by Bob Mayer
“Did they take SAS down two weeks ago?”
Rollins nodded. “That’s the word.”
“And Karralkov is pressuring you to sell property.”
Rollins gave a bitter laugh. “Everyone is pressuring me to sell. Karralkov, the bank.”
“The Quad?”
“You are informed,” Rollins said. “Yeah, them, too. So much for ring-knocking.” He held up his left hand, adorned with a large, gold school ring. “Except Karralkov is offering top dollar. As if money is no problem. But his top dollar still keeps me underwater.”
“Maybe money isn’t a problem for him,” Riley said. “Especially if he got a cash infusion of five million two weeks ago. Did you hear the shots last night?”
“Yes.”
Riley waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. “That didn’t worry you?”
“Yeah, it worried me. I though they were after me.”
“Who?”
“The Russians. Karralkov.”
“Is that why you have someone up there”—Riley nodded toward the window—“with a gun?”
Rollins sighed. “Mikey!”
A head appeared in the window. “Yes, Mister Rollins?”
“Mister Riley isn’t a threat. Watch the road, and also watch the security camera for the dock.”
“Yes, sir.” The head disappeared.
“You worried about someone coming by water?” Riley asked.
“Worry is part of my life.”
“Mikey your bodyguard?”
Rollins shrugged, indicating Mikey was of little importance. “He’s a former Marine. Pretty much homeless when I found him. He lives above my garage. He can be useful at times.”
As if he were a dog you found on the street, Riley thought, but didn’t say.
“You’re here about the kid, aren’t you?” Rollins asked.
Riley took a step closer. “What do you know?”
“The Russians snatched him. Briggs’ son. That’s the word I’ve heard. They’re taking SAS down. They’re going to take over this whole fucking place. And no one can stop them.”
“We’ll see about that,” Riley said.
“You’re going to take them on?” Rollins asked. “I’ve been thinking about getting on board my plane and flying south. A long way south.”
“You have a plane at the airfield here?” Riley asked. He heard a car graveling up the drive behind him. He glanced back at Chase’s lot, and a green Volkswagon Beetle rolled to a halt behind his Jeep. A slight woman with red hair emerged from the driver’s side, and a massive brute with a Ranger T-shirt stretched over his torso somehow unfolded from the passenger seat.
Rollins looked past him and saw the same thing. “Those more of your friends? I know that big guy. He’s crazy. Get the fuck out of here.” The door slammed shut.
* * * * *
There were many overlapping rhythms to the tidal lands and the barrier islands and the ocean. Kono believed they all mixed together in a masterful symphony that was felt moment by moment, stretched through the day into the night, into the cycle of the tides through the month, and through the seasons of the year.
Most thought the winter a dead time, a time when the land was chilled and the water cold and the trees bare. But it was a season that had its own call, beckoning to those who were open to it. For Kono, one of the greatest benefits was the lack of the tourists, the fools on their jet skis roaring through the water, drowning out the wonderful symphony of nature.
He drove Fina, his boat, at low throttle, along the south coast of Pritchards Island. The easternmost of the barrier islands, it was also unoccupied, set aside by the University of South Carolina as a preserve for research. No roads touched it, and it was only accessible by boat. To the west was the Marine Corps base at Parris Island, and Hilton Head was to the south, across Port Royal Sound.
It was one of the last places where the land was as it had been when the Gullah fled to the islands during and after the Civil War, isolating themselves from the mainland. Most had worked on the brutal rice plantations between Savannah and Charleston, and any life was better than that.
It was rice that brought the slaves to the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Stolen from their villages in Sierra Leone and Liberia, they were chosen because they could work in the heat and the shallow water needed to grow rice, and because many had worked the rice fields in their homeland. So many were ‘imported’ that as early as 1710, Africans outnumbered whites in South Carolina. Kono knew that was part of the paranoia that consumed South Carolinians for generations and naturally caused Charleston to be the tinderbox, generations later, that started the Civil War. Fear ruled the coast of South Carolina for centuries, fear that those who were used to generate the wealth would one day rise against their masters, whom they outnumbered. The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina in Charleston, was founded partly to make sure the state had a militia ready to deal with such an insurrection, public declarations to the contrary.
The Gullah were in a different situation than slaves in the other states. They worked massive rice fields, requiring many bodies laboring together. It was not the quiet plantation life, or even the cotton field system. It was backbreaking work, in brutal terrain where snakes and alligators were as common as the diseases that killed many. The first Gullah were on the islands even before the Civil War, escaping their enslavement and hiding among the islands and swamps, building the basis for their own quiet way of life.
Kono turned the bow of his boat toward a small inlet. The tide was half out, and he knew within a half-inch how much water his hull drew. He knew the inlet as most Americans knew the route to work. The woman hadn’t said a word since leaving Dafuskie, which impressed Kono. Most buckra prattled on endlessly, never listening to nature, to the world around them. She sat silent in the jump seat to the left of him, watching the passing water and land, never asking where they were going or what he was doing.
Most unusual.
Kono cut the throttle and Fina slowed, coming to a halt just a few feet from a decaying dock. A rowboat was drawn up to the left of the dock, turned upside down. To the right, a crumbling concrete structure stood above the sand.
Feeling the woman’s silence pressing on him, Kono finally spoke. “In World War Two, German U-Boats were out there.” He pointed toward the Atlantic. “They would target ships going up and down the coast. Sometimes the ships were outlined against the lights of cities, like Charleston. Perfect targets. So watch places were built. This was one.”
She nodded.
Fina bobbed in the backwash of her own wake. Kono took a line and jumped over the side into a foot of water. He tied the line off to a metal rebar on the edge of the dock. The woman stood to get off the boat, but he held up a hand. “I need to talk to someone alone.”
“All right.” Sarah sat back down, again disturbing something deep in Kono.
He waved his hand in a slow sweep, taking in the low country. “The sand here has eaten much blood since the white man came.” He pointed south. “The Spanish were first. In Florida.” He pointed north. “Then the British came. They brought the first slaves. And both sides used the natives to fight for them.”
“People always use others to fight for them,” Sarah said. “Is that what I’m doing? Is it wrong?”
Kono shrugged. “Each has their own reasons to do what they do.”
“Why are you getting involved? For Chase?”
Kono smiled grimly. “Partly. But I also have my own reasons.” He turned for the beach, but paused. “Pirates were here long before U-Boats. Blackbeard hisself is said to have buried treasure here on Pritchards Island.”
“Do you believe that?”
“May well be, missus. May well be.” He pointed north again. “Blackbeard, he blockade Charleston back long time, May 1718. City feared him something fierce. They pay him gold to leave. Maybe he leave some gold here.”
“Edward Teach,” Sarah said, surprising Kono again.
“Y
a. That was his real name.”
Sarah pointed to the small flag on the bow of the Fina. A black flag with a white skeleton, spearing a heart while toasting. “That was his flag.”
“It was.”
Sarah held up her cell phone. “I’d like to pretend I knew all that, but I Googled it while we were coming here. The signal comes and goes.”
Kono laughed. “Honest lady. Like that.”
“How do you know Horace?” Sarah asked.
Kono looked away, at the water. “He save my life many years ago. We were out, pulling traps. My foot got caught in a line, and I was pulled over the side when trap was locked on something. Took me under. Chase, he dove in. Tried to free me, but couldn’t. But he kept one hand on boat, one hand on the line, pulling me up, out of water every minute, letting me take breath. He did this for long time, ten minutes or so, but it was losing battle. But he do it long enough, the old man, the man I here to see, he saw Chase hanging on boat. He came over and cut the line. I was almost dead. Old man, he bring me back to life. But Chase keep me breathing long enough for that.”
Sarah pointed. “He’s waiting for you.”
The old man stood in the doorway of the remains of the old watchtower. He was dressed in denim coveralls and a black turtleneck. His clothes were surprisingly clean for living out here. He sported a long white beard that came down to his belly.
Kono walked up to the beach and then down it. They greeted each other in their native tongue and continued to converse in it, a language a buckra might make a bit of sense out of, but not enough with the speed with which they talked.
“Been a bit,” the old man said.
“Three weeks, one day, Tear.”
The old man laughed as Kono held out a sack. It clanked as the old man took it. He didn’t look inside, instead putting it just inside the doorway to the concrete structure. Where he’d gotten his nickname from, Kono had no idea, but there were hints that the old man had endured a hard life for many years. His given name was a secret he held close to his soul. Kono didn’t know whether the three, barely visible teardrops tattooed on the old man’s left cheek had led to the name, or whatever led to the name, led to the tattoos.
“You need anything?” Kono asked.
“You just bring me what I need.”
“Have enough water?”
“I rowed over yesterday,” Tear said, nodding toward the west. “Jugs be full.”
Kono nodded. He knew others checked on the old man and brought him things. But the man had pride, and he still pulled that old rowboat to Parris Island every week or so to fill his jugs of water and buy supplies at the Post Exchange. Tear had served in the Marine Corps many years ago, drafted into the service and going, because no matter what his differences with the past, he believed in his country. Tear often reminded Kono that a great war had been fought, started near here in Charleston Harbor, and many buckra had given their lives to free the Gullah and other blacks. That was something to be remembered.
The old man had not yet said a word about Sarah, sitting on the boat, watching them.
Tear sat down on the concrete stoop, a deep sigh indicating the extent of the arthritis that penetrated his bones. Kono had tried to get the old man to let him take him to the VA for treatment, but Tear’s appreciation of the government only went so far, and his pride bound him to his homemade remedies.
“What bring you here?” Tear asked. “Other than pleasure of my company.”
“Russians.”
Tear wagged his finger. “I told you. You stay clear of them.”
“They’ve stolen a child. I am helping to return the child to his mother.”
“That woman?” He did not point or even look toward the boat.
“Yes.”
Tear sighed. “Why?”
“For a friend. From long ago.”
“The son of Lilly Chase.”
It didn’t even occur to Kono to ask how he’d made that connection or knew that Chase was back. The old man’s sources of information were a wide net—which was why Kono was here. “Yes.”
“That is very deep waters,” Tear said. The old man looked past Kono, out at the water, the sun going lower in the west, reflecting off the waves. “This is a magic place, but the magic is both good and bad. There have always been those who went both ways. It is something that is in the air.”
“You mean like pirates?”
Tear snorted. “Yes. You and your pirates. And those who hunted pirates. They did it for the bounty. So were they any different than those they hunted? The man who killed Blackbeard, whose flag you fly, he was never paid the promised silver and gold for that. He died bitter because of it. Did he have a better life? Were he a better man?”
Kono said nothing.
“The roots of the tree burrow deep and wide,” Tear said. “You cannot see into the hearts of other, why they doing what they doing.”
“I know my own soul.”
“That child is not your real reason for wanting to go after the Russians,” Tear said.
Kono remained silent.
“You have always been like the alligator, boy. Hooded eyes behind those glasses. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Alligator can wait week just to get little deer. You been waiting long time on Russians. You and your fr’un, who name be Gator. No chance there. But it was no Russians’ fault. You know that. Each man, each woman, make own choices.”
“They do,” Kono agreed. “But baby get no choice.”
“Ahh!” the old man said it as if the words hit him in the stomach. Tear reached up and took Kono’s hand. “He your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him of your sister and of the one not yet here into the world she was bearing? Did you tell him of your other friend’s rage?”
* * * * *
“You look like shit,” Riley said to Chase.
“Hi to you, too,” Chase said.
“Horace!” Erin ran to the front door of Chase’s new home, but stopped short of hugging him because it would cause pain.
“So Karralkov didn’t confess?” Riley said, lifting his beer and taking a drink, but he was watching Chase very carefully.
Gator laughed and took a tilt of his own beer.
“Chase, this is Gator,” Erin said. “Gator, Chase.
Gator nodded. “How do the others guys look?”
“There were four,” Chase said. “They tossed me out, but made sure I went head first.” Erin scooted past him to get her med kit from the Volkswagen. He looked around. “Where’s Kono and Sarah?”
“Not here yet,” Riley said. “Anything broken?”
Chase shook his head, which he immediately regretted. “No. Karralkov just wanted to make a point. He says he had nothing to do with Cole. Beyond that, he wasn’t very communicative.” Chase had fought his desire to unlock the compartment, grab his pistol, and go back into the club, but the fall down the stairs had knocked enough sense into him to realize that attitude is what had gotten him thrown down those stairs in the first place. It was time to think before acting.
“Believe him?” Riley asked.
“No.” Chase nodded toward Gator as Erin came in, opening up her kit. “Heard you took out two Russians wanting to find out about me.”
“It was nothing,” Gator said. “Only two, and one was already hurt. Not four. And there were no stairs.” He pulled a beer out of a cooler. “Want a cold one?”
“Sure.”
Gator tossed it to him.
Riley put his beer down. “Farrelli did say your neighbor, Rollins, is into SAS for almost a million. But he didn’t think Rollins would turn to kidnapping.”
Everyone turned as the rumble of an engine echoed up from the Intracoastal. Kono was pulling in to the dock, expertly feathering the engines as he brought Fina to a halt.
“I don’t think so, either,” Chase said.
“I went over to talk to him when I got here,” Riley said. “He’s not going to win any awards for friendliness. And he’s wig
ging out about something. He’s scared of the Russians. He says Karralkov is trying to take over everything. And, for what it’s worth, he thinks the Russians kidnapped Cole.”
Chase started to turn his head to look out at the dock, but Erin smacked him to keep him still. “I’ve got to suture this,” she told him, “but I don’t have any anesthesia.”
“Just do it,” Chase said.
“Yeah,” Riley said. “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
“No shit,” Gator was nodding, not catching the irony in Riley’s voice. “It really is.”
“Men,” Erin said as she pulled out a loaded suture. “It’s going to leave a scar, Horace. I can take you to the hospital and get a plastic surgeon to do it. He won’t leave a scar.”
“Ha!” Gator laughed. “A plastic surgeon for the wussy man. And Horace? What kind of name is that?”
“Just do it, Erin,” Chase said.
Gator lifted his Ranger shirt, exposing a long, jagged scar that ran down his right side. “RPG shrapnel.”
Erin held up her free hand. “Let’s not be doing the ‘who has the biggest, baddest scar’ thing, okay. I’m sure you’re all manly men, and I could care less.”
Gator frowned and dropped his shirt. “I was just saying, a little scar over the eye could be, what’s the word—”
“Distinguished,” Riley said.
“Stupid,” Erin muttered.
Kono and Sarah entered. As soon as she saw Chase’s face, she ran over and threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry! What happened?”
Erin poised in her suturing and Riley grimaced in pain. Sarah let go of him and stepped back. “Karralkov?”
Chase started to nod, then paused as Erin stuck the needle through and out once more. “Yes. He says he knows nothing.”
“He’s a liar!” Sarah said vehemently.
Riley took a sip of beer. “Criminals do have a penchant for obfuscating the truth.”
Gator scrunched his face as he tried to process that, and then simply said, “English, dude.”
“They lie,” Riley said. He turned to Sarah. “You have no clue who your husband’s business partner is?”
“I always thought it was someone in Antigua.” Sarah faced the group: Chase, Riley, Erin, and Gator. “All I know from Walter is that Karralkov’s people took down the site two weeks, and extorted five million from SAS. He sent two thugs to Erin’s business to try to find out who Chase is. It’s Karralkov. He’s got Cole, and we’ve got to get him back. And we don’t have much time.”