by Toby Neal
“Untie me,” I croaked.
Falconer was too busy looking for a way to arm himself. He ransacked the meager room with its multiple cots, unable to find anything but a pair of scissors. He unhooked the bag of liquid hanging beside me from the metal pole, laying the bag on my chest. “This will do.”
“Untie me.” I said it louder. “I can move. I think.”
The handle of the door rattled and rattled. The boom of someone kicking the door echoed through the room. I heaved myself sideways in the cot, trying to flip it over. That did nothing but send a lance of fire through me, and a sharp yelp of pain burst from my lips.
Falconer, standing by the door, the pole raised, seemed to realize that he’d left me tied and helpless. He turned toward me just as they fired on the door from the other side.
The shotgun blast sounded like a cannon in the enclosed space. Like some horrible cartoon come to life, the round tore a hole in the wood and pierced Falconer from behind. The shell blew through his midsection, spattering me with his blood, and embedded itself in the wall above my head.
Falconer dropped the metal pole. His hands clutched his abdomen. His very dark eyes, wide and ringed with white, met mine. He gave a little head shake, an ironic acknowledgment at having come this far only to die now.
“No!” I screamed. The door flew inward. Camouflage-dressed soldiers ran in as Falconer dropped to his knees, blood pouring between his fingers. He looked down at his hands and slowly tipped over onto his side.
The captain from the camp we’d escaped from so long ago entered the room, striding with a swagger. His soldiers stood over my bed, guns pointed down at me, as the captain walked over to Falconer. He gazed at the giant wound in the man’s belly. Falconer looked up at him.
“Gut shot. You will die slow and terrible,” he said in Spanish. “I will give you mercy.”
Falconer shut his eyes and nodded, once. The captain pulled his pistol and shot Falconer in the head. Falconer jerked, and relaxed. The smell of blood filled the room, powerful as ammonia in my nostrils.
“No!” I thrashed, but I couldn’t get free of the bindings. My weakness, helplessness, and agony overwhelmed me, along with disgust and horror. My vision faded to gray, then booted back up into focus again.
The captain’s face loomed close as he looked me over. He was unshaven and greasy with sweat, and in his eyes I saw a debate: Was it better to keep me alive or kill me? There wasn’t a thing I could do about any of it. I welcomed the familiar darkness that closed over my head.
It was much later when Lei, Pono beside her, Shepherd bringing up the rear, sat down at a battered Formica table in the jail’s adolescent visiting room. The smell of Cheetos and grape soda filled the room, emanating from a trash can near the door. The table was gouged with initials and cusswords. She briefly wondered where the table had come from—no sharp objects were allowed in the room.
Tony entered with a juvenile officer. He wore cuffs, a zip-front orange overall, and fragile bravado. “What you cops want? I nevah goin’ talk.”
Lei reminded him of his rights, which the juvenile officer duly noted. “Uncle Noah is dead,” Lei said. “He can neither protect you nor hurt you any longer.”
Tony’s color ebbed until it was the shade of badly tanned leather. His eyes held the hopelessness of someone who hasn’t a friend or loved one in the world. Though this kid might be too far gone for redemption, he was no more than sixteen—too young to have no one who cared.
“Do you have a family, Tony?” Lei felt sorry for him in spite of herself.
“Not anymore. Uncle was my family.” Tony dropped into the molded plastic chair like a sandbag.
“We’re trying to find people you’re related to. You went to Uncle from foster care. You and your brother.” Elizabeth had tracked Tony’s foster placement and disappearance to eight years ago, when he and his brother, Luke, had gone to Selina Tahua’s—and supposedly run away, never to be seen again. “Where’s your brother, Luke, Tony?”
Tony looked down at his hands in the cuffs. He had a little meat on his bones, compared to the three boys at Philomena Bugata’s, and that reminder pricked Lei’s anger. “You want proof Uncle Noah is dead?” She took out her phone, scrolled to a picture.
Lei held the phone up so that the boy could see it. Uncle Noah’s eyes were open, bloodshot and bulging, but fixed in death. Blood filled his open mouth. His chest was dented in rather than curved. Tony gasped and covered his face.
Lei flicked the phone off. “He died trying to escape when his quad flipped. He left you to die in the jungle, Tony. We just want to know what happened to your brother.” She unslung her backpack, set it on the table. She’d stopped by the morgue on her way here, and now she took out a Ziploc bag containing the small skull, stained red from iron-rich soil. “Is this your brother, Luke, Tony?”
Tony gave a cry. “No one was supposed to dig him up! He was peaceful there!” He lunged across the table and snatched the skull, hugging it to his chest. “Luke. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” He cried, harsh dry sobs.
Pono glanced sidewise at Lei. She could feel disapproval rolling off him in waves. He thought she was being too harsh.
“Who killed Luke, Tony?” she asked.
“Nobody. Luke—he got sick.” Tony gestured to his abdominal area. “Super sick. Bad pain in his stomach. He was puking and crying in pain. He got really hot. Uncle, he wouldn’t take him to the hospital. Said Luke was weak, that he would talk and tell about the farm. And then Luke died.” Tony hung his head, cradling the skull in his arms. “I’m so sorry, Luke.”
“So you buried him back there.”
“We buried him by the stream. He used to love the stream, playing in the water after we were done working.”
“Tony, we need to know about the farm.” Shepherd came around the table with his chair to sit beside the boy. “Uncle’s dead, so there’s no reason to protect him any longer. But we still need to know about how his operation worked and any people still out there who worked for him.”
Tony bobbed his head. “Yeah. I can tell you that.”
Lei and Pono stood. “We need Luke back,” Lei said. “We’ll take good care of him until your family can be located to bury him properly.”
The teen held the skull in both hands and tenderly kissed it on the forehead through the plastic. He handed the skull back to her. Lei took it and met the boy’s gaze with her own.
“Luke led me to you. He wanted you boys to be found. And freed.” She’d never been more certain of anything.
Tony’s eyes filled with tears. She felt his gaze on her back as she and Pono quietly exited. She slid the skull into her backpack. Pono reached out a hand. “I’ll take that by the morgue for safekeeping. You get home to that boy of yours.”
Lei smiled, handing over the backpack. “Pono Kaihale, touching a child’s bones. Never thought I’d see the day.”
Pono wrapped thick tattooed arms over the backpack in something a lot like a hug. “I think you’re right about Luke finding a way to get help for his brother and the other kids. It’s time I got over being chicken about kid cases. Solving them is how we can help.”
They parted ways at the entrance, Pono to return the skull to the morgue and the special drawer where Dr. Gregory stored such treasures, and Lei to get home to her boy.
As she got into her borrowed truck, one of the phones in her pocket rang.
Chapter Twenty-Five
This time when I woke, it was to a bright light, blinding, in one of my eyes. Somewhere off in the distance, muffled voices called my name.
I wanted to respond. I told my eyes to open, my hand to lift, my mouth to form words, but nothing happened. I was trapped inside my body. It felt like lying in a wooden coffin, confining and tight, and the coffin was lined with nails.
That eyelid was let go, and then the other one lifted. The bright light bored into my brain, rousing me. Still I couldn’t respond, though I heard them call my name again. The voices were close and
immediate.
The light went away. My eye fell shut. I drifted and disappeared again.
The crocodile had stuffed MacDonald under a log at the bottom of the river. He was bloated and bobbed up and down with the gases of decay, finally just as the croc liked a body to be for eating.
“Let him go,” I begged. Water filled my mouth, but I could breathe fine. Some part of me was aware I was dreaming when MacDonald opened his milky eyes to look at me.
“We’re in hell, Stevens. Don’t you know that? None of this is real.”
“I’m not supposed to end up in hell. I prayed that sinner’s prayer. I thought I was going to heaven,” I told MacDonald.
“Obviously it didn’t work.” MacDonald shook his head.
I swam over and tried to pull the man from under the log, but the croc lashed its tail and knocked me away. The current caught me and carried me, and the croc sank its teeth into MacDonald’s swollen side.
The current carried me away from that horror show. The water was dark, thick, and gritty, but I was coming up, up, up from the bottom. My nose filled with a stinging scent that felt like a spear to my brain. I broke the surface and gave a gasp.
“I think he might be coming around.” My eyelid was pried open again. The light blasted. The other eye was tried. “No. Pupils aren’t responding.” An unfamiliar voice, American, was speaking. Was I home? Rescued?
I couldn’t open my eyes or respond. The container of my body held me tight and pinioned as an iron maiden.
“We need him awake by tomorrow when the ransom comes through.” This was a familiar male voice, crisp and authoritative. I knew this person, but not well. I’d recognize him if I saw him, but no name would come through the sludge at the bottom of the river and attach to his voice. I felt something land on me, heard the shuffling of paper. “Another proof-of-life photo for today. It would be better if he wasn’t lying there looking like a corpse.”
“Nothing I can do,” the first voice said. A flash of light. The paper object was removed from my bedclothes. “I’ll administer some more stimulant medication later. But maybe it’s just as well if he stays unconscious. He can’t tell what he doesn’t know.”
“True.”
My eyelids opened a crack, at last obeying a neurological command. I registered a uniformed man with an upright bearing exiting the room. I shut my eyes again.
Something was wrong here. I wasn’t rescued. These were not the voices I should be hearing at a hospital somewhere in Nicaragua.
I heard the sound of footsteps retreating. Silence surrounded me, broken only by the beep of a monitor.
I tried to backtrack mentally and reconstruct what had happened. We’d been attacked. I’d woken up in the pit, sick, along with four others. I’d been so sick, probably from exposure and withdrawals, that they’d put me in the shed. Anchara had appeared, and forgiven me, and showed me the way out, and I’d escaped. Tied up one guard and killed another. Blown up three helicopters. Broken out three of the men who’d chosen to come. We’d gone miles through the jungle, and one by one my companions had been killed. I’d ended up in Nicaragua in a remote village, recaptured by the captain of the kidnappers.
And now I was here.
Was here the same place as where the captain had killed Falconer and taken me?
I dragged my eyes open again.
The room was different from the one I remembered in the Nicaraguan village—it was a tent. Large and heavy-duty, but still a tent. I could make out metal support poles in the corners, and above the rip-stop material of the roof, lacy tree patterns. The sounds of the jungle were present—a howler monkey, somewhere far off. The shriek of a bird, the shushing of a small wind in the tops of the trees.
Perhaps the captain had turned me over to these Americans? If so, why had they taken a proof-of-life photo and then said what they had? They’d talked about me as if I were a captive. They were Americans, but talked like kidnappers, propping a newspaper on me and taking that picture.
My hands wouldn’t move, but I could feel them now, feel the fabric under them, feel the small pain that was an IV going into the back of the left one. I wiggled my feet and they responded, lifting and moving the sheet, but when I tried to slide them back and forth, I couldn’t.
I hoisted myself a little higher in the bed, making my sore head swim, and looked down. My hands were tied to the metal bed frame with wide strips of fabric. The source of the pain in my side became apparent now: A short plastic catheter, inserted into my rib area, drained pus and blood into a plastic container that reeked of sweet, putrid infection.
The sight made me want to retch, but the clenching of my hollow belly was way too painful. I breathed carefully, with my mouth open, to keep from smelling it until the reflex passed. These small efforts exhausted me, and I shut my eyes, sinking back into a gray half-sleep.
Sometime later I woke again to hear someone moving around the bed. Remembering what he’d said about stimulant medication, I decided to let whoever it was know I was awake. Perhaps I’d misheard earlier, or been dreaming. I wanted to think so, and knew this for the weakness it was.
I opened my eyes. A brown-skinned man in scrubs and a mask was checking the drain at my side. “Water,” I croaked. “Agua, por favor.”
The man looked up, eyes crinkled and friendly over his green mask. “So you woke up at last. Welcome back, Lieutenant Stevens. I’m Dr. Aquinas. I’ll get you water in a moment. Let me finish changing this dressing. We’re almost ready to remove the drain.”
I turned my head slightly to see what he was doing, but that made me dizzy. Pain descended, a vise around my temples. I groaned and shut my eyes.
“Head hurt? Don’t move it. You’ve been out a long time, and that was a serious head injury.”
Head injury? I didn’t remember having a head injury. Just the cut from the pig’s tusk and my ruined feet. I blinked, looking at my far-off feet. I wiggled them. They felt fine, but my eyes were gritty. Everything felt stiff, like I was fighting through an onset of rigor mortis. I tried speaking. “Where am I?” My voice sounded like a rusty hinge.
“You’ve been very ill. Almost died, in fact. But we did some surgery, and you’ve been on an antibiotic drip, and it looks like you’re going to make it.”
“Why am I tied?”
Dr. Aquinas prodded the flesh around the drain. Again, he didn’t answer my question. “This really seems to be better. I think I’ll take the drain out.” He pulled up the tape, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from moaning as the adhesive pulled my skin.
“Ready?” He pulled the drain quickly from the wound, a feeling like a saber flaying my flesh to the bone. I screamed, or would have if my voice were working—the sound that came out was the short, sharp squawk of a chicken being stomped on. “There. Got some nice fresh blood coming out now. I have to pack the wound. This is gonna hurt.”
It sure as hell did. I writhed against my bonds and bit my lips as he stuffed the wound with sterile gauze tape, leaving a wick protruding.
“Still got some drainage here. Perhaps we can take this packing out in the next day or so.” Dr. Aquinas stripped off his gloves and straightened up. “I’ll give you a little something so you can rest now. You just came out of a coma, so the priority is to take it easy.”
“A coma? How long have I been here? I have questions…”
“And I don’t have the answers for you. I’m just here for your medical care.” Dr. Aquinas avoided my eyes. He injected something into my IV. “Sweet dreams.”
“No, man. I just woke up!” I tugged at the restraints, hating that I was bound, knowing that I was still a prisoner. Darkness dragged me under, and it felt like the crocodile pulling MacDonald down to the bottom of the river.
Lei reached the truck she was borrowing from a relative of Pono’s, and pulled her vibrating cell phone out of her pocket. “Dr. Wilson! I was wondering when we could talk.”
“Yes, Captain Omura told me about recent events. I’m on Oahu, but I thou
ght we could perhaps do your post-shoot debrief over the phone.”
“That could work.” Lei got into the vehicle and turned it on, cranking up the AC. The blast of warm air from the vents smelled of the mustiness of the truck’s interior, something sweet and melted in the backseat, and a note of wet dog. She frowned. Her sense of smell was not usually this good. There was only one other time when it had been this sharp—that time she’d been pregnant.
Could that one night with Stevens before his departure have…? But no. She’d been through the roller coaster of hope and disappointment way too often to wish now. “I’m hoping to get a call from the army anytime now, that they’ve negotiated the prisoners’ release.”
“Yes, Omura briefed me on the situation.” Dr. Wilson’s tone was concerned. “I heard Michael was captured.”
“Yeah. They haven’t told me much. I haven’t been able to do anything to help him, and it’s so frustrating.” Lei blew out a breath. “I had Sophie look into the situation over there a little bit, and it’s not reassuring. The army and Security Solutions seem to be having some disagreement on how to handle the kidnapping. I’m worried.” She clenched and unclenched a hand on the warm plastic of the steering wheel. “First of all, that the army might do some crazy thing like a raid on the prisoners’ location. And then, even when we get him back, that he’s worse from this. Not better.”
A long pause. “I didn’t agree with his idea of curing himself by going overseas,” Dr. Wilson said softly. “But as you know, he didn’t ask me.”
“I know.” Lei pushed a hand into her disordered curls. “He didn’t ask me either.”
“So how are you handling the stress?”
“Staying busy with work.”
Dr. Wilson snorted. “That’s not exactly a news flash, my girl.”
Lei laughed ruefully. “I have to keep moving. Because as soon as I stop, I think of all that could go wrong.” She sighed. “But I got a really hot case that started out as a cold one, and that’s how I got into a couple of shooting situations.” She described what had happened with the child’s skull that Mrs. Yamaguchi had found and how it had led to the discovery in Hana and the raid in Kaupo.