by Wilbur Smith
From Carl’s standpoint the move was also highly favourable. He now had three of the beneficiaries of the Family Trust removed from under the shield of his father and from the jurisdiction and protection of the government of the United States of America to an isolated island where they were a great deal more vulnerable and accessible to the attentions of the friends of Johnny Congo.
Carl laid his plans with great care and attention to detail. Congo was an enthusiastic participant in the enterprise. He had cocaine syndicate connections in Honduras and Colombia who were always interested in making a few extra dollars in more mundane side projects.
Johnny’s contact in Honduras was Señor Alonso Almanza. He based himself in the port of La Ceiba, where he kept two very fast forty-foot ocean-going speedboats. These were usually employed in nocturnally running white goods north to Mexico, Texas or Louisiana. However the US Coast Guard had recently become a trifle bothersome and so his fine boats were underutilized.
The distance from La Ceiba to the Cayman Islands was less than five-hundred nautical miles; an easy run for one of those big fast Chris-Craft.
‘Alonso is a good man, very trustworthy. He doesn’t mind a little wet work if the price is attractive. I think we could do a lot worse,’ Johnny Congo told Carl.
‘I like the sound of him, and his price is good. But, what about the initial survey? Do you have somebody on Grand Cayman who can do that for us?’
‘No problem, white boy.’ The nickname which had started out as deliberately pejorative had now become a term of endearment between them. ‘There is a realtor in George Town who once did a bit of work for me. He isn’t fussy. We just tell him we want to make an anonymous bid for a property on the island and that we need a full description of everything in it including the servants and occupants.’
‘Get on to him, Blackbird.’ Anybody else who called Johnny Congo that to his face would die prematurely and painfully. ‘Most of all we need to know about the security on the estate. If I know my daddy, and that I do, it will be tight. Obviously we must know which bedroom my mother sleeps in and where to find my two sisters. It’s a good bet their bedrooms will be close alongside their darling mama’s.’
Johnny’s contact on Grand Cayman was a retired Englishman named Trevor Jones who had decided to spend his autumnal years in a tropical island paradise. He had discovered to his chagrin that paradise comes at a price and his pension was not stretching as far as he had hoped. He took this lucrative assignment from Carl Bannock to heart. He uplifted from the government surveyor’s office a copy of the blueprint plans of The Moorings, the Bannocks’ beachfront home. Then he ran to earth a former chambermaid of Mrs Marlene Bannock who had been fired from her employment for stealing a pair of pearl earrings from Miss Sacha Bannock’s jewellery box. Her name was Gladys, and she had left The Moorings with a chip on her shoulder large enough to qualify as a log.
Together Gladys and Trevor Jones pored over the house plan. She showed him in which bedrooms the three members of the family slept and where the security guardroom was located. She knew the patrol routines of the guards. There were punch-clocks set up at various points on the property that kept the guards working to a strict timetable. The shifts changed precisely on the hour. So the movements of the security guards were predictable. Gladys was also able to provide a roster of the domestic staff. Most of these were not required to work on Sunday. They only returned to their duties after the weekend.
Gladys knew the exact location of every one of the numerous alarm sensors on the property. Naturally, the passwords had been changed after she was fired, but her common-law husband was still employed at The Moorings as a sous-chef. He willingly supplied her with the new passwords.
The gap through the coral reef was marked with light buoys and the channel to the anchorage in front of The Moorings was also buoyed. Jones went out in his little fishing skiff and took surreptitious soundings and made one or two other arrangements. At high spring tides the channel was a goodly three metres deep at the shallowest point, more than sufficient water for even one of the big Chris-Craft.
This entire package of information was sent to Johnny Congo. Its total cost to Carl was well under $4,000, which he considered excellent value.
The information was forwarded to Señor Alonso Almanza in La Ceiba with further detailed instructions and a bank transfer payment of $75,000 against a contract completion price of $250,000.
‘I’m going to tell you a little secret, Blackbird.’ Carl grinned at Johnny Congo. ‘If you have enough money, you can do anything you want, and have anything you want. Nobody is going to stop you.’
‘Right on, white boy!’ Johnny lifted his right hand and gave him a high five.
*
Twenty-eight days later Señor Almanza’s Chris-Craft Pluma de Mar used the light of the full moon to creep quietly through the gap in the reef into Old Man Bay on the north side of Grand Cayman. Her hull was painted matt black, so even by the light of the moon she was almost invisible. She had cleared La Ceiba at noon the previous day, and had timed her arrival precisely for a quarter to three on a Sunday morning; the witching hour when only highwaymen, werewolves and pirates should be abroad.
The Pluma de Mar carried a crew of eleven. They were dressed in black tracksuits and wore black head-hoods with cut-outs for their eyes and mouths. They tied up to one of the channel markers seventy metres off the beachfront of The Moorings. Trevor Jones had placed a tiny radio beacon on the marker to guide them in. Leaving one crewman on board to take care of the vessel, they launched an inflatable dingy and the battery-powered outboard engine carried them silently ashore.
They hit the beach at exactly three o’clock, when they knew that the security patrols would be gathered in the guard room changing shifts and drinking coffee. Two of the masked men ran ahead to bypass and disable the alarm sensors and clear the way for those who followed. When the assault team burst into the guard room they took the four men gathered there completely off-guard. Within minutes they had gagged and bound all of them with duct tape, and shut down the alarm system at the main control board.
Then they raced around the swimming pool and jemmied open the door into the main house. They knew exactly where they were headed, through the living rooms and up the main staircase to the bedroom suites. At the head of the stairs they split into three groups. Each group went quickly to the suite that they had been allocated. They rushed in while the occupants were still sleeping soundly. They hauled them out of their beds and bound their hands at the wrists with duct tape. Then they were dragged down the staircase and out onto the pool deck. The pool deck was discreetly screened by high walls and tropical vegetation to allow the Bannock women to indulge their penchant for nude sunbathing.
One of the gang produced a movie camera from his rucksack. He was a professional maker of hardcore pornographic films from Guadalajara in Mexico. In passable English he told the three terrified and weeping captives, ‘My name is Amaranthus. It is my pleasure to make a documentary film of you. Please take no notice of me and try not to look into the lens of my camera unless I ask you to.’ He stepped back and aimed his camera at them.
The gang leader took his place in front of them. ‘I am Miguel. You will do as I tell you, or I hurt you bad. Name? Nombre?’ he yelled at them, forcing each of the women in turn to announce her name for the benefit of Amaranthus and his camera. Sacha Jean was struck dumb with terror. Bryoni spoke up for her and gave her name.
‘She is my sister Sacha Jean Bannock. She is sick. Please don’t hurt her.’
Sacha fell to her knees and explosively soiled her pyjama bottoms. Miguel laughed and kicked her. ‘Filthy cow! Stand up!’ He kicked her again. Bryoni reached down with her trussed hands and helped Sacha back onto her feet.
The gang leader turned to Marlene and he produced a slip of paper from his zip pocket. ‘These are my orders.’ He read from it in his thick Hispanic accent. ‘Marlene Imelda Bannock. You are to be executed. Your death is to be witnessed by your daughters, S
acha Jean and Bryoni Lee. Your execution will be filmed for the benefit of all interested parties. Thereafter your daughters are to be imprisoned for life in a foreign country.’
Sacha’s legs collapsed under her again. Bryoni could not hold her and she fell to the marble coping that edged the pool. She rolled herself into a ball and wailed shrilly. She started banging her forehead on the marble with such force that one of her eyebrows split open and blood trickled down into her eyes. Bryoni knelt beside Sacha and tried to prevent her injuring herself further.
As three of the men dragged Marlene away she called back desperately. ‘Be brave, Sacha! Don’t cry, baby. Take care of her, Bryoni.’
They took Marlene down the pool steps and into the water. It was waist deep. Bright underwater floodlights lit the stage for Amaranthus, who knelt on the edge of the pool and filmed it all.
One of the crew members stood on each side of Marlene, holding her arms. They looked up at Miguel on the edge of the pool above them.
Miguel told them, ‘Bueno! Hold her under.’
Two of them forced Marlene’s head below the surface of the water. The third man grasped her ankles, and lifted them up high. The top half of Marlene’s body was completely immersed. She kicked her legs wildly and her entire body bucked and convulsed so violently that the men had difficulty holding her.
‘Enough!’ Miguel shouted. ‘Bring her up for a minute.’ They lifted Marlene’s head from the water and she gasped and struggled for breath. Then suddenly a mixture of pool water and vomit shot from her gaping mouth, and she choked on her next breath.
‘Bueno, that’s good. Put her under again.’ They ducked her head under just as she drew breath and Marlene took down a mouthful of water rather than air. They repeated the duckings at progressively longer intervals as Marlene’s struggles weakened. Amaranthus behind the camera wanted to make the most of this scene. This was one of the stipulations that his sponsors had set, and Amaranthus understood how fascinating this would be to them.
Torn by her love for her sister and her mother, Bryoni left Sacha and crawled to Miguel and tried to hold his legs.
‘She is my mother. Please don’t do this to her.’
He kicked her away, and called to the three men in the pool, ‘Now we will finish it. Keep the old bitch under.’
There was a violent burst of bubbles on the surface as Marlene’s lungs emptied completely. Her struggles grew weaker and at last stopped.
‘Ha muerto?’ one of them asked. ‘Is she dead?’
‘No, esperar un poco más,’ Miguel ordered. ‘No, wait a little longer.’
Bryoni understood enough Spanish. She crawled back to Miguel and clutched at his legs again, ‘Please, señor. Have mercy, I beg of you.’ This time he kicked her in the mouth and she fell over backwards, holding her bleeding lips.
‘Your turn will come soon enough,’ he jeered at her. ‘But first we must sample your meat; both you and your loco sister.’ He pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch. Then he spoke to the men in the water. ‘Bueno! That should do it. Bring her up. Let’s take a look at her.’
One of the men grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted Marlene’s face out of the water. Her skin was waxy pale. Her eyes were wide open and staring. Her hair had come down in streamers over her face like seaweed exposed on a rock at low tide. Water drooled from her open mouth.
‘Leave her there,’ Miguel ordered and they released her and waded to the steps, leaving Marlene’s corpse floating face-down in the pool.
‘We have been here too long already. It’s time to go,’ Miguel told them. ‘Get that dirty puta cleaned up.’ He pointed at Sacha. ‘The jefe will kill us if we get shit all over his beautiful boat.’
They stripped Sacha’s soiled pyjamas off her and threw her naked into the pool beside her mother’s corpse. One of them stooped over Bryoni and cut the duct tape from her wrists.
‘Get in there with your pig sister and wash the shit off her,’ he ordered her in Spanish.
Bryoni waded out to Sacha and washed her body and cleaned the blood from the wound above her eye, then led her back to the pool steps with one arm around her shoulders. Sacha kept whimpering and looking back at Marlene’s floating corpse. ‘What is wrong with Mummy? Why doesn’t she want to talk to me, Bryoni?’ Sacha had regressed to her five-year-old state.
*
The dawn was a riot of majestic cumulus clouds set alight by the rays of the rising sun. The Pluma de Mar was running hard for the south over an easy and unctuous swell. She was two hundred nautical miles south of Grand Cayman, but she was not on a direct return course for La Ceiba in Honduras.
She was headed instead for the port of Cartagena in Colombia. This was a deliberate ploy ordered by Carl and Johnny Congo. The Pluma de Mar had left La Ceiba with only eleven crew members on board. She must return with the same complement; otherwise the suspicions of the port officials would be roused.
As soon as the sun cleared the horizon Miguel ordered the captives to be brought up from the forecastle to the cockpit. Sacha was completely confused and disorientated. She did not understand what was happening to them. She was even unaware of her own nudity. She stood blinking in the bright sunlight, and she kept asking Bryoni where their mother was. ‘Who are all these strange men, Bree? Why are they staring at me? Why did we leave Mummy behind, Bree?’ She had retreated into the profound depths of her dementia.
The crew had brought up some of the gaily coloured cushions from the benches in the main cabin and strewn them on the deck of the cockpit to serve as a mattress. All of them had removed their black tracksuits and hoods, and had stripped down to tee shirts and shorts. Now that the raid was successfully completed, they were in a jovial and celebratory mood. They were joking and laughing, drinking Mexican Corona beer from the can as they crowded around the two girls. Miguel came down the companionway ladder from the flying bridge. He pointed at Bryoni. ‘Get the clothes off that one. No secrets on board this boat. Let’s see what she has got there for us.’
While Amaranthus filmed them, they pulled Bryoni away from her sister and tore her flimsy nightdress from her back. One of them balled it in his fist and threw it over the side of the boat. The crew crowded around her, reaching out to grope her buttocks and fondle her breasts. Bryoni tried to fend them off by twisting her body around and striking out at their hands. Miguel intervened and pushed them back. ‘No fighting!’ he warned them. ‘Everybody gets a go. By the time we reach Cartagena you will all have had so much of this pussy that you’ll be sick of the sight of it.’ He held up a fan of playing cards. ‘Draw your card, caballeros. The numbers are Ace to Jack. Ace gets first turn, and Jack comes last.’ They pushed forward to take a card out of his hand. One of them let out a triumphant whoop and held up the ace of spades.
‘Beat that you whore-sons!’ he challenged them.
‘Stand back!’ Miguel chuckled. ‘Feliciano gets first shot. Which one do you want, amigo?’
‘I’ll take the fat one.’ Feliciano elbowed his way towards Sacha. She smiled at him as he took her hand. She still didn’t understand what was happening. She followed him compliantly as he led her to the pile of bench cushions on the deck and pushed her down on them.
‘No, Sacha! Don’t let him touch you.’ Bryoni was struggling with the men who were restraining her. ‘He is going to hurt you, baby.’
Sacha was smiling happily now. Her mood swings were quick and unpredictable. ‘It’s all right, Bree. I like him. He is such a nice man.’
Then Feliciano knelt in front of her and pulled down his shorts. Sacha’s damaged brain made another instantaneous connection to her brother Carl Peter in a similar pose and she recoiled in fear. It took four of the crew to hold her down before Feliciano was able to enter her. Sacha was still shrieking as Feliciano rolled off, and grunted, ‘Fantástica! Mejores de la historia! Fantastic! The best ever! I love to feel them buck and hear them squeal.’
Bryoni was dragged over and thrown down on the floral patterned cushi
ons as the next man in line came forward eagerly. She also began to scream and struggle, but the same four men pinioned her limbs, and spread her legs wide apart. Amaranthus kept on filming.
By the middle of the afternoon as the Pluma de Mar roared on into the south both the sisters were in a stupor. Neither of them had the strength nor the will to continue resisting. One of the gang stood up after covering Bryoni for the third time, and complained to Miguel, ‘She is like meat in the butcher shop; dead and cold.’
‘Bueno, I can fix that. Bring them down to the main cabin,’ Miguel told him.
They carried Bryoni down the companionway and laid her on the mess table. Miguel wound a length of surgical rubber tubing around her upper arm and tightened it until the veins in the crook of her elbow stood out blue and proud. He poured a heaped teaspoonful of white heroin powder into a small bottle of distilled water and shook it until the powder dissolved. Then he drew it up in a disposable syringe and shot it into Bryoni’s distended vein. Within a few minutes Bryoni was resuscitating as the rush of the drug hit her. She started screaming and struggling again. They dragged her up to the cockpit where the man whose turn it was came forward, lowering his shorts and working up his penis with his hand.
In the cabin below Miguel turned his attention to Sacha and prepared a second shot of heroin for her. Amaranthus recorded the entire process.
That evening, twenty nautical miles off the Colombian port of Cartagena, in the short tropical twilight, the Pluma de Mar made a rendezvous with a working barge from the port. Once again the two sisters were trussed and gagged with duct tape. Then they were transferred across to the barge, and concealed under an old stained tarpaulin in the stern. Amaranthus with his ubiquitous camera followed the girls across to the barge. His brief was to stay with them and continue filming to the very end.
The Pluma de Mar reversed her course and headed at thirty knots for La Ceiba. The barge trundled on into the port of Cartagena.
*
There was an old Ford three-ton truck waiting to meet the barge on one of the wharves in a remote section of Cartagena harbour. A fresh team of men was waiting to receive them: a driver, his mate and two thugs. The girls were quickly transferred ashore and bundled into the back of the truck. Another tarpaulin was thrown over them. Amaranthus and the thugs climbed into the rear of the truck. The driver and his mate scrambled into the cab. The driver started the engine and drove to the harbour gates. A customs official came out of his hut. There was a muttered conversation with the driver and a wad of banknotes changed hands. The customs man stood back and waved them through and they drove into Colombia.