Castigo Cay

by Matthew Bracken

  “Not too damn likely.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it from the water.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking too.”

  “So, what’s your plan?”

  ****

  “Plan?” I laughed, almost giddy with exhaustion. “Harry, I don’t have a plan yet. First I have to find a boat and get to Florida. Then try to sneak aboard Topaz, I guess.” As soon as I said the name, I regretted it. I kept talking, hoping it had not registered. “It’s over a hundred feet long, big enough for a twenty-foot tender underneath in the boat garage. It even has a hot tub.”

  “What, no helicopter pad?”

  “No helicopter pad. It’s not that big. Why, do you fly helicopters too?”

  “Hell yeah, I fly helicopters. So, have you got a tracker?”

  “A tracker? You mean like an Apache scout or something?” I was just joking. I knew what he meant.

  “A locater beacon. A pinger. To follow Topaz from long range, just in case you can’t sneak aboard it in Miami.”

  Shit. He’d locked onto the name. Nothing I could do about that now. “Hell no, I don’t. An electronic tracker is about number fifty on my list of things I can’t afford.”

  “Only fifty? That’s a short list. You have the main thing: the boat. And a hell of a boat at that. Very impressive. What is she, seventy feet?”

  “Sixty on deck. Sixty-eight overall.”

  “I didn’t get a very good look on the fly-by. Is she a gaff rig schooner?”

  “No, gaffs are too much work. Both masts are Marconi rigged, with fully battened main sails.”

  “Makes sense,” he commented. “A lot easier to handle than a gaffer.”

  “You know your sailing.”

  “I should, after more than sixty years in these islands. Even owned a few boats, power and sail. I’m guessing your schooner has a steel hull, right?”

  “Yeah, steel.”

  “Thought so. That’s good in the islands. Sooner or later you go bashing into coral, and steel can take it.”

  “Been there and so forth.”

  “Hell of a boat for such a young man.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Harry understood. Rebel Yell was my castle, my floating fortress, my freedom.

  “You know, most of the charters I fly anymore are old farts like me. We all have the same problem: more money than time left to enjoy it. Any kid your age that can wangle a sixty-foot schooner, that’s a kid with his eye on the ball. You sort of remind me of me, a long time ago. When my flying was more adventurous. Not just this charter stuff.”

  “Did you ever fly into Normans Cay?”

  After a pause he said, “Let’s save that discussion for another time. Okay?” With a tip of his head, he indicated Nick in the backseat. With my headset on, I really couldn’t tell how much of our conversation Nick was following.

  We flew over Clarence Town on Long Island midway through the flight. Long Island was a real string bean, sixty miles in length by just a couple of miles wide. With a twenty-knot tailwind pushing us, the Cessna made the trip back to Great Exuma in less than an hour.

  ****

  After landing at George Town’s asphalt strip, Harry went off to arrange the refueling. I stepped down and stretched in the shadow under the high wing. It was almost ten a.m. and already very hot on the tarmac. The Tropic of Cancer ran smack across Great Exuma Island, officially placing us in the tropics. After I deplaned, Nick Galloway climbed out of the backseat and hopped down. I turned to shake his hand and said, “Hey, you forgot your bag.”

  “What are you talking about?” Both of his hands flew up to his shoulders, palms facing me, and he took a step back. He didn’t understand my offered right hand, and I stood there awkwardly before dropping it to my side.

  “This is George Town. This is your bus stop, Nick. What did you think? This is where your boat is. Thanks for your help last night. I’m sorry the mission was an abort.”

  “What? You think I’m getting off the airplane here?” His fisted hands went to his hips and his eyes narrowed.

  “Well, yeah, the mission was a dud. It was a dry hole. So we’re done, right?”

  “You’re kicking me off the team? What, you don’t consider me enough of an operator?”

  “We’re a team now? When did that happen?”

  “Hey, man, I signed on to help you find Cori and see if we could make some kind of financial recovery along the way. We didn’t do either, so the job’s not finished. I start a mission, I finish it. No part-time, no going halfway. You’re going to Florida, so obviously the mission’s not over. Harry’s not going to charge you more for another warm body on the plane, is he?”

  “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack,” he replied without hesitation.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t go back to Florida.”

  “You said you couldn’t either, but you are. And when was the last time you were in South Florida, anyway? Five years? I was there just a year ago. I know what’s going on back there. So, what do you think, Chu-tau? Are you dead set on running this mission solo, or do you want a wingman to watch your six?”

  I thought about it for a minute, staring at him. He stared right back. I was impressed that he’d remembered the Vietnamese word for captain. He was letting me know he understood that he would be in a subordinate role if I agreed to take him with me.

  Over the past day and a half I’d gotten to know Nick Galloway pretty well. Not from long conversations about our lives, none of that chick-flick crap. He had indeed proven to be a skilled operator, at least in the areas where he had been tested. He had those Ranger patrolling skills. They can’t be faked. And the names tattooed on his upper arm still rang true to me. No backstabber would inscribe the names of his fallen comrades onto his flesh.

  But patrolling on an isolated island didn’t have much in common with sneaking around the urban landscape of modern America. On the other hand, he’d been living in the States more recently than I had and might have some useful knowledge that I lacked. I looked away from him at the sky and considered for another minute before responding. Maybe he had some of what I had: the hunter’s drive. Once on the blood trail, it was hard to turn that instinct off.

  “All right, if you want to come along, come along. You have your .357, right?”

  “And two speed loaders, and about twenty loose rounds.”

  “Don’t expect me to throw your bail if you get picked up for doing something stupid. You get arrested for being a dumb ass, I don’t know you.”

  “Same goes likewise, skipper. I’m too broke to throw anybody’s bail, even my own. Dan, I’m so broke you’ll have to spring for my meals.”

  “I can handle that, if you don’t mind eating cheap. But I’m taking the backseat on the next hop. I’m ready to keel over. While you were getting your beauty rest on top of that sand dune last night, I was too jacked up to sleep. Next leg I’ve got to catch some rack time or I’ll be useless.”

  “No problem, I’ll sit up front and keep Harry company. How much have you told him about the mission?”

  Nick hadn’t had an intercom headset on during the flight from Acklins Island and couldn’t have heard much of what we were discussing over the engine and wind noise. Or maybe he had. It was hard to know, since my ears had been covered by headphones the entire flight. “I told him most of it, but without the names.”

  “So if he asks me any questions…”

  “Talk to him, but be vague. I trust Harry. No—I have to trust him, to a certain point. I have no other option. Oh, and by the way, we’re going to West End on Grand Bahama, not Bimini. He says he knows somebody with a boat.”

  “You sure it’s not a setup? It could be a trap.”

  “Yeah, I guess it could. But I have no other options at this point. Still want to go?”

  He nodded, resolute, and put out his own right hand. “I still want to go, skipper.”

  We shook on it, and it was done.

  The private fuel
truck pulled up to our plane, and Harry climbed down from its passenger seat. The Bahamian driver set up a ladder, reeled off the hose and topped off the wing tanks. Ten minutes later we were airborne again. The next hop would take us over New Providence Island and through Nassau’s controlled airspace, so a flight plan had been filed. Our bags were already behind the backseat in the luggage compartment, so I could stretch out just a little. After we took off, I lay on my back with my knees up, and fell asleep before we reached cruising altitude.

  I shifted positions a few times, once when the sun was shining straight in my face from a high angle. The strangeness of the trip was overpowering, and my mind flashed to Black Hawks, Chinooks, Ospreys and C-130s. I always enjoyed flying aboard small planes and helicopters. I even wanted to take flight lessons someday, but to what end? I could hardly afford to keep Rebel Yell in paint and diesel fuel, so what was the use of thinking about flying my own airplanes? When I needed to fly, I’d have to find a willing pilot like Harry Allan to get me from point A to point B. Still, the inability to fly bothered me. I could drive boats, cars and motorcycles, but when it came to flying, I was strictly a non-qual. Straight and level stick time mid-flight in bluebird weather didn’t count.

  I couldn’t afford a plane, but my Uncle sure could. Uncle Sam owned thousands of planes, and he’d flown me to some of the world’s real garden spots. But when I had ridden in his air fleet, he’d owned me just as much as he’d owned the aircraft I flew in. Yes I enjoyed flying on government planes and helos, but not enough to stay in the military and remain government property for twenty years. Not for the sake of a pension that might or might not ever be paid. Or if it was paid, might be paid in IOUs or ration cards or whatever paper confetti they decided to dole out to the veterans in the future.

  But it wasn’t only the pension. I just wasn’t the lifer type. I had answered my country’s call of duty, and I’d done my thing in the deserts and the mountains. Besides the paycheck, cool clothes and free airplane rides, I had also learned a trade. Certain esoteric skills related to applying mass times velocity over random distances to within very tight tolerances of time and space. Skills without much demand in the civilian sector. When my time was up plus a little more, I said adios to my jarhead friends in San Diego, grabbed my DD-214 and my other separation papers and walked away without looking back. I drove up I-5 past Camp Pendleton on cruise control, and kept going all the way out of Mexicalifornistan.

  10

  In my mid-twenties I was a college freshman at the University of Oregon in Eugene. It was hard for me to relate to my teen-aged classmates and granola-munching professors. A five- or six-year difference in age doesn’t sound like much, but my previous five years had been spent under very different circumstances from those of my peers.

  Of course, college wasn’t all bad. The girls outnumbered the guys almost two to one, and I was partying more than studying my way through my first semester of college. After my Spartan tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, my semester in Eugene was like landing in hookup heaven. When not drinking or chasing girls—or being chased by girls—I managed to squeeze in just enough study time to keep my GPA above the waterline. Maybe if I’d finished the semester, I would have successfully adapted to academia and gone on to Great Things as a Professional with a College Degree.

  But in early December I got wrapped around the axle with a Professor of American History. Ennis Robbins was a pudgy, prematurely balding rat-faced maggot who stood about five-six in his Birkenstocks. In his classroom and passing in hallways, he always seemed intensely aware of my proximity, shooting me coy looks that I ignored.

  This wasn’t unusual in itself. Gay guys often sent me test glances, which I always ignored. Robbins, though, didn’t receive the correct signal on his gaydar. On a Friday afternoon in December he invited me to his office to go over a final draft of an eight-thousand-word term paper I had written on the lessons of the Vietnam War. Across from the cluttered desk in his cramped office was a swivel chair. Robbins was already behind his desk when I entered. He indicated that I should sit down, and I did.

  He came around his desk with a printed hard copy of my term paper, handed it to me, and stood behind me in order to point out the corrections and suggestions he’d made. He leaned in closely enough for me to feel his breath on my neck while his hand rested on the arm of the chair. He said, “Dan, this paper is going to need extensive reworking to be acceptable.”

  “I can’t see why. Every paragraph—hell, almost every sentence—is footnoted. I can back it all up from primary sources, every bit of it.”

  He reached around me to flip to a middle page of my term paper. In a few moments he was touching his hip to my side and his arm to my shoulder. “Well, Dan, some of your sources are not exactly held in high regard by most reputable, mainstream historians. But I think we can use this as a teachable moment.” His body relaxed and he leaned into me, his true intentions suddenly becoming all too clear when he gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze.

  I kicked out with both feet against his heavy desk, shooting the chair backwards on its rollers and propelling him rearward. He tripped over a crate of books, did half of a somersault and went down hard, with his head smacking a low bookshelf before hitting the carpet. I leapt up from the chair to bolt from the room. Harsh words were exchanged, including my calling him a goddamn faggot, among other insults. Robbins was still rolling on the floor and wailing when I slammed his office door behind me.

  He intercepted me the following Monday in a hall on my way to class. According to Professor Robbins, my “intentional misinterpretation of the perfectly innocent situation” was sure proof of my dangerous homophobia. My behavior was a result of Christian right-wing bigotry and was typical of ex-military knuckle-draggers. I just ignored him and shouldered my way past. Our student-teacher relationship went straight downhill after that hallway meeting. My tests, papers and projects were returned to me covered in so much red marker that they looked like freshly used combat dressings. He graded all of my tests and papers with Ds and Fs. Semi-literate but politically correct sycophants in the same history class received As and Bs.

  When he called on me in class after our two encounters, he referred to me in the third person as “the soldier” in a tone dripping with derision. (I never bothered to correct him on the distinction between Army Soldiers and Marines.) He never let up. After one final insult, staring directly at me while describing American soldiers in Iraq as baby killers, rapists, genocidal murderers, and ignorant tools of imperialism, a classroom full of teenage college freshman witnessed me dragging him across his upended podium and slamming him to the deck by the lapels of his elbow-patched corduroy jacket.

  One look into my eyes must have convinced the professor not to press assault charges, at least not then. I’m sure my face conveyed the intended message that if I wasn’t given a life sentence in maximum security, I’d hunt him down and cut out his heart with a rusty knife. Even though I wasn’t immediately charged with assault, rumors about the “violent incidents” between us spread among the students and faculty.

  Another professor (who was an Army veteran) took me aside and whispered to me that multiple felony charges would be forthcoming. Federal hate crimes, even. A full dossier was being prepared in secret. However, Professor Robbins might drop the charges if I dropped out of school and moved far away. Leaving Oregon for a distant state seemed to be a prudent idea. Thus ended my brief exposure to Higher Education, and my chance to become a Professional with a Bachelors Degree. (Later, I learned that I was not the first male student to have an “incident” with the professor in his private office, and he had his own reasons for wanting to bury the case.)

  My father had already been deeply disappointed that I’d joined the Marines instead of going straight to college after high school. We Kilmers went to college, period. My two older sisters had gone to college, and I was expected to follow in their footsteps. But instead I enlisted in the military when I turned eighteen.

  Wo
rse still, I didn’t enlist in the Navy or even the Air Force, where, in my father’s view, I might actually have learned a marketable skill. Instead, I enlisted in the Marines, where mainly I learned how to blow holes in people at ranges from point-blank to beyond a thousand yards.

  After I separated from the Marines, my father’s hope in my future was renewed when I was accepted at the University of Oregon. This new hope ended when I was forced to leave college during my first semester in order to avoid arrest and prosecution.

  The state of Oregon didn’t mean anything to me. It was just the geographical location my father had returned to after putting twenty-five years in the Navy before retiring as a captain. Growing up I was just a Navy brat, moving every two or three years during my childhood. I’d lived in Hawaii, Sicily, California, Japan, Virginia and Spain. Maybe that rootless upbringing was the wellspring of my nomadic habits. But in the end I had legal Oregon residency, so that’s where I received the discounted in-state tuition rate and that’s where I spent my unfinished semester of college.

  Helping my Uncle Jeff to complete his multi-year “boat project” had been my father’s idea. Jeffrey Kilmer was my father’s older brother by four years. According to my dad, Jeff had done well enough earlier in his life as a corporate exec, but he had gone off the rails somewhere around age fifty when his second wife dumped him, or he dumped her. According to my dad, Jeff had turned into a mid-life hippie. Confirming this suspicion, Jeff had sold his perfectly good house and bought a derelict schooner that wasn’t even in the water, but was rusting away in a Florida boatyard. To my father, this was proof of certifiable insanity. After my college fiasco, I got the impression from my Type-A dad that he considered both his brother and his son to be losers, and clear across the country from him was a good place for both of us to be. Maybe we two losers deserved each other, in my father’s judgment. Be that as it may, Uncle Jeff needed help, and I needed an immediate and distant change of legal jurisdiction.