What made you think of it?”
“They were doing their thing,” he said, “You know…” He wiggled his index and ring fingers. “With their dangly bits.”
“So you responded—”
“How I thought you might,” he said. “It was the best I could come up with.”
“And that’s why you’re…” She pointed a finger at his midsection. He looked down and was immediately consumed by embarrassment.
Rowan reached for his saturated shorts, but Talia caught his wrist. “Not yet.” She turned back to shore where the five men had disembarked and were now dragging the craft into the trees. “What happened when you finished the haka?”
“They left,” he said.
“They just left? Nothing else?”
“The man at the back, with the pole, he pointed out to sea and spoke a single word.” Rowan shrugged. “Then they left.”
“What did he say?”
“Lazlow…Laslome…Lazoaf. Something like that. Can I get dressed now?”
She hadn’t let go of his arm. Looked back at the island. He couldn’t see anyone now, but apparently, she did. “They’re still watching. We can still send them a message.”
“Another haka?” Rowan said.
“Something like that,” she said, standing up.
Rowan looked to the shore, searching for any signs of the Sentinelese. When he turned back to Talia, her bikini top laid on the bench and she was sliding out of her shorts. “What…ahh…”
Talia stepped back and sat on the dinghy’s prow, naked as Rowan. She lifted one leg onto the rail, her invitation unmistakable, to Rowan, or anyone watching from the island. “There are several reports of public sex acts between Sentinelese men and women, performed in front of visitors, on the beach. Those who were not deterred by the chanting or gesturing, lost their nerve upon witnessing the public sex. If we perform the act before they do, they’ll know we’re speaking their language, so to speak.”
“And if I don’t want to?” he asked, feeling hotter despite the whipping rains.
She shrugged. “Maybe nothing. But if you impressed them with the haka, maybe they’ll think you’re less of a man. Who knows. But…you want to.” She pointed as his midsection again, and this time when he looked down, he saw indisputable evidence of his desire.
“So this is just part of the job then?” he asked.
She smiled, almost fiendishly. “Let’s call it a perk.”
He looked to the jungle. Saw nothing. Turned to the Sea Tiger, lost in a haze of rain. Then there was Talia, beautiful, naked, and willing, covered in rivulets of water, blood running down her arm, wild and exotic. He took a deep breath and caught a whiff of something fragrant, like flowery incense. A kind of primal energy came over him, perhaps from performing the haka, or simply from being naked in Talia’s presence. He didn’t know which, but as it increased, he no longer cared. He stepped across the small boat, leaned into Talia and let her envelop him.
13
Mahdi snapped awake. Confusion assaulted his tired mind. Visions of a fading dream danced in his memory, primal and chanting. And then, it was gone.
Where am I?
He sat up in bed, looking for the exit, and when he found it, he squinted at the frame’s small size. Then he felt the world sway around him. His memory returned.
I’m in India...the Sea of Bengal…on a yacht.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
I’m hidden. I’m safe.
The yacht swayed again, and Mahdi’s body compensated for the motion without a hint of nausea. Emmei had told him he would eventually get his sea legs. It was hard to believe while clutching a toilet in a cramped bathroom, which he learned was called ‘the head’ on a boat, but it seemed the captain had been right.
He headed for the door, feeling resilient for the first time since leaving the resort. And then the rest of his memory returned. The manila folder. The photos inside. The contact information. Winston knew everything about him, including how to reach the people who wanted him dead. One phone call, and the chase would begin anew, but this time, in India, Mahdi would have little resources and no friends to call on. If he didn’t follow Winston’s lead, wherever that might take him, his life was forfeit.
He felt ill again as he headed up the stairs. His past would haunt him forever. The questionable alliances of youth were hooked into the meat of his back, dragged along wherever he went, even to this remote island. He knew he couldn’t escape them. Only death could free him. But he had hoped for a respite, a temporary freedom from fear. He’d felt the weight lift for a single day, despite the discomfort of being at sea. But that tenuous ceasefire of nerves had been ended by Winston and Ambani, whose motives he had yet to discern. All he really knew was that he had not been sought out because he was a skilled linguist. He was here because he was desperate, and easy to manipulate. To control. They were the very personality traits that had plummeted his life into chaos.
Hand on the rail, he paused to collect his thoughts, determining to walk the gray tightrope between right and wrong. He would do as Winston asked, so long as it did not pose a threat to the people on this boat. And if the crew was endangered…he would have to revisit his determination. If he didn’t, and his friends-turned-enemies came for him in this place, his fate would be sealed.
The idea of it, of being killed after all this time, gave him a kind of peace, until he considered the beliefs he’d once clung to. Death might not free him from the tortures of life. It might just prolong them, indefinitely.
Infinitely.
He shook his head and continued up the narrow staircase. Now was not the time for a theological debate.
Halfway up the stairs, the sound of a small outboard motor reached his ears. He stepped into the saloon and found it empty. The lounge and dining room were also empty. He squinted at the late day sun beaming through the windows.
The storm had passed. The sun returned. Talia and Rowan were returning. Though he didn’t understand their true purpose here, and now he knew he’d be doing no real work while on this expedition, he couldn’t deny his curiosity had been piqued. The Sentinelese were an intriguing people, free from the emotional sludge of modern life. He envied them. Their freedom. Their lack of inhibition. While the rest of humanity had grown barriers between each other, the Sentinelese still lived as the very first humans had, without shame or religious restrictions.
Perhaps, if I could talk to them, they would allow me to stay?
He smiled at the thought as he walked through the dining room, headed for the aft deck. If there was one place on Earth the men desperate to take his life couldn’t reach him, it was in the jungles of North Sentinel Island.
He patted his chest pocket, felt his sunglasses, and plucked them out. He put them on, happy to have his eyes, and the guilt he was sure they projected, hidden from the others. He stepped into the open-air aft deck and recoiled from the humidity left in the storm’s wake. Then he saw Sashi, Chugy, and Winston, and he knew he had missed something while sleeping.
Winston looked bemused, Sashi uncomfortable, and Chugy was fuming. Emmei’s voice fluttered down from the wheelhouse. The windows were closed, the captain happy in his air conditioning, but his boisterous laugh was still easy to hear. Chugy glared up at her uncle, and then, arms crossed, turned back to the arriving small boat.
Talia, standing in the prow of the dinghy, tossed the tow line onto the deck, and Chugy didn’t make a move for it. Sashi and Winston looked confused by both the flaccid, dead snake of a line and Chugy’s unwillingness to do her job. Though M
ahdi had only seen the boat tied off once before, he bent down to pick up the line and climbed down onto the dive deck.
The small engine idled and then sputtered to a stop. Mahdi pulled the boat in close while Talia reached out to grab the deck and drag them alongside.
“Someone die while we were gone?” Talia asked.
“I was going to ask you the same,” Mahdi said. “I just woke up.”
Talia smiled and shook her head. “We’ve been gone six hours.”
While the Sea Tiger crew seemed off, Talia seemed in a good enough mood. Rowan was smiling, too.
“I was tired,” Mahdi said, and then he glanced back at the others. “Perhaps something happened during the storm? Something to the ship? But that doesn’t explain—”
Emmei’s muffled laughter reverberated from the wheelhouse.
“—that.” Mahdi said.
Talia looked up at the others, whose expressions hadn’t changed. When she made eye contact with Chugy, the young woman looked away, and Mahdi understood. Chugy had been scorned by Talia.
“Shit,” Talia said, voice hushed, and then she turned to Rowan. “They saw.”
Rowan’s smile melted.
Mahdi’s eyebrows rose slowly and out of sync. “Saw?”
“We had a breakthrough,” Talia said. “With the Sentinelese. A conversation of sorts.”
“They spoke to you?”
“Body language mostly,” Talia said.
“And they spoke a single word,” Rowan said. “Lasloaf or something. Hard to recall, though I’m pretty sure it meant ‘get the frik out.’”
“Fascinating,” Mahdi said. Without hearing more of the language, any attempt at translation or general understanding would be impossible. They could have just as easily been saying, ‘How about this storm?’ The Sentinelese language developed without outside influence for sixty thousand years. A question might not sound like a question. A single word could be loaded with context. And that could change with subtle inflections or even the volume at which it was spoken. “But I fail to see how this progress affected—”
“The conversation ended with a ritual of sorts,” Talia said.
Mahdi nodded. The Sentinelese were known for their strange behavior, which to the outside world appeared rude and degenerate. “I understand…but I don’t understand.”
Rowan lifted his rifle case onto the dive deck. “We had sex.”
“You had what?” Mahdi’s fingers went slack on the line.
Talia grunted, holding the sideways boat to the deck on her own. “Little help.”
Mahdi held on to the boat while Rowan moved more gear to the deck. “Sex. On the boat. Where the locals could see us. And apparently, everyone else.”
“There is a history of the Sentinelese performing sex acts on the beach, in front of visitors. I wanted to beat them to it. Let them know we were trying to speak the same language.”
Mahdi couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Talia was unorthodox and brazen. And now she’d roped Rowan into her lurid anthropological mindset. “For all you know, the act of public sex is a declaration of war.”
“As long as they understand it,” Talia said, climbing out of the boat. “That’s a start.”
“Of a war,” Mahdi countered.
“Sex in every culture, from civilized to primitive, is either an act of dominance or of love. We could have just as easily said, ‘we come in peace.’”
“Or,” Rowan said, “‘We like to hump, too.’”
Mahdi laughed despite his discomfort with the subject matter.
“But the conversation at this point, is the important part. These people are under threat from the Indian government. We need to do whatever we can to initiate contact, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.”
“I didn’t think it was uncomfortable,” Rowan said.
“You weren’t sitting on the prow,” Talia joked and took the line from Mahdi, whose face felt hot. She tied the boat off and let it drift away. “I’ll brief the others, and if I need to, I’ll talk to Chugy. Explain why it happened. Might help.”
Talia picked up her gear and climbed aboard.
Rowan clapped Mahdi on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mahdi, you’re not alone. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever done, too.”
Mahdi looked back out at the island. The day was clear. The distant beach empty. A shadow moved beneath the Sea Tiger and Mahdi remembered where he was. He climbed back aboard, and spent the next few hours watching unfolding dramas fit for American TV. Sashi was confounded by their behavior. Chugy was defiant and unwilling to listen, as though she’d had a relationship with Talia. Emmei didn’t help matters by laughing at everything, including his niece’s raw anger. When he could stand no more, Mahdi headed for the silence of the back deck. Sweltering was preferable to melodrama.
As the sun began to set, Winston joined Mahdi on the back deck. He lit a cigarette in silence, power-smoked it, and then flicked the butt into the sea. “Let’s go.” He tapped Mahdi’s arm and nodded his head toward the door. “I want you to back me up, even if the others disagree.”
“What are you going to propose?”
Winston glanced back. “Nothing you’re going to like.”
Goosebumps rose on Mahdi’s arms as he followed Winston back into the cool dining room. Sashi, Rowan, Talia, and Emmei were seated at the table, snacking. Chugy was nowhere to be seen.
“I would like to get some night shots of the island,” Winston blurted out. “I think we should spend the night.”
“You’d have to know how to work that camera to get night shots,” Rowan said.
Winston chuckled. “You think because the red light isn’t on that I’m not recording? We both know that people are less inhibited when they think the camera is off.” He smiled at Talia, who returned his gaze with poison darts from her eyes. “What do you think, Mahdi?”
“I, uh…”
Talia stepped forward, arms crossed. “Well, as much as I loathe to agree with a pig, you know, because I’m Jewish and all, I think staying overnight is a good idea. Given the minimal activity we’ve observed during the day, it’s possible they’re living a more nocturnal lifestyle. Unlike people in other parts of the world, there are no nighttime predators to worry about on the island.”
“I agree,” Mahdi managed to say.
“Great,” Talia said, standing from the table. “I’m going to sleep. Wake me at midnight, or earlier if any activity is spotted.”
Rowan stood next. “I’m going to do the same…in a separate bed…just so we’re clear.”
“They don’t care,” Talia said, disappearing below decks. Rowan followed a little sheepishly.
Mahdi wasn’t sure about that. Chugy had made it clear that she cared. And while Mahdi believed Rowan, that they were going to sleep before a long night, he hoped the day’s drama had come to an end. When Rowan closed the door behind him, he knew that it hadn’t.
“Well, that’s convenient,” Winston said, and then to Emmei, “You brought the coconuts?”
“They are stowed with the life preservers,” Emmei said.
“And the spray?” Winston asked.
Sashi opened a bag that lay on the floor by her feet. She pulled out a spray bottle that appeared to be some kind of Indian disinfectant.
“You are all…?” Mahdi was aghast that Winston had somehow convinced Sashi and Emmei to help him as well. But it wasn’t Winston pulling the strings. Not really. It was Mr. Ambani, the resort tycoon. “What is in the bottle?”
“Take it.” Sashi slid the bottle across the table. “Just do what you are told, like the rest of us, and everything will be fine.”
Mahdi read between Sashi’s words. She was telling him to comply, but also revealing that like him, she was being coerced, as was Emmei.
Winston headed for the door. “Mahdi, bring the spray. Emmei, fetch the coconuts. We’ll go as soon as it’s dark.”
Mahdi chased after him and then remembered the spray. He ran back, pluck
ed it from the table, and followed Winston back onto the aft deck. “Where are we going?”
“Perfect night for a beach visit, don’t you think?” Winston stood on the dive deck, pulling in the dinghy. “Don’t worry, I’ll row.”
14
“I have eyes on the party,” Corporal Rowan Baer said, peering through a pair of PVS-15 night vision goggles, allowing him to view the nighttime scene in hues of green. “One klick south of my position. Looks like a warehouse. Lots of movement. Over.”
“Copy that, Starsky” came the crackling voice. “The Chief says there are friendly operators in the area. Please confirm party guests.”
What I just did, Rowan thought.
His partner, Army Specialist Kyle Mohr, was shaking his head. “Next they’ll have us taking classes so we can learn the difference between a clip and a magazine.”
Rowan gave his M107 Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle a pat. “Everyone knows we use clips.”
Rowan toggled his throat mic. “Copy that. Confirming.” He turned to a tap on his arm, took the brushed metal flask, and drank his fill of liquid courage. He had performed this task before, this dirty business of condemning men, women, and sometimes children, to death. He was good at his job, not only because he could infiltrate enemy lines, survive in the wild for weeks on end, and make it back out without anyone being the wiser, but because when it came time to pull the trigger, or in this case, aim a laser, he didn’t hesitate.
That didn’t make it easy. He wasn’t a sociopath. He knew his actions got innocent people killed. Collateral damage was part of what it took to dismantle groups like the Taliban and ISIS, so he accepted the weight of it on his soul. The alcohol lightened the burden, for him and for Mohr.
After one last swig, he looked through the scrub brush concealing the sniper team. The magnified warehouse buzzed with green-hued activity. Men carried cases from the open doors to the back of black vans. It sure as hell looked suspicious. If those cases contained RPGs, AK-47s, or IED-making materials, they could do a hell of a lot of damage.
Forbidden Island Page 10
