Caribbean Gold: Three Adventure Novels

by K. T. Tomb

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  THE

  TEMPEST

  A Thriller

  by

  K.T. TOMB

  The Tempest

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2014 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  The author wishes to dedicate this book to the late

  Author C. Clark.

  The Tempest

  Prologue

  La Isla Samara,

  Somewhere in the Caribbean

  The tiny island of Samara sat alone in the Caribbean Sea, as though the ocean surrounding it could engulf it if it wanted to, especially if a decent storm were to brew in the region. The fifteen-story resort hotel sat alone on the tiny white-beached island, with a swarm of construction workers making their way around the building, performing their various tasks. Massive waves crashed along the sandy shores, pulling the sand into the ocean as they retreated. The island was small and remote, perfect for an ultra-luxurious hotel project such as this but barely enough room for the small airfield they were constructing. After three years of complicated work, the hotel was finally nearing completion, but was still in the detailed stage of finishing touches. Construction workers filled the structure on the ground and on scaffolding as furnishings and fittings arrived by cargo plane and ship to complete the end designs of the interior decorators.

  Suddenly, a scream pierced through the loud construction noise, followed by a loud thump.

  Work ceased as the men dropped their tools and ran to the spot the thump came from. In front of the hotel’s main entrance, a body lay spread out on the ground at an awkward angle. Blood poured from the back of the man’s head and formed a gruesome pool on the perfect travertine tiles. It was a portly man of average height, dressed in blue jeans, white T-shirt and an orange ‘CAUTION’ vest—the standard “uniform” of the construction crew. The workers studying the grisly scene looked up at the top of the fifteen-story building, squinting their eyes and shielding them from the searing sunlight, trying to put a location on where he had fallen from. They buzzed and speculated over the reason behind the fall.

  “His wife just left him. He must’ve gotten it into his head that this would be it,” one voice said.

  “He did sound depressed the day before,” another one confirmed.

  Gossip swirled around the crew, while a few of them broke from the crowd to get help. One of these men was the foreman, who marched over to his car far removed from the construction site and drove to an office building only minutes away. The foreman gripped the wheel and steadied his breathing; his measured breaths did nothing to relieve him of the mounting anxiety in his chest. When he reached the office building, he parked his car and stormed into the office.

  This has to end. It has to end today! the foreman thought, reviewing the conversation that would take place once he got off the elevator.

  The foreman stormed into the plush office down the hallway on the third floor.

  “Steve. Steve!” he screamed, shooting straight past the receptionist.

  “Mr. Morton, you can’t go in there without an appointment.”

  However, Mr. Morton ignored her. He twisted the knob and pushed the door open with a full swing. Steve sat on the far side of the desk in a leather upholstered chair, appearing very settled into his position as he wrote notes on a notepad.

  “You have to end this,” Mr. Morton said, slamming his hands on the desk.

  Steve did not look up from his writing; he remained unshaken.

  “End what, Mr. Morton?” he asked.

  “We’re working these men too hard. Most of them haven’t been on their required leave in months and they’re getting stressed. That leads to exhaustion, and that’s going to cause accidents, even deaths.”

  Steve kept his eyes glued on the blueprint.

  “Give me one minute to finish this, and then we’ll talk.”

  Steve noticed the receptionist at the doorway.

  “Ah, Mary, come here.”

  He gave Mary the notepad.

  “Make a memo of this, and then send it out right away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mary took the notepad and departed with it, reading the writing.

  “Another man jumped at the site,” Mr. Morton said, once Mary closed the door. “This is the third one this quarter. Some guy fell from the top of the building and landed in front of the entrance.”

  Steve smirked. “Need I remind you that tourist season is rapidly approaching? This is the Caribbean, the tourist destination of the world. When November ends, Samsara has got to be ready to receive guests; we have reservations. When those people come from the States, Europe and everywhere else on this planet, they expect to stay at a completed resort. Do you hear me? Complete. That means no amount of money or delays or deaths will get in the way of this project.”

  “What about the scandals? This will be international news. The BBC and the networks in the States will pick up on this, and news outlets everywhere will follow.”

  Steve shrugged and settled back in his chair. “Free publicity. That’s all it is, Mike. Besides, anyone with common sense will see these things happen all the time. Turn on the news. There’s some kind of accident every single day, some tragedy that befalls the human race because of somebody’s stupidity, or someone’s inclination to sin. But I understand your concern. I appreciate it as well, my last foreman wasn’t as careful as you are; he made some stupid mistakes when a few of his men had accidents on the site. I’m still waiting to see if those mistakes are going to come back and bite me in the rear. All we can do is arrange for the funeral. What’s the man’s name?”

  “Marshall Kelly. He was assigned to roof work and somehow, he fell off the goddamn scaffolding.”

  “Ah.” Steve turned to his computer and pulled up a file of workers’ names and their pertinent information. “Family problems?”

  “Some of the guys say he’s been having some. His wife threatened to leave him.”

  “Any next of kin?”

  “Other than his wife?” Mr. Morton paused to ponder this question. “I don’t think so.”

  Steve looked up Kelly’s name in the employee spreadsheet on his computer.

  “I thought so,” he said, arriving at the same conclusion from reading the screen.

  He returned his attention to Mr. Morton.

  “Then no one else has to know about his death. Do with the body as you have done with the others; ship it home, send the wife the check and move on according to plan and on schedule.”

  “No.”

  Steve moved the computer mouse, operating the on-screen pointer to lock himself out of the account. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m done with this shit, man.”

  “Need I remind you, that you are in debt to me, literally? You borrowed money from me before you started this project, or did you forget?”

  “What? The mortgage money? I paid you all of that twenty grand back, remember?”

  “No, not all of it. You still stiffed me on the last payment.”

  Morton was silent, he had been called out.

  “I’m pretty surprised at you, Morton. You’re the foreman on this site. Your first responsibility is to make sure the workers are safe, and that they’re in good medical hands if anything happens to them. It’s your responsibility to keep them working and earning a living, but here you are instead, yelling at me to stop the project.”

  Morton shrugged and left the office feeling beaten. He drove back to the construction site, where an ambulance and two police cars were parked. Sighing, he made his way through the scene and approached the police officers.

  “Officer Barnes,” Mr. Morton said.

  “Mr. Morton,” the policeman replied, in a typica
l island drawl. “This is becoming regular occurrence, man. Why you workers don’t stop droppin’ like fly? You no see them need to get relieved?”

  “My next team doesn’t get here until Friday, Barnes. They’ve got to make do; there’s no way I can stop the work; we’ve only got another ten weeks to be finished and it’s the height of hurricane season already.”

  “I understand, man, but the men then have be more careful.”

  Morton nodded his agreement and went inside the lobby to find the decorators; maybe he could have one piece of good news this morning.

  ***

  One year later…

  “Mr. Carter,” the technician said, without taking his eyes from the computer screen, “we’ve initiated complete lockdown of the property.”

  “Excellent,” Carter replied. Then he turned to another man and asked, “Gibson, what are the reports? How strong is this thing?”

  “N.O.A.A. has it registered as a Category 3 presently, sir, and it’s definitely headed straight for Samsara. We have about twelve hours before the eye passes over us.”

  Inside the hotel, the staff members were busy getting ready for the hurricane to hit. They’d been well trained for the past two years; every one of them knew the procedure like the back of their hand. Even though Samsara had never been hit by a storm since completion, there wasn’t a manager on property who doubted their capabilities.

  In the kitchen, Chef Antonio barked orders to everyone around him. The chefs and stewards were busy rearranging the cold storage rooms and the fresh product cabinets into the proper sequence for consumption during a storm. The freshest food would have to be consumed first, followed by the more preserved, even though they wouldn’t be losing power at any time during the squall; the extensive back-up power system would ensure that.

  He paused and told one man that their new, state-of-the-art hotel could withstand any storm.

  Smiling, he added, “He can huff and puff all he wants, but not even God can blow this resort down.”

  As their guests calmly reclined by the heated indoor pool, enjoyed massages in the well-appointed spa and sipped afternoon cocktails at each of the hotel’s twenty-six full service bars, Eric Carter and his four computer technicians sat comfortably in front of the screens at their workstations and began to go through the emergency sequence. Computer screens showed every possible angle of the massive resort and with the touch of keys and the flicking of switches, metal shutters appeared out of the hotel’s exterior and covered all the windows, skylights opened and custom recessed light fixtures flooded every room and level with artificial sunlight. Steel doors locked into place, protecting the entire lobby and entrance way and additional commands were emailed to the maintenance department for the generators to be primed and tested and all debris to be removed from the outside of the hotel. With that, Samsara, the indestructible resort, was declared fully armed against the coming storm.

  As the winds hit the island with Category 4 hurricane force, confirmation spread among the management team that the hotel was indeed the architectural wonder that it was built to be.

  In the hotel’s executive offices, Steve Masterson smiled at the large screen on the office walls. Images from the exterior cameras flashed periodically, showing the nightmarish scene outside.

  “Isn’t it everything we said it would be, Mr. Ivorsson?” he said to the tall, blond Swedish man who stood beside him smoking a cigar as they both watched the pictures on the monitor.

  Ivorsson blew out a ring of smoke as he watched the storm rage outside. But inside, the lights didn’t even flicker. Comfy. He held up his glass and looked at the amber liquid. Without even taking his eyes from the spectacle he was watching, he recited a version of the children’s book, “And they huffed and they puffed, but they couldn’t blow this house down.”

  “I’m happy that the investors happened to be here for our first storm. Not that I want you to be in harm’s way, but how better to exhibit the real premise of the hotel; what makes Samsara so different from any other resorts,” Masterson said, stepping back towards his desk. “You and your colleagues invested in an indestructible hotel, but really what we offer here is an indestructible vacation; no matter what Mother Nature throws at us, there won’t be one interruption to the indulgent retreat all our guests have planned.”

  Ivorsson said nothing but nodded appreciatively as he lifted his glass to his lips.

  In the distance, Hurricane Freda raged and threatened to strengthen to a Category 5 before passing over La Isla Samsara. But Steve wasn’t worried and neither was anyone else who was inside the resort. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case with the other inhabitants of the island.

  Chapter One

  Kingston, Jamaica, present day.

  The Winfreds walked through the finger docks between the airplane and the terminal. The atmosphere seemed different, and Karl Winfred sensed the humidity around them almost immediately. Passengers pushed past him and his wife as they struggled to pull their small carry-on suitcases behind them. When they reached the airport terminal, Karl noticed a rainbow through the spanning window. The skies were welcoming and generous with sunlight. The sunrays brushed the grounds with enthusiasm as the rainbow extended across the sky.

  Karl looked up at it.

  “I hate rainbows.”

  Rebecca glowered at him, and Karl saw her expression out of the corner of his eyes.

  “What do you mean, you hate rainbows?” she asked in disbelief.

  “We’ve been married 15 years. You didn’t know that?”

  “I think you mentioned it in passing, but not as though you were making it as an out-and-out statement. Really, who says they hate rainbows?”

  Rebecca pouted with a mocking tremble in her lips. She put her hand on Karl’s shoulder.

  “Did a rainbow hurt your feelings in school?”

  Karl quickened his pace. Some people strolled through the terminal like it was a day in the park, while a few here and there dashed through like they were attempting to reach the end zone of a football field.

  “I don’t hate them like that, like I plot to rid the world of them. Ever since I was a kid, when I saw my first one in a puddle after a rainfall, it didn’t do anything for me. Many people would have stared at it, but for me there was no fascination. Then, whenever I see one, it’s like … nothing. I don’t think about whether pictures should be taken of them and put on greeting cards, or that I should feel inspired to think more positive. None of that. Rainbows have no room in my life.”

  Passengers stood around the baggage claim carousel waiting to pick up their bags. The Winfreds stopped to wait as well. Rebecca retrieved a small mirror from her purse, fluffed her bangs and stuffed the mirror in her purse.

  “You have the oddest quirks about you.”

  “Really? Now there’s something I’ve never heard you say before, Rebecca,” he replied sarcastically.

  Rebecca adjusted the shoulder strap of her purse.

  “Christ, here we go again.”

  The siren sounded, accompanied by a flashing light on the machine. The conveyor belt rolled, and a rush of baggage came out from behind the wall.

  “Seriously, Becky. Is that all I am to you?” Karl said. “A source of amusement? Don’t I do anything right?”

  His wife paused. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Awkward silence lingered between the two amidst the bustling of the terminal. The silence drew out after Karl asked his question.

  Karl shrugged.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Sometimes, when my girlfriends and I get together for lunch, or when we go work out at the gym, we … talk.”

  “You talk to your friends about me.”

  Karl pursed his lips, churning this information in his brain.

  “That comes as no surprise. Girls talk to each other all the time about anything and everything. Those Real Housewives shows are a good example of idle women who talk to each other too much. We don’t talk about housewives, or S
ex and the City or what happened when a next-door neighbor runs out into the streets naked with sushi sticking to her naked skin. We have … meaningful conversations.”

  A black bag rolled out. Karl moved closer to the carousel. Recognizing the tag, he pulled it off the conveyor belt.

  “I’m not trying to bust into your girls’ night out or whatever it is that you call it, okay? What do you tell them?”

  “Before I go any further, remember that I don’t bash you, but when you come into the picture, I’m honest.”

  Karl spotted another piece of luggage right behind his own: a light blue one, followed by a dark blue one. He grabbed one in each hand and yanked them off the conveyor belt onto the floor. “What do you say to them?”

  “I don’t say much, okay? I’m only expressing concern that you … about your…” Rebecca looked around herself. “We can’t talk about this here.”

  Karl passed the blue baggage to his wife. “Fine. When can we talk about this?”

  “At the hotel. That way, I can at least order a cocktail before telling you everything else.” Karl and Rebecca traversed by foot through the airport down the escalator and into the humid air that instantly weighed down on them. The hot Jamaican sun washed over the sidewalk as the couple stepped up to it along with nearby strangers waiting for a taxicab.

  “I can’t wait to get to the hotel. They just finished it, and it’s unlike anything that’s ever been seen,” Rebecca said. “I hear that it’s so huge, you can see it on a plane.”

  “I see,” Karl said, observing the street and hailing for the upcoming taxi.

  “But, I’m frightened, too. According to the news reports, a lot of the workers died during the construction.” Rebecca leaned closer to Karl.

  “People are saying the place is haunted with their ghosts.”

  “Really now?”

  A taxi pulled up to the curb and Karl leaned into the open passenger’s side window.