by C. J. Box
Satellite images he’d looked up of Isla de Zapatos revealed an utter lack of construction on the south end of the island, nothing but white beach leading into a mangrove forest. If he dropped in there, he might be okay. It’d mean a daylong hike to the north end of the island—maybe two days if the terrain was treacherous—but he’d just have to live with that. It was preferable to getting riddled with bullets while falling from twelve thousand feet.
The satellite images he’d seen had also revealed the compound, a plane on a dirt runway, and a dock with a boat tied to it on the north end of the island. Noah couldn’t fly a plane, but he could drive a boat, so this was his one and only plan for escape.
Gael poked his head out of the plane. “We’re ready when you are, man. Let’s do it!”
Noah nodded, stoic, took a last drag from his cigarette, and flicked it away. He grabbed his rucksack from the tarmac. It held two changes of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a small tarp, a blanket, enough food for two days, a hundred feet of twine (you never knew when you might need it), and a flint. A fanny pack already strapped to his waist held a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a fold-out knife, a compass, his flip phone, a Glock 20, and fifteen 180-grain 10mm rounds. The fanny pack was supposed to be waterproof, but everything in it was bagged anyway, in case of a water landing. He also had a full canteen clipped to his belt.
He walked up into the plane and Gael shut and locked the hatch behind him.
* * *
The wind whipped through Noah’s graying hair. The ground below, free of any artificial light, was covered in shadows. The seawater was black ink. He felt sick to his stomach. They were at twelve thousand feet and nearing the jump point. He lowered goggles over his eyes. Gael tapped him on the shoulder. He nodded, turned on a strobe light attached to his rucksack, and threw it out into the night. For a moment he watched it drop, seeing only the rhythmic flashing of the light, then he jumped out into the darkness after it.
He arched his back and put himself in a neutral position, the wind whipping against his body, louder than the plane engine had been.
It was impossible to orient himself in the night. He could make out the silhouettes of trees and occasionally see the moonlight reflecting against the seawater, but had no way to gauge distance.
He looked at his altimeter. Nine thousand feet.
He was gonna pull his chute as late as possible, which would mean a hard landing.
Six thousand feet.
He looked to the north and saw lights in scattered buildings; saw tall lamps surrounding the compound.
Four thousand feet.
He looked down and saw the blinking light on his rucksack. It was still falling—then it wasn’t. It landed and the light went out.
Two thousand feet.
He angled down, cutting through the wind.
One thousand feet.
He could now see the world below him more clearly. He was heading for a water landing—but not too far from shore.
Eight hundred feet.
He hoped the water had depth where he hit or he might break his legs.
Six hundred feet.
He started to feel genuine panic. Up to this point he’d been flying, but with the ground rushing up at him he knew for sure he was falling. If he’d jumped off the Empire State Building, he’d be about halfway to becoming a smudge.
Two hundred feet—you could buy a length of rope that long.
One hundred and—
He pulled the ripcord.
The chute burst open, caught air—one second, two seconds—and he splashed into the water, going under completely, feeling the sting of the landing even through the soles of his shoes. For a brief panicked moment he felt disoriented, it was dark underwater and he didn’t know which way was up, but then he surfaced and saw the beach. He began gathering his parachute, stuffing it back into the pack. He’d either have to carry it with him or hide it, but it couldn’t be discovered.
He scanned the water but couldn’t see his rucksack, so he swam toward shore. If it came down to it he still had a knife, a gun, and some water. But when he reached the shore he saw it lying on the beach. The light, still flashing, was half buried in the sand. He lay on the beach beside it and looked up at the sky, heart pounding.
No one had shot at him, which meant he probably hadn’t been seen. Either that or a group of men with guns was cutting its way through the woods to find him.
He reached into his fanny pack, pulled out a sandwich bag holding his cigarettes and lighter, and lit himself a smoke. When he got near the compound he’d probably have to lay off—he wouldn’t want to give himself away—but for now he thought he was okay.
Once he’d finished his cigarette, he snuffed it out in the sand and put the butt into his pocket. He got to his feet and trudged across the beach, past a group of box thorns with fat green paddles and red bulbs, and into the mangrove forest. He walked some distance, listening to the night animals, looking for a flat surface to lie on. When he found a place, he pulled his tarp and his blanket from his rucksack and laid them out, putting the tarp down first. He undressed and hung his wet clothes from tree branches. He loaded his Glock’s magazine with the fifteen rounds, lay down, wrapping himself up like a human burrito, and with the pistol gripped in his fist, closed his eyes.
* * *
Noah woke early the next morning to the sound of distant birds and the sensation that he was being watched. Before he did anything else, he reached for the grip of his pistol, which he’d let go in the night, and then, lying as still as possible, shifted his eyes left, then right, seeing what he could without moving his head.
About ten feet away, sitting among the mangrove trees, was a black jaguar. Its face and head were the color of midnight, but the darkness faded enough that you could see the shadow hints of spots on its flank. Its tail was curled around its body and it was looking at him with its yellow eyes. It was a large cat, at least a hundred and fifty pounds, but it was relaxed, giving Noah no sense that it was prepared to attack. Still, if it changed its mind, he had no doubt that it’d be able to kill him—unless he managed to shoot it first.
But he had no intention of doing that unless the thing made an attempt on his life. He wouldn’t murder an innocent creature—he had more love for animals than people—but also he didn’t want the sound of a gunshot echoing across the island.
He slowly pushed the tarp and blanket off himself and sat up, still holding the pistol. He got to his feet. The jaguar continued to watch him, but it didn’t move, so he pulled his clothes off the mangrove branches and put them back on. He snapped his fanny pack in place but tucked the pistol into his waistband for easy access. He buried his parachute, stuffed his tarp and blanket into his rucksack, and strapped it onto his back. He looked at the jaguar.
It didn’t move.
He didn’t think he could read the jaguar’s mind—wild animals were mysterious to him—but it did seem that it was waiting for him to do something. He pulled his compass from the fanny pack, oriented himself, and began walking, glancing over his shoulder at the jaguar every once in a while, not fully trusting it wouldn’t attack.
After about ten paces, it began to follow.
He continued to look over his shoulder as he walked, and it continued behind him, never coming closer or falling back.
Every once in a while he would hear the calls of frigate birds or cormorants and glance up to see them flying overhead, far beyond the canopy of trees. The sky was pale blue, like a bolt of faded denim, but he could see dark clouds to the east blowing toward him.
As he continued walking, as he began up the rocky slope of the hill that separated the south end of the island from the north, as he got farther from the shore, he saw them less frequently.
The black jaguar continued to follow.
It got very hot out. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his sun-pinked skin, and the runnels caught on his eyebrows. He wiped them with his arm
when they began to tickle and continued on. Sweat ran down his torso. His socks grew damp.
The mangroves were thinning as the terrain grew rockier and the water beneath it less brackish, but new types of foliage appeared, tall grasses mostly, cacti, an occasional cypress, and flowering plants he didn’t recognize.
About noon he discovered a cave in the hillside. It was surrounded by red bursts of panic grass, so he nearly missed it. But didn’t. He entered the cool, earthen-smelling interior of the cave. Somewhere deeper inside he could hear the steady drip of rainwater filtered by the rocks splashing into a standing pool. He shrugged out of his rucksack and sat down. He looked to his left and saw the black jaguar sitting on a boulder about ten feet from the mouth of the cave, looking at him, waiting. He opened his rucksack and pulled out a large bag of beef jerky he’d made a week earlier. He didn’t have a food dehydrator, so he clipped the marinated steak to a box fan he put in his kitchen window and let the sun-heated air do the job. He took a piece out and tossed it to the jaguar, who sniffed it, then ate it. He bit into his own piece, washed it down with a swallow of water from his canteen.
After lunch he strapped the rucksack back on and continued his trek, the jaguar following.
About four o’clock he reached the top of the hill and stood there beneath the sun, looking out on the terrain to the north, the island stretching out before him. It looked to be a completely different habitat. He could see jacarandas on the downslope, and then, as the terrain grew less rocky, black sapotes, big-leaf mahoganies, and panama rubber trees, a forest of them, with the blue sky and the ocean beyond—seabirds circling the waters, looking for fish; clouds like pulled cotton Scotch-taped to the firmament. He just stood there a moment, looking out at all this distant beauty, and for a moment he felt completely at peace.
But though he wouldn’t go so far as to call the beauty a lie, it was a half-truth. Once you got close enough you saw the danger: predators lurked in the shadows of the forest, and the sea was haunted by death. Always had been.
It started to rain as he began navigating the rocky slope down. It would have been a relief, except it made the ground beneath him slick and treacherous, slowing his journey. Fortunately, despite falling twice, he avoided any injury worse than a scraped elbow.
It was nearly dark before he reached the base of the hill, and he decided he was finished for the day. It was still raining, he was tired, and he didn’t want to walk through unknown terrain in darkness.
He strung a length of twine between two trees, about three feet off the ground, and put the tarp over it, forming a makeshift tent, then put rocks on the corners of the tarp to keep it from flapping about in the wind. He sat in the mud, listening to the rain thwack against the tarp, and smoked his first and last cigarette of the day.
The jaguar sat beneath a black sapote and waited.
* * *
The next morning he and the jaguar reached the rubber tree forest. The trees had great gouges carved into them for the exudate to run down once they’d been tapped, and there were old white-coated buckets scattered among leaves and fallen branches, most of them half buried.
Soon after that they came across an old camp, housing for the laborers who worked the rubber plantation probably. The camp consisted of two dozen wooden huts with corrugated steel roofs, now rusted and falling in.
“Should we go inside one of them, Chloe?”
The jaguar didn’t respond. Noah wasn’t sure she liked her new name.
“I’m gonna check it out,” Noah said. “You can wait here if you want.”
He pushed open a wooden door, the bottom rotted away, and stepped into a small hut. Beams of light stabbed their way in through the rusted roof, dust motes swimming around in them like minnows. The hut held two cots and a table, and on the table an old oil lantern. It was otherwise empty. He thought about the men who must have worked and lived on this plantation and felt brief—but overwhelming—sadness. This island was beautiful, but there was something rotten about it, something bad seeping up through the soil. The men who had harvested rubber, even if they’d been paid a pittance, had almost certainly lived lives of desperation—their hopes and dreams stolen from them by a shoe company so it could make high-tops for kids in Indianapolis—and now the island was being used to hold young girls who were being bought and sold into slavery of a different sort. It made him feel sick in his stomach to think about it.
A wolf spider crawled across the table.
Noah looked at it for a moment, then turned and left the hut.
Chloe was sitting just outside the camp. She looked at him as he approached, her face expressionless.
“Let’s get going.”
Noah continued to walk, heading north, and the jaguar followed.
* * *
He heard the men talking before he saw them, and, as soon as he did, stopped all movement. He hadn’t looked at his watch for some time, but the sun was low and the sky was streaked with orange and pink, so—despite the heat and sweat dripping from his body—evening had arrived. He pulled the Glock from his waistband and listened to the conversation, which turned out to be an argument.
“Estoy cansado. Es tu turno.”
“Todavia tengo ampollas de la ultima vez.”
“¿Cómo es mi maldito problema?”
“Porque estoy haciendo tu problema, imbécil.”
Noah took one careful step forward—then a second, a third, and a fourth.
He could now see the men between the trunks of the trees. They were standing in a clearing next to a hole they were digging, a hole they had been digging, anyway, before they decided to fight about whose turn it was to work. The larger of the two, olive-skinned and dark-haired, was holding the shovel like a baseball bat, threatening to hit the smaller one, a pale redheaded man, with the spade end, but the small one didn’t appear to be all that concerned.
“¿Cómo se supone que debo cavar si me estás amenazando con la pala?”
This was a solid point and seemed to convince the large one that his threat was pointless. He lowered the shovel, hesitated a moment, and then handed it over. The small one swung it around hard and it whacked against the large man’s skull with a hollow thwack that rang out briefly like a broken bell. The large man collapsed to the ground and the small man hit him in the head again, and again—with quick, brutal blows—then threw down the shovel and spat.
“Fucking stupid dumbfuck,” the small man said with a Texas accent Noah hadn’t heard in his Spanish. But just listening to those three words in English, Noah knew this was a man who’d wersh his clothes rather than wash them.
He raised his pistol and stepped out into the clearing.
The Texan had his back to Noah, still looking down at the guy he’d hit in the head. The skull was cracked and seeping blood into the soil. The blood looked black and thick as crude oil in the evening light.
Noah walked up behind the Texan as quietly as possible, knowing that with each step he might reveal himself—with a snapped twig or the sound of his breathing—and once he was close enough, he yanked the revolver from the guy’s waistband.
The Texan jumped, startled, and turned to look at him.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Noah tucked his Glock away but kept the revolver aimed. “I’m pointing a gun at you and you’re unarmed—except the ankle piece, and if you go for it, I’ll do you. That means I’m the one who gets to ask the questions. A woman was brought to this island. Where is she?”
The Texan shook his head, as if confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
“Bullshit. Tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know no woman.”
It might have been true. She might as easily have been dead in a ditch on the mainland.
Then Noah saw why the men had been digging—something large was on the ground behind the pile of dirt they’d excavated. It was wrapped in a bloodstained sheet.
“What’s
the grave for?”
The Texan nodded toward the sheet. “Go look.”
“I think you need to tell me.”
“You can’t shoot me. If you do, a dozen men’ll be here in less than five minutes.”
“I won’t be here in five minutes, but you’ll still be dead, dumbass. What’s in the sheet?”
The Texan shook his head.
Noah stepped forward and used the revolver to whack the man’s temple. The Texan stumbled back dazed, slipped, and fell into the grave, but didn’t seem to like it there much, because he immediately tried to scramble out. Noah decided not to let him. He kicked the guy back into the hole, aimed the revolver at him.
“Tell me where the woman is or get comfortable where you’re lying.”
Chloe slunk out of the shadows as silent as a ghost, her body moving fluidly, and sat down beside Noah, looking at the man in the grave. The man looked back, scared.
“She’s been with the girls most of the time.” He pointed toward the compound—clearly more afraid of Chloe than he was of a man with a gun. Noah didn’t blame him. Wild animals hadn’t learned the niceties of civilized life and didn’t care about laws or justice. They were instinctual, and instinct without thought was not only dangerous but unpredictable.
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t know—she was.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When was she alive?”
“I saw her about two hours ago.”
During the course of his conversation with the Texan, it had occurred to Noah that he might have to kill him. If he didn’t, the man would talk, everyone else in the compound would know he was here, and that would make it difficult to get off the island alive. He told himself the guy was part of a human trafficking ring and if he killed him he’d be doing the world a favor. It was probably even true. The man had caved in another man’s skull over whose turn it was to dig a hole. He clearly placed no value on human life. But Noah found it was difficult to put himself in the right frame of mind. He’d killed people when he was in the army, had even shot someone once as a cop for the LAPD—before he was kicked off the force for stealing cash from the evidence locker—but in those situations his life had been threatened. He’d been reacting to danger. Killing a man in cold blood was another thing altogether.