by AD Davies
“Which one is Curtis Benson’s?”
“Oh, Gareth deals with all that. Have you seen him?”
We passed another limestone outcrop, then turned South East to create a wide arc and throw them off our trail.
“I don’t know where he is,” I said, worried that telling her he was dead might freak her out. “I haven’t met him.” I waited for a reaction, but didn’t get one. “What did they do to you there? At the house?”
“Cleaning, a bit of sex, some dancing. They were teaching me to cook, too.”
“A bit of sex.”
“Yes. A bit. Sometimes once a day. I’ve only been there ten days, though, so I don’t know if that’s normal.”
“With Vuong Dinh?”
“Eight times with him, once with Kwong, and another man did it too. I didn’t see him again.”
“Who’s Kwong?”
“The man you pushed in the sea. With the suit. It’s a nice suit.”
“Are you okay?”
“They said it was my job now. I had to. Or they’d hurt me. I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to do the sex, either, but it’s my job.”
I didn’t know if it was better or worse that she had this condition. It allowed compartmentalization, but at the same time it made her easy to take advantage of. A choice between sex with someone she didn’t like or getting hurt was simply a mathematical calculation for her. I expected the other two slaves were not quite as together.
“I’m going to take you home,” I said, and smiled as reassuringly as I could.
She actually smiled back, although it appeared to be a learned reaction rather than instinctive. She said, “I’d like that.”
An insect droned by my head and I swatted at it.
“So, we’ll set down on a beach,” I said. “Hide out for a bit, then make our way—”
Another insect zipped by and I pulled my head away in annoyance. In doing so, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Out on the ocean.
“Shit!”
It was the launch from the Hoà bình đẹp, closing in. Three men on board, one with a rifle aimed this way. The muzzle flashed and I fell sideways. The bullet/insect impacted the seat.
I pulled Sarah to the floor, told her to stay down, and crawled back to the wheel. In a crouch, I increased our speed and zigzagged as much as I could. I may not know much about guns, but it was a safe guess that shooting from a moving boat was not particularly accurate. I veered hard to the right and a series of tiny explosions raked the water as they engaged some sort of auto-mode. I took us through an archway of white stone and pulled a left for cover behind an island, but their boat was more powerful and equally maneuverable.
Sarah said, “You should go faster.”
“Thanks.”
But the throttle was as open as far as I dared and the craft almost capsized with every jerk of the wheel. I skirted the island as the gunfire resumed. White chips and dust erupted under the battering of stray bullets. One of them would hit home eventually.
I ran us behind a pair of rocks that resembled two rabbits kissing, dropped our speed to a crawl, and spun a one-eighty to face the way I came. When I heard the other motor rise in volume, I accelerated. Suddenly, we were in a game of chicken. Their reaction was instinctive. They spun aside. The gunman stumbled and his long-barreled weapon tumbled over the side.
I raced toward a cluster of smaller islets where I reduced speed due to the proximity of the obstacles. It gave me time to think about what I just did, and what I saw on their boat: the sniper was the Caucasian guy who boarded with the holdall, pasty white, so he likely hadn’t been in the country too long. Also of concern was what I didn’t see, which was the Goon. He wasn’t on board. Just three mini-Goons. The two on the marketplace were tough but not well trained, but the guy with the rifle, travelling so fast and on water … you don’t get that close to your target without some serious range-time.
I had been correct. They knew who I was and why I was there. They probably knew my funds were frozen and that I planned to take Sarah away from them. I would have been murdered out here, my body never found.
It was, indeed, a trap.
The pursuing boat roared out ahead of us. The sniper now wielded a handgun and let off round after round. I yanked the wheel left and fled between a valley of seaweed-covered rocks, pings and cracks sounding either side.
I blasted out of the valley and into the path of a second motor-launch, piloted by the guy who fell into the eels. Kwong—the Goon himself—held a gun on us. He fired and my left ear stung. Blood sluiced down my neck as I accelerated right. Two more rocks touching. Another archway. A deep one; a tunnel. This one much lower than other escape routes I tried. I ducked right down to avoid a head injury.
Ha! Too small to get their launches through.
The dark tunnel afforded more cover, and was cold and damp. The exit was a welcome sight as we burst into sunlight. I guessed the two touching islands were big enough to give us another head start.
Not for the first time this week, I was wrong.
The cave led to a lagoon, completely encased by sheer limestone rock. The only escape was where we entered. They had pushed us into a prison.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The island interior was a sheer white donut. Vegetation grew thirty feet above sea level, where the angle formed a steep hill. Several inlets, but no adequate cover.
Sarah looked up at the rock face. “Are we safe now?”
“No,” I said.
A flock of birds took flight high up at the sound of us.
Sarah said, “We shouldn’t have come in here.”
“No. We shouldn’t.”
“So why did we?”
“I need to think.”
They couldn’t get their launches in, but they could swim. And we were unarmed. Except for a meat-cleaver and a six-inch knife.
Sarah said, “What now?”
“Now…” I didn’t have an answer. “Look for a cave. Any way to get out of this boat.”
Sarah said, “There.”
I followed her finger to a narrow horizontal gash in the limestone about seven or eight feet above the water. The lip was coated in bird droppings.
I said, “We could hide in it but they’d find us eventually.”
“The birds,” she said.
“What birds?”
She swept her finger up the green hillside to the spot where a flock of fat sea birds perched. “When we came through that tunnel, birds flew out of there, where those birds are waiting. The droppings. It has to be connected.”
At full speed, it took a minute to ride over there. Looking directly up, the gash was easily wide enough for Sarah, but I’d have to squeeze through, if I made it at all. The problem was that it was higher up the limestone than I estimated. At least four feet over my head.
The chug of a motor echoed through the tunnel.
I cupped my hands and crouched so she could step into them. She held her bag in her teeth and I boosted her up to the feces-coated entrance, heaved my hands up to shoulder-height, and she secured her arms on the ledge. With a final shove, I raised her feet right over my head and felt her land on solid ground.
“Thank you,” she said.
A dinghy arrowed out of the tunnel; a small inflatable they must have carried on board. Bugger. Kwong and the sniper were both riding this one, positioned behind the Eel Guy and a Driver. Firearms came out—snub-nosed machineguns. They’d be here in less than a minute. In range in less than that.
I tried to jump to reach the cave’s lip, but the boat just bobbed deeper. I opened the cupboard, hoping for flares at least. Nothing.
I called up to Sarah, “Toss me the matches.”
“But they’re mine,” she said, clutching her bag.
“Give them to me!”
“Why?”
I poured the spare fuel out onto the Indigo, on the sides, out into the sea. It would have been great to toss a few containers in the water and aim a f
lare at them like James Bond, but that’s not how flammable fuel works, unfortunately.
Sarah said, “Oh, I get it,” and threw down a book of matches. They were from The Rex.
I struck one and set fire to the others and—standing on the nose of the Indigo—threw them on the floor. The fuel ignited unspectacularly at first, and then it caught with a whoompf. Flames obscured me from the approaching boat, but they wouldn’t stop bullets. Limited visibility was the best I could do.
“The cleaver,” I said.
She threw it to me. I caught it by the handle, but it slipped, headed for the water and I grabbed it in a panic. The blade sliced my right hand. Not deeply, but it was another wound for the collection. I bled freely.
The first bullets pinged into the rock.
I took the meat cleaver and hacked into the limestone at my chest-height. It did little with the first blow, but on the fifth, the blade sunk in. I jiggled it loose and swung again. Deeper this time. Slippery with my blood.
Heat seared at my back now. A pop sounded, the inflatable giving in to the flames. More gunfire, this time impacting the boat and chipping into the cliff around my legs.
A final swing and the cleaver’s blade jammed in up to the handle.
Sarah said, “They’re nearly here.”
I backed up close to the flames, then ran toward the rock. I couldn’t leap, exactly, but I threw myself and gained air thanks to my momentum. Pushing off sent the flaming boat backwards and the approaching gunmen unleashed a barrage upon it. My foot landed on the cleaver’s handle and my thigh pushed upwards. I got my arms onto the ledge, but they sunk into bird poo. I started to slide. I dug in my fingers, and jammed them in to the smallest of ridges. My foot again found the embedded cleaver. I flexed my toes to give me more leverage. Sarah held me by the upper arms and tried to pull, but her brain quickly calculated the odds of success and she stopped.
A burst of bullets battered the rock over my head. I heaved again, fingers straining, but it was no use. Then the cleaver snapped.
All that stopped me from falling was Sarah. She hugged a larger outcrop and wrapped her legs around one of my arms, which I held onto. I dangled over the sea. Unable to move. Then Sarah did something that seemed odd at first. Unable to actually lift me, she tangled her body around the rock, wedging herself fast between this outcrop and the cliff-face. Then she squeezed her legs together and bent at the knees. She’d turned herself into a human lever-system. I rose up the face and rolled onto the gooey shelf.
The dinghy arrived. The Sniper opened fire, bullets hitting the soft rock. No ricochets. On my belly, I helped Sarah unfold and we both crawled into the cave. The last we heard was the Goon yelling.
Sarah made it through into a wider cavern. She calmly offered her hand and I waved it off, wiggling sideways through the two immovable slabs. The upper section curved out a couple of inches, trapping me there.
I had to pivot. My head stuck out into daylight. The four men inside the dinghy looked up. Kwong smiled, raised his gun, but I was gone by the time he got off his first shot. I jiggled backwards, feet-first, like a caterpillar, and made it through.
I sat up. Bumped my head on the ceiling, but I could move again. I tore a sleeve off my outfit and wrapped it around my cut hand. A bright white pinpoint through the tunnel suggested Sarah’s logic had been correct. There was another light source up ahead. We crawled towards it through a trickle of freezing water.
“Do you know what’s on those pen drives?” I asked.
“No. Gareth made copies. Lots of copies. But he couldn’t get the files to work. He told me to look after them. So I did. When the men put my clothes into a suitcase, I made them give me this bag. My shoes are important too. Gareth bought them for me.”
The dead Gareth.
“Nice of him,” I said.
“He said they made me look like a slut when I danced.”
“Like I said, nice.” The new light was closer but I was getting a bad feeling about it. “The money, Sarah. How much money was there?”
“I didn’t want to take it. Gareth said we should. He told me Curtis owed him wages. I thought it was a lot for a doorman.”
“How much?”
“About five thousand three hundred pounds.”
A fraction of what I’d been told. So Benson really was onto another scam. Something he’d pay dearly for, were it exposed.
Sarah said, “It was enough to start again somewhere. But Gareth said the pen-drive was more valuable. I supposed that’s why he made copies. So he could sell them all and we’d be happy. When do you think he’ll be back?”
His body would be a pale, bloated bag of rotting organs by now, slowly disintegrating in a Saigon morgue. I didn’t think now would be a good time to mention this.
The hole was the size of a football. Plenty for a bird to fly through, but not nearly enough for a man. Or even a skinny eighteen-year-old girl. In the beam of sunshine, Sarah’s expression gave little away except that we should continue up the passageway. There really was no choice.
Because some caves are formed by geological shifts and others by water erosion, they are more varied than anyone can predict, but the stream dappling gently around us marked this as the latter. So when we no longer had to crawl and could actually stand up, it was more happenstance than luck. Another meager glow slowly materialized ahead. When we reached the light-source, I almost forgot why we were there.
The passage opened into a cathedral-sized cavern, a luminous layer of some green organism coating the roof. Several dripping holes in the cave’s shell emanated an otherworldly radiance that rippled shapes against thick shadow, revealing a network of natural walkways and slopes. The draught on my skin made me shiver, and the air tasted damp. Both ends delved into darkness, and either could have led deeper into the island or stopped dead meters beyond the reach of the nature-made spotlights.
A couple of the holes up above flickered. Muffled voices sounded. Vietnamese. A head and shoulders leaned into the cave fifty feet over our heads. A torch came on and swept around. We ducked behind a boulder.
I gestured for Sarah to stay where she was, and moved silently back to the corridor. Listened. A hollow breeze gusted. Nothing that sounded like a man slopping his way up.
No noise but the voices above.
We had to chance it.
I beckoned for Sarah to join me, but before she could move, a gunshot exploded through the silence and impacted above my head. I dived behind the boulder, with time to see the head and shoulders hanging through the roof were equipped with night-vision goggles. Several more shots rang out until an American yelled, “Cease fire!” The sniper called, “You’re stuck, Adam. Give up the girl and we’ll leave you a boat. Go home, don’t come back.”
Lying bastard. Why bring along a mercenary sniper if they were happy to take her and run? Were that the case, they would have said “no” back at the house.
She was bait. For me. The troublemaker.
Sarah hugged her bag like a teddy bear. I wondered how much she’d value it if she knew the truth about Gareth.
The American sniper called, “Come on, Adam. You know we got you.”
I wasn’t going to give up Sarah, so there was no point negotiating. But he’d said there was no way out…
I darted back toward the passageway. Waited. The first thing to pass my hidey-hole out of the entrance was the barrel of a snub-nosed machinegun. Eel Guy was holding it the way SWAT officers do on American TV shows, which at least looked correct.
I summoned that feeling, that focus I achieved in Paris when faced with Michelin Man and Butterball. I grasped the gun barrel, whipped him round to open his body up, and drove my fist into his solar plexus. The air gulped out of him and his eyes bulged. My knee came up to his jaw and shattered it. He fell, unconscious, and I took his gun. Searched him for other weapons and found none.
I took cover behind the boulder again. The gun had a safety catch and a switch that ratcheted from “1” to “3” to �
��auto.” I’d read enough books to know this meant single shot, bursts of three or full automatic fire. I selected “1” and popped up over the boulder and fired at the roof. My cut hand and broken finger flared under the recoil.
The heads all pulled back outside and shouting commenced.
“Go,” I said.
Sarah looked at me dumbly.
“The tunnel,” I said. “Go.”
“Why?”
“To get away.”
“There’s no boat,” she said.
More flawless logic. Where was she when I needed a clear, uncluttered brain? Oh yeah, imprisoned by these guys.
The sniper’s head came back out. “Is he dead? Our guy?”
“No,” I said. “I’m the goodie, remember? You’re the baddies.”
They returned fire and I hunched back down. My eardrums stung from the noise—so much louder than outdoors. I made a mental list of who we were up against: the Goon—Kwong—of course; outside help in the form of a sniper; Eel Guy, who wouldn’t wake up for a while; then the other two mini-Goons.
Four left.
I said, “Stay this side of me.”
I squeezed off a couple more rounds without aiming. The recoil nearly made me drop the gun, but the people disappeared again. We ran to the side, into shadows. Bullets gouged into the rock all around us before we made cover.
“Light,” Sarah said.
A tiny point an indeterminable distance into the cave. It looked like the passage quickly got smaller. The light source could be the width of a grapefruit or big enough to drive a bus through, I couldn’t tell.
A rope dropped through one of the holes in the roof and a coil landed on the floor; plenty down which to rappel, but I’d be able to pick them off easily.
“No,” I said. “We’ll take them here.”
The first of the mini-Goons descended. I aimed. My hands shook. This guy on the rope, I had no idea who he was. He might’ve believed I was the bad guy.
I pushed those thoughts away and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked against my shoulder, my hearing in one ear numbed, and my shot cannoned into the dark.