New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  “Come with me.” Juan exited the blockhouse, and Dmitry followed him to the edge of the bluff. Juan pointed at the water of the channel. Shielding his forehead with one hand, Dmitry followed his finger to somewhere else. And then a third location.

  After a season spent on the water, in the ORCA, his eyes were well trained.

  “Ras, dvah, tree, chetiree, poht, shest…” With growing amazement, he counted the trailing wakes and gray dorsal fins.

  Juan gripped his shoulder and spun him, staring into his face with a grim expression. “When I pulled you out of the water five days ago, that shark wanted a piece of you. You and I both know that’s wrong, but we saw it.”

  There was nothing Dmitry could say.

  Juan pointed at the water again. “Five days ago, there were only two or three sharks out there. Now, there are more—a lot more.” He turned away and limped back toward the blockhouse. “Your raft will just be the appetizer tray.”

  CHAPTER 171

  Veronica blinked. Her eyes strained at the gloom around her, opening wider and wider. She could feel them bulging from their sockets as she tried to see where she was. The uneven ceiling above her looked like rock.

  She couldn’t turn her head.

  The tendons tightened in her neck as she strained to turn her face to the side. She tried to open her mouth. She couldn’t move her jaw.

  She was paralyzed.

  She could barely breathe.

  Rage coursed through her body. She would kill the person responsible. She would kill them all. Just as soon as she managed to get up.

  A hollow chuckle sounded in the distance, echoing off rock walls of the small space around her. A rhythmic scraping noise drew closer and closer.

  A new emotion crept into the mix of fury and frustration that twisted her face: fear. She rolled her eyes to the side as far as she could, staring, trying to pierce the semidarkness. She could see nothing.

  “Ah, you’re awake, I see. Good. Because it’s that time again.”

  Something moved into Veronica’s field of view, hovering an inch from her eye.

  A needle.

  Liquid dripped from the tip of the hypodermic syringe. Her eyes crossed, focusing on it, helpless to look away.

  The person holding the syringe remained a dim, blurry outline leaning over her.

  “Rocuronium only lasts an hour or so. Guessing the right amount for someone like you was tricky. Too little and you’d still be able move. Too much and you wouldn’t be able to breathe. You’re lucky I’m getting good at this. It took me quite a number of experiments until I started getting the amounts right.”

  A hand cupped her breast. Then it trailed down her stomach, touching, exploring. Teasing.

  I’ll tear you apart, you fucking animal. I’ll break you into little pieces.

  Veronica strained to move an arm, a hand, a leg, a finger—anything. Her own body betrayed her. She was helpless, unable to protect herself.

  “I think I nailed the correct dosage in your case. Now, as soon as we get a few uninterrupted hours, we can have lots of fun together. What do you think?”

  Fingers probed at her roughly, where she was the most vulnerable.

  Terror and fury vied for control in Veronica’s mind as her eyes followed the needle’s descent toward the jugular vein in her neck.

  CHAPTER 172

  Juan stared at the scattered rocks of Jordan’s cairn. Jaw trembling, he gritted his teeth and strangled the guttural sounds trying to force themselves from deep within his chest. His shaking fingers ratcheted into fists, clenching with a brutal force that sent spikes of pain stabbing through his side.

  Nearby, the flag lay in the rubble, discarded. The broken megalodon pendant had been trampled into the sand. Rocks were strewn in all directions, radiating outward from the gaping, empty hole where he had laid her lifeless body to rest.

  Jordan was gone.

  “Come, my friend.” Dmitry’s sorrowful voice came from behind him. “This is bad, I know, but you must come now. We need to make plan.”

  Shaking his head, Juan raised his fists to his temples, unable to speak. He squeezed his eyes shut against the desecration, seeing Jordan sitting on the cot in the blockhouse, the forgotten tears of an actress drying on her cheeks as she looked at him with frank curiosity. Jordan, wondering why her tears hadn’t worked on him the way they always had on everyone else. Jordan asking him, “Can you catch me a fish?”

  A shuddering breath exploded from his lungs. He lowered his arms and gripped the shaft of the speargun that had once belonged to her, but was now his forever.

  I’ll catch you a fish, he silently promised her. I’ll go catch you some fish, right now.

  And then he would drag whoever he caught back to the blockhouse, where the concrete walls would muffle their screams, and he would ask his questions again. But this time he would allow no evasions. He would tolerate no lies. He would fire up the portable generator and, with one hundred twenty Volts AC to help him get answers, he would learn everything.

  He would find out who.

  He would find out why.

  Pressing a hand against his side and ignoring Dmitry’s calls, Juan stalked toward the blockhouse. The hole in his chest stung and burned, and he welcomed the pain. It was all he had now. It gave him focus. It would see him through this. And he would share it a thousandfold with whoever was responsible for bringing Jordan here.

  Until he found that person, they would all share Juan’s pain—innocent and guilty alike. Because in the end, his father was right. If you hesitated, afraid to harm the innocent, it would cost you everyone you loved. It would leave you with nothing.

  Leave you a ghost, cold and dead inside.

  Dead but still standing.

  • • •

  Camilla stood in the doorway of the blockhouse, watching him approach. Her face was cold and unfriendly.

  Juan shouldered past her, ignoring her. He grabbed the wet suit off the rack. He would spare no one in his search for the truth, but he would save her for last. As he peeled his shirt off, he could feel her staring at his back, not saying anything. The cold way she was looking at him now was new; she had never looked at him that way before.

  “Where are you going, Juan?” So cold, too, her voice.

  Shrugging into his wet suit, he didn’t answer.

  “We’re all dying out here,” she said.

  He tugged the lanyard, zipping up the back.

  “When are you going to understand? This is not what we need from you.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” He picked up the speargun again.

  “No, you won’t. You’ll die, Juan. And so will the rest of us. We need to help each other.”

  “What you need is to stay out of my way now,” he said. “Ask Jordan how well my help worked out for her. Ask Natalie.”

  “Natalie’s gone. Don’t you care at all what happens to the rest of us? Mason’s crippled. Veronica’s gone insane. Brent’s killing himself with drugs. JT’s hiding under a rock.” She laid a hand on his arm. “We need a leader, Juan. We need you.”

  He turned away.

  “Mason’s ten times the man you are.” She sounded furious now.

  “Go lay your guilt trip on him, then.”

  “She told me.” The fury faded from her voice, replaced by bleak resignation. “She tried to tell me about you, but I misunderstood what she was saying. You’re afraid to let anybody in.” She grabbed her purse to leave and looked at him with disgust.

  “Jordan was right about you. You’re a coward, Juan.”

  The strength drained out of his legs, and he sat down hard on the cot. The bands around his chest tightened with crushing force. He couldn’t look at her, so he looked up at the ceiling instead. “What did she say about me?”

  “She said not to trust you.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “I can see why, now.” Camilla gave a pitiless laugh. “But at the time, I didn’t understand what she meant. I thought she was t
elling me you were with Julian, because of what else she said.”

  “What else did she say about me?”

  “It wasn’t about you. I only thought it was. She said that the name of the company pretty much told us who set this up.”

  “The Hippocrates quote?” He opened his eyes and stared at her. “Ars longa, vita brevis, and all that? But I don’t see what it tells us at all.”

  “She said what didn’t matter. Who did. And, Juan, I figured you would have gone to strict Catholic schools. Latin would have been part of your curriculum.”

  His jaw dropped. “No, don’t you see? Who! Who! Hippocrates, that’s who! That same quote probably appears in half the medical textbooks ever published.”

  He stood and grabbed her arm.

  “Camilla, Hippocrates was a doctor!”

  PART V

  FINAL ROUND

  CHAPTER 173

  Mason raised a hand as they approached.

  “Waiter, another mojito, please. The Cruzan Estate Silver, and easy on the ice.”

  He had dragged a chair and a threadbare blanket from the station to the top of the hill, where he now sat, next to the wreckage of the tower. Jordan’s grisly banner stood behind him, the seal head on top a festering, flyblown horror. The corners of the blanket were wedged between the twisted struts of the tower, blocking the sun like a beachside umbrella. He lounged in the shade, bad leg extended, like a tourist on vacation.

  Camilla pushed ahead of Juan and Dmitry and stopped in front of Mason.

  “We know who is behind this,” she said.

  Mason nodded. “Brent. I figured out the answer to your question about the connection between us all. The best place to look if you wanted to find proven survivors.”

  “A hospital,” she said.

  • • •

  The afternoon sun beat down on their impromptu four-person council of war. The blank-eyed seal head watched from atop the flagpole, lending its silent approval.

  “Why this doctor wants to kill everyone?” Dmitry asked.

  “I don’t know.” Camilla’s throat was tight. What had she done to deserve Brent’s hatred? “I just don’t know.”

  “Let’s ask the man himself,” Juan said. “When’s the last time one of us saw him?”

  “Last night,” Mason said. “Going into the factory building. Whatever else our Dr. Moreau is, he was drugged to the gills. You should have seen his eyes.”

  Juan leaned against the wreckage of the tower. Looking at his handsome features, Camilla could see no telltale signs of plastic surgery. Undoubtedly, he had used the most skilled surgeons. Any traces they left would be very subtle. But they would be noticeable to a trauma doctor digging bullets out of his chest—a doctor fascinated with survivor stories, who might wonder how a charter dive boat captain could afford such an expensive makeover, or why he might need one. A doctor who might secretly begin an investigation to find out who his mystery patient really was.

  She opened her mouth to say something but noticed that Juan’s face was pale. She looked down at his feet instead, and her heart squeezed. “You’re bleeding again.”

  Dime-size drops of blood sprinkled the rocks and streaked his booties. Juan glanced at them. He shrugged. And then he coughed, wiping a hand against his chin.

  Camilla stared at him, dismayed to see a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. That meant the spear had nicked his lung. He was injured even worse than she had thought.

  “Confronting Brent will be dangerous,” she said. “You and Mason are already in bad shape.”

  Juan looked away.

  “You know what you need to do,” she said.

  He nodded. “JT.”

  She took a deep breath. She hated to do this to him, to hurt him again. But she had to.

  She reached into her purse, pulled out a black object, and laid it on a waist-high spar of the tower. Covering it with her hand, she hesitated.

  What if she did this to him now, and something terrible happened again?

  She pulled her hand away to reveal the Glock.

  Juan’s eyes widened. He looked at her, and sorrow suffused his features.

  She held his gaze. The gun that had killed Jordan lay between them—a mute harbinger promising more violence to come. For a long moment, no one said anything.

  Then Juan picked up the Glock. “I know where to find JT.”

  • • •

  Juan walked onto the dock, the thick rubber soles of his scuba booties thudding on the wooden planks. Camilla stood on the rocky breakwater with Mason and Dmitry, watching him. Water lapped at the sides of the narrow jetty and frothed at the rocks of the shore. Nothing else moved. Camilla could see no sign of anyone else, but she didn’t expect to. She had already witnessed how invisible JT could become.

  Juan stopped in the middle of the dock and turned to face the island.

  “Roll call, Corporal Washington.” His voice echoed off the rocks. “Time to redeploy. Mission’s changed. DR phase is over. It’s now DA.”

  A splash sounded under the dock, directly below Juan’s feet. Ripples spread from beneath the boards. Then a shaved head and broad, muscular shoulders emerged from the water alongside the dock. A dripping JT looked up at him.

  “What does a fucking drug lord know about ‘deep reconnaisance’? ‘Direct action’?”

  Juan gave a cold, arrogant smile. “Quite a bit, actually. We had our own private G2, our own intelligence organization, you know. When you brought your war on drugs to our country and Pastrana’s ‘Plan Colombia’ became an excuse for the U.S. to send in your military, we studied you. We dissected your structure, equipment, doctrines, capabilities, weaknesses. We learned you inside out.”

  He paused to cough.

  “That’s all in the past, though. I’m a fellow American now. Just a dive boat charter captain, JT.”

  He took a step forward and held out an arm. “I’m asking for your help.”

  JT didn’t say anything.

  Camilla held her breath.

  Then JT reached up to clasp Juan’s forearm. He hauled himself up out of the water to stand dripping, facing him on the dock. They stood like that for a frozen moment. Then Juan held out JT’s Glock, butt first.

  JT glanced down at it. Then he shook his head.

  “You keep it… Captain.”

  CHAPTER 174

  The ocean lashed against the other side of the seawall. The wind had picked up. It whipped their clothes and blew Camilla’s hair about her face. Juan had gathered them in the lee of the seawall, below the three connected buildings that housed the science station. The sun was setting. Shadows crawled across the rocky ground. No windows interrupted the broad shiplap sides of the largest of the three—the factory building. He knew it would be near-dark inside, between the ceiling-height rows of dusty machinery.

  They would find Brent there. Juan tried to picture what the doctor might be doing, and couldn’t. He faced the others.

  “We clear the station room by room. JT and I lead. Dmitry, you and Camilla follow, supporting Mason. With his leg, he’s going to need your help keeping up. Everybody, keep your eyes open.”

  He coughed, spat a dark streak onto the ground, and smeared it away with his foot.

  “By now, Brent knows we’re onto him. He’ll have surprises planned for us. Don’t get distracted. Watch out for him circling back around to come at us from behind. But no matter what, I want him alive. Is that clear?”

  The taste of blood lingered in his mouth. It was constant now, like the ever-present tickling ache in his side when he breathed.

  “Alive.” He looked at each of them in turn, but it was himself he was most worried about. Would he be able to control his own reactions when he was face-to-face with the person who had lured Jordan here? “I want some real answers from him. He’s got a lot to answer for right now, to all of you. And to me.”

  Juan chopped the air with his hand, giving the signal. JT cocked his leg and piston-kicked the door of the first build
ing, sending it swinging inward to slam against the wall. The loud crash reverberated through the dim rooms beyond. Juan went in low and to the left, speargun in hand. The Glock stayed at his thigh. He knew that once the gun came into play, their chances of taking Brent alive would drop to zero quickly. JT followed almost immediately behind him, holding a thick length of chain doubled in one fist. He went right.

  The first room of the station was unoccupied. Juan stared about him in surprise.

  Shredded papers rustled along the floor, stirred up by the wind through the open door. The former science station was almost unrecognizable. The scale of destruction visited on it in such a short time defied the imagination. Mangled binders and eviscerated books and reports lay thick on the concrete floor. A chair swayed brokenly from the wall at head height, its legs driven through the plywood wallboard. Pieces of another chair were strewn all around them. The cabinets and drainboard had been ripped away from the wall and lay in a jumbled pile in the corner, splintered and flattened. The twisted frame of a cot leaned upright against another wall. Its vinyl top had been shredded from the frame and now hung in strips that fluttered like flags in the draft from the door.

  The large seal skulls had been shattered, their white shards scattered everywhere underfoot. The bone fragments trailed through the darkened doorway that led deeper into the station buildings—into the room where Heather had disappeared.

  Juan waved JT forward with another chopping motion of his hand. They went through, weapons ready.

  The destruction in this room was even worse. The cots lay in pieces. The card table was broken in half. The remains of the LED lamp were shattered in a corner. Jagged sheets of plywood, torn loose from the wall, dangled askew from one or two corners.

  Juan could hear the low exclamations of surprise behind them as Camilla, Dmitry, and Mason entering the first room. But Brent had brought them here and done all this for a reason. He was sure this rampage was meant to distract them from that.