Spartan Gold (13 page)

Sam and Rube had instantly bonded, their friendship cemented over the six long weeks of training, and they’d stayed in touch ever since, meeting once a year in the fall for a three-day hiking trip through the Sierra Nevada.

“Everything I’m going to tell you is unclassified—at least officially.”

Sam read between the lines. After receiving his call, Rube had in turn made his own calls, tapping contacts and sources outside the government. “Okay. Your message said ASAP.”

“Yeah. The name of the guy you call Scarface used a pretty heavily backstopped credit card attached to dummy accounts to rent the boat in Snow Hill, so it took a little digging. His name is Grigoriy Arkhipov. Ex-Russian special forces, spent time in both Afghanistan and Chechnya. He and his right-hand man, a guy named Kholkov, left the army in ’94 and went freelance. Arkhipov you’re familiar with, but I’ll e-mail you a picture of Kholkov. If you haven’t seen him around yet, you will. As far as we can tell they’ve worked for just one man since ’05, a real nasty piece of work named Hadeon Bondaruk.”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Rube replied. “He’s the kingpin of the Ukrainian mafia and the toast of Sevastopol high society. He throws parties and hunt weekends at his estate several times a year and restricts his guest list to the überwealthy—politicians, celebrities, European royalty. . . . He’s never been charged with a crime, but is suspected of dozens of murders—mostly other crime bosses and enforcers who for whatever reason made him mad. Other than rumors there’s not much out there about his past.”

“I love gossip,” Sam said. “Let’s hear it.”

“Rumor is he commanded a cell of guerrilla fighters in Turkmenistan during that whole Russian-Iranian border mess. Moved around the mountains like a ghost, ambushing patrols and convoys, never leaving anyone alive.”

“A real Samaritan.”

“Yeah. So, what’s your interest in him?”

“I think he’s after the same thing we are.”

“Which is?”

“Better you not know, Rube. You’ve stuck your neck out far enough already.”

“Sam, come on—”

“Just leave it, Rube. Please.”

Haywood paused, then sighed. “Okay, you’re the boss. But listen: You’ve been lucky so far, but your luck could run out in a big hurry.”

“I know.”

“Will you at least let me help you? I know a guy down there you should see. You got a pen?” Sam grabbed a pad from the end table and took down the name and address Rube recited. “I trust him. Go see him.”

“Will do.”

“And for God’s sake, take care of yourselves, you hear me?”

“I hear you. We’ve been through some tough scrapes together, Remi and I. We’ll handle this one.”

“How exactly?”

“Easy. We’re going stay one step ahead of them.”

Three hours later Sam pulled the Beetle off the coast road into a small gravel parking lot and eased to a stop beside a rusted Quonset hut topped by a windsock and bearing a faded hand-painted sign: AIR SAMPSON. Fifty yards to the right was another Quonset hut, this one larger, and through the sliding double doors they could see the nose of an airplane. On the other side of the hangar was a landing strip composed of crushed seashells.

“This is it?” Remi asked, eyes narrowed.

Sam checked the map. “Yep, this is it. Selma swears it’s the best charter place on the island.”

“If she says so.”

“Are you really going to bring that thing?” she asked, nodding to the towel-draped object lying on the floor between Sam’s feet.

After hanging up with Rube, Sam had gone to the villa and recounted the conversation to Remi, who listened carefully and asked no questions.

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” she said finally, taking his hands in hers.

“And I don’t want to see you get hurt. It’d be the end of my world.”

“Then let’s not get hurt. Like you said, we’ll just stay one step ahead of them. And if things get too rough—”

“We’ll call in the good guys and go home.”

“Sure we will,” she replied.

Before coming to the airstrip, after leaving the hotel they’d first followed Rube’s address to a shoe-repair shop in downtown Nassau, where they found that the owner and Rube’s contact, Guido, was expecting them.

“Rubin wasn’t sure you would come,” Guido said in slightly Italian-accented English. “He said you were both very stubborn.”

“Did he now?”

“Yes, oh, yes.”

Guido walked to the front door, flipped over the Out to Lunch sign, then led them into the back room and down a set of stone steps into the basement, which was lit by a single hanging lightbulb. Lying on a bench amid shoes in various states of disrepair was a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver.

“You both have handled guns, yes?”

“Yes,” Sam replied, answering for both of them.

In fact, Remi was a damned good marksman and had no fear of handling guns, but tried to avoid them if at all possible.

“Good,” Guido answered. “No serial numbers on the gun. Untraceable. You may throw it away when you are done.” He wrapped the gun in a towel along with a box of fifty bullets, then handed it to Sam. “One favor, if you don’t mind?”

“Name it,” Sam said.

“Don’t kill anyone.”

Sam smiled. “That’s the last thing in the world we want to do. How much do we owe you?”

“No, please, nothing. A friend of Rubin’s is a friend of mine.”

Sam now asked, “You want me to leave it?”

“No, I guess not. Better safe than sorry.”

They got out, collected their backpacks from the trunk, then went into the Quonset hut. A black man in his late sixties sat behind the counter on a lawn chair, a cigar jutting from his mouth.

“Well, hello there,” he said, rising to his feet. “I am Sampson, owner, operator, chief bottle-washer.” He spoke perfect Oxford English.

Sam introduced them, then said, “Not from around these parts, I take it?”

“Born in London. Came here ten years ago to live the good life. So, you’re going to Rum Cay?”

“Right.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Both,” Remi said. “Bird watching . . . photography. You know.”

Sam handed over his pilot’s license and filled out the required forms. Sampson looked over the forms, then nodded. “Overnight?”

“Probably.”

“You’ve booked a hotel there?”

Sam shook his head. “We’re roughing it. You should have gotten a delivery yesterday—tent, potable water, camping gear. . . .” Guided by one of her dozens of mental checklists, Selma had arranged a full load of gear for their trek, from the absolute necessities to the “what-ifs.”

Sampson was nodding. “I did. It’s already loaded.” He pulled a clipboard off a nail on the wall, jotted a note, then returned it. “I’ve got you in a Bonanza G36, fueled and checked.”

“Pontoons?”

“As requested. Head over to the hangar and Charlie will send you on your way.”

They turned and headed for the door. Sampson called, “What kind of birds you hoping to spot?”

They turned back.

Sam shrugged and smiled. “Whatever is native to the island.”

C
omprising as the island did an area of less than thirty square miles, finding a hidden base on Rum Cay might at first glance appear a fairly straightforward task to uninitiated adventurers, but Sam and Remi had been down similar roads before and knew the coastline, uneven as it was with hundreds of coves and inlets, was in reality at least six times the island’s gross circumference.

Originally known as Mamana by the local Lucayan Indians, the island was renamed Santa Maria de la Concepción by Christopher Columbus, finally gaining its modern name when Spanish explorers found a lone cask of rum washed up on one of its white sand beaches.

The island’s only village of note, Port Nelson, lay on the island’s northwest coast surrounded by groves of coconut trees. With a population that, according to the 1990 census, was somewhere between fifty and seventy souls—most of whom lived in Port Nelson—Rum Cay’s primary, if anemic, industry was tourism, followed by pineapple, salt, and sisal, all of which have waxed and waned over the decades. Other settlements, long since deserted and overgrown, bore exotic monikers like Black Rock and Gin Hill. Formidable reefs, coral canyons, and plunging seabeds encircle the island, making it a favored destination for pirates of old—or so said the brochure Remi had picked up in Nassau.

“There’s even a famous wreck,” she said as Sam banked the Bonanza to the right, following the contour of the island.

However unlikely they were to spot their target from the air, both thought it prudent to at least circumnavigate the island to get a better feel for what lay ahead.

“Blackbeard?” Sam asked. “Captain Kidd?”

“Neither. The HMS
Conqueror
, Britain’s first propeller-driven warship. Sank in 1861 in about thirty feet of water in a staghorn gully near Sumner Point Reef.”

“Sounds like it may be worth a return trip here.”

Rum Cay offered a few luxury resorts and even more beach cottage rentals. Judging by the azure waters, lush rolling hills, and relative seclusion, it struck Sam as the perfect get-away-from-it-all spot.

“There’s the airstrip,” Remi said, pointing out the window.

The 4,500-foot paved runway sat a couple miles from Port Nelson, a truncated white T amid a patch of forest that seemed determined to reclaim it. Sam could see antlike workers at the tarmac’s edge, hacking at the foliage with machetes. Just east of the runway they could see Salt Lake, and a few miles north of that, Lake George.

Though Sam had no fear of using the airstrip, they had asked Selma to ensure whatever aircraft they rented was equipped with pontoons. Exploring the island by car would have taken weeks at least and required miles of cross-country bushwhacking. With the pontoons, they could hop around the island’s shoreline, exploring interesting spots as they came across them.

Sam descended to two thousand feet, contacted Port Nelson Control, which verified their flight plan and permission, then banked around the northeast headland and turned south along the coast. As the least-inhabited part of the island, he and Remi thought it the best place to start their search. As the western half of the island was well explored and well populated—at least by Rum Cay standards—any discovery of the secret base would have been noted by now. Selma hadn’t come across any such reports, so Sam and Remi took this as a good sign. Providing the secret base wasn’t simply the concoction of some senile German Kriegsmarine.

“That looks like it’d make a good base of operations,” Sam said, nodding through the windshield at a three-quarter moon cove with sugar-white beaches. The nearest structure, what looked like an abandoned plantation house, sat six miles inland.

Sam banked again, bleeding off speed and altitude as he went until they were two hundred feet off the waves, then lined up the Bonanza’s nose on the beach. He did a quick visual check to make sure he hadn’t missed seeing a reef, then eased the craft down, flaring at the last moment and letting the pontoons kiss the surface. He throttled back to idle, letting the plane’s momentum carry them forward. The pontoons hissed as they contacted the shoal sand and they came to a gentle stop six feet onto dry land.