by Toby Neal
“Damn that spawn of a two-headed goat!” McDonald was likely in a bureaucratic meeting discussing her phone call. The CIA didn’t move quickly on something like this.
Sophie had charged the electric motor on the boat’s battery, but she still had to decide whether to try to swim to shore and leave the vessel safely anchored on the atoll, or try to get the Chris-Craft all the way to the coast on the electric motor’s charge.
She had a judgment call to make, but first, she’d contact Nam and check in. “Home Base, this is Pearl. Any news?”
The radio crackled. She called again, but Nam did not respond.
Had the island fortress been discovered? Or was Nam just away from the radio, doing his usual morning routine?
No way to know. And now she had to decide.
Sophie assembled her backpack of supplies first, to assess how much she’d need to move through the water if she chose that route.
The backpack was significant—at least thirty pounds of camping equipment and water. Staring at it, Sophie sat back on her heels, still torn. That damn electric motor was sure to give out before it was able to get the heavy speedboat to shore, and she was too familiar with the hazards of this ocean to feel comfortable just jumping in with a backpack and a pair of swim fins.
Was there anything she’d overlooked? What if the Chris-Craft had some kind of emergency inflatable? Or even a blow-up mattress she could use for more flotation?
Sophie began a serious search of the boat, going through every cupboard and bulkhead—and sure enough, in a far forward hatch she hadn’t noticed before, Sophie found a small, tightly rolled rubber dinghy. Less than six feet in length, with a flimsy collapsible paddle, the inflatable was not built for anything but a worst-case scenario. It was perfect.
Sophie unrolled it and discovered an emergency kit, complete with a water reclamation device, flares, a first aid kit, and an emergency beacon. “That makes me feel better,” she said aloud, missing Ginger again with a sharp pang. And Jake? Connor? Her heart thudded with anxiety. Sweat broke out on her hands. “They’re probably fine. Everything is fine. All you have to do is this, right now, Sophie—getting Momi back is the priority,” she told herself aloud.
She hooked up the pump she uncovered beneath the inflatable, and soon she had the tiny, bright yellow craft blown up.
Sophie put it into the water, tying it to the Chris-Craft with a built-in cord. She loaded the heavy backpack into the raft. The lifeboat bobbed and tipped alarmingly, even in the gentle waves lapping their hidden berth.
Sophie frowned. Paddling that thing against wind and waves was going to be challenging if she couldn’t find a way to hook up the small electric motor to the boat’s squishy stern. And what if she lost sight of the land? She was no sailor; this whole thing was a steep learning curve.
Perhaps getting a look at her destination would help with her nerves.
Sophie made sure everything was secure and then jumped onto the boulder she’d tied the speedboat to. A pair of binoculars and the handheld GPS tucked in her pockets, Sophie clambered up the steep side of the atoll to get a look at the shore. The exertion of climbing, grasping the weathered rock and hauling herself ever higher, calmed her down. By the time she reached the stone atoll’s apex, she was flushed with exercise and ready for anything.
Sophie took another heading from the peak, clinging to a scruffy, salt-burned bush, and locked in the coordinates. Even if she lost sight of the horizon, she just needed to keep going toward the direction she’d chosen.
Resolved, Sophie clambered back down.
She got into the life raft, just to get a feel for it. Yes, it was tippy, but if she sat in the middle and kept weight in the center, it settled. She wrestled the electric motor and its battery over the side and into the raft, and spent another half hour messing with it until she’d pinched enough of the rubber body into the motor’s clamp to secure it to the raft’s stern.
She closed and locked the Chris-Craft and hid the key, tying it in a sealed plastic bag to the rubber bumper against the hull—she couldn’t take the chance of losing it before she was able to return.
And then, her heart drumming in her chest and her palms damp with sweat, Sophie slipped on a lifejacket, climbed carefully into the dinghy, and cast off.
Chapter Nineteen
Day Twenty-Five
“Stop! Let him go!” Connor thrashed against his bonds, screaming, as he watched the torturer and his ninjas drown Jake in a tub of water. “I told you I’d tell you what you want!” His own heart seemed about to burst from the stress of watching Jake’s dying struggle.
Pim Wat, standing to one side with her arms crossed, lifted her chin.
The ninjas hoisted Jake’s upper body out of the tub and tossed him off the chair. Jake landed with a wet thump on the stones, falling onto his side.
Jake’s face was blue, his eyes were closed, and water dribbled out of his slack mouth.
He wasn’t moving at all.
“If he’s dead I’m not telling you shit,” Connor choked. “Not one fucking word.”
“Oh, you’ll tell me whatever I want to know. And a lot more besides, Mr. Hamilton.” Pim Wat smiled. “I don’t need Jake when I’ve got you.”
“Resuscitate him, you bitch,” Connor ground out. He crawled forward on his knees, tugging at the shackles on his arms reflexively, frantic to reach his friend. Because that’s what they’d become in this test of every human limit: friends. Brothers, who loved the same woman and were united in one purpose: keeping her safe, finding her baby, and surviving this impossible situation. Maybe he could do mouth to mouth. “You want me to talk? Help him. I’ll die before I tell you anything if he’s gone.”
“What is this, Beautiful One?” A dark and silky voice, speaking in Thai, came from the door.
“Master.” Pim Wat started and spun to face the room’s opening. “Master, I am getting these men to give us the information we want.”
Connor finally reached Jake. Using his head, he pushed Jake onto his back and leaned over to press his mouth against Jake’s, blowing into his friend’s cold lips. He emptied his lungs, then moved to the man’s chest and banged his head down on it, ignoring the pain in his forehead as he counted out loud: “One, two, three, four, five.”
He sidled back up to Jake’s face, heedless of his bleeding knees. Foamy liquid frothed out of Jake’s mouth—was that good? Maybe the water was coming out. He blew into Jake’s mouth again with determination, emptying his lungs.
Rapid Thai flew over his head between Pim Wat and the Master, too quick for Connor’s limited language skills to follow—an argument, to judge by the tone.
Pim Wat huffed angrily and left the room. Connor felt rather than saw her go, darkness lifting from the area as if a carrion bird left a carcass.
Someone was beside him, barking orders. The man Pim Wat called Master turned Jake on his side again, thumping his back hard. Water gushed from Jake’s mouth. The Master lowered him down and began doing chest compressions. He and Connor counted aloud, synchronizing their efforts; between compressions, Connor breathed into Jake’s foamy mouth. The Master lifted and turned him; more water flowed out as the Master hit Jake’s back with heavy, open-handed blows.
Ninjas ran in with an external defibrillator and pulled Jake up and away from the puddle of water surrounding his body. The Master gestured for Connor to retreat. Connor shuffled out of the way as they applied the paddles to Jake’s massive chest.
His friend’s big body arched up, thumped down.
They did it again. Arch and thump.
“Come on Jake, come on, come on,” Connor muttered. “Come back, dammit, we need you. She needs you.”
A third time.
Jake was still not breathing. His body remained slack and unresponsive.
The Master sat back on his heels and shook his head.
Connor shuffled forward and laid his ear on Jake’s chest.
The faintest of thumps. He blew another breath into Jak
e’s mouth, and this time felt the warmth of his friend’s lips, the flush of his skin. “He’s alive!”
The Master rolled Jake onto his side again and thumped his back some more. More foam emerged from his mouth, and Jake coughed and choked, breathing at last.
Connor sat back on his heels in relief. He wiped tears off his face onto his shoulder, laughing weakly. “You’re a tough son of a bitch, Jake. Gave me a heart attack, man.”
The Master barked something to the ninjas. Both of the men’s restraints were removed. The Master covered Jake with a blanket the men brought in and kept him propped on his side as Jake continued to retch and cough, clearing his lungs.
Connor twisted his raw wrists, getting circulation back into his arms and hands. He rose slowly to his feet, feeling every scrape and bruise on his abused body. Cold drafting through the door lifted the hairs on his bare skin, and he covered his genitals instinctively. Jake appeared to be breathing more easily, and the Master looked up at Connor. “You need a bath. Clothing.”
The Master’s English was British-accented and clear, like Sophie’s. He’d been foreign-educated. He had strangely compelling dark purple eyes.
“You didn’t know what she was doing to us?” Connor asked. “Pim Wat?” He hated to speak her name.
The Master didn’t answer. He tucked a bit of blanket beneath Jake’s head to pad the stone as he lowered the man back down. He barked more orders in Thai, and several ninjas brought additional blankets and carefully moved Jake onto one of them. They covered him with a clean one. Then, they lifted Jake and carried him out of the room.
The Master stood. He was tall for a Thai, and moved with a lithe grace that belied years hinted at by lines beside his eyes and a peppering of silver in long braided hair. He gestured to Connor. “Come with me.”
Connor trailed him into the stone-lined hall, but the men carrying Jake were headed in the opposite direction. Connor stopped, looking after his friend.
“They’re taking him to the infirmary. He will be cared for.” That voice. Such a potent combination of compassion and command. Connor followed the Master.
Chapter Twenty
Day Twenty-Six
Wind hit the little yellow dinghy the moment Sophie reached the opening of the atoll’s inlet. The flimsy raft’s bow lifted as waves slapped against it, spray immediately dousing Sophie from head to toe. She pulled down the ball cap she had found in the speedboat’s cabin, squinting into the glare of the sun off the waves.
So much for being able to keep an eye on that distant shore! Instead, Sophie shielded the GPS device underneath her thin parka, and glanced at it periodically to make sure she was still headed in the right direction.
The battle against wind and waves seemed to take hours. Sophie’s world narrowed down to the tiller of the electric motor in one hand, the GPS in the other, and keeping the raft steady.
The flimsy craft was not designed for anything but random floating, and had no real steering. The craft weaved from side to side as the waves pushed back, and without rudder or center hull, Sophie was unable to keep a straight course. She was still a good distance from land when the electric motor gave out.
No sense keeping deadweight on board; there would be no way to charge the battery when she reached the mainland.
Sophie unclamped the motor and let it slip overboard. She also dropped off the heavy, useless battery. Hopefully she could find a more seaworthy craft to get back to the speedboat in; there was no way she would risk this passage carrying a newborn baby.
Sophie extended the collapsible paddle, changed her position to forward in the bow of the tiny craft, and began paddling.
She was glad of all the hours she had spent in the gym over the last two weeks as she stroked deeply into the wind and waves. And stroked. And stroked.
Sophie could tell she was making headway only by checking the GPS with the wind against her—but she was slowly inching forward.
Her mind drifted to Momi as her body engaged in the mindless activity of forward movement.
The first time she had felt the baby kick was a sensation like a feather tickling her insides. She’d been at the Security Solutions office in Hilo that she shared with Jake, and she’d called him inside. Closing the office door, she took his hand in hers, slid up her shirt, and set his big warm palm on her slightly rounded abdomen. She enjoyed the feeling of his fingers against her flesh, the intimacy of their gaze into each other’s eyes as he waited to see what this was about.
Then, that fluttering. This time it was more like tickling bubbles, like the fizz of champagne.
She would never forget the way Jake’s dawn-gray eyes seemed to light with infectious joy, his grin taking up most of his face. “Our baby is really in there!”
Sophie turned her head to wipe tears from the stinging spray on her shoulder. He had to be alive; he just had to.
And Connor?
She couldn’t imagine her life without the man who had been her first lover since she’d escaped Assan Ang. Though he’d betrayed her in the cruelest way by faking his death to dodge the authorities, he’d worked hard and sacrificially to make up for it. He was the only person besides Dr. Wilson, her therapist, who knew all of her secrets and shared her passion for the wired world. Connor was more than a friend, and always would be.
Sophie finally reached the coast, and her laboring heart sank as she faced an impenetrable-looking mangrove swamp. She grasped onto a tree with wide, buttressing roots that dug deep into the silty bottom, and tied the dinghy to one of the roots for a moment so she could assess the situation.
The mangrove jungle was alive with sound; the squawks of kingfishers, the chatter of an egret, the chirps of plovers. The mangroves themselves creaked and groaned, their bark rubbing against each other as if in conversation. And everywhere, filling Sophie’s nostrils, the thick, fecund smell of rotting vegetation.
After drinking some water and eating a restorative energy bar, Sophie took out the GPS again. This time she used a satellite map program to get an aerial view, and determined that the mangrove swamp probably extended no more than a mile inland.
She put the paddle outside of the dinghy to take a depth reading. The murky water was only a couple of feet deep—but that couple of feet would be home to many snakes, crabs, and other waterborne hazards. Sophie checked that the wet/dry hiking shoes she had donned were strapped on carefully, and she stuck a leg out of the raft.
Simple things, like climbing out of the dinghy without capsizing, were taking up way too much time and energy. Sophie suppressed a stab of worry.
Armita had not given her a deadline for their meetup. She would know that Sophie’s journey, alone as specified, and trying not to be detected by the Yām Khûmkạn, might be difficult and hazardous—though she’d have no idea that Sophie had lost all of her backup. Haste was not going to help Sophie get to Armita faster; in fact, it might cause her to make the kind of mistake that could get her killed.
Up to her knees in brackish water, her feet sunk into a muddy silt bottom, Sophie took the flare gun and the first aid kit out of the dinghy and stowed them in her backpack. She took time to deflate and wrap up the raft, and walked into the trees, carrying the crudely rolled inflatable. Once deep enough into the mangroves not to be visible from the ocean side, Sophie stowed the raft and its collapsible paddle in the branches of one of the mangroves. She put a pin in the GPS. Worst-case scenario, if she had to reuse the flimsy craft, she could find it again.
Though carrying Momi? How could she paddle? Maybe a sling to keep the baby close . . . and hopefully the wind would be at her back. It seemed way too dangerous to use the raft again, but she would do whatever she had to, to get her child home.
Tightening down the straps of the backpack, Sophie forged deeper, the GPS in her hand as she navigated the tangled roots of the mangroves. She kept her eyes moving and her arms and legs as far away from the reaching branches and roots as she could.
A great heron flapped up in a whirl of wing
s, startling Sophie, and she fell back against one of the mangroves. She shrieked as she landed on something moving. She recoiled, almost losing her grip on the GPS as she jumped away—only to see a harmless four-foot python withdraw higher into the branches of the tree.
Sophie calmed herself with an effort, refocusing and taking another reading on her direction using the GPS. It would not be good to get lost in here. The mangroves were a maze, their spreading roots creating little islands, and often so close together that there was no way to pass between them. This forced Sophie to keep moving laterally to wherever she could find a way through, and without a GPS to give her a direction, she would soon have been hopelessly lost.
Stories of people wandering or snakebitten in the mangroves, starving and dying only meters from well-trafficked areas, were the stuff of urban legend in Thailand.
She pushed on, only stopping when she felt a vicious pinch on her foot, all the way through her hiking shoe. She kicked wildly, and a large, blue-tinged crab flew out of the water to hit one of the trees. Her kick detached it forcibly from her toe. On another day she might have laughed; today it was one more threat knocked down, nothing more.
Sophie took deliberate calming breaths, her eyes scanning the thick growth around her for any of the multitudinous types of tree snakes or large, stinging insects. She moved even faster, swishing through the water as quickly as she dared.
Once again, the journey seemed to take forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours when Sophie grasped onto a mangrove’s wet roots and hauled herself out of the water onto a slippery mud bank. Checking her heading, she pushed forward through heavy brush toward a thin line on the screen showing some kind of track.
Sophie tried to remember her early years in Thailand, but the truth was, she had never spent time in the wilderness; she’d always stayed close to home at the family compound near Bangkok. She didn’t remember ever having come this far out into the countryside. The idea of bushwhacking through virgin jungle, alone, would never have occurred to her family with anything but horror.