He glanced up, surprised to see that he had reached the paved road already. He sat down on a big fallen log at the corner of the trail and the paved road and took out a handkerchief. He cleaned his feet carefully and put on his socks and shoes. Hearing the sound of an approaching engine, he rose to his feet and stepped to the edge of the road, waving the handkerchief to flag down the brightly decorated minivan. It screeched to a halt, and he opened the sliding door, scrambling in and finding a seat amidst a chorus of "Bonjours," from the passengers already packed in like sardines. They cheerfully shifted around, helping him wedge himself into a seat. As the bus pulled back onto the road, he passed his handful of euro coins up to the driver, who glanced at them casually, gave a Gallic shrug, and tossed them into an old coffee can at his feet.
Lulled into a torpid state by the droning of the tires on the pavement and the warm, close air in the crowded vehicle, the houngan fought to stay awake, worried that he would miss his stop if he fell asleep. He distracted himself by visualizing tonight’s expected encounter with this white man who had been asking Claude-Michel all the questions yesterday. He had told Marie to make the same arrangements they had made for his meeting with Martinez. Claude-Michel would put the man in Enrique’s taxi. They would blindfold him and drive him around for a while. Once he was disoriented, Enrique would drop him off, and Claude-Michel’s brother, Jean, and one of his friends would escort him out into the cane fields to the shack. The houngan had decided that it would be a mistake to take the creature with him. He was naïve when he met Martinez, but not so now. He shook his head, trying to wake himself up. He began to watch the road signs, seeing several that advertised businesses in Trois-Îlets. They were getting closer; he would get out at the town center and walk until he found the hounfor. He had directions and a description of the mambo’s house.
****
It was the middle of the afternoon when the professor and Lilly stepped out of the air-conditioned taxi at the lobby entrance to Le Petit Refuge du Caritan. They had been shopping and sightseeing in downtown Fort-de-France this morning, and they had just finished a leisurely lunch at a waterfront restaurant in Ste. Anne.
After the professor settled with the taxi driver, Lilly said, "You know, with the exchange rate, we must have spent $50 U.S. on cab fare this morning. Maybe we should have rented a car."
"No way! These people would give a New York cabbie a nervous breakdown, the way they drive. Besides, I asked Liz, and she said it would be cheaper to use taxis, given our plans."
"How do the regular people afford to live, when it costs so much to get around?" Lilly asked.
"I guess they walk, or ride those minibuses."
"But those things look awful; everybody’s jammed together, hanging out the windows. The radios are always blaring. I saw one woman getting in one of them this morning with two live chickens all trussed up. I wouldn’t ride in one for anything."
"Better stick with me, babe. I’ll keep you in the lap of luxury."
"Right, Chuck," she said. "As long as you have RDF’s bankroll."
As they stepped into the lobby, she asked, "So what makes you think we’ll get a different answer from that bartender today?"
"I’ve done this before, Lilly. Age and experience. You could tell he was lying when he denied knowing anything about the zombies. You told me you thought so."
"Yeah, but what’s different today?"
"He’s had time to think about it and talk it over with the houngan, or somebody, anyway. He dropped enough hints yesterday about patience, and trying later. He didn’t act like we were the first ones to ask him about it; he seemed pretty comfortable with it, actually."
They took a table in a dim corner of the bar and waited for the bartender to come and take their order. He returned in a few minutes with two ti punches, the signature drink of Martinique. Made with flavored cane syrup, a little fruit juice, and a generous tot of rhum blanc agricole, the 150-plus-proof white lightning produced all over the island, the sweet concoction was dangerously intoxicating. Liz had cautioned them yesterday about the drink. Although it went down smoothly, the least expensive of the ingredients was the rum. "The lower the price, the stronger the drink will be," she had warned.
"Bonjour, monsieur-dame," the bartender said, as he put a frosty glass in front of each of them. "You still look for the zombie, yes?"
"Yes," the professor said. "Did you by chance remember something?"
"Possibly. My memory, sometimes it needs some little ‘elp, yes?"
"Would this be enough help?" the professor asked, as he allowed just the denomination on a 50-euro note to show through his fingers as he held the bill flat against the table top."
"Mais oui," Claude-Michel said, smiling, as he pulled out the extra chair and sat down.
Chapter 10
Claude-Michel was behind the bar polishing highball glasses when Martinez came in.
"Bonjour, bienvenu," he said, as Martinez settled himself on a stool at the bar, resting his heavily muscled forearms on the polished wood.
"Hello, my friend," Martinez responded.
"What would you like to drink, señor?"
"Ti punch, please."
"It is nice to see you back so soon. You must like our little hotel."
"Actually, I’ve come back to see the houngan again. You can arrange for me to see him?"
"Yes, certainly I can do this. I know that he has some business already tonight, so perhaps he can meet you tomorrow night. Would that be agreeable?"
"If that is the soonest I can see him, then I must wait, I suppose. You are sure that you can’t arrange it for this evening? I can wait until later if he has some ceremony, or something."
"No, he meets the man…" Claude-Michel caught himself. "He will be busy all this evening, I am sure."
Martinez flattened his right hand on the bar, smoothing a 20-euro note. "Perhaps this other man could wait," he said.
Claude-Michel eyed the note hungrily, thinking. "I do not think so, but I will try very hard to persuade the houngan that he must see you tomorrow night."
"Very well, then. It would be worth something to me to know more about this man he meets with tonight," Martinez said, his eyes on the note as he pinned it with his left hand, smoothing it with his right.
Claude-Michel watched, thinking. Reaching a conclusion after a moment, he said, "It is the professor from the yacht."
Martinez held the note in place with his left hand, reaching into his pocket with the other hand. He added another 20-euro note, placing it on top of the one on the bar. Carefully aligning the two notes, he looked up into Claude-Michel’s eyes. After a moment, Martinez raised his eyebrows and nodded.
"This professor, he is interested in the zombie, also. Just as you are," Claude-Michel said, tentatively.
Martinez nodded his encouragement. "Which yacht?" he asked, his cold, dark eyes holding Claude-Michel’s nervous gaze.
"I…I don’t know the name, señor, but it is the large, white one that you see right out there, off the beach." Martinez looked in the direction Claude-Michel pointed. He nodded, knocked back the rest of his drink, and got to his feet. Leaving the notes on the bar, he turned and walked out into the lobby.
Martinez sat in a lounge chair, thinking, his eyes on the yacht. He wondered who this professor could be, and what interest he had in the houngan and the zombie. He ran through the list of people who knew about his plan, quickly eliminating Carmen and Moraga. Carmen knew nothing of the zombie, and Moraga’s loyalty was beyond question. It was possible that there was a leak from the embassy, or even that the ambassador had let something slip. It had to be one of those two explanations. Martinez didn’t believe in coincidence. He would have to question this professor to find out why he was snooping. Martinez reasoned that the man could be working for any one of several agencies; he needed to know which one.
He was sure that the houngan’s men would use the same method of escorting the professor to his meeting that they had employed for hi
s own recent meeting. He thought about having them followed, and then he decided that it would be less involved if he allowed the meeting to take place and then questioned the professor. That would give him more options for dealing with the houngan than he would have if his men interrupted the meeting.
His decision made, he took a cell phone from his pocket and called a number which connected him to the commander of a group of military ‘advisors’ in nearby St. Lucia. A fast boat could land a detachment here in less than an hour. After a few minutes of whispered conversation, he disconnected the call and went to his room to take a nap. Two commandos would join him after dark, and they could watch the yacht from his room.
****
After an early dinner aboard Vengeance, Dani and Liz took their guests ashore in the dinghy. Claude-Michel had instructed the professor to come to the bar alone at 7:30, and to expect to be gone for several hours. Dani had given him a handheld VHF radio so that he could call for a pickup when he returned to the hotel. After he caught a cab to the hotel, the three women enjoyed an evening stroll through the village of Ste. Anne. A few shops were still open, angling for tourist business, and Lilly and Liz amused themselves by shopping. When Liz sensed that Dani could stand it no longer, she suggested that they return to the boat. Liz had discovered a problem with the drain on the galley sink when she was fixing dinner, and she knew Dani was impatient to get to work on it.
Plumbing problems on a boat were less easy to ignore than similar problems ashore, besides which Dani was obsessive about maintaining the boat. As she and Lilly followed Dani back to the dinghy dock, window shopping along the way, Liz explained to Lilly a bit about the need for vigilance in dealing with marine plumbing. It wasn’t just the inconvenience of a clogged drain that worried Dani. The sink drained into the ocean via a large hose that connected it to a hole in the bottom of the boat. There was a heavy bronze valve, called a seacock, which could be used to close off the hole. This allowed removing the hose to clear the drain, and if the hose burst, closing the seacock would keep the boat from sinking. The seacock was frozen in the open position, and this was worrisome in itself. If the drain hose burst, there would be a two-inch hole in the bottom of the boat, which would rapidly flood Vengeance if unattended.
Once they were back aboard, Dani dug out her tools and went to work. Lilly sat at the dining table with her laptop computer, reading through some of her reference material and making notes. Liz was in the forward cabin, reading. They were listening to a recording of steel pan music, and a soft evening breeze wafted through the boat.
****
Martinez was on the small patio outside his room, pacing. He had an unobstructed view of the beach and the water, and he had seen the people from the yacht leave earlier. All four had left in the dinghy at a little before seven, and he was sure they had gone to the town dock in Ste. Anne, although he couldn’t follow their progress that far because of the configuration of the shoreline. About an hour later, the three women had returned to the yacht.
He alternated between checking his watch and staring out over the dark water, growing anxious. The two Marine commandos were five minutes overdue. By now, he should have seen their darkened rigid inflatable boat approach the beach – there was sufficient moonlight. He was growing angry; he was about to step back into his room and call his contact in St. Lucia when he felt the odd, prickly sensation on the back of his neck. He whirled around, dropping to a crouch, and let out a startled cry as he almost collided with two lithe, medium-sized men standing within a foot of him. Quickly regaining his composure, he looked them over as they stood casually, smiling at his discomfort. Non-descript men, clad in blue jeans and polo shirts, they would easily pass for light skinned locals, just as he had requested. Inclining his head for them to follow him, he led the way into his room and briefed them.
"There are three women on the yacht. You will subdue them. They should be bound, gagged, and blindfolded. You will find out from them what arrangements have been made for the man to get back to the yacht."
One man, obviously the senior of the two, nodded. Both stared intently into Martinez’s eyes.
Shaking off his discomfort, he continued. "I want him bound, gagged, and hooded once you have him. You can use their dinghy to bring him ashore here. I have an S.U.V. in the parking lot. We will take him to a place I know nearby, a park. No one else will be there this late in the evening, and we will question him there. You understand?"
The senior man nodded.
"You have what you need?"
"Sí, señor," the senior man spoke for the first time.
"Any questions?"
The man shook his head.
"Then go, now."
The junior man stepped out onto the patio and returned quickly with two small, waterproof packs that Martinez hadn’t noticed before. He tossed one to the other man and they quickly disrobed. They wore black tank suits, and the senior man had several ugly scars on his torso. "Knife fight," thought Martinez, as he watched the men pack their clothes into the backpacks and settle them on their shoulders as they melted back into the dark. He saw them slip smoothly into the water, and then they disappeared. He knew they were there, but he still couldn’t see them swimming toward the yacht.
****
Dani was crouched in the cabinet under the galley sink. She had wire-brushed the verdigris from the recalcitrant seacock and squirted it with penetrating oil. She allowed the oil to soak in while she cleared all the canned goods out of the locker, making room to work. She loosened the retaining nut on the end of the seacock shaft opposite the handle, put a block of hardwood against the shaft to protect the threads, and gave it a sharp rap with the three-pound hammer that she held. She had just shifted her grip on the hammer, preparing for another blow, when she felt a change in the gentle, rocking motion of the boat. Suddenly alert, she ducked her head and crawled out of the locker, sure someone was climbing aboard.
She had just managed to stand up, still gripping the hammer, when a pair of hairy, well-muscled legs appeared on the top step of the companionway ladder, inches from her nose. She registered that the man was dripping wet as he bent over, looking her in the eye as he brandished a commando knife, the muscles in his heavily tattooed chest bulging. She gave him a disarming smile as she swung the hammer into the side of his left knee with all the force she could muster. The man screamed in agony as he tumbled down the ladder, his leg bending the wrong way with a loud, tearing sound as he landed at Dani’s feet. He had fallen on top of the injured leg, and Dani glimpsed a shard of bone protruding through bloody flesh. She heard a male voice yelling in Spanish from the cockpit as she delivered a measured blow to the side of her opponent’s head. She wanted him unconscious, but not dead. Scooping his knife from the deck with a fluid motion of her left hand, she raced up the ladder.
When she stepped into the cockpit, the junior man grinned at her, making menacing movements with the knife in his right hand. Dani feinted to her left with the knife in her left hand, as if to slash his knife-arm, the hammer hidden behind her right thigh. As he went for her knife-hand with his own left, her hammer broke his left arm between the shoulder and the elbow. She reversed the motion of her left hand, leaning into him, and she felt her knife rake across his ribs. He screamed as he toppled over the knee-high life lines and fell into the water. She saw him swimming quickly into the darkness using a practiced side-stroke, his useless left arm trailing in his wake.
She stepped back below to discover that Liz and Lilly had just realized something was wrong. Typically, her sense of time was distorted by the adrenalin; she felt like the fight had taken forever instead of a few seconds. Making sure the intruder was still unconscious, she reached into her tool box under the sink and grabbed some cable ties. By the time Liz asked what had happened, the intruder’s wrists and ankles were securely fastened together, his arms wrapped around his folded legs, his face against the ruins of his left knee. He was propped with his back against the side of the companionway ladder no
w, still unconscious.
"We had gentlemen come calling," Dani said, in answer to the other women’s questions. Filling a glass with water from the sink, she dashed it in his face, up his nose, and he gagged, coughing and gasping. He rolled his head back and looked up at Dani, making an obvious effort to focus on her. "Hand me my cell phone, please," she said, setting the glass on the galley counter.
The man moaned, and then he mumbled something as Dani punched a number into the cell phone. "You have something to say?" she asked, prodding his broken leg with her foot.
He screamed in pain, but quickly recovered. "Tell police… ambulance," he pleaded, in heavily accented English.
"You think I’m calling the police?" she laughed. "In your dreams, asshole."
Chapter 11
Dani spoke softly into the telephone for a moment, and then disconnected. She handed the phone back to Liz, noticing that Lilly had disappeared. Before she could ask about Lilly, she heard the sound of retching coming from the forward head. Liz went to see about their guest, and Dani turned her attention to the concussed man at her feet. Not bothering to ask questions, she took in the tattoos visible on his arms, noting the Venezuelan flag and the fouled anchor. Seeing the small backpack wedged behind him for the first time, she used his knife to cut the straps. She pulled it roughly from behind him and opened it, finding a silenced pistol and his dry clothing, but nothing else. He groaned again, rolling his head around.
Liz returned, having given Lilly a shot of cognac and helped her to stretch out on the starboard settee in the main cabin. "How many were there?" she asked.
Bluewater Voodoo: Mystery and Adventure in the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 3) Page 7