by A P Bateman
There was nobody in the kitchen. The door was wide open and swinging on its hinges. Stone turned to Kathy. “Stay here,” he said. “Cover the door while I take a look.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said adamantly.
“No, stay.”
“Bullshit! I’m coming with you! There’s two smashed windows in there.” She nodded back towards the lounge. “I can’t cover two different directions at once and I only have three shells left.”
Stone looked at the intensity in her dark eyes. They were almost ebony, but softer than the other woman who had been claiming to be her. He recognised when he was losing. “Ok,” he conceded. “But stay close and watch our rear. I’ll keep watch ahead.” He changed to a new magazine and put the old one, with at least three rounds left, in his pocket. He now had twenty-one bullets in the weapon. He glanced out through the doorway and realised it wasn’t going to be enough.
The wounded man had reached the grey Ford Taurus and backed it into the driveway. He was taking aim from behind the hood and another man had joined him, crouched by the rear bumper and pulling out the retractable stock of a Heckler & Koch G36 carbine. He noticed Stone, smiled and shouldered the weapon. Stone spun around, grabbed Kathy and hustled her back into the lounge. His eyes darted left then right, then settled on the cavernous fireplace. It had been cleaned out in the spring and arranged with dried flowers. There was room for two. Just. He barrelled into Kathy and they hit the hearth together, Stone pulling her into the protection of the brick surround as the bullets sliced through the building and tore up everything in their path. Stuffing spewed out of the sofas and chairs and the glass coffee table shattered, along with practically each and every item on the shelves, sideboard and walls. They both pulled their legs up and ducked their heads. The onslaught was terrifying and Stone realised the man must have changed magazines two or three times.
“We can’t get out front to escape!” Stone snapped at her. The bullets were still tearing up the room. Stone knew that if the men were tactically trained, and he could see that they were, then someone would be flanking them as the man continued to fire. They could not afford to get bogged down. “We need to draw them out so we can get to my bike!”
“What about a boat?” she said, still shielding her ears, her head ducked down to her chest. “I have a dory with an outboard at the beach.”
“Perfect! Is it in the water?” he asked. He had seen waves breaking on his ride down, a boat couldn’t be moored in the surf.
“The beach ended half a mile up the coast. There’s an inlet here, a few boats are moored inside.”
The gunfire subsided. Stone wasted no time. “Let’s go!” He pulled her up. She had dropped the shotgun, but Stone pushed her onwards towards the shattered bay window. “Lead the way, I’ll cover us.”
They both hurdled the body on the deck and Kathy sprinted across the sand-covered lawn. Stone realised she was faster than him and had to give it everything he had to keep up. Kathy looked like she was pacing herself. Gunfire started up behind them, but it was a different calibre than what had decimated the house. As Kathy darted through a narrow gateway, bordered by sand dunes and tufts of seagrass, Stone turned to see the wounded man standing on the deck. He was favouring his legs, leaning against the building. He raised his machine pistol, but Stone fired first. A burst of four shots, in two double-taps. The man darted back inside, glass shattering the window next to him. As Stone turned to run there was just enough time to see the man with the assault rifle run across the ground at the front of the house. Stone didn’t stop to fire, he was outgunned and the distance was a factor, so he ran as fast as he could to where he’d last seen Kathy. He ran through the gateway and down a sand path. He could see a set of small, fresh footprints. The pathway wound round to the right then dropped steeply to the beach. A mixture of shale and sand with patches of rock, the shore spanned thirty-metres to the sea, which was calm and clear. Six or seven boats were moored up, tethered to the shore by ropes fastened to large boulders in the sand. It was only when Kathy untethered the rope to a small dory and pushed it deeper, that Stone saw their problem. The water was permanent – a lagoon, cut off from the rest of the Chesapeake by a breakwater, a groin of sand where large waves crashed onto the shore. The mounds of green water rose, sucking sand and stones with it, then broke into five-foot high walls of water before unleashing onto the sand with an audible crack. The lagoon must have been usable for about half the tide, and at low tide it would be completely surrounded by sand and landlocked.
Stone cursed loudly and jumped into the boat. Kathy had started the engine and reversed into deeper water. She looked at Stone apologetically. “We’re cut off from the sea!” she exclaimed.
Stone looked up the sand dune and saw one of the men sliding halfway down the loose sand. It was the man with the machine pistol. He raised it and aimed. Stone caught Kathy’s wrist and killed the engine’s revs. He raised the FN and aimed. Even though he was armed with a pistol, he still had the trajectory, power and range advantage over the 9mm MP5. Stone fired, not expecting a hit, but to see the splash of sand near his target. He needed a marker. It was left by a half metre and low by one. He adjusted his aim, close to one-hundred-and-thirty metres distant. The machine pistol spat out some rounds and they splashed into the water in front of the boat’s prow. Stone had recalculated and his next shot closed the range and width by half. His third, fourth and fifth rounds struck the man in the chest and he rolled the rest of the way down the dune and rested still on the rocky shoreline.
Kathy tried to protest as Stone took over the control and increased the revs, the boat shot backwards and Stone knocked it into forward gear and turned hard on the tiller at maximum revs as the man with the assault rifle ran into view two-hundred metres away at the top of the dune. Distance was of the essence, their survival depended upon it, and as the boat powered out towards the sandbar, Stone weaved left and right with no particular rhythm to hassle the man’s aim. He heard gunshots, but did not stop. The boat was fairly quick, its moderately powered thirty-five horse power engine helped considerably by the boat’s light weight and short length. The flat bottom drew little draught and the boat skipped playfully across the light chop of the deep lagoon. The steering was sensitive and Stone found himself making constant adjustments. He chanced a look behind and saw the man aiming. He was a long way off now, towards the effective range of the short barrelled G36 with its 5.56mm ammunition. But a trail of splashes followed them and then bullets pinged into the aluminium transom. Stone ducked and looked at the damage, but smelled the fuel and saw water seeping into the boat. The bullets had gone through the portable fuel tank. By the smell of it they would run out fuel soon. He imagined the man changing to another magazine, raising his aim so that the bullets rained down on them from three hundred metres away. He slew sideways, kept the revs on and watched the breakwater ahead of them.
“What are you doing?” Kathy yelled above the engine noise.
“Hold on.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“There’s nowhere in this lagoon where we’ll be truly out of range. Especially if he works his way closer. The water is giving him perfect markers when he misses.”
“We can’t go over the breakwater!”
“Hold on.”
Kathy looked at him, then back at the breakwater. She tucked herself down into the boat and gripped a cleat with both hands. More bullets struck the boat and Stone twitched, sensing a bullet had come as close as possible to his head without hitting. He brought the boat to port and watched the wave breaking along the strip of beach ahead. There was a surge of water subsiding from the previous wave. It looked a little deeper in the middle so Stone aimed at it and kept the revs on full. The wave started to mound, drawing up sand as it peaked. As it crested, the tiny boat was no more than twenty-feet from it. The wave looked a lot bigger than it had from the shore of the lagoon. Stone guessed it was six to eight feet of pounding shore break. He held his nerve, ignore
d Kathy’s scream as the boat ran aground on the shale and sand. The wave barrelled and seemed to slow for a moment before crashing down just feet from the prow of the boat. The prow rode up on the white water and the entire boat left the water and was airborne. The engine revved loudly, its reverberation echoing across the lagoon as the propellers spun freely in the air. Stone gripped the tiller and felt himself taking off, parting company with the boat. The boat landed stern first, at about thirty degrees and the propeller sliced back into the water sending up plumes of spray. When the rest of the flat hull thudded into the water, waves were thrown outwards on both sides. The boat landed at the base of the next green wave, the last of the set. The boat climbed, almost pivoted backwards, but pushed through at the crest and smashed down onto calm water behind. Stone had slipped off the transom and sprawled into the boat. Kathy was picking herself up. The two looked at each other for a moment, then both of them grinned with relief.
“Awesome!” she shouted. “I never thought we’d make it!” She hugged him as he climbed back onto the bench seat.
“Nor did I,” Stone replied. He revved the power control on the tiller and the boat moved through the calmer water parallel to the shore. He lowered the revs and the boat wallowed with the swell. “We need to get away. The fuel tank has taken a hit and it’s leaking badly.”
Kathy looked behind Stone at the beach. “The gunman has gone. Could we double back? He’s seen us head up the coast. Maybe he’ll drive up and try to shoot at us from the shore. He can travel on the road in his car faster than we can out here.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Stone said. “What’s down the other way? Somewhere we can put in easily?”
“There’s a nice beach a mile down from the house. There’s a turning and parking area almost on the shore.”
“I don’t like the idea of walking back along the road.”
“We don’t have to,” Kathy said emphatically. “It’s part of the nature reserve, there’s footpaths all through the woods and the dunes.”
Stone nodded. “That will do.” He pulled the tiller towards him and the boat turned out to sea in a wide arc.
“What if they’re still there?”
“They won’t be. Someone will have sounded the alarm, called nine-one-one.” He thought of what Max had said. Maybe those police officers would be coming for him anyway. He needed to turn himself in, but he also needed to find out what was happening and who was behind this. And he needed to find the woman who had impersonated Kathy. The woman who had brought down the Secret Service.
32
The man had told Stone about the Jeep and Stone had pushed him on ahead. Stone had ejected the shells from one of the Remington shotguns and removed the firing pin. The man now used it as a crutch and limped ahead of Stone, who periodically shoved him in the small of the back with the muzzle of his own shotgun. Stone had stripped off The Saracen’s robes. He was bare chested and wore just the Arabian style trousers. He took one of the dead men’s pistols and three magazines and pocketed them. He then ditched the FN Five-Seven – there wasn’t enough ammunition to make it a viable option. Instead, he had taken the other shotgun and mustered a dozen or so 00 buck shells. They were 3 ½ inch magnum loads with nine deadly ball bearings per shell, each ball bearing marginally smaller than 9mm pistol ammunition. They were fearsomely devastating loads. At close range, each shot was like firing nine handgun rounds.
Stone had elected to keep the bow and had slung it over his shoulder along with the dozen arrows in the quiver. He liked to keep his options open.
The Jeep was exactly that – an original Willys-Overland from world war two. Open-topped, seats for four with a small cargo deck on the back overhanging the rear axle. It was basic, but small and manoeuvrable in the terrain.
“Get in,” Stone said sharply. “You can drive.”
“But my leg,” the man protested.
“Hell, this thing will shift without the clutch once you’ve got it moving.”
“But…” Stone pointed the shotgun at the man’s other leg. “Ok! Ok!” he pleaded and got into the driver’s side.
“What is this place, an island?” Stone asked. The man nodded. “Where?”
“Off the west coast of Panama.”
“Is this to do with Richard Anderson? Of Anderson-Lucas Holdings?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know them.”
“It’s a he,” Stone said. “Richard Anderson. The company is called Anderson-Lucas and has a bank in Panama City. Payments to missing veterans were made from an account held with his bank. Is he behind this? Does he own the island?”
“Oh, wait, the banker guy?”
“English?”
“Yeah, he owned a bank in Panama,” the man nodded. “He was here before you. His family also.”
“Where is he?”
“Wasted.”
“What?”
“Him and his family. They were wasted before you got here. Some Chinese bankers did some pretty high bidding to have them all fucked up. The guy apparently screwed them over years ago, they didn’t forget. He nearly put them out of business, or knocked them a few dollars off of billionaire status. Who knows? Money is all the same to those guys.”
“What happened?”
“Him and another guy were pegged out at the ponds. A couple of the guys in the game fed his family to the crocs while they were forced to watch. The bidding went insane. Wasn’t the nicest thing done here, but not the worst either.”
Stone shook his head, sickened. He had seen the stakes, used the rope to start the fire for his meal. He had assumed it was the remnants of a trap. “Who was the other guy they pegged out?”
The man shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “Just some suit. Who the hell knows what goes on here, really.”
“This, concession, you have here must have a generator for electricity. The cameras and Wi-Fi are running twenty-four-seven.”
“There are stacks of generators and a solar array.”
“Really?” Stone changed tack. “Tell me about communications. To stream live on the internet, you need routers and a network hub, but you also need a phone line. Out here it will need to be an antenna or a satellite dish.”
“They have a satellite dish. A huge one,” he paused. “Hey man, I’m helping you. You’ve got to help me.”
“What do you want?”
“I want out.”
“You’re not free to leave anytime? I’m surprised.”
The man started the Jeep’s engine and shrugged. “I guess it’s obvious really. Nobody has ever asked to leave. Most of the guys here really enjoy what they do, but they’re pretty psyched up. All experienced combat veterans. They missed the killing.” Stone remained silent. He had killed, but he had never once enjoyed it. Living with it could be difficult at times. He’d always made sure that the people he’d killed had been on the wrong side of the moral compass. He’d led them to Edwards, he knew that. The man’s death was on him. This episode was going to take some dealing with, he was sure of that much. “I’m not a killer,” the man continued, pulling away jerkily. He winced as the Jeep vibrated and obviously hurt his leg. “But…”
“But you turned a blind eye.” Stone finished the sentence for him.
“I did what I did,” the man said.
“Like German guards in the concentration camps,” Stone commented. “They lined them up, marched them along. But it wasn’t their decision. Is that it?”
“No, not really. Hey, don’t judge me, man. When this shit first started it was vet against vet. Soldiers battling it out like gladiators. They knew what they were getting into. Their egos got them into it. Then the word spreads, throughout the net, through different walks of life. Then the betting and bidding escalates. People are actually having enemies abducted and dropped off here. They get to watch them scared and pleading, get to watch them die. All from the comfort of their snug, a brandy in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other. This place turned rich men into gods in their own homes.
Suddenly the people dying here aren’t even mortal enemies, they’re business partners, ex-wives, a partner’s lover… Hell, one guy apparently got himself blown by a two-thousand-dollar whore while he watched his ex-wife hunted through the jungle. People are plain weird, whichever way you cut it. But the operation still needs clearing up afterwards.” He thumbed his chest. “And that’s by the people who keep this place running. The cooks, the cleaners, the maintenance guys. And the field support staff, like me and my buddies you just wasted back there.”
“Well I hope the benefits are good. On more than Obama care at least.”
“We do ok,” he said quietly. “Or would if we ever thought we’d leave here to spend it.”
“Is that the feeling in general?”
“Nobody says so, but we ain’t that dumb. It’s gotten too big. I guess we’re all just riding it out, hoping there’ll be an opportunity to jump.”
“So how do you get rid of the bodies?”
“Use your imagination,” the man said, swinging the Jeep onto a narrow stone track. “Where do you want to go?”
“The satellite.”
The man drove onwards. “There’s at least a dozen Black Caiman here. Big ones. The smaller ones have all been eaten. They don’t get fed between killings, that way they’re hungry and have to make do with a few catfish and turtles. The west coast of the island gets Great Whites passing through in spring and fall. I think they head somewhere to breed in the summer but hang around here for a few weeks. It’s pretty bountiful ocean around here. There’s bull sharks, hammerheads, white-tips and tiger sharks off the coast all year round. You get some blood and chunks in the water and when there’s enough sharks competing for it you drop the bodies off the boat.”
“You have boats here?”
“Of course. That’s how we get supplies in. And the players for the game.”
“Where?”
“The west coast. There’s a natural inlet that almost curves back on itself like a double horseshoe. You can’t see the boats or jetty from the sea, and the Pacific swells don’t reach it. But it can get rough once you get out of the inlet. It’s the least sheltered side, but the inlet is a natural harbour.”
