Horizons Beyond the Darkness

by Scott B. Williams

  More gunshots rang out as soon as she took off and she could hear the sound of bullets impacting the palm boles and cutting through vegetation behind her. She reached the thicket unscathed though, even as the pistol rounds were followed by the much louder report of the AK-47 rifle just seconds later. Mindy was wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top and reef shoes. The thorny branches and vines tore at her bare legs and arms as she forced her way deeper into the scrub, but she was so pumped with adrenaline she barely noticed. She had no idea how big this forest was or if there would be a place to hide for long, but she knew her life depended on covering as much ground as she could.

  Thomas was dead! Why had he been so foolish to reach for that gun? Getting rid of it wouldn’t have made a difference because they were going to find the AK anyway. Had that man shot him because he thought Thomas was going to shoot at him? They tried to kill her too, and they knew she was unarmed. It made her wonder if they were really policemen at all. From the ratty condition of their uniforms and their boat, she now considered that they could have been thieves posing as policemen, using the ruse to get close enough to kill them both and take their boat and belongings. If that were the case, poor Thomas never had a chance regardless of whether he reached for that gun or not. Tears streamed down her face as Mindy ran, knowing that the man she loved was dead. There was nothing she could do for him and no one had witnessed what happened but her. She was certain that those men would be coming after her, and she had no idea where to go to elude them but she knew she couldn’t stop now or she would be dead too.

  Four

  MYRON BENSON FIRED THE AK-47 as fast as he could pull the trigger until he’d completely emptied the magazine. He did it partly in hope that one of the bullets might find its mark by chance, and partly in simple frustration that the woman had disappeared into the bush before they could stop her. It was a long shot for a pistol so he couldn’t hold Sidney at fault, and she had already reached the concealment of the trees before he brought the rifle to bear, but Myron saw no reason to hold back. He couldn’t see her from where he stood aboard the sailboat, but he unloaded the AK on her anyway, hoping maybe he’d get lucky. He was shooting blind, but until they were ashore and could search the woods beyond the palm grove, he wouldn’t know for sure.

  What he did know was that Samuel was still down, lying on his side in the sand and screaming bloody murder. Myron didn’t know exactly what that little woman had done to put a big man like Samuel down with nothing but a stick, but whatever it was, it had worked and he had not lain a hand on her before she turned and fled. He threw the empty AK into the skiff in disgust and stepped over into it from the tiny sailboat. He had not seen anything of value in the claustrophobic cabin besides the two firearms, but he would come back and check again later. There were likely American dollars stashed away in there somewhere; not as valuable as they would have been before, but still useful for certain kinds of transactions in the islands. The woman had mentioned jewelry too, though she might have been lying. At least they had no more worries about the husband. Sidney’s bullets had struck him in the chest and face, and Myron knew he was dead before the body hit the water.

  “That Samuel, he cryin’ like a baby!” Sidney said as he joined Myron in the skiff and untied the lines from the boat.

  “I know it, mon! I should have left you to watch the woman and brought him with me to the boat! Now the woman got away!”

  Myron gunned the outboard as soon as it started and drove the skiff hard onto the beach. Both men were running to their fallen companion as soon as they leapt from the boat.

  “What’s the problem, Samuel? Where did she hit you, mon?”

  Samuel pointed to the stick on the sand nearby, one end still smoking from the fire. His other hand was clamped firmly over his face, covering his right eye, blood streaming from between his fingers. “Hit me in de eye, Myron! De bitch she put out my eye!”

  “Let me see, mon. Maybe it’s not so bad as you think.” Myron knelt beside him, and had to literally pry the man’s hand away from his face. His whole body was trembling and he was on the verge of shock. What he saw when he finally got a look made Myron feel queasy. The burning stick had indeed hit his friend squarely in the eye, turning his entire eye socket into a bloody pulp. He could only imagine the pain that Samuel was in, and it was no wonder he had screamed like he did. Myron turned to Sidney: “Get some water out of the boat! We’ll clean the blood and make a bandage with his shirt.”

  “I need to go find de doctor!” Samuel pleaded. “We have to go back to de village!”

  “We’re going back, mon. But first I’ve got to look for that woman! Maybe she got hit already. Maybe she’s not too far in the bush and I can finish her off!”

  Samuel just moaned and lay back in the sand, the pain overcoming any ability to argue the matter. When Sidney returned with water they cut off his shirt and sliced it into strips for the bandage. Myron was sure there was nothing any doctor could do for his destroyed eye, especially with conditions in the village the way they were now. They would take him back there soon, but first he wanted to see if he could find the woman nearby. He told Sidney to stay there with Samuel and then he drew his pistol and started in the direction she had fled, through the dense grove of coconut palms and into the tangle of scrub forest beyond.

  He knew the going would be difficult anywhere in the interior of the island. Thorn bushes, vines and cacti formed a near impenetrable understory beneath a canopy of stunted gumbo-limbo and mahogany trees. Jagged outcrops of fossilized coral made walking treacherous anywhere but on the few old paths and remnants of roadway, all of which were a long way from this particular beach. The woman was short and thin though, and Myron knew she could weave her way through the tangle much easier than a man his size, in the same way a rabbit might elude a fox in a briar patch. His hope was that he would find her dead or wounded just a few feet within the forest, but though he looked carefully, he could find no blood or other indications that she’d been hit with either Sidney’s 9mm bullets or his rifle rounds.

  Once she’d left the beach, her footprints disappeared among the rocks, making it difficult to determine which way she’d gone, but Myron was sure it was directly away from the water. How far she would go, he couldn’t guess, but it was useless to try and follow her now. The island was big enough that she could cover a lot of ground if she was determined, and Myron had no doubt she was. He didn’t relish the thought of pushing through all the thorny brush to go after her. He didn’t even have a machete in the skiff, and with Samuel hurt as bad as he was, he couldn’t leave him there to spend half the day hunting her down. The woman had fled with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. The mosquitoes and biting flies would torture her in the bush and force her out in the open at some point, and besides, it didn’t really matter if he caught her soon or not. There was no one on the island to help her and no one she could tell about what she’d seen. He decided the best thing he could do was come back later with Sidney after they took Samuel to the village. He would bring a couple of machetes and a shotgun, as well as more ammo for the AK. The woman couldn’t leave the island without a boat and she couldn’t hide out indefinitely. They would find her. It was simply a matter of time.

  He made his way back to the beach and he and Sidney helped Samuel into the skiff. The little sailboat the white couple had been living on was no longer than their open fishing boat, although it was a beamy, heavy displacement hull. It would be a simple matter to tow it back to the village, but Myron didn’t want to have to explain it when he got there. Instead, he would leave it anchored right where it was, but disabled so the woman couldn’t return and sail it away. That was easy enough, because the little boat had a simple outboard rudder mounted directly to the transom on gudgeons and pintles. All he had to do was remove the retainer pins to lift the entire rudder and tiller assembly off the stern. Without it, the little boat was going nowhere, and if someone in the village saw the rudder in the skiff, he could just say they
found it washed ashore somewhere. The last thing he did was close the companionway; locking it shut with the padlock he’d noticed inside when he and Sidney inspected the cabin. He would cut it off later, when he came back and had time to do a more thorough search of the interior.

  * * *

  Mindy twisted and weaved her way into the tangle of the island forest, desperate to get as far from the beach as possible. The vegetation and coral rock on this island was unlike anything she had ever tried to walk through. Thorny trees, their branches bent and twisted by ocean winds interlocked overhead, the space beneath them choked with thickets of smaller bushes and tangled vines. The ground here was much rockier than in the Keys, where there was more sand and mud. Most of the rock was fossilized coral eroded into sharp, knifelike edges and riddled with potholes waiting to trip or break the leg of anyone attempting to move across it in a hurry. In the few places where the trees and brush thinned out, immense patches of prickly pear, agave and other varieties of thorny cacti presented formidable obstacles, making it impossible for her to travel in a straight line. Mindy had no idea how big the island was, but from seeing it on the chart the day before, she knew it was bigger than most of the smaller cays nearby. None of the islands in the Exumas were really big, especially the uninhabited ones, but that was all relative because the terrain here was so difficult to traverse. She had seen higher ground in the distance from where she and Thomas had anchored the boat, and knew it was probably the spine of the island. There were likely more beaches and coves on the other side, and it seemed like a good idea to go that way.

  The image of Thomas getting shot and falling into the water replayed over and over in her mind as she fled. She had no doubt that he was dead, having seen his reaction from the first shot even before the man followed up with three more. How could somebody do such a thing? If those men really were policemen, they should have been able to tell by looking at him and by his actions that Thomas was no threat to them. Yes, it was a mistake for him to reach for a gun, but he wasn’t pointing it at them and they could have simply ordered him to drop it and he would have. Mindy knew the kind of men that had appeared at their campsite that dark night in the Florida Keys would have killed them both in cold blood, but she hadn’t expected anything like that from this encounter. These men hadn’t seemed capable of that. Sure, they were accusatory, and seemed to enjoy using their authority to intimidate, but that was not uncommon with law enforcement officers. And it was true that Thomas and Mindy had broken the law by being in these islands without proper clearance. It was also true that they had been fishing with no permit or license, and that they had undeclared weapons on board that did not even belong to them. Mindy knew the guns were going to get them in deep trouble once the men found them, but the worst she’d expected was to be thrown in jail. The possibility of death never entered her mind. But whether the men were really cops or not was as irrelevant now as it had been then. There wasn’t much she or Thomas could have done differently when she thought about it. The men had approached quickly out of nowhere with an outboard powered boat. There was no way to avoid the confrontation that ensued, and once they were determined to search Intrepida, nothing Mindy or Thomas could have said would have dissuaded them. Mindy knew this was the truth. But she still wished she could turn back time and try something else.

  That she had escaped herself was nothing short of luck. If not for the burning stick within her reach and a good throw at her only opportunity, she wouldn’t be here now. Stopping the man on the beach had bought her time to reach the safety of the trees before gunfire erupted from the boat and bullets zinged all around her. She knew it was truly fortunate that the particular beach they were on was narrow so that she didn’t have far to run to reach the woods. She would have been cut to pieces if the men shooting at her had a chance to really aim.

  The big unknown now was whether or not they were coming after her. She couldn’t see anything of the beach from within the dense woods, and she was already too far in to hear their voices, if they were talking. She had to assume they would try to hunt her down though, because she had witnessed their act of cold blooded murder, if that even mattered in times like these. There was so much of that kind of thing going on now that maybe they didn’t care if they were seen or not, but she couldn’t make that assumption. Then, there was the fact that she was a woman—a young and pretty one at that—alone and defenseless on an uninhabited island she knew nothing about. Those men were native to these islands, and probably intimate with the lay of the land. Mindy knew her only chance was to keep moving, working her way ever deeper into the interior or perhaps crossing to the other side somehow. Maybe she would find other boaters anchored over there that would help her get off the island to someplace else. She doubted she would ever see Intrepida again, so there was no use thinking of going back to that anchorage even if the men had left. Whether they were policemen gone bad or common criminals didn’t matter. If they would shoot Thomas like they did, they would probably take the boat as well. Mindy was on her own now with absolutely nothing but her clothes and shoes. She was already covered with insect bites and her arms and legs were scratched and bleeding from the thorns. Even if she avoided capture, there was still the question of how she would survive, but she would figure that out later. For now, getting away was all that mattered.

  Five

  CASEY AND JESSICA SLEPT until midmorning, waking only when Grant tapped on the cabin side over their bunks to tell them of Larry’s plan.

  “It’ll be high tide around 3 p.m. He wants to try to pull the Sarah J. off then.”

  “I wonder what his plan is? It’s going to be a lot harder than ungrounding the catamaran, right?” Casey asked.

  “Oh yeah. That boat weighs three or four times as much. But he thinks that if there’s enough water at high tide, we can heel her over farther from the masthead and reduce her draft a bit more. It’s going to take all the anchors we’ve got and some time to set it up, though. That’s why he told me to wake you guys up. Sorry about that.”

  Casey told him there was no need to apologize. She felt bad for sleeping so late anyway, even if they were up half the night before.

  “How is Scully today? Have you seen him?”

  “He’s hanging in there. Your dad says he’s going to be fine, but he won’t be helping us today, you can be sure of that. The doctor has given him strict orders to stay put.”

  “Yeah, and I can see why. I’m glad it’s not worse though. We’ll be out there and ready to help in a few minutes. I’m sure we can get it done if Uncle Larry has a plan. He always knows what to do when stuff like this happens.”

  Casey had full faith in her uncle’s abilities, but she knew he was feeling a bit down on himself because of all that happened since Green Cay. First of all, he trusted that Russell guy far too much and like the rest of them, underestimated what he was capable of. Then, he’d dropped his guard when he and Jessica were out in Tara’s dinghy, looking for the Sarah J. The dinghy had been taken and he was helpless to do anything about it. It had put him and Jessica in quite a predicament, and it was sheer luck Grant had spotted them when he did. But whatever mistakes Larry and the rest of them made, it didn’t much matter now, other than the loss of the nice sailing dinghy. Rebecca was safe, and her mom’s boat was undamaged, as far as they could tell. Scully had been found, so they didn’t have any reason to split up again, and for that, Casey was especially grateful. Every time something came up that caused their little group to divide, bad things happened, and Casey had about had enough of that. She was sure everyone else felt the same, except maybe Jessica. Casey still wondered how things were going to be between her and Jessica after Grant had pretty much repeatedly rejected her advances even when they were together for days without Casey in the picture. It remained to be seen if she was going to keep it up or not.

  Jessica had seemed indifferent to him this morning though, certainly not jumping up and eager to talk to him when he came to wake them. Instead, she just rolled
over and listened, letting Casey do the talking. It probably meant nothing. Jessica was likely just tired and wanting to sleep. Whatever was going on with her, she seemed to be in a better mood and more agreeable than she’d been just days earlier. Casey wasn’t going to complain about it, she just hoped it lasted because they were all living in close quarters again and getting along was imperative.

  The plan that Uncle Larry had devised for pulling the Sarah J. off the sandbar required first repositioning the Casey Nicole and setting all her anchors so the catamaran would remain immobile and serve as a fixed point for winching leverage. Even if they hadn’t lost it in the Bogue Chitto River, the auxiliary outboard that had been fitted to the catamaran was far too small to consider using in an attempt to pull the heavy monohull free. In the absence of engine power, Larry’s alternative involved using one of the halyards from the mast of the Sarah J. to heel her even farther on her side, hopefully enough to break her keel out of the sand when the tide was at its peak. He said that if they could do that, it might then be possible to winch her sideways off the bar and back to deep water. It made sense to Casey, and she had every confidence it would work, because Uncle Larry assured her he’d used the technique before.

  Now that Tara’s dinghy had been stolen, the only way they had to get back and forth between the boats once they moved the catamaran into position was the two-seater kayak. Larry had pulled aboard the pathetic little dinghy he and Jessica had used to get off the island when Tara’s sailing dinghy was stolen, but he said it was so unseaworthy it would be useless for this operation. Because of this, they had to decide now who was going to stay aboard the Sarah J. and who would go on the Casey Nicole before they moved her. Most of the heavy work would be done from the catamaran, so Larry said he definitely needed Artie and Grant. Tara would stay aboard with Rebecca and Casey decided she should too in case she needed help. Jessica could go with the guys. Since Grant was the strongest paddler among them other than Scully, he would be in the kayak ferrying lines and anchors into position as Larry directed, and he could probably use Jessica’s help in the front seat. Once this was settled and the crew aboard the catamaran got underway to reposition it, Casey went below and knelt beside Scully’s bunk.