by Ted Bell
Dead or alive, he told Alex when they’d said good-bye two days ago at Logan airport. Stoke liked dead better. Alive, Alex would probably kick Rodrigo’s butt and turn whatever was left of him over to Scotland Yard. Best part about dead, ain’t nobody got to worry about extraditing your ass, you dead. Or, worry about you dissapearing down some loophole.
The four troops sitting in the stern were so excited about his SEAL card, next thing they’d be askin’ for was his damn autograph. Stoke was thinking he wished he had his old crew, Thunder and Lightning, on this thing. Some world-class badass hop-and-pop counterterrorists with him, instead of Rambo Jr. and his teenage commandos sitting back there behind him, all amped up about a real-live SEAL driving the boat instead of worrying about kicking ass and taking care of business.
Least he had Ross. Even wounded, you want Ross on your side. Tough as it was, bouncing around like this, Cubans had a medical corpsman trying to get some kind of splint on Ross’s busted lower left leg.
“Hey, Ross,” Stoke said, shouting at the man over the roar of wind and engines. “How you doin’ back there, my brother? Ok?”
Ross smiled and gave him the thumbs up. Man was stone badass. He was lying down on a thwart seat in the stern, holding onto the guy who was working on his leg by the scruff of his neck, trying to keep the medic from bouncing out of the boat. Every time they pounded through a wave, a wall of seawater washed over the boat. “Hoo-hah,” Stoke shouted into the salty spray. Just then, the outboards sputtered and he looked down at his fuel gauge.
“Shit, Pepe, what were you thinking about? We’re about to run out of gas, man! How you plan to catch this asshole without fuel? You ain’t even got extra jerry cans aboard?”
“In the other boats! We only plan for enough to get back to Port of Miami, señor!” Pepe shouted, holding on to the windscreen with his left hand, and the Night Vision binocs with his right. “Not this!”
“Plans don’t always work out, do they, Pepe?”
Stoke thought about the situation for a second.
“Listen up, Pepe, I got a thought.”
“Sí, Señor Stokely.”
“We don’t need the other boats, they’re only slowing us down. We can deal with this all by our lonesomes, we got enough gas. I’m going to slow down, let ’em catch up, off-load those extra jerry cans. You keep your binocs on Rodrigo.”
Stoke hauled back on the throttles, back to idle, let the boat settle, ride up the front of the big waves, crest, and slide down the back. In a couple of minutes, the other three boats had reached them. Stoke waved them in close, ready to throw lines and raft up. Start the fuel transfer. He knew the three boatloads of commandos wouldn’t be too happy about this but—
“Señor!” Pepe said. “We will not need the gas! Look!”
He handed Stoke the night-vision binocs. The boat had slid down to the bottom of a trough so he had to wait till they crested to get a look. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing through the luminous green lenses. Seven or eight ramshackle old wooden houses rising up on stilts, ’bout twenty feet over the water. Old, looked like, and deserted. Stiltsville! Yeah, he’d read about the place on the plane down. Old gambling and rum-running settlement, built in the ’30s. Been a ghost town since the last big hurricane. But, the really weird thing? Rodrigo’s sixty-foot speedboat was moored to a ladder going up to one of the bigger houses. Boat looked empty, just bobbing up and down. Now, why would he want to do that?
“Fantástico! Lo tenemos! La rata! We got the rat!” Pepe shouted, looking at the troops in the other boats and pointing to the Cigarette. “Vámonos!”
“Hey! Hold up, Pepe!” Stoke said, quickly grabbing a lifeline on the nearest boat before the guy driving it could take off. He pulled the boat alongside and pointed at two large jerrycans of gas in the stern. “Dos más, por favor,” he said to the young commando. Kid was built like a small gorilla. He picked up the two heavy gas cans like a couple of super-sized Pepsis and handed them over to Stoke. By the time Stoke had them, the three inflatables had already gunned their motors and raced away.
“What you wait for, señor? Let’s go get him!”
“This is a major goatfuck, man, I’m tellin’ you. Get on the damn radio and call ’em back. Pronto if not sooner!” Stoke turned his back on the guy and started filling his tanks.
“This is my operation, señor, not yours! I take my orders from el comandante, not norteamericanos. Now, go!”
“You always this stupid, or you just making a special effort today?” Stoke said, shaking his head in wonder.
The other three flat-bottoms were still racing towards Stiltsville and closing fast. Total and complete fuck-up, you could see it coming a mile away.
Stokely had the Cuban commander’s Glock nine sidearm out of its holster and jammed up against Pepe’s head before the guy even knew how or even if it might happen.
“How you say ‘mutiny’ in Spanish, jefe? ’Cause that’s what’s happening. First thing you do? You tell your guys here to hand their guns nice and slow to Ross, comprende? ’Less you want your brains in the water.”
Lieutenant Alvarez gave the order, and Stoke knew enough Spanish to know the man wanted to keep his brains intact, though, from what Stoke could see, there wasn’t a whole lot to go around. Ross, sitting up now, accepted the weapons and stowed all but one, an AK-47 Chinese assault rifle, under the thwart seat. The AK he cradled loosely, but his finger was on the trigger.
“Assault knives?” Stoke asked the guy.
“Sí.”
“Feed ’em to the fishies.”
Four knives splashed into the bay.
“Yours, too, comandante. I’ll keep it safe for you.”
After the guy had handed him the knife, Stoke took the gun away from his head and pushed him down into the seat. The three assault boats were now closing to within maybe a couple hundred yards of the nearest stilt house, the big one where Rodrigo’s black Cigarette boat was moored.
“One last chance, amigo,” Stoke said, handing Pepe the radio. “Call ’em back.”
The guy shook his head no.
“Ask you a relevant question, Pepe,” Stoke said. “You seen much combat? Or you just a special ops guy? Dragging folks kicking and screaming out of their houses in the middle of the night and shit. Kidnapping their children? Or, maybe you just got a sinus problem? Your nose so stuffed up you can’t smell a trap stinks to high heaven right in front of you?”
“My men will take him, you will see.”
“Well, look at it this way, Comandante, however it goes down? We sittin’ tight. We got us a front row seat. Ain’t that right, Ross?”
“Trap, Stoke.” Ross said quietly, eyes following the three boats, going slowly now, ghosting up to the ramshackle house where the black boat was tied. Troops on their feet, weapons all trained on the Cigarette.
“Bet your ass, trap. Nothing else makes sense, Ross. Rodrigo, he knows we after him. Why he stop? Tie up? Take a nap? Catch him some bonita? He got Fancha with him. Maybe catch a little trim?”
“The boat doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s what I’m working on, too. He can’t be in it. He knows he’s outnumbered. Twelve guys with automatic weapons, RPGs. Shoot his boat up, sink it. So, then, what, he’s up in one of the houses? Lure them in? House-to-house? Twelve against one? Make any sense to you?”
“Better off running, Stoke. Head south for the Keys. Bags of hidey holes down in the mangrove swamps.”
“What I try to tell the military genius here.”
“Right.”
“Rebel without a clue. Boy like to snatch his troops from the jaws of victory.”
“His call.”
“Keep your eyes open, Ross. Looks like Señor McHale’s Navy is going in without him.”
“Here’s a thought,” Ross said, rubbing his stubbly chin. “Maybe that Cigarette’s not Rodrigo’s only boat.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Suva Island
HE TOOK A SMALL SIP OF THE ICE-COLD
GIN, AND SAVORED the juniper bite of it on his tongue. In no aspect of his appearance or attitude was there any hint that here was a man about to ignite the fuse of what could conceivably be World War Three.
The dense din of insect music provided a natural background for the man and his two companions. The three of them were sitting on the broad Bambah verandah, bathed in the pale equatorial light of late afternoon. The owner himself was seated in a tall white wicker rocking chair, regal as a fat old maharajah, sipping his gin fizz and lime. The cane and wicker rocker was creaking under the burden of his weight.
Bin Wazir wore his favorite evening attire, an aged white dinner jacket made up long ago at Huntsman’s of Savile Row. He’d had his tailor enlarge it any number of times, still he had to be very careful not to strain the seams. Age and the brutal Indonesian heat had turned the vast silk jacket almost yellow, which made it even more elegant. He was wearing black striped silk trousers, black tie, and a pair of black velvet evening pumps without socks. He had rubbed oil of macassar into his thick dark hair and combed it straight back off his domed forehead.
In the distance, out beyond the sweeping ring of the bay, the peak of the towering volcano was sending plumes of grey ash into the whitish-yellow sky. Occasionally, brilliant red and orange jets of molten fire would streak upwards, pause, and then fall back into the mouth of the volcano. There were reports of increased activity. Reports? Anyone who’d lived around volcanoes long enough knew it was early days. The old mountain was just building up a head of steam. Even Saddam, his tail whispering across the floorboards, knew it was only a matter of time.
From time to time, barefoot servants in gold and red sarongs would appear, padding out onto the verandah with bowed heads and hands clasped as if in prayer, silently topping off bin Wazir’s gin, adding tinkling ice from a silver bucket. Or, another might insert a fresh yellow Baghdaddie into his long ebony holder, while yet another held his flaming gold Dunhill to the tip.
Tonight was clearly a very special occasion in the long and storied history of the Hotel Bambah. A sense of nervous excitement was obvious among the staff and guests throughout the hotel, even out here on the verandah. Especially out here on the verandah.
“Most kind,” the owner would say to the servants, and then the verandah, save the constant insect hum, fell quiet once more.
His two companions sat in silence. Three, really, if you counted the dragon, Saddam. Earlier, Tippu Tip had been playing with the Komodo, rolling monkey heads across the floor. He aimed them carefully, keeping them all a foot, and no more, outside the range of Saddam’s jaws, the dragon snapping and straining at his steel leash. The African had tired of this game well before the dragon, and was now lying stretched to his full length atop the cushions of a bamboo divan, snoring quietly.
Saddam was coiled in his corner, his great scaly tail swishing slowly, snaking across the old wooden floorboards, head down, eyeing the various occupants of the porch carefully with his yellow eyes. He had varying degrees of interest in these three humans. He regarded the sleeping African for a while, his eyes flashing, then he turned his attention to Snay bin Wazir rocking in his chair at the top of the steps.
The sight of his owner seemed to calm him. The man never teased or threatened him. And never failed to toss a monkey head or two his way when he came up the steps from walks in the gardens. Pacified, he would even allow the human to stroke his great snout. Satisfied that all was well with Snay bin Wazir, Saddam directed his gaze to the third man on the verandah, Ali al-Fazir. The bright eyes flashed again and the long forked tongue shot out, licked the air, and retracted.
The hotel manager was Saddam’s chief tormenter when the owner or guests weren’t around. He was sitting on the steps below Snay bin Wazir with his arms wrapped morosely around his knees. He was gazing out into the darkening gardens. The old dragon smelled fear and flight; at any moment the much-hated old sack of bones might stand up and sprint off into the encroaching gloom.
Snay spoke, breaking the long silence.
“All of the guests have arrived and are checked in?”
“Yes, Excellency,” Ali al-Fazir said, “All four hundred. All very beautiful, may I say, sire. Exquisite.”
“Yes. But, chosen for the their brains and training, my dear Ali. The crème of the camps the world over. The preparations for this evening’s reception? And the welcome dinner?”
“Complete.”
“The menu?”
“Beef Rendang, Ikan Pedis, and Babi Panggang for the main course. Sate Ajam, Gado Gado, and Kroepoek udang to begin. As you ordered, sir.”
“Ah, well,” Snay said with a sigh, “I suppose there’s really nothing left for you to do then, is there, Ali old friend?” He took another sip of gin.
The silence continued thus until Ali could stand it no longer. “I was wondering, Excellency, about….” He realized he had no idea what he was wondering about, that he was just desperate to say something, anything, to prolong the inevitable. “About…”
“About?”
“Trees,” Ali said, a lost look filling his bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes.
“Trees.”
“Yes, sire, all the trees you planted so long ago out there in the garden. I’ve always wondered what they are.”
“Ah, curious, after all these years.”
“Well, I am curious, sire, about the various—”
“No, no. I meant it is curious that after all this time on the property, you suddenly develop an interest in its horticulture.”
“I only meant—”
“Quiet, Ali. Silence. At any rate, these plantings here at the foot of the steps are East Indian snakewood from Java and Timor. The seeds yield strychnine. And, just over there, those evergreens beyond the path, are my favorite. From Borneo. They call it the ordeal-tree, or poison tanghin as the fruit contains tanghinine, a toxic asthenic. These spectacular Hawaiian climbing lilies, Gloriosa superba, are a wonderful source of colchicine, three grains of which are fatal. The castor bean plants at your feet contain the seed which produces ricin, a quite fashionable poison once again.”
“All poisonous. Everything.”
“With few exceptions, yes. A lovely thought isn’t it? The Poison Garden. Thinking of going for a walk, are you not?”
“I was, yes.”
Ali got slowly to his feet, pushing down with his hands on his knees for leverage.
“How far will I get, sire?”
“Depends on your herb of choice, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
Snay turned and looked at the African and saw the big rheumy red eyes staring at him in the growing darkness. “I believe we’re ready,” he said to Tippu Tip and the big head nodded once in acknowledgement.
He looked back at al-Fazir and saw that the man was rooted to the spot, his chin down on his sternum. He was shaking like a leafless stalk in a strong breeze.
“I-I’ve been a good soldier,” he blurted out, more to himself than Snay.
“Good-bye, Ali,” Snay said pleasantly. “One last thing. That tree by the gate. If you get that far, it’s a Chinaberry tree. The fruit contains a narcotic that instantly shuts down the entire central nervous system. It might be of some help.”
Ali bowed deeply from the waist.
“Sire.”
The man leapt from the steps and hit the ground running. Bin Wazir let him get twenty feet away and then looked over his shoulder and nodded. Tippu already had the key in the security lock. The glass cover of the device slid back and he pulled the red ring. The steel pole the dragon was chained to descended silently into the verandah’s floor.
“Saddam!” Snay whispered to his roaring dragon. “Kill!”
Ali did make it to the Chinaberry tree, such was his desperation and fleetness of foot. He leapt up and caught the lowest hanging branch and managed to swing himself up into the tree. The ten-foot lizard was racing through the gardens at over forty miles an hour with its jaws open. Ali screamed and started climbing desperately for
the top branches, his leather shoes making it difficult to find purchase.
The fruit? Where was the fruit?
Saddam was at the base of the tree now, his foreclaws making huge gashing swipes at the bark. He looked up at his hated prey, for that’s what Ali could see in the watery yellow eyes, hate, let out a bellowing roar, and started upwards, climbing swiftly and easily.
Ali was snatching handfuls of leaves and berries, shoving everything down his throat, choking it all down, chewing desperately on the fruit, swallowing the bitter juice, waiting for darkness. He felt Saddam’s hot breath on his bare ankles and screamed when the dragon bit off his left foot in one quick bite. Then Saddam started on his other leg.
It wasn’t just the sound of screaming coming from the top of one of the poison garden trees that brought the few guests not already massing down at the beach pavilion to their windows. It was the horrible sound of cracking bones. Snay sat back in his rocker, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Why you kill him?” Tippu rumbled from the shadows.
“He was due. And he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.”
“Heh-heh. Lak Saddam.”
“Tippu,” Snay said after a long moment, “Would you get a couple of fellows and fetch Saddam? I think he’s quite finished with Ali for the time being.” Snay knew Saddam’s eating habits. He would take an appetizer from a soft portion of the victim, wait for the blood poison to take effect, then return to the main course when he was hungry again. Meanwhile, what was left of Ali would remain in the treetops, ropy strings of flesh draped in the higher branches.
Tippu clapped his hands smartly and two young native boys appeared out of the bush. One had a high-powered rifle loaded with tranquilizing rounds, the other a thickly meshed steel net. The African descended the steps heavily, took the rifle from the boy, and the trio disappeared into the garden.
“Sire?” the receptionist said as Snay passed the front desk on his way up to the main ballroom to check on the arrangements. “So sorry to disturb you. There is an urgent telephone call for His Excellency. I’ll put it through to the telephone room, sir.”