She finally reached the end of the road. The dump truck, the paver, a circular saw, a surveyor’s tripod, and a load of lumber met her. She frowned and reached into her pocket for her gun. She should have been met by one of Yvette’s cops.
“Here I am, Miss Gibson.”
She peered around the truck and saw him standing on the hood, facing her, his back to the forest, and her heart skipped a beat. “Wouldn’t you be better protected inside the bed of the truck?”
“Protected, sure,” he said, his face serious, “but then I couldn’t see the enemy approach.”
“You didn’t see me approach.”
“Sure I did,” he said, holding up a pair of binoculars in his left hand, along with the Gloc automatic he held in his right hand. He jumped down from the truck’s hood in a fluid motion, landing in a crouch. He looked all around him before he straightened and came silently toward her. He holstered his gun and extended his hand, which she took. His name, he said, was Charles, and that was the extent of his small talk. “You have a weapon, right, Miss Gibson? And you’re trained to use it?” And he patted her on the back when she nodded. “The chief thanks you, and I thank you. I’ll manage to get ten or eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep before reporting back here tonight.”
“You’re here all night?”
“Yeah, me and one other guy, and thanks to you, we’ll both be able to stay awake.” He gave her the binoculars. “Leave ‘em in the cab when you take off,” he said, and, tossing her a hasty salute, he ambled off down the road.
She hung the binoculars around her neck and, using the tire as a step, climbed up on the hood of the dump truck and sat facing the forest. She could easily see right and left and, without too much effort, she could swivel around and see behind her. “You live and learn,” she muttered, adding, “Cops.”
She heard the returning crew long before she saw them, and found relief in their presence. She also found herself more vigilant than she had imagined. She wasn’t certain what she had expected when she volunteered for this duty, but she found herself constantly scanning the forest ahead and on both sides, and taking periodic looks to the rear. The binoculars were powerful, providing amazing distance and detail. When the work stopped at five o’clock, Joseph walked up the road and returned with what she recognized as Paul Francois’ pick-up truck. She hadn’t seen it since his death. The circular saw, all the tools, and most of the workers were loaded into the back. Carole Ann noticed, as she watched it depart, that the ride was smoother than on any other road on the island except for the Coast Road.
She turned her gaze forward again and peered into the wide expanse of the forest. In another hour, it would be dusk in here, and probably dark by seven o’clock despite the fact that it would be full daylight over the ocean for two hours longer. She looked directly above, into full sunlight. She looked forward again, into dimness. Then she understood: The forest had been cleared for the cultivation of the marijuana. Where the trees loomed marked the end of the pot field. She looked north and attempted to calculate the distance to Sugar Town. She looked south and wondered how far to the airstrip. Off to either side of the truck, and slightly ahead, men were pounding stakes into the ground. Torches, she saw, seven or eight feet tall. Hearing activity to the rear, she stood up and looked behind her.
Roland and five other men, including Toussaint Remy, were parking the paver hard on the dump truck’s rear tires. Then they climbed into the bed of the truck and stretched out on a quilt-covered pile of leaves and dirt and here they would remain until the officers returned at eleven. “You are not expected to remain here so late, Carole Ann,” Roland said, settling himself on the leafy pallet.
She had clambered on to the cab of the big truck and sat there looking down at them in amazement. “You’ve been staying here until ten or eleven at night?”
“What else can we do?” Roland asked.
“With all due respect, Monsieur Remy, is your health able to withstand such a regimen?” she asked and was met with a roar of laughter.
“He is younger than all the men,” a much younger man she had never seen responded. “All the women say so!” And they dissolved into laughter again, Toussaint Remy laughing louder and longer than all the others.
“Come down and have dinner with us,” the old man said, wiping his eyes and extending a hand to her. Two of the men stood and caught her arms, lowering her into the truck’s bed. She sat and found herself surprisingly comfortable. She found herself surprised again when they opened a built-in metal box that ran half the length of the truck and withdrew several pails and containers of food and bottles of cold beer and a gallon jug of Monsieur Remy’s ginger beer. She had a bowl of fiery gumbo and several cups of water. The men ate more heartily and, one by one, climbed down and disappeared into the forest to relieve themselves. She stood on the cab of the truck, peering nervously after them, ignoring their claims of bashfulness and modesty. Very shortly thereafter, they settled down and gentle snoring joined the cacophony of the forest’s night noises.
Carole Ann climbed back up the cab and resumed her duty station on the truck’s hood. The forest animals sang louder as it got darker, and the exhausted men in the back of the truck snored louder. She found herself less tense than she would have expected. At exactly eight o’clock, one of the men clambered down from the truck and went forward to light the torches, using a long taper. She didn’t know how he knew— she hadn’t heard an alarm. But then she never overslept either when she had important work to do. He waved at her and returned to his bed.
Almost without her realizing it, full darkness descended upon the forest. The torches were strobe lights that flickered and cast Tyrannosaurus Rex-sized shadows in the distance. She found the scene beautiful and peaceful. Only the mosquitoes prevented it from being idyllic, finally forcing her down off the hood and up into the cab where she must have dozed, because she awoke to pitch black darkness and shouts from behind her. “What the hell!” Grabbing her gun, she opened the cab and jumped to the ground. Three figures scurried away from the back of the truck. She fired a round above them, ordering them to halt. Two stopped running. The third turned and fired. She ducked and returned the fire and all three disappeared into the darkness. She pursued them for several paces, realized the futility and danger of that, and ran back to truck. “Roland! Monsieur Remy! Are you all right?”
“My God! These people are animals! They are insane!” Roland was shaking with rage and fear. Carole Ann was overcome by guilt. The attack occurred because she fell asleep.
“Is anyone hurt?”
“No,” he growled, and jumped down to the ground, “but I hope you hurt one of them!”
She hadn’t shot anyone. She hadn’t aimed at anyone. She had fired off the rounds to demonstrate that the truck’s occupants were not helpless, were not defenseless, though that is exactly how she felt. “What were they trying to do?”
“Destroy our equipment again!” Roland growled through clenched teeth. “They came right here, to the back of the truck and they left something to remember them by.” She looked where he pointed and saw a metal gas can and shuddered. She looked at her watch and could see nothing in the darkness. Roland whispered that the officers were due in half an hour.
“We need to get those torches re-lit,” she whispered back. The men were clustered around her, seething with anger, the dangerous kind. The kind that would prompt them to go off into the night seeking revenge and retribution. She asked the one who had lit the torches not three hours ago whether he’d be willing to light them again, with her standing guard beside him. “The light will make you a target,” she warned him.
“We are prey for those animals standing here in the darkness,” he replied, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a lighter. He whispered something to the group and after a bit of scurrying about in the darkness, he was given the long taper and he strode toward the front of the truck and into oblivion. Carole Ann rushed to overtake him. She stood in front of and to the right of o
ne torch, chambered a round, and extended the weapon out in front of her in a two-handed grip. She tensed when she heard the lighter flick, inhaled at the first faint glow of light, and tightened her grip on the gun when the forest burst into artificial daylight, startling the night creatures into silence. She kept her grip on the gun but exhaled and followed the flickering taper to the other torch, keeping her eyes trained on the forest spread out before her. The second torch ignited and she heard rustling off to her right. She fired two rounds into the air and the rustling became feet running through the tangled brush.
An audible though restrained cheer rose from the men. Roland squeezed her arm and Toussaint Remy patted her shoulder in a fatherly fashion. She resumed her position atop the truck’s hood, binoculars in hand, wide awake and totally unaware of any mosquitoes. The men took up positions in the truck’s bed, all of them awake and alert. Stillness and silence prevailed. Then, at virtually the same moment, each of them became aware of a sound— at first a distant hum, then, growing closer, the distinctive roar of an engine. A vehicle was speeding down the road toward them. Carole Ann slid down the hood of the truck to the ground and raced around to the rear. Headlights were visible and approaching rapidly. She dropped into a crouch and backed off the road, eyes on the approaching vehicle, arms extended.
“It’s our guys,” one of the men called out, as the cruiser skidded in the dirt. The passenger door opened before the car stopped completely, propelling Officer Charles into their midst.
“Is everybody all right? What the hell happened out here?”
“We’re fine. How do you know anything happened?” Carole Ann asked, then looked sheepish as he brandished a two-way radio.
“Our guys on stake-out on the other end heard gun fire and then a bunch of the rats came scurrying home, so he called me... called this radio,” and he held it aloft. “The one I forgot to leave with you. The Chief reamed me a new asshole.”
Carole Ann stopped him. “This isn’t your fault. What stake-out on what other end?” “At that camp...it used to a logging town, I think, but now it’s camp and HQ for the bad guys,” Charles explained.
“And the Chief’s got people in there?” Carole Ann could barely breathe, her heart was pounding so hard.
He shook his head. “Not in, near. We’ve been watching it for a few days. Lots of coming and going, I hear. But this is my detail, so I don’t really know.”
Her heart ceased its pounding and sank down to her kneecaps. If Nigel Osborne or Andre Collette thought they were under surveillance, if they spooked and ran...The crackle of the radio stopped her thoughts and her heart. Officer Charles spoke into it and then listened to it. He grimaced, tried and failed to convert it to a smile, spoke into it again, then listened to it for another brief moment, and shut it off. “They’re on the run,” he said.
She knew which “they” he meant. She felt paralyzed, useless, drained. Everything she’d put into place was about to unravel. Nigel Osborne would get away with murder— with three of them at least— and with probably millions of dollars in cash. And Philippe Collette would be left with egg on his face; not in as much disgrace as Osborne had planned to have befall Henri LeRoi, but embarrassed and disgraced, because Andre Collette would not be allowed to escape. His usefulness had come to an end. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, and turned away from him. She lifted a hand toward Roland and the other men, and started off down the road. Officer Charles caught up with her. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“And then where?”
She stopped and looked at him, the light from the torches now too distant to illuminate his face and instead casting flickering shadows. “I beg your pardon?”
“I know who you are, Miss Gibson,” he said, rushing the words. “I was in New Orleans when you brought down the dirty congressman, and I read about what happened in L.A. If you’re going active, I want in.”
She leaned in close to him and peered into his eyes. Not a flicker. She couldn’t outrun him and it wouldn’t make sense to knock him down and disable him. And besides, he no doubt was a better shot than she was, and had few qualms about aiming at a subject when he fired his weapon. “Come on, then.” She turned away from him and began to trot down the road.
Officer Charles ran over to his colleague, whispered quickly and urgently to him, and followed Carole Ann. Running now, they reached her house in less than ten minutes. The Jeep was parked out front. She had the keys in her hand when she reached it and quickly unlocked the door and jumped in. She reached across and unlocked the door for her new partner. He had the radio tight against his ear when he climbed in. “Do you know where the ‘Seaview’ cottages are?”
She shook her head. “Never heard of them...”she began but he cut her off.
“Seacliff. Not ‘view.’ Seacliff cottages...up on the north coast, in Deauville...” Still listening to the radio, he transmitted information to her as he heard it. “Some private beach cottages up on the hill...”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, remembering the saltbox houses at the end of the Deauville main street. “I know them! I didn’t know what they were called, and I’m not sure how to get there. How to drive in, that is. I know how to walk in.”
“...from a private road through the de Villages estate... guests have some kind of key card that opens a gate...”
“Never mind.” Carole Ann jammed her foot on the gas pedal, accelerating as they rounded the crest into Deauville. “We’ll go in on foot.” And stand out like gate crashers at a White House state dinner, she thought, turning on to the main street. It was sedately lit, by candles on the tables of outdoor cafes, and four towering gas lamps on the four corners of the street. No other traffic moved, and she parked the Jeep. Elegantly clad diners strolled in the middle of the street, just like the tourists in Ville de Paix, in Government Square. There, however, dressing for dinner meant wearing enough clothes to cover the crucial body parts; here, it meant jackets for the men and dresses for the women. Carole Ann, in baggy cargo pants, a tee shirt, and running shoes, appeared grossly out of place. Officer Charles, in the uniform of the Isle de Paix security force, looked... comforting.
“Where’s this Seacliff place?”
“End of the street,” she answered, and reached into the back seat of the Jeep for her baseball cap. She jammed it on to her head, pulled the bill down over her eyes, ducked her head, and began walking. She wasn’t so foolish as to hope she wouldn’t be noticed, but she prayed not to be recognized. They’d have difficulty enough being unobtrusive on Seacliff’s narrow lanes without attracting attention before ever getting there.
Thankfully, just before they reached the end of the street, three couples emerged from the patisserie on the left and, talking and laughing a little too loudly, they jiggled and jostled their way into the enclave. Carole Ann and Charles followed as closely behind as they dared. She removed her cap and finger-combed her hair, and he dropped a few paces behind her, locked his hands behind his back, and whistled tunelessly under his breath. A beat cop on the job, doing his job. The six Germans— snatches of their conversation had wafted back on the gentle breeze and Carole Ann had heard enough to identify them— turned into the house across the street from where she believed Nigel Osborne lived. She slowed a bit and looked toward the house. No light at any of the windows. She continued to walk, past the house, swinging her arms, glancing from side to side and occasionally up at the sky. She didn’t know whether any of Nigel Osborne’s associates lived here; she didn’t know anything, she realized, for Yvette Casson hadn’t told her what, if anything, her search of the rental car records had revealed.
There were lights glowing in most of the houses, and noise emanating from many of them— music, laughter. After all, this was a resort and people were on vacation. Then she heard the sound of tires screeching. She stiffened and glanced quickly behind her; Charles had heard, too, and stepped off the road, toward one of the houses. Carole Ann followed suit, just in time to see headlights a
pproaching. The car definitely was traveling too fast, and its driver almost lost control of it as it screeched into the driveway of the next to the last house on the lane. Carole Ann had stopped walking and Officer Charles was no where in sight. She ducked into the yard of a darkened house and chanced walking on to the porch, giving her a view of the car four doors down, but obscuring her from their view. The passenger door of the car opened, but no one emerged. The driver’s side door opened, a figure jumped out and slammed the door shut, and rushed around to the passenger door. It was a man and he reached into the car and pulled.
The screamed, “no,” split the air like cracked crystal, the sound high-pitched and shrill for one instant. Then it faded. The man looked around, pulled again, and a woman flew out of the car. Carole Ann caught her breath: Andre and Nicole Collette. He shoved her up the walkway toward the house, then opened the back door of the car and emerged with two satchels or duffels... she couldn’t be certain in the dark. Nicole was huddled on the porch and Andre stormed after her, cradling the two bundles close to him as if they were babies. He dropped the bags, unlocked the door, shoved Nicole in, picked up the bags, followed her in, and slammed the door. Carole Ann remained motionless on the porch for a full minute, then hurried down the steps and, keeping close to the edge of the lane, back toward where she’d last seen Charles. A shadow moved and she froze. It beckoned to her. She peered into the space between two of the houses and saw a form that she could not positively identify as Officer Charles.
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