New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  “Sorry, Natalie.” Veronica lowered the gun and walked toward her. “But it’s just a game.”

  “But you can’t do that! I didn’t try to shoot at you first. You didn’t know you were my target.”

  “I knew. I heard it in your voice. It’s a righteous kill. Now, give me your gun.”

  Head down and shoulders hunched, Natalie held it out to her.

  Turning, Veronica fired a shot from Natalie’s gun. A starburst of blue paint appeared on the wall beside the monitor, and she handed the gun back.

  “Besides, you did shoot at me first,” she said.

  Natalie looked at the gun in her hand, at the blue paint on the wall, and then her face crumpled like a sheriff’s subpoena in an angry woman’s fist.

  Veronica snorted in disgust. “Grow up, Natalie. I don’t have time for this. If you want to make a big deal out of it, you can go complain to Julian.”

  The monitor on the wall flashed, and the scoreboard appeared. The cell around each of their scores was outlined in white again, rather than the red or blue team colors. Veronica stared, mesmerized, watching her own score spin up ten points.

  Natalie’s cell blinked. Then the outline around it faded from white to gray. She slid down against the wall, hugged her knees to her chest, and buried her face.

  Veronica turned her back on the room and marched upstairs, ignoring Natalie’s sobs.

  She didn’t have time to babysit.

  Women in need were counting on her.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, Veronica stood in her room. The paintball gun and envelope lay on the cot in front of her, but she was looking at her hands, turning them this way and that. She realized she had been doing that for several minutes, spacing out while her mind wandered. She had been thinking again about Leo, her second husband… Time to get with the program here. Her French manicure was a mess—nails split and cracked. She had forgotten to put her makeup on this morning. Her hair was filthy, knots of it hanging in front of her eyes. She was falling apart. At this rate, she’d look like a street person soon, dreadlocked and disgusting.

  Ah, Leo, dear, I’m sure you would have loved to see me in this state.

  She raised both arms and tried to comb through her hair with her fingers. They caught, hung up in the knots and tangles.

  Her eyes snapped into focus and zeroed in on her Louis Vuitton travel bag. She crossed the room with aggressive strides, flipped it open, and unzipped the upper compartment where, four days ago, she had been surprised to find JT’s court-martial transcript tucked away. Reaching inside, she dug deep until her fingers closed around the black Spyderco tactical folding knife she had brought.

  Veronica flipped it open with a practiced one-handed motion, and three inches of matte-black case-hardened steel locked into place. With her other hand, she reached up to grab a tangled lock of hair.

  CHAPTER 128

  Brent loosened the surgical tubing he had wrapped around his upper arm, and rolled down the sleeve of his plaid shirt. Letting out a pent-up breath, he picked up the three syringes, now empty, that lay on the step beside him. Out of habit, he turned his head, looking for the sharps disposal, but of course there wasn’t one. He chuckled and let the syringes fall from his fingers to roll down the steps, their bare needles pointing every which way.

  He dumped a packet of pills into the cup of his hand and slapped his palm to his mouth, dry swallowing them. Reaching into his vest pocket, he grabbed another packet and tossed them down, too.

  “Stop it. Please stop.” The voice came from the top of the stairs.

  Brent looked up to see Camilla standing there, eyes huge, like a little girl who wanted to go downstairs at night but was afraid of monsters. She held something white in front of her chest, two-handed, the way a Japanese pharmaceutical rep held a business card. He squinted. It was a folded-up wad of paper—perhaps the one that had been in her pocket earlier.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Her face was sad. “Something I wanted to talk to you about, but it’s not important now.” She tucked it back into her pocket and came down the stairs to sit beside him.

  She looked into his eyes and winced. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Brent?”

  He didn’t have an answer for her.

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Talk to me.”

  Brent looked toward the distant windows. The light streaming through the plastic sheeting shimmered and danced, making patterns on the floor. Across the room, the scoreboard glowed from the wall monitor.

  He pointed at the paintball gun tucked under Camilla’s arm. “Can you imagine what those scientists think, seeing us running around with those things?”

  “I don’t want you to die.”

  Brent laughed. He could imagine how it probably looked to her, what she thought. He squeezed her knee.

  “You needn’t worry about this old man. I’m not killing myself.”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw.” She pointed at the syringes, the empty pill packets scattered on the steps. “So many…”

  Brent sighed. “I suppose that would be enough to kill somebody—probably even enough to kill the rest of you put together.”

  He leaned toward her, trying to see her face clearly.

  “Tolerance builds up over time, you see. Your physiology adapts.”

  “What if you make a mistake? Out here, that could kill you.”

  She sounded like Mary now. Loneliness washed over him, and he looked away.

  “I’m a survivor, Camilla. I’ve faced my own mortality. Death doesn’t scare me anymore.”

  He stared at the shimmering, dancing light again.

  “Living the rest of my life alone does.”

  CHAPTER 129

  Mason leaned against the wall inside the chicken coop, shrouded in shadow, watching the two houses through the open doorway. Glancing at the blue card in his hand, he read the name of his target: Juan. A half-smile played across his face. The paintball gun hung loosely in his hand, loaded with balls of neon pink—Julian’s sense of humor on display once again.

  Mason wondered what Camilla was doing right now.

  Motion at the entrance of the Greek Revival house caught his eye. A woman stood in the doorway, bracing her fists on the edges of the doorframe, her own paintball gun gripped in one hand. Her body vibrated with restrained energy as her fierce silvery gaze swept the open area outside, probing the shadows.

  Mason’s eyebrows rose in surprise. It had taken him a moment to recognize Veronica. She looked different now.

  Her hair had been chopped short. The bright salon highlights were gone. Standing up in spikes and radiating from her head in a rough shag, her hair looked almost black in the distance. She looked very familiar to Mason, now, though. Apart from her clothes and the missing nose ring, Veronica looked exactly the way she had as the angry teenager in the picture from Julian’s profile.

  Only deadlier.

  Her nostrils flared. Her mouth was slightly open, in an expression of hungry anticipation. Mason watched her chest rise and fall. She looked like a predatory animal readying for the hunt.

  Your mask is slipping. I can see what you really are. Even if you yourself don’t know.

  Her pale eyes bored into his across the empty space, and Mason drew back against the wall despite himself. He grinned. Even though he was sure she couldn’t see him, the urge to hide had been involuntary, instinctive.

  He wondered whose name was in Veronica’s envelope. He hoped it wasn’t Camilla’s.

  Veronica stalked away from the house, disappearing into the lengthening shadows as she made her way toward the barricade.

  After a moment, Mason slipped out to follow her.

  CHAPTER 130

  JT ripped another strip from the black T-shirt. It required almost no effort, as if the tough cotton were tissue paper. The bloody white gauze of his eye patch gleamed up at him from his cot. It would make him a target, visible in light or darkness. Reaching up, he wra
pped the black strips of clean cloth around his head and over his dead eye, winding them into a bandana that also covered one side of his face. He double-knotted it behind his head.

  The Hawaiian shirt lay on the cot. In its place, he wore another long-sleeved black T-shirt. The desert camouflage of the multipocket tactical vest that covered his chest was a decent match for the island’s dirt and rock, as were the tan fatigue pants he wore.

  He double-laced his boots—combat boots now, also in desert tan—and listened to the quiet sounds that echoed through the Victorian house.

  JT himself made no noise at all. Silence was his specialty.

  One dark night in the Korengal, DiMarco had dubbed him the “shadow of death.” The nickname had stuck. But the Taliban themselves had no nicknames for him. The ones he had encountered on patrol didn’t have nicknames for anything anymore.

  JT flipped open a small green plastic compact one-handed, shielding the mirror inside its lid with his hand to prevent reflections from bouncing off the walls and ceiling, visible from the hallway or outside. Without looking down, he dabbed two fingers into the compact and striped the dark greasepaint under his eye. He dipped again, coming up with a lighter color.

  He finished the interlocking pattern of light and dark that now covered his face, head, neck, and wrists, then slipped the compact back into a vest pocket.

  Then he picked up the blue card that had been inside his envelope. His eye flicked down briefly to read the name of his target.

  The card and envelope went into another pocket of his tactical vest. He picked up the night-vision goggles from his cot.

  JT clipped a Benchmade tactical folding knife, also striped in camouflage, to his pants pocket. Then he slipped through the door, disappearing into the darkening hallway.

  He would be a shadow once again.

  CHAPTER 131

  Crouching by the breakwater, Jordan ripped upward with the dive knife. She sliced through the half-dry seal hide, which she had carefully scraped clean of putrefying flesh, and cut another long strip. Sheathing the knife at her waist, she ripped the last few inches by hand. The end of the strip refused to separate, and she tore it free with her teeth.

  Her anger burned inside, white hot, incandescent, making her stomach hurt, her jaw clench, her heart ache, her eyes sting.

  She scanned the area all around her. No one moved—only seals and birds. She thought of how he had pointed them out to her on the beach this morning, teaching her their Latin names, and a choked sob suddenly erupted from her mouth. Tears splashed the backs of her hands, burning them.

  Bastard.

  Swiping her forearm across her eyes, she strangled the sobs that wanted to come, that threatened to leave her curled helpless on the ground, a pathetic loser for others to pity and feel superior to. That wasn’t her. It would never be her.

  She would make that bastard sorry.

  Gritting her teeth, fully in control of herself again, Jordan stared at the paintball gun, the speargun, and the envelope that lay on the ground beside her.

  She would make him regret what he did.

  Grabbing a long strip of sealskin, she shifted onto one knee and wrapped the strip around her opposite ankle, heel, and foot in a figure-eight pattern, layer after layer, pulling it tight they way a gymnast did after a sprain. She tied it off and shifted position, switching knees so she could wrap the other foot.

  She didn’t need his fucking scuba shoes.

  Ignoring the stench of rotting blubber, Jordan looked at the three sealskins in front of her and thought of tuna and peaches.

  Or his fucking food, either.

  She stood and grabbed the hooded sealskin cape she had fashioned, sliding it onto her shoulders and tying the reeking folds of it about her like a full-length Burberry trench coat.

  Or his cozy fucking blockhouse. He could keep it all. He could rot in there. She didn’t care.

  Her new outfit felt sticky and awful against her skin, but it would keep her warm enough, even in December. After all, this was California.

  Jordan slung the speargun across her back and picked up the paintball gun. She ripped open the envelope, and her shoulders sagged in disappointment. Her target was Mason. Then she straightened.

  That meant Juan had her name. He would have to come after her.

  And if Juan didn’t have the guts to come after her, she would still make him sorry. Her eyes narrowed. After she took out Mason, she would only have to eliminate six others to close the circle.

  Then Juan would be her target, just as she was his.

  She was going to look that son of a bitch in the eyes and make him regret that he ever met her.

  CHAPTER 132

  Juan stood inside the blockhouse, next to the drying rack, facing the open doorway. The light outside dimmed, and a chill wind tickled his bare chest and shoulders. Clouds were gathering above the island. They were sparse now, only thin wisps and streamers, but he knew they would thicken and darken over the next few hours.

  The storm was coming.

  Thrusting both arms into the form-fitting black wetsuit that covered him from the waist down, he shrugged his shoulders and felt the neoprene drape his chest. He reached behind him to grab the lanyard and drew the zipper up his back. Kneeling, he zipped up the left neoprene bootie, then the right. Their heavy-duty rubber soles were ridged on the bottom and sides, for stable footing on wet rock.

  She hadn’t given him a chance to explain, to tell her how he felt about her. But now what was done was done. Best not to think about it anymore.

  He stood and pulled the black neoprene gloves over one hand, then the other. Flexing his fingers, he watched the space beyond the door. Nothing but seals.

  He had hurt her pride.

  Lifting a heavy nylon belt threaded with square lead weights off the drying rack, he swung it around his waist and buckled it into place. Then he shrugged into a slim buoyancy-compensator vest and tightened the straps about his chest. Without a tank to inflate it, the BC vest wouldn’t be much use for its primary function of providing buoyancy. But its many pockets, D-rings, and buckles had other uses. He attached a clear face mask to a D-ring near his shoulder, letting the mask dangle at his collarbone.

  She had let her guard down. She had left herself totally open to him. After what she had been through already—her fiancé’s suicide—that must have taken incredible courage.

  The oversize swim fins on the drying rack—Beuchat Mundial Carbon Pros—were each almost a yard long. They were designed for free diving and for powering through strong currents with minimal effort. Rubber struts ridged their black carbon-fiber blades like the long, bony fingers of a bat’s wing. Juan lifted one over his shoulder and snapped it through a ring of the BC, letting the fin hang down his back, out of the way. Its mate went over his other shoulder.

  He had been afraid to trust his own feelings. Now it was too late. She would never forgive him.

  He slid the serrated dive knife into the black plastic locking sheath strapped to his calf. The spare paintball ammunition—yellow, in his case—went into a side pocket of the BC vest. Wedging the paintball gun barrel-first into a diagonal chest pocket, he left the grip exposed so he could draw it one-handed. Left-handed.

  Perhaps, deep down, he had known that he didn’t really deserve her.

  But he couldn’t undo what was done, and it didn’t matter how sorry he was. He would focus on the job at hand—the true reason he was here. He ignored the way the corners of his mouth tried to pull downward. No more distractions.

  With his right hand, Juan picked up JT’s Glock. A day of immersion in salt water had done the polymer handgun no harm at all. He had wiped the brass cartridges dry and reinserted them into the magazine, but he was fairly sure even that precaution had been unnecessary. The Glock would probably even shoot underwater. He slid the blocky handgun into the improvised drop-leg holster strapped to his thigh, which he had made by cannibalizing parts from another BC vest. A rubber strap snapped into place, holdi
ng the gun securely until it was needed.

  Juan smiled grimly. Now he could operate in the frame of shallow water that surrounded the island, too, while everyone else was limited to moving on the rock-and-sand picture within that frame.

  With the serrated dive knife, he sliced through an empty water jug, cutting away the top to leave a large opening. Then he grabbed another empty jug and did the same. That one had belonged to Jordan.

  His eyes swept the blockhouse, inspecting the walls and ceiling corners, until settling on a sunken divot in the concrete. He was reasonably certain he could make out a small black dot in its shadowed center. Staring at it, he drew the paintball gun.

  Unsmiling, Juan raised his other hand to present a raised middle finger to the camera. Then he aimed the paintball gun. It bucked once in his hand, and the divot disappeared under a splatter of yellow.

  Grabbing a jug with each hand, he carried them to the doorway, ready to drop both and grab for either gun. After scanning the area outside the blockhouse, he slipped cautiously outside and knelt to brace the two jugs upright between rocks.

  Juan stood up. It was time for some answers.

  The storm was coming.

  CHAPTER 133

  An unnatural stillness reigned over the island. Camilla lay flat on her back, watching the sky. It was what she liked to do at the midpoint of a mountain bike ride. She would reach the summit, legs shaky, breathing hard from the climb, and find a nice place to stretch out. She would take her helmet off, tousle her sweaty hair to let it breathe, and watch the clouds while she gathered herself for the downhill run. Getting ready.

  Because on the downhill run, anything could happen to her.

  Camilla liked to go fast. Crazy fast.

  She would dare the mountain to do its worst to her and she’d laugh, bombing down the trail without ever touching her brakes, leaving her riding companions far behind, because flying free with the sky wide above her and the wind whipping her face while trees flashed past on both sides was the exact opposite of being buried in darkness and smoke and death and screams while crumbled walls of rock and metal pressed in on you from all sides and crushed down on you from above and you were crawling, lost, crawling, crawling, dragging yourself, unable to find a way out…