“I was on the roads coming here; we don’t want to do roads. Take the plane.”
“Wind crashed it on takeoff. Into the mountain after the pilot dropped us with the two Tontons.”
I say, “Any road we take, we’re in the Rebelyon. And the Gryphon’s on our heels.”
Anne locates the castle on the map. “Idamante’s fightin’ to the north of us, just down the hill from Pétion-Ville. If we can make it to the south coast at Marigot, we drive the coast road west and grab the first boat that’ll sail.” Anne points at an island near the southwestern tip of the country. “We take that boat to here, just before the open ocean that leads to Jamaica, the big island in Ferret Bay. It’s a deep-water harbor, protected, a hurricane hole Henry Morgan used. I’ve used it. Big boats will be there, boats we can take to the Pedro Bank.”
Susie shakes her head. “Won’t work. A Cat 3 or worse would’ve wrecked every boat on the south coast that didn’t run. We’ll be on that road naked to the rebels and the Gryphon.”
Anne thinks about it. “A plane would be better.”
Susie says, “Have to be a seaplane. And the pilot would have to be insane.”
“Kayak Jim Jordan.”
Both women look at me.
“Rum Cay. Hotel Boblo. You know him, Susie.”
Susie laughs. “Jim Jordan’s crazy, that’s a fact.”
“He flew me to Cuba looking for you. You found a sat phone in this castle, right? That’s how you called the Gryphon. We call Kayak Jim, you offer him money and naked pictures for his bar, he flies down behind the hurricane. Piece of cake.”
Both women laugh.
“No shit, I mean it.”
Susie and Anne stare at each other, shrug, and Susie says, “Can’t hurt.” She pulls a sat phone from a bag on the floor. “Probably won’t work again until the storm passes.”
I try. The phone is live but has no signal. “Plan B?”
Anne gathers her gear. “Don’t be here when the Gryphon arrives.”
I step between her and the door to suicide. “Ease up a minute. There’s a hurricane out there. I know we’re not going out in that. And I know we’re not walking into the mountains. And I know the Gryphon is coming. So, ah, if you’re packing to leave, which one of you has our gassed-up magic Cadillac in her pocket?”
Susie jingles car keys. “The car the Tontons carjacked from the airstrip manager. We wedged it in under the castle for a rainy day.”
Anne points toward the stairs. “Best be movin’. Every minute we’re not here after the storm passes is another minute ahead of the Gryphon. Call your Kayak Jim from the car. If we reach him, he’s our way off the island. If not—”
“We do something else.” Susie pats her AK-47, reaches for the door, looks us both over, and adds, “Piccard’s dead. We’re gonna win. It’s our turn.”
I press up from the table to stand but can’t feel it on my hands; can’t feel my arm . . . cold all over . . . can’t see very well. At all—
Chapter 32
Bill Owens
Evergreen freshener? Blink . . . awake? Engine running in a parked car—back seat . . . I’m looking past a head at . . . ocean? Susie’s head?
Wooden boats are piled on a beach. Beat-to-shit black people. Oh shit, police. With AKs. Susie’s in the driver’s seat. I ask the back of her neck, “Where are we?”
“Get down.” Susie’s hand has a cocked pistol in it and reaches over the seat to push me lower. “Be cool. We’re a half mile above Marigot. Anne’s talking to the police.”
“What happened?”
“You passed out at the castle. We thought you were dead; let you sleep. When Lana cleared, we loaded you in the car and took backroads to the 101. The mountains were wicked, almost wet my pants twice.” Susie checks the rearview mirror. “Lana’s finished with Haiti; looks like she veered north toward Cuba. We’ve got an alley to Jamaica. Been trying Kayak Jim. No luck.”
“Gimme the sat phone.”
She drops it into the back seat. I wipe sweat out of my eyes and dial. Kayak Jim answers on the second ring, like he’s been waiting all his life for a call. “Hello? Hello?”
“Jim, this is Jon Eig. You remember—”
“Which one?”
“The one with Anne Bonny and Susie Devereux topless on my lap. We need a fourth to share the Capone gold.”
“That’d be a party.”
“Not kidding. We need a ride. Three of us and 1,650 pounds of gold. You told me to call when I found it.”
Static. Silence. Static. “Say again.”
“Hold on, Susie Devereux wants to talk to you.” I push the phone up over the seat to her behind the wheel. Susie switches hands with her pistol, grabs the phone, and holds the phone out so I can hear.
“How are you, Jim Jordan. Long time.”
“Susie? You’re alive?”
“Wearing a strapless prom dress. Anne and I need a ride to the dance. Are you interested?”
“Anne Bonny?”
“Herself.”
Static. Silence. Different tone. “How bad is it?”
“Backside of a hurricane in the Corazón Santo. Civil war. The Gryphon. I’d say a long par five.”
“Jesus. You found the gold?”
“We did. Bill did. You know him as Jon Eig.”
“So I heard.”
“So, Mr. Jim? Are you flying or not?”
“What would a flight like that pay? Into a civil war?”
“Naked pictures for your bar and one million in gold.”
Silence. Static. “Make it two.”
“That would be pictures or million?”
“Both.”
“Done. Marigot, Haiti. There’s a false bay a mile after the 101 turns west along the coast. Bring shovels.”
“The Gryphon really in this?”
“He is.”
“Wow. He’s real, huh? That’s, ah, genuinely awful. How close?”
“Don’t know. The hurricane was hard on him, but likely not hard enough.”
“CNN says the fighting’s heavy in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien. Where are we going from Marigot?”
“Not far. Hurricane’s already past us. I’m sure there’s civil war at Jacmel, but we’re well east of there, and the road between us and there is gone. Plane will need enough gas, at the very least to Jamaica. How long till you can be in the bay?”
“Three, maybe four hours if I can fly straight across the Inaguas. Won’t know that till I’m in the air. Not exactly calm out there.”
“That’s why the heroes call it adventure. When you’re close, call this number. If we don’t answer or you don’t see Herself and her red hair waving from the beach, don’t put down.”
“Roger that. Tell your boyfriend I’m impressed.”
Before I can inflate my chest, Anne pops the passenger door, squats so she can see us but doesn’t look at us or get in. Her arm’s still duct-taped to her chest; red hair pouring out the back of her bandanna. “This constable blocking the road—”
Susie’s .45 goes click, click in the front seat.
Anne continues, “Gave him twenty US. He’s passin’ us up to his captain at the next checkpoint; says the shoreline’s bad-awful. Most of the road’s out between there and Jacmel, like we hoped.”
Susie nods. “Poor people and waterfront are never a pretty picture after one of these. At least nobody can come east at us from Jacmel.” Her empty hand taps near Anne’s duct-taped arm. “We got the plane. Inbound in three to four hours.”
Anne cranes her head inside the window. “For true?”
From behind the seat, I say, “Put a man on the job, things happen.”
“And a fine, fine man ya are, William. I take back everything Susie ever said about your gender.” Anne shuts the door and walks back toward the checkpoi
nt.
Susie says, “Get ready. No telling what this next checkpoint will be. Or how Herself will handle it. She’s hurt worse than you think.”
I cock my pistol as she slow-rolls our car forward and narrates what I can’t see, four minutes of slow-roll, mudslide, snapped-tree narration and we stop.
Susie’s voice ramps: “Anne’s at the checkpoint, fifty feet up, talking to the top cop. He’s pointing at our car, haggling. Three more cops now, looking Anne up and down. If I have to get out, I’ll start yelling, draw them away, then you get out, shoot whoever isn’t with the program.”
Loud voices, but not Anne’s.
Susie says, “Anne just waved. Better sit up; hide your .45.”
I slide my hand and the .45 under my shirt. The outskirts of Marigot look like a logging camp hit by a tornado. The mountains must’ve channeled the wind into some kind of super funnel. What’s still here is mostly wood pulp and mud.
Susie rolls us through minimal road debris and nine standing survivors on the roadside, teenage boys and grown men still dazed an hour after the storm passed.
Anne is stepping back from the roadblock and four armed men. She stops, plants her feet apart under the long legs and boat shorts, chin up, head back, a cocked pistol belted in the small of her back. She raps the passenger-side front fender as we arrive.
Susie stops the car. Anne steps to the passenger window, doesn’t look in, and ice-cold, says, “Don’t . . . think . . . so. Turn around; I’ll walk back to the roadblock, keep ’em busy.”
Susie says, “And then what?”
“Turn around.”
Susie says, “Bill, pass an AK up here.”
I slide one of two over the seat, grab the other one, and drop the safety. Susie lays hers across her lap, and tells Anne, “Not leaving you here. Get in the car.”
Two of the four policemen shout something in Kreyol. Anne slowly raises the one hand she can. Susie kills the engine, says, “Game time.” She jumps out and shoulders her AK at the four cops.
I pop the door on Anne’s side, jump out with my AK. The ‘cops’ have shirts and hats, but the wrong pants and their gun belts don’t fit.
Anne draws the pistol from her back and says, “Gentlemen, we’re tourists goin’ to the beach. Where we’re not goin’ is to be ‘searched’ or ‘interrogated.’ If ya have any further inclination toward either, I suggest ya draw your weapons and defend yourselves.”
All four ‘cops’ back away.
Susie shouts “Not you” at the nearest man. “Come here.”
He walks thirty feet and stops.
Susie says, “Food, water, and a roof. We have money. Not looking for trouble. Not looking for boyfriends either.”
The man points west, to his left, around a blind corner.
Anne says, “Drop your gun. Have a seat on the hood. We’ll kill ya first if your restaurant friends can’t remember what business they’re in.”
***
Two hours. Humid. The flies are returning. We wait nervous in the scoured rocks and destruction at Marigot’s false bay, eyes on the sky for our exit visas; eyes on the road for the Gryphon. He’ll have to search the castle; probably already there. I have an AK on my lap. Anne has her pistol in hand and is unwilling to discuss her injuries. She passed out once we were set up but is now awake and wants to talk clues.
Susie has our host at the restaurant’s entrance gate, his back to us, her AK pointed at him and the only way in. The Gryphon has had three hours to arrive at the castle, then “guess” that we took the only route south that was open. Essentially, we’re trapped. I’m semi-surprised he isn’t already here.
Anne taps Eddie O’Hare’s last two clues. “Bird Cay is thirty-five acres.”
“Yep, lot of sand. Gotta hope the ‘shade’ we can ‘trust’ is the shade of the tree. The shade is the map’s base point.”
Anne nods cautious.
I reread Eddie’s last verse out loud for her:
Soldiers, slaves and sailors,
all have drowned under the weight,
the end is the end,
circles the friend,
and like all thieves, death is your fate.
Anne says, “Drowned under the weight of what? The gold?”
“Lemme think about it. Anything else ring a bell? ‘The end, circles the friend’?”
Anne shakes her head.
“Okay. Do we at least agree that we have to dig?”
Anne nods. “If the gold’s there, we have to dig.”
“Is there anything else on that island that’s focal other than the one tree?”
“Nothing focal. Just crabs, birds, their eggs, and guano.”
“Good. Anything different from the 1930s, when Eddie would’ve been there?”
Anne thinks about it. “Wasn’t a designated sanctuary back then.”
“Would the queen-conch fishermen from Jamaica have been using it?”
“Could. Would for certain if the fishing elsewhere had played out. Daytime only. None would lie up there at night.”
“So Eddie and Remi and whoever helped them bury 1,650 pounds of gold probably did it at night?”
Anne shakes her head. “Could’ve been months, day or night, when no one was out there.”
“And all of the diggers except Eddie O’Hare would’ve died there? Before he wrote his clue?”
Anne nods. “If Eddie O’Hare could drive a boat.”
***
Our sat phone rings. Susie jams it to her ear. “Jim?”
She listens, circles her finger at Anne and me, then stands with some difficulty and tells the phone: “You’ll have to land in close; no boats left on the coast to ferry us out. We’ll wade out to you, but we’re in no shape to swim.”
Anne says, “Tell him not to make a pass. Come straight in, one time, and out.”
Susie repeats Anne’s instructions, listens, says “Ten-four,” then buttons off. “Biggest plane Jim could get can fly two thousand pounds total. The three of us probably weigh four fifty; he’s one sixty. Then there’s the extra gas.”
I scan the sky for the plane, then the road back to the castle. “Out of here’s the priority.”
Susie pats her AK. “Not stupid, Mr. Bill.” She grabs her bottle of Barbancourt, turns to Anne. “Are we ready, Anne Cormac Bonny?”
Our host ‘cop’ jerks around to look. Anne waves him to her with her pistol, then points to a small pile of bills on the rock next to where she sits. “This money’s yours.” Anne aims her pistol at his chest. “So’s this if you make me come back.”
He nods. “Anne Bonny?”
“Aye. I bring Rebelyon back, not Idamante. We leave here to liberate Port-au-Prince. Take your money. Sit down till we fly away. Tomorrow, Ayiti is free.”
A nervous hand grabs the money. He retreats to sit the farthest rock from her.
An engine drones above us somewhere in the bay. We scramble down the rocks to the water.
Thirty feet off the beach, a white seaplane half circles, dips a wing, and splash-lands between the long, low waves. The engines steady, spraying green ocean in three directions.
Susie, Anne, and I wade out in a line, AKs over our heads, me backward, facing the beach and the small crowd watching.
A grinning Kayak Jim Jordan pulls Anne aboard, says, “Welcome. Welcome,” reaches past to pull Susie up and in, then jumps back into the pilot seat.
Susie and Anne pull me in.
Both engines rev into roar and we bounce forward on the waves. Jim shouts, “Hold on tight. Water’s gonna be rough.”
The plane bounces ocean, twists, dips, and we’re airborne with the door still open. Anne, Susie, and I are on the floor between the seats and shovels, grinning like Christmas.
I made it out of Haiti.
We steep-climb the dead air a
nd make two thousand feet as we pass Jacmel. Below us, the Rebelyon fighting looks like newsreels of Vietnam. Kayak Jim banks away from the fires and smoke and shouts: “Where to?”
Anne crawls up to the copilot seat, bandanna in her only free hand wiping her face and pushing red hair behind her neck. “Pedro Bank. Bird Cay. You know it?”
Jim does a thumbs-up. He looks at her, then his gauges, then her again. “No shit . . . Anne Bonny?”
“Aye. Pleased to meet ya.”
Kayak Jim looks like a kid whose Cracker Jack box had a Cadillac in it. “Heard about you since the second day I was in the Bahamas.”
“All true.” Anne belts her pistol under her taped arm. “Can you snug this plane up to sand?”
“Maybe.”
Anne points ahead of the plane. “Up ahead, the Jamaica Defence Force has a Coast Guard station just northeast of Bird Cay where we’re headed. The US Marshals and DEA have a twenty-four/seven camp there as well. Got all the gadgets. They’ll see this plane landin’ and want to know why. Should the authorities come out, it’ll be by boat, the Jamaican’s JDF. We’ll wanna pack up fast and make ’em think our true intentions are elsewhere.”
“Okay,” he says. “Once we’re loaded, range depends on the weight. And how sure you wanna be that you get where you’re going.”
Anne scans Haiti’s coastline. “We’ll be needin’ margin for the Gryphon as well.”
Kayak Jim shakes his head. “Anyone not chasing you?”
“Would seem to be the full complement.”
“Yeah, it would. Not sure two million was the right number.” Kayak Jim banks south, then levels. “Bird Cay in forty-four minutes.” Over his shoulder he shouts: “Hiya, ‘Jon,’ Ms. Devereux. Good to see you both. There’s rum back there with the shovels.”
***
Kayak Jim makes one low pass at Bird Cay’s thirty-five acres of flat scrub. A mass of white birds levitates in a carpet. The island’s low center is now a storm lake. The surrounding ocean is calm—a storm-churned milky blue above a ring of submerged coral shoals.
The shoals would be murder for any boat that didn’t know exactly where it was going. Eddie O’Hare probably never saw the island from up here. There’s one narrow channel into the beach; have to be navigated by someone who knew, and in daylight. The bow of any boat that made it in would be pointing straight at the lone tree standing on the island. No telling if our tree is the same tree that was here for Eddie O’Hare eighty years ago.
Privateers Page 34
