The sound of the waves crashing against the island’s rockbound coastline below grew louder as they walked down the amber lit path. Ahead the ground lights came to an end, and a white barrier was starkly in place between the final domed lamps, the amber wash illuminating the letters of the two signs on the white obstruction. The left was again in Spanish, the right in English.
กPellagra!… Danger!
Beyond the barrier was a promontory overlooking the sea, the angry waters churning in the erratic moonlight, the sound of the crashing waves now deafening. Kendrick was being led to his execution.
* * *
Chapter 41
Pockets of swirling vapour spewed up from the rocks of the promontory above the Pacific. Evan suppressed his panic, remembering his covenant with himself: he would not die passively; he would not be killed without a struggle, no matter how futile. Yet even last-ditch efforts presumed the outside possibility of survival, and he had spent his adult life studying the complexities of specifics. There were tropical vines all around him, thick and strong from the moisture and the winds constantly assaulting their trunks. There was lush undergrowth on both sides of the string of amber bulbs and loose wet dirt within that twisted foliage, mud that never knew a dry moment. The Mexican who had directed the Mafioso to the killing ground was a reluctant partner to murder. His voice grew fainter as they approached the final steps towards the white barrier.
‘กDefrente, defrente!’ he cried nervously. ‘กAdelanto!’
‘Go over it or around it, Congressman,’ said the Secret Service man, his tone cold, a professional doing his professional job, someone for whom life and death meant nothing.
‘I can’t,’ answered Kendrick. ‘It’s too high to step over and there’s some kind of barbed wire spreading out from the sides.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ Kendrick pointed down into the dark undergrowth.
‘I don’t see—’
Now! screamed the silent voice inside Evan’s throat as he whipped around, both hands surging for the large ugly weapon, gripping it and pushing it away as he bent the Mafioso’s wrist back and crashed his shoulder into the guard’s chest, pulling the arm forward and desperately, with all the strength that was in him, heaving the man off balance and into the brush and the wet dirt. The gun fired, the explosion melding with the sounds of the crashing waves below. Kendrick shoved the weapon into the soft earth and, freeing his right hand, grabbed a fistful of mud and slapped it into the Mafioso’s face, grinding it into his eyes.
The guard shouted garbled words of fury, trying simultaneously to wipe his eyes and yank the gun out of the earth and Evan’s grip. Kendrick remained on top of the writhing, thrashing killer, repeatedly crashing his knee up into the man’s groin as his right hand continuously scooped up mud, crushing it into the Mafioso’s eyes and mouth. His knuckles struck a hard, jagged object… a rock! It was almost too large for the panicked spread of his fingers, but nothing could, nothing would, stop him. Straining muscles he had not exerted in months, years, holding off the convulsive assaults beneath him, he pulled the heavy, jagged rock out of the mud, raised it, and crashed it down into the head of his would-be executioner. The killer-guard went limp as the man’s body sank into the wet undergrowth and the soft ground.
Evan grabbed the gun and snapped his eyes up towards the Mexican. The Hispanic, waiting to see who would live and who would die yards away in the mist-laden, shadowed foliage, crouched, backing into an amber lamp, smashing it with his foot. Seeing the survivor, he spun around, digging his feet into the path to run.
‘Stop!’ yelled Kendrick breathlessly, leaping up and lurching out of the bordering overgrowth. ‘Stop or I’ll kill you! You understand me well enough for that.’
The Mexican stopped, turning slowly in the wash of light to face Evan. ‘I am no part of these things, se๑or,’ he said in surprisingly clear English.
‘You mean you don’t pull the trigger, you just tell them where they can pull it!’
‘I am no part,’ repeated the man. ‘I am a fisherman but there is no decent pay on the boats these days. I make my pesos and go home to my family in El Descanso.’
‘Do you want to see your family again?’
‘Si’, very much,’ replied the Hispanic, his lips and hands trembling. ‘If this is what happens, I will not come back.’
‘Are you telling me it’s never happened before?’
‘Never, se๑or.’
‘Then how did you know the way!’ shouted Kendrick against the sound of the wind and the crashing waves. He was regaining his breath, gradually aware of the mud that covered him and the pain everywhere inside him.
‘We are brought here and given maps of the island, which we must know completely in two days or we are sent home.’
‘Why? For multiple executions?’
‘I told you no, se๑or. These are drug waters—narcoticos—and very dangerous. Mexican and American patrols can be summoned quickly but still the island must be guarded.’
‘Summoned quickly?’
‘The owner is a powerful man.’
‘Is his name Grinell?’
‘I do not know, sir. All I know is the island itself.’
‘You speak fluent English. Why didn’t you speak English before?’ Evan gestured towards the dead Mafioso. ‘To him!’
‘I say it again, I wanted no part. I was told where to take you, and as we grew closer I began to understand… No part, se๑or. But I have my family back in El Descanso, and the men who come here are powerful men.’
Evan stared at the man in indecision. It would be easy, so easy, to end his life and eliminate a risk, yet there was a glimmer of opportunity as well if the frightened Mexican was not a liar. Kendrick knew he was negotiating for his life, but there was another life involved, too, and it made the negotiation easier. ‘You understand,’ he said, drawing closer to the man, raising his voice to be heard clearly, ‘that if you go back down to the house without him and he doesn’t appear or they find his dead body up here or washed up on the rocks, you’ll be killed. You do understand that, don’t you?’
The Mexican nodded twice. ‘Si’.’
‘But if I don’t kill you, you’ve got a chance, don’t you?’ asked Evan, raising the Mafioso’s gun. The member of staff closed his eyes and nodded once. ‘So, it’s in the best interests of you and your family back in El Descanso to join me, isn’t it?’
‘Si’. The Mexican opened his eyes. ‘Join you in what?’
‘Getting out of here—away from here. There’s a boat down at that dock next to a fuel tank. It’s large enough to handle the trip.’
‘They have other boats,’ interrupted the executioner’s guide. ‘They go faster than the government drug boats and there is a helicopter with powerful searchlights.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Down near the beach on the other side of the island. There is a cement landing ground… Are you a pilot, se๑or?’
‘I wish I were. What’s your name?’
‘Emilio.’
‘Are you coming with me?’
‘I have no choice. I want to leave here and go home to my family and move to a town in the mountains. Otherwise I die and they will go hungry.’
‘I warn you, if you give me any reason to think you’re lying, you’ll never see El Descanso or your family.’
‘It is understood.’
‘Stay at my side… First I want to check out my hangman.’
‘Your what, se๑or?’
‘My friendly executioner. Let’s go! We’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it.’
‘To the boat?’
‘Not yet,’ said Kendrick, a vague, fragmented plan coming into abstract focus. ‘We’re going to disrupt this goddamned island. Not just for you and me but for everybody. Everybody. … Is there a tool shed—a place where they keep things like shovels, picks, hedge clippers, those kinds of things?’
‘The mantenimiento,’ answered Emilio. ‘For the gardeners, although we are often required to assist them.’
‘We’ll make a stop first, then take me there,’ continued Evan, moving awkwardly and in pain back to the dead Mafioso. ‘Come on!’
‘We must be careful, se๑or!’
‘I know, the guards. How many are there?’
‘Two on each of the four passable beach areas and the pier. Ten for each shift. All carry radio alarms that set off sirenas—very loud sirens.’
‘How long are the shifts?’ asked Kendrick, bending over the corpse of the Secret Service man.
‘Twelve hours. Twenty guardas and four jardineros—gardeners. Those not on duty are in what they call the “barracks”. It is a long building north of the main house.’
‘Where are the tools?’
‘In a metal garage fifty metres south of the generador.’
‘The generator?’
‘Si.’
‘Good.’ Evan removed the Mafioso’s wallet and black plastic identification case, then went through the mud-soaked pockets finding more than a thousand dollars, undoubtedly not from a federal payroll. Finally, he took out the small electronic ‘key’ that released the bolts and opened the door of the cabin-cell in the woods. ‘Let’s go,’ he repeated, rising with difficulty from the soft, wet earth and undergrowth.