So I’d sewn an X-acto blade into these pants. Lots of use-ful items could be hidden in your clothes, but your pants would probably be the last article taken before you were stripped naked and handed a prison uniform or shot. My pockets had been emptied and my belt removed, but my shorts had not been thoroughly examined by my captors. The blade in my hand was the proof.
Hiding the little crafting scalpel in front allowed it to live in the magnetic shadow of the innocent metal button. A handcuff key would also fit there, but when you really need a handcuff key, your hands are usually behind your back. Some very flexible people—girls mostly—can work their cuffed hands under their bottoms and to the front, but I can’t. There were plastic handcuff keys that could beat magnetic detection, but I’d never gotten any when I’d had the chance, before leaving the States. Ceramic blades can also be hidden. Next time. If there was a next time.
No guard feels every inch of clothing, actually fingering and bending it, when conducting a pat-down search. Trevor Ridley hadn’t. And that’s the only way the thin blade would ever be detected. (Well, except maybe by one of those back-scatter X-ray machines with an eagle-eyed operator. I tend to avoid first-world airports for that and many other reasons.)
Having the blade with me today came down to the luck of the draw, the pair of pants I had thrown into my kit bag when I left Rebel Yell. I have lots of shorts and I lose track of which bit of metal is hidden where. But today I had an X-acto blade. Nothing to attach it to—yet—but I had a blade. I pulled the clear plastic back against the sharp tip and freed it. It could cut rope or a throat. It could be made into a knife, a spear tip or an arrowhead, depending on what I found to make a shaft.
And I had something else besides the blade. I looked at Marian’s bracelet on my right wrist. Faded desert-tan paracord, darker for being wet. I turned it around to expose the seam where the two ends were sewn together with thread. The seam Trevor Ridley hadn’t noticed, making it appear to be permanently woven around my wrist. It meant less than nothing to him, some old macramé thing. Not even worth the minor effort of cutting it off an unconscious prisoner.
I pricked at the joining thread with the tip of the blade, found the buried ends of the paracord and untied it. Seven inches of woven bracelet unraveled into seven feet of paracord. It had been tied so tightly for so long that it sprang back in crazy jagged accordions. The cord was faded where it had been exposed to the sun and coyote brown where it had not.
Seven feet of cord and an X-acto blade. It wasn’t much of an armory, but it wasn’t nothing.
I squatted in the sand, held the bundle of wet paracord, and studied it. After so many years on my wrist, Marian’s bracelet was no more. But I knew that she would understand. More than that, I knew that she knew. Right then. She knew. If anybody was ever in heaven, ever, it was her. If anybody had ever died a true martyr’s death, she had. Saint Stephen himself had surely vouched for Marian and adopted her as one of his own.
On my knees in the sand staring at the bundle of string, in that little grotto tucked between gray walls, I prayed silently that they would watch over my endeavor today. Old Saint Stephen and young Saint Marian. I knew that it was too much of a stretch to ask the Big Guy directly. God knows, I didn’t deserve that kind of consideration, not me. But perhaps Sister Katterina would put in a good word?
Was the elderly nun still among the living? It seemed very unlikely. She had been over seventy years old back in Baghdad when she was doing the most dangerous job on earth: rescuing tortured girls from evil monsters in the darkest depths of Mordor. Unarmed, protected only by her faith. Unpraised, unthanked, unknown except to God. It would surely have been a miracle if she was still alive. But living or not, maybe, just maybe, could Sister Katterina ask the Big Guy for a minor miracle today? Please? I haven’t been to church since, well, a long time, and that was only at somebody’s wedding. I’ve been a sinner, God knows I have, but please, can I get a little miracle today?
Not for me. I don’t need it for me. I don’t ask it for me.
But for Cori Vargas, and for Brooke Tierstadt?
Please?
****
I pulled my shorts back on. Half of the paracord went for a belt, tied in front with a square knot. Before leaving the grotto I looked around again at my surrounding ring of high-tide debris. Luck was with me, or perhaps something else guided my eyes. A tiny scrap of driftwood in a pile was straighter than the rest of the flotsam. I pounced and it turned out to be a small wire brush, not much bigger than a toothbrush. The short steel bristles at one end were rusted to a memory. This left an honest seven inches of hardwood, dry and tough. Tossed overboard and promptly forgotten by a ship’s sailor on painting duty, once its stiff wire bristles had folded over or fallen out. To roam the seven seas and land here almost at my bare feet.
I used a boulder for a work bench and a rock for a hammer. I tapped the edge of the blade into the end of the wood, going with the grain, to create a mounting slit. Then I tapped the base of the blade sideways into the new slot with my hammer stone. This talented X-acto blade could create its own handle from ordinary trash, a neat trick indeed.
A nylon strand from the paracord’s center, tautly wrapped around the end of the wood handle, fixed the blade in place as firmly as any Apache’s war arrow. It was only a seven-inch knife with a one-inch blade. But it was a knife. I stuck a soft chip of rotten wood onto its tip, so that I could keep it in a pocket without it stabbing me or cutting its way loose. I put it in my back right pants pocket, point down, ready at hand but mostly concealed. The other half of the paracord I balled up and shoved in a front pocket of my shorts.
It was time for a plan. The Serb had been standing in the open across the channel. I was glad that he wasn’t afraid to show himself. If I stalked him and took him out—and got his rifle—I would have a good chance to rapidly eliminate the other men. A very good chance. If I got his rifle.
And then there was Archy Mildenhall’s MP-5, last seen beneath Eddie Medina’s fresh corpse. The scoped AR and the MP-5 outgunned anything else I’d seen on the island. I only had to swim back across the channel unnoticed by the Serb. Pick a crossing spot far from him to the east, toward the Atlantic. But it would not be easy to avoid being swept under his rifle. Not with a four- or five-knot tidal current racing in from the ocean.
Nope. Bad idea. That’s the way they would expect me to go. And as far as going after the MP-5, that little item fairly screamed sniper bait at me. If the gun had been left behind, it was not by happenstance. In addition, it was very bad luck. At least it had been for its last two possessors.
The Serb was probably under orders not to kill me outright. A clean, early kill by their underling Milan Vukojebina would deny the two big dogs their own maximum enjoyment. He was around only in case things got out of control, so he would probably aim for an extremity if he shot me at all. Or he might just use harassing fire to drive me toward Prechter or Ridley.
And of course he served a purpose merely by standing somewhere in the open, with his menacing rifle visible to me. That’s where I wouldn’t go. So they thought.
I crept between boulders, always careful to stay out of any possible line of sight from Castigo Cay and the Serb’s rifle until I was fairly lost in the middle of the rocky labyrinth. The sun was all the compass I needed. I studied each bit of debris piled in corners above the tide line for more useful tools. Many Asian brands of products, tossed off ships to arrive on this otherwise pristine rocky shore. I could have had a dozen good drinking-water containers, but I had no drinking water and what I really needed were weapons.
****
In a few minutes I could see the rusted bow of the wreck. The ship must have been steering due west when it plowed into the reef. It came to rest with its flaring bow smashed against the rocky Atlantic-facing cliffs of the north island. I estimated the vessel at a hundred fifty feet in length. It was all red-brown rust, not a flake of paint left. It might have been there half a century or even longer. The
ocean swells blasted against the rocky shore and erupted in white explosions, keeping the bow of the ship soaked with spray. In another century it would be just a red-brown discoloration across the reef.
But there would probably be some useful items on it even now, something to use as a weapon or a tool. And the ship’s stern stuck fifty yards out into the ocean, so it would give me a clear line of sight down the Atlantic side of Castigo Cay. I snaked my way up between the highest boulders until I was even with her prow, then hopped over and down. The triangular foredeck was lower than the hull sides by a good four feet, so that crew working the bow in rough weather were protected by solid bulwarks. Now they concealed me from anyone looking north from Castigo Cay.
Thirty feet back from the bow was a square two-story superstructure. The starboard bulkhead door was gone and I slipped inside. Light slanted in through round ports long devoid of glass. Wind-driven salt spray penetrated even inside the deckhouse. There was evidence of many generations of seabirds nesting inside, but no birds were in residence today. The wood steps of the ladder up to the bridge deck were gone. I walked through the lower level gingerly, afraid of putting a leg through a vestigial skin of rust.
I used a piece of driftwood to rake through ancient trash and flotsam trapped in low corners. At the bottom of one pile I spotted something dark and straight that turned out to be a round bastard file, twenty inches long and over half an inch in diameter in the middle. I recognized the tool from its spindle shape; the file teeth were long since corroded away. I hefted it. The steel rod weighed over a pound, as much as a small pistol. I flipped it end over end, catching it right-handed and left-handed, learning its balance. Both ends were pointed, but especially the skinny forged rat tail that had once fit into a wood handle. A minute of sharpening the tail against an iron bulkhead removed the rust and gave it a silvery needle tip.
As long as the target is a tree of sufficient girth, I’m a pretty fair knife thrower, given a few practice tosses. I’ll nail an unsuspecting tree nine times out of ten on a good day, from point-blank to twenty feet or even more. I use the modern no-spin technique, the blade flying tip forward all the way to the target. My index finger puts a touch of reverse spin on the top of the grip as I release it from my hand, countering the rotational forces and sending it straight on its way.
But the art of throwing knives is, at least for me, more of a parlor trick than anything I would want to use in an actual fight. Particularly when I have only one knife to throw and one chance to make a hit. A knife in your hand is a far better weapon than a thrown knife that deflects off a moving enemy, or that misses altogether. The round steel file was an honest weapon, though, and it raised my spirits. Even with no cutting edge, it was a twenty-inch-long dagger that I could plunge deep into an enemy. I slid the old file under my new paracord belt on my left side, twisting it through a belt loop to hold it firmly in place.
I rummaged around in another pocket of debris and found a rusted hex nut, the mate for an absent one-inch-diameter bolt. Once again the heavy metal was under the flotsam, like a gold nugget at the bottom of a miner’s pan. The four feet of paracord not occupied holding up my pants was given its first job. I tied one end of the cord to the plum-size iron nut and put a small bowline loop for a handle in the other end. I gave it a few fast whirls and figure-eights around my head to get the feel and the range of it, and then put it in my right-front pants pocket with just the loop poking out. Contemplating the sum of my armaments made me laugh. A rusted file, a hex nut on a string and a toy knife.
Through the long-absent side portholes of the superstructure I had a perfect view of the Atlantic side of Castigo Cay, or at least of its rocky points. The beaches formed long scallops between the rocky heads, so they were invisible to me. On one of those beaches, Cori and Brooke were probably buried up to their necks by now. How much of the tide had already come in? Was the water already splashing against their faces?
Soon, the waves would engulf them between breaths. Who would last longer? Cori was an expert swimmer and breath-hold diver, comfortable in surf, but Brooke was also an athlete, and she was taller.
Don’t go there, I told myself. Instead, think and plan. From the ship I could drop into the Atlantic beyond the breakers. From the land, the morning sun would turn the seascape into a dazzling wall of glare and hide my face when it crested a wave. And they would never expect me to approach from the open Atlantic, directly in front of them. Not unless they had stood on this rusted wreck and studied Castigo Cay from this vantage point.
But perhaps they had. Perhaps Richard Prechter was outthinking me even here. Always one step ahead, that bastard.
The back of the deckhouse terminated halfway along the ship’s length. From there I again dropped below the top of the bulwarks and crawled aft. The deck plates had rusted entirely though in places, and I could see some big grouper loitering beneath me in a few feet of clear water. Spray continued to fly across the wreck as each wave slammed into her side. Soon I was all the way aft, with nowhere to go but into the water. I studied the set of the waves and watched the foam and the flotsam to gauge the set of the alongshore current. If it was running north, I’d have to abort this strategy. After a minute of observation I determined as best I could that the current was going my way.
****
The stern of the ship lay in deeper water and the transom was fully submerged, creating a coral-encrusted steel beach with swells rolling across it but not breaking. I rechecked my gear (such as it was) and then on a crest pushed off into the ocean and began to sidestroke toward Castigo Cay.
It was not a comfort to realize that my maximum swimming speed was only a fraction of the potential speed of the ocean current. If I had misjudged the current’s overall direction, I would be swept toward Bermuda or Puerto Rico or anywhere else. Gone forever, about as gone as gone gets.
Kick, stroke and glide. I swam on my left side so that I could see the land and keep oriented, at least while the lift of the swells permitted me a view. A look behind at the shipwreck told me that I was heading in the right direction. The current at least doubled my speed through the water. I had to head even further offshore, to put more distance between myself and any watchers on the beach.
The main swells were running about four feet high with maybe thirty feet between them, and I could see land only when I was lifted on the crests. I saw the open mouth of the channel between the rocky northern island and Castigo Cay for only a moment and then I was past it. I wondered if the Serb was scanning this part of the ocean through his rifle scope. It had been probably a half hour since I’d seen him at the other end of the channel, and he could have walked across to the ocean side in just a minute or two.
Would his polarized sunglasses defeat the morning sunshine reflecting off the water that I was counting on to hide my approach? I was in easy range from the shore, less than two hundred yards off. A rifle shot exploding the water near me would answer the question.
Then on some high ground near the top of Castigo Cay I glimpsed a person standing alone. He was dressed all in white so it had to be Andre the chef, today serving as Richard Prechter’s videographer. He had chosen a spot where he could watch the ocean side of the channel. It made sense. The two of them could observe the entire channel and report my return.
Or they could report to their boss that I was still hiding on the north island. If they thought I was still on the rocky islet, they’d soon figure I was not coming to rescue the girls. Then they would make plans to deal with me later in the day, ferreting me out of a coward’s secret hiding place.
I continued making rapid progress to the south. On another swell I caught sight of some people on a sandy beach between rocky points. Normally at two hundred yards I was capable of identifying people, but not with salt water burning my eyes while getting only a quick look from a random wave crest. Maybe a half second out of every ten. A few glimpses told me that the senator was working with a long-handled shovel and Trevor Ridley was standing nearby. I di
dn’t spot Cori or Brooke on my first fleeting views, and when I did see them my heart sank to the bottom. Only their faces were visible above the sand. They were already buried.
I didn’t see Richard Prechter at all.
Then I was past them, and it was time to come in hard and fast lest I be swept past Castigo Cay to drown in the middle of the ocean. I changed course for the beach, making little progress landward as I continued to be set by the alongshore current. I really started motoring then, switching from sidestroke to freestyle, more worried about being carried out to sea than being seen. I had over two hundred yards to make toward shore, and I was still being dragged south by the alongshore rip.
The green mangrove tops on the small island below Castigo Cay came into view. I changed to breast stroke, swimming directly for shore, then felt a new pull, and suddenly I was shooting toward the land. I saw the sand inlet between Castigo Cay and the mangrove island and then I was pulled through it.
The tidal race I had forded with Nick Galloway three nights before had sucked me in and slung me into the lagoon between the four cays. If one of my enemies was watching the inlet, there was no way he could miss seeing me. On the positive side I was behind them, in their rear, and nobody had shot at me or raised the alarm. The downside was being in calm gin-clear water with absolutely no cover or concealment nearby. I could swim into the mangroves on the south island and hide, but I could accomplish nothing in there except to visit Archy Mildenhall’s final resting place.
Castigo Cay Page 49