by Ian Bull
Except I don’t have another bag of Hextend. And he’s not responsive. I’d try the saline next, but that exploded in the pack. I need this guy to hobble to a raft and hold a rifle. A Navy Medic with a full Medical Trauma Kit on his back is what I need, but this is what happens when you gamble and go lean and mean.
Think. What can I do?
Should I shoot him up with seawater?
No. That’s stupid. Even worse things would happen.
But he needs something. He’s eyes flutter more and his breathing is less shallow, but his skin is grey and he can only moan when I poke him. What are my choices? I tilt my head back and exhale.
I open my eyes and see them. Coconuts. Coconuts aren’t native to the Bahamas, but they tried to grow them here two generations ago. The plantation failed, but enough of the palms grow wild that they are all around us.
In World War II, Americans used coconut water as a plasma substitute when they were trapped and wounded on distant Pacific Islands. The North Vietnamese supposedly used it all the time on their wounded soldiers. It might work—or it could just screw him up worse. I could overload him with too much potassium and calcium and whatever else is in the coconut water and wreck his kidneys.
“You watched me, right? When the bag is completely empty, I want you to put the brake on the tube near the catheter and take the tubing off the IV bag but keep it clean. Can you do that?” I ask her.
“Why?”
“You’ll see. Can you do it?”
She looks at all the tubing and nods.
“I’ll be back,” I say, and I run into the trees before she can say anything. I dart through the brush looking for palm fronds on the ground. I know that the wind kicks through these low lying islands hard enough to knock palm fronds and coconuts off the trees, and a green coconut probably has a half a cup of sterile fluid right in its heart.
I retrace my steps from last night and find palm fronds again. There’s a line of two dozen mature trees and the ground is scattered with coconuts. I manage to fit five in my arms without dropping the whole pile, set my chin against the one on the top and move back to Julia like Santa carrying too many Christmas presents.
I find Julia again and drop all the nuts in a pile in front of her. She’s already taken the IV gear apart. “Good work.”
“What now?” she asks.
I hold up the coconut. “We have to put what’s inside this inside him.”
“Is that going to work?”
“I don’t know, but if it doesn’t, we’re screwed.”
Chapter 44
Julia Day 11: Sunday
Steven looks at his hands. His latex gloves are filthy, so he rips them off and tosses them aside. He picks up a coconut and turns it over in his hand as if it were a puzzle with a hidden lock. His face is full of doubt, and when he looks at me I know he sees the same on mine.
He unsheathes his knife and wipes it with alcohol, does the same to the coconut, and sets it between his knees. He then twists the tip of his knife into the green flesh and bores a hole. He pulls the knife out and peers into the coconut. “I’m at the shell.”
He puts the blade back in the hole and hits the palm of his hand against the butt end of the handle, then changes the angle and does it again. He pulls out the knife, smiles and gestures for me to hand him the free end of the IV tube I’m holding, and he guides it into the coconut.
He rips off small pieces of the gaffer’s tape and glues the tube into place, like a fifth grade science experiment.
“Best item you could have taken,” he says.
He gets to his feet and holds the coconut up. A few drops dribble out of the coconut and into the plastic tube, but not much.
“I’m going to have to siphon it, to get the flow going,” I tell him.
“Have you ever siphoned anything before?” he asks me.
“Yes,” I answer and I let a little resentment seep into my voice. I want to tell him about siphoning gasoline from motorboats on lakes in the summertime, but I hold my tongue. I’m also surprised that I care what he thinks all of a sudden.
But I do exhale sharply to let him know I don’t have time to listen to his bossy man lecture. I remove the other end of the tubing from Carl’s catheter. I sip a bit of rubbing alcohol in my mouth and spit it out, then I suck on the tube leading up into the coconut, and a thin line of clear fluid runs down the tube. I take the tube out of my mouth, cover it with my thumb and insert it back into Carl’s catheter, then turn the valve.
Coconut water starts flowing into his vein. “How much do we add?” I ask.
He shakes his head with wide eyes. “I don’t know, I’m just guessing.”
Steven and I look at each other, then at Carl. He looks asleep—not dead—but he hasn’t moved in ten minutes. I touch his face and his eyes flutter lightly but don’t open.
“Come on, you need to wake up,” I whisper into his ear.
“I need you to hold this,” Steven says, gesturing to the coconut.
“Why? You’re doing a fine job.”
His face darkens as he narrows his eyes. He gives me the full stare down. “What’s the next thing we do to stay alive?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Exactly,” he says, and holds out the coconut.
I stand up and we trade places. If my comment bugs him, he doesn’t let on.
Steven sets another coconut between his knees and bores into it with his knife, this time faster. He gets through the outside, then resets his knife, and pokes a hole through the husk. He peers in the hole and seems satisfied and sets it aside.
Steven yanks out the water container from his own backpack, and it’s only one-quarter full. He and I drank a lot in the last few hours. He squeezes it into his empty canteen, filling it. “This is what we’ll drink today,” he says, and sets it aside.
He then squeezes the remaining amount of water in his pack into Carl’s water bag. “This is the only clean water for you three on the raft,” he says, then he grabs his empty water bag and stands up.
“Where are you going?”
“To fill up my empty pack with more water from the blue hole. You’ll need two bags of water on the raft, remember?” He runs into the trees without making a noise.
I stand there holding the coconut, watching Carl’s face. The rising sun hits my back and the ocean breeze rolls through the trees, shaking their leaves. Sunlight and wind usually make me feel content, but today I feel exposed. I crouch down, afraid that if the sun can see me so can the whole world.
Carl must sense that someone is close, because his eyes flutter again. Maybe hearing us talk helped rouse him, or maybe the coconut water is helping.
I kneel down. Holding the coconut high with one hand, I use my teeth to yank off the latex glove on the other, and then lay my bare hand against his face. Whatever helps, I think. Carl is now pink instead of grey.
He opens his eyes. He’s conscious for the first time in hours, and I can tell that he’s confused, scared and in pain. He starts to sit up and I put my hand on his forehead and shush him. I smile and he smiles back, a little less scared.
“Hey, handsome. How are you feeling?” I whisper.
“With you here I feel a lot better.”
“Are you in pain? What do you need?”
“You know what I need,” he says and puckers his lips.
I can’t help laughing to myself. He’s so bold that I decide he deserves it. I bend close and give him a good long kiss on the lips—and he has enough strength to kiss me back. I pull away and smile, and he smiles back at me.
“Not bad,” he says. “Are you really a movie star?”
“Some people would call me that.”
“What about you? Because I need to say I kissed a movie star.”
“Yes, I am. I’m a movie star.”
“Really? You kiss like a regular beautiful woman. Can I compare again?”
He’s a charmer, this guy. I oblige him again.
I hear
a cough and look up. Steven is standing there with a full plastic water bag in one hand and a massive dead land crab in the other. He stares at us with eyes that change from surprise to confusion to something that looks like jealousy.
“Feeling better, Sergeant?” Steven asks.
“Getting there,” he says. “A little more first aid and I’ll be fine.”
Carl winks at me and Steven rolls his eyes. Steven is jealous of my nursing techniques, which amazes me. I also see how their friendship works. Carl is the confident one with the ladies, and Steven is always playing catch up.
Steven kneels next to me. Carl holds out his left hand and Steven takes it, and by the firmness of the grip I can see how strong the bond is between them.
“Thank you,” Carl whispers.
“Never doubt,” Steven answers.
Steven turns off the valve on the catheter but leaves the IV coil attached. Then he yanks the other end of the IV tube out of the coconut and jams it into the new hole he made on the next one. He nods at the gaffer’s tape roll then at me. “Want to lay a couple of strips down here and seal this sucker up?”
I rip off three long pieces and tape the plastic coil flush to the coconut, making a waterproof seal. “Are we giving him this now?” I ask. “He’s awake.”
“No. Leave the brake on. This is for later, if he needs it.”
“Later? Let’s just get out of here,” Carl says.
Steven and I trade looks. Steven’s about to speak, but I should do the explaining, so I kneel down and touch Carl’s face again. “It’s not just us three. They have a friend of mine. We have to go get her.” His eyes narrow as he takes it in.
“I can concentrate a little while longer,” he says. “But hurry.”
Steven arranges the pack and the water so Carl can reach it, and puts another packet of goop in his hand.
“I need something for the pain,” Carl says.
Steven reaches across Carl and finds the remaining morphine syringes. There are three left.
“I don’t want to give you this,” Steven says. “Your fluids are messed up right now.”
“I need something if you want me to move on my own,” he says.
“Just a little bit, then,” Steven bends down and injects him in the vein of his left arm and pushes the plunger less than halfway. Carl’s eyes roll back. Steven pulls out the syringe and whispers in his ear. Carl nods.
Steven moves quickly again. He puts the water bags back inside the packs, then lays out Carl’s rifle, the coconuts he gathered and the dead crab in a neat line. “This is what you’re taking on the raft, understand?” he asks, and I nod.
He rips off another piece of gaffer’s tape and tapes it to his pack. “This is the pack with the dirty water. You drink this only when the other water runs out, and only through the white straw. Got it?”
Again I nod.
“When you come back, if he’s not responsive, you turn the valve on the catheter and lift up the coconut and give him more juice until he wakes up again.”
“What if he doesn’t wake up?” I ask.
“You have two choices—leave him here and I’ll keep him alive. Or you drag him in his survival bag down to the beach and roll him into the raft if you can,” he says.
“How will I know?”
“You won’t. Just make the best decision you can. But don’t be a hero and try to save him if it means all three of you end up getting killed.”
He then sheathes his knife and snaps the canteen of water in place on his belt. He checks the pistol in the holster on his hip, and then pulls the other gun out of a front pocket in his pants. He checks that too, then puts it back.
Finally he picks up a handful of small black cartridges and puts them in yet another cargo pocket of his camouflage pants.
“What are those?” I ask.
“Bullets,” he answers. “We’re taking two pistols, a knife, water and that’s it. When you come back here, I want you to handle all the supplies, and I want Carl to hold the rifle. Understand?”
Again, I nod.
He stands up and looks at Carl, then looks at me. “You ready?” he asks.
“Aren’t we going to cover him?”
“I want to make it easy for you to find him again. And if they’re the ones who find him, it means it’s too late anyway,” he says.
He heads into the trees. I stare at Carl wishing his eyes would open, but they don’t, so I hurry to catch up. I hope I make it back in time for him.
We reach the beach on the west side of the cay in less than two hundred yards. Steven stops just inside the trees. The rocky point with the light beacon is about a quarter mile to the north, and past that there’s rough water and then sandy land beyond it. That must be the next cay.
“See those rocks in the water in front of us? In a few hours the water will be lower and they will stick out more. Look how they line up, and that’s how you’ll find this exact spot again, so you can find Carl by running on the beach too,” he says. “Got it?”
There’s a line of three rocks jutting out of the water. “Got it,” I say.
He then points north. “You have to get past this rocky point to find the beach on the north side. That’s where we saw the boat burning last night. You must swim three hundred yards across to the next cay, which is a half mile long. Find the raft and bring it back here. Carl can walk or hop, with someone helping. He’ll hurt like hell, but he has no choice. Get the raft in the water first with all the packs and gear, then make sure it’s far enough out in the water. You don’t want to dump him in and have the raft hit bottom—then you’d have to haul him out again.”
“I understand,” I say.
Steven then points straight out to the water. “Then go that way,” he says.
“You make it sound easy,” I say.
“It won’t be,” he answers.
He stares at me and I know what he’s thinking. All I have to do is say, “I want to leave now,” and he’d get the raft, and send Carl and me on our way.
“We have to try to get her,” I say. “I have to try.”
“I know. And we’ll get her, I promise.”
He then unhooks the transmitter receiver on his belt and flips the top. He points at the small video screen and points at two dots. “See that dot? That’s Carl’s transmitter. This dot is my transmitter,” he says, then hands it to me, “Now it’s yours. Use this and the directions I gave you, and you can find Carl and get out of here.”
He starts to leave, but I grab his arm. “What did you whisper to Carl before we left?”
Steven stares at me before answering.
“I explained how I wouldn’t be back, but that you and Trishelle would be.”
He then heads off in a slow jog and I have to run after him just to keep up.
Chapter 45
Steven Day 11: Sunday
We head south, moving through the trees but staying close to the beach. As we get closer to the villa, I hear people talking and laughing, like a crowd at an outdoor restaurant. We round the last point and are now four hundred yards shy of the estate. Through the trees we can see Constantinou’s yacht parked at the end of the dock with the gangplank down. A line of people stroll out onto the dock with their rolling suitcases and carry-ons. The movie crew is leaving, and they are as loud and happy as vacationers boarding a cruise ship for a tour of the Caribbean.
“There’s Bernard,” whispers Julia, bouncing like a kid seeing her favorite movie star.
“What about him?” I ask.
“He’s leaving,” she says, and points at a curly haired guy in his early forties, wearing Bermuda shorts, a print shirt, a straw fedora and sunglasses.
“So? Aren’t they all leaving?” I ask.
“He’s my co-star. We still had one more scene to shoot, the big climax. If he leaves, that means we can’t finish the movie,” she says.
Her smile lights up her dirty face, but I still don’t understand why she’s so happy.
“Don’t
you get it? Xander loses for once! He’s giving up on the movie, it’s over!”
It’s not just the movie people getting on the boat either. The gardeners, the chefs and the maids all board the yacht as well. Dressed in their tropical shirts and black slacks and pulling their wheelie bags, they look like flight attendants heading to the next city. This place is not their home, it’s just a job at a resort that’s the whim of a rich man. Now that job is over, and everyone must leave this remote cay.
Austrian Arnold and the Watcher stand next to the gangplank, and as the last person boards, they follow up behind them and onto the yacht, leaving the dock empty. A crew member pulls the plank onto the yacht, the captain blows the marine horn and the sleek white yacht pulls away.
There’s only one boat left in the tiny bay now—the sleek black cigarette boat. It is fast enough and has enough fuel that it can reach four different Caribbean countries within a few hours.
The only bad guys left are the Angry Poker who guarded the staircases, Caballero himself, and Constantinou.
Why only three? It feels like they’re on the run, and that we may even be chasing them now.
“I didn’t see Trishelle go on board,” Julia says.
“But our odds just got better,” I say, and pull her through the trees.
Constantinou, Caballero and the Angry Poker must be getting on that cigarette boat soon. Maybe Carl’s contacts are coming through and they know the authorities are coming. If I give them a bad enough time, they may go faster and leave Trishelle behind.
We reach the estate. I peek over the lowest balustrade and see no one on the patio, then hunker back down next to Julia against the wall.
“Where would she be?” I ask.
“Her room was above the kitchen. Mine was the room with the big outdoor balcony. She’s in one of those two places,” Julia says.
“We need a way in besides the main entrance,” I say.
“I know a way,” Julia offers.
I raise an eyebrow. She sees my look and gives me a smirk back.
“You want to do this or not?” she asks.