Vacation to Die For

by Josie Brown

  Emma’s fingers are now flying across the keyboard of her iPad. Arnie’s are also moving at warp speed. Still, I have to temper Jack’s bravado with Arnie’s double-take. It doesn’t help when he gives Jack a sidelong glance and mouths, Are you crazy?

  Here’s hoping he’s not.

  One hundred and thirteen lives depend on it.

  As instructed, we get to the safari staging room at ten minutes to eight.

  Battoo is nowhere to be found.

  “Ah, there you are, Mrs. Stone!” Julie’s cheery hello, coming from behind me, sends a shiver up my spine.

  What the hell is she doing here?

  I cover my concern with an air kiss. “Fancy meeting you here! We were under the impression that Battoo was to be our guide.”

  She opens her arms in mock exasperation. “He’s tied up at the moment.”

  In this place, that is never a good thing.

  She motions toward the gun room. “Shall we get started? Feel free to pick out any gun you like.”

  When we enter, there is no one else there—not even Abu, who is supposed to be working tonight.

  Strange.

  Jack and I scan the gun racks until we find rifles to our liking. For him, it’s a 45.70 Marlin, while I choose a Ruger 1B and hope that I don’t have to use it.

  She takes our guns. “Here, let me load them for you.”

  She walks down the counter until she finds the right bullet drawers. In no time at all she’s loaded both guns. She hands them to us, along with two hunting vests. “Safety first,” she purrs.

  Her next task is to choose a gun for herself—a Marlin 338MX. “Ah, here’s my baby!” She kisses each bullet before loading them into her gun.

  Jack and I exchange glances. “Then you’ll be joining us, I take it?”

  She nods. “I wouldn’t be much of a guide if I didn’t have your backs, now would I?”

  I won’t let her get anywhere near my back. Or Jack’s for that matter.

  She better watch her own.

  “Ah, there’s your prey!” Julie points through the thicket.

  She’s right. George kneels, gasping. He’s put on a good show. We’ve finally cornered him in a marsh just a few hundred yards from the beach.

  He’s been running for the past half hour, but we’re never more than one hundred yards behind him. This may have something to do with the fact that the medallion on his shirt is really a tracker, plus his tunic and pants are dyed with something that glows so that it can be seen, with or without our night goggles.

  Not to mention that if the pygmies find him first, their darts, tainted with a sedative, will slow him down, Julie explained so matter-of-factly. To top it off, George hasn’t been fed all day. “We find that a hungry prey is less challenging to track.” She patted Jack’s arm. “We aim to please.”

  In other words, this isn’t a safari. It’s a shooting gallery.

  Like me, Jack has had enough of this. Neither of us is planning on shooting George.

  Not that Julie knows this.

  In truth, she should worry about herself.

  Jack lifts his hand, indicating that he’ll go in first, and that we’re to stay back here, behind the brush.

  I nod, but Julie starts after him. I grab her arm. “The kill is supposed to be his, remember?”

  “The hunter has to be in view of his guide at all times. It’s Hunt Club protocol.”

  The shot from Jack’s gun is loud. Birds screech and scatter in the skies.

  Julie looks at George’s GPS signal on her cell phone screen. It isn’t moving. “Well, well, well! Your husband should be congratulated. He’s had his first kill.”

  I look down at the screen, too. Suddenly I hear Arnie’s voice in my earbud. “We’re in…sort of!”

  “What does that mean?” I say under my breath.

  Julie looks up and smirks. “What do you think it means? The prey is dead.”

  Suddenly I realize she thought I was talking to her. “Oh!...Well, of course, it would be. He loves to hunt—deer, bison, elk, big game—”

  The dot on her cell screen is moving again.

  She sees it, too.

  Her reaction is faster than mine. She breaks the grip on my rifle by slamming the butt of her gun into my gut.

  As I double over, she prods me upright with her rifle.

  “But he won’t shoot an innocent man.” She laughs. “It’s all the proof we needed that neither of you are who you pretend to be. Congratulations on finding Dr. Mandrake, Mrs. Stone. We certainly appreciate you leading us to your daughter’s imaginary pirate. But what stupidity, leaving the bacteria samples in Mr. Chiffray’s foyer!”

  Her jibe hits its mark. When I wince, she laughs. “Let’s see, how can I earn back your husband’s sympathy after I kill you?” She fakes a look of innocent shock. “Oops, I tripped and fell, and my gun went off! Too bad it shot poor old Donna in the back.”

  How dare she call me old! I’ve got four years on her, at the most.

  Okay, maybe six.

  She takes a step back, raises her gun, and puts me in her sights.

  The bang is even more deafening than Jack’s shot.

  I wait for the bullet—

  But I don’t go down.

  When I turn around, she’s staring at me. She may be stunned, but she’s knows an angry woman when she sees one. She shoots again—

  The bang is deafening.

  I flinch again—

  And yet, I’m still standing.

  Abu’s voice comes in over my earbud. “Hey, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but this afternoon I changed out all the bullets in the gun room with ones that are blanks. Got to love FedEx when it absolutely, positively has to be there on time. Even here on Fantasy Island, they got those blanks here in a twenty-four hour turnaround.”

  Now he tells me.

  With a flick of my wrist, my knife is out of my boot.

  It finds its mark in her thigh.

  But only because I want to take her alive. We’ve got a few questions about the Quorum that need answered.

  Julie screams and clutches the knife. She tugs gingerly, but it is buried too deeply in muscle.

  She stumbles backward, into a murky pond. With only one leg to stand on, she falls backward.

  The marsh seems to suck her down. She tries to raise her arms over her head, but she can’t. It’s as if they are stuck in the muck.

  She must be in quicksand.

  And she’s sinking fast. The more she struggles, the quicker she sinks. In no time at all it is over her chest, then up to her neck. “I…I can’t get out! I can’t move! I—”

  She gulps and gasps as the guck fills her mouth.

  By the time Jack and George reach me, she’s in over her head.

  “Where did she go?” George wonders.

  I point to the quicksand pit.

  When Jack sees me, he grabs me in a hug, as if he’ll never let me go.

  But he has to, and we both know it. We still have a lot of work to do.

  We’ve got to get to the prisoners before it’s too late.

  “I never gave you a proper thank you,” I say to George as I give him a hug.

  Then I strip him out of his tunic. His broad shoulders glimmer with the sweat that comes from running for your life.

  Jack looks from me to George and back again. “Um…what the hell are you doing?”

  “The emblem on his tunic has a built in tracking device,” I explain. “Abu and Dominic, are you listening? Just in case all the prisoners are being tracked, please make sure to cut the emblems off their tunics. Have the prisoners leave them in their cages.”

  “We’re already aware of this, milady,” Dominic’s voice can be heard on our earbuds. “Battoo warned us. In fact, he’s one of those being released. Julie caught him neutralizing the sedative used in the pygmy darts.”

  I’m glad to hear he’s getting off this cursed rock as well.

  I turn to George. “You were one of the Fantasy Air
pilots, weren’t you?”

  He nods. “Jack told me you deduced I’d flown Mandrake to the island, on one of Fantasy Air’s smaller jets. The Quorum didn’t realize I had the guest compartment’s surveillance system engaged, and was listening in on their pitch to Mandrake. Laura, the attendant on the flight, heard it, too. When Mandrake never made any of the flights off the island, I got suspicious. My mistake was asking too many questions. I was summoned to Julie’s office. She must have drugged me, because I woke up in a cage. My hunt took place two days later. I grew up hiking and fishing. I learned a few tricks about survival along the way.” He pounds one hand with the other’s fist. “Laura never had a chance. She must have asked Julie about it, too.”

  I nod. “We found Laura’s body in a mass grave.”

  He tears up. “Thank God you’ve decided to do the right thing about the other prisoners.”

  “Oh yeah, about that,” Arnie begins. “As I started to say, we’ve hit a little glitch in our game plan.”

  “It’s almost ten o’clock. Don’t leave us in suspense, Arnie.” I nudge Jack and George back on the path toward our jeep. I pray that Julie left the keys in it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to hotwire it.

  “The great news is that Emma tracked down the satellite feed for the livestock room’s security cameras. We were able to put it on a loop. The guards in the control booth aren’t any wiser to what’s happening right under their noses. Neither are the guards in the hallway.”

  “Sounds great so far.” I know that Arnie is stalling on the bad news, a frequent habit for him.

  “Also, Abu and Dominic immobilized the men guarding the tunnel to the tarmac. Already your family is on the plane, as are most of the prisoners.”

  We’re in luck. The keys are in the jeep. When we jump in, I take the wheel.

  The Hunt Club is ten minutes down the road and the airstrip another five beyond it. The road is bumpy, so my voice shakes as I say, “I like what I’m hearing. Can you cut to the chase?”

  “Unfortunately, Dominic broke the key in one of the locks. If we can’t find the master switch that opens all the cages simultaneously, we’ll be leaving twelve of the prisoners behind.”

  “Unacceptable,” Jack, George and I say at the same time.

  “Is there any way around it?” I ask.

  “Electronically, I’m trying as many combinations as possible. But as you know, we’ve only got another twenty-six—make that twenty-five—minutes before the gas is released.”

  “We’ll be there in ten,” Jack says firmly.

  We’re now doing over sixty miles an hour. I’m hugging every curve.

  I know what the guys are thinking, even if they don’t say it: woman driver.

  At this point, just getting there alive will be a miracle.

  Make that two. Even if we get there in time, the odds of saving them are still slim and none.

  When we reach the tunnel, it’s already ten-fourteen.

  Here comes the hard part. “Okay, both of you—get on the plane and secure it for take-off.”

  Jack does a double-take. “What? Are you crazy? If you don’t get on that plane, then I don’t either!”

  “You’ll get on it, and that’s an order from your faux wife and your mission leader.” If one doesn’t convince him, the other should.

  “I don’t care.” He crosses his arms. He’s just as stubborn as ever.

  “I do, Jack. About my children. About you. About my team members.”

  I kiss him. It’s long, and deep and hard, and makes all kinds of promises—

  That I’ll be back in time, because I don’t plan on dying.

  That when the plane is wheels up, I’ll be on it.

  That we’ll enjoy a long and happy life together.

  He must have gotten the message, because he doesn’t stop me.

  I don’t look back. Otherwise I can’t look forward to all I’ve just promised him.

  “So much for fun and games,” Dominic mutters as he bangs on the recessed lock holding the key.

  It locks the cell holding the little Middle Eastern girl. She sobs uncontrollably. Having watched the others escape, she wonders out loud why Allah has forsaken her.

  I want to hold her to tell her that he has not.

  Without thinking, I jam my hand into my vest pocket. Inside is the key ring holding the jeep’s car key.

  In fact, it holds all sorts of keys—

  Including the brass one we need—Julie’s original key.

  I whoop as I turn the locks of the cages still holding prisoners—

  —Including the missing Montrose boy who almost went too far with Mary. How did he end up here?

  He glances back at me, but only for a second. His survival instincts keep him moving forward with the others, who are running for the exit.

  The only cage I can’t open belongs to the little girl.

  My hand is just small enough to slip into the recess, and my nails are just long enough to lift the broken tip of the key, very slowly, through the key hole—

  It comes out.

  I insert Julie’s key in its place and the door swings open.

  The girl runs out. She is so happy that she leaps onto me in delirious gratitude. Together we topple to the floor. Her hugs are tight, and her kisses are furious.

  Realizing we’ve got only seconds to go, Dominic picks her up and runs out with her.

  I’m on his heels—

  But that’s still not fast enough. It’s exactly ten-thirty. The steel doors slide shut, just as I reach them.

  It’s going to be interesting to see how long I can hold my breath.

  Chapter 19

  Repeat after me:

  “There’s no place like home…”

  Whenever one goes on vacation, inevitably there comes a time when homesickness kicks in. One of the most heartfelt scenes in The Wizard of Oz is about just that:

  Dorothy wants to go home.

  Ah, if only it were so easy to click your heels three times and end up in your own bed. But since you don’t own a pair of ruby slippers, here’s how to make the trip home, safely and soundly:

  First, don’t hitchhike. The guy who picks you up may be a good Samaritan. On the other hand, he may be a perv. Your odds are fifty-fifty. Those aren’t good odds in any game of chance, so cough up the price of a Greyhound ticket and away you go.

  Next, double your estimated time of arrival, or ETA. No one ever gets anywhere on time. Los Angeles traffic is proof of that, as is the Atlanta International Airport, or as it's known in the business world, “the seventh circle of hell.”

  And finally, not everyone will welcome you home with open arms—and that’s okay. Remember, you went away for a reason. Now that you’re rested, you’ve probably come back with a plan.

  Stick with it. Or find a new home. And a good pair of ruby slippers.

  I can breathe.

  But I can’t see.

  And I can’t move.

  Am I dead?

  No. From what I can tell, I am blindfolded. My arms are shackled over my head, while the bindings on my legs leave them spread apart.

  My legs and arms ache. How long have I been hanging here?

  As if reading my mind, Boarke laughs heartily. “Ah, Mrs. Stone, after almost a full day, you are finally awake!”

  My shock at the lost time comes with an involuntary spasm.

  “Very soon, you’ll regret missing your flight.” The tone of his voice is as dark as Hell. “But you’ll be pleased to know that between Mandrake’s chicanery and your little stunt with the prisoners, I was almost ruined. When word gets out of the prisoners’ escape, no country will do business with me again.”

  I try not to smile at the news that the others got off the island. Then I remember that I’ll never again see Jack or my children, and my heart sinks to the pit of my gut.

  At least the blindfold keeps my tears from rolling down my face.

  I’m almost afraid to ask, but I know I have to. “What do y
ou mean, ‘Mandrake’s chicanery’?”

  “Why do you think you’re even alive, you little bitch? The plague bacteria sample he brought with him was a fake!”

  Well, what do you know.

  I can’t help myself. I laugh, even through my tears.

  Boarke slaps me hard, across the face. When I flinch, he laughs.

  “You pig,” I mutter. “You had children in here—a little girl, even a teenage boy who was one of your guests.”

  “You can make an enemy at any age. You of all people must know that.”

  I spit blood in the direction of his voice. I guess it hit its mark because he slaps me again. “You think you’re so funny?”

  I steel myself for another smack.

  “As it turns out, your pretty little head”—even as he says this, he presses my forehead into the wall—“has a high price on it.” He chuckles. “At least, to two of my benefactors.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It seems you are to be my collateral for Fantasy Island. By selling you to the highest bidder, I’ve secured my loan.” His face is so close to mine that he sprays me with his joyous declaration. “I can only imagine what the winner will do with you. I know what I would have done, had I kept you.”

  I’m glad I’ll never find out. And he should be happy he’ll never find out what I’d do in return.

  “I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers. Who were my bidders, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Not at all. You met one of them during your stay here—Mr. Chiffray.”

  Lee.

  With what I’ve seen about him, the offer might have been made out of pity or kindness. He was helpful in locating Mary, and certainly kind to Trisha. Should he hang in with silly Babette, we may even be neighbors—that is, if he had the highest bid.

  If so, they’ll have free babysitting for life, not to mention all the pie they can stomach.

  “The other is an old acquaintance: Carl.”