Tania laughs. She looks at Susie and Anne. “He belong to either one of you?”
Susie and Anne both nod.
Tania looks as surprised as I do. She grins. “Oops. Last time these two liked the same boy . . . didn’t go too well.”
The Lear bends into a bank. I ask, “Where we going?”
Tania shrugs. “Up to Susie.”
I turn to Susie. “You said there’s a catch.”
Susie nods but doesn’t explain.
Tania does. “Not all of us are gonna live to spend the gold you found.”
Chapter 34
Bill Owens
Tania Hahn finishes a very short explanation.
I’m the only one in the plane who blurts, “We have to do what?”
Tania answers, “Kill the Gryphon.” She nods at Susie. “I explained it to Susie. No way Lopez and I join this party unless he’s dead. Or we are. That, and we get the $20 million Susie says you left in the water back at Bird Cay.”
I choke on the bet-your-life precondition to my future; check Susie and Anne, neither of whom are rushing to take chips off the table. I return to Tania. “You can kill the Gryphon?”
Tania says, “Bill, my man, your two chicas here are formidable when they’re in better shape, but they ain’t me.” Tania points at Shelia Lopez. “Or her.” Tania’s cherubic grin remains, but her message hardens a bit. “We hunt people; that’s what we do. All we do.”
“Forgive me, but I’ve seen the Gryphon’s operation. Colonel Kurtz, Heart of Darkness shit. Every goddamn flesh-eater for a thousand miles, out of their goddamn minds on—”
“I know. I knew Piccard, not personally, but of him. I know the black-box interrogation business; have dropped more than one jihadist in them.” She glances at Susie. “Lopez and I don’t get our contracts because the Spice Girls turned them down. We’re the Wicked Witches of the East, we just don’t look like sisters.”
Exhale. Face rub. I check Anne and Susie again for a way out that neither offers, then surrender to yet another Valkyrie trip through the roses. “Okay. It’s your plane. Tell me how.”
“The gold aboard this plane allows your girls to afford Shelia and me, and it’s the center of a perfect storm; one of the very few chances to get a guy like the Gryphon out in the open. Lana hit Haiti as a Cat 5. Gotta believe the Gryphon lost ninety percent of everything he had in Haiti. No doubt he sees the gold as his insurance settlement. We’ll bait him with half; Susie said $60 million. Right?”
Susie nods.
“We’ll stack $30 million in gold in a ‘safe’ place. Susie tells him that’s what will be waiting. For him, in person. She’ll say she wants to see it in his eyes that he means to leave her alone. If she doesn’t see it, her suicide vest kills them both; Susie’s happy with either outcome.”
Lopez shows Susie the vest.
“If Susie sees that he means to leave her alone, he walks away with the $30 million. Up to him.”
I look at Susie again, then Anne.
Anne coughs, wipes at the blood on her chin with her gun hand, then says, “He’s a mentaller, beat bad after the storm, and he’s beaten Susie twice. No reason for him not to take the bait . . . if we put our hook close to his home ground.”
I’m hoping close does not mean Haiti. “Where? Jamaica?”
Tania says, “Two choices; four minutes to decide: best for us would be Ragged Island. Lana just leveled it. Ragged’s basically an abandoned salt pond mine—a hundred miles off the coast of Cuba; three hundred miles of open water from Haiti. Got an airstrip, tricky but usable. My guess is the Gryphon sends whatever boats he can squeeze through what’s left of the channel and the rubble from Batterie de l’Anse and Prison Labouque. He waits till those boats are close to Ragged, flies to the boats via a seaplane he’ll commandeer, then comes ashore with them full-force. That’s how I’d do it. If I had the equipment.”
Shelia Lopez adds, “He’ll try some kind of feint so he can disable our plane on the runway. We’ll be trapped. He’ll kill us all.”
“That’s our best option? How do we kill him?”
Tania and Lopez trade a glance, surprised. “You mean not blow up Susie?”
Chapter 35
Bill Owens
The copilot reaches back and shows Tania four fingers, a plain silver ring on all four. Tania gives him the thumbs-up, then looks at me.
I say it again: “What’s the second option? The one where Susie doesn’t have to die?” I glance at Susie for her to join the club.
Tania says, “M72 LAW rocket at two hundred yards. Got three aboard, French-built SARPACs. Can’t use them on Ragged Island. Too flat; nowhere to hide. Has to be the vest.”
“Say we use the rockets; where?”
“DR’d be best; Shelia’s got DEA connections for the equipment we’d need. The Gryphon comes over the mountains from Haiti on any road that’s open. Could have every night howler with him who survived the hurricane and Rebelyon; he’ll like that.” Tania grimaces. “We won’t. So, as quality options go, I’d say option two is a distant second.”
“And then?”
“Staying with option two?”
I cast a troubled glance at Susie. “Yeah, option two.”
Tania continues. “We extricate him from the body of his army—I’m gonna guess fifty to a hundred is what he actually brings—isolate his options, show him the gold, and kill him. With a LAW we lose the gold too. He won’t be expecting that.”
I visualize the show, the aftermath of Tontons digging for gold fragments for the next month until the Dominicans figure it out and kill them. “Does Susie still have to meet him with the gold and vest?”
“Yup.”
“But she gets away, right?”
Tania shrugs. “Maybe.”
I push back in my seat. “I vote option two. And if it’s that fucking bad, I say we draw straws for who wears the vest.”
Susie leans forward to my shoulder. “I said I’m gonna kill him, and I am.”
Anne licks her teeth, swigs the champagne. “Ours is ne a single-vote partnership. We sail together; we finish together. Them’s the rules, dearie.”
Susie frowns. “So says Anne Bonny?”
“Aye, Susie my dear. Tania here may think she can outfight Anne Bonny on a good day, but she’d be wrong. You’ll not face that bastard alone again if I’m breathin’.”
Dominican Republic
Chapter 36
Bill Owens
We’re on a coffee-plantation airstrip. Shelia Lopez and our two pilots will stay inside the Lear with what remains of our life savings. Outside the cargo door, I unload a crate of 250 coins from the hold, then take the crate back inside to the cockpit.
Both pilots have Glocks in shoulder holsters and faded forearm tattoos. One squints when I show him my Flyers neck chain and say, “You look like guys who live through these adventures.”
He nods. “Always the plan.”
“Do me a favor? Out of this crate, you keep ten coins each for your trouble, give the remaining two thirty to Coach Kenny Rzepecki at Johnny’s IceHouse in Chicago. It’s for some Down syndrome kids who are gonna suffer big if this money doesn’t get there ASAP. Unfortunately, I’m not certain it will if I keep it.”
The copilot looks at me like he agrees with my assessment. “That redhead really Anne Bonny?”
I nod. “Port Royal. In the flesh.”
“Get her to autograph the crate for me. ‘To Ian Pearce.’ I have a cousin in Belize City with Down syndrome. I’ll get the coins to your coach.”
“Thanks.”
I drop down to the tarmac. Anne, Tania, and Shelia are checking our weapons. Tania waves me over. “Ever fire one of these?” She shows me one of the three LAW rockets she and Lopez have.
“Right. SOP at the racetrack.”
Tania doesn’t laugh. “
You’ll be firing one today. Pay attention; I’ll show you how. Probably’ll be the difference between being alive and not.”
I get the three-minute course in professional M72 LAW rocket operation. The tube looks like it’s been around awhile. “How old is this thing?”
Tania waves off my concern. “Works fine. French. Use ’em all the time.”
Anne grins at “all the time.” “He’s gotta die, Bill. One of us has to get ’im.”
I look at the name carved on my palm. “There may be something to this vodou shit after all.”
Anne says, “Before the shooting starts, Tania thinks she can secure our side of the field, but even if she does, there’ll be snipers on ya from the Gryphon’s side. Find a ridge. Let ’em see ya high up there, but not the rocket. When Susie and I make our move, don’t hesitate; light him up.”
“Gee, simple as that?”
“Aye. Him or us; couldn’t be simpler.”
I walk to Susie. She’s on the other side of the plane, cinching her C-4 suicide vest. I stop in front of her. “No offense, but I don’t see why the hook has to be baited this way.”
Susie stares, then smiles small and shrugs.
“We were gonna have the kids, the pirate outfit, some laughs. You know, boy-girl stuff, but bigger, maybe. Right?”
Susie finishes cinching the vest, steps close enough to kiss me lightly on the mouth, and does. Her fingers hook into my belt. “And if we’re alive tomorrow and you’re in the mood, that’s what we’ll do. This movie can end more than one way, sugar.”
“Meaning the vest is fake?”
“Nope. But it’s not plan A.” Pause. Tone drop. “His hands won’t touch me again. And I’m all done running.”
I pull my Flyers talisman over my head and hand it to her. “I haven’t been anywhere without this in a long, long time. It’s real, you need to believe that.”
Susie loops the chain over her head, kisses it, then me on the lips again. “Flyers rule.” She turns her back to me, pulls a knife from her belt.
I watch her carve “Cyril” into her left forearm, then “Tommy” into her right.
***
We’re deployed. Sweat rivers my face. The air tastes like stomach bile. Below me is a three-hundred-foot-wide crater that I’ve been told is a dead volcano’s eroded caldera. Maybe 150 feet deep, like a Roman gladiator colosseum dug into the rock.
I’m alone on the caldera’s east rim, purposely in plain sight, surrounded at my back and shoulders by thin jungle that Hurricane Lana shredded yesterday. My LAW rocket is hidden fifteen feet away, armed and ready to fire.
Tania and her LAW rocket are somewhere on the north rim to my right, but I can’t see her.
Directly across from me on the west rim are thirty Tontons gunmen. Some are aiming at me. Some scan the north and south rims for targets. Most are aiming at Susie and Anne on the caldera’s floor.
Susie and Anne drove down from the south rim in a Jeep via a steep, narrow ramp of partially collapsed crater wall. Even though the crater is round, Tania called it a “kill box.”
In my head, I hear Arlington’s bugler: “Post time.”
On the caldera’s floor, Susie and Anne stand beside their Jeep. It’s stacked with what will pass for forty crates of gold coins, ten thousand total, $30 million US. The lids are off all the crates. Five million of it’s real. The shine is what you’d expect, golden.
Anne and Susie both have pistols in their right hands. Anne braces her hip against the Jeep’s door but seems to wobble anyway. Susie has her suicide-vest trigger switch in her left hand, her thumb on the button.
She and Anne glare at an armored UN Humvee.
Behind it are three gunmen aiming short-barreled submachine guns.
Behind them is a smallish light-brown man. He wears sunglasses, jeans, and a sport jacket with no shirt.
I can’t smell or hear him; no way to tell if he’s what was in my monastery cell with me.
Sweat stings my eyes. I try to hear what’s being said but can’t; the crater’s too deep. Didn’t think I’d die like this, a multimillionaire with my own hockey team, doing the final scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. My knees ache. Both feet want to move. But move means a sniper bullet. Dry swallow. This is it, the bet-it-all moment all horseplayers crave and hate. If I held win tickets they’d be crushed in my hand.
Clear as day I hear Arlington Park’s John Dooley say: “They’re all in the gate. They’re all in line—”
***
Susie Devereux
The .45 is cocked in my right hand.
My left hand has the suicide-vest detonator.
I point the detonator at the Gryphon’s three gunmen. Anne looks across her duct-taped arm at me. I step three feet closer to the gunmen. “Go ahead, pull the trigger, kill you some white meat for dinner.”
Another step closer.
“C’mon, let’s all see if that Humvee’s armor came from Rumsfeld.”
Anne coughs. “Eyes on the prize, dearie.”
The “prize” is the monster behind the Humvee. Other than the bone pearls around his narrow lumpy neck, his clothes are unchanged from the last time he had me. I use his real name, shout over his protection: “Feel it, Marcel? Fuck it up here and it’s end of the line. You’ll be in hell before you know I sent you.”
The Gryphon’s gunmen bristle. They really, really want to shoot me.
The Gryphon speaks, his tone the emotionless confidence of old-world French aristocracy. “It is you, Susan, who must be sure. For your partners, their families, their friends.”
His voice chills my back. My thumb tightens on the detonator. “Don’t think so. You won’t have the reach after you’re dead. And you’re gonna die where you’re standing unless I find Jesus in the next few minutes.”
Anne says, “Susie.”
His breath is twenty feet away, but I can smell it on my lips, all over my face. He says, “Deliver my gold, and I will allow you to walk away, face your demons on any ground you choose.”
“Step out here, eye to eye. Make me a believer.”
“Prove the gold you display is real.”
I nod Anne away from our open Jeep. “C’mon, then. Take your look.” Plan A is move back to the edge of the ravine behind us.
Anne whispers, “Sail together; finish together.”
One of the Gryphon’s three gunmen steps forward, eyes me, then looks over my shoulder to Anne behind me, then continues past me to the Jeep.
He inspects everything that’s visible; pops the glove box; pops the hood . . . looking for a cache of explosives large enough to possibly kill his boss, regardless of the Humvee.
Satisfied that the threat isn’t there, the gunman inspects the gold, removing random coins from five different boxes. He steps backward several steps until he can pass the coins to the Gryphon at the far end of the Humvee.
Anne wobbles off the Jeep’s fender to move back—
The Gryphon dives behind his Humvee’s rear wheel. Two of his .50-caliber rifles boom from the west rim.
I spin; don’t see Bill standing where he was. Submachine guns roar on Tania’s rim. I jump back and hook Anne’s neck with my gun hand to keep us where we are. The Gryphon’s three gunmen are crouched to light us up—
My heart’s pounding. Anne blinks, confused, but doesn’t fight. She hip-slides us past the Jeep’s door to the front bumper, where we have to be if we intend to kill this monster and survive.
The Gryphon stands but stays behind the Humvee. His voice is still calm, calmer than when he had me naked on his table: “If your intent is to carry on as agreed, step away from the gold.”
Anne straightens her neck, stares at the Gryphon, and says, “And who would you be, tellin’ Anne Bonny her business? Your gold’s here where we said, $30 million in coins; maybe $10 million if Susie’s vest make
s ’em pieces, assumin’ a digger could find ’em all.”
The Gryphon doesn’t move.
Anne spits blood and saliva at the gunmen. “Not much of a man, your Gryphon. Two women got his tongue and his feet.” Anne shoulders us off the fender and past the bumper. We both stumble—like we are supposed to. I jerk us backward—
We fall five feet over a narrow ledge into the crevice directly behind us.
Anne lands hard on her back. I land on Anne and punch the button.
The Jeep doesn’t explode.
Submachine guns rake Tania’s and Bill’s rims. I punch the button again. And again. Goddammit, my vest detonator was actually rigged to the Jeep via a remote sensor, not the vest. The Jeep’s oversize tires and seats on the passenger side are packed with four hundred pounds of C-4 that won’t fucking explode.
Tania’s LAW rocket doesn’t fire.
Bill’s LAW rocket doesn’t fire.
Anne moans. I roll off her chest. She paws for her .45 and rolls to her stomach. I rise in a crouch, then peek between the top of our crevice and the bottom of the Jeep. “Cease fire! Cease fire! We fell, that’s all! We’re here. Stand down and we’ll come out.”
Up high on the rim behind the Gryphon, two children crawl over the caldera’s edge and slide down the rocks toward the bottom. Then another child, then another.
Anne pants, sucking for air that the fall knocked out of her. Her face is taut, eyes clouded with pain.
I try to figure the detonator. It clicks but won’t fire. Must be the goddamn sensor.
At the bottom of the crater, ten children waddle-walk single-file to the Gryphon’s Humvee and cluster behind him. He motions the nearest boy to stand in front, places a hand on the boy’s shoulder, draws a serrated knife, holds it blade up, the hilt resting on the boy’s shoulder.
Privateers Page 37
