Red Rain

by Toby Neal

  I was on my knees, retching from the tear gas, when one of the raiders, face hidden by a gas mask, checked my uniform, apparently looking for names. LT. STEVENS was right there on a Velcro patch on my chest, right below a patch that read, contractor. Otherwise, my jungle-camo uniform was the same as the ones worn by the other U.S. men in the camp.

  The man zip-tied my hands, yelling for help. I wrenched away, stumbled to my feet. One of the trainees had his weapon out and took a shot at my attacker. It drew a line of fire across my side, and I felt rather than heard someone behind me. I couldn’t turn away before he slugged me on the head.

  It was lights out after that, until I woke up in the pit. Now I glanced at the camp’s commander from under my brows.

  “Is he still sick?” the man asked, picking up the peaches and sucking them from his fingers.

  “Yes. He needs help to walk.”

  “Well, let me know if he gets any worse. He can be our first casualty,” the commander said. “We’ll start killing them tomorrow. One a day until we get the money.”

  I controlled my response with an effort, keeping my breathing slow and my head lolling.

  “They aren’t paying the ransom, sir?” the tent guard asked.

  “Fucking tightwad Americans,” the man said. “We’re going to have to show we’re serious.” He picked up another MRE packet. “Get him out of here and start bringing up the men from the pit.”

  I allowed myself to be lifted up and helped back to the shed.

  There the man threw me another rice ball and refilled my water bottle before he locked me in.

  They weren’t paying our ransom, and I was going to die tomorrow if these thugs didn’t get the money. I rolled onto my side, removed the knife, and slid it under one of the bags stacked beside me, in case my guard missed it and came back to search me.

  I was going to have to escape, and if possible, bring the other men with me.

  Now that I had the knife with its compass, survival was at least possible, and while I didn’t have a map, I’d gotten a good look at the one on the wall behind the camp commander. Directly north of us, through a belt of jungle and what looked like some open area, was the Coco River, and on the other side, Nicaragua. I could get some help if I could just find people to alert to our situation, and hopefully the kidnappers wouldn’t pursue us into another country.

  It was still light out. There was no hope of escape until dark, and even then, getting the other men out was going to be difficult.

  But maybe the ransom would come today.

  There was nothing I could do until nightfall, so I ate the rice, drank only a little water because I planned to take the jug with me, and willed myself to sleep.

  Of course, it didn’t work.

  Instead, I remembered Lei on the last night before I left, standing in the doorway of our bedroom, wearing nothing but a towel. I’d gone to her. Looked down into her face, hoping.

  I loved that face so much it hurt.

  Her big, tilted brown eyes were full of shadows and darkness, but her lush mouth was turned up to mine. I bent down and kissed her, and she responded, the kindling of our bodies against each other instant and fiery.

  I’d missed her so much. We hadn’t been together in two months, since she’d moved out of our room when I’d told her about the deployment. I was too stubborn to beg or try to visit her in her little hideout at the back of the house. She was too stubborn to come back to me. But now she was here, and she dropped the towel. Nothing was left between us.

  All that existed was the velvet of her skin, the slickness of her mouth, her strong legs and delicious breasts and all of me over and in and around her as we strove. It was hard and harsh, wrenching and intense. Then, sweet and slow as a long last breath.

  What a fool I’d been.

  There were so many other things I could have done about my shit than come to this godforsaken hole. I’d wanted to punish myself. And I’d succeeded. But I’d punished her, too, and I’d seen it in the tears she shed even as we made love, sliding down her cheeks silent and desperate. We spoke no words, because words would destroy the moment. Words would remind us we were still poles apart.

  Yeah. I’d punished us both, and my son, too.

  But I was still alive, and I was off the booze now, and I’d faced Anchara’s ghost for the last time, at least according to her. Now I just had to stay alive and get back to my family.

  I’d go tonight.

  I shut my eyes and waited for night to come.

  Lei slammed the door of her truck. She’d pulled up onto a half-moon of stony beach a short drive from Mrs. Yamaguchi’s house. “So you go down here every day?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Yamaguchi had slid on a pair of bright green Crocs with her cotton pants and shirt, and donned a ratty sweater for their drive to the beach. She carried a canvas shopping bag emblazoned with Hasegawa General Store, the small family-run emporium in Hana that stocked everything for the remote town from candles to cartridges. “This for my litter cleanup.”

  Lei followed the elderly lady as she picked her way with the aid of one of her canes across the mounds of smooth volcanic rocks polished round by the ceaseless tumble of waves on the shore below. She looked up and down the beach. No one was there but the tiny white arc of an iwa, a Hawaiian tropicbird, flying above with its distinctive pure white silhouette and long, split tail. The ocean was the gray-green of an overcast day, and off in the distance, Lei spotted an unusual red rainbow beneath storm-blown cloud. Wasn’t that some sort of Hawaiian omen? She turned back, making her way through piled rocks and the mounds of driftwood clotting the beach.

  Mrs. Yamaguchi was still walking. They reached a small creek coming down from one of the many nearby valleys. The creek drained out into the ocean here, bouncing and trickling across the stones and carving through them to the sand beneath.

  Mrs. Yamaguchi pointed her cane at a mound of interwoven sticks, logs, and debris on the other side of the creek. “It was in there.”

  “I see how smart those Crocs are,” Lei muttered, as the old lady waded the shallow stream flow, wearing the plastic footwear, to reach the driftwood pile while Lei was still pulling off her athletic shoes and socks. She joined the old lady a few moments later. “Where was the skull?”

  Lei had already slipped some latex gloves on in the truck, so when Mrs. Yamaguchi pointed with her cane, Lei lifted the wood away, searching carefully for anything more.

  “Mrs. Yamaguchi, I’m looking around this area and there’s nobody. For miles. I don’t see any houses in that valley either.” Lei gestured up into the thickly jungled, narrow valley. “You have to tell me why you said someone would take the skull.”

  “There are people in that valley,” Mrs. Yamaguchi said. “People who don’t want you to know about them.”

  “But I told you the skull was old, right? It was buried. Probably an old grave that washed out in a flash flood.” Lei gestured to the mountain of tangled branches and debris. “These floods rip down the valleys and clear out all the overgrown brush. Some little boy’s ancient grave just finally washed away in all this.”

  “You think what you like. I know what I know.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Mrs. Yamaguchi refused to answer and just wandered off, picking up bits of plastic and litter and putting them slowly, painfully, in her bag.

  Lei tore into the pile of debris, pulling it apart and searching it carefully. She found nothing but branches, rotting grasses, old logs, leaves and twigs, and one battered coconut.

  But somewhere up in that narrow valley was a gravesite and people Mrs. Yamaguchi said didn’t want to be known. She photographed the area, the stream, and the valley with her phone camera. Seemed like a good time for a hike.

  But first she’d have to take Mrs. Yamaguchi home and let Pono know what she was up to.

  She checked the time on her phone. Twelve thirty p.m. She wasn’t going to make it back from Hana in time to pick Kiet up from scho
ol. Signal was iffy out here, but hopefully on the beach she’d be able to get a call through. She connected with her father, Wayne.

  “Hey, Dad. I’m out in Hana and can’t get back in time to pick up Kiet. He’s supposed to go to Ellen’s today—would you mind?”

  “No problem, Sweets. The lunch rush will be over by then.” She heard the clatter and clash of dishes in the background. Wayne’s Local Grindz in the Haiku Cannery Mall was doing a brisk business since he opened a few years ago. “I’ll run him out there. Maybe have a cup of coffee with Ellen while I’m at it.”

  “I’m sure she’d like that.” Lei had often wondered if the friendship that had grown up between Stevens’s widowed mother and her own single father might turn to something more. “I should be home by five, though. Thanks so much.”

  She hung up, but didn’t call Pono because Mrs. Yamaguchi was making her way back. The canvas bag was filling up with trash. “Do you do that every day, Mrs. Yamaguchi?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s amazing that there’s that much trash on this beach, then,” Lei said.

  “Such a shame, that,” the elderly lady said. “Rubbish, it washes up from the ocean. So many people, they throw any-kine stuffs in the ocean like it one big garbage dump.”

  “I hate that, too.” Lei’s most recent case had revolved around fish poaching and reef conservation. “The ocean is more fragile than people realize.”

  “The `aina, too,” Mrs. Yamaguchi said.

  That Hawaiian word for “land” was also the name of a handsome Coast Guardsman she’d met on her last case, a man whose appearance and heritage, similar to hers, had elicited something within her. A recognition. A chord of something shared, compatible, and exciting.

  But she wasn’t going to find out what. She didn’t care what it might be. She was married.

  Happily.

  Okay. Maybe not happily, but married. And her husband was a captive in Central America, probably suffering right now in some hideous prison camp. On the other hand, there was Kathy Fraser, her husband’s beautiful partner. Kathy knew things Stevens should have shared with his wife. She meant something to him, and he to her, and that scared Lei.

  Still. It wasn’t right to think about Aina Thomas and his kindness and the connection she’d felt with him. She flushed with shame for even having a thought about another man. Hopefully he’d get the message and just leave her alone, because she wasn’t feeling very strong right now.

  Stevens was captured, in danger. That was the priority. That, and her son. This case was just a time filler, but she might as well have a look for the gravesite since she’d driven all this way.

  Lei dropped Mrs. Yamaguchi off and tried to get a signal to call Pono, but there was no reception at the Yamaguchi house. She drove back to the beach and parked on the shoulder beside the stream. She found a plastic water bottle in the back seat, along with her portable backpack crime kit.

  Lei twisted her wayward hair into a ponytail and tried to call Pono again. This time the call went straight to a glitching voice mail.

  “Hey, Pono. Just wanted you to know I’m taking a hike into a valley in Hana at”—she looked around for a landmark—“mile marker sixteen.”

  The voice mail cut off abruptly in midsentence, and when she tried to call back, it didn’t connect at all.

  Oh well.

  She locked the truck, donned the backpack and her Kevlar, checked her weapon, pulled her MPD ball cap down over her hair, and headed into the mouth of the stream.

  Chapter Seven

  Darkness had finally fully come. I prepared as best I could, untying the rope, which might be useful for something else, and looping it around my waist. I snapped the knife scabbard onto my belt, drank a little water, and carrying the jug, headed into the back corner. I pressed gently on the shutter.

  It didn’t open.

  It was too dark in the shed to really see, so I set the water jug down and felt around the edges of the window.

  Yes, there was an opening in the wall. Whatever hallucinogenic state I’d been in yesterday, I wasn’t so gone that this remembered window wasn’t even real. But the opening was shut firmly now. Pushing on it, nothing happened. A wave of terror rippled over me, prickling the skin of my hands and erupting across my shoulders in sweat.

  This was the first time I was really scared. All this time I’d been pretty sure that the best thing I could do was stay alive until rescue, that I’d be ransomed. But I’d heard it myself from the camp commander’s lips—I was to be made an example of, to show how serious the kidnappers were.

  I need to get out. I stifled the desire to pound and push on the window. That would draw attention.

  Perhaps there was a latch of some kind.

  I drew the knife from its scabbard. It was a six-inch blade of tapered, tempered steel with a serrated back and a razor-sharp blade, the tang running all the way through the molded plastic grip. It fit my hand like it was made for me.

  I slid the knife down into the crack between the edge of the window and the shutter, sliding it slowly along.

  It made a rasping sound against the metal that sounded like our dogs when they wanted to get in at the back door, a clawing that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  And it caught on something.

  I worked it back and forth, hoping it was a simple hook.

  Hyperaware of the loud scraping noise I was making, I slid and pried, jiggled and worked. Finally, with a squeak, the latch of the shutter gave.

  A draft of slightly cooler, mossy-smelling air drifted up into the shed as I lifted the shutter. At least it wasn’t raining at this particular moment.

  I sheathed the knife, dropped the water jug gently outside. I slowly raised the metal shutter, looking and listening. No response to my activities so far.

  I used my arms to lift myself into the opening, and brought up a leg. Awkwardly, painfully, I slid my leg out over the sharp, narrow edge. Weakened as I was, it took all I had to ease myself quietly out the opening and drop onto the soft, pulpy ground outside. The smell of green, growing, and rotting things filled my nostrils as I squatted, all my senses alert.

  In the dark of the creaking, clicking, squeaking jungle, several of the glowing moths flitted. I’d probably been having a hallucination yesterday. Anchara couldn’t have visited me.

  Thank God the shed butted up against the jungle. It would be easy to just set off into the darkness, but I had to see if I could get any of the men out of the pit.

  I flattened myself against the metal wall and sidled along it, staying in the shadow of the roof overhang as I worked my way to the front of the building.

  The moon was a thin blue-white flashlight in the sky, flicking on and off as clouds came and went. The deep shadow of trees provided extra cover around the shed, but ahead of me was the open area at the end of the muddy runway. Temporary shelters hunkered like turtles around a fire pit area.

  I could hear voices coming from that area, snatches of conversation. The fire provided a distant glow and flickering invitation, glimpsed through the tents’ fabric.

  Even though things looked deserted, there had to be guards posted.

  How was I going to get out into the open area to the pit, let alone figure out a way to get the men out?

  Perhaps a distraction could draw attention away.

  My eyes finally adjusted all they were going to, and I spotted two guards. They were armed, leaning against trees near the main open area. They didn’t appear to be highly alert—their postures were relaxed, their heads turned toward the fire. One of them was on my side of the clearing, the other on the opposite side, farther away but closer to the pit.

  Perhaps I could disable one of them and he would have something I could use as a distraction.

  I began working my way around, keeping to the shadows, my rubber-soled hiking boots silent on the damp jungle mulch underfoot. There was no rush. I had all night. I just needed to get around the camp undetected, disable the guard, and the
n… That was as far ahead as I could plan.

  I controlled my breathing, keeping each breath quiet and slow, and as I did I felt an extraordinary alertness flood me. My earlier weakness and sluggishness were completely gone. As I crept around the wide, rough-barked bole of a tree, I realized I hadn’t felt this alive in years.

  I was clearheaded, revitalized, and firing on all cylinders.

  This. This was what I’d come for.

  In a highly dangerous situation, with my life and the lives of others at stake, I finally felt good in my body again. This was what I’d needed and had been unable to explain to anyone.

  When I got home, I had to get back to solving cases. Being the trainer behind a desk had been making all my other shit worse.

  I closed the last few yards toward the guard leaning on his tree. I slid around the tree, focused on the man leaning there, his rifle carelessly propped on his leg and his chin nodding on his chest.

  I grabbed him in a yoke chokehold, hauling him back into the darkness.

  He thrashed, and I tightened my grip, feeling his struggles get more frantic. His legs were kicking up leaves as he writhed and kicked, so I lifted him off the ground, and that settled things rapidly.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him. When I felt the artery in his neck, his heart was still beating.

  “Arturo! You okay, man?” came from the other guard in Spanish.

  “Taking a piss,” I called back in that language, coughing into my fist in case my voice didn’t sound right.

  I lowered the unconscious man to the ground. He was wearing a web belt with shoulder straps loaded with several grenades, ammo, and a canteen. I stripped it off him and put it on, acquiring another knife and a pistol, too. In his upper shirt pockets were a chocolate bar, a packet of sugar cookies, and a small LED flashlight on a webbing strap, meant to be worn as a headlight.

  Jackpot. I was good to go into the jungle with all of this.

  I gagged the man with his own neckerchief and hog-tied him with his belt. Killing him certainly would have been faster, but I didn’t want to raise the stakes on this whole operation before I’d even gotten away from camp. I put Arturo’s billed hat on, and holding the M16 in the same way he had, I slouched back to his surveillance spot.