Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “Janjak,” Teffinger said.

  “So you think she killed Station?”

  “That’s my guess, through Kovi-Ke,” he said. “My suspicion is that Kovi-Ke is working for her. What I don’t get is why they were playing a game with me. Run down the two guys and see what they know. Tell them they could be targets. Made sure Station’s sister knows that too.”

  “She already does,” she said. “I just had a wild thought.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe there’s been some kind of grand plan in place all along to lure you down to Haiti.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  43

  Day Six

  June 9

  Monday Afternoon

  Teffinger came up with a plan; a crazy, dangerous plan; a plan that would probably kill him, but at least it was something. The question at this point is whether he should do it now, this afternoon under light of day, or wait until dark.

  Dark make more sense, a lot more sense.

  Still, every minute that passed was another strike against Modeste. The clicks of her clock were limited. He paced and then hunted down Angel.

  “I need a place where I can keep a prisoner,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Janjak.”

  She smiled, anticipating the punch line, and then grew serious when it didn’t come.

  “You’re not kidding.”

  Teffinger shook his head.

  “It can’t be here. They’ll look for her here.”

  Ten minutes later they were in the Boston Whaler, cruising on plane into open turquoise waters. Forty-five minutes later they came to a string of three small islands or cays, none bigger than five or six acres, all within a few hundred yards of one another. They circled around and through, finding hypnotic pristine beaches and swaying palms but not a single sign of human life, not now or from the past, stretching all the way back to the beginning of time

  “No one comes here,” Angel said. “They’re cursed.”

  “By who?”

  “Sea ghosts, if you believe the rumor.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “These used to be rocky crags,” she said. “No one ever came here. The ghosts slowly transformed them over time, turning them into paradises. No one could pass by without stopping. The ghosts made bait out of beauty.”

  “Bait for what? Murder?”

  She shrugged.

  “All anyone knows for sure is that people disappear, boats disappear. There are stories of bad things, supernatural things, things where souls got dragged under the water and were made to live forever with no air.”

  “So why are you bringing me here?”

  “Because you don’t believe the stories.”

  “What about you?”

  “I believe lots of boats ran aground here in the dark waters over time and that lots of people unquestionably died,” she said. “I believe that rumors can start from events like that.”

  Teffinger maneuvered the vessel between the three islands, out of sight of open waters, and trimmed the engines up as he drifted into a beach. The bow nestled into the sand. He tied it off with an anchor, just to be sure, then made his way through the lukewarm water to the dry sand of the beach.

  Angel hesitated in the boat.

  Then she jumped in the water and joined him.

  The beach was pristine and under other circumstances Teffinger could have spent the rest of his life right there with no regrets. The opposite side of the island was no more than a couple of hundred yards over.

  They cut across.

  Halfway there they came across a human skull lying in the sand. Teffinger picked it up and bounced it in his hand to get a feel for the weight and said, “Here’s one of your lost sailors.”

  “I don’t think so. Look.”

  He did.

  Thirty feet away was a pile of bones, a large pile, human skeletons, with twenty or thirty easily identified skulls. None contained flesh.

  “Looks like a body dump of some kind,” Teffinger said. “Not recently though. These have been here for years, maybe decades.”

  Angel kept her distance and said, “We should get out of here.”

  “Are these your ghosts?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Teffinger dropped the skull and kept going.

  “Let’s see what else we have.”

  What they had for the rest of the island was nature uninterrupted, nature strutting her stuff with all the passion and mystery and eroticism she could command.

  “Let’s check the other two islands,” Teffinger said.

  As they passed by the bones on the way back, Angel pointed to something and said, “What’s that?”

  Teffinger looked.

  It was something in the middle of it all, peeking out from under the sand, barely protruding but visible nonetheless, possibly an old belt buckle or the tip of a weapon.

  He picked his way through the bones, trying to not step on any but finding them too dense too avoid, feeling the crunch of their once-meaningful fibers shoot up his legs and into his heart.

  The object was small and golden.

  He wedged it out of the sand.

  What it was he couldn’t believe.

  “A gold coin.”

  He tossed it to Angel, looked for more in the sand, found nothing and picked his way out.

  “It looks Spanish,” Angel said.

  “Yes it does.”

  “What do you think it’s worth?”

  “More than my soul.”

  “So what’s it doing just laying there in the sand?” Angel shifted her footing and ran her eyes over the gluttony of bones. “Maybe there was some kind of pirate fight over bags of gold and that kind of thing. This one got dropped when someone was running.”

  Teffinger chewed on it.

  “That’s possible,” he said.

  “It’s probably been peeking in and out of the sand for a hundred years. We happened by at the exact right time. I told you there was such a thing as fate. It’s our first possession together. We share it, right? Fifty-fifty?”

  “It’s all yours,” Teffinger said. “But if there’s more, we’ll share them.”

  “You think there’s more?”

  He nodded.

  “You bury treasure in the sand in a crate or chest of some kind,” he said. “It’s going to be wooden; possibly reinforced with steel bands and a padlock, but at least to some extent wooden. Time takes its toll. The wood rots and disintegrates. Now the treasure is loose in the sand. Trees grow and roots push things around under the surface. Some of those things get pushed up. Like that little guy, for instance.”

  “So what are all the bodies for? A marker?”

  He nodded.

  “A marker and a deterrent,” he said. “What’s the last place on this island you’d want to poke around in?”

  “Right there.”

  “Exactly.”

  He rolled his sleeves up and started picking bones out and throwing them to the side. Angel watched for a few heartbeats and then joined in.

  “I want to make love to you right there in the middle,” she said.

  Teffinger smiled.

  “You’re a kinky little thing.”

  “You have no idea.”

  He slapped her ass.

  “Maybe that’s what all these bodies are,” he said. “Maybe they all had the exact same idea. Did you ever think of that?”

  She slapped him back.

  “You’re not getting out of it so don’t even try.”

  44

  Day Six

  June 9

  Monday Afternoon

  The next three hours changed the whole world. As Teffinger predicted—but still to his shock—hundreds of gold coins were buried under the bones, ranging from depths of two to five feet down; 328 precious little golden pieces of history, all told. If they widened the circle they’d probably find a hundred more but t
hat was enough for now. They replaced the sand and the bones, made everything look as undisturbed and original as possible, then collapsed in the shade on their backs as the warm cerulean sky played through the palms.

  “Half are yours,” Teffinger said. “A hundred sixty nine.”

  “I don’t like to think of it like that,” Angel said. “I like to think of it as three twenty eight, ours together.”

  “I already have a plan for my share.”

  “What is what?”

  “Use them to get Modeste back.”

  “You’re going to give them to Janjak?”

  “Some of them,” he said. “I’m not sure how many yet.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t see why you’re going to such extremes,” she said. “The woman played you. You owe her nothing.”

  “I’m all she has.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t owe her anything. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  He got to his feet and pulled Angel up.

  They took off their shirts and split the coins, one going into hers then one into his, until they were all divided. Teffinger stuck ten coins in his pocket, tied his shirt off and said, “Stay here.”

  “Where you going?”

  He dangled the shirt.

  “To bury this on one of the other islands.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep it safe.”

  “I’m not coming with you?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s better you don’t know where I’m doing it. That could save your life later.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you just fine,” he said. “It’s other people I don’t trust. Stay here.”

  He made his way to the Boston Whaler, which fired up exactly as it was supposed to, and then motored over to the farther of the other two islands. There he found something he didn’t expect—another large grouping of fleshless skeletons, even larger than the first, with a good forty or fifty skulls showing.

  He didn’t like the looks of it.

  He didn’t like the island at all.

  It had an eerie patina to it, nothing he could put a finger on but something that didn’t resonate well in his gut. He left and went to the other island.

  There he found no skeletons.

  He found a place to his liking, one he could remember, and buried his shirt three feet deep. The sand went back and then got smoothed out until the dig turned invisible.

  Back at the first island, Angel was waiting for him on the beach, meaning she clearly saw where he was coming from. She waded out waist deep into the aqua waters, tossed her shirt in the boat and then climbed in.

  He said, “Any ghosts get you?”

  She gave him a wet kiss on the lips.

  “Only you. You’re a ghost, aren’t you?”

  “You never know.”

  Two minutes later they were out in open waters on full plane with the wind in their hair and the pounding of the hull in their ears.

  Halfway back Teffinger said, “It’s best that no one knows anything about any of this for the time being. Put your coins someplace safe but don’t tell anyone about them. That includes Rail.”

  “That’s my plan.”

  “Good. I don’t want to find out they’re cursed.”

  45

  Day Six

  June 9

  Monday Evening

  Beaten with exhaustion, Teffinger lapsed into a deep, cavernous sleep when he got back to the villa, not to open his eyes again until hours later when evening was thick over Haiti. He bolted upright with a racing heart, only to find Angel sleeping next to him, already waking from his movement. He didn’t remember making love to her or even laying down with her. She must have come in after the fact.

  “Can you find those islands in the dark?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “I’d have to go back through the GPS history on my phone to get the coordinates,” she said. “Then I’d have to use the phone to try to get back there in the dark.”

  “Work on it.”

  The next hour was a fury of motion, but whether it was forward motion or backwards motion, only time would tell. They gassed up the Whaler, stocked it with everything they’d need, and worked on summoning up the courage to actually do what they were thinking of doing. All the while Teffinger twisted his mind trying to decide whether it would be a good thing or a bad one to bring Rail with him. Both scenarios had their pros and cons.

  “I’m coming,” Rail said. “End of discussion.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’ve already seen.”

  In the end, Teffinger relented.

  Half an hour after dark, they both kissed Angel goodbye and set off into the black sea with the Whaler’s lights out. A pale moon beat through a blanket of high thin clouds, throwing some light to the earth, not much but enough to distinguish the shore from the water.

  They made their way down the coast under relatively calm seas until they came to Janjak’s lagoon. There they motored quietly to far end of the island, anchored the boat and headed up the sand on foot.

  Teffinger had a knife but no gun.

  Rail had two weapons, a handgun and a rifle.

  Several armed men became visible as Teffinger and Rail studied the grounds from the black recesses of the night. There was no sign of Janjak but the lights of the primary structure were on.

  “I count seven,” Teffinger said.

  “I got eight.”

  “You ready?”

  “No.”

  Teffinger grunted.

  “Stay behind me. The more I think around the rifle, leave it here; it’ll just slow us down. Don’t shoot anyone unless it’s absolutely in self-defense, and then don’t shoot to kill. Get them in the leg or something. I don’t want to take lives to save one, even if they deserve it. If we get separated, we’ll meet at the boat. If I get killed or taken, don’t hang around for me. Just get the hell out. Are we on the same page?”

  “Yes.”

  Teffinger exhaled.

  “Okay, then. Game time.”

  With a pounding chest, Teffinger snuck through the night, occasionally turning to make sure Rail was still behind him. He took his time, picking his shadows with all the precision of a surgeon, slowly making his way into the thick of it all and, finally, to the very thatched structure where Modeste had been held prisoner.

  The door wasn’t locked.

  She wasn’t there.

  That wasn’t a surprise.

  Teffinger expected it.

  They no doubt moved her to a new location, assuming she was still alive. It would be futile to look for her. She could be a hundred different places, none of which were anywhere around here.

  “Plan B,” he whispered to Rail.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  They snuck back out, circled around through the outlying blackness, and from the beach approached the main structure—Janjak’s quarters—crawling on their stomachs. The windows were lit from inside, throwing a yellow patina into the night, almost like cat eyes, but no exterior lights were on.

  Two men sat at a table of some sorts on the left side of the structure, drinking from bottles. Their weapons leaned near their sides.

  Their voices were animated—drunken.

  Teffinger and Rail approached from the right, letting the corner mask them.

  Then, they were there.

  They were right there.

  Teffinger worked his way to a window and brought an eye far enough over to look inside.

  He saw no one.

  They entered, moving quickly, searching for Janjak.

  They found her upstairs, in a dark, dark room, sitting in a chair in the corner, staring right at them with the whites of her eyes.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  “Scream and you’re dead,” Teffinger said. “All we want is Modeste.”

  �
�Me scream? No, don’t worry about that. Are you ready to have some fun?”

  With lightning speed two men suddenly sprang from out of nowhere. Knuckles landed with the force of a rock to Teffinger’s face, exploding the inside of his skull into fireworks and knocking him to the floor.

  A kick landed on his ribs, then another, and then another.

  He tried to twist away.

  It did no good.

  The leather hardness of a boot smashed into the side of his head, snapping it so fast that his teeth bit deep into his tongue.

  Blood filled his mouth.

  He braced for the next blow.

  Suddenly a shot rang out, an explosion of gunfire so incredibly thunderous that it felt as if the whole world had just imploded.

  It came from Rail.

  He pulled Teffinger to his feet and punched Janjak in the face so hard that she collapsed to the floor.

  “Get her!” Rail said.

  Teffinger flung the woman over his shoulder and then they ran down the stairs with the barrel of Rail’s weapon pressed against the side of Janjak’s skull.

  Men appeared with rifles and crazy faces.

  Rail shouted “Back off!”

  46

  Day Six

  June 9

  Monday Night

  Teffinger dropped Rail off at the villa with a warning. “They might come for you. Get Angel to town, someplace safe.” Then, with Janjak now conscious but her hands tied behind her back, he pointed the bow of the Whaler into the dark endless sea. The islands were moonlit when he got to them, taking shape a good quarter mile before he came to them.

  He beached the boat on the first island, put a handcuff on Janjak’s right ankle and padlocked the other end to a thirty-foot chain, which he wrapped around the base of the first palm tree he came to and secured with a second padlock. Then he cut the rope off her wrists.

  There.

  She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You’re a sexy man,” she said.

  “This isn’t a game. Is Modeste alive?”

  “For now.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Her body or her soul?”