A Fortnight of Fury

by David Culberson

  He rounded the north side of the cay and noticed that the current had turned. He knew that the coral on the west side of the island would turn to rock on the east side. He continued to swim in the deeper water and scan the shallower rocks closer to the island, thankfully seeing no bodies. A movement out over the sand out in the deeper water got his attention. A medium-sized kingfish swam near him and turned away. Arlan raised his speargun and waited. Fast swimming pelagic fish like kingfish were some of the most difficult to shoot, but he knew there’d be more kingfish swimming the same course. He’d be lucky to land one. The fish were in your sights for just a second or two, and spearguns were extraordinarily inaccurate. The thick rubber bands were used to catapult a two-and-a-half-foot spear about eight feet from the speargun where it either hit its target or abruptly stopped when it reached the end of the nylon line that connected it to the gun. Getting that close to a kingfish would be difficult.

  Arlan kept his speargun pointed out over the sandy bottom and saw nothing but distant blue haze. A second kingfish whizzed by about twelve feet from him. He’d need to move out over the sand and risk spooking the next one, which was sure to come. His patience paid off. The third and largest fish approached, causing Arlan to hesitate. The kingfish was at least forty pounds, large enough to take him for a ride. Any larger and Arlan might lose the speargun, something Captain Jay and Tommy would never let him forget.

  The fish swam by within ten feet of Arlan, who fired and hit the fish about midway down its body. Not a kill shot. Damn, he thought. This will be a problem. Not only would the fish tug him around for a while, but the low-frequency vibrations caused by the fish’s thrashing would attract any predator in the area. Arlan had to hang on to the speargun with both hands and had no chance to pull the fish to him while it was this active. He could only wait for it to tire and watch the periphery for hungry sharks, which didn’t take long. Five minutes after he shot the kingfish, he spotted the first shark out in the blue haze. Its long caudal tailfin told him that it was a thresher shark, which was not likely to approach. A few minutes later, just as the kingfish started to lose energy, Arlan saw an eight-foot bull shark, which he knew would approach, and if he couldn’t bag the fish soon he’d have to fight for it.

  Arlan had managed to haul the fish closer to the submerged rocks near the cay, where he could back up to a rock and bring the speared fish to him while watching the shark. The shark made another, more aggressive run at the fish, making Arlan pull the line attached to the spear to him and causing the fish to thrash again, further exciting the shark. He brought the tired fish close to him and turned his speargun around so he could use its butt to poke the shark, which swam back and forth about twenty feet from him. Arlan knew that if he saw the shark point away from him, drop its pectoral fins and hump its back, it would explode in a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and attack. Whether it would attack him or the fish, he wasn’t sure, but he was prepared for either.

  Two seconds later it was over. Two swipes of its tail, and the shark vanished into the blue. A second later Arlan heard the twin screws of Captain Jay’s dive boat and looked up to see its hull knife through the medium-sized waves on the surface. Gizmo was on his way to pick up Tommy, he surmised. Lucky for Arlan sharks hate the sound of boat engines. He pulled the near dead fish to him, removed the spear, put the fish into the mesh bag and continued to search the east side of the cay.

  The current picked up and sped Arlan through the remainder of his search. Satisfied he didn’t see Lisa’s body crammed under a rock, he acquiesced to the strengthening force and let it carry him south, beyond the land mass and into the sound, his kingfish in tow. When down to five hundred pounds of air, he surfaced, blew air into the buoyancy compensator and floated with the current.

  Gizmo, Captain Jay and Tommy were waiting, Captain Jay and Tommy having finished their search twenty minutes earlier. Gizmo drove the boat past Arlan and backed the dive platform toward him.

  “See anythin’, Rookie?” Captain Jay shouted from the boat.

  Arlan spit his regulator out of his mouth and said, “No.”

  “Did you get any fish?”

  “One,” Arlan answered and kicked toward the boat.

  “One? That’s all? There was activity all over the place. I got a bag full, and Tommy got three big snappers. How could you only get one?” Captain Jay shouted.

  Arlan reached the platform and handed the mesh bag to Tommy, who’d stepped onto the dive platform to lift Arlan’s gear into the boat.

  “J-jesus. This is h-heavy.”

  Tommy pulled the bag up and tossed it onto the deck. Captain Jay and Gizmo stared at the big kingfish, which weighed more than all the other fish combined.

  Gizmo said, “Dat’s a big fish.”

  “You got lucky, Rookie,” Captain Jay said and stomped to the helm.

  Arlan smiled and gave his tank to Tommy. He then grabbed the edge of the platform and used his flippers to kick up and out of the water, turning halfway around and landing his ass on the dive platform, facing away from the boat.

  As Arlan expected, nobody had found a body or parts of a body or clothing that Lisa might have worn the night she was abducted.

  “Let’s go to the point where she jumped,” Captain Jay said.

  “The water there is no more than ten feet deep. You can see the coral and the bottom from shore. She’d have been found if she was there,” Arlan said.

  “We’re goin’ there anyway,” Captain Jay said and took the wheel from Gizmo.

  Tommy and Arlan looked at each other and shrugged.

  Five minutes later Captain Jay pulled back the throttles and idled fifty feet off shore at the south side of the entry to Caneel Bay—the place Jay speculated where Lisa had jumped from the dinghy.

  “H-how do you know this is wh-where she jumped?” Tommy asked.

  “How do you know she jumped at all?” Arlan added.

  Captain Jay ignored Arlan and said, “Had to be here. The guards said they took off this way, and they couldn’t see the Happy Hobo. That’s because it was out here behind the anchored boats, so it couldn’t be seen from shore.”

  “Wh-when did you become Sh-sherlock Holmes?”

  Captain Jay ignored Tommy’s comment and said, “Rookie, get your snorkel gear on and look around down there.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anythin’ that doesn’t look right.”

  Arlan donned his mask, snorkel and fins and stepped off the dive platform and into the shallow water. He held his breath and glided down to the small coral heads and rocks. He swam around them, checking under anything that had a ledge and was about to surface when he saw a glint of sunlight reflect off something twenty feet away. A few seconds later he kicked up and onto the dive platform with a bracelet in his hand.

  Captain Jay inspected the bracelet and said, “She’s alive.” He turned the boat toward the dock and said, “No more huntin’ for Lisa underwater. We’re goin’ down island.”

  “How do you know she’s alive?” Arlan asked.

  “We’ve looked everywhere for her body and haven’t found squat.”

  Not everywhere, Arlan thought. She could be drifting toward Puerto Rico or out into the Atlantic.

  Captain Jay held up the bracelet and said, “This is her bracelet. I gave it to her a few months ago. Look. It’s not broken. It came off because she took it off.”

  “Why would she do that?” Arlan asked.

  “It’s a signal. She sent us a signal that she’s alive,” Captain Jay said.

  Arlan looked to Tommy and shrugged. Tommy did the same. Arlan had no idea why Captain Jay saw the bracelet as a signal that Lisa was still alive. But it was clear that they were heading down island—soon.

  * * *

  The Pappy Bobo sailed under the bright Caribbean sun, knifing into long, shallow swells while on its way to Anguilla or
St. Marten, whichever island Boiled Bob could find a quiet bay near the main port of entry so they could sneak in and out of the country without clearing customs. They’d snug up into a small bay from where they could quietly get to shore to try to sell the dinghies and buy more supplies.

  Halfway to their destination, while the crew busied themselves on deck, Boiled Bob went below, drawing glances from crew members as he climbed down the companionway. None of the crew members were allowed near Lisa. She was tied and gagged when Bob wasn’t in the cabin with her. He’d untie her and allow her to use the head and shower during his visits, taking care to remove anything that could be used as a weapon and standing outside the door with a four-foot gaffing hook each time she emerged from the head.

  Boiled Bob opened the cabin door and smiled. Lisa was in a sitting position on the bunk. Her wrists were individually tied to a beam attached to the ceiling of the small cabin. As soon as Boiled Bob reached out to untie one wrist, Lisa used her free hand to remove the gag. Boiled Bob handed her a bottle of water.

  “Are you here to see if you can get a hard on, dipshit?” Lisa said and took a long drink from the bottle.

  Boiled Bob sneered and reached over to slap her. She recoiled, and Bob backed off and sat on the far end of the bunk. Lisa’s face was already bruised from the beatings he’d delivered the day before. Any more bruises and she’d start to look less sexy to him.

  “Bitch,” Boiled Bob said, looking at her body. Boiled Bob had discarded all of her clothes except her panties as soon as he tied her up.

  “Go ahead, pervert. Look all you want. You can’t seem to do anything else.”

  “I’ve already had you, while you were unconscious.”

  She stared at him and shook her head.

  “Don’t remember, do you?”

  He waited to see her squirm.

  “It must have been good for you,” Lisa said. “I wouldn’t have felt that little thing of yours even if I’d been conscious.”

  Boiled Bob couldn’t help himself. He reached over and slapped her, then sat back and said, “I should have left you in the water. You’d have been dead in minutes.”

  “Why did you save me then, asshole?” Lisa asked and rubbed her cheek. She took a drink from the water bottle and added, “Why did you kidnap me in the first place?”

  Boiled Bob said, “I needed you as a hostage to get past the guards or anybody else who might have stumbled into the lobby.”

  “Why keep me? I’ll never give in to you or your moronic friends.”

  Boiled Bob didn’t answer.

  “You shouldn’t have jumped,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. All I ever wanted to do was to go sailing with you on my father’s stolen boat,” Lisa said. “And I couldn’t wait to be tied to this fucking bunk.” She took another drink of water and said, “Why do you think I jumped, asshole?”

  Boiled Bob thought about his decision to tell Long Bill to make another pass near the rocks to save Lisa, which could have easily been a disaster. The truth was that he couldn’t have Lisa’s death on his hands. Kidnapping was one thing. He’d eventually drop her off on one of the islands and disappear. Murder was a totally different thing. Captain Jay or the crazy mercenary friends of her father would haunt him to hell and back if they ever found out he’d caused her death. And they’d find out. There were five witnesses on the boat who’d give him away in a second if confronted by the Black Ops or Captain Jay.

  “Why keep me?” Lisa repeated.

  Boiled Bob smiled, then gazed at her body and said, “For entertainment.”

  “You’ll be Captain Jay’s entertainment when he catches up with you,” Lisa said.

  Her smart-ass attitude pissed him off. She needed to suffer a little more before he let her go.

  Boiled Bob snorted and said, “I’d like to have seen Captain Jay’s face when he learned you drowned.”

  Lisa looked surprised and said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I put the word out that you jumped and were smashed into the rocks. Everybody’s going to think you’re dead.”

  Lisa stared at him and said, “Jay and my father and who knows who else will come looking for this boat. It’ll be easy to find. I wouldn’t want to be you when they do.”

  Boiled Bob shrugged. “No big deal. I’ve changed the appearance of the Happy Hobo. Changed the name too. It’s now the Pappy Bobo,” Bob said with a smile.

  Lisa cringed. Boiled Bob smiled.

  Lisa’s expression then changed. She frowned and said, “What the hell is a Pappy Bobo?”

  Boiled Bob looked away. He stood and said, “We’re heading down island, and nobody’s ever going to find you. Not even your badass boyfriend.”

  Lisa slumped onto the bunk.

  Satisfied, and tired of the banter, Bob said, “I’ll untie you and let you wash up. Don’t try anything.”

  Bob lifted the gaffing hook he’d brought with him and had placed on the floor by his feet.

  “After you’re clean I’ll bring food. After you eat I’m going to fuck you—again,” he said and opened the cabin door.

  “Oh, gee, honey, I can’t wait to see that little baby weenie again,” Lisa said.

  Bob slammed and locked the cabin door with the padlock and hasp he’d found on the boat and installed soon after they’d sailed from Caneel Bay. He looked through a port window in the galley and saw Tricia and Long Bill look at each other with smiles. He saw Maynard out of the starboard porthole looking inside with a smirk.

  “Bitch,” Boiled Bob said to himself and started to prepare food.

  Chapter 6

  DAY 5: OCTOBER 18

  Captain Jay wanted to start the search for Boiled Bob immediately after their dive and finding Lisa’s bracelet. Tommy suggested he wait until the next day so they could talk to the Black Ops members to find out what plans they had made to search for the boat and Lisa. Arlan agreed with Tommy. Captain Jay snorted and walked ahead of them up the path to his Jeep. They rode to the village in silence.

  Tommy and Arlan met early the next morning at the ferry dock in separate vehicles to pick up workers and shuttle them to the jobsite. They returned to the project site, parked next to the office, and the workers bailed out to start their work day. A few minutes later Forrest Fishman arrived in an old Jeep with a marine plywood body, the metal having rusted out years earlier.

  A member of the Black Ops, Forrest had come to the islands a decade earlier from California, where he’d flown then Governor Reagan around the state. Once, failing to stop the governor’s plane at the end of the paved runway during a landing, he opted to use the rudder and spin the aircraft into a three-hundred and sixty degree turn rather than run off the tarmac and into a muddy field. Reagan, nonplussed, unbuckled his seatbelt, smiled at Forrest and said, “That was an interesting landing.” Forrest’s value to the Black Ops was that he was qualified to fly just about any aircraft and was considered to be an excellent pilot, even when inebriated.

  Forrest flashed his Jimmy Carter smile and stepped out of the doorless Jeep.

  “Where’s Captain Jay?” he asked.

  “He’ll be here. He’s champing at the bit to go after Boiled Bob but agreed to hear what you and the Black Ops have planned,” Arlan said.

  Just as Arlan finished talking, Captain Jay sped into the parking lot and braked to a stop a few feet from Forrest’s Jeep. He smiled, stepped out of his baby-blue Willys Jeep and removed his aviator sunglasses, letting them hang from his neck by a black nylon line.

  “What do you got?” Captain Jay asked, without a hello or a smile.

  Forrest smiled, used to Captain Jay’s abruptness.

  “I talked to Charlie last night,” Forrest told them. “He asked that I meet with you so we can organize a search and rescue.”

  Captain Jay said, “The Rookie and I are headin’ down island to kill th
at son-of-a-bitch.”

  Arlan looked at Tommy and Forrest and shrugged. He was pretty sure there’d be no killing, at least not by him.

  Forrest said, “Charlie wants me to warn you that something big is about to happen down there, either on Dominica or Grenada. Probably Grenada. Word is that Maurice Bishop is under house arrest by his military.”

  “What’s that got to do with anythin’?” Captain Jay said.

  “Who knows where the Happy Hobo is going, but you could be heading into a shit storm, and Charlie asked that you work with us on this.”

  Captain Jay snickered, clearly not caring about island political upheavals. He didn’t care about anybody’s politics. He didn’t understand them. Captain Jay couldn’t hold an intellectual conversation about anything. He never reflected on the past and never planned for the future. Jay was all about doing, about the moment. He had one of two reactions to everything—joy or anger. At the moment, Captain Jay was angry, and there was a job to do—find Boiled Bob. Beyond that he didn’t care what anybody else did, as long as he was in charge.

  “Wh-what’s going d-down there?” Tommy asked Forrest.

  “You know that Bishop New Jewel Movement overthrew Gairy a few years ago?”

  “Wasn’t Gairy the prime minister who believed in UFOs and rigged the Miss World contest in London a few years back?” Arlan asked with a smile.

  “He also had secret police called the Mongoose Gang. They terrorized and murdered his political enemies. That’s how Bishop took over. The island residents were fed up with Gairy,” Forrest said.

  “So what’s the big deal?” Captain Jay asked.

  “Turns out Bishop has been friendly with Castro, and Cuba has sent construction workers to help build a new airport,” Forrest said.