by Ken Douglas
“ Will we be able to out run them?” Broxton said.
Ramsingh didn’t answer. His eyes were on Sea King as she made a clumsy and wide turn. But instead of stopping at ninety degrees as they had done, she kept coming around.
“ No!” Broxton screamed.
One second, Sea King was slicing through the water, a dangerously beautiful sight as she moved through the choppy seas, and the next she was stopped dead as she slammed into the rocks.
Ramsingh slackened sail and Gypsy Dancer straightened up and slowed to four knots. “Three strikes,” he said. “She’s out.”
And Broxton understood. Ramsingh had gambled that she would be so caught up in the chase that she’d forget about the rocks. While she was changing places with the Texan and struggling to turn the ship around, Ramsingh had him circling around the rocks. She’d been too busy to notice what they were doing.
“ We have to go back,” he said as the boat floundered.
“ No,” Ramsingh said, and Broxton watched in horror as a gaping hole opened in Sea King’s bow. In seconds she was on her side. Ramsingh looked away, tightened sail and cleated off the sheets. “We’re going back to Trinidad,” he said.
“ We can’t leave them,” Broxton said.
“ Sometimes a prime minister has to make life and death decisions,” he said. “This is the first time for me, and I hope the last. I hope in the end God will judge that I acted properly.”
“ She’ll die,” Broxton said.
“ And her father will go on to serve his president and the world. The Scorpion will kill no more. Warren will mourn his daughter and you and I will keep our silence. A beautiful young woman has died and the Scorpion has gone into retirement.”
“ I loved her,” Broxton said.
“ I know you did, son,” Ramsingh said, “and that saddens me, but it was the only way.”
Eleven hours later they sailed back into Trinidad racing the setting sun. The waters around the Bocas were unusually calm, the sea inside the gulf clear and flat, the wind silent. A yellow-orange sky greeted them as they dropped anchor. The sound of cheerful pan music floated across the anchorage, but it failed to lift Broxton’s heart.
Dani was dead and he’d had a hand in the killing. There was no other way. He knew that, but still she was gone. He felt like the light had gone out of the world.
Chapter Twenty
“ Hey, how’s it going?” Broxton said. “I called your room. When you didn’t answer I thought I’d come out here and check.” Maria was finishing dinner at a table by the pool. Two of the other three chairs were full of shopping bags and there were more under the table. He pulled out the empty chair and sat down.
“ I’m getting by. I got on with Iberia. I start in a week.” Her smile was genuine. She looked happy. “How’s the protection business?”
“ Finished,” he said. “They got the bad guys, so they no longer need my services.”
“ Where does that leave you?”
“ They’ve offered me a field assignment. Here. I’ll be working out of the embassy for a year. Then I suppose they’ll rotate me.”
“ So you’re a field agent now?”
“ Looks like it.”
“ How do you feel about that?”
“ It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“ Then I’m glad for you.”
“ Enough about me. What did you do, buy out the city?”
“ No, it’s all fabric. I’m a seamstress in my spare time. I make quilts.”
“ So much,” he said, looking at the bags.
“ Port of Spain must be the fabric capitol of the world. I’ve never seen so many fabric shops. I couldn’t help myself. Give a girl a credit card and you know what happens.”
He laughed as he subconsciously took the ring out of his pocket and started playing with it.
“ There’s that ring again,” she said.
“ I guess I’ve given up on her,” he said.
“ Really?”
“ Yeah,” he said. Dani was dead, but there was no way he could tell her that. He turned toward the pool.
“ You’re not?” she said.
“ I am,” he said, and with a flick of the wrist he sent the engagement ring spiraling and sparkling toward the deep end of the pool.
“ That was very foolish,” she said.
“ Better to have loved and lost.”
“ But you haven’t lost yet,” she said.
“ Ramsingh has a mantra he repeats to himself when the going gets tough. ‘Never give up. Never quit,’ but the battle has to be winnable.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Dani and I were best friends growing up. She was one of the guys. She was the one I could tell everything to, but I think that’s all we were ever meant to be, best friends. Even that’s over now.”
“ Never lovers?” Maria said.
“ We never were,” Broxton said.
“ Really? I thought-”
“ Can you think of a better way to ruin a perfectly good friendship?”
“ I think maybe it can make a friendship even stronger. Something that can last forever. What could be better than your lover being your best friend? I think that would be very nice.”
“ I suppose, if you found the right woman. Dani obviously wasn’t the right one for me.”
“ Can you help me carry these up to my room?” she asked.
“ Sure,” he said.
“ Then let’s go,” she said, pushing herself from the table. She stood, brushed her hair back with her fingers, then picked up several of the bags. He picked up the rest and followed her toward the lobby and the elevators.
At her room she slipped the plastic card key into the door. She reached out to open it when the green light on the lock told them it was okay to enter, but the door jerked open before her hand touched the knob.
“ Bring the bags inside and set them down, then walk to the bed and put your ass on the mattress, Mr. Broxton. You too, Maria.” The voice commanded obedience, and the gun in his right hand backed it up.
“ You?” Broxton said.
“ Me,” Earl said. “Surprised?”
“ Very,” Broxton said.
“ You know each other?” Maria said.
“ He’s the man that tried to kill Prime Minister Ramsingh in Venezuela,” Broxton said.
“ He’s also my husband,” Maria said.
“ Curious,” Broxton said.
“ And that’s the way you’re going to stay,” Earl said. Broxton tensed his legs and gauged the distance between them, two quick steps, but Earl seemed to be daring him to try it and Broxton knew he’d be dead before he closed half the gap.
“ Sit,” Earl said. “Only you, Broxton. Maria, get a glass of water out of the bathroom.”
“ Get it yourself.”
“ Come on, baby, we both know I can be difficult if I get upset, so don’t get me angry and make me do something I’ll be sorry for.” He was talking softly, but he was a man on the edge and any second he was going over.
“ Do as he says, Maria,” Broxton said, sitting.
“ You don’t scare me anymore, Earl.”
“ Baby, if you don’t hustle your buns into that bathroom, I’m going to put a bullet into lover boy’s stomach, then we’ll see how much I can scare you.”
She went into the bathroom and got the water. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“ Put your ass next to his,” he said, as he fished a bottle of pills out of his shirt pocket. “These won’t kill you, but they’ll put you right out.” He tossed the bottle toward them and Broxton snatched it out of the air with a quick left handed catch. “Four for you, Mr. Broxton. Two for my wife.”
“ How do we know they’re not poison?” Maria said.
“ You don’t, baby, but it’s the pills or a bullet.”
“ What are they?” Broxton asked.
“ How should I know? She gave ’em to me and told me if you got in the way to drug
you up till it was over. She wants you alive, remember?”
“ She tried to sink us,” Broxton said.
“ That was then, this is now.”
“ How’d you get away?”
“ You were so busy turning tail and leaving us to die that you didn’t notice when she lowered the dinghy into the water. We grabbed her get-away-bag and sailed into this nice little bay. Three hours later we were on a plane for Port of Spain. We probably beat you back.”
“ She’s well known in Trinidad, by now Ramsingh knows she’s back. He’s probably got every cop in the country looking for her.”
“ Think again, you’d never believe the shit she had in that bag. She’s a master of disguises, you’re old girlfriend. I thought I was flying back to Trinidad with my mother. She sailed through customs, a little old lady from Boston, coming down to Trinidad to visit her son who works for one of the oil companies. She even had the accent down.”
“ I don’t believe it.”
“ Believe it,” Earl said, then he gestured toward the pills in Broxton’s hand. “Now, eat up, I don’t have all day.”
“ I’m not very hungry.”
“ Mr. Broxton, we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. I got no instructions about my wife. You want her to stay alive you eat the pills,” Earl said, as he moved the barrel of the gun till it was pointing at Maria. “Well?”
Broxton poured four of the pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.
“ Now you baby.”
Maria took the bottle from Broxton and tipped it to her lips, swallowing the last two pills, then she drank the water. “I hope they kill me, Earl,” she said. “That way I’ll never have to see you again.”
“ Baby, death is the only way you’ll ever get rid of me,” he said.
“ Now what?” Broxton said.
“ Now we wait,” he said, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow evening, at five straight up, Ramsingh will be getting his and it’ll all be over.”
“ She’s going to hit him during the dedication speech?”
“ Yeah, in front of an army of cops, pretty fucking ballsy. I almost with I was doing it, but it’s her show now. I’m out of it.”
“ It’s not too late to really be out of it, Earl,” Broxton said. “Let us go and I’ll keep you out of it.”
“ Climb up on the bed, lay down on your backs and stare at the ceiling,” Earl said.
“ You don’t have to do this,” Broxton said.
“ You’re wasting your breath,” Maria said, and she scooted on her rear till she was in the center of the bed and lay down with her head on the pillow.
“ Now you, Broxton,” Earl said, and by the time he was stretched out next to Maria she was asleep and he was out a few minutes later.
The slight breeze blowing through his hair told him it was a dream. He tried to reach a hand up, to touch it, to pull on it, to feel its texture, but his hands were locked at his sides. He opened his eyes and looked down, wind rippled through his loose clothes, tickled his bare feet and helped to keep him aloft.
“ Dani,” he moaned. He was floating above her nude body, gently coming down on top of her. He felt her breasts pushing against his bare chest, felt himself getting hard. He tried to bring a hand up to caress her, but his arms were locked iron tight at his sides.
He felt her hand take him and guide him into her. After all these years, it was happening at last. He felt her grind up to meet him and he was thrilled. He never wanted to wake, the dream was better than any reality, better than life.
He was so hard, but he couldn’t seem to find release. The dream had him in its grip and he slowly pumped into her. He came so close, but the pleasure he craved was just beyond the edge. He tried to grind into her faster and harder, but he was crippled without the use of his hands and so he was forced to match her slow, sensual rhythm and she held him on the edge of forever with her steady rocking, stomach tightening, thigh clenching motion, seeming to suck him deeper and deeper into her until he felt like his heart was going to burst.
Then she pumped her pelvis up to him to catch him as the greatest release he’d ever known ripped through him. He went and went and went and he thought he’d go on forever. “Dani, Dani,” he moaned, then he was sinking in dark waters, the surface fading away. There were sharks here, danger near, and he was moving blindly out of control, buried in black, shivering and shaking, cold one second, hot the next. He tried to see, but pain plagued his eyes, the lids weighed heavy, covering an ache that caromed through his head. To open them would be to invite in the hot chills that ravaged his body. He felt like he’d been crucified and tossed into a whirlpool, and it was sucking him down into the pit.
Reality was spinning away as the varying shades of red running inside his eyes turned into flames dancing over hot coals, leaping out from behind his eyelids and wrapping hot tongues of fire around the back of his neck, hot and clenching, choking his breath away as his lungs exploded. He gagged, trying in vain to suck air through lips that refused to part. And then he passed out again.
Later he came awake, shaking in a cold sweat. He was covered in pain. His legs felt like an army of assassins were beating on them with flaming torches. His arms were frozen, hands still nailed to the cross. Ice dripped from his armpits instead of sweat. His face was buried in snow. His mouth was nailed shut, cutting off air. The red flames inside his eyes had turned into frozen hands of clutching ice. Wicked hands, long nails digging into the back of his neck, digging deep, drawing blood, squeezing, clutching, seizing his spinal chord, snatching it away, pulling it through his throat.
Somewhere someone moaned, then his body started shaking, arms and legs vibrating and shuddering. He sensed that the source was from outside of himself, and he was powerless to control it. His right arm shot upward and came down hard, hitting himself in the leg. He felt a stab of pain as his arm was going up to attack himself again and he stiffened himself and fought against the force, slowing the attack. His midsection started jerking, spasms from outside of himself, flesh against him, pounding and rubbing, slippery and slapping. He wanted to see, but was choking, struggling to take in air, and he passed out again.
The cold was gone when he woke again, the clutching hands replaced by a dull headache, greater than a hangover, but bearable. The pain in his legs was gone, but so was most of the feeling. His bladder was screaming, but he couldn’t relieve himself. He was aching, stiff, and his tongue lay flat, dry in his mouth. He tried to move it, tried to swallow saliva and couldn’t. He had a kink in his left foot and tried to move it. Like his tongue, it was immobile. He opened his eyes.
Her eyes were inches from his own, staring unblinking. He tried to jerk away, but he was frozen in place. He fought to reclaim his raging pulse. He tried screaming, but the sound was killed in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to fight the fright building inside. He was attached to her and she was dead. He shivered and gagged on another scream, then his arm shot up, out of his control, and he slapped himself in the leg, but he kept his eyes closed, hoping beyond hope that he’d slipped into a nightmare and not cold reality.
He slapped himself again and he opened his eyes.
She blinked.
She was alive.
He stared into her eyes and forced his fear aside. Her nose was touching his, he could feel her warm breath on his face. She had gray duct tape stuck over her mouth. He tried to move his lips, moved his parched tongue between them, touched and tasted the tape covering his own mouth. Cold fear crept up his spine.
He closed his eyes again and inhaled a long slow breath through his nostrils. When he open them back up she was still staring at him. She cast her eyes down the length of their bodies and he followed her look and the fear so recently calmed burst through the surface, screaming and sending spikes of ice into the base of his neck.
Their arms and legs were duct taped together, wrapped several times, mummy like. They were naked, her breasts were flat against his chest, her pelvis pressed against hi
s, their breath intermingled, their eyes sharing their combined fear. They couldn’t move, he couldn’t sit without breaking her back, she couldn’t without breaking his, but there had to be a way, he thought. There was, it was at the edge of his mind, but the drugs riding the blood through his veins dulled him and he found himself drifting into semi consciousness.
But there was a way out, he thought, as everything faded to black.
He felt the sun warm on his neck as he woke again, craving water, still stiff, still unable to move, and she was still staring, eyes so close to his. He tried to blink her away. He was still groggy from whatever drugs that were working on him, and it took a few seconds before he realized that this was no dream. He tried to talk through the tape, but his words, “Are you all right,” filtered through his dry mouth, the drug haze, and the duct tape, and came out like a cross between a moan and a groan and he knew they were as unintelligible to her as they were to himself.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, to think, but he opened them quickly when she raised her arm up, pulling his along with it, and slapped him in the leg. He got the message and nodded his head. He wasn’t going back to sleep.
Then he remembered the dream and he knew that it had been no dream. It wasn’t Dani he’d made love to, but Maria. He stared deep into her eyes, felt her sweat mingled with his, felt her heart beat racing and rippling through her to him, tingling his skin and his soul. They were trapped and taped to each other as one, and he felt all the love he had to give flowing through him, passing into her.
She picked his arm up again and he shook his head. She didn’t have to slap him anymore to get his attention. He was awake now and he was thinking. He looked past her to the clock on the nightstand beyond. Two-thirty, two-and-a-half hours to prevent an assassination, but first he had to get free.