Lost Girls (22 page)

Sherry kicked off her shoes, unbuckled her belt, and unzipped her shorts, tugged them off her hips, and let them fall to the ground. She heard men speaking in Creole, three of them, to be certain. Two were distant, near the corridor leading to the outside, or so she gauged. The other was closer, within striking distance.

They were all enjoying this. This was something they had seen many times before, had likely participated in.

Bedard concerned her most. She could feel his eyes on her. She could sense his lust, his hatred.

She undid the buttons of her shirt and let it fall off her shoulders. She took a deep breath. This would have been a lot easier if the young girl were not here. She might have had options then. Or maybe she would have done as all the other women did here. Try to live for another moment, another day.

The captain of the
Anna Marie
stooped to crane his neck beyond the ship’s wheel. There was a light in the sky to the north. It seemed to be growing, shimmering on the wet windshield of the cabin.

He rummaged through rags and sundry tools, found binoculars in a hatch, and trained them on the light.

One of the crewmen came into the cabin behind him and shut the door.

“What is it?”

The captain shook his head.

The light continued to grow on a cloudless palette of stars. It wasn’t heavenly, he knew, nor was a second light now becoming visible on the horizon. There was another ship out there.

In twelve years of smuggling, the
Anna Marie
had never been boarded. The police and military were fixated on the go-fast boats, which had been highly successful outrunning them. Fishing trawlers weren’t immune from the drug interdiction cops, but the ones that were targeted had been linked through informants to cocaine. The
Anna Marie
smuggled bodies, not drugs, and her name had not yet come up on law enforcement radar.

Two more crewmen entered the cabin, pulling automatic rifles from the hatches. The lights were converging in front of them, bright as small moons.

The captain turned the wheel in a reflexive but futile gesture. Then they could hear the
whop
of a helicopter coming toward them across the open sea. The helicopter’s floodlights came on as a machine gun fired and hot orange tracer rounds rained upon the dark water off their bow.

The superstructure of the coast guard cutter was now visible in the captain’s glasses. She was a big one, he thought, eighty, ninety feet, and she would be armed with cannon and torpedoes. He put the binoculars down and barked an order to his crew as the helicopter descended over the cabin of the
Anna Marie.

The crew put down their weapons, opened the double doors over the hold full of women, quickly stepped away, raised their hands to surrender, and waited for the cutter
St. Louis
to come alongside. Above them the Jayhawk helicopter’s crew looked down in wonder. The open hold was packed full of women, every one of them staring up into the blinding lights.

Men in black flight suits huddled over a black-and-gray satellite image, topographical features of a coastline illuminated in laser-green light. Their attention was being drawn to a mountain ridge. There was a series of small outbuildings by a cathedral, the perimeter of a security fence traced in red.

“Five-knot winds from south-southeast.” The leader met each of their eyes. “If your body begins to plane in free fall you’re going to sail off target. Every foot matters, gentlemen.”

The men nodded their understanding.

The blacked-out KC-130 Hercules was silent at 35,000 feet, releasing the five high-altitude chutists into chilled un-breathable air over western Haiti. The men dropped like shadows into the night, oxygen masks linked to personal tanks on their chests, Heckler and Koch .45-caliber pistols in black shoulder holsters and 5.56mm SCAR light combat rifles strapped across their backs. They plummeted an astonishing six and a half miles before deploying the square black plumes of their canopies. The men were virtually invisible as they floated above the spires of the ancient cathedral and dropped within the security perimeter.

Metcalf landed on his feet at the edge of the outbuildings. In less than a minute he heard the others hit dirt; all but one dropped their harnesses and used their radios, making telltale clicks over the closed frequency to signal they were okay.

The last man to land drifted northwest of his target, was still inside the perimeter but dangerously close to the fence and foundation of the cathedral. He was still trying to extricate himself from a coil of barbed wire inside the fence when one of Bedard’s guards, who just happened to be standing there, shot him.

A hundred feet away and behind the foundation walls, Sherry in bra and panties stood listening to the sound of Bedard’s boots in the dirt. He was waiting for her to strip; had started toward her, and she flexed her right hand, knew that if needed she could make her second finger go rigid. Tucked slightly beneath the first, it was called the spear hand and it was deadly to an opponent’s throat or eyes.

“All of it!” he screamed again, but then they heard the rifle shot. “Guard them!” Bedard yelled, as he ran from the cellar.

The leader of the parachutists also heard the shot. It was an ominous sound and explained the missing signal from one of his men. He pointed in the direction of it and nodded, watching two of his team members split and head toward the entrance to the quarry. He removed a rectangular box from his backpack—small, about the size of a loaf of bread—and found the switch that activated a pin-dot red light. He buried it under vegetation and slipped the rifle off his shoulder, motioned to the remaining members of the team, and they moved forward, beginning to work their way through the outbuildings toward the foundation of the cathedral.

“Bring him,” Bedard shouted, enraged.

Sherry, still standing in her underwear, heard men laboring under the weight of a body. A moment later they dropped it at her feet. She heard the man moan; he was alive.

“I think you know something you are not telling us, Miss Moore.”

She didn’t move and he slapped her. Sherry remained expressionless and he slapped her again.

“Perhaps then you will tell us one more fortune before you die.” Bedard reeked of fear and aggression.

Sherry heard the hammer snap back on Bedard’s pistol, then an explosion deafened her right ear. Through the ringing she heard screams from the women kneeling not ten feet away. She prayed no one would move, that no one would dare to run.

Bedard grabbed her and threw her facedown on the dead man. His belt buckle jabbed her stomach; his clothing had heavy zippers and snaps, the coarse ballistic shoulder holster. Her face was against his chest, her right arm over his collarbone. It was wet and warm over the bullet hole above his heart. She could feel her panties soaking up the blood from the shot he’d taken in the hip when he was still outside.

“Touch him, you bitch.” Bedard’s voice was low and cruel. He pulled back the hammer on his gun once more.

Sherry grabbed the dead man’s right hand with her left. She lay there upon him. He was warm and ever so human, she thought, catching a
flash of light and then hands reaching out for him, she saw light in the jungle, the entrance of a tunnel; a man to the right was holding an antiquated Kalashnikov, the man to his left, there were three in all, now was carrying a radio; the tunnel was lit by strings of bare lightbulbs, the walls were a combination of rock and smatterings of luminous marble reflecting in the light; a woman, herself, in white brassiere and pale blue panties; a man with a dead white eye, dark-complexioned, automatic pistol, a .45-caliber Colt in his right hand; a man’s face, streaked dark with paint, his face was large and chiseled, his eyes pale green; a younger man with red hair, a map, the sparkle of moonlight on black sea; the silhouette of jagged coastline; a dark-haired woman in a hospital bed, she was smiling, holding a crying baby smeared with blood; spires of a cathedral; bare feet of the nearly naked woman; his own hand shaking in front of his face; thumbnail scratching dirt; nothing…

Sherry tried to think. What did she say to Bedard? He would kill them all anyhow.

Bedard grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Who is out there?” he shouted, gun to her head.

A cell phone rang. Bedard snatched it from a pocket. “What?” he screamed.

There was a long moment of silence as he listened. His face must have registered alarm because someone came forward.

“Commandeur?” a man said.

Bedard’s voice was different, somehow shaken. “The palace has ordered all police commanders to their stations.”

“Martial law?” the man asked.

“I do not know,” Bedard said. “They have been instructed to account for their men, Préval has closed the airports. Nothing flies in or out.”

“What do you wish, Commandeur?”

“Get the helicopter ready. No, first get that detonator for me.”

“The engineer, Commandeur?”

“Kill him. Just bring me the fucking thing.”

Gunfire erupted outside the cathedral. Bedard ordered men to respond. The shooting continued outside, then a mighty explosion rocked the ground.

Smoke poured into the cellar. It was chaos after that, automatic weapons fire, but now it was from within. Bedard’s remaining guards sprayed the entrance, Sherry heard them shouting in Creole, but she thought there were fewer of them now. She thought they were taking hits.

Bedard grabbed her once more, wrapped an arm around her neck with inhuman strength, and pivoted her in the direction of the fire. She could feel the heat of his body against her. She went rigid.

The firing suddenly stopped.

“Let her go,” a man shouted in English. Sherry turned her head, surprised. She sensed the smoke was clearing.

Bedard backed her into the corner, his men on both sides. “I am taking your blind woman,” Bedard said. “Matteo,” he screamed over his shoulder. “The detonator!”

“Let her go or you die,” the American said calmly.

Sherry heard footsteps running; someone came up behind them and handed something to Bedard.

Sherry felt him slip the pistol back in his holster.

“Perhaps I will kill us all.” Bedard raised his arm over his head. “We are surrounded by explosives.”

Sherry let her head fall forward, chin to her own chest. She wondered if she could get hold of his gun. It was right there in the holster on his right hip.

“You’re not going anywhere,” the man said again. Sherry had already matched a face to that voice. A face she had seen only minutes before, in the final few seconds of the dead soldier’s life. A face she had once imagined on a mountain called Denali.

She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised by the calm in Metcalf’s voice. He had not come all this way to lose. Metcalf would not show emotion.

“Put down your weapons, you fools,” Bedard snarled. “Put them down or you all die.”

“Barrage radio interference,” Metcalf said evenly. “Or maybe you would understand it as random frequency blocking.”

“Babble,” Bedard mocked.

“Not babble,” Metcalf said calmly. “Your signal has been jammed. Your detonator is worthless. Kill them.”

Rifles cracked from the area of the cells, bodies fell around them with no return fire.

“One more chance,” Metcalf said.

“Fuck…” Bedard managed to get out, but then he lurched sideways as a bullet struck his shoulder, half spinning him with Sherry still in his arm. She filled her lungs and snapped her head back, striking Bedard’s bandaged throat.

He did not let go, but it was enough for Sherry to use his weight and momentum against him, her knee sweeping his left leg until he fell rolling on his back. She felt his arm moving for the pistol, but something heavy landed on him, pinning him down, and Carol Bishop yelled, “Die!” as Aleksandra drove the point of Yousy’s bone hairpin through his good eye.

Rolly King George sat in the pilot’s chair on the flying bridge of his Bertram, water lapping softly against the side of the boat, sky above a virtual dome of tranquil stars. They were afloat off the coast of southwestern Haiti. It had been thirty minutes since they’d gotten word the KC-130 Hercules had dropped men over Contestus.

Brigham was below in the cabin, speaking on his cell phone with someone in the United States. He had been communicating with someone ever since they left Frenchman’s Cove in Jamaica almost four hours ago.

The cabin door opened and closed below, and George heard the handrail rattle as Brigham began to climb the ladder to the bridge.

“Take us in, Rolly,” the retired admiral said. Brigham stood behind, his hand on the inspector’s shoulder.

“They’ll meet us on the beach in Tiburon harbor.”

“All of them, sir?”

“All but one,” Brigham said throatily, looking out at the random spray of stars on the horizon. These were emotions the admiral hadn’t experienced for quite some time, the love and fear that a brotherhood of arms never talked about. And then there was Sherry Moore. She was all but a daughter to him. His wife had died. His parents and siblings were all gone. Sherry was all he had and he was ever so glad to have her back.

Captain Metcalf loaded the women and his soldiers into one of the trucks on the compound. There was no plan to take any Haitian citizens off the island until Hettie begged them to. She had but one request, that they stop at her shanty in the harbor long enough for her to retrieve something.

Brigham and the inspector watched as the truck’s headlights appeared and stopped momentarily in the village. They did not expect resistance; even the Haitian policemen were to have been recalled to their stations and should pose no threat. But Inspector George had brought arms for both and they were ready to defend themselves if need be.

In only minutes, however, it was Captain Metcalf who ran the front tires of a truck into the salt water and jumped out, unloading men and women from the back. Brigham was over the rail and running to meet Sherry. The soldiers carried the body of their comrade aboard, then Pioche’s body, as Carol helped Aleksandra along behind. Hettie, with Amaud’s picture under her arm, held Yousy’s hand as Rolly King George helped them through the gate in the transom.

Then a small creature came darting across the beach and Yousy screamed, “Chaser!” as Hettie pulled her away. Metcalf leaned over the side of the boat and scooped up the dog as Rolly King George eased the Bertram into deep water.