by Jack Mars
Elaine had been against this. She’d been furious with the girl, and didn’t want to send her up. She said the girl wasn’t ready. She said the girl hadn’t bought in, and probably never would. Elaine said all these things, but Darwin overruled. He didn’t do it often, but when he did, it stuck.
Darwin was the boss here, and Elaine knew that. In the end, she had transformed 21 into a work of art. A masterpiece.
He could see through the fabric of the girl’s nightgown and follow the outline of her young body. It did not make him want to ravage her. That would come later. Tonight, her beauty made him feel love for her, a love so pure and unadulterated that he didn’t want to ruin it. She was so innocent and he didn’t want to touch that, he wanted it to be exactly what it was.
The tension of her innocence, poised on a knife’s edge, right before her fall into decadence, was exquisite.
She stood on the stone tiles, eyes cast down. She was too shy to look at him. He loved that about her. Some girls came in here, and they were already bold. They were already experienced. They would look him in the eye, almost ready to challenge him. Sometimes girls like that didn’t last.
But this… this 21… she was everything he wanted.
All around the room, and in fact, this entire apartment, candles were lit. The lights were all out, and there were perhaps a hundred white candles, candles on every flat surface, their tiny flames dancing in the warm breezes that came in from the outside.
There was a new bottle of red wine in an elegant glass decanter. He had been drinking all afternoon, and he didn’t see any reason to stop now. He had won, or he was going to. Miles Richmond had reached out to Bill Ryan, and they thought they were going to take the girl back. Now Miles was dead, and Bill… well, Darwin supposed he’d see how Bill was doing at a later time. Hopefully, Bill was beginning to see the error of his ways. He had tried to send a commando team to what? Kill Darwin King? And how far had that gotten him?
It had put him in the hospital.
It was one thing to do away with Miles Richmond, of course. The man was a cockroach. His death would barely make the evening news. It was quite another to assassinate the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. You didn’t do that lightly. You sent a message first.
Message received.
The girl was standing there, still as a statue. She was ethereal, almost like a ghost. That was good. Darwin King gave her a physical essence. He granted her substance, reality itself. He could take it away if he wanted.
Her grandfather was dead now. He had been murdered in the garage below his offices. Terrible shame, but these things happened.
And her mother’s boyfriend… Zorn. Not really a stepfather, Darwin supposed. He was also dead, by his own hand. He was a weak man, no one had ever supposed anything different about him, and now he was gone.
Her mother? Under sedation, apparently. Couldn’t cope with the loss of her daughter. Now her boyfriend… my, my, my. Darwin could take care of the mother, too, if he so desired. He could pull the plug on her at any point. Who would blame her for committing suicide at this point? Who would suspect anything different if she just disappeared, then washed up on a beach somewhere?
Darwin was a god. He could take everything away from a person. And this girl knew nothing about how much he had already taken.
She thought he had taken her freedom. In fact he’d made her freer than she had ever been. A person with no attachments had complete freedom. Her attachments were gone. She was untethered, adrift, like a spaceman who lost contact with his ship and was now floating away into deep space.
“Come here, 21,” he said.
He sat down in the plush white armchair that was behind him. He sank into it, so that when she walked to him, they were nearly the same height.
He reached and put his strong arms around her. He pulled her close. He wanted to smell her, and he did. There was the slightest sent of lavender and vanilla. She smelled like a confection, a light dessert.
She stiffened in his embrace.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I never want you to be afraid of me, because I’m going to take care of you, and love you, and keep you safe. Nothing bad will ever happen to you again. Because I am going to be so good to you.”
He pulled away for a moment and looked into her pretty blue eyes. “I love you, honey. You know that, don’t you?”
The girl seemed frozen, unable to move. She looked down again, focusing somewhere on his shirt.
“I don’t know anything anymore,” she said in a small voice.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Darwin said. “That’s the perfection right there. You don’t have to know anything when you’re with me. You just have to know the one thing, the only thing that’s important. That I love you, and you love me. That this relationship is about love. That we love each other and we take care of each other.”
He looked into her eyes again, and saw that she was silently crying, the tears sliding down her face. He caught one with a thick finger. Then he put it on his tongue.
“Your tears are so salty,” he said. “But why are you crying?”
Her face broke up into a grimace, a mask of anguish, like the face of a small child. When she spoke, her voice was deep and husky, like the sound was caught in her throat. But it also made her voice sound more like that of a woman. Womanhood was coming.
“I want to go home,” she said.
Darwin shook his head. “Angel, you are home.”
Her mouth was quivering. “I’m not. I’m not home.”
“That other place was never your home,” he said. “This was always your home.”
She stood there, his hands on her arms, her body shaking. He found it disturbing, the way she was acting. She was not adapting. She was not appreciating.
This island was breathtaking. She could have a life here like none other. Total luxury, an existence that others could only envy. Instead, she was still crying and whining about a life that was gone.
It was the kind of thing that could make him lose his temper. These girls could be brats sometimes. It was Elaine’s job to discipline these tendencies out of them. This was nothing that Darwin wanted to deal with.
The girl shook her head. “I want my mother.”
“I think you need to learn to appreciate what you have. Instead, you’re reverting to these childish—”
“I want my MOTHER!”
Before he knew what he was doing, Darwin’s right hand reached out and grabbed a chunk of the girl’s hair near the scalp. He got a nice, tight grip, and pulled her to the ground by her hair. In a second, she was on her knees.
“You don’t have a mother,” he said.
He put his face close to hers. He had loved her moments ago, he remembered that, but now he was seething with hatred for her. This happened sometimes. When he was drunk, he could get very angry. It was important that he not do anything rash. He didn’t want to ruin this opportunity. He didn’t want this girl to fail.
She could end up leaving the island, and not in a good way. Not in a going home to mother way.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You need to grow up. That life you think you remember is over. This is your life now. And if you don’t start appreciating me, and what I’m doing for you here…”
He pushed her head away from him. Now she was on her knees, curled in a ball, weeping abjectly.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
She just kept on crying.
“Boo-hoo,” he said. “Boo-hoo.”
He picked up the telephone and pressed the button.
“Yes,” a voice said.
“It’s Darwin. I need another couple of girls. There’s something wrong with the one that I have here. It seems like she might be defective.”
He thought about who he wanted. He wanted ones that were completely obedient, loyal, girls who had learned their place, who had adapted to life here. He wanted girls who were
residents of paradise, girls who owed their very lives and well-being to him, and who damn well knew it. Girls who would show this one what it was all about.
“Send me number 11, and number 17. Thanks.”
He hung up. He looked down at 21. It disgusted him, the way she was.
“I’m going to show you what we do here,” he said. “Tonight, you’re going to watch, and then you’re going to participate. My patience is through. So now I’m going to show you what’s expected of you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
9:05 p.m. Central Standard Time (10:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Isla de los Jabalies
Near St. Simon’s Saw
The Caribbean Sea
The sea grasses were man high.
Luke could see how this island might once have been a good place to hunt boar. But good was a relative term. The grass was so deep you would never see a boar until it was right on top of you.
He checked his compass and hiked through the grass to the rendezvous point. The island was an inexorable down slope in that direction.
It was quiet, hardly any sound except the wind rustling the grass, and the crash of waves on the pebble beach ahead. As the water retreated into the ocean, it made a sound across the rocks like fingers scraping across bones.
He came out onto the beach, and there were two figures to his left in the darkness. They stood near a large inflatable motorboat, its engine up. As he came closer, Luke saw the white hair gleaming in the night. MacDonald was smaller than Luke remembered. Bowles was here already. He had landed first and hadn’t bothered to wait for Luke. Bowles seemed to tower over Buzz. The man was shrinking. Old people did that.
“Buzz Mac,” Luke said.
MacDonald turned to look at him. Buzz Mac was indeed shorter than either Luke or Bowles. He had a full head of hair on his head, all of it completely white. He had a white goatee on his face. He wore a dark T-shirt and cargo pants. In the dim light, Luke could tell that he was deeply tanned.
“Luke Stone,” Buzz Mac said. “How long has it been?”
“I’d say about seven years,” Luke said. “Maybe eight.”
Mac nodded. “You were a baby then.”
“So were you,” Luke said.
“Hardly a baby,” Mac said. He stuck a hand out to Luke and Luke took it. Buzz’s grip was firm and strong.
“I brought you a present, Stone. I wanted to repay you for the ring.”
“The ring?” Bowles said.
Buzz nodded. “Yeah. I was sixty-five when they finally pushed me out of the Army. I never wanted to leave. I was having too much fun. Don Morris was the one who drew the short straw and finally had the talk with me. I could tell that dreaded it, and hated every second of it.”
“What did he tell you?” Luke said.
“He said, ‘Mac. You’re a sinking ship, and you’re dragging everybody else down with you. Put your retirement papers in so you can have a graceful exit.’ It was kind of him to tell me, to be honest. No one wants to be the guy who pooped his pants, and everybody knows but him. I sure didn’t.”
“If you were sixty-five when he pushed you out, that would make you…”
Buzz nodded. “That’s right, seventy-two going on sixteen.”
He looked at Bowles. “Anyway, Stone, Don Morris, a bunch of guys who were around chipped in and bought me a ring. I wear it every day. I don’t know if I can even take it off at this point. I call it my Super Bowl ring.”
“We called it your wedding ring,” Luke said.
“I was never married to the Army. She was my mistress, but not my wife. Anyway, it’s a doorknocker.”
Buzz held up his right hand, and good as his word, he was wearing it, even here. Luke remembered the ring well. It had a large stone made out to resemble the black, gold, and white star of the US Army. A group of small glittering diamonds circled the star. Around the perimeter were the words Be All You Can Be. Looking at it again, it was actually pretty nice.
“You could render someone unconscious with this thing. I try never to smack myself in the forehead.”
“So what did you get me?” Luke said.
Buzz smiled. “It’s in the boat. I thought you might need it tonight.”
The three of them went over to the Zodiac and Buzz pulled a rifle carry case up onto the gunwale. He undid the latches and opened it. Inside was a gun and a number of accessories, all snug in their own compartments.
“M24 sniper rifle. Bolt action. Comes with telescopic sight, bipod, sound suppressor and flash suppressor, all here in the carry case. The case can be double-strapped to your back for when you go up the cliffs. Plus I loaded up a couple of five round box magazines for you.” He looked back at Luke, a mischievous glint in his eye. “You ever used one of these before?”
Luke nodded. That was going to be a hell of a thing to carry up a cliff face. Even so, it was probably a good idea to have it along. “Maybe. But Buzz, that gun costs a lot more than I chipped in for your ring.”
“Yeah, well… call it interest.”
“It’s been quite a reunion so far,” Bowles said.
Buzz nodded. “It has. Did I tell you about the time Stone and I went on an operation together? It was our only one. My days were numbered at that point.”
“You never told me about anything,” Bowles said. “I just met you.”
“That’s right,” Buzz said. “So I’ll tell you now. Stone was a big kid with wide eyes. Scared half to death.”
“I was 75th Rangers before that, Buzz,” Luke said. “I was handpicked by Don Morris. I’d already seen combat in…”
Buzz raised a hand. “It’s my story. Let me tell it.”
Luke shook his head and smiled.
Buzz went on. “So they gave me bright eyes here, and we did a critical mission. An eleven-year-old boy was dying of cancer, and his last wish was to ride with the special operations guys.” He sighed.
“Sweet kid. Aaron something. Very skinny. His mom was having a heart attack about the whole thing, but we promised her he’d make it. We met him at Camp Lejeune, the training grounds the Marines have in North Carolina. We did an easy jump at dawn, the kid tandemed with Stone. We touched down, rendezvoused with a Stryker armored vehicle. Ran it through the swamps they have out there, water and mud splashing everywhere, the kid riding up top, helmet, goggles, he looked like a pipsqueak tank commander. We took him to a shooting gallery out in the woods. Kid fired a bunch of guns, finished with a Jeep-mounted M30, a thousand rounds in a minute or so.”
“We had him stab a fighting dummy,” Luke said.
Buzz nodded. “That’s right. The kid was so tired by then, he could barely lift his arms. But he stabbed the stuffing out of that thing. He wanted to kill it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. And that was it. It wasn’t even eleven a.m. I hope it was enough.”
“I think it was,” Luke said.
“It had to be,” Buzz said. “The kid died a month later.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “Kids, man. It’s hard sometimes. His mom sent me a letter. I was out on the street pretty much right after that. My last mission.”
He shook his head. He seemed to stare into the black distance for a moment.
“You boys ready?” he said finally. “This little girl isn’t going to rescue herself.”
* * *
The surface of the water was shrouded in fog.
The Zodiac rode the big swells. Up and down, up and down, ten feet high, the boat coming up over the top, then plunging into the valleys between them. Each time they crested, Luke could see the glow of the Darwin King’s compound floating high in the sky, creeping closer.
“It’s coming up,” Buzz said.
It was one of the few things he had said since they climbed aboard. He was at the stern, working the engine and the tiller. Now he started talking.
“I’m going to run this up on the beach. Be ready for anything. If somehow they know we’re coming, this could be a short trip.”
> Luke and Bowles were at the bow, either side, along the gunwales. Both of them had their MP5s out, straps over one shoulder, snouts poking forward.
“If it drops that way, you guys rip them up hard, I’ll back this thing up and out, and then you fall back to me. I’ll be five feet off the beach. Just drop in and we’re out the way we came. Don’t give up on it, though. When I turn around, I want you facing backwards, laying down suppressing fire the whole way. But don’t shoot me.”
Buzz was calm. His voice exuded authority. A hundred missions? Hell.
“Got me?” he said.
“Roger that,” Bowles said.
“Roger,” Luke said.
They approached the shoreline of the island. It was a sandy strip lined with palm trees. Luke was on red alert. Even in the night, from some distance out and through wisps of white fog, his eyes were so sharp he could see the beach etched in tiny detail. If anyone was there, they were back in the dunes.
For a second, he glanced up at the millions of stars in the dark sweep of sky above them. The boat skimmed the smaller waves closer to shore, and for a moment, with the sea breeze blowing past and the sensation of dark speed, he caught himself feeling good. It was the first time in a while.
Here we go.
The boat crested a breaker, sliding down the face in white foam. Luke and Bowles leaned back simultaneously. For an instant, it felt like the boat might flip over forward, then it dropped into the wash, caught the energy unleashed from the broken wave, and burst out ahead of it.
“Ride ’em cowboy,” Bowles said quietly.
“Get ready for impact,” Buzz said.
They hit the beach and slid forward onto it. Luke and Bowles were out instantly on either side, kneeling, taking firing positions. Luke scanned the tree line and the dunes. Shadows moved as the trees swayed in the warm breeze.
Nothing. It was a quiet night. A long moment passed.
