Red Stripes (2 page)

Moving along the trail, I was alert for further sentries. Those I’d just killed were the outer belt of guards, but there would be others. Perhaps they would be lazier still, expecting that the men I’d just slain would alert them to any trouble, but I couldn’t count on it. There were always one or two people who took their duties seriously, and I couldn’t allow my attention to slip for a second.

Thirty years previously this compound had been a holiday haven for rich Americans, but it had declined into bankruptcy and neglect by the early nineties, and was now a ghost of its former glory. The buildings that once housed the holidaymakers, as well as the restaurants and pavilions that pandered to their needs, were still there, but they had all suffered from the years of neglect and were now faded shells of their former beauty. The jungle had encroached in many places, and most of the outer buildings had been reclaimed by the land, and were now empty husks from which grew trees and shrubs. The buildings were of a colonial style, but just like the colonies they were based upon they were now a thing of the past. Years ago, while Diane and I were still married, we holidayed in Jamaica at a resort on Montego Bay, but this place didn’t bring back any happy memories of our time on the island. Then we did what most tourists did: we climbed the world-famous Dunn’s River Falls, swam with dolphins, and sailed on the turquoise waters and snorkeled on the reefs. My trip here this time would hold no such joys. Something that struck me back then was how the stereotype of the marijuana-smoking Jamaican Rasta was very much that, but the one where they were known as the “happy people” was true. I’d never met people so happy to be alive. The men in this compound went against the grain in that respect. They were scumbags of the highest order and only pleased when making the lives of others unbearable.

I’d heard tales of punishments being carried out by way of the machete.

Attract the attention of these men and you could expect to have your arm stretched over a rum barrel, and your hand chopped off. Really upset them and they took your feet as well. It was stories like those that gave me no qualms about going in with a “shoot on sight” policy.

Making my way along an overgrown footpath, the papaya trees and palms forming a canopy overhead, I could hear the drumming of the rain. It wasn’t abating one bit. On my way here my friend Rink had warned me that Hurricane Irene might just touch land in the Caribbean, but it hadn’t come as far west as Jamaica, having skirted the eastern shores of Cuba before heading north past Florida for the Carolinas. Nevertheless, the tail end of the storm was enough to make the night pitch-black, and the wind and rain insured no one would hear my approach. Even the ever-present nighttime chorus of insects was hushed beneath the battering rain.

I came across the next guard standing beneath the lintel of a conical building that used to serve as a grill and pizzeria. The cooking ranges and ovens were long gone, and now the space inside the circular brick walls was home to a stand of bamboo that had grown clean through the holes in the tiled roof. Rainwater sluiced from the tiles, and made it difficult to see the man beyond. If he hadn’t struck a lighter to his cigarette at the opportune time I might have missed him. Taking a good look I could see he was also armed with a pistol that was holstered beneath his left armpit, but he also had a machete with a black matte blade hanging from a loop on his belt. By the looks of things the blade hadn’t been employed to cut back any of the jungle, so there was only one reason that the guard was carrying it. I was in no rush to lose any of my appendages.

The water was spilling from the roof hard, but it was no hindrance to my bullets. I placed one in the man’s heart and then one in his head. He slumped to the floor, the machete making a clank that was dulled by the storm’s fury. I immediately moved in on him, ready to put another round in his skull if necessary, but as I inspected him I found that he’d be no trouble. The bullet had took him through the left eye, and exited a little behind his left ear. It had bounced around in his skull cavity a few times before finding a place of egress. He was as stone cold dead as he could be. For a moment I thought about relieving him of the machete. I’m all for proportional retribution as a rule, and there were two or three guys here who should be made to pay for their crimes at the tip of the blade, but I couldn’t allow myself the distraction. Taking some of them out of the picture was a bonus, but secondary on this occasion. My job wasn’t to punish the gang members, but to extract their hostages.

Kidnap for ransom was largely a forgotten crime in the Caribbean. Nowadays you had to look to the east coast of Africa, and Somalia in particular, to find groups of pirates willing to take ships both large and small. Generally, when it was one of the larger ships, the pirates demanded ransoms from the shipping companies, and the payment was made through insurance brokers and mercenary intermediaries. These days the payouts could count in tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of dollars, but it was still a small price to pay to insure that the shipping companies got their boats back, and, more important, their cargoes. Occasionally, the Somalian pirates would take a smaller yacht or pleasure cruiser, and then the demands for money would be directed at the families of the rich men and women they held. Largely, the ransoms were paid and the hostages returned unharmed. Pity that this upstart Jamaican crew hadn’t based their operation on the Somali blueprint, then it wouldn’t have been necessary for me to be on the island. The trouble was, instead of trusting to the family’s desire to get their loved ones back, the Jamaicans had started negotiations rolling by mailing one of their hostage’s index fingers to his parents, wrapped in a bubble wrap bag to keep it fresh. Pay up, they’d said, or the next thing in the mail would be the rest of the boy’s hand. Next his parents should expect a bigger box, this one large enough to contain a bowling ball. The family had paid up. Because there were express instructions not to involve the police, the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, the family had been directed to deliver the ransom payment in used U.S. dollars to an apartment block in SoBe, Miami. Using a local private investigator to conduct the drop, the family handed over $500,000 on the promise that their son would be returned to them safely.

Greed, and the ease at which the family had been manipulated, told the Jamaican crew they were onto a winner, and instead of returning Stephan Pilarcik to his parents, they moved the goalposts, now demanding that a further half million dollars be raised to cover their expenses for keeping the boy in food and water and for delivering him home to Florida.

It was apparent that without outside assistance the Pilarcik family would see the eventual return of Stephan, albeit piece by piece, and each time after further demands for money. There would be no resolution to the scenario for the Pilarciks that didn’t end with a dead son and a zero bank balance. They were on the cusp of calling in the FBI, but their PI counseled them against it. The Jamaican crew obviously had connections in Miami, and it was highly likely that any involvement by the FBI or police would be spotted and reported back to the main players, who would chop the boy to chunks as a warning to the other families they were extorting. That was when the PI, a guy named Charles White, made the Pilarciks understand that the only sure way to get their son back was through what’s known in the trade as a “successful rendition”: in layman’s terms, a snatch and grab. He wasn’t in business for the job, but he reassured the Pilarciks he knew some guys that were. That was where Rington Investigations came in. And why I was on the job.

Rink was there too. He’d entered the compound earlier sans his brightly colored shirt. His choice of clothing was as dark as my own, but he’d enhanced the camouflage capacity by adding patches of green and brown rags stitched to netting that he’d draped over his shoulders in a makeshift ghillie suit. He’d smeared dirt on his face, blackened the steel of his KA-BAR knife over a candle flame, and gone hunting. He was one of the best recon soldiers I’d ever known, and against the type of sentries here could probably sit in silence a few feet away from them and never be noticed. Minutes earlier, before I’d made my assault on the three lazy guards, Rink had confirmed that he’d located the hostages through the stick mikes and earbuds we wore.

He was in position to free Stephan Pilarcik; his girlfriend, Wendy Charteris, and the three crewmen who’d been snatched from the pleasure cruiser alongside them. It was my responsibility to clear a pathway back to where Velasquez stood offshore with our getaway boat. McTeer was further north; insuring the private plane we’d flown in on was ready to go at a moment’s notice. I didn’t begrudge McTeer his task: the pilot, an islander, was fond of the ganja and had lit up the second we’d touched down on arrival. It was McTeer’s job to insure the pilot wasn’t too stoned to get the rest of us flying as high.

I moved along a narrow pathway between towering fronds. There was no cessation from the rain: it poured from the tips of the fronds in liquid rods that lanced at the earth. There had been a boardwalk once upon a time, but now only the occasional plank had survived. Most were rotted chunks half buried in the soil. The wood was so spongy I didn’t fear my footfall would be heard over the drumming downpour. But I’d to be careful that the damn things didn’t trip me.

Through the dark spots in the foliage I made out infrequent lights. They were storm lamps, strung on poles to mark the pathways. Any flickers of movement between me and them I could put down to the bushes moving in the wind, but that would make me a fool. Any one of them could be another of the Jamaicans stealing through the night. I checked each before moving on.

“What’s your twenty, bro?” Rink’s voice came through the wireless earpiece I was wearing. We both wore twin rigs, with throat mikes and buds in our ears.

“Due west of the main complex, one hundred and fifty yards out,” I told him.

“You got two hostiles on the veranda, another two inside the building. You can forget about the other frog-giggers out back.”

Trust Rink. Couldn’t make do with a simple reconnaissance gig: he wanted in on the action. “How many?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just keeping score,” I mugged.

“My guys were tougher than yours,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. But it wasn’t there in his next exhalation. “I’ve eyes on Stephan and his gal, can’t see the crew they were snatched alongside.”

“Surplus to requirement, I guess.”

“Motherfuckers. Brother, there’s a dude with a big knife. Another with a gun. Looks like a big-ass revolver. You sure you don’t want me to do ’em and get this over with?”

“I’m good, Rink. You just cover my arse when I bring the kids out.”

Rink pinpointed a room to the right front corner of the building I was looking at. It was a single-storey affair, the area to the left of which was dominated by what I guessed was once an entertainment area. A semicircular dais surrounded a listing stage, and the tattered remnants of a canvas roof hung from support poles, dingy and stained by bird crap and rotting vegetation. Next to it was an entranceway to what was undoubtedly the holiday resort’s reception area, and likely an indoor bar area. The room where Stephan Pilarcik and Wendy Charteris were held was possibly one of a number where administration duties used to take place. It would be an easy-enough task to enter the building via the entertainment area, make my way to the room through the reception and surprise the two kidnappers, if not for the two men standing on the veranda. They’d see me the moment I moved on the building.

“Where are you, Rink?” For all the looking I couldn’t see my buddy.

“See the hut to the right?” There was a sagging beach hut about twenty feet from the room where the hostages were held. A hatch in the front was partly open, where staff once handed out towels to beachgoers. I stared and saw a brief flash of white. Rink’s teeth bared in a grin. “What’s up?”

“Could do with a distraction,” I said.

“Gotcha. On three . . . two . . . one . . .”

The hatch slammed shut.

The wind was high, it was natural enough for the disintegrating beach complex to fall apart in the storm, but the sound was sharp enough to attract the attention of the two guards on the veranda without actually raising any alarm. Their instincts were to look for the source of the noise, and it was enough for me to slip out of concealment and rush across most of the intervening open space before either of them turned my way. Most handguns are accurate to about fifty yards. I was within that range. Suppressors have a tendency to affect the accuracy, but my shots were true enough. The first caught one guard in the throat, choking off his cry of warning when he saw me. My second hit his pal in the chest. Neither man died immediately: the one with the blood pouring out of his throat clutched at his wound as he went to his knees, the other was staggered by the round in his lungs, and leaned against the rotting veranda rail for support. Neither of them was in a good way, and neither of them had the presence of mind to shoot, but inevitably one of them would make enough of a racket to alert those inside. I was closer now. My aim better. I put a round in each of their skulls. The first guard went slack, and slumped to the veranda. The other must once have been an extra in a cowboy movie: he pitched headfirst over the rail and executed a pratfall to the earth five feet below. Stunt guys usually get up after such orchestrated falls, but he didn’t.

I moved past the two dead men and circumvented the raised dais. Cushions to soften the seats were a thing of the past, and the dais was now a semicircle of bird-shit-splattered concrete as soulless as the empty stage.

“Rink,” I whispered.

“Go for Rink.”

“You said there were two hostiles inside?”

“Two plus the two guarding the kids.”

Glad I cleared up the momentary misconception. One of the outer guards was just inside the reception area. I couldn’t be sure, but perhaps he heard the thud of his falling mate, because he was craning his neck, eyes rolling white as he peered out through the murky glass of a window.