by Tom Savage
“Where’s Diablo?” Nora asked.
“Probably with Mrs. Lamont, figuring out what to do with us. And Laurel and Hardy are probably in the guard room, but we’ll have to watch for them—they could come here to check on their prisoners anytime. In fact, I’ll bet they do something on the hour. It’s four forty-two now. We’d better be far away from here by five.”
Nora looked down at his leg. “How bad is it?”
“It hurts like hell,” Ralph said, “but I’ll be okay. Do you have a pack of matches? Or a lighter?”
“Not on me. I have both in my shoulder bag, but I didn’t bring it tonight.”
Ralph turned to Carmen. “How about you?”
Carmen shook her head.
Nora thought a moment, remembering something Ellie had told her at dinner the other night: He smokes like a chimney. She went over to the unconscious man in the corner, knelt beside him, and went through his pockets.
“Aha!” she cried, holding up a Bic lighter. “Here you go.”
She handed Ralph the lighter, then went over to the window above Carmen and looked out. The rain had begun again, but lightly this time. She hoped the wet weather would serve to keep Laurel and Hardy—Ralph’s perfect term for them—inside the guard station. She hoped so.
Ralph moved unsteadily to join her at the window, wincing at each footfall. Carmen leaned out of the way as with a great effort he picked Nora up and sat her in the window. She swung her legs over the sill and jumped down. Ralph pulled himself up and through the window, biting back a cry of pain.
When they were both standing behind the building, she got on his left side and placed her arm around his waist. He placed his left arm across her shoulders, and they made their awkward way along the back alley to the generator hut and water tank. The path to the bay where the boats were docked began on the other side of the tank. Nora stopped them there, carefully removing her arm from his waist and his arm from her shoulders. Their short, stumbling journey from the storehouse had convinced her that she must pull rank and change the plan. She turned around to face him.
“You wait here, Ralph,” she said. “That’s an order. No argument, please; there isn’t time. I can find the century plant. What am I looking for?”
He told her, and she nodded. She squeezed his arm, smiled, and left him standing beside the water tank. Bracing herself, she set off into the forest.
Chapter 42
Nora ran through the trees, bent at the waist to keep low to the ground. The rain pelted her as she moved, but it wasn’t bad. The leaves and fronds on the mesh awning high above the compound caught a lot of it, and the thick umbrella of leaves here in the forest caught even more. She barely got wet at all.
She constantly looked over at the two buildings through the trees on her right, half expecting the troops to come bursting out of the barracks at any moment. More than that, she worried about the guard station: if Zeb and his colleague came out of there and began snooping around…
Now she was abreast of the building that housed the guard station. The forest cut a corner just ahead of her, conforming to the shape of the camp it enclosed. As soon as she passed the building, she veered right until she was behind the station. Twenty yards, twenty yards. She took large steps through the trees, gauging one yard for each footfall. At exactly twenty-two paces, a big century plant appeared before her, and she stopped.
Ralph had an excellent sense for distances. This was the plant in question; she could see a tiny edge of the slick black plastic bag sticking up from the spiny flesh deep in the center of the great flower. Leaning forward, she pulled away two fat, razor-edged leaves and slowly, carefully thrust her right hand down into the bag, hoping no tropical creature had claimed it as a new residence in the hour or so that it had been here. The last thing she wanted was to yank her hand back out and find a nest of centipedes or a family of scorpions attached to it.
She felt around inside the slippery bag, identifying things by touch. The tiny, blunt, cold metal rods were firing pins; the slick boxes were bullets; and—aha!
She found the big box at the bottom of the sack. By now, she was bent over the massive plant, her arm thrust down to ground level deep inside it, and all she could think of was Little Shop of Horrors. Beautiful as it was, there was something sickening, downright nauseating about sticking her hand down into the innards of this strange distant cousin of the cactus family. She yanked the plus-size plastic cigar box from underneath the other articles and quickly pulled it out. Too quickly: She received a long tear on the sleeve of her jacket and a long, thin scratch on her inner arm as payment for her effort.
She let go of the thick leaves she’d been holding out of the way, and they sprang back into place, totally concealing the bag. Clutching the plastic box under her arm like a football, she made her way back through the trees to the woods at the side of the big, long Quonset hut. She brushed away the raindrops pelting her face, and began the return trip to the water tank, where Ralph waited for her.
As she passed by the building, which was now thirty yards on her left, she heard a commotion from that direction. She stopped, crouching down in the undergrowth, watching. Carmen Lamont, still in her dark robe, had come out of Diablo’s quarters at the far end and was running toward this end, the guard station, calling Zeb’s name. She reached the door and banged on it. It was opened immediately, and Zeb and the big guy came outside to join her.
A low, animated conversation ensued between the three of them, with Carmen waving her arms and gesturing, pointing this way and that. The two men were clearly upset by whatever she was telling them. Then they both nodded, and they all took off, Carmen back toward Diablo’s place and the two sentries toward the barracks on the other side of the field. Carmen entered Diablo’s door and slammed it.
Nora watched the men go, making sure they weren’t headed toward the storehouse. They weren’t: They entered one of the middle doors in the long hut. She concluded that they hadn’t discovered that she and Ralph were at large, nor were they waking the other denizens of the compound. She shrugged at all the activity, and was preparing to continue on her way back to Ralph, when she paused a moment, looking over at the wide-open door to the guard room a mere thirty yards away.
She didn’t even have to think about it; her decision was made. With swift glances at Diablo’s door and the doors across the way, Nora came out of the forest and sprinted across the empty space to the Quonset hut, rushing in through the open door.
It was a big, square room, functional rather than decorative. It contained two desks, a big one in the center and a smaller one off to one side. Nora assumed she’d have to go through drawers or cabinets to find what she sought, but everything was laid out for her on the smaller desk. She saw the objects immediately and went over to stare down at them.
The remains of three cellphones—her two and Ralph’s one—were piled on the desk, smashed beyond repair. That was the bad news—but the good news lay beside the pile: a shiny gray thumb drive. Nora snatched it up and dropped it into her pocket. She scanned the room for a working phone or a weapon, but no luck. She went over to the laptop computer on the main desk and opened the lid, disheartened to see the familiar blank screen with the blinking cursor. The instruction was in Spanish, but she knew what it said in any language: Enter Password.
Nora knew next to nothing about computers, but she knew it was useless to try to copy the contents of this laptop to Ralph’s thumb drive; she couldn’t gain access to it. But she worked with people who could perform miracles, including Ralph Johnson. She unplugged the laptop and carried it outside with her, clutching the computer and the cigar box to her chest like library books, and headed back toward the woods. She was halfway there when she heard the running footsteps pounding toward her across the quadrangle.
The big guy (Oliver Hardy?) had come out of the barracks across the way—carrying a suitcase, of all
things—just as she’d come out of the office. When he’d seen her, he’d dropped the case and taken off after her, moving swiftly across the wide field. Now he was closing in on her, and she was still out in the open.
But not for long. Nora plunged into the forest, running in the direction of the century plant, but as soon as she was out of his sight she made a U-turn and took off in the opposite direction toward the other side of the compound, where Ralph was waiting. She tore through the wet trees, crouched so far forward that she was practically on all fours, hanging on to her packages for dear life. She heard the big man’s shouts behind her, but she didn’t think he’d be fooled for long by her feint. He wasn’t: Even now she could hear him, still shouting, crashing through the bracken behind her in hot pursuit. From the sound of his shouts, he was quickly catching up; at any moment, he would be upon her.
Trees, trees, and more trees; would this forest never end? Had Zeb heard his colleague’s shouts? Was he also in pursuit? Had the noise alerted Diablo? No time to turn and look; she had to keep moving. Just when she thought she’d run the wrong way, deeper into the woods, she burst out of the trees into the open space beside the generator hut.
It was empty. She’d left Ralph right here next to the water tank, but he wasn’t here now. She slowed, trying to decide what to do. If Ralph had been recaptured, what could she do about it now? Her best bet was to keep going, join Eb in the Violet, and go for help. The pounding behind her was nearly on her now. Just as she decided to resume speed, the water tank spoke to her in an urgent whisper.
“Don’t stop, Mrs. Baron! Go down the path! Run!”
Nora ran. She flew over to the dirt path and threw herself down it. She’d gone only a few steps when she arrived at the leaf-covered wire mesh curtain stretched across the path, coming down from the cliff above it, obscuring the entrance to the camp from outside eyes. She figured there must be an opening somewhere, but she couldn’t see it. She knelt, put down her packages, and picked up the bottom hem of the mesh curtain from the path. She’d simply go under it—
She stopped when she heard the click behind her. She jumped up and whirled around to see the big man standing at the top of the path in front of the water tank, grinning as he raised his pistol and took careful aim at her.
Chapter 43
What Nora saw next was mostly a blur. One moment the man stood there, grinning and aiming, and in the next moment he was flying forward to land facedown on the ground, the pistol flying from his hand and skittering away. Ralph Johnson lay on top of him, his arm around the man’s neck from behind, squeezing it in the crook of his elbow. Nora saw the man’s eyes widen as Ralph gave his elbow a ferocious yank, and she heard the awful sound. The man slumped forward, his face sank into the dirt, and that was that.
Nora stared, taking it in, adjusting to it. Then she stepped forward and reached out to help Ralph to his feet. He stared down at the man, then up at Nora, into her eyes. Yes, she thought, I know how it feels the first time. She thought it, but she didn’t say it.
She retrieved the pistol from the bushes beside the path where it had come to rest. Ralph bent down and went through the dead man’s pockets, coming up with a cellphone. Together, they rolled the body to the side of the path, and Nora pushed it over the edge. The man rolled down to the rocks to land, half in and half out of the water.
She handed Ralph the pistol and picked up the laptop and the plastic box. Then she turned to the curtain behind her and searched it again.
“You’d think there’d be an opening,” she said, “but I can’t find it.”
Ralph studied the mesh for a moment. “I think you just pick it up and walk under it.”
Nora nodded. “That’s what I was about to do when…” She trailed off, reaching down quickly and lifting the hem of the mesh. For all its vast size, covering the entire compound, it was surprisingly light, mere gossamer. They passed under it, she dropped it back in place, and they continued down the seaside path. She offered Ralph her arm, but he shook his head. They walked in silence, and Nora kept a slow pace to accommodate him as he limped along beside her. When they came around the curve and arrived in the bay, they stopped, staring.
The big, flat water taxi with its rows of benches was docked where they’d last seen it, but the other side of the dock was empty. The speedboat was gone.
“That son of a bitch!” Nora muttered.
The Violet came puttering around the point, and Nora snapped out of her trance. There was work to be done. Ralph seemed to sense it, too, because he hobbled down onto the dock and went directly to the remaining boat. Nora put the laptop on the dock and opened the box. There were twelve sticks in two layers, six to a row: shiny gray plastique, each about the size of a sturdy dinner table candle and adorned with a long, slender, rigid white string. Nora had never seen one up close before, and she wondered how something so beautiful could be so deadly. Then she thought of Diablo, and she didn’t wonder at all.
“That son of a bitch!” she said again. She turned to Ralph. “Where do I put them?”
Ralph was studying the water taxi, noting the hatch behind the seats for the inboard motor and the dashboard near the bow with a wheel and a seat for the pilot. The blue-and-white-striped plastic canopy above the seats was held up by four posts, one at each corner. Nora thought it looked like a ride in a theme park.
“One at the helm and two down the hatch should do it,” Ralph said. “Just lay one on that shelf under the dash and the others in the hatch, as close to any moving parts as you can get them.” He handed her the lighter. “These are two-minute fuses, according to the label, but let’s not stick around to find out. Plant them, light them, and run like hell, okay?”
“Okay.” She turned around as the Violet arrived at the dock across from the other boat. Eb sat in the stern, handling the tiller with apparent expertise. He pulled up to the dock, facing the ocean, and threw a line to Nora. She tied it loosely—she’d have to untie it quickly. Then she handed the laptop and the plastic box to Eb before helping Ralph down into the boat and settling him on the aft bench.
“Eb, be ready to tear right out of here in a minute, okay?” Ralph said. “As fast as you can go.”
Eb looked from Ralph to Nora, then down at the three sticks in her hands. His eyes widened. “Aye, sir.”
Ralph smiled at the boy. “You made it here in twenty-seven minutes, so you’ll get a prize. Get us far away from this dock in two minutes, and you’ll get two prizes.”
Eb was delighted. “Aye, aye, sir!”
Nora and Ralph exchanged a glance over the child’s head, and Ralph nodded. Nora climbed onto the dock and stepped over the transom into the water taxi. She went aft first, dropping to her knees and raising the hatch to look down inside. The big motor was covered in a smooth white plastic shell, so she wasn’t sure where the moving parts would be. Then she noticed hollow spaces under each side of the casing, so she placed them there, one on each side, and lit the fuses.
She slammed the hatch and ran to the dashboard, lighting the third fuse as she went. Eb revved the outboard motor of the Violet loudly; it sounded like a motorcycle or a racing car. She hoped it would be as fast. She thrust the third stick deep inside the shelf under the wheel and ran for the dock. She untied the line, threw it down into the Violet, jumped in, and sank onto the forward bench.
“Go!” she cried.
The little fishing boat leaped forward, gliding smoothly away toward the open water. Nora noticed that the rain had finally stopped. The eastern horizon was lightening, and she saw a cloudless sky in that direction. The storm had passed, apparently. The soothing breeze cooled her hot face. She was almost relaxed when Ralph looked back and pointed toward the island. Nora turned around to see where he pointed.
“Oh, my God!” she cried.
Carmen Lamont and Zeb were running down the path to the dock, and Zeb was laden down with suitcases. Carm
en was dressed all in black, including a wide-brimmed hat with a veil. Mourning clothes, Nora thought. As she and Ralph stared, the pair ran down the dock and boarded the water taxi. Zeb dropped the luggage and ran to the dashboard while Carmen sank onto a bench. Zeb inserted a key and started the engine.
Nora rose to her feet—not the smartest thing to do in a speeding tub, but she had no choice.
“No!” she screamed. “Carmen, get off the boat!”
Carmen Lamont turned and peered out at the retreating Violet. She stood up from the bench and walked over to the transom, turning to say something to Zeb. He stood at the wheel, staring out at them.
“No! Get away from the boat!” Nora screamed.
In response, Carmen turned to Zeb and spoke again. He drew his pistol from its holster and extended his arm, aiming at the Violet. Carmen Lamont looked across the water at Nora, frowning.
“No!” Nora screamed a third time. “Carmen, you have to—”
The three explosions were simultaneous, echoing out across the water, accompanied by blinding flashes and followed by shooting red flames and billowing black smoke. The stern of the boat was lifted into the air, and then it crashed down into the water. When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of life aboard; Carmen Lamont and Zeb had vanished. As Nora and the others watched from a safe distance, what remained of the burning hull sank quickly down into the water beside the dock and disappeared.
Now the dock was on fire. Nora stared at the smoke and flames, listening as Ralph, on the bench behind her, used the phone of the man he’d just killed with his bare hands to call Ham Green in New York. As Eb cut the engine and hoisted the sail to catch the morning winds to Martinique, they heard the distant thrum of approaching helicopters.