Cori and Brooke were on the ocean side of Castigo Cay. I hoped that the Serb and the Belgian were still in position observing the north channel. Ridley and the senator were with the girls on the beach, across the dune ridge from me. Only Richard Prechter was unaccounted for, and I had to assume he was someplace where he could both see the girls and watch for my approach.
My Glock 17 gave him maybe a hundred-yard range, if he was a skilled pistol shot. But he wanted to chase me down, not shoot me from a distance. Or did he? For all I knew, he had a high-powered rifle stashed in his future dream house, and from some high place he was following me in his scope even now. I’d seen so many men in my own crosshairs that I felt the target on my forehead like a burning tattoo. I breaststroked and then crept through the shallows toward dry land as stealthily as I could, no splashing, just my nose and eyes above the water.
7
I crawled out in a place with only a narrow strip of sand before I would reach the concealment of a few scrubby palmettos. I looked back at my footprints across the wet sand. I pulled off a fan of palmetto leaves and brushed them out. It looked no better after being swept; the incursion was obvious. Prechter didn’t have enough manpower to patrol the beaches yard by yard during these critical minutes. The rising tide would erase them, but by then the fate of the girls would have been determined. Maybe my tracks across the wet sand wouldn’t matter. A lot of things wouldn’t matter in a very short while.
I crouched in the concealing shade behind the palmetto and studied the island from the south. Pulled out the rusty round file, hefting it again, flipping it end over end. The steel spindle had a nice weight and balance. I kept it in my hand, nervously spinning it like twirling a baton between my fingers. It was over a pound of steel, pointed enough at each end to do some real damage. The X-acto knife was still in my right rear pants pocket. The bolt on a string was still in my right front pocket, the loop protruding. My weapons were ready.
I was standing on the sandy leeward side of Castigo Cay, the calm lagoon side, and with luck all four of my enemies were looking in other directions. I knew that the girls were across the ridge and little ways north, but that area would be a well-prepared killing zone, the girls serving as the ultimate sniper bait. Rushing over the ridge and charging down upon them would be suicidally stupid, and it would squander my greatest tactical advantage, my having infiltrated their rear unknown.
But stalking and killing the four men over the course of a few hours would also serve no purpose. The outcome of the struggle was measured by the tide, and the tide wasn’t going to wait for Dan Kilmer. Without any cover or concealment between widely spaced vegetation there was no point in moving slowly, so I trotted northward along the lagoon, a little inland where the sand was talcum dry and my prints would not be as obvious. The land broadened and flattened out along the western side of Castigo Cay. From the south I could see most of Topaz, but she looked as though she were planted in the sand, because the little harbor itself was still invisible to me across the ground. After traveling another few hundred yards I could see the turquoise water of the formerly landlocked salt pond around the megayacht.
There was more cover and concealment when I reached the area around the harbor. This was where most of the construction equipment and materials were located. There were pallets full of bagged cement under plastic sheeting and stacks of every type of building material, and a front-end loader and backhoe combination beneath a drape of brown-and-tan desert camouflage netting. I lay in shadow below the yellow machine and observed the island to the east. Boxwoods and myrtle topped the coastal ridge along this part of its length, several hundred yards away. I thought I saw some unnatural motion near the top of the hill and studied it. I wished I had a spotting scope, but hell, I wished I had a lot of things. At least I still had my twenty-fifteen vision.
After some study of a stand of dry bushes I saw two anomalous black dots that became the soles of shoes, toes downward. The sand below the feet was disturbed, not wind-smooth. Somebody was lying in the shade under concealment near the crest, observing the ocean side of the island. Most likely Richard Prechter, since I had previously located his three henchmen.
Could he have seen me being carried through the inlet into the lagoon between the cays? Not likely. If he had, he’d be facing this way, not away from me. He was watching over his live bait: Cori and Brooke. Could I sneak up the steep sand hill and take him unawares from behind? It would be a few hundred yards across mostly open sand. Possibly it could be done, but then what? There would still be the Serb with his scoped rifle to contend with. And Trevor Ridley down on the beach with the girls.
Next I studied the rest of the island to the north and northwest, looking for the Serb. Castigo Cay was much wider at the north end. I remembered from the Raven video that it looked like a tadpole, with the dredged salt pond as its eye. Actually it was more of a tear drop, much bigger at the top. There was good cover to be found around the construction material, so I rapidly leapfrogged north. Much of the cargo seemed to arrive on the island on trailers, towed off landing craft and left ashore. The most interesting of them was a desert-tan five-hundred-gallon tank trailer marked DIESEL. The original U.S. Army numbers and markings had been sprayed over with brown primer paint.
While hiding beneath the diesel tank I saw a flash of light toward the north end of Castigo Cay. I’d seen it many times in many settings, and knew immediately what it was. It was a lens, being turned so that it sometimes was aimed between the sun and my position. The Serb was a few hundred yards away but I could make him out plainly enough. He was still skylining himself, visible above his shoulders. I studied his movements and picked up the rough timing. He was primarily facing toward his northern sectors, scanning across the channel, but occasionally he turned a full circle.
This was enough to go on. I dashed forward and soon was beyond the construction zone and came to the dredged cut connecting the lagoon to the little yacht harbor. Topaz was moored with her bow toward the south. For a while her hull and superstructure concealed me from any observation from the east. I had assumed that all hands were accounted for, that all of Prechter’s crew were ashore. If any others were left aboard Topaz, they would be able to see me from behind the megayacht’s many tinted windows.
The wide rectangular radar atop her mast was not turning. It would make sense that Topaz was operating under strict radio and electronic silence, considering the purpose of her murderous mission. In the wireless digital age, Prechter would not want any electronic record of his weekend here. He would use passive GPS to find his island, but he would emit nothing. Obviously, he had no clue that the tracker beacon in the waverunner was sending its hourly signal into space.
The little yacht harbor was a few football fields in size. I reached its mouth, waded in and silently breast-stroked across its twenty-yard width. This mini-channel from the lagoon into the salt pond had been blasted through solid coral to a fathom’s depth, six feet, measured using my body’s length. Once on the north bank I lay half in the water and waited for the Serb to do his periodic scan through all 360 degrees.
****
There was only one more opportunity for concealment ahead of me, a rusted fifty-five-gallon drum lying on its side and half buried in sand. When the Serb turned away from me I was up the bank and scrambling across open ground until I was able to drop flat behind it. I was in clear sight of anybody behind me or high up on the coastal sand ridge. It was only fifty yards ahead of the drum to where the Serb was scanning across the channel toward the north island. Apparently he had brought no binoculars, because he was still using only the scope on his AR.
Sometimes he dropped his rifle to the low-slung position and waited a minute or longer before shouldering it again for a look through the scope. Sometimes his 360s were made with the rifle down, just using bare eyes behind his wraparounds. Either way, most of his attention was focused on the north island. The rifle was unwieldy for him to use as a telescope for long periods, and it was dow
n more than it was up. The Serb should have brought binoculars.
Occasionally he paused for only a short time before turning another complete circle. Sometimes he just stared at the north island for a minute or two at a time, his rifle hanging horizontally from its sling. I had to pick a moment and go. If I reached him from behind unawares, I’d slash the X-acto knife across his throat and take his rifle. Until I was that close, I’d keep the round bastard file in my right hand. The heavy steel comforted me. I removed the protective soft wood from the X-acto’s tip and gripped the little knife in my left hand. Time and tide waited for no man. My chance of success all came down to the randomness of this Serbian hired killer’s mind. Not much for hope to hang onto.
I couldn’t hide behind the rusty steel drum all day; the status quo could change at any moment. I was not visible to the Serb, but I was plainly visible from half of the island behind me. From that point forward there was no cover or concealment until the final yards of Castigo Cay grew rocky. If I made it that far unseen, I might find a fissure or some dead ground where I could lie in wait for the Serb to complete another 360.
He went through another scanning cycle, walking around on the same patch of high ground above the channel. After a rotation he dropped his rifle back down to the low-ready position, slung in front of him across his belt line. He removed a green canteen, unscrewed the cap and took a drink.
Next to his rifle, I most wanted the contents of his canteens. Trevor Ridley hadn’t splashed much water down my throat back aboard Topaz, and swimming in the ocean leaves you crazy to drink fresh water. The Serb’s hands were occupied with getting a drink, so I was on my feet and running in a trot, my bare feet making a soft crunching in the dry sand, nothing that would be heard over the steadily pounding ocean surf just a couple hundred yards east.
While I ran toward him, the Serb pulled a walkie-talkie out of one of his ammo pouches. So not all of the pouches were carrying magazines full of cartridges. Not that it mattered. The thirty-round mag already in his AR held all the bullets he’d ever need. But now both of his hands were occupied, and neither was on his rifle. Luck was smiling upon me.
****
He spoke into the radio and began to turn, maybe to face whoever was calling him. By now I was fully committed, out in the open. My chances were better in completing my surprise charge than in turning to flee. There was no cover nearby that I could reach before he shot me, and you can’t outrun a bullet. Even if I managed to make it back to the rusty oil drum, I’d only prolong my death or capture by a few seconds.
The Serb spotted me and dropped the canteen and radio. His hands flew back to his rifle. When he swung it up to his shoulder, I was less than fifty feet away and still coming hard. It was now a sprint over loose pebbles as the ground turned rocky. The blood roaring in my ears was louder than the surf. Slo-mo, microsecond time. I knew I was totally screwed, but I had to finish my assault to have any chance at all. To take to my heels and show him my back would mean that I was finished, and so were the girls.
Reality is reality and sometimes it just plain sucks, but you still have to face it. The Serb’s muzzle leveled on my chest, and at twenty feet from him I came to a sudden halt. I turned my left shoulder to him to minimize his target, as if it would matter to a rifleman at seven yards. The round bastard file was still in my right hand, concealed behind my right hip.
This wasn’t a Mexican standoff, this was a sucker’s standoff and I was the sucker. I’d taken my chances by rushing across the open ground, and at the last moment lady luck had turned her thumb down on me. Now I was at the Serb’s mercy, and I’d seen how much mercy he’d shown Eddie Medina. But still he didn’t shoot. Perhaps his rules of engagement forbade him to kill me? This had to be the case, otherwise he could have begun firing at me from the first moment he had turned and raised his rifle.
We were too close together for him to sight through his high-magnification scope, so he slightly lowered the barrel, staring at me above it through his wraparound sport shades. His bristly face cracked in a crooked smile, revealing a missing upper tooth. Instead of demanding that I get down on the ground—which I expected—he asked me, “Which foot you like more? I only destroy one foot. Which foot not so good? Which foot give you problem? I fix. No more problem that foot.”
He lowered the muzzle some more, using the top of the scope and the barrel for alignment, a crude form of aiming. Some people were very good at that type of instinctive snap-shooting at close range with a rifle. I was. But was Vuko really that good, or was he just pretending to be since I had snuck inside his close-range danger zone?
And did that even matter, with a thirty-round mag in his rifle at twenty feet and his finger on the trigger?
He moved the barrel’s point of aim back and forth between my knees and my feet, making lazy sideways eights. A torso shot would have been dead easy at that distance; he literally couldn’t have missed if he’d just gone for center of mass. I was certain now that he had firm orders from Prechter not to kill me outright. For once in my life, somebody else’s restrictive rules of engagement were giving me a break. I could smile at the irony later, if I was still alive. This was a novelty to me, and I wondered how best to exploit it for tactical advantage. Only one plan came to mind.
His barrel aimed at my right foot, then wavered toward my left. At that moment I pushed off to the right and brought the file up overhand. He fired almost at the same instant that I let it go. I gave that bastard file a baseball pitcher’s release and follow-through, giving it all the velocity I could, but I had no expectation that I would actually wound him. I threw it only as a diversion, hoping to strike any part of his body in order to give me another second or two to rush at him with my tiny knife.
As soon as the file was out of my hand I dived into a roll, then scrambled to my feet and swerved toward him, fully expecting to be riddled with bullets before I could reach him. Continuing the charge was the least bad of the terrible choices confronting me. I braced myself to receive his shots…but no shots came.
Instead, he let go of the rifle and clutched at his throat. I hadn’t seen the file strike him, but now I could see it plainly enough. It was sticking out the left side of his neck, just above the collar of his green T-shirt. The Serb’s eyes were hidden behind his shades and he made no sound, so I couldn’t tell if he was gravely injured, but he sure seemed to think he was. He gripped the steel with both hands and stopped, looking down at it as if unsure if pulling it out would do more damage than good. For that second all of his focus was on the heavy steel dart that had invaded his neck. I was forgotten. The game changer—his scoped rifle—was nearly in my grasp.
Just before I could reach him he caught his heel on something and fell backward while spinning away. I clutched after him, trying to grab his webbing but only touching his shirt sleeve before he fell over the edge. It was a dozen feet down to the water in the channel. I looked over to see if there was any chance for a rapid salvage of his rifle.
He was submerged facedown in a forest of staghorn coral. He was squirming, but I couldn’t tell whether he was struggling for life or the still-flooding current was moving his limbs. He’d fallen face-first into the water, so his original wound might have been compounded many times over if the file struck bottom and was driven even deeper. I’ve never had a penetrating neck wound, but I suspect it’s not so easy to recover from one, especially not when you unexpectedly find yourself underwater a few seconds after impact.
I would need to climb down into the water very carefully, or risk being torn up on the same sharp coral surrounding him. Growing among the white coral antlers were countless black urchins, up to the diameter of melons, each with hundreds of brittle barbed spines. Obviously, it was no place to rush into with bare feet.
Before descending, I grabbed the Serb’s open canteen from the ground. It held only a few swallows, which I drained. I’d take his handheld VHF radio with me, leaving it in some dry niche above the channel while I went into the water afte
r the rifle. The other canteen was still on his web belt. I could get it when I removed the weapon from his body. I returned the little X-acto knife to my back pocket, swung my legs over the edge and dropped onto a narrow shelf to study the best approach to take to get to the Serb’s body and his all-important rifle.
8
The radio squawked, and the squawk was followed by Richard Prechter’s flattened voice. “Vuko, what’s going on, over?” Another squelch break when he released his transmit button.
I was tempted to use the radio to taunt him, or to offer him some kind of bargain. Perhaps I could bluff him that I already had the Serb’s scoped AR. But it would have been stupid to do so. Instead, I pressed the transmit key while blowing on the radio’s microphone pickup. I pressed and blew a few times, an old trick. Radios frequently malfunctioned, even good ones. Batteries weren’t charged properly, or they wouldn’t keep a charge. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. “You’re breaking up, Lieutenant!” had saved many a grunt from following especially stupid orders radioed from faraway command posts.
“Vuko, Vuko. Report, please, over.”
After a few seconds I gave him one more click of squelch. Dead battery. Salt-air-corroded contact. Anything. Happened all the time.
Prechter tried again. “Andre, can you see Vuko from your position, over?”
A long wait, then, “Ah…non. Not from here.”
“You heard one shot, over?”
“Oui, one shot. You heard his radio?”
“I’m not sure what I heard.”
It sounded as if Prechter couldn’t see either of his two northern scouts guarding the channel between the islands. If he was perched in his future home on the highest point of the island, or almost anywhere on this side of the summit of the ridge, he’d have been able to see the north shore, where he had posted Vuko and Andre. So Prechter was the pair of shoes overlooking the beach. The beach where Senator Sanchez had been busy with a shovel. Prechter was on the dune ridge, but on the lower south side of his future summit home.
Castigo Cay Page 50