by Jay Giles
“No. We can do this by bike.” I had doubts as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “How far exactly?” I asked Su.
“No more than five miles. The place we saw is a new area they’re developing for luxury homes. He said it’s not a hard ride.”
The bicycles were old and beat-up, the baskets rusty. Nestor’s bike had a chain that didn’t want to stay on the sprocket. Mine had a front tire that looked suspect. We rode to the outskirts of town, where there was a hill steep enough that we got off our bikes and walked them to the summit. As we started our descent, I thought I could see the red tile roof off in the distance.
Midway down the hill, my front tire blew and sent me flying over the handlebars for a three-point landing—left rear shoulder, left hip, back of the skull. Lying flat on my back, I saw stars and tried to assess where I hurt most.
This was not a good start to a foray into the enemy camp.
Su pedaled over. “You okay?”
My shoulder was scraped and bleeding, felt awful. My hip was throbbing. I had an egg-size lump on my head, a headache like you wouldn’t believe. “Peachy.”
The real damage was to our supplies. Three bottles of Tequila we were going to use for Molotov cocktails had been in my basket. They’d broken. That left us with five.
“Should we go back and buy more?” Nestor asked.
“No,” I said adamantly. “We make do with what we have.”
When we reached the house, I realized that had been a bad decision. My plan had been to get close enough to the house to toss Molotov cocktails in the windows.
I hadn’t expected the place to be a walled compound.
An eight-foot high stucco-covered cinderblock privacy wall fronted the street and ran back on both sides to the water. The only entrance/exit appeared to be a heavy wooden gate located in the middle of the front wall.
All I could see of the house was a glimpse of the roof. Windows? Couldn’t see a one.
“What now?” Su and Nestor asked together.
I needed a better look at the house. Much as I didn’t want to do it, the best way to see it would be by climbing one of the trees on the undeveloped property next door.
“Hide the bikes,” I told Nestor. “Let me take a look.” A tree on the right front side of the wall looked like it would give me the best view. I grabbed a limb and pulled myself into a ‘y’ in the trunk. From there, I was able to carefully step-up a branch at a time until I was in the top of the tree. I had a clear view of the front of the house and the front courtyard. There was a circular drive with two cars—a black Land Rover and a red Ferrari convertible with the top down—facing each other by the front door. A man-in-black, armed with a sub-machine gun, patrolled the grounds.
From my pants pocket, the sat phone began to ring. The guard wasn’t so far away that the sound wouldn’t carry. I grabbed for my pocket, careful not to lose my grip on the tree, got the phone, and held it to my ear. Sloane, of course. “Listen, I can’t talk,” I whispered. “We’ve found the boat, may have it back shortly.”
“About ti—” I clicked off and put the phone back in my pocket.
Lights had come on in the front of the house. Something was happening. I didn’t have long to wait before a man and a woman ambled out the front door. He reminded me of Mr. Clean. Big shoulders. Big biceps. Shaved head. Even the hoop earring. His right arm, down to the wrist was covered in tattoo swirls. He wore a black short-sleeve dress shirt, gray slacks, and he was holding a cell to his ear. The woman was younger, curvy, with long blond hair. She had a white lace shawl over her shoulders, wore beige Capri pants, and carried a brown clutch purse in her right hand.
The guard came over quickly and opened the Land Rover’s passenger door for her. Mr. Clean opened the driver’s door but finished his call before he got in. I strained to hear what he was saying. He spoke in English but it was in such low tones I could only catch a few words. Call finished, he climbed in the Land Rover, waited for the guard to open the gate, and drove out.
When they were gone, I turned my attention back to the house, looking for targets. There wasn’t much. On the first floor, there were picture windows. On the second floor the windows were smaller. The front door had a small ornamental wood balcony above it. A wooden cornice ran the roofline.
I thought about throwing from the tree and trying to hit a window, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get enough oomph on my throws. Better to throw from the ground, even if I couldn’t see my target.
Nestor met me at the bottom, whispered, “I’ve got an idea. I’ll go to the end of fence,” his head nodded toward the water, “I’ll work my way back to the front of the house, toss these puppies in.” He had a bottle of tequila in each hand.
I shook my head, whispered back, “You’d never make it. There are guards patrolling the grounds.” I looked for Su. She was watching the street. I motioned for her to come over.
“What?” She asked in a low voice. “I was keeping lookout.”
“I need you to climb this tree—”
“Why?”
“So you can tell me what I hit,” I whispered. When she didn’t argue, I shifted my attention to Nestor. “Position yourself on the shoreline so you can see if the guard on the boat comes in to help with the fire.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Plan B.”
Su gave me a look. “Let’s hear plan B. Maybe we like it better.”
“There’s no plan B,” Nestor grumbled as he turned to leave. “Plan A isn’t much, either.”
I watched him disappear into the foliage. “Scamper up,” I whispered to Su.
She went slowly, holding on like she was scared to death. “How’s this,” she whispered down from about ten feet up. “I see house fine.”
“If you see the guard, tell me. I don’t want to throw anything while he’s patrolling the front of the house.”
“What you waiting for? It’s clear now.”
I carried over the picnic supplies—five bottles of rot gun tequila, a torn-up tee shirt to use for wicks, and two disposable Bic lighters, one green plastic and one blue plastic—unscrewed the cap on the first bottle, tucked in a strip of tee shirt, lit the end. When I had a good flame, I heaved it at the house with all my might.
I heard the bottle break.
“You miss house. You need to throw it ten meters more distance and two meters to right.”
I prepped the second bottle, put all of my weight into the throw, and heard a satisfying smash.
“You hit house to right of window,” Su whispered. “Flame went out.”
“How close was I?”
She put her finger in front of her lips. “Guard.” We waited. “Okay, he’s gone,” she whispered down. “A meter to right.”
I made what I thought was the right correction and heaved bottle number three. This time I only heard a thump.
“Bottle not break. It’s sitting in the shrubbery.”
I was down to two bottles. I visualized the house in my mind. Maybe I was targeting the wrong thing. I corrected my angle and heaved bottle number four.
This one broke. The best crash yet.
“What you doing? You hit that pretty car.”
“Where? Is it burning?”
“Yes. In the seats.”
I wondered the size of a Ferrari’s gas tank. It had to big enough to set off an impressive explosion. “C’mon down,” I whispered.
“You not going to throw last one?” She asked, back on the ground.
I took her hand and pulled her along. “Let’s get to the water.”
Halfway there, we heard a whoosh. The gas tank must have caught. I glanced back through the foliage at the fireball, hoping it was big enough to jump from the car to the house. We didn’t stop to find out. On the other side of the wall, men were already shouting.
Nestor was crouched in the foliage at the water’s edge. “There are two of them,” he whispered, as we crouched next to him. “See ‘em standing on deck, watching?”
That was trouble. They were observers. They didn’t act like they wanted to help.
“C’mon, c’mon,” I urged under my breath.
“Why aren’t they doing anything?” Su wanted to know.
“They’ve probably been told not to leave that boat no matter what,” Nestor said.
I glanced over my shoulder at the fire, which appeared to be thriving. Flames cast a yellow glow that extended over the roof into the evening sky. Snapping and popping sounds mingled with men yelling. I glanced back at the Venetian. Nestor was right, judging by the two guards’ body language, they were staying put. “Right back,” I told them.
Making my way through the foliage to the privacy wall, I eased around the wall’s end so I was on the estate side and ran to the pool deck as if I just come from the front of the house. I made big waving arm motions at the men on the boat. When I saw one of them point me out to the other, I switched to an exaggerated one-armed come here motion.
Even with all that, they were slow to act. When they finally moved away from the rail, I ran back to the wall, ducked into the foliage, made my way back to Nestor and Su.
“That was crazy,” Su told me.
“Yeah, but it worked.” Nestor pointed toward the stern of the Venetian. The two guards had climbed into the Zodiac, untied the lines, and started the outboard motor. With a whirr the rubber raft made its way to the dock.
The two guards didn’t bother with the dock, they ran the Zodiac up on the beach, killed the outboard and hopped out. One guard ran for the front of the house, the other didn’t.
“What’s he doing now?” Su wanted to know.
What he was doing was watching the Venetian. The two had probably worked this out on the ride in. One would keep an eye on the boat so they weren’t totally ignoring their orders.
We’d gone to a lot of trouble to have this one guy block our way. I felt on the ground for that last fifth of Tequila. My fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle. “Be ready to go,” I told Su and Nestor.
“Wi—” Nestor started to say.
I made my way through the foliage so I could approach the guard from the back. I didn’t try to be stealthy about it. The noise and commotion of the fire covered the sound of my steps.
Still, when I was ten feet from him, bottle in my raised hand to swing at his head, he must have heard or sensed me. He turned. Snarled. Hand reaching for the pistol at his side.
Chapter 25
The Tequila bottle caught him on the noggin above the left eye before he had his gun barrel horizontal. Either his head wasn’t as hard as I imagined or they’re making bottles thicker, because the bottle didn’t break. It bonked off his forehead. I would have hit him with it again, but he was already on the sand at my feet. Out like a trout.
I relieved him of his gun, put it in the Zodiac and began pushing it back out into the water. Su and Nestor joined me on-board and Nestor fired-up the outboard.
As we pulled away, I kept an eye on the house. From the water, I had a better view of the fire and could see that the whole front of the house was ablaze. I must have looked a little remorseful, because Su nudged me and said, “They stole your boat, remember.”
Greeting us as we tried to board the Venetian were two angry dogs—a German Shepard and a Rottweiler. Teeth bared, growling, they eyed us, probably thinking, wow, new chew toys.
I heard Su’s breath catch in her throat. She took a quick step back toward the Zodiac.
“I like animals as much as the next bloke,” Nestor said and fired two quick shot with the gun I’d taken from the guard. “But enough already.”
He and I picked up the dead dogs and heaved them over the side while Su stood lookout on the fantail. Nestor headed for the engine room. I ran up the stairs to the bridge. “How’s it look down there?” I asked Nestor over the intercom.
“Who cares? Let’s get out of here.”
Our exit was as fast as the Venetian would allow, our course set for Laranjeiras to pick up Ollie. On the way, I called Sloane. “We did it,” I crowed when he came on the phone. I gave him the blow by blow, minus my bike fall, and to his credit, he oooh’d and aaaah’d at all the right places. “Keep me posted as you make your way north. You’ve earned a bonus for this, Will. A big one,” he said as he rang off.
Ollie looked a little dumbfounded when the Venetian came alongside the Wanderer. “I never thought you’d pull it off,” he admitted as he tied the two boats together. We transferred what little we had on the Wanderer to the Venetian, Ollie used the sat phone to call the Wanderer’s owner and tell him he where could pick-up his boat, Su ran in and out of a farmer’s market to get us a day or two’s provisions, and that quickly, we were underway.
With Ollie driving the bus, I did a quick disaster check of the boat. What I found, I found strange.
They’d replaced the telco. Okay, maybe that wasn’t so strange.
The body was gone from the wine fridge. They’d pulled the whole fridge out. There was just a big empty hole. That was strange.
The twelve suitcases of cocaine were still stowed in the Venetian’s closets. I even opened two of them to make sure they hadn’t removed the cocaine and left the suitcases. It was all there. It was as if they didn’t know what was in those suitcases. I found that even stranger. When they took the boat, I assumed it had been for the cocaine. If that hadn’t been the reason, I was mystified. Nice as the Venetian was, staging an armed intervention to gain her seemed excessive.
One other strange item: a rubber mallet was lying on the island in the galley. A hammer I’d have understood. It’s a multi-purpose blunt object. But a rubber headed mallet is a specialty tool. I’d seen a mallet like it but couldn’t remember where, and since I had more immediate things to worry about, I let it go.
Torching the house of a guy who has his own private army was not a move that would go unpunished. I was pretty sure by now baldy was crazy out of his head, yelling and screaming like a demon. Bring me their severed heads. Now. Or worse. Bring them to me alive so I can burn them at the stake. An involuntary shiver ran through me. I hustled to the bridge. “Anything on radar? Anybody coming?”
Ollie’s face was grim, his big body tense. “I’ve been watching, but I haven’t seen anything.”
“How fast are we going?”
“Full-throttle. I didn’t have to push Nestor. He knows we need every bit of speed we can get.”
Su arrived on the bridge. “Can we go any faster?” she asked Ollie, nervousness evident in her voice.
Ollie’s worried look deepened. “This is it. She’s dancing as fast as she can. What are we going to do if they chase us?” he asked in a small, frightened voice.
I grinned. “The last thing they’d expect—we’re going to ram their boat with the Venetian.”
Ollie looked appalled. Who could blame him? Maneuvering a 155-foot yacht to ram a smaller boat was probably totally looney toons.
Whatever concerns he had, he kept to himself. We watched the radar all night, alert for boats coming after us. Time slowed. Seconds became minutes. Minutes hours. Hours days.
Around eight the next morning, Su brought us bowls of oatmeal and mugs of coffee. She looked like she’d actually slept. Since I was tired, achy, grimy, and stressed, I was envious, too. “How could you sleep?” I asked around a bite of oatmeal.
“I don’t worry about things I can’t control,” she said matter-of-factly. “They come. They not come. I can’t change outcome with worry. So, yeah, I slept.” She gave us both a hard look. “You could both use sleep. You’ve been here all night. Let me take the wheel.” When I hesitated, she added, “I’ll wake you if I see anything on radar.”
Ollie looked at me. He was dead on his feet.
“Okay,” I said grudgingly. “If I’m not back in four hours, wake me and I’ll go spell Nestor.”
She nodded.
I took one last look at the radar and headed below. In my cabin, I kicked off my Nikes, sprawled fully clothed on the be
d, and was asleep in a heartbeat. I slept soundly until a pack of dogs cornered me. Their leader, a black Rottweiler, jumped on me and I woke with a start.
A look at my watch told me I’d slept three hours. I padded into the bathroom, splashed water on my face and noticed something peculiar—all my toiletries were sitting on the counter where I’d left them. I turned off the tap, went back to the bedroom and looked in the dresser drawers. Sure enough, my clothes were still there. My wallet still contained my money and credit cards. I checked my sport coat’s inside pocket and felt my passport.
Weird. Why was any of this still here? Baldy and blondie would certainly have wanted to use the master cabin. Why hadn’t it been cleaned out?
And where were they? Sixteen hours had passed since we liberated the Venetian; they would’ve had plenty of time to locate us. As terrified as I was that they’d find us, I was equally troubled why they hadn’t.
My worries accompanied me to the engine room to spell Nestor. I found him asleep on a cot, lying on his side, his back away from the door. He must have heard my footsteps over the rumble of the engines, because he sat-up abruptly and heaved an adjustable wrench in my direction.
It whizzed by my left ear and clattered harmlessly to the floor. Seeing it was me, Nestor looked horrified.
“My fault,” I assured him. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”
He let out a big breath. “I was sure it was them.”
“Yeah, I can’t figure out why they haven’t come after us.”
He rubbed his eyes. Yawned. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to feel bad if they don’t.”
I watched him stand and stretch, his hands on his lower back. “I’m here to relive you,” I said. “Go get yourself something to eat and some sleep.”
“Pfff, I’ve been sleeping,” he said, shaking me off. “The engines are running good. I’m thinking we don’t have to baby them as much. There’s no need for you to be down here.”
“Why are they suddenly running better?” I wanted to know. This was another thing that didn’t make any sense. When we left Rio, we couldn’t go a nautical mile—even at low speed—without some problem. Now we were at full-throttle, problem free. “How does that happen?”