Castigo Cay

by Matthew Bracken

  “Stick it into his dead body, maybe,” said his boss.

  “With all respect, sir, but I don’t think so. If and when you finally shoot him, you’ll find this already sticking into his corpse.” He tossed the knife in the air end over end, caught it by its grip and winked at me. “Beautiful knife, Dan. A fine piece of American steel. A worthy addition to my collection. Something to remember you by.”

  Ridley and Prechter continued to banter back and forth, pleased with their humor at my expense. Andre continued filming, shifting about for better angles. The Serb stayed well off to my right on overwatch. The senator was still curled on the ground, wheezing and whimpering.

  I said, “At least you have the balls to do it up close, Trevor. I’ll say that much for you. Unlike your boss, who has other people do his killing.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Danny boy,” responded Prechter. “Rest assured, I’m going to do my own killing today.”

  “Not if I catch him first,” said Ridley.

  ****

  “Listen to you all!” I said. “A Belgian queer, a Serbian hired killer, a circus freak-show act, and all led by a half-wit half-Brit. I’ll admit, I don’t understand it. I guess it’s an European thing.”

  “I’d say it’s an intelligence thing,” Prechter snapped back. “That might explain why you’re tied to a tree and I’m not.”

  “Oh, sure, it takes a real mastermind to send Igor Ridley out to snatch women off the street. Tasering women on parking lots takes real genius.”

  Prechter bowed slightly, made a flourish with one hand and said, “Yet here we are, and there you are—bound to a tree on my little island paradise. And there are your two ladies-in-waiting, waiting for the miracle that won’t come. Must be hard for you to watch this, eh?”

  I said, “Of the four of you, I think only Trevor has even one testicle. At least he’s willing to use a blade. The rest of you need guns against handcuffed prisoners.”

  Ridley grinned and said, “Oh, no, Yank, the knife is for your pleasure alone. All I ever use on the lassies are me hands and me cock. And when I fuck ’em, let me assure you, they stay fucked. The very last thing they ever see in this world is good old Trevor, smiling down on ’em.”

  “I know, good old Archy told me all about that. They’ll have to invent a new category of psycho just for you: the trans-necrophiliac. He told me all about it, before I fed him to the crabs.”

  “So—you did kill him!” said Prechter, his eyes widening in sudden interest.

  “Archy Mildenhall told me about lots of things. Like Beverly Clifton, who you kidnapped in Nassau and murdered right here. Yes, I know all about it and so do a couple of reporters for the Miami Herald.” I was making it up as I went. I hoped the mention of Archy and Bev would lend credence to my ad-libbed spiel. It was hard to talk with the noose already tight and my neck bound against the palm trunk.

  Prechter scoffed and said, “Am I supposed to be impressed? Afraid?”

  I gritted my teeth and continued, struggling for air after every few words. “Not by what I say. By what the Miami Herald is going to write. And the New York Times and all the rest.” I wished it was true, and I hoped that they believed me. It wasn’t much but it was all I could think of, my mind spinning escape fantasies on the gallows.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Prechter, suddenly interested.

  “Don’t worry, the story is already in safe hands. The senator, Topaz, Castigo Cay, everything. Everything except Brooke being kidnapped, but we already have plenty of names for them to start with. If Cori Vargas and I don’t turn up in Miami by midnight Sunday, this story will be the Monday morning lead on every network.”

  “Obviously you’re making this up,” he said. “But I sup-pose I’d try the same ploy, were I in your shoes…well, your bare feet.” He turned to the Belgian and said, “Andre, turn off the camera.” He returned to me, walking up to just a yard’s distance from my face. “You’re out of plays, so you’re bluffing. That’s completely understandable. I’ve seen it before, this last desperate measure of false bravado. Right before they start crying, and then begging. And then screaming.”

  I kept the best face I could. No crying or begging, not yet. “Won’t it be interesting, sailing into the Port of Miami and being met at the dock by a thousand television cameras. They’ll probably send helicopters out to film you coming in. A Coast Guard escort. You’ll be famous by Monday, no matter what happens today. Famous, and locked away in a jail cell. Or a padded cell.”

  Prechter laughed, but his jaw was twitching. “You’re the crazy one, Kilmer. You’ve been away from the States for too long. Things are different now. They’d never run a story like that without independent verification. Which means asking the senator and me about it—and we’ll deny everything. You’re just throwing a Hail Mary pass with this fairy tale. I don’t blame you, though. You don’t have anything else.”

  I tried to laugh. It probably wasn’t very convincing, not with my knees quivering. “Prechter, I want some of what you’re smoking. This story has beautiful girls being kidnapped by a multimillionaire. It even has a missing United States senator involved up to his eyeballs. What are they going to say, that Pete Sanchez was out hiking on the Appalachian Trail?”

  “You’re extremely naïve, Kilmer, and you’ve long passed the age when that can sometimes be considered a virtue. Nothing like that gets printed anymore. Nothing. There are controls in place now to promote social stability. You’ve been out of the country, maybe you don’t know, but talk radio and the internet have been neutralized for years. The First Amendment and all that other rubbish is passé. Too bad you’re such a slow learner.”

  I was grasping at straws, trying to prolong the conversation, in no hurry to get to the next act. “I might be a slow learner, but I learned you’re a coward. Using a gun instead of a knife, like Ridley.”

  “If you think you can appeal to some higher sense of so-called honor and goad me into being less prepared, then you’ve underestimated my intelligence—again. Frankly, Kilmer, you bore me. I had hoped for better. First your asinine bluff, and then trying to dare me not to carry a gun. You, of all people! You’ve killed plenty of people with guns. People who never even knew you existed on the same planet with them. Walking down the street, and then bang—life over—because of Dan Kilmer’s trigger finger.”

  Prechter drew his Glock—my Glock. He held the muzzle against my forehead, his finger on the trigger. Three pounds of pressure would permanently remove me from his carefully crafted scenario. The lightened after-market trigger suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. I wondered, as I had a few times in the past, if I would see the flash or hear the bang. If I did, I sure wouldn’t hear it or see it for long.

  But instead of firing he said, “Okay, Trevor, it’s time. Cut him loose.”

  Ridley moved in close behind, grabbed the short chain and unlocked the cuffs, springing them free from both wrists. Then he slid my Ka-bar’s blade between the palm trunk and the lashings around my neck, laying the back of the blade vertically against my throat and ear. “We’re not done yet, boy,” he whispered. “The next time you feel this steel, it’ll be sliding into your guts.” Then he jerked the blade back, cutting through the rope. I was released from the tree. I considered and rejected the idea of trying to grab the pistol Prechter held in front of my face: the Serb’s rifle was still up at his shoulder, now aimed at the girls.

  Prechter kept the Glock’s muzzle to my forehead and said, “We’re letting you go, and hardly a scratch on you. Then after you run away, we’re going to have some fun with the girls.” He smiled devilishly. “You know, I’ve always wanted to bury somebody up to their neck on a beach at low tide. Well, actually, I have. But never two at the same time. So we’re going to have a contest and see which of them can hold her breath the longest.”

  I heard the senator say, “Richard, you can’t do this…you can’t.” I glanced down between my two tormenters. The senator was sitting on the ground Indian
-style, leaning far over and raking sand between his fingers. He was mostly covered in sand, a human sugar cookie.

  Prechter ignored him and held eye contact with me, above the barrel of my Glock. “So this is what will happen next. We’re going down to the beach, and a United States senator is going to dig a nice big hole. Big enough for two girls. But you’re not going with us, Kilmer. That would be boring. Trite. Where’s the sport in that? No, I have something much more interesting in mind than that. A test, actually, to see what kind of man you really are. If you’re only a sniper who does his killing from long range, then one of the girls will drown. And all the while that they’re holding their breaths they’ll be waiting for big, brave Dan Kilmer. Waiting longer and longer between each wave, until one of them can’t wait any longer. And when you don’t come back, they’ll know what kind of coward you really are.” He slid the pistol barrel down until it was resting lightly against the bridge of my nose and stepped in closer, until our faces were just inches apart.

  “If I don’t see you by then, we’ll pull out the winner and let her catch her breath. And after we’ve had our fun with her, then it’ll be your turn. We’ll hunt you down, Danny boy, no matter what hole you’re hiding in.”

  Prechter dropped his voice. “Now Andre, he’s not one for the ladies, but he thinks you have a très joli derrièrre.” In full voice again he said, “Oh, it’s going to be a terrific morning! Dan, I can’t thank you enough for providing me with such topflight entertainment. Boredom is the very bane of my existence.” He gave a large sigh of exhilaration, but his close-set green eyes never blinked. “Trevor, see to the ladies. Give our Dan a reason to mind his manners.”

  Ridley moved over behind the girls and placed my Ka-bar across Cori’s throat while clamping the fingers of his other hand into her remaining hair. Prechter carefully backed up out of my kicking range and lowered the Glock to aim at my torso. Never taking his eyes from me, he said, “Okay, Mr. Sniper, here’s your cue to exit stage left. I’m giving you a sporting chance, which is more than you ever gave all the people you assassinated in cold blood. Jump in and swim for the other island. We’ll give you time to find a hiding place, and then we’ll have our little beach party. And what happens after that will be entirely up to you.”

  Of course I was glad to be released from the tree but I was still not free, not with a Glock aimed at my stomach and a knife held against Cori’s throat. I looked across at the girls and they returned my gaze, wild desperation in their eyes.

  Prechter turned and said to them, “There he goes, your big hero. Running away. But will he come back in time? Will he come back at all? Only time will tell. Tick-tock, Dan! Time and tide wait for no man, but the girls will be waiting for you. And so shall I. Isn’t this just great? Isn’t this just fun?”

  It was only a dozen yards over to the cliff. On the way I passed Medina’s body in the sand, the MP-5 still under him. I considered making a grab for it and diving into the water, but the carry strap was around his torso. I turned back and saw the Serb fifty yards away, rifle raised, glassing my magnified image through his scope. He could empty his entire magazine into me before I could get the sub-gun loose. I gave him a mock-friendly wave. He took his left hand off the rifle’s stock and waved back, but his barrel never wavered off target.

  After a last look at Cori and Brooke, I turned toward the channel, picked a pool I hoped was deep enough, and dove headlong out into the briny blue.

  6

  I speared the water and flattened out, arriving in a spot sufficiently deep to avoid an immediate and anticlimactic end to Richard Prechter’s scenario. Pain lashed the outside of my left leg from knee to foot. My unbelted cargo shorts were halfway down my hips and I had to waste effort pulling them back up before I could even begin swimming in earnest. Little things you almost never consider, like belts, can really nag you with their absence. I breached the surface and freestyled across, head in and out of the water because there were serious dangers to account for both above and below. Every few yards I had to grab my pants and yank them up.

  The tidal current was rushing in, so when I reached the opposite side I was more than a hundred yards west of my jump-off point. I assumed that the Serb had kept pace with my lateral progress and was still directly opposite. It was no trouble for me to get out of his line of fire by swimming around an outcropping of rocks, but it was always tricky to climb out of coral. Stepping onto an urchin or fire coral (not to mention a poisonous lionfish or stonefish) would add one more degree of difficulty to an almost impossible mission.

  Above the high-tide mark the going was easier, although the sharp corners and points of the tumbled and cracked rocks were hard on my bare feet. They were ancient gray limestone slabs that were broken, eroded and undercut by a million years of battering waves. The pain I’d felt on my left leg turned out to be three deep gouges running parallel to my shin and oozing blood. I considered myself fortunate to be on dry land with only that reminder of all the coral I had just negotiated.

  The north island was maybe eight to ten acres in size. This was only a guess, based on my memory of the Raven video and Nick’s little chart. I sure wasn’t going to stand tall on a promontory for a look-see, not with the Serbian rifleman just across the channel and watching for me.

  This island would probably never be developed, not even in the limited and secretive way that Prechter was developing Castigo Cay. It was just too craggy and uneven. Only the toughest plants survived here in sheltered pockets, some cactus and other indestructibles. Not a single palm tree. Salt water sluiced through crevices and canyons that provided me with a means to negotiate the terrain while staying out of sight, but their mazelike twists often led toward dead ends. Some were partly blocked by ancient shipwreck timbers wedged into impossible places by hurricane waves. Sharp coral underwater forced me to hop, skip and jump wherever I could between boulders just above the waterline.

  I had the basic idea that the shipwreck I’d seen on the video might be useful in some way. There were no better ideas coming to mind, so I headed back to the east, out of the sight of watching eyes.

  Plastic trash, driftwood and other flotsam marked the serpentine high-tide line. Cori and Brooke would soon be buried on a beach with their heads below that level. My watch was gone, so I could only guess at the time, but it seemed likely that in a little over an hour one girl would be dead and the survivor would be treated to the cruelest tortures that Richard Prechter and his henchmen could devise.

  I stayed low and scurried up a slanted ravine made of tumbled gray rocks the size of cars. The north island was so different from Castigo Cay that it was hard to imagine the natural processes that had thrown them so closely together. Only the northern edge of Castigo Cay approached the rockiness of this island.

  Some bristly vegetation grew in a cleft near the top of a boulder. It gave me cover to peek over the crown and back across the channel at Castigo Cay. There, less than a hundred yards away, I could see the Serb’s head and torso down to his waist. He was glassing the north island with the scope on his rifle. Most of his attention was directed at the lagoon end of the channel, and not toward my concealed location. He was the only person I could see on the opposite side. The little palm grove where we had been tied by our necks was empty. Not a hint remained of the psychodrama torture session that Richard Prechter had conducted there.

  I could see the upper deck and radar masts on Topaz a few hundred yards behind the Serb. He had to be wise enough in the ways of soldiering to know that he was skylining himself. If he had been a fighter during the Balkan wars he’d know the risk, so clearly he didn’t care if I saw him. Or did he want me to see him? There is a difference between care and desire. He obviously realized that I could do him no harm from this island. Was his presence intended to drive me in a direction favorable to them? On this hunt was the Serbian rifleman a shooter, or just a beater?

  I slid down into a small space between boulders and took stock of my situation. Tide-driven sand had ma
de a dry and level place between rock walls. Surrounding me was only flotsam, loose rocks and shells. Some old netting made of faded black polypropylene rope, killed by ultraviolet light and crumbling at the touch. Detergent bottles and other plastic trash, some new enough to be usable as containers. Nothing I needed, nothing I could use in a rescue attempt.

  But I was not without a weapon. I slipped off my soaking cargo shorts. They had a double layer of sturdy cloth at the belt level all the way around, as most men’s pants have. This creates a channel that is useful for concealing small things. Lengthwise-folded emergency traveling money, for example. A well-timed bribe to the right port captain or border guard can mean the difference between freedom and a third-world prison cell.

  My shorts had a big metal button to close them in front, like Levi’s jeans. The button was a decoy. I used my teeth to gnaw at a thread I’d hand-sewn to keep a little treasure hidden behind it. In a minute I’d opened up a gap on the inside of the waistband and worked the thin cargo near enough to the opening to pull it out.

  It was a narrow X-acto blade, size number eleven, made of surgical-quality stainless steel. The blade was an inch and a half of trouble with a thousand uses, heat-laminated inside plastic ID card stock, trimmed for just a little overlap. The razor’s angled cutting edge was an inch long, culminating in a wicked needle tip. The half-inch base had a hole for attaching it to its handle, which of course I didn’t have.

  I’d learned to hide escape-and-evasion tools in my cloth-ing when I’d been operating in a part of the world where an infidel’s on-camera beheading was considered must-see TV for the kiddies. Scout-snipers operated in small teams and we really didn’t want to get captured. But if it happened, we were not going to spare a single trick to pull an early escape. It was even better to make a furious charge in a mad escape attempt and be killed in a hail of AK bullets than suffer the far crueler last rites of the prophet’s mujahideen. That unholy sacrament was when they brought out the long knives and the video cameras. And the black flag of jihad, to pin on the wall as a backdrop to human blood sacrifice in the name of their allah.