Maria looked at Felix’s newly forged weapon, its crude tip telling her all she needed to know. She took a step back as horrible thoughts entered her mind.
“You . . . you are planning to stab me.”
“What?”
“With that.” She pointed. “You will stab me out there. Make me bleed in the water so sharks will come.”
Felix threw his head back and laughed. “You mean, like you did to Kenny?”
Maria didn’t answer. The wooden point had her attention fixed. She wished she still had the sharp stone that had been lost at sea. Felix tucked the dagger into his waistband and wagged a finger at her.
“No, I won’t stab you,” said Felix. “Despite what you may think, I ain’t like you.”
“Then why I no have?”
“Like I said before, you won’t need one,” Felix said, shaking his head. “Because you’re staying here.”
“¿Qué?”
“You’re not coming with us, honey. And if you try to, I will cut you up out there and spill that bad blood of yours for the sharks.”
Maria hitched in a breath of shocked air. Ginger and Nash said nothing, though they too were caught off guard by Felix’s decision.
“But I will die if I stay!” Maria protested.
Maria went to step even closer, but a subtle shake from Nash’s head stopped her. They exchanged a look between them, one which spoke volumes. They both knew Felix was as good as his word. If the man said he would cut her, he would cut her deep. Felix walked away and waded into the shallows.
“You’ll die quicker if you try to follow me,” he said over his shoulder. “I can guarantee that much.”
Ginger and Nash hesitated at the water’s edge, pointed sticks tucked in their waistbands as if they were players in some cheap pirate pantomime. If their situation hadn’t been so dire, they would have looked comical.
“We’re just going to leave her behind?” Ginger asked.
Felix was resolute. “We’re just going to leave her behind.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Yes, we can. She’s earned her abandonment.”
Nash waded through the water toward Felix, noticing that the yacht was in motion, closer than ever. Three men were on deck, watching and waiting. The fourth stood in the cockpit, piloting the vessel. Nash got the unshakable feeling they were about to do something drastic. He put a hand gently on Felix’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.
“Felix, what’s going on?”
“An experiment.”
“An experiment for what?”
Felix held a finger to his lips. “Wait and see.”
He beckoned for Ginger to join them in the water. She went reluctantly, casting a worried glance at Maria. Again, Maria tried to take a step in their direction. Felix wagged another finger at her.
“Don’t even think about it. Stay right where you are.”
Maria stayed, fixed in her spot with both fear and frustration. Nash looked upon her with pity and saw what he’d missed before. In her own way the young woman loved life. She was a survivor, one who beat the odds, clawing ahead constantly to keep from slipping back. Failing to go with them defied every instinct she had. Maria began to yell at the others, voice panicked and enraged at once. They backed away, moving deeper and deeper into the water, leaving the woman on the beach to a different fate.
o o o
“Something’s up, fellas,” Buchanan said, squinting behind the scope of the M107. “Take a look.”
Greer signaled to Turk in the boat’s cockpit. Turk eased up on the throttle and slowed the boat down as Greer and Reposo raised their binoculars.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” Greer said, focusing on Maria.
Maria stood fast on the beach, face red and neck strained, her mouth a flapping hole as she shouted at the three others wading out to sea.
“What on earth is she yelling about?”
“Not sure,” replied Reposo. “It’s all in Spanish and I can’t hear it too well.”
“Looks to me like she’s refusing to participate,” Buchanan said. “She ain’t budging from the beach. I think she’s decided not to go with them.”
Greer’s cruel smile returned. “Is that so?”
He raised a closed fist and Turk slowed the boat to a full stop. Then he turned to Buchanan and nodded. Buchanan folded out the M107’s bipod and lay down on the deck.
o o o
When the water was chest high, Felix, Nash, and Ginger began swimming. Fifty yards out Maria’s angry shouts behind them became broken by the wind and waves, but the woman still spat every ounce of venom she had their way.
“Hijo de puta! Me cago en tu madre—”
The retort of the M107 echoed across the water a split second after the .50-caliber bullet struck Maria center mass.
“Jesus—”
Nash stopped swimming and looked back. He thought he saw Maria lying on the beach, but was sure he was mistaken. He wiped salt water from his eyes and looked again. It couldn’t be her. What was on the beach was in two separate pieces.
“Felix!”
Felix and Ginger were already watching. The M107’s .50-caliber antimaterial round, capable of putting a hole in an armored vehicle, had ripped Maria’s body clean in half. Her top portion continued living for almost a half minute, eyes opening and closing, mouth moving, still trying to spew the last of the profanity her brain had formed into speech.
“We have to go back,” said Nash.
Felix stared with a trembling jaw at the two halves of the woman on the sand. He’d thought a warning shot might have been in the cards, something to motivate her into the water. Not this.
“Felix?”
“F-f-forget it,” Felix stammered. “She’s dead. They took her out.”
“They did? Why?”
Felix gulped. “Because they thought she was refusing to participate.”
Nash turned on him. “That was your goddamn experiment?”
“We had to know what would happen if we didn’t follow their instructions—”
“Fuck me, Felix. You’re as bad as they are.”
“Me? You saw what that callous bitch did to Kenny. She would have done that to any one of us this time if we gave her half the chance.”
Nash figured he was right, but wasn’t going to give Felix the satisfaction. He turned to swim back, wanting to get a closer look, to see if Maria really was dead. Ginger’s trembling voice stopped him before he started.
“I need you, Nash.”
They were the last words he ever expected to hear from her. The desperation in her tone forced him to turn back and face her.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded. “I can’t do this alone.”
“Do what alone?”
“Abandon another person like we just did.”
Nash looked into her eyes and saw more fear there than he’d seen since waking up beside her two days before. It was the idea of being left behind that terrified her most, more than hungry sharks, psychotic men, or the ocean itself. Left to the mercy of such things meant you’d been abandoned. It was out of your hands, and that was the most awful part. Someone else made the decision to forsake you, leave you behind, alone and out of your element to deal with monsters in theirs.
“I won’t leave you,” Nash said. “I promise, Ginger.”
“Hell, nobody gets left back,” said Felix. “The three of us are . . .”
His mouth gaped as he watched the yacht slowly propel itself into view behind Nash’s head. The buzz of an outboard engine came to their ears. Seconds later a Zodiac pulled away from the yacht’s stern with a full-throttled whine, two men riding it. It seemed to be headed straight for the beach, though Felix wondered if it would veer around and head for them instead.
“Watch these guys,”
he said. “Don’t take your eyes off them.”
The Zodiac pulled into the shallows and beached itself. Both men jumped out and hit the sand, Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns slung over their shoulders. Nash finally got a good look at them, focusing on the one with the cropped blond hair.
“That’s one of the guys that tailed me in Opa-locka, I’m sure of it.”
Felix peered, straining his neck. “Yeah, looks like the redneck who winded me outside my apartment door.”
The men made their way to Maria’s two halves and stood over them. They talked briefly, prodding at her corpse with their combat boots. Then one of the men dragged her lower half by the legs back to the boat. The other man followed, dragging her top half by her curly black hair.
“What are they doing?” Ginger asked.
“Cleaning up evidence,” Felix replied.
The Zodiac pulled away from the beach, but did not return to the stern of the yacht. Instead, it sped into the open water and slowed to a stop, where it waited, the heads of both men turned in the direction of the survivors.
“Now what?” Ginger moaned.
“We swim for the next island as fast as we can,” Felix said. “And we don’t stop.”
They kept their heads above water this time, staying alert for any threat. Nash looked to the sky, taking in the beauty of the blue expanse crested with clouds, trying to distract himself from the darker blue that dominated below. His eyes slid over to Ginger and Felix, who to his surprise had overtaken him. The last thing Nash wanted to do was take up the rear. That hadn’t worked out so well for Kenny.
Forget about outrunning the sharks, he thought, cowardice blooming inside him. All you have to do is make sure you outrun these two.
Nash swam hard to catch up. He had never been so scared in all his squandered life. Now and then he dared to squint into the water below, but saw only a blur of unbroken blue. Every tenth stroke or so, Nash reached down to check that the dagger was still with him. The pointed stick tucked in his waistband provided little comfort. He had checked over a dozen times when Ginger’s pained voice suddenly rang out.
“Help!”
Nash and Felix wasted no time swimming to her side, ignoring as best they could the possible causes for her distress.
“What’s wrong?” Nash said, reaching her first.
“Leg cramp,” she squealed. “I can’t get it to go.”
“How bad?” Felix asked.
“Real fucking bad, all seized up. My leg is like a damn block of wood.”
“Don’t freak out,” Nash said. “Here, I’m going to lift my calf sideways. Put your arms around my neck and stomp your foot down on it as hard as you need until you work that cramp out.”
Ginger’s quivering mouth tried to smile for Nash. He was there for her, coming to her rescue, a rescue that deep down she had wanted since the beginning of the whole fucked-up ordeal. She slung her arms around his neck and pulled him close in the water for just a moment, pressing her slender body against his, feeling the warmth of his skin. In that moment she knew they could have been lovers in another time, another place. In another set of circumstances she might have met him one night after a gig at the Barracuda Room and let him buy her that drink that would lead to other things.
Ginger planted a kiss on Nash’s cheek, catching him off guard. Then she beat her foot down on his calf, jarring her cramp into submission. The force bobbed them below the surface of the water. When they came back up she was smiling.
“It’s all gone,” she gushed. “Thank you.”
Nash nodded, still feeling the touch of her lips on his cheek. “Good. You okay to continue on?”
His concern was genuine, the unexpected kiss softening something in him. It was the first sliver of sincere affection he had received from anyone in a long while, and he was thankful. For him, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
“I’m good to go,” Ginger said and released him from her embrace.
Nash let her lead, suddenly willing to take up the rear to protect her. They swam four hundred yards, almost halfway to the next island, with no sign of the tiger shark or scavenging white-tips. Adrenaline pumped their muscles harder and faster than they had ever been tested, yet minutes seemed like hours. Nash’s heart raced. His lungs begged for a break. Searing pain shot through his sinews, daring his body to give out. Even as it worsened, it was still more bearable than the withdrawal that had ravaged him on the last crossing. When they had completed two-thirds of the distance Felix called out for a breather. The three formed a huddle in the water.
“Look,” he said, pointing and panting. “They’re coming closer again.”
The Zodiac was less than a hundred yards to their left, moving slow, matching speed as it traveled parallel to them. The two men were crouched, one of them holding up what looked like a video camera.
“The sick bastards are just waiting for a show,” Nash said. “But I get the feeling they might not get one today—”
The Zodiac’s idling engine roared to life and it sped up on its trajectory, curving a hundred and fifty yards ahead to where it could stop directly between the swimmers and the next island. Felix strained his neck and peeled his eyes to try to get a better look.
“What the hell are they doing?”
The man in front was hurling stuff over the side of the boat with a small container, as if bailing water out of the hull. Felix could see that what was being chucked over the side was red.
“Oh, you fucking cocksuckers.”
“What?” Ginger moaned.
“They’re chumming the water, throwing blood and fish bits ahead of us to attract the sharks into our path.”
Nash gave a loud, sickly cough. “Oh, God, they’re doing more than that. Look.”
They watched as the man tossed both halves of Maria overboard, spilled intestines trailing over the side. Two large splashes and a single laugh sounded over the water. They could see the pieces of the woman floating on the waves.
“We should go back,” Nash said, holding back the urge to vomit.
“We have to go back,” Ginger insisted.
“That’s what they want us to do,” Felix replied. “When the sharks arrive they’ll have more time to lock onto us if we try and return. Fuck, we’re three-quarters of the way already, and I’m almost out of juice. I say we go forward.”
Ginger couldn’t believe her ears. “You expect us to swim through blood and body parts?”
“We’ll give the chum a wide berth,” said Felix. “Swim around it, head for the far side of the island. The sharks will be too attracted to the blood to give a shit about us for a little while.”
Ginger shook her head. “Either that or the chum appetizer will get them in the mood for a main course.”
The blond man dumped the rest of the bucket over the side, bits of Kenny mixed with blood and tuna spreading out over the water. The three survivors resumed their swim using breaststroke, heads above the water to monitor the situation, altering their route to avoid the chum. The Zodiac pulled away to a safe distance and waited. Soon Felix stopped, motioning for the other two to do the same. The first white-tipped fins broke the surface of the red water ahead of them.
“This is crazy,” Nash panted. “So unbelievably ridiculously fucking crazy—”
“Hey,” Felix snapped. “Save your energy.”
A muffled whine suddenly escaped Ginger’s throat, drawing the men’s attention. Her hand was clasped over her mouth, eyes bulging at something behind. They turned, both stifling a cry at the sight. Forty yards away the large fin of the tiger shark rode the waves, picking up speed on approach. Nash and Felix instinctively grabbed their daggers and held them under the water to fend off an attack. As it neared, Nash noticed that the fin wasn’t quite aimed at them. It was offset a few degrees, targeting something else.
“Try not to move m
uch,” he whispered. “I don’t think it’s coming for us.”
The man-eater closed the distance quickly, drifting to their left. The three treaded water with minimal movement, noses just above the surface, watching the tiger shark cruise by less than five yards from their floating bodies. It ignored them completely, focusing strictly on the scent ahead, dwarfing them as it passed. The dorsal fin cut the water, sending ripples against their bobbing heads, the true power and capability of the creature becoming apparent to them all. Nash could see the faded stripes along its body below the surface, markings that gave the beast its name. That the creature had been bestowed with the names of two predators played on his mind. Such a title spoke volumes of its savagery.
And it’s looking for lunch, Nash thought.
He felt the powerful tail push a current over his submerged body. The fin sped toward the blood and chum, diving just before reaching it. Felix let out a long shudder, his words escaping with a slow exhale of air.
“I think I just pissed myself.”
“I think we all did,” whispered Ginger.
They tucked their daggers away and continued on, trying to make as little disturbance as possible, beginning their wide berth of the blood and chum, noting every fin and tail that splashed and thrashed the surface. Both sections of Maria’s body bobbed in the water, shrinking as bits of her were eaten away.
Targeting the far end of the island added more than fifty yards to the swim, but the enticing safety of the beach caused their quiet advance to lapse. Felix was first, splashing more as he tried to pick up the pace. Ginger followed, churning the water frothy with her limbs. Nash winced at the commotion.
“Hey, stop, you guys.”
Neither of them stopped. In fact, they seemed to make more noise in light of his warning. The sharks would sense the distress soon, if they had not already. Nash shouted as loud as he dared.
“Hey! Quit making so much . . .”
He looked over his shoulder, the rest of his sentence falling down his throat and into the pit of his stomach. Maria’s remains were gone. Halfway between him and the chum was a white-tipped fin, moving curiously toward the sounds of splashing, ignoring the blood behind it. The shark was one of the last to turn up, missing out on the meal of Maria. It had gulped a few pathetic scraps in the water, but was growing disinterested in the lack of actual food in the blood cloud. Nash had no doubt this shark was coming straight for them.
Bait: A Novel Page 15