Primary Valor

by Jack Mars

  “Answer me, 21.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Is that all you can say? You don’t know?”

  Charlotte was stuck. There was no good way to answer these questions. Elaine was angry with her. Or maybe she was just acting angry to manipulate her. It was impossible to tell, but it seemed real.

  “You’re making his life very difficult, did you know that?”

  “I…”

  Elaine had the switch in her left hand. She stepped quickly across the room and slapped Charlotte across the face with her right hand. Hard. Instantly, Charlotte’s cheek stung. She raised a hand to it. The skin was hot.

  “Speak!” Elaine said. “Say something, you dumb slut.”

  How could she speak? What could she say? She had no idea what this person was talking about.

  Elaine slapped her again. And again.

  “They think they’re coming to take you. Okay? But they’re not. They’re not going to make it here, and even if they do, they won’t know where you are. Do you know why? Because you’re going to be in this room. No one is going to find you down here, princess. No one. And anyone who tries is going to die.”

  She smacked Charlotte with the switch. It sliced across Charlotte’s bare neck. The sting was such that every time she felt it, it seemed like it ripped open the skin there. It always felt like she would bleed. But instead it raised a welt, one which would go away in a few hours. Already Charlotte had realized why.

  Elaine was not to damage the merchandise. Charlotte belonged to Darwin, not Elaine. Elaine’s attacks were superficial. They hurt, but did no lasting harm.

  Even that little bit of knowledge gave Charlotte power. The tears streamed down her face now, but the emotion didn’t reach her heart. It was an act. Elaine couldn’t hurt her. She wasn’t allowed.

  Elaine herself probably belonged to Darwin.

  And someone was coming. Someone was coming here to rescue her.

  She knew it!

  “Don’t get your hopes up, dummy. I see it in your eyes. But you might as well forget it. No one is going to save you.”

  Elaine turned to the man with her.

  “Give her the bucket.”

  The man reached outside the door and came back with a white plastic bucket, like something chlorine for your pool would come in. He dropped it and kicked it into the room. It made a hollow sound as it slid across the floor.

  “That’s your bathroom break today, bitch.”

  They left the room and the door slammed shut. The bolts closed. Charlotte was in near total darkness again.

  They hadn’t left her food, or water. And they were going to make her pee in a bucket. That was too bad, but it also didn’t matter.

  Someone was coming. She needed to be ready for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  10:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Marriott Extended Stay Suites

  Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  “Greetings from Nicaragua,” Buzz MacDonald said.

  Luke looked at Ed and smiled. The guy was a character.

  “Hi, Buzz,” Luke said.

  “Hello, Stone. Who else you got there for me?”

  Luke introduced Ed. Introductions were made around the table at SRT headquarters. Formalities and niceties were exchanged.

  “What are you doing in Nicaragua?” Luke said.

  “What am I doing here? I live here. Beautiful beaches. Beautiful women to spend Uncle Sam’s pension money on. And I’m a foot taller than everyone I meet. At least a foot. Big, long waves if you like to surf, and I do. And the fish jump into your boat. The real question is: what are you doing there?”

  Now even Ed smiled.

  “The commies don’t bother you?” Luke said.

  The United States had been fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua during Buzz’s time. Whatever the government in Nicaragua called itself now, many of the middle-aged politicians in suits were just older versions of the young revolutionaries in fatigues from decades before, and with guns borrowed from Cuba.

  “I like commies,” Buzz said. “They scare the tourists away. If you drive just a little ways down the road from here, the college kids are turning friendly, welcoming Costa Rica into one big drunken wet T-shirt contest. No thanks. I’ll take a stern communist and a little bit of vitamin deficiency any day. It gives the people soft bones.”

  Luke shook his head. But Buzz wasn’t done yet. “Oh, I like to go swimmin’, with bow-legged women,” he half said, half sang.

  “I think we should call this meeting to order,” Don said.

  “I think I’d like to second that,” Luke said.

  “I was ready an hour ago,” Buzz said.

  “Buzz and I talked early this morning,” Don said. “Without going into a lot of preamble, Buzz knows the waters around St. Simon’s Saw. Buzz?”

  “I do,” Buzz said. His tone switched instantly. Now he was all business.

  “I’ve fished those waters quite a bit. There’s a small island about ten clicks to the south and west of St. Simon’s. The locals call it Isla de los Jabalies. There’s been nobody out there in recent years. A little bit of raised terrain on the northeast side, but flat as a pancake across the rest of it. Grasslands primarily. Some mangroves to navigate, but on the island proper, the trees were mostly cut down ages ago. It’s wide open. You guys can do a night drop in there easily. The Hondurans won’t bother your airplane—they’ll think it’s a cartel run, if they even notice it. I’ll already be there with a Zodiac, ready to go. The water can get big between islands, but nothing we can’t handle. I’ll ram it up on the beach on St. Simon’s, below the house. There’s a hiking trail that goes up the side of the mountain. I think your girl has done a little bit of research on all this.”

  “A hiking trail?” Luke said.

  “Trudy?” Don said.

  “I’m your girl,” Trudy said. “Yes, it sounds like a plan that can work. Isla de los Jabalies, in Spanish, means Island of the Wild Pigs. In the mid-1800s, rich landowners from the mainland stocked the island with boars for hunting.”

  “Are there boars out there now?” Luke said.

  Getting charged by a wild boar while tangled in a parachute didn’t sound like the best way to start an operation.

  “No. The impoverished peasants killed them all and ate them a hundred years ago. But the name stuck. The island has been inhabited, off and on, throughout history. In recent decades, the shanty towns that popped up tended to get knocked flat by hurricanes. Hurricane Mitch in 1998 seems to have rendered the place uninhabitable, at least for the time being.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Buzz said. “There’s no one out there. There had been a few tumbledown huts remaining, but a storm last year washed them all out to sea. The ocean came over the top and dumped a lot of salt on the ground. The only thing that’ll grow right now is seagrass. Eventually, I imagine the people will start coming back, but they haven’t yet. There’s nothing for them.”

  “What about this hiking trail?” Luke said.

  “It seems like the best way into the compound,” Trudy said. “There are mentions of it in old hotel brochures. It was considered a challenging hike for adventurous visitors. It turned into another one of the island’s misfortunes. Over the years, at least two people fell and died while attempting it.”

  “Sounds like a fun place,” Mark Swann said. “I can’t imagine why it went out of business.”

  “It’s a series of switchbacks that cut up the steepest side of the mountain. There are spots where the trail itself ends, and there are simple iron rungs bolted into the cliff face. You go straight up those like a ladder. The first ladder you encounter is four stories high. There are two smaller ones after that. At the very top of the trail, it flattens out and then supposedly you have exceptional views back the way you just came, down to the water. In the old days, the trail would take you right onto the grounds of the house. Now, if
my guess is right, it probably dead ends at the perimeter fence.”

  “And the dogs,” Ed said.

  “Yes.”

  “Swann, can you see this trail at all?” Luke said.

  A moment passed as Swann fine-tuned the imagery from his drone.

  “Yeah, I can see it. It’s pretty overgrown, but it’s still there. I can see a bit of the trail obscured by the trees and undergrowth, and maybe some of the old iron rungs, glinting in the sun. I’d say, if you were going to try going that way, I’d bring something for hacking down the forest on your path, and also some way to move up that cliff face, pitons that you can drive in, say, in case a rung or two is missing.”

  “And bring something to cut the fence,” Trudy said.

  “And treats for the dogs,” Swann said.

  Everybody was a comedian today. Some were better than others.

  “Would you say that fence is electrified?” Luke said.

  “I’d say it isn’t,” Trudy said. “This is an island, far from anywhere. It has to be self-sufficient. It is likely making its own electricity, using some combination of solar power, wind power, and gasoline-powered generators. Certainly, the hotel used to tout its solar and wind projects in its advertising brochures. And this is supposed to be an idyllic retreat for Darwin King, or at least give the impression that it is. Gasoline generators are loud. I’d say he likes to keep that kind of noise to a minimum. It ruins the effect. In other words, I doubt he would waste his very limited juice on an electrified fence. More likely the fencing is thick, sturdy metal, with small holes making it hard to climb, and something sharp at the top.”

  “And electricity running through it,” Swann said.

  Trudy laughed. “Right. Might as well assume the worst.”

  “Okay,” Luke said. “We’ll bring bacon chewies for the dogs, and one hundred percent pure rubber gloves to touch the fence while we cut it open. So let’s assume all that goes fine and according to plan. How do we get back out?”

  “You could go out the same way you came in,” Trudy said.

  “Hot,” Ed said. “Very hot.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “Figure we’re going to be leaving in a hurry. We’ll have a disoriented girl with us, who we can assume has zero climbing skills, and may be too terrified to do anything even if she did have some. It’s going to be hard to go back that way. It gives us an element of surprise coming in, but going out? I don’t know.”

  “Guys,” Swann said. “There is a small parking lot on the property maybe fifty meters to the left of the front door of the house as you exit. It’s in the shade of some trees, so I can’t see all of it. But at this moment, there seems to be at least three large cars there, maybe SUVs. There might be a limousine. Looks like there might also be a sports car, like an old MG convertible.”

  “Darwin King is careful about security,” Trudy said. “In fact, you might even say he’s obsessed with it. He’s an arms dealer, after all. So there’s a good chance those SUVs are armored.”

  “Right,” Swann said. “You could potentially take a car and ram the gates on your way out. There are also jeeps at the guardhouse. You might be able to take one of those. Make a run straight downhill to the airfield.”

  “Hot,” Ed said again.

  Luke nodded. “Very hot.”

  But he liked it. Come in by boat, out by plane. If they were stealthy on the grounds of the house, and hit hard, they might catch the whole place napping. Leaving the grounds wouldn’t necessarily be a mad dash with guns blazing. If they got lucky, they might practically cruise out of there.

  He and… Henry Bowles?

  “Henry Bowles wants to come,” he said.

  “Who is Henry Bowles?” Buzz said.

  Luke smiled. “He’s just some guy who has taken an interest in our work.”

  “Bowles is an agent assigned to us by the Bureau proper,” Don said. He sighed, just a bit. “How does he know about this?”

  Luke shrugged. “They seem to know what we’re doing before we do.”

  “Okay,” Don said. “If he wants to go, okay. He may be an asset to you out there. But I would limit his knowledge of the plan, feeding him details only when he needs to know, and I would try to curtail any communications he might have with his superiors. Are we clear?”

  Luke looked at Ed. Ed shook his head, but said nothing. Limit what? The SRT was a boat full of leaks at this point.

  “Clear,” Luke said.

  “Once you’re in the air, you have a decision to make,” Don said. “If you’re free and clear, you can head north and east, and come straight home. If you have any problems, there’s an old airfield in Honduras, deep in the rainforest near the Nicaraguan border. In an airplane, you can be there very quickly. We’ll make sure you have those coordinates.”

  “Who runs it?” Ed said.

  “Friends of ours.”

  “We’ll need a pilot on the ground with us,” Luke said.

  “I’ll wrap around the island while you guys go up the trail,” Buzz Mac said. “I can meet you at the plane. I know the airbase in Honduras. They used to call it Amistad, for friendship.”

  “You can fly a plane?” Luke said.

  “Don’t you know by now, Stone?” Buzz said. “I can do anything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  12:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Boulevard Burgers

  Hollywood Beach Boardwalk

  Hollywood, Florida

  “In or out?” Luke said.

  Henry Bowles stared at him across the table. They were sitting in the outdoor eating area of a popular joint down at the Hollywood waterfront. To Luke’s left, a steady stream of joggers, roller bladers, shirtless weightlifters in tight shorts, bloated tourists and young girls in sexy bikinis went by on the wide stone walkway. The sun was high and hot. The ocean here was bluish-green.

  Bowles was drinking a pint of beer with his burger and fries. This was probably to show he was as much of a cowboy as they were. Luke and Ed were drinking water. Bowles’s facial hair was still perfectly set at three days.

  “What’s the operation?” he said.

  “You know the operation,” Ed said.

  Bowles shook his head. “How does it work? What are the details? When do we go? How do we get in? Do we have someone inside already?”

  “That’s classified,” Luke said. “Need to know. If you’re not coming…”

  Ed finished the sentence for him. “Then you don’t need to know.”

  Bowles took a minute to think about it.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m in.”

  “You comfortable with a night jump?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could be hot.”

  Bowles smiled. “I like it hot.”

  Luke nodded. He gazed out at all the people. A long-haired man was staggering by dressed as Jesus Christ, complete with a bloody crown of thorns around his head, and a heavy wooden cross on his back. It was a literal freak show just a few feet from Luke’s left elbow. This was a good spot for people watching.

  He almost wished he could just sit here all day. Here in South Florida. For an instant, he flashed back to the brief conversation he’d had with Becca twenty minutes ago. He and Ed were going on a stakeout tonight. He would be out of touch until at least tomorrow. No big deal, and they wouldn’t be in harm’s way. They certainly weren’t leaving the country or anything like that. Just people watching in Florida, basically.

  He put his hand out to Bowles. “Let me see your phone a minute.”

  Bowles stared at him, but then handed his phone over. It was a black Nokia flip phone. Luke opened it. “Work phone?” he said. “Personal phone?”

  Bowles shrugged. “I have no personal life. It’s the only phone I carry.”

  Luke looked at it for a few seconds. Then he smashed it against the table. He hit it once and the flip top broke off. Now it was hanging by a wire. The screen was already cracked. Luke smashed it into the table again. And again.

/>   He was mindful not to cut his hand. He dropped the phone on the ground and stomped on it with his shoe.

  A group of ladies at a nearby table watched him in amazement.

  He smiled at them. “Just been having a lot of trouble with this thing,” he said. “It’s always dropping calls.”

  He picked it up off the ground and slid the crushed remnants of it back across the table to Bowles.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “We’re leaving in an hour. We have all the gear you’re going to need, so you’re with us for the duration at this point. We’ll give you the details on the plane, everything we know, and exactly how we’re going to hit. There will be plenty of time to talk.”

  Bowles shook his head. He picked up the ruined phone.

  “You didn’t need to do that.”

  Luke shrugged. “I’ll get you a new one when we get back. A nice shiny Motorola, courtesy of your friends at the Special Response Team. If you’re in, you’re all the way in. I can’t have you getting cold feet and sneaking off, calling your superiors to tell them where we are or what we’re doing. No mixed allegiances. You said yourself that the investigation into Darwin King has been stonewalled for years. There’s a good chance that the Bureau is compromised on this.”

  “Better than good,” Ed said. “I’d say close to a hundred percent.”

  Luke nodded. “The fewer people who know we’re coming, the better.”

  “I wasn’t going to call anyone,” Bowles said.

  “I believe you,” Ed said. He gave Bowles big doe eyes.

  “Trust but verify,” Luke said. “A very smart man said that. Consider yourself verified.”

  He pushed his seat away from the table.

  “Now let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  2:15 p.m. Central Standard Time (3:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)

  La Sierra de San Simon (St. Simon’s Saw)

  Near Honduras