Castigo Cay

by Matthew Bracken

  “I guess he drowned. Went swimming, and drowned.”

  “So you said in your report.” Prechter looked disgusted. “Where’s his body?”

  “Who knows? Out in the ocean. Where else?”

  “I don’t remember Archy being much of a swimmer. Do you, Captain Ridley?”

  “Not especially.” Ridley was the last one of us leaving the inflatable, after pushing me off. At least he didn’t trip me this time.

  Prechter said, “The landing craft is coming on Tuesday with the grader. So tell me, Eddie, how much of the survey did you finish?”

  “Well, without Archy, it would have been pointless. I mean…I’m not trained at it.”

  “Didn’t Archy leave you the plans? Didn’t he go over them with you? The corner stakes were already roughed in, I saw to that much myself. We’re not building a super highway here, just an earthen runway. Nice and level. The concept of level is not too hard for you, is it?”

  “Mr. Prechter, I’m not a surveyor, I’m not…”

  “So let me guess: you just sat around and got drunk? Got high? Spanked your monkey and played computer games?”

  Eddie flushed and stammered, “No, b-but I—”

  Prechter put a hand up, cutting off Medina’s excuses. “Okay, forget it. It doesn’t matter. They can finish the survey when the grader arrives.” He turned away from his island guard to face Senator Sanchez, who still appeared dazed. Prechter gestured around him and said, “Down here we’ll have the power station, the docks, the workshop and the boathouse. That sort of thing.” Instant tour-guide mode.

  He gave his hand a last airy wave, dismissing the dull infrastructure and logistical projects, and said, “Come along, children. Up the hill, like Jack and Jill.” The three handcuffed prisoners, including yours truly, were standing huddled together and hemmed in by our captors, one per neck leash. Prechter slung on his daypack, then put a hand on the senator’s back and guided him past the pallets and drums and concrete mixers and pumps and up the slope toward the high dune. The construction trailer dormitory, the fuel and the water tanks, the backhoe and the other heavy equipment under their camo netting were between the harbor and the dune hill.

  Prechter and the senator led the procession. The girls and their handlers were in front of me. Ridley pulled me along by my noose. The other end of the rope was wrapped around his ham-fist. I tried to envision a brilliant escape plan, but none came to mind. A futile kick or head-butt at Trevor Ridley would do nothing but cause general hilarity and lead to immediate retribution against Cori and Brooke.

  It was already growing warm, especially on the leeward side of the island now that the sun was over the hill. I was wearing just the tan cargo shorts I had been captured in, without my belt. My hands were behind my back and I had to hitch my pants up occasionally. I buy them a size too big, in order to comfortably fit a concealed pistol and holster inside the waistband, so without a belt it was a problem keeping them up. Especially after barely eating for several days.

  We walked through loose sand up the hill at the north end of Castigo Cay. The short hike left the senator panting and wheezing. Prechter offhandedly mentioned that the path would be finished with paved steps at a later stage in the construction process.

  Near the top of the fifty-foot dune it was bisected horizontally by a floor and roof and walls, all made of reinforced concrete panels. They appeared to have been precast off site, then barged in and assembled in place. The roof level extended several yards out over the openings for the doors and windows on the leeward side. The top slab of concrete had been covered over with sand and planted with sea oats and other transplanted island shrubs.

  Satellites and high-flying planes would see just a continuation of the natural dune running up the Atlantic side of Castigo Cay. Only the rare boat that passed close by would be able to see the recessed windows, and only when the sun was shining just so. Sand-colored shades outside the windows could easily be lowered at those times of day, rendering the house invisible from any direction.

  ****

  Ridley dragged me inside behind Prechter and the senator. The interior was just roughly finished concrete. PVC pipes emerged from the slab where water would eventually be connected. The only electrical wires visible were the orange contractors’ cables snaking along the floor.

  Prechter led us through a dark passageway into a room about thirty feet long by twenty across. The long axis of the room ran parallel to the Atlantic surf, which was maybe forty feet lower and a hundred yards away. As on the lagoon side, the ceiling of the room had a wide concrete overhang extending out past the floor by five or six feet. The overhangs were why I’d been able to see only a dark shadow on the dune when the men had disappeared from the Raven UAV’s view.

  Our tour guide assumed the tone of a proud home owner, addressing himself to Sanchez but making sure we could all hear him. “When all three phases are complete, the entire complex will be around four thousand square feet. This will be my living room. There’ll be tinted picture windows here. Triple-pane, of course, because it will be air-conditioned. Electricity won’t be a problem.”

  “Wind generators?” the senator suggested helpfully, trying to evoke a bit of normalcy in a day that was anything but. Putting on a good face, pretending he was simply on another fact-finding junket to a project funded with taxpayer dollars.

  “No, not wind generators. You can see them from miles away. Might as well put out a welcome sign. Noisy, ugly bastards too, and they blow down in hurricanes. No, for this island the only right solution is tidal power. Completely invisible. Come on, follow me, I’ll show you. It’s just a little way down there. Mind your step, ladies. This path will be paved with natural stones when all the construction is complete.”

  Prechter guided the senator out, the rest of us following behind. We walked a hundred yards downhill and north along the ridgeline of the dune to where Castigo Cay ended abruptly at a segmented and broken rocky cliff. A few yards from the edge we stood on an acre of relatively flat, sandy ground, covered in sea grass with randomly scattered coconut palms. The Atlantic waves were breaking down on the beach to our right. The lagoon between the four Castigo Cays was to our left. In front of us was the fifty-yard-wide channel over to the smaller and rockier island that was the northernmost of the Castigo Cays.

  Both sides of the channel were broken and irregular. Peninsulas and small rocky islands projected from both sides. The color of the water in the channel varied from shallow white to deep blue. It was hard to imagine Topaz negotiating the tighter bends of the deepwater passage, but obviously it could. I guessed it was only five or six feet deep in places, just deep enough for Topaz. Practice makes perfect, along with twin props and a good bow thruster. Just wait for slack tide and no current. Any patches of shallower coral had been dynamited into submission, completing the navigable route from the Atlantic into the lagoon and then the little harbor.

  Prechter said, “We’ll have four of our medium-sized turbines down there. They’ll generate enough power to run an industrial desalinator. We’ll make enough fresh water on Castigo Cay to keep two cisterns and a swimming pool filled. In fact, we’re standing where the pool is going to be. What a view, eh?”

  The palm grove was about twenty feet above the channel, with vistas of both the Atlantic beaches and the calm lagoon. Prechter spread his arms and turned in a circle, gold-clad wrists sparkling.

  “Picture it, right here. The swimming pool will be round, so it’ll look like a blue hole from up above. Did you know that the Bahamas are the blue-hole capitol of the entire world? One more won’t make anybody take notice. We’ll have all the fresh water and electricity we’ll ever need. Enough for gardens to supplement the food we bring in. Plus ocean and reef fishing, and aquaculture in the lagoon. We won’t go hungry or thirsty no matter what happens on the mainland.”

  “Your own Shangri-La,” I commented sarcastically.

  “That’s the idea. It’ll certainly be nicer than Florida, once the power goe
s out for good—and it is going to go out. It’s just a matter of when. But by then we’ll have everything we need to live a comfortable, first-world life out here.”

  “And all the beautiful girls that Igor can drag here to lay at your feet.”

  Ridley, just a yard behind me, didn’t even snap my leash at the provocation; he just guffawed pleasantly. “And I do a splendid job of it, Danny boy. A man who loves his work is a lucky man indeed.”

  I ignored Ridley and addressed his boss again. “You’ve thought it all out.”

  “Of course I have. Come on, Dan, you’re certainly not blind and I don’t think you’re stupid. You know what’s happening. In Florida, in America, in most of the world. It’s not just the Greater Depression—that would imply a full recovery in our lifetimes. This is the big one. The thousand-year event, the ‘grand super cycle.’ The debt bomb is finally blowing up and we’re on our way to a new Dark Ages. Exactly what that’s going to look like, nobody knows, but it isn’t going to be pretty. It’s a slow-motion tsunami, and it can’t be stopped. Too many people and not enough food, water or petroleum. The overbuilt past is crumbling and disintegrating, and the future won’t feed six billion hungry mouths. Not even close. Malthus was right in the end—he was just ahead of his time. Everybody with vision has seen it coming for at least a generation—and they’ve known it was irreversible.”

  He waved a hand toward the dropoff along the channel. “Only the dumbest sheep are unaware of the cliff that lies ahead of the herd. All of the shepherds are false prophets, leading them to their doom. Everybody with vision has been preparing their parachutes and their life rafts. Or building castles. Preparing for le deluge. And for the big die-off.”

  “Aprés nous, le deluge,” said Andre, making sure the reference wasn’t missed. That much French I did know, as well as the familiar quote from their blood-soaked revolution.

  I said to Prechter, “And you’re loving every minute of it, aren’t you? You’re having the time of your life getting ready for the great flood. As long as you can ride it out in style, who cares if the peasants are busy ‘dying off’?”

  “Dan, please don’t bore me with moralizing that even you don’t believe. You saw this train wreck coming and, like me, you stepped away from the tracks in good time. You had a sailboat, I have an island. Well, islands, and not just here. Actually, I own properties all over the world. No sense in putting all your eggs in one basket, right?”

  Prechter looked around at each of us individually and lastly at Trevor Ridley. “Did we miss anything, Captain? Anything I forgot to mention?”

  “No,” said Ridley. “I think you covered all the high-lights.” Bragging and gloating in the presence of their bound victims increased their pleasure, that much was obvious.

  ****

  “So, what should we do now, Captain Ridley?” It was clear that he was being prompted for the next line in a script.

  He replied, “Well…it might be a good time to see if the senator has any talent as a hairstylist.”

  Prechter and Ridley exchanged meaningful glances and sly smiles. So much animal electricity was flying between them that I wondered if they had a gay thing going on. Prechter said, “Yes, I think so too. It’s definitely haircut time.” He pointed to a coconut palm that was leaning away from the ocean breeze. “Tie the sniper to that one.”

  Ridley pulled me over and tied me to it with a half-dozen quick windings of the tail of my leash around tree and neck. No fumbling, no uncertainty. He had done this before, more than once. The left side of my face and my neck were mashed against the roughly pebbled gray bark. I was able to stand up without much pressure on my throat but if my legs were repeatedly kicked out from under, I would dangle and strangle. Ridley had deliberately tripped me when I stepped from Topaz onto the tender, just to plant the idea. I wondered if he was about to trip me again, but he didn’t. No, I wasn’t intended for an early exit; he just wanted me plenty worried, and I was.

  Once I was secured to the tree, Prechter said, “Now tie both girls to that one.” The Belgian and the Serb dragged Cori and Brooke to another palm about twenty feet nearer to the ocean from mine. The Serb tied both of their rope leashes to the trunk, but without wrapping the extra rope around their necks, as Ridley had done with me. This left them with a little slack, allowing them a few inches of movement. They were standing shoulder to shoulder facing me, Cori on my left, Brooke on my right. Behind them was a sandy beach visible between rocky heads, and beyond the surf zone the entire Atlantic. I could move my head no more than a half-turn in either direction. An empty horizon, no help out there within the range of my view.

  Prechter stood in front of them, his hands on his hips. His back was to me, but I could hear him perfectly. “I know every young girl dreams about being carried off to a desert island by handsome pirates. And here you are—you two won the contest. I suppose you girls are just naturally lucky.”

  They reacted passively to being bound to the tree. They were probably taking their cues from me. If big, tough Dan Kilmer was so easily immobilized and rendered as helpless as a newborn, what chance did they have to resist? When your hands are cuffed behind your back and your neck is tied by a noose to a rough-barked tree, you are not going to even risk moving your feet. Not when losing your balance could mean strangling and losing your life. Under the circumstances, you will stand quite still; to that I can attest.

  Once he had tied the girls, the Serb moved back up the dune toward Prechter’s future home. He was still carrying his AR slung muzzle-down on his back. Milan Vukojebina was the backup, like the professional white hunter on an African big-game safari otherwise consisting of amateurs and dilettantes. The insurance against untoward events. The stopper.

  Prechter slipped off his daypack and set it on the ground. He crouched over it, balancing easily on the balls of his feet, showing the superb calf definition of a serious long-distance runner. He unzipped a side pouch and produced a pair of long scissors with black handles. They had at least six-inch blades; they might have been kitchen poultry shears. The girls stared at them with obvious fear. Prechter looked up at them and tauntingly snapped the scissors open and closed a few times; they made an impressive swishing sound. Then he hopped lightly to his feet.

  The senator was not tied up, but he was just as passive and compliant as the bound prisoners. Prechter laid a friendly arm over his shoulder. “Everybody needs to pull his weight on my island, Pete. No freeloaders. Everybody needs to help. We all have a role to play. Are you following me so far?”

  Sanchez’s mouth worked, but no words came out.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. So now it’s your turn. We’re all going to see what kind of talent you have as a barber. You’re going to give the ladies a little trim. Don’t worry, nothing fancy.” He held the open scissors against Brooke’s head, at the level of her left earlobe, the side away from the tree. Her eyes bulged at the sight of the approaching blades as her right temple pressed against the trunk.

  Prechter said, “Right along here should do it. Then cut straight around her neck around to the other side.”

  The senator took an awkward, stumbling step away from his host and stammered, “I-I-I won’t.”

  Ridley walked over and stood behind him. The senator seemed to physically shrink in his proximity.

  Prechter looked at his guest as if he were mildly disappointed. “Well, Pete, if you don’t, I will. But you know what? I might make a mess of it.” He held the shears so that Brooke’s left earlobe was in the cutting arc. “Your choice. I’m warning you, though: I’m not much of a barber.”

  Sanchez slowly shook his head no. “I won’t do it.”

  “Trevor, give the senator a little tickle.”

  Ridley drew his knife—my knife—and prodded Sanchez in the kidney area with a few pricks. He said, “Come on, guv’nor, it’s just a little haircut. What’s the harm in that?”

  The Belgian chef was holding a palm-size video camera, taken from one of his vest pouches. He
spoke with a lilting accent. “Look at it zees way, mon sénateur. We are simplement making a reality show. Cinéma vérité, n’est pas? And you are zee handsome leading man in zees project, so smile for zee camera, oui?”

  The senator held his hands up toward Prechter and said, “Richard, please, this is madness, this is—”

  “Madness, is it?” Prechter responded, tipping his head side to side, rolling his eyes and wiggling his fingers in an exaggerated pantomime of insanity. “Well, then, it’s a fine old madness. Ain’t it, boys?”

  Ridley grinned. “Oh yes it is, m’lord; it’s a fine old madness. The best, I’m thinking.”

  Prechter held the scissors out to the senator, correctly and politely, with the black handles forward. “Pete, either you do it or I will. But my way will be a lot messier.”

  The two men stared at each other, and after a few seconds the senator took the scissors but remained standing in place, staring at Prechter.

  “Go ahead, Pete. Under the ears and all the way around.”

  “You’re j-joking. You’re j-joking, r-right?” It was the same voice I remembered from the talking-head shows years before, but he hadn’t stammered then. The pundits had called him silver-tongued. Not today.

  “Joking?” responded Prechter. “Hmm…perhaps. Soon we shall see, shall we not?”

  It was actually a valid question. So far, nobody had been hurt, other than the road rash on Brooke’s cheek and a few Taser wounds. Prechter could have called it a day at any time. No fresh blood had been spilled. Senator Sanchez balked, staring at his host.

  “Now, Pete, cut her hair. That, or give me the scissors and I’ll do it myself. The messy way.”

  5

  Reluctantly, Sanchez did as he was ordered, clipping Brooke’s straight shoulder-length hair in ragged chops. Sheafs of her golden hair fell to the sand with each cut. He gently guided her head with his left hand so that he would have room between her and the tree as he worked behind her neck. She appeared utterly numb, her eyes closed, tears streaming, her lips moving, perhaps in silent prayer. When the senator was finished, she had a crude pageboy haircut.