by Mike Safe
‘Oh, god, nothing,’ said Poppy after sliding off her board and checking Vargas’s airway for any blockage and then his pulse and breathing. ‘We have to give him CPR but we can’t do that out in the middle of the ocean.’
Dutton came swimming up to them as the first wave of a new set exploded on the outer limits of the reef.
‘Let me try,’ he said.
‘Here, sit on my board and do it from there,’ said Harcourt, sliding into the water. ‘Maybe you can get some sort of leverage on his chest. We can hold the two boards close together so you can reach him.’
Poppy joined him in the water, one at each end of the two boards as Dutton started cardiopulmonary resuscitation … thirty swift and firm compressions of the lower chest using both hands to mount pressure followed by two mouth to mouth deep breaths, the aim being to push oxygen into the lungs so that it could reach the brain and keep Vargas alive. Dutton went through the procedure once, twice and a third time. There was no response.
‘Let’s get him to the beach,’ Dutton said. ‘It’s impossible to do it properly out here. Goddamn! We’re running outta time!’
They set out for the beach, pushing and pulling the board with Vargas on it as best they could.
‘Poppy, when we get in you take the jet ski we left on the beach and go back to the house,’ said Dutton, pausing for a moment between swimming strokes. ‘There’s a defibrillator there in the shed where the boards are kept. Get that and bring it back ASAP.’
‘I want to stay with Mike,’ she said.
‘No, you know how to ride that thing at speed,’ said Dutton. ‘Johno doesn’t.’
‘I’ve never even been on one of ’em before today,’ said Harcourt. ‘But I know how to do CPR.’
‘That settles it,’ shouted Dutton. ‘Poppy, we need the defibrillator and need it real quick.’ He started swimming again.
Harcourt looked over towards Poppy as they paddled, her eyes set firmly on the strip of sand and palm trees ahead. Reaching the beach, they carried Vargas’s board with him still on it across the firm white sand. Poppy touched his tanned cheek as the other two set him down before she ran down to the remaining jet ski, roaring it to life and setting off at breakneck speed towards the house. Dutton rechecked Vargas’s airway and also his pulse and breathing. Again, nothing. He restarted the CPR – the thirty compressions to the centre of the chest, two mouth-to-mouth deep breaths. After two rounds, Harcourt took over and kept up the tempo. Then they changed back and changed again. Blood continued to ooze from the wound on the back of Vargas’s head, staining the brilliance of the white sand.
‘I didn’t say anything while Poppy was here, but I’m reckoning we’re too late, much too late now,’ said Dutton as Harcourt continued to work on the unresponsive body. ‘By the time we got him out of the water, onto the board and back to the beach where we could do this properly, it was ten minutes, more than that. It only takes five minutes without oxygen before brain function’s compromised, ten minutes is real bad, any more than that …’ His voice trailed away.
Harcourt kept counting the compressions out loud, ‘… six, seven, eight, nine, ten …’ There was nothing else to say.
There was a growing roar as Poppy, the defibrillator slung over her shoulder in a canvas pack, ran the ski onto the beach. Dutton took the pack from her, pulled it open and attached the shock pads to the top left and bottom right of Vargas’s chest, making sure there was proper contact.
‘Take his watch off,’ said Dutton, ‘and that ring. There can’t be any metal on his skin when we shock him.’
Poppy unclipped the watch’s metal band from Vargas’s limp left wrist and handed it to Harcourt and then removed the ring, a simple gold band, from the same hand and tucked it inside her yellow bikini top next to her breast. Dutton checked the defibrillator’s connections and fired the switch, delivering an electric shock aimed at kick starting the heart. Vargas jolted slightly, but otherwise there was no response, no vital signs reactivated. For the next half hour, they continued the routine … CPR, mouth to mouth, defibrillator … with barely a word spoken. They were joined by the two Johns, who came running along the beach from the house, the old man with tears in his eyes.
Finally, after Harcourt finished another round of CPR and the defibrillator failed yet again to jolt a response, Dutton raised a hand and said, ‘Enough, that’s enough. He’s gone. God, wherever you are, take his soul.’
The five of them stayed slumped there on the sand, saying nothing. The only sound was Poppy’s soft crying and the distant rumble of waves out on the reef, the swell from faraway growing bigger and fiercer by the minute.
The unsympathetic morning light had Harcourt squinting as he exited the house to join Dutton who sat on the edge of the verandah, a cup of coffee in his hand, a satellite phone by his side. Harcourt offered a croaky good morning, knowing it was anything but, and sat next to the ex-soldier who returned the greeting. There was no sign of Poppy. Dutton looked skywards and said, ‘They’ll be here soon. They’ve left Nadi airport and are on the way.’
The previous afternoon and into the night had passed in a daze. On making it back to the house, the three of them – Dexter, Poppy and Harcourt – agreed it was best to keep details of the death as tight as possible, not to involve anyone who didn’t need to know at this stage.
‘I know we’re all trying, the Johns too, to handle this as best we can, but the worst thing would be for this to get out into the media before we’ve got some sort of control of the situation,’ said Harcourt. ‘Believe me, every news outlet on the planet will be all over this when they find out – and then all over us. The media is not our friend in this.’
‘Understand that,’ Dutton replied. ‘I guess you’d know about that kind of stuff.’
‘You guess right.’
The first satellite phone call Dexter made – before informing any of the Fijian authorities – was to Vinnie Vincenso in Sydney. Both agreed the plan had to be to get them, and Vargas’s body, off the island, back to Viti Levu and then on to Australia as quickly as possible.
The Beaver float plane would be an overly tight fit to transport them all, their luggage and the body back to the main island – Harcourt found himself picturing the body, wrapped in a sheet, sitting up in one of the plane’s seats, a macabre image best kept to himself. Vinnie said he would find a bigger and more appropriate float plane and security if necessary. No one was sure of the protocol involved in flying a body back to Australia, but Vinnie said he’d find out.
‘Dexter, all you need to do at this stage is make the appropriate calls to the local authorities there, the cops, maybe the court if you have to, but start with the cops and don’t get more involved with anyone than you need to. Then you’ve probably got to inform the Australian authorities in Fiji, the consulate or whatever it is probably in Suva, the main town. Mike had dual citizenship, Australian and American, and, as you know, we’ve got more than enough lawyers and high-up contacts this end and in the States who can do all the sweet-talking, all the arm-twisting, if necessary. Don’t worry – I’ll set all that in motion from here. The bottom line is that it was an accident – none of you were responsible for the death.’
Except for his initial shock, Vinnie was all business during the long conversation, but once they had the extraction idea in place his voice took on a reflective tone. ‘You know, I’ve lived for decades with the deep down thought of something like this happening. From way back when he was a kid, Michalis, as his dad called him, was always pushing it. The two of them had their moments, good and bad, and in my own way I was always there – I don’t know, as a sort of uncle figure, I guess – to help him on his way to what he became … Sure, half of Hollywood ended up loving him, the other half hated him. But Dexter, to your credit, once you came along you kept a check on him, you were his on-the-spot eyes and ears, kept him in line….’ His echoing voice trailed away.
‘Yeah, well, I don’t know,’ said Dutton. ‘I wasn’t keeping him in l
ine this morning.’
‘Dexter, it wasn’t your fault,’ said Poppy.
There was a silence and then Vinnie had signed off, saying he would liaise with Vargas’s management in LA and be back within a couple of hours with a fully plotted exit plan.
And he was. He had a private jet on standby at Sydney airport – a Gulfstream G3 – and he would fly to Fiji overnight. With him would be a Senior Counsel specialising in international protocols who already had a team of lawyers working on expediting the return of the body to Australia. They were being assisted by a Sydney undertaker who had experience in overseas retrievals, including from Fiji where he had well-respected contacts in the business. Then there was a doctor, a forensic pathologist with long involvement in coronial investigations. The SC and pathologist also had their sources within the Fijian government and judicial systems where inquests into deaths, if deemed necessary, tended to be handled through the magistrate’s courts. Both were confident they could circumvent any such inquiry. It had been agreed with the Fijian police that a senior officer would also accompany them out to the island to supervise the retrieval of the body and view the accident scene.
‘We’re keeping the police there totally on side. Those of you present at the time – Dexter, Poppy, Johno, I guess – will have to give statements to the cops about what happened, probably when we get you back to the main island,’ Vinnie said. ‘There will need to be at least an examination of the body with the proper Fijian practitioner attending, but hopefully nothing too much beyond that.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Probably no autopsy there at least.’
Vinnie had also spoken to one of Dutton’s contacts in Sydney, a retired Special Air Services officer who had lined him up with two of his now guns-for-hire former commandos who had seen several tours of duty in Afghanistan. They would remain on Lailai Atoll to guard the house and surroundings for at least a couple of weeks and, more importantly, keep the inquisitive, especially the media, away from accessing what was private property. At mention of their names Dutton, a bleak smile creasing his face, said he knew one and had heard of the other. ‘Yeah, they know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t be sneaking around out here on their watch if I was some TV talking head.’
Further, Vinnie was bringing a bodyguard for the three of them – ‘just in case.’ He paused for a moment, leaving nothing but an echo on the satellite phone connection. ‘The reality is we have to expect the worst. It’s going to be difficult, almost impossible, to keep what’s happened under wraps for very long. Someone, somewhere is going to talk. Dexter, I know you could handle any security stuff, but you’re too well known as Mike’s offsider and it’s best that you, Poppy and Johno stay out of sight, keep as low a profile as you can.’
After landing and overnighting at Nadi, site of the international airport, Vinnie and his group would fly out to Lailai at first light on a float plane, a Twin Otter 400S, which he had requisitioned.
‘That’s a big twin engine number,’ Dutton commented. ‘Depending how it’s set up, it can probably take a dozen or more passengers.’
‘Please, Dexter,’ said Vinnie, the first hint of annoyance in his voice. ‘It’s what I could get in a hurry that could do the job and so that’s what we have. Expense is not a factor here. It’s doing the right thing by Mike and getting him and the rest of you off there and back here with minimum fuss.’
‘Okay, copy that,’ Dexter said. ‘I’m with you one hundred per cent, Vinnie. We’re all with you. We’ll see you in the morning.’
With the calls done, three of them – Dutton, Harcourt and Little John – had carried Vargas’s body, wrapped in a white bed sheet, back to the house on an old door for need of a more appropriate conveyance. Poppy wanted to be part of it but Dutton finally persuaded her to stay at the house with Big John, who looked upon her with grandfatherly concern.
Later, the two Johns fired up the cooking pit as twilight descended and there was more perfectly cooked fish for dinner, although no one showed a great deal of appetite. It was agreed that the father and son would stay behind with Vinnie’s hired guns and prepare the house to be closed down. They would also retrieve the wayward jet ski, or what was left of it, from the reef once the swell died down. But there was no sign of that happening any time soon as they sat outside picking at their food, the night closing in. The brooding dark swells continued to explode in cascades of white-water on the reef, the sound like cannon fire from a far off battlefield.
Dutton told the two Johns they would be well compensated for the work to be done and when it was time to leave they would be flown back to their home island on the Beaver float plane which would stay moored at Lailai for the time being. One of the ex-soldiers was endorsed to fly it and would eventually return it to the seaplane base on the main island.
‘We always like it here,’ Big John said. ‘Mike, he was a good boss. Treated us fair when we come to work, like we were part of the family.’ The father looked at the son. ‘We gonna miss him, eh?’ Little John nodded, took a pull on his Vonu Larger bottle and wiped the corner of his eye.
They might not have eaten much, but as the night wore on they drank more than they should have – the men, including the two Johns, what remained of the Vonu Larger while Poppy stayed with white wine. Dexter, who was a mainstay of containment and order, became melancholy as the pile of Vonu Larger empties grew.
‘I should have seen it coming,’ he lamented. ‘It was right there in front of me. It was my watch, my job to look out for him. All those years we’d been doing that together, all that shit we’d been through.’
‘Dexter,’ Poppy said, ‘he couldn’t have had better friend than you. You saw him through the good and bad, you were the one he relied on. For whatever reason he had to take that last long drop out there today, on that wave that wasn’t meant to be ridden. He was a good man, a bit of a charmer for sure, but he had that other side to him, not a bad side, but a need to push it, to go beyond …’
Now, slightly hungover in the following morning’s glare, Harcourt sat in silence with Dutton. The promised Twin Otter 400S came sweeping across the atoll from the north and did a long lazy turn over the house before lining up over the lagoon where it put down on the smooth surface before taxiing back towards the smaller Beaver at the pontoon.
Poppy and the two Johns came out to join them on the edge of the verandah. She had showered and washed and dried her hair, which gleamed in the morning sun, a red tropical flower of some sort behind her right ear. Her aqua blue tank top and white shorts against tanned legs made her look like a model from a South Pacific tourism poster. Quite simply, Harcourt was amazed by her composure, her resolve. She stood ready to confront the outside world that was about to engulf them. Anyway, that was what he thought, that was how he’d remember her.
EIGHTEEN
Within three hours they were back on the main island. Vinnie and his crew hadn’t wasted any time. The two ex-commandos had emerged from the Twin Otter float plane with loaded packs on their backs, each carrying a long canvas sleeve over his shoulder which could only contain a rifle of some sort, while one of them lugged a large and apparently heavy metal container that no doubt held the necessary ammunition.
They shook hands with Dutton, Poppy and Harcourt, plus the two Johns who would be staying with them. They’d been followed off the plane by a large shaven-headed man in taupe slacks and a violently coloured South Sea island shirt. He turned out to be Brad, their bodyguard, whose handshake, Harcourt discovered, was like being squeezed in a vice. Then came a dapper Fijian wearing a crisp white shirt, black tie and slacks, dispatched by Vinnie’s hastily hired undertaker to collect Vargas’s body. He’d been accompanied by a hulking Fijian in a police uniform, Inspector Petero Ratuvou, who looked like an old rugby forward who’d survived his share of battles on the field, but a perfectly affable fellow off of it. ‘Please, call me Inspector Petero,’ he said to Harcourt as they shook hands.
Along with the pilot, a New Zealand expat, last off the plane had been
Vinnie himself, wearing another loud pinstriped suit and wide tie and looking uncomfortable as he stepped out into the morning sunshine before tiptoeing across the shell grit beach as if it was a minefield. After more handshakes and a hug for Poppy, he’d offered condolences and in a lame attempt to lighten the mood suggested, ‘If I was ever meant to get my shoes full of sand and grit I would have been born a towel-head, not a wog.’
His SC lawyer and forensic pathologist, now aided by a senior staffer dispatched from the Australian High Commission in Suva, had remained in Nadi where they were in consultations with Fijian government officials and police.
‘We seem to be keeping a lid on this so far,’ Vinnie said to Dutton and Harcourt. ‘Hopefully we can get out of here and on our way back to Australia pretty well without drama later today. There will be a basic examination of the body – jeez, I can’t bring myself to say Mike anymore – probably at the public hospital in Nadi while the three of you will have to give individual statements to the police, probably Inspector Petero at one of the local cop shops. We’ll see, but the locals are being pretty good about it all.’
The inspector had wanted to see the site where Mike had been brought to shore and so Dutton and Harcourt drove him down the beach in one of the Mokes before walking the section that was too rough for the vehicle to traverse. Mike’s blood was still visible where it had soaked into the final stretch of otherwise pristine white sand. The surf, now enormous and unrideable, exploded out on the reef.
‘My god, were the waves this big yesterday?’ the inspector asked.
‘Uh, no, inspector,’ said Harcourt. ‘But they were coming up pretty quick and Mike got caught by a nasty one.’
‘Hmm, some of our visitors … the things they do.’ The inspector shook his head, took out a small camera from a backpack and photographed the stain on the sand and the otherwise idyllic location. He then made some notes in a small pad.