“Back!” Emmei shouted. “All of you back!” He approached the stern alone, looking down into the water. He scratched his head. Took a step back. “We are sinking.”
“That’s pretty much what he just said,” Rowan said, pointing to Mahdi. “Any idea of how long we have?”
Emmei shrugged. “Hours? It will be—”
A grinding noise interrupted. The yacht scraped over coral, the weight of the water flowing inside the ship pulling them off the reef.
“Perhaps less,” Emmei said.
Rowan pointed at Emmei. “Life jackets and emergency gear.” Then to Sashi. “Help him.”
He turned to Mahdi next. “There are trash bags in the galley. Fill them with non-perishable food. Nothing that will be ruined by getting wet. When they’re half full, bunch the top, inflate it like a balloon and tie it off. As much as you can get on deck.”
“We will be missed,” Winston said. “This is a six million dollar yacht. When we don’t return on time, Ambani will send an army to look for it.”
“You mean, look for us,” Talia said.
“If that’s what you want to tell yourself.” Winston shook his head as though he were speaking to a naïve child. “Either way, we won’t have to spend more than twenty-four hours on the island.”
On the island.
The words sank deep into Mahdi’s chest. North Sentinel Island was one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Few people had ever felt its sands beneath their toes and lived to tell about it. And now they had to survive for a day, waiting for a possible rescue.
“Talia,” Rowan said. “You can help me.”
“And what about me, oh fearless leader?” Winston asked.
“You can stay on deck and keep watch with that nine millimeter tucked into your pants.”
Winston grinned and pulled the weapon out. “How’d you know it was a nine mil?”
“Small and less effective,” Rowan said with an honest grin. “It’s what you’re used to.”
Mahdi was surprised when Winston guffawed, and then he was being herded inside the ship by Rowan. “Ten minutes. Then I want everyone back on deck.”
“We might still have several hours,” Emmei said. “Perhaps even into the daytime.”
“We need to be off this boat, on shore, and settled in before the sun rises or everyone on that island will know exactly where we are. Our best chance at survival is to stay hidden until help arrives.”
“And if we can’t?” Sashi asked, squeezing her shaking hands together.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he said, and then the group dispersed, Emmei and Sashi headed toward the bow, and Rowan and Talia going below deck—leaving Mahdi alone in the dining room.
He headed past the saloon and through the door on the far side of the bar, entering the galley, in which he had yet to spend any time. He opened three cabinets before finding trash bags. Then he riffled through the galley cupboards and began removing armfuls of canned goods. Next he went to the fridge and took fresh fruits and vegetables. They were perishable, but would last several days and be unaffected by the water. He filled three bags halfway, blew them full of air, and tied them off as instructed. It will work, he thought. The food will float.
He believed Rowan an odd choice for security. Mahdi had a sordid past, but he was not in charge of keeping people safe. Then again, Rowan wasn’t being used to hurt people. And Mahdi doubted the man would agree to such a thing. He returned to the cupboards, determined to fill at least one more bag.
“Hey.”
Mahdi twisted around and sprawled to the floor, dropping two cans of pineapple juice. One cracked into his shin. The other rolled across the floor and stopped at Winston’s boot.
“Pineapple juice? Don’t tell me you’re planning to open a resort here, too?”
“Sh-shouldn’t you be keeping watch?” Mahdi asked.
“If the locals were going to attack tonight, they’d have done it already.” Winston squatted down, strangely flexible for such a large man. “Here’s the deal. Since you’re kind of on the payroll now, you’re safe. I think Mr. Ambani would like to keep you on in the future. A man of your particular…nationality can be intimidating, if you can learn how to stop acting like such a Nancy.”
Mahdi did not know what a ‘Nancy’ was, but he inferred the term’s meaning.
“The point is, I don’t need to kill you. That’s good news, right?” Winston waited. “Right?”
Mahdi nodded.
“The bad news is that those two—” Winston pointed to the sparkling clean white floor. “—need to die. On the island.”
“But they don’t know enough to—”
“It has nothing to do with what they know,” Winston said. “They came here to die, and honestly, so did you. No one will mourn their deaths, or yours. No one will come kicking down doors, asking questions if they’re never seen again. But their deaths will legitimize the use of deadly force, which may not even be necessary if enough of them handled those coconuts.”
Winston gave Mahdi a pat on his shoulder. “If you hadn’t been such a nosey nelly, the noose would still be around your neck. So, bravo for that, I guess. But now you need to help.”
He held out an automatic switchblade. “All you need to do is push the button, see?” A three inch blade snapped out of the handle, the suddenness of it making Mahdi flinch. “Push the button again, and…” The blade retracted into the handle.
Winston pressed the blade into Mahdi’s hand. “On the off chance their bodies are recovered, it needs to look like a local job. So no bullets. When the time comes, you act, or join the dead.” He pointed at the fourth, partly filled trash bag. “If there isn’t whisky in there when we get to the beach, I’ll kill you first.”
Mahdi sat still and silent. He didn’t know how to respond. Winston’s treachery was so blunt and without remorse. “Good talk,” Winston said, tapping the barrel of his gun against Mahdi’s head. Then he left.
Mahdi looked down at the knife in his hand and shook his head. He couldn’t do it. Running for his life, he could do, but take a life to save his own?
Guilt swam its way up his throat, forming a knot. But he had already done that, hadn’t he? With Winston, on the dinghy. He might not have plunged a knife in the Sentinelese, but if they died from a virus he helped transport to the island, that wasn’t just murder, it was genocide.
Tears filled his eyes as the full weight of what he’d been part of began to gnaw on his soul. I am a killer, he realized, and when he heard footsteps rising from below, he wiped the tears from his eyes and slipped the knife into his pocket.
20
Rowan felt the heft of his rifle, handgun, and the two weapons that belonged to him personally: a five inch Ka-Bar knife and a combat Tomahawk, as well as the black tactical uniform, sans the body armor, he’d changed into. The weapons and gear, along with the box of ammunition Talia carried, added fifty plus pounds to his weight. No way he’d be able to swim with it all, even with a life jacket. And he didn’t expect the others to carry weapons over food, nor did he trust them to.
He stepped into the galley, followed by Talia. The cupboards and fridge had been ransacked. A box of trash bags was on the floor along with discarded open boxes of crackers and chips. Mahdi had apparently completed his job and moved to the deck.
The floor tilted as more water rushed through the unseen hole. A few cans of tomato sauce rolled out of the cabinets and across the floor. The ship’s sinking would be faster than Emmei predicted, the rate of flooding increasing exponentially as the yacht dipped deeper into the water. They might have two hours, or thirty minutes. Either way, they needed to abandon ship ASAP.
He picked up the box of trash bags, wondering if they would be buoyant enough to carry his weapons, and keep them out of the salt water. He doubted it, but there weren’t a lot of other options.
“I’m assuming you know how to use a handgun?” he asked.
“I won’t kill the Sentinelese,�
� Talia said.
“Not even in self-defense?”
“They’re the ones defending themselves. We’re the invaders.”
“Have you considered that maybe the Sentinelese aren’t just another noble tribe, defending their land from gods and devils? Maybe they’re smarter than that, and are just a bunch of violent, rude assholes?”
“Sounds more like Winston,” she said.
He held up the Sig Sauer handgun. “That’s why I want you to take this when we reach the beach.”
“Winston, I could shoot,” she said with a smile, which faded when she realized he wasn’t joking.
“One more question. Will you stop me from defending us?” Rowan needed her on his side. If she wanted him to fight for the crew’s safety using only his balls and a haka dance, he would have no one left to trust.
After a few seconds of deliberation, she shook her head. “Do what you have to. I just can’t.”
“Sometimes not pulling the trigger is a good thing,” he said, and he headed for the door. They moved through the empty saloon, lounge, and dining rooms, emerging onto the now visibly tilted aft deck.
Mahdi and Winston stood waiting, four trash bags blown up like balloons resting at their feet.
“Not a peep out here,” Winston said. “Island’s quiet.”
“Maybe they went to sleep?” Mahdi asked.
“Some of them,” Talia said. “They’re vigilant, so it’s likely some of the warriors sleep in shifts.”
“Then they’ll see us coming?” Mahdi asked.
“Chance we need to take,” Rowan said.
They turned at the sound of footsteps. Sashi and Emmei approached from the port side. Sashi carried five bright orange life preservers looped around one arm, and a medical case in the other. Emmei held a large bundle of folded black material that Rowan instantly recognized as an inflatable raft. In the other hand, he carried a second large med kit.
Rowan pointed to the deflated raft. “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
“Forgot we had it,” Emmei said. “Have never needed it.”
“How big is it?” Mahdi asked.
Emmei shook his head. “Two people. Short range. The plastic oar was missing.”
Rowan sized up what they had, how many people there were and where they had to go. “Lose the life vests.”
“What?” Sashi looked mortified. “Why?”
“Some of us are already going to shine like beacons in the moonlight. Those vests are made to be easily seen.
“We won’t all fit in the raft,” she argued.
“Because none of us are going in the raft.”
“You hired an idiot,” Winston said to Sashi.
There wasn’t time to screw around, so Rowan took the five life jackets from Sashi’s arms and tossed them overboard.
“Hey!” Sashi shouted.
Rowan whirled around in time to see Winston stepping toward him. Stood his ground. “Have any of you made an incursion into enemy territory? Have any of you had to survive behind enemy lines for days, or weeks?”
No one answered. Talia might have done both while living in the forest, but she stayed quiet, letting the weight of his words have their desired effect.
Silence was compliance enough. Rowan looked at Sashi. At her clothes. “Do you own any clothes that aren’t bright enough to melt a blind man’s eyes?”
She frowned and shook her head. He’d seen enough of her hot-colored clothing to know she owned nothing subtle. He nearly made a joke about her being an easy target, but kept it to himself. The last thing he needed to do was scare people more. He needed them functional.
He pointed to the raft. “We’ll load it with weapons and medical supplies. We can cover all that with the black trash bags. They’ll float if they fall in, but let’s try to keep the bright white med kits covered. We’ll swim with the raft as a group. Two hands on the raft at all times, but let’s keep our bodies low in the water. I’ll stay in the back to hide my face.” He turned to Winston, whose skin was equally pale. “You, too. It’s not very far, and if the raft isn’t supporting our full weight, it will carry us all to shore.”
“And when we reach the beach?” Winston asked.
“We dig in.”
“I thought we were going to hide,” Sashi said.
“If we can, but it’s a small island, and we don’t know how many Sentinelese there are. Best case scenario, the boat sinks before sunrise and they assume we’ve left. But if they’re looking for us…”
“They’ll know every inch of the island,” Talia said. “Every tree. Every branch. If something is out of place, they’ll notice.”
“Then we are without hope,” Emmei said, and that right there was the kind of shit-thinking that got people killed. Despair was the soldier’s first and worst enemy. It robbed the will to fight.
Thankfully, Talia had an answer to it. “In 1867, the merchant ship Nineveh wrecked on one of the reefs. The crew and passengers landed on North Sentinel and camped on the beach. They held out for eleven days before being picked up by a Royal Navy rescue party.”
“How many were there?” Emmei asked, and the way he asked made Rowan think he already knew the answer. He wasn’t an anthropologist, but he grew up in a similar tribe on the neighboring Andaman Islands. He would know the island’s history better than most. “How many people?”
Talia deflated a little. “One hundred and six.”
“One hundred six people,” Emmei said. “We are missing another hundred. But do you know how many survived?”
“All of them,” Talia said with a trace of doubt.
“Western history prefers to forget its failings,” Emmei said. “But we on the islands? We do not forget. When the Sentinelese killed, life got harder for the other tribes.”
Rowan couldn’t squelch his curiosity. “How many?”
“Fifty six.”
Shit, Rowan thought, and he tried to keep the shock from his face. The death toll claimed by the Sentinelese was far more vast than he, and the rest of the world, had been led to believe. It seemed a miracle the island’s population hadn’t been wiped out long ago. If not for the protective ring of coral keeping ships at bay, he suspected they would have been. The dire twist on Talia’s hopeful story changed little. They still had to reach the island before daybreak. With as much confidence as he could muster, he unslung the FN SCAR from his shoulder, gave it a pat, and said, “Well, they didn’t have this, and they didn’t have me. So let’s get in the water, while we’re still hard to see.”
The sea was warm, but still cooler than the nighttime air. If not for the possibility of being skewered upon arrival, or eaten by a shark on the way, Rowan would have found the experience pleasant. He held the small raft steady while Talia and Mahdi loaded the weapons, emergency kits, and bags of food. Then he kicked away from the floundering Sea Tiger and waited as the others slipped into the sea one at a time. Mahdi was the least comfortable in the water, dog paddling to the raft and then clinging to it.
When everyone was in the water, holding on to the raft, Rowan said, “Kick slow. We’re not in a rush.”
“Speak for yourself,” Winston said, eyes on the water.
“Sharks are attracted to fast movements,” Emmei said. “Feet look like wounded fish. Slow is good.”
“No splashing,” Rowan said, “and until we’re in a secure location, no talking. If you have to, whisper, and I mean like a mouse fart whisper.”
Everyone nodded. Not a word. Good, Rowan thought, and then he pointed toward the shoreline with two fingers. Their slow progress through the water was both encouraging and agonizing. Rowan had seen battles, but he always knew who his enemies were and he had a good idea of from where they would attack. In the sea, at night, there was no way to know if a twelve-foot tiger shark was just biding its time, five inches from his feet. He found himself jerking his feet forward occasionally, and he heard Winston sighing out curses when their kicking feet touched.
The swim took them fif
teen minutes, and everyone survived intact. Rowan recovered the FN SCAR from the raft and crawled onto the beach, the soft sand sticking to his wet body and clothes. He searched for any sign of the Sentinelese, saw no one, and then inspected the landscape. The sand around him was well traveled, covered with depressions created by Sentinelese feet. That was good. Their fresh footsteps wouldn’t stand out in the loose, dry sand, and the waves would wipe away the depressions left in the wet sand.
A tangle of tall roots caught his attention. They formed a small bunker, sans the sand bags and reinforcements, from which they might be able to establish a defensive position. Assault rifle pressed against his shoulder, finger on the trigger, he stood slowly and made himself a target. When nothing happened, he hurried back to the others.
“There’s a tangle of tree roots near the jungle,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the gently lapping waves. “We’ll be concealed from anyone in the jungle, have clear line of sight down both ends of the beach, and can hide behind the roots if we see anyone coming. Everyone take as much as you can carry, without making noise. We’ll move as a group. I want this done in one trip.”
The supplies were divvied up, including the raft itself. He recovered his knife and tomahawk, and made sure Talia got the handgun and three spare magazines. Then they moved across the beach, and as quietly as possible, they loaded their supplies into the roughly ten-foot-square twist of roots. The trees fed by the long root system swayed high overhead, megalithic sentinels that had probably stood for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Using hand gestures, Rowan got everyone digging and pushing sand against the roots, sealing gaps, and lowering their position. When they finished, he could sit up and have just his head showing.
Not bad, he thought. Now we just need to survive until Rattan Ambani notices his pricey yacht hasn’t returned, and sends help brave enough to evacuate us from the beach.
Sashi stood and adjusted the raft, which lined the bottom of their bunker and held their supplies. She gave it two tugs, stood up straight to inspect her work and brushed the grit from her hands. He was about to whisper a harsh ‘Sit. Down.’ But it was already too late. When Sashi ducked down behind the protective wall of roots, she had an arrow protruding from her right shoulder.
Forbidden Island Page 14
