Just underwater, Cori nodded rapidly at me in desperation, but I couldn’t help her, not with Ridley so close. I left her and went to block his approach, moving on my knees and crouched low, the end of the thin pole held out toward his face. Maybe it would have been better to use the camera end for a club, but I didn’t. I had the full use of my right arm and partial use of my left, but I was steadily bleeding out.
Staying upright on my knees was dizzying. I held out the tip of the monopod against him. He was lying in the rushing surf on his left hip, dragging his right leg along. Sanchez was chugging back across the beach toward the rocks. He must have used up his quota of bravery for the day. Or had he seen me tossing away the firearms?
I wondered if Ridley would survive the inch-deep stab wound into his right side. He would if I hadn’t pierced a critical organ or sliced a significant artery. At any rate it was nothing that was going to stop him in the time frame that mattered, which was the next minute. The cut hamstring and quadriceps made travel awkward for him, but were survivable if he could stop the bleeding.
But he’d cut my brachial artery with a lucky slash, and there was no way I could prevent it from pouring out my life. There was no time to even contemplate using my tightly knotted paracord belt to tourniquet my own bleeding arm.
Ridley’s wounds didn’t stop him as he steadily inched for the girls, and for me. His left shoulder was closer and I was able poke at his hand and arm with the tip of the camera monopod. Two cripples clumsily fencing in the surf zone. The monopod wasn’t much, but I had nothing else with which to impede his forward motion, awkward as it was. Barefoot kicks at him would just mean another deep blood-gushing wound that I couldn’t afford. Anyway, I couldn’t even stand against the force of the waves racing up and back, not with my fading horizon faltering and tipping over.
He grinned at me and said something I didn’t hear, and the world was beginning to go blurry. I had to stay between him and the girls. Retreat was always possible but never was an option. I would live or die between Trevor Ridley and the girls. Ridley and I had both lost a lot of blood, but I had undoubtedly lost more. I could use my good right arm only to ineffectually jab with the flimsy aluminum tubing, and when I delayed pulling it back, he grabbed it and pulled me forward off balance. A tumbling wave sent me onto my belly alongside him, and in the process I choked in a breath that was more water than air.
I rolled onto my side, missing the plunging knife, and tried to scramble away but Ridley covered my move with astonishing speed, swinging out his good left leg and straddling me at my hips. Another wave rolled across both of us, pushing and then dragging. He had somehow raised himself onto both knees, holding the black-bladed Ka-bar above me in two hands like an Aztec priest’s obsidian blade. The sun made a blazing radiance behind him as water rushed over us again, submerging only me.
I tried to raise my left hand to block the knife, but my arm didn’t respond to my brain’s command. My good right arm was underwater and I felt the monopod tumble against me, rolling down the sandy slope in the backwash. I grabbed it but couldn’t tell one end from the other—my eyes were locked on the knife above me. I swung the skinny rod up, really just a final gesture of defiance, but there was no strength behind it. The orange corona surrounding him grew and grew until it almost seemed that he was engulfed in burning flames.
10
The knife paused at the very peak of its rise, and at that moment blood erupted from Trevor Ridley’s chest. A fist-size hole appeared in the middle of him where his heart might have been, if he’d had a heart. He toppled over onto me, the knife falling from his limp hands, and all at once two hundred fifty pounds of dead weight were pinning me down. Fresh cascades of salt water engulfed us both. Ridley no longer needed to breathe, but I still did. I could see the sun through a pane of swirling brine, and it began to diminish in size and brilliance.
Just then Ridley’s body flew off me as if he had sprouted wings. Strong hands grabbed me and pulled me upright choking and blinking into the sunlight. Standing above me in the water was a brown-black silhouette, Tran Hung, and then Victor Aleman a moment later, both of them soaking wet. A big gray inflatable was alongside us in the surf zone, its engine racing as it was driven hard up on the beach. My own beloved, much-patched Avon. My own more beloved crew.
I gasped, “The girls—air!” And there was Kelly Urbanzik springing from the Avon with a pair of snorkels in her hands, dive masks dangling. Snorkeling gear from my own dinghy, always kept there in readiness. She waited for a deep trough when Cori’s face was momentarily exposed and put one in her mouth, then did the same for Brooke. She knelt downslope between the girls and held the snorkels upright. The extra foot of plastic tubing meant they were able to breathe half of the time. Kelly covered the tops of the snorkels with her thumbs, uncapping them only when they were exposed to the air. Smart girl. Smart.
Nick Galloway came charging down the beach with my scoped .308 Savage carried at port arms, its bipod legs extended. When he was close enough to sprint he dropped the rifle onto the wet hard-pack sand.
Victor and Tran pulled me up the slope until my shoulders were on dry sand, with only a little foam licking at my feet. In a moment they’d seen my wound. Victor’s medical pack was already unzipped. He said, “Tourniquet!” and in seconds Tran was cinching one down at my shoulder. They laid my arm out to the side, and Tran applied pressure with his hands while Victor ripped open a big quick-clot bandage and jammed it into the open gash. Most of the tri-fold bandage didn’t fit inside the wound. He used the rest of it on the outside over the cut, then laid both his palms over it and bore down with all of his weight. The face of deliverance had short gray hair, a trimmed vandyke beard and placid hazel eyes.
He looked down at me and asked, “When did this occur?”
“I don’t know...”
His face was grim. “Who are you?”
“Dan Kilmer.” Then I got it. It was the old orientation-to-person-place-and-time routine.
“Who am I?”
“Victor.”
“What country are we in?”
That one took some considered mental effort. “The Bahamas, I think.”
“What month is it?”
“Umm…June? How am I doing?”
He smiled. “I think you’ll live.”
The quick-clot mashed against the open artery would stop the bleeding; the question was whether I still had enough of the red stuff left inside to sustain my life.
Again I said, “The girls…” and used my last strength to turn my head and look for them. Nick Galloway and Tran Hung were digging furiously, using the short-handled emergency paddles from the tender as shovels.
Victor said, “Don’t worry, the girls are also alive.” He was still bearing down, pressing the quick-clot bandage into and against my wound with all of his weight on it.
“How do you know?”
“They’re breathing, so they’re alive. That’s been true in every case I’ve seen.”
“Victor…it’s good to see you.”
“And you.”
“How did you know to come here?”
“Your friends called us on VHF and used the Devilfish code. Their boat had not enough petrol, so we came in the Avon. We saw you fighting when we came around the point, and your friend went ashore with your rifle to get a good firing position. The rest you know.”
I looked for the girls again. Nick and Tran were digging with their hands, scraping the wet sand from around the girls, the swirling ocean trying to replace it. I could occasionally see their faces above the froth. Kelly was still holding the two snorkels, one black, one pink. In another minute Brooke and Cori were being pulled out and dragged above the reach of the waves, still handcuffed behind their backs.
Tran came over to me again, holding our Kalashnikov. He crouched next to me and asked, “Any bad men?”
“One. Behind us, on top of the hill. No gun. He’s gut-shot—wounded. I’d like to talk to him, if possible.” Tran d
isappeared behind me. A black T-shirt, black shorts, black sandals and an AK-47. Distant memories of his misspent youth. But he loved the modern electronic sight. The bright red dot helped his old eyes.
I could see only the ocean and a little stretch of beach on each side. My gray inflatable. The girls. Nick and Kelly. Victor’s face still above me, his hands still applying full body weight through his stiff arms. After Tran left, my grounding in reality became rather tenuous and things got a little fuzzy, and I had the strong suspicion that I wasn’t awake all the time.
At some point I was triaged into the non-urgent category, because evidently Victor felt his medical expertise would be better utilized elsewhere. My left bicep was tightly wrapped and bound, the tourniquet still above it but no longer biting in. The arm was tied securely to my side; my hand was also tied in place by my hip.
I understood the situation. I mustn’t move and disturb the newly forming clots that would keep the rest of my blood inside me where it was needed. That was Very Important. I’d gotten the lecture from both Victor and a few Navy docs.
I heard three spaced shots from the Kalashnikov. A few minutes later Tran Hung was crouching over me, brown as a betel nut. He was balanced on his sandals near my waist, considerately blocking the sun from my eyes with his head, a freshly lit hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the crease of his mouth. He rolled his own and kept a couple of them in a little waterproof plastic case in his pocket.
AK shots followed by a cigarette. I understood. Not unlike after sex. Making life, taking life. Yin and yang, alpha and omega. And I’d get no final chat with Richard Prechter. The sea breeze kept the end of Tran’s cigarette a glowing ember, and I enjoyed a whiff of sweet Virginia smoke before it was carried away over the dunes behind me. That burning tobacco smell said You’re still alive, buddy. So be glad.
And I was.
The AK-47 was balanced across his knees. The MP-5 was slung across his back, along with Prechter’s brown daypack. Tran delivered an opus, by his tight-lipped standards. “I finish bad man, Chu-tau. He no can talk no more.”
I’d missed another chance to make millions. So what else was new? On the other hand, there was now one less Richard Prechter in the world. It seemed like a fair trade-off. Nah. Better than fair. Anyway, I wouldn’t have wanted the money if it meant keeping that piece of human debris alive.
Tran tugged a strap of Prechter’s daypack. “I put Glock in bag. Belt too bloody—I throw away.”
“I have another one.”
He nodded, then turned over a gnarled fist and revealed a gold Rolex and a gold-nugget bracelet. Diamonds marked the hours on the watch bezel. Hundreds of tinier diamonds were embedded in the gold bracelet so that it shone in the sun like a magical thing. Sticky red blood filled every crevice of both pieces of gold jewelry.
“You want, Chu-tau?”
“Nah, I don’t want. Keep the one you like. Give the other one to Victor.”
He nodded again, just a hint of a smile. “Chu-tau, you got key in pants?”
“A key? Not today.” Today I’d had only an X-acto blade in pants. Then my cloudy brain experienced a flash of clarity. “That man has the key,” I said, pointing with my right hand.
Trevor Ridley was tumbling along at the surf’s edge, a glistening tattooed arm rising, folding over and dropping as if giving a farewell wave from the hatch to Davy Jones’ locker. Tran went through the dead man’s pockets and then over to the girls, who were sitting up. Still facing seaward, still leaning against one another while being comforted by Nick and Kelly, who were sitting on either side of them.
Tran knelt behind them and in a few moments their hands were free and their arms were wrapped around each other, Kelly and Nick adding extra arms of support, all of them rocking together in a group hug that was quite gratifying to behold.
I saw Victor and Senator Pete Sanchez walking down the beach beyond them. From the senator’s arm movements and hand gestures I could tell that he was explaining the situation and presenting his wishes to my Argentine crewmate. The senator would have taken Doctor Victor Aleman, MD, for the responsible, mature adult on the island. Not a bad guess, considering.
The bare outline of the next plan was obvious. My Avon or Topaz’s white tender would return the senator and the girls to Acklins Island. Harry Allan would fly them out on his Cessna 180. A United States senator would have no problem landing anywhere in Florida. And no hassles from Customs and Border Protection, no sir. Just snappy salutes and a shiny black government SUV, to take him to meet an equally shiny government jet that would whisk him back to Washington or Texas, his choice.
Nice work, if you can get it.
After a while Kelly and Nick came over and sat next to me on my right side. He stuck my Ka-bar in the sand near my shoulder. “Found this. You lose it?”
“For a while. Thanks.”
Kelly had gotten a water bottle from the Avon, and I had a few sips while she held it for me. Then she took my right hand in both of hers, over her crossed legs. She was still wearing the same white shorts and red top, now filthy and salt-streaked and soaked through. A busy girl for the twenty-four hours since she’d picked us up in her GTI back in Wilton Manors. No time to change or freshen up. The trade wind breeze whipped her brown ponytail around her solemn face.
I asked, “So, how did you guys do it?”
Nick said, “When we were fifteen miles from Atwood Harbour, we used the Devilfish code on VHF.”
“Victor told me. Nice shot, by the way. You centerpunched him.”
“Thanks. Four hundred yards, who could miss with a ten-power? I took it from the second point down there. The one that sticks way out, not the close one. I knew your rifle was dead-on at three hundred. I just held right for the crosswind, and up a few inches.”
“Good timing.”
“My pleasure, bro. So that’s Trevor Ridley, huh?”
“In the flesh, minus the chunk you removed.”
“No problemo, Chu-tau.”
“Man, you guys sure took your sweet time.”
Kelly’s smile relit. “We figured out the gas and the mileage and the speed, and we still barely reached your boat. If we’d come straight here, we wouldn’t have made it. And we only had Nick’s revolver. So we went by your boat first and armed up and got reinforcements. Atwood Harbour was already in your GPS, so it was easy to find.”
It would have been an impressive effort even if they’d arrived on Castigo Cay ten minutes later. But they hadn’t, so their arrival was nothing short of miraculous. “Good work, you guys. Damn good work. Good thinking. Good everything.”
“Well,” said Kelly, squeezing my hand and blinking away tears, “somebody needs a brain in this sorry outfit. Dan, we love you to death, but you don’t do so good when you’re off on your own.”
I had to smile. “That’s the truth. But I wasn’t alone.”
“What are you talking about?” Nick asked. “You mean the senator? Or Brooke and Cori? Is there somebody else on the island? Somebody alive, I mean.”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” I didn’t have the physical or mental energy left to discuss divine intercession, saints and angels. Anyway, I didn’t understand it myself, and they would just chalk it off to delirium induced by blood loss. And maybe it was. It was hard to be sure of anything, except that all the people I cared about were alive and well.
And sometimes miracles do happen.
Epilogue
A month later we were on one of the lesser known Dutch islands, and that’s all I’ll say about that because I might sail back that way someday. Rebel Yell was out of the water on a marine railway, an ancient contraption made of iron laid over a rough concrete ramp. The steel-wheeled boat-lifting cradle was a giant wedge, level on top and angled below to match the slope of the rails. Every bit of it was almost as rusted as the shipwreck back on Castigo Cay. Further up the railway an antique diesel engine was connected to an even older cable winch to drag the cradle and boat up onto dry land. The single sho
rtcoming of this primitive system was that it could haul only one boat at a time out of the water for bottom work. You had to wait your turn for it to become available.
This was not a do-it-yourself boatyard. You paid the owner and you watched local men perform the labor. Which was fine with me. My left arm was back to only half strength, so no scraping or paint rolling for me. I was content to sit in the shade like a colonial and watch the native yard workers have at it while I sipped cold fresh-squeezed mango-lime juice from a thermos mug. Wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, what else? The sun wasn’t yet over the yardarm, so the beverage was not reinforced with cane sugar and the superb local rum—dark, of course. A civilized man must uphold certain standards, and not drinking before noon was one of mine.
Even in paradise.
Victor was off exploring the island. Tran had delivered the chilled juice and climbed back aboard Rebel Yell. With the schooner up on the hard atop the railway, her deck towered fifteen feet above the ground. My injured arm restricted the number of trips I made up the rickety wooden ladder leaning against her side. Tran did what he could to make the skipper’s life easier while I was at less than fighting strength, hence the juice delivery.
It was a pleasant time to reflect on recent events. It had all worked out rather well in the end. Nick Galloway had snagged both video cameras and hidden them from the senator, who hinted about them but didn’t pursue the issue since he needed our help until he was off Castigo Cay. Nothing was ever said about the cameras explicitly, but the risk of those videos someday being released onto the internet gave him plenty of motivation to be our friend. One early example of the senator’s solicitude was Cori Vargas getting papers to bring her family to Miami, with green cards and expedited citizenship for them all. There was even talk of a university position for her father, teaching constitutional law. There was a good joke in there somewhere.
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