Aground on St. Thomas

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “Pull out your spyglasses and your infrared scopes. The attorney general’s office has just announced a bounty for any information pertaining to the Governor’s whereabouts that leads to his arrest.”

  With a grimace, he pushed the button for the jingle music. The reggae thump bounced off the cistern walls.

  “I smell a rat.”

  Coki Beach

  ~ 45 ~

  Bounty Hunters

  GIVEN THE SIZEABLE reward posted by the attorney general’s office, it didn’t take long for all of St. Thomas to get in on the hunt for the Governor. News of the bounty quickly spread across the island. The information-disseminating power of the KRAT broadcast had been undiminished by the attempts to shut down its transmission.

  Citizens peeked out their windows, cagily eying their neighbors. Over the course of the next five minutes, the intensity of person-to-person scrutiny ratcheted up to a heretofore unimagined level.

  But when this passive approach failed to yield results, the island’s residents swung into action.

  Chickens were rousted in backyard coops; cluttered garages were foraged. Pruning shears were used to attack patches of overgrown greenery in side yards and culverts. Anywhere the big man might be hiding was the subject of a diligent search.

  The overwhelming public consensus seemed to be that the Governor must still be in Charlotte Amalie, not far from Government House. Streams of people flowed into town from the interior, hoping to get in on the reward. The narrow alleyways between the shoreline shops soon saw more foot traffic than on days when the largest cruise ship was in port.

  Regardless of their personal feelings about the Governor’s guilt or innocence, money was a powerful motivator.

  No one was more inspired by the potential prize than a charismatic Crucian coconut vendor–turned–Coki Beach braid entrepreneur.

  •

  “THAT’S THE LAST one,” Mic said as he tied off the final braid for what had been a very thick head of hair. The long locks of wild curls were now neatly arrayed in several dozen braided rows.

  The hair belonged to one of his regular customers, a woman who worked at the aquatic center.

  “You’re the best, Mic,” she said, handing him a five-dollar bill as she stood up from the sand. “I’ll be back on Tuesday.”

  “You know where to find me, mon,” he called out, causing the customer to giggle.

  As the woman walked off, Mic handed the money to Currie. He preferred to let his partner handle all of their financial affairs.

  “Ca-ching,” Mic said with an eyebrow pump as Currie tucked the cash in a shorts pocket he kept closed with a safety pin.

  “Not bad for a slow day.” With a sigh, Mic looked out across the empty beach. “Where is everybody?”

  Currie shook his head. “They kept the day-trippers on the boat because of the mess with the Governor.”

  Mic scooped up a cracked shell and tossed it into the water. “Well, then those pasty boys need to come down here and get some braids done.”

  •

  THE RADIO AT the rum shack squawked as the bartender switched over from his collection of downloaded beach tunes to the latest KRAT update. After hearing about the reward offer, Mic flopped backward onto the sand.

  “That’s a lot of dough, Currie-mon.” He whistled up at the sky. “Think of what we could do with that kind of money. We could get our own place.”

  Currie twiddled a stray hair tie in his fingers. “You wouldn’t know what to do inside a real house, Mic. You’d probably feel trapped. We haven’t slept under a proper roof in years.”

  Mic bent his knees, digging his heels into the sand. “A tent, mon. I promise you, I wouldn’t complain about being inside a tent.”

  The pair fell silent for several minutes. The broadcasters took another break, and the bartender turned off the radio, leaving the dull lapping of the waves to fill the void.

  Finally, Mic smacked his lips.

  “Currie, mon, we know a thing or two about hiding. We should head into town and see if we can’t track down this Governor dude.”

  Currie sighed. “About all we know is how to hang out with a bunch of Jamaicans on a beach.”

  “You think he’s here?” Mic sat up and immediately began looking up and down the shoreline.

  Currie chuckled at his friend’s gullibility. “No, he’d stick out like a sore thumb. He’s probably still in Charlotte Amalie. That’s my bet.”

  After another lull in the conversation, Currie hopped up from the sand.

  “Come on,” he said, offering Mic a hand. “Thanks to your braiding, we have a little extra cash. Let’s catch a ride into town. We might as well go see what all of the fuss is about.”

  •

  MINUTES LATER, THE pair climbed into the back of a safari truck. It was a spontaneous—and fateful—decision.

  Currie couldn’t have known that he was steering them on a direct path toward the man bent on their destruction.

  The reward for information about the Governor was a minor amount compared to the far greater value that had been placed on their heads.

  The West End of St. Thomas

  ~ 46 ~

  A Deal with the Devil

  THE WEST END of St. Thomas was a lightly populated terrain, scattered with private estates. Little of the commercial tourist infrastructure that dominated the island’s eastern half had spread to this sector.

  The area featured several stretches of inaccessible coastline along with a few tucked-away beaches that were popular with the locals but were too remote to be reached by day-tripper traffic.

  It was the ideal spot to stage an unsupervised entry.

  The Crucian motorboat powered swiftly toward shore, targeting one such length of sand. A dense forest flanked the rocky cove, blocking the view from the main road.

  The captain slowed only slightly to navigate around a jut of boulders. No sooner had the bow pushed up onto the bank than a half-dozen thugs hopped out of the vessel.

  The men carried sizeable loads of guns and ammo. Their dark skin had been heavily tattooed, the inked emblems memorials to romantic quests, family members, and various gang associations.

  In addition to their weaponry, the men sported an assortment of gold chains and diamond-studded ear and nose rings.

  But none was adorned as decoratively as their leader, Casanova.

  He had blinged up during the ride around the island’s southern rim. Who knew what St. Thomian ladies he might encounter that evening?

  After all, he thought with a smile, that night, he planned to take the streets of Charlotte Amalie.

  •

  WITH THE LAST pack of supplies and ammo tossed onto the sand, the motorboat reversed out of the cove and returned to open sea. Nova motioned for his gang to gather up their gear and move inland.

  The key to these surreptitious landings was to get it over and done with as quickly as possible. The longer they loitered, the greater the chance a busybody sailboat or a passing coast guard vessel might radio in a report.

  The Crucian crew hiked up a goat trail to a clearing where they were met by a small fleet of jeeps and all-terrain vehicles. The transport would take them to the outskirts of Charlotte Amalie. They would wait there until nightfall to make their final incursion.

  Nova smiled, spinning a gold ring he’d slipped onto his left index finger. Everything was going according to plan—that is, until an unexpected figure stepped out of the front vehicle.

  The crew watched their leader, waiting for his signal.

  Nova eyed the slim man in the golf shirt and chinos, pondering his presence. He knew the man by reputation—and his descriptive name.

  The Fixer.

  •

  NOVA STRODE A circle around the clearing, prowling like a panther as he sized up his potential adversary.

  The
Fixer allowed a sixty-second inspection before stiffly introducing himself. His alias they both recognized as meaningless, merely another obligatory step in the dance. Then he cut to the point.

  “I’m here on behalf of the Governor. Whatever she’s paying you, he’s willing to double it.” The Fixer paused and then added, “Surely that’s worth your consideration.”

  Nova was unimpressed. “That’s not enough to switch sides. She’s a powerful woman. Your involvement . . . complicates things.”

  He leaned toward the Fixer, a menacing cue to his crew, who brandished their weapons as they closed in around the interloper.

  The Fixer appeared unconcerned. He had done his homework. He’d come to the bargaining table prepared.

  “I can get you the Coconut Boys.”

  The words had their intended affect. Nova stepped back, and his men immediately relaxed.

  Without further hesitation, he offered his hand for a confirming shake.

  “Then we have a deal.”

  The Lutheran Church

  ~ 47 ~

  Bunkered

  THE BISHOP RETURNED to the cistern in time to hear the KRAT duo wrap up their broadcast.

  Dread Fred rubbed a towel over his head, soaking up the sweat. There was relief in his voice. “We’re signing off for now, folks. Thanks for sticking with us this morning. You can look for us the same time tomorrow. We’ll do our best to get back on the air.”

  Whaler added a parting comment. “Stay safe, my friends.”

  As the DJs packed up their equipment, Sanchez grabbed her satchel and moved toward the ladder. Bobo remained in his chair. He looked expectantly at the Bishop.

  The Bishop held up a cautioning hand. He stood in front of the ladder, blocking her path.

  “Senator Sanchez, I advise you to stay here in the cistern for a while longer.”

  She bristled at the suggestion. “It’s too hot in here. I don’t think I can take another . . .”

  The Bishop cut in, his voice calm but commanding. “The federal agents are still looking for you. There’s a team sweeping the area as we speak. If you leave now, you’re likely to end up with the rest of the senators, trapped in the Legislative Chambers.” He smiled sympathetically. “I assure you, this is a better alternative.”

  “He’s right, Jules,” Bobo said with a stretch. He began pulling off his tunic. “We might as well get comfortable.”

  Sanchez watched forlornly as Dread Fred and Whaler climbed the ladder and disappeared into the world above.

  The Bishop quickly followed, pausing at the top.

  “I’ll try to bring you some water, but it’s best to close this for now.”

  The bottom hem of the cassock disappeared from view.

  A claustrophobic fear gripped the senator’s chest as the hatch swung shut and the Bishop cinched down the lid.

  Across the Island of St. Thomas

  ~ 48 ~

  Everywhere at Once

  BY MIDAFTERNOON, THE local cell phone towers had resumed service, either because the ordered blockage period had ended or the person in control of the switch had tired of the inconvenience. So many St. Thomas residents had moved their phones over to the Tortola tower, the backup had begun to overload from the extra usage.

  Word of the attorney general’s reward offer now spread to those few residents who hadn’t been able to access the intermittent KRAT broadcasts.

  The volunteer-assisted manhunt for the Governor transitioned into yet a higher gear. As the islanders searched high and low for their erstwhile elected leader and, more important, the lucrative reward money, a few promising leads began to surface—and then the number exploded exponentially.

  The designated hotline was besieged with callers.

  Throughout the rest of the afternoon, reports continued to pile in. The Governor was sighted in every possible location in Charlotte Amalie and across St. Thomas. Other eyewitnesses placed him on St. John and St. Croix—both at the same time.

  For Agent Friday, overseeing the impromptu call center from the FBI’s St. Thomas field office, it was a maddening experience.

  Coconut was one fruit, beverage additive, and flavoring that he would never again voluntarily consume.

  •

  THE LOCAL FBI agents had been somewhat less than hospitable when Friday requested a landline and desk space in their office.

  He could understand their bitterness. It had been a poor operational decision not to brief them on the day’s planned arrests. The offended feelings, he reasoned, probably explained the condition of the room he’d been offered.

  The walls were dirty and scuffed, in need of a fresh coat of paint. The carpeting was so severely stained, it was impossible to tell what the original color had been. The desk was a prefab government-issue construct that looked as if one of its legs might fall off at any moment.

  As for the phone, he’d been given a plastic contraption with a push-button keypad whose center number six routinely stuck in the depressed position. The receiver relayed incoming audio accompanied by a dull echo, likely a result of corroded wiring.

  He had turned the phone’s volume all the way up to its maximum setting, but it was still difficult to make out the voices coming through the line.

  It certainly wasn’t enough to drown out the occasional mocking comments from the agents on the other side of the wall. They were reveling in the mission’s current state of failure.

  Despite the squalid surroundings, the poor equipment, and the hostile atmosphere, the field office was a far preferable command center to the Legislature Building.

  Friday shuddered at the thought.

  Given the difficulties in locating the Governor, the appellate judge had ordered that the arrested senators be taken into custody aboard the navy ship. It was a decision that should have been made by the district court judge, but no one had been able to track her down since she left the melee of the early morning proceedings.

  The growing armada of attorneys advising the senators had pounced on this legal technicality, challenging the appellate judge’s order. The politicians had decided to stage a sit-in, obstinately refusing to move.

  The situation had reached a stalemate, with no resolution in sight.

  •

  FRIDAY LOOKED DOWN at the map he’d spread across the wobbly desk. He’d used his color-coded grid scheme to allocate agents into different sectors, so that they could efficiently chase down as many leads as possible on the missing Governor, to no avail.

  While they were typically unable to identify the look-alike who had triggered each report, it became clear that they were dealing with more than just the occasional case of mistaken identity. An army of doppelgängers had been let loose upon the territory, preprogrammed to pop up in choreographed locations that were timed to generate maximum confusion and distraction.

  As the afternoon wore on, a concentration of Governor sightings were reported at eating establishments. A doppelgänger made an appearance at Gladys’ Café, a popular West Indian place in the alleys along the waterfront. Almost simultaneously, another look-alike was seen at a diner in Frenchtown on the southwest edge of the harbor. Before those two instances could be investigated, a third Governor was spotted by the poolside kiosk at one of the island’s high-end resorts.

  For the increasingly frustrated—and hungry—federal agents sent to investigate these sightings, the temptation to stop for a quick bite had been too great.

  Friday listened to the latest garbled-mouthful report from the field.

  “Another false alarm, sir,” the agent mumbled through an inartfully suppressed munch.

  “Anything else?”

  A loud swat echoed through the transmission.

  “The mosquitoes down here are vicious.”

  •

  AGENT FRIDAY STARED at the scuffed wall inside the tiny office and po
ndered the strategic implications.

  The Governor’s pre-indictment efforts had extended far beyond the series of last-ditch pleas he had submitted to the executive branch in the days leading up to this morning’s invasion. He had made extensive preparations to elude capture and arrest—activities that apparently went undetected by his top aide.

  Either the FBI’s Government House source had been wrong about the Governor’s mind-set in those last days or the whistleblower’s betrayal had been discovered and he’d been intentionally cut out of the loop.

  This much was clear. The Governor had no intention of making an easy surrender.

  Government House

  ~ 49 ~

  His Whistle Blown

  UP THE HILL from Friday’s impromptu call center, Operation Coconut’s second headquarters was seeing far less productivity.

  Little had changed inside Government House since the discovery of the second governor impostor at the construction site and the sacrificial chair being tossed over the office balcony—other than Agent Hightower had slipped into a rum-induced nap.

  The office remained in a state of disarray, with Hightower at its center, sleeping on the leather recliner behind the Governor’s desk. His head was tilted back in an openmouthed drool. Every so often, a slobbering snore broke the silence, but otherwise, the Gorilla was quiet.

  The Government House employees—minus the burly maid in the high-necked dress—were still being held in the first-floor lobby, but the group had grown restless. Their patience had run out, and tempers were rising to match those inside the Legislature Building.

  So far, nothing had been thrown at the luckless agents standing guard, but it was only a matter of time.

  •

  CEDRIC FOUND HIMSELF once more pacing inside the Governor’s office. He shook his head at the deplorable sight of the room and the special agent in charge passed out behind the desk.