Castigo Cay

by Matthew Bracken

  “So Prechter owns Topaz,” said Nick. “That’s a sweet little scam.”

  “No,” she corrected. “Technically, TPS owns Topaz. That’s Tidal Power Solutions. But Richard Prechter is CEO of TPS, so yeah, I guess he does.”

  “You know,” he said, “Topaz is perfect for a VIP party boat. Prechter probably takes politicians out and gets them drunk and gets them laid. Whatever they’re into. Girls… boys…drugs…whatever. All that luxury, and total privacy. ‘What happens on Topaz stays on Topaz.’ No media coverage. It’s a perfect way to keep the politicians happy and keep the grant money rolling in.”

  I asked Kelly, “Aren’t you afraid that all this research you’re doing on Prechter is going to trigger some alarms somewhere?”

  She looked at me as if I were slow on the uptake. “Look, Dan, if you want a lesson in safe surfing, I’ll be happy to get you up to speed some other time. I understand that you’ve been out of the country and have missed a lot.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I conceded. It was impossible to stay current with technology that changed from year to year and country to country. There was an eternal push and pull between personal privacy and government intrusion. A South Florida college student was as likely as anybody to be current with the state of the art. “Sure, I’d like that, if we get the chance. Now, what about the conference in Miami Beach? Where is it? Who’s sponsoring it? And is Prechter really scheduled as a speaker?”

  “It’s the fifth-annual Renewable and Sustainable Energy Conference at the Fontainebleau Hotel. He’s scheduled to speak at eleven. I’m driving you there, so I’ll need some cash for the jug boys.”

  “You’re driving?” I asked. “Who decided that?”

  “Dan, that’s a cute little boat you have out back, but I don’t think it’ll work too well in downtown Miami. So yes, of course I’m driving. It’s already been settled. We planned it all out while you were catching Zs on the couch. Right, Nick?”

  Nick just smiled and said, “She’s right, you know. About her driving. It only makes sense. She has a car. We don’t.”

  What better alternative did I have? I couldn’t rent a car without a credit card and an ID check, leaving an electronic trail in real time. Take a bus? Could you buy bus tickets with cash anymore? Even if you could, between the war on drugs and the war on terror bus terminals were all filmed from a dozen angles. Take a taxi? Maybe. Or I could just accept the ride being offered, so I agreed.

  “Okay, well, thanks. But if the three of us are going down to Miami, we’ll have to split up when I go to the conference. So we’ll need to pick up a couple of cell phones. Prepaid phones. I can buy them with cash.”

  Kelly shook her head. “Not anymore, you can’t. Prepaid phones are illegal now. Only criminals and terrorists need them, so says our government.”

  “But we’ll need secure phones that can’t be traced to us.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can handle that. We’ll get them tomorrow morning on the way to Miami.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “We’re not getting prepaids. There’s another way to get untraceable cell phones. Don’t worry—I’ll take care of it.”

  Kelly was almost too good to be true, and naturally this made me suspicious. Her car, her cell phones and her computer expertise, all offered to me on a silver platter. But I had no better alternative, especially just hours before the Miami Beach conference began. So I suppressed my paranoia and pressed ahead. “I’m guessing the conference is closed to the public.”

  “You guess right,” she said.

  “Then I’ll need credentials to get in. People have to sign up in advance. I’ll have to come up with a way to infiltrate the Fontainebleau.”

  “No, you won’t.” Kelly grabbed some papers from the printer in front of Nick and handed them to me. “You did sign up in advance, don’t you remember? This is your pass. I made it while you were sleeping.”

  “How did—”

  “I un-canceled a professor from the University of Oregon. That’s where you’re from, right?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know it, but he changed his mind at the last minute and decided he could make it to the RASE Conference after all.”

  “Rays?”

  “That’s what they call it, the RASE Conference. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Conference. Like the sun’s rays, get it?”

  “Got it.” I examined the printed credential. My new name was Malcolm Garret.

  She continued, “Now, just in case somebody at the conference actually knows this guy, I created a second badge, with a bogus name. Once you’re inside, just change badges.”

  She handed me another paper, identical to the first but with the name Marcus Garnet. The credential badges would be about four inches square when they were trimmed down from the full-size sheets. They looked good to my eye, with sharply printed names, sponsoring organizations, various code numbers and a scannable bar-coded strip along the bottom. The names were printed in a font small enough to not be easily readable by most people unless they were almost handshaking close. “What about the Marcus Garnet badge? Will it scan too?”

  “It’ll scan as Malcolm Garret. I only changed the name.”

  “What if the security guards ask me to show some ID along with the badge?”

  “It’s unlikely, but I’ll photoshop you an Oregon driver’s license. You have your old license, right? That’s all I need. I’ll take your picture here, but I have to go home to make it. I have the right kind of printer and an ID laminator there. They won’t fool a real cop with a laser scanner or a chip reader, but they’ll work on a security guard inside the hotel. Especially a license from Oregon. What does some Miami rent-a-cop know about Oregon driver’s licenses? Nothing. Don’t sweat it. You’ll be fine. You just need to get some shut-eye and be ready for tomorrow.”

  Kelly turned away from the computer screen and held eye contact with me. She said, “You’re probably wondering why I’m going to all this trouble for a couple of guys I just met.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “Well, Mike and Sharon think you walk on water. Then Nick told me the whole story while you were sleeping. This Cori Vargas…she must really be something, huh?”

  “Yeah, she’s really something.” Even though Cori had jumped ship, I still had strong feelings for her. And there was also my vow to her parents to keep her safe.

  “You know, Dan, I think you’re going way above and beyond the call of duty. Nick told me that even though she dumped you, you’re still trying to rescue her.”

  “There’s a lot more to it, but…well…that’s about right. She didn’t know the kind of people she was getting mixed up with. She made a bad mistake. And I don’t want her to maybe get killed just for making a mistake.”

  I knew that if I’d been fairly punished for some of the mistakes I’d made when I was Cori’s age, I might not have lived to see twenty-five. At the very least, I’d have been thrown out of the military or even sent to prison for some of my escapades. A few times, the difference had been a cop or a Marine Corps officer cutting me some slack in order not to ruin my future. Maybe I was trying to pay the karma forward. Or maybe I was just rising to meet a challenge to my male ego. Not only had Richard Prechter and Trevor Ridley snatched my girlfriend away from me, but they also intended to use her for some evil purpose. This I could not allow.

  And I could still hear Trevor Ridley telling me, ‘Fuck off, Yank,’ and see him giving me the middle finger as they left the beach on the white inflatable. Oh, we had an account to settle, Jolly Boy and me. And I hadn’t even properly met Richard Bloody Prechter yet.

  Kelly looked me in the eyes, studying my face but not lingering on my scar, as many girls did. Her blue eyes were a shade lighter than mine. “Listen…I just want you to know that I don’t go to all this trouble for every hot guy with a fast boat that comes up the canal. I mean…it’s just a really, really good thing, what you’re trying
to do. If I was ever kidnapped, I hope somebody would try to rescue me the way you’re trying to rescue this Cori Vargas.”

  Nick said, “I told her about the girl I saw on Castigo Cay waving the red dress. And I told her about Bev Clifton and her message on the stick.”

  In a few clicks Kelly brought up an article from the Palm Beach Post’s internet archives. They had all read it while I slept. Beverly Clifton was a Boca Raton high school senior who had disappeared in Nassau on March 14 while on a spring break cruise along with two hundred classmates. There was a small color photograph of an attractive teenage girl with blond hair, wearing a basketball uniform. Beverly was only seventeen, but probably tall for her age and very athletic.

  Her parents were quoted as saying something about how safe they believed the cruise ships to be, compared to other vacation travel options for the teens. Ironically, that was the only reason they had allowed her to go on the senior cruise: safety. They had no idea that people were ever kidnapped in the Bahamas. There were no suspects in her disappearance, and no ransom demands. Nothing. Their daughter had disappeared without a trace in Nassau. Missing. Gone.

  “Nobody rescued her,” said Kelly. “There were no Nick Galloways or Dan Kilmers around to save her. Nobody even knew what happened to her.”

  But we knew. And whatever happened to Beverly Clifton and to the girl that Nick had seen on Castigo Cay wasn’t going to happen to Cori Vargas. Not even if she had walked out of my life and left for Topaz of her own free will.

  Kelly asked me, “Do you think you’ll get back together with Cori if you find her?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. She has a lot of ambition. More than just hanging out on a sailboat.”

  “But you’re going after her anyway.”

  I thought I saw more than a hint of admiration in her eyes. “Yeah, we are.”

  “Nick said you were a Marine sniper.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, you’ve killed people?”

  I looked into her cool blue eyes. “Yeah, I have.”

  She didn’t look away. “So, are you going to kill Richard Prechter?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I hope you do. Trevor Ridley, too. They deserve it. Somebody should kill them. It’s the only way to stop animals like that. God knows the government won’t. The government just keeps shoving money at them.”

  4

  I spent the night on the sectional couch in the living room, with my Glock, still in its holster, under a cushion close at hand. Nick, a few inches shorter than my six-two, took the single in the spare bedroom. I slept badly in a strange house on unmoving land. The only stars were an unfamiliar constellation of blinking LED lights on the various electronics surrounding me. The immediate neighborhood was quiet, being a dead-end street, but I felt the presence of the million people around me snoring, watching television, eating, making love, fighting or getting drunk within Barrett fifty-caliber range.

  The awareness of being in the center of such a swarming human hive was disturbing. I was accustomed to empty horizons and clear fields of fire, and I didn’t like being back in a city. Federal Highway was only a quarter mile to the east, and 26th Street, a major thoroughfare, was just a few blocks north. The sounds of random sirens and tire screeches penetrated the living room. A few pops that could have been distant shots. Motorcycles climbing through their gears. A train that took minutes to pass. They were unfamiliar night sounds after months aboard Rebel Yell. At sea I was usually up several times each night, so at least I was accustomed to interrupted sleep. The harsh city noises, lumpy sofa, bad pillow and stress of the impending mission into hostile territory all conspired to send me into a bizarre dreamscape during intermittent periods of slumber.

  I remembered only a fragment. I was on a sniper stalk, low-crawling through sunlit meadowland, with only sparse vegetation around me. Instead of wearing my old fringed ghillie suit, textured and colored to mimic the dry grass, I was wearing a blaze orange deer hunter’s suit. In place of a scoped bolt-action rifle, I was dragging along a skin diver’s speargun. I wondered what a barbed fishing spear’s maximum range would be through the air, and how I should figure the elevation holdover.

  Scout-snipers almost always work in pairs, and I wasn’t alone in the meadow. Instead of low-crawling along my back trail, my spotter was walking upright a few yards behind me. He was a stranger to me, backlit by blue sky. Like me, he was dressed in blaze orange. I whispered to him to get down, that he could be seen for miles. Instead of a rifle, he was carrying a giant butterfly net at port arms. He said he was going to catch any incoming bullets with the net. It was one of those dreams. The kind where I urgently need to fire an aimed shot and my trigger breaks off or the barrel explodes. Or the rifle scope is mounted backwards, or I have the wrong-caliber ammunition for my weapon.

  I pushed the button and checked the glowing face of my watch a dozen times during that long night. When I awoke for the final time, it was still dark outside. Despite it all, I felt rested and did some quiet stretching and isometrics, crunches and push-ups. Nick came out at first light; Mike and Sharon made their appearance when they heard us moving around. Breakfast was black coffee, oatmeal, toast with grape jelly (they had no butter or margarine), and sliced scrapple fried in vegetable oil. Sharon was apologetic, but we were grateful. They were taking a risk by making their home into a safe house for our rescue operation. The Pantera was sure to be seen by neighbors, and remembered.

  After breakfast and a weak, dribbling shower of slightly ill-smelling water, my first checklist task of the morning was getting a haircut to alter and upgrade my appearance. One of Sharon’s friends from down the street was a hairdresser who operated out of her home. Sharon explained that people were doing any kind of work they could from their homes, since the income was unreported, unregulated and untaxed.

  Gloria arrived on a bicycle, with a small suitcase containing the tools of her trade strapped to a rack over the rear wheel. I sat on a plastic chair in the Delaneys’ open garage with a sheet around my shoulders, and she went to work. I’d already shaved, showered and shampooed, and my hair was still damp when she began to clip it with scissors and a comb. She chatted casually with Sharon but asked me no questions unrelated to my hair. When she was finished, my hair was blow-dried and brushed back, slightly moussed, fashionably styled but not overdone. With much of the sun-bleached length gone, my light brown hair was a shade darker.

  Nick went next, and his wild blond hair received slightly more rudimentary treatment. He told Gloria, “I don’t want it to look like I just got a haircut,” and when she was finished it didn’t. He was left with a full head of hair that still covered most of his ears and neck, but without the random flyaways and excessive thickness. He’d already shaved his beard off. His scraggly whiskers hadn’t been thick enough to prevent the sun from tanning the skin beneath, so he was spared the two-tone-face look. His brushy walrus mustache was trimmed back to military or police regulation. Sharon paid her neighbor five hundred dollars for her time and effort—Mike had not yet returned with the cash from selling my gold.

  I dressed in my khaki slacks, a sky blue oxford shirt and loafers. Sharon had ironed the slacks and shirt while I showered. Nick wore tan cargo shorts and a mostly-blue Hawaiian shirt Mike lent to him that featured palm trees and 19th-century native surfers. Nick wasn’t attending the RASE Conference, so “typical tourist” would be his best Miami Beach cover. And, of course, the untucked shirt would serve to conceal his revolver if he needed to carry it.

  I made my own final preparations in the Delaneys’ guest bathroom, behind closed doors with all of my gear either laid out on the floor or hanging from various hooks and towel racks. After I knotted my tie—black, silver and red silk in an abstract geometric pattern that always garnered compliments—I loosened it and slipped it over my head, folded it, and put it into the inside pocket of my jacket. I wasn’t going to wear the jacket or the tie until I was at the conference. I unbuttoned the shirt
collar and partially rolled up the sleeves. It might stand out as somewhat unusual if I was much better dressed than my crew today in Kelly’s car. Anything that would stand out was to be avoided.

  A key item I’d brought with me to Florida was an expensive pair of Italian sunglasses with brushed metallic frames that I’d picked up in Buenos Aires. The lenses transitioned to dark as the ambient light increased. Indoors, they were almost clear and turned my blue eyes to gray. I knew that they looked like prescription eyewear, but I needed no correction for my twenty-fifteen vision. I had not selected them for their fashion appeal, although I did appreciate their stylish looks. In overall size and appearance they fit a niche between shooting glasses and what you might wear in a university lab, if you had a lot of money to spend on eyewear. Their main attribute was that the bottom edge of the silver-gray frame paralleled my scar and hid it.

  They were one of the half-dozen pairs of glasses, mostly sunglasses, that I’d brought on the trip. All of them were kept in their original cases, which together fit into a purple cloth Crown Royal Whisky bag. I have a weakness for high-end eyewear, mostly sports glasses with widely flaring lenses that also cover the scar from most angles. It’s not that I’m overly sensitive about the mark. It’s been a part of me for years now, and I never was the pretty-boy type to begin with. But it can sure hinder a stalk if the prey is aware of it. And I’m just more comfortable outdoors with some form of eye protection, I think understandably so after my experiences in the sandbox. I enjoy the advantages provided by having binocular vision and want to keep both eyes functioning at max efficiency for as long as possible.

  And when networks of security cameras blanket every urban street and sidewalk, dark glasses and brimmed hats are two of the best privacy defenses. I was bringing my green daypack to Miami with hats, different eyewear, a couple of shirts and a pair of shorts in case I had to change my appearance to disappear from surveillance. I even threw in my curly dark-haired wig.