Authors: J. Kent Messum
“W
e got a little problem. . . .”
Felix paused, gulping needed air. He took his eyes off the men on the boat just long enough to give Nash a look so unsettling that it made him shiver.
“I think they’re just about done with us.”
Nash believed it. They sat in silence, afraid to move in case it attracted any unwanted attention. Then something inside Nash reared its ugly head, making him twitch. He tried to ignore it, but it came again like a nervous tick.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Felix asked, but he already knew.
The first niggling for heroin buzzed Nash’s brain stem, causing him to salivate. Drool escaped the corner of his mouth. He got to his feet, looking up and down the beach for the promised box. A thin, bare mast poked out over the top of the island’s central vegetation, inviting investigation. He left Felix and what was left of Ginger and trudged up the beach to the grass and bushes for a better look. Three things came into view. The first two he expected, but not the third.
“Felix!” he yelled. “Get your ass over here!”
Felix rocked his bulk off the sand and came running. His eyes fell first on a small sailboat pulled ashore and the trunk nearby. Then he saw what had Nash so excited. About a mile out in the open water was a large cabin cruiser, headed in their direction.
“We’re making a break for that boat,” Felix said. “I ain’t staying here to see what those psychos have in store for us.”
Felix ran to the sailboat, casting a glance at the trunk on the sand as he passed. Nash followed, but stopped at the box and flipped open the lid. Everything Nash expected to see was inside, including a new white envelope. Nash grabbed it.
“Forget that,” Felix barked. “We’re not playing by their rules anymore.”
Nash dropped the letter back into the box. “Fucking right we’re not.”
“Grab some of those water bottles and get in the boat,” Felix said. “C’mon, make it quick now.”
He paused, scratching a sudden prickly itch on his neck. Felix licked his dry lips at the thought of another snort of the delectable junk.
“Wait, grab the fucking dope too.”
Nash grabbed an armful of water bottles and threw them into the hull of the boat, then went back for the metal container. He flipped up the lid to make sure. A full pound of dope lay within.
Shit, they weren’t lying,
Nash thought.
Nash looked again at the letter, suddenly tempted by its contents, intrigued by his tormentors’ track record for telling the truth. If this was supposed to be the end of the game, what was left to tell?
. . . further instructions to retrieve something more for your troubles . . .
“Hey!” Felix yelled. “Pull your head out of your ass!”
Nash grabbed the letter again. “I think we should read this.”
“Give me that.”
Felix snatched the letter from Nash’s hands, elbowing him out of the way for his disobedience. Felix was in charge now. There would be no democracy between two people, no more delaying decisions.
“I said
leave
it, Nash,” he snarled, throwing the letter back in the box.
He grabbed Nash by the arm and pulled him stumbling toward the sailboat. They dragged the craft into the water, pointing the bow at the cabin cruiser off in the distance. Neither man knew a thing about sailing, but a pair of oars lay in the bottom of the boat. Rowing wasn’t rocket science. Nash and Felix jumped in and each pegged an oar into a pivot. They dug the blades into the water and pulled, calling on strength they didn’t even know they had. It wasn’t long before Felix paused and gave Nash a nudge.
“I knew they wouldn’t let us go that easily,” Felix said, pointing.
The motor yacht was coming around the tip of the island at full speed. Felix rowed harder, urging Nash to do the same. He looked over his shoulder at the approaching cabin cruiser. Closer, but not nearly close enough.
“How far?” Nash wheezed.
Felix demanded that he double his efforts. Their tormentors were gaining fast. Nash stood in the boat and turned in the direction of the cabin cruiser, holding on to the mast for support. He leaned out, waving a hand frantically, trying to attract attention.
“Help!” he shouted. “Over here!
Help us!
”
A thunderclap rang out, echoing over the water. Nash heard a whistle of air a millisecond before the .50-caliber round blew through his outstretched hand, decimating it in a red mess of shredded fingers and busted bone. He watched the debris fly off the starboard side and pepper the water.
The thought came almost casually to his mind.
You’ll never play the guitar again, Nash old boy.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t even breathe. He simply stared at the remains of his hand floating on the waves.
“Nash!” Felix cried.
Nash sank to the gunwale, cradling his stump to his chest, his other arm slung around the mast. Blood spurted from his wrist, wetting his chest and running down his body into the bottom of the boat. Felix dropped to his knees, wrapping one big black arm around him and grabbing Nash’s slack jaw in his hand.
“Stay with me, man,” he ordered. “We come too far now.”
Nash looked almost catatonic. Felix knew he was going into shock, so he did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the container of heroin and dumped out a pile of powder into his palm.
“Here, buddy,” he said. “Take a big sniff.”
He crammed his palm up against Nash’s nose. Nash inhaled, snorting and spluttering until he fell back with a giddy grin. His eyes went glassy over his dusted nostrils and lips as his burgeoning shock was temporarily sidelined.
Another thunderclap rang out, sending a second round splintering through the hull at the waterline and leaving a ragged hole the size of a softball through which water poured. Felix ducked, pulling Nash lower into the boat. A third shot sounded and exploded through the mast, showering Felix’s side with sharp debris.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck all of you!”
One more clap rang out, the shot whizzing harmlessly over the bow and into the water beyond. Quiet followed. Felix dared not even breathe. Wincing, he ran his fingers over the splinters embedded in his ribs. Dark blood surfaced around them and ran in thick trails down to his waistband. A minute passed before Felix dared to peek over the side of the boat. The yacht wasn’t coming for them anymore. It had turned and was heading back around the island. Felix looked over his shoulder and let out a loud, mad cackle. The cabin cruiser, alerted by the sound of gunshots, was picking up speed. Felix figured it would arrive in less than ten minutes.
Bleeding profusely, he grabbed the oars with renewed vigor and pulled for safety, but their plight had worsened. His injuries, Nash rendered useless, and the fast-sinking sailboat tripled the difficulty. Blood and seawater washed around their ankles in the hull, rising quickly.
We’re gonna sink long before that boat gets here,
Felix thought.
He began to bail with cupped hands, but stopped when he realized their spilled blood would attract the sharks. They had even less time than he thought.
“Shit.”
Felix watched his tormentors retreat farther while he tried his hardest to row faster, hoping to shorten the distance to the cabin cruiser as much as possible before the inevitable.
“How you doing down there, Nash? Are you still with me?”
Nash rolled his eyes up to Felix and raised his gored wrist so that they could both get a good look. Watery vomit came, a mash of swallowed salt water and food bits, spilling out over Nash’s chin and onto his bloodied chest.
“Christ, I hope I wake up anywhere but here,” Nash said and passed out, crumpling to the thwart.
The first of the white-tipped fins appeared thirty yards off the starboard side, moving inquisitively toward the sailboat. Felix saw it approach and prepared himself.
“End of the line,” he said.
Somewhere in the distance a gull cried out.
A
gull cried out as Lieutenant Follson walked the length of the island in the early evening light. Ensign Parrish waited for him next to a trunk on the sand. Their coast guard cutter was moored off the north end of the island and Follson had just taken a dinghy ashore to examine further evidence of the day’s insanity. He walked past two more of his men on the beach as they bagged what was left of a woman’s body.
The trunk was now Follson’s main focus. He pitied the poor sons of bitches whose sailboat had sunk out there and left them floating on the waves. The one who’d suffered the worst from the sharks was dead by the time he was pulled from the water. The other had somehow managed to survive the ordeal. Follson sincerely hoped the man would make a full recovery. The lieutenant had seen a lot in his years with the USCG, but nothing like this.
Parrish stood at attention and saluted the lieutenant as he approached.
“At ease, sailor. You touch anything, Parrish?”
“No, sir.”
Follson stood over the open trunk and examined its contents. An envelope lying among the wrapped sandwiches and bottled water quickly attracted his attention. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pinched a corner between a thumb and finger.
“What is it, sir?” Parrish asked.
Follson lifted it out. “Do I look clairvoyant to you, Ensign?”
“No, sir.”
Follson shook his head and smirked. Parrish was eighteen, four months into his service, and as green as they came. The boy could barely grow facial hair.
“You’re standing in my light, Parrish.”
Parrish shuffled to one side. “Sorry, sir.”
Follson carefully opened the letter and held it out, allowing the setting sun to shine on the black typeface. He read the note aloud with great interest, enticing Parrish to come a step closer.
“Dear survivor,
“Congratulations on completing our trials. If you have made it this far, you are deserving of more than just your heroin. At the opposite end of this island you will find a cross on the sand. Handsome compensation for your troubles is buried beneath it. A briefcase containing $50,000 cash, a cell phone, and a GPS receiver to aid in your rescue are waiting to be retrieved. We thank you for your participation.”
Lieutenant Follson folded the paper and looked to the opposite end of the island, his mind running the numbers, thinking through what he had just read. Parrish looked around, confused.
“What was going on here, sir?” he asked.
“Hell if I know, son.”
“Fifty thousand dollars, Lieutenant? Cash? For real?”
There was a long pause as both men pictured that kind of money and the many things that could be bought with it.
“Go grab a shovel from the dinghy, Ensign,” Follson ordered. “And don’t breathe a word of this to the other men.”
“Right away, sir.”
“And double-time it, Parrish.”
Parrish ran to where the dinghy was beached and grabbed an entrenching tool from the bow. He rejoined Follson, who led him farther down the beach to where he predicted the briefcase would be buried. In the fading evening light, they searched the long grass, growing excited at the prospect of finding buried treasure. It was a daydream that every sailor found himself indulging in at one point or another: coming across a pirate’s trove of ill-gotten gains or a sunken Spanish galleon with gold in its belly. A buried briefcase with fifty grand was close enough.
“See anything, son?” Follson asked, growing impatient.
Parrish brushed back the long blades of grass and discovered a wooden cross jammed low into the sand.
“I think I found it, sir.”
Follson knelt, examining the cross closely, considering options both legal and illegal. He had a duty to report his findings, but fifty thousand in cash could solve a lot of personal financial problems, and the USCG paid him a fraction of what he was worth for all his years of commendable service. After some consideration he turned to his subordinate, a crafty smile on his face. Parrish wasn’t sure what it meant.
“What should we do, sir?”
“We should dig, Ensign.”
“And what do we do if we find that money?”
“We keep it to ourselves. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Parrish began digging. As he shoveled he thought about all the sandbags he had filled back at base during his first few months. It had all been mere practice for this big payoff. When the hole was two feet deep he looked up at the lieutenant with excitement.
“There’s definitely something down here, sir. And it looks like it’s been buried fairly recently.”
Follson leaned over the deepening hole, intrigued. Parrish kept digging. Finally the shovel connected with something hard. A metal ping emanated from just below the surface.
“Bingo—”
Both Follson and Parrish managed a second’s worth of smile before the claymore mine detonated, tearing the muscle and tissue from their faces and shredding their bodies in an inverted hailstorm of shrapnel and sand.
W
hen he awoke several nights later he couldn’t recall his name. It was thirst that brought him around, parched tongue and sore throat begging for moisture. Weak and disoriented, he tried to rise. An ache that ran the length of his body stifled his movements, pain seeping from the very marrow of his bones. He lay still instead, nestled in a clean bed centered in a dark room, staring at the ceiling with blurry eyes. A night-light above his headboard illuminated him and little else. There was a window to his right, but only black beyond the glass. A closed door to his left revealed a single line of weak light at the base. Something behind his head beeped rhythmically, but a sharp pain in his neck forbade him to look. The air smelled of ammonia and bleach. It was the smell of a hospital.
“Hello?” he called.
No answer.
“Is anybody there?”
Still nothing, save the beeping. He had no memories to speak of, but broken, jagged thoughts began stabbing his head, angry at being shut out and eager to get back inside. For the moment he was glad to remember nothing. It felt like self-preservation. What he could not recall seemed better forgotten. He lay in silence, waiting while his eyes adjusted to the dark.
When he could see more clearly he began to inspect his surroundings. Only a bedside table with a clipboard atop was of interest. With much effort he reached over and snagged it. He brought the clipboard close to his face, eyes straining to see what was written. Printed in the top right-hand corner was the patient’s name: Felix Fenton.
“God damn.”
His voice trembled, withering and hoarse. Memories flooded back in, making Felix twitch. He experienced it all over again, every horrible instance. Salt water burned his throat; sand and rocks scraped his knees. Water beasts with skin like sandpaper came at him, teeth gnashing, tails thrashing, nictitating membranes rolling over eyes. Then blood came, blooming in a rolling underwater cloud before diffusing into shades of pink consumed by blue. The terrified faces of strangers who had quickly become comrades floated in and out of the thickest red, mouths open, screams drowning.
“I’ve escaped from hell. . . .”
There was a soft click and an open flame appeared in one of the dark corners of the room. It caught Felix by surprise, causing him to drop the clipboard to the floor with a clatter. A sitting figure was illuminated for a single moment before the flame died. The voice that came was gruff, unemotional.
“You’re a hard man to kill, Mr. Fenton.”
“Who’s there? Where am I?”
The pungent smell of cigar wafted into Felix’s nostrils. The heart monitor mounted on his bedpost quickened its rhythm. Motivated by fear, Felix found the strength to sit upright. In the corner, the cigar ember burned bright. Felix could make out a man’s expressionless face in the pulsing orange glow. Even in the gloom something looked wrong with it, smooth where it shouldn’t be, piebald in places. The eyes above were cold and piercing, shining as if made from polished marble. There seemed to be no irises in them, only pupils.
“You’re in intensive care,” Greer said.
“And who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy who helped put you here.”
Somehow, Felix already knew. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon. There was an IV stand close by, the only thing within reach. He shifted toward it, but groaned at the pain that came with his effort. He tried calling for help instead.
“Doctor! Nurse!”
“No one is coming to your aid, Mr. Fenton. We have ensured this.”
Felix tried again to move, succeeding only in breaking a sweat and increasing his discomfort. He risked another glance at the IV stand.
“Don’t try to get up,” Greer said, aware of Felix’s intention.
Felix froze. He suddenly got the sense that there was more than just the one man in the room with him. He could feel other eyes watching him from the shadows.
“Why not?”
“Because all that’s holding you together right now is thread and gauze.”
Felix gently pulled back the sheets to examine his body. Much of his legs and body was wrapped in thick bandages. Both feet were in plaster casts. He tried to move them and felt the numerous sutures strain hot against the many wounds they were helping to keep closed.
“A hundred and thirty-six stitches in total,” Greer continued. “Sharks kept a few pieces of you too, as a memento.”
Felix gulped. “What did I lose?”
“Nothing that won’t heal over time, except two toes on your right foot and a good chunk out of your left calf. Your scars will sure be something special, but you’ve got enough meat on you to graft the worst of them.”
Felix managed a middle finger. “Go fuck yourself.”
A grunt came from elsewhere in the room, from someone else’s throat. That was when Felix noticed the outlines of the other men standing perfectly still in the dark. One of them stepped forward and spoke. Felix recognized the voice, the Southern drawl of the man who had dropped him outside his apartment door.
“You best count your blessings while you can,” Buchanan said. “It would be wise to show the captain here some respect.”
Felix was taken aback. “Captain?”
Greer nodded, taking another drag on the cigar that seemed some sort of proboscis protruding from his mouth, ready to wound and cauterize on contact. Smoke drifted into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Felix knew the man wasn’t being called Captain because he was a licensed mariner.
“You guys are military?”
“Formerly,” Greer replied coolly. “Let’s just say we’re the kind of people that you meet only once, Mr. Fenton. For all intents and purposes, we’re ghosts . . . technically we don’t even exist.”
Felix fell silent. The men surrounding his bed were the best of the best gone rogue, and he was at their mercy. Then the realization sank in. If this privy information about his tormentors was being imparted to him, it probably meant that he was already dead. Felix figured he’d get some answers before the captain or one of his men put a bullet in his brain.
“Why?” Felix asked.
Greer snorted. “Why what?”
“Stranding us on an island. Baiting us with junk. Why would you do that to someone? Why us?”
“Because no one would miss you.”
“And how do you know we wouldn’t be missed?”
“Our contacts knew each of you well enough. They selected you and gave you up when we asked. They sold you out.”
Felix wasn’t following, but he didn’t care to have Greer elaborate. There was only one question he wanted answered.
“Why did you do it?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Greer stared at him.
“I think I’ve earned some answers,” Felix snapped.
Greer’s face seemed to darken with anger, even in the shadows. “So far you’ve earned nothing from me other than a small show of mercy.”
Felix didn’t miss a beat. “And it’s the
least
you could do after what you put me through. Now, tell me why, God damn it.”
There was a long pause. Greer took another drag on his cigar, thick smoke rolling out into the light as he exhaled. There was something about Felix he admired, a single man cornered by four others who could kill him in a heartbeat, and he was still demanding an answer to his question.
“I said you wouldn’t understand.”
“Humor me.”
Greer’s eye twitched. “Do you have any idea how most people feel about human excrement like you? How many folks sit behind the wheel of their car at a stoplight and cringe as you approach their windshield with a filthy rag and spray bottle? How many men see you passed out in a doorway or alley and for a moment hope you’re dead? The number of women and children who see you hanging around their neighborhood one day and pray you won’t be there the next? Do you have even the slightest inkling of how many people you come into contact with on a daily basis that would prefer if you somehow just disappeared overnight?”
Felix said nothing. If he were honest with himself, the numbers were staggering. He saw it in the eyes of so many he passed in the street day to day. Eyes of those on their way to work or school, eyes that told him he was garbage, viewing him as nothing more than disease and depravation. Those same eyes that sometimes said they’d rather see him a corpse in a gutter than the wandering urban zombie he’d become.
“Lack of conviction,” Greer continued. “That’s the only reason society doesn’t go through with disposing of you. You’re already dead from drugs and disease.”
Greer’s eye twitched again, pupil dilating and drifting. Felix didn’t like it, a possible sign of growing instability in the man sitting before him.
“No, Mr. Fenton, what we did was help clean up Miami that little bit more. We simply made it more . . . sporting.”
“Sporting?”
“Think of it as a kind of modern-day safari.”
“You can go to Africa for that sort of shit, y’know.”
Greer sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it,” Felix balked. “You guys are fucking psychopaths.”
“Professional soldiers,” Greer corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Whatever. You’re sick.”
“We’re sick?” Greer laughed. “Oh, that’s rich coming from a junkie. Y’know what’s truly sick? You, your kind, your neighborhood, your city, this whole damn country, addicted to anything and everything that can dull the pain for a minute. There’s no supply without demand, and demand keeps rising. My men and I were ordered to put our lives on the line again and again to help America win the war on drugs, to stem the flow of product that bankrolls those that wage war against us. I’ve been waist deep in more poppy fields than you can imagine, eradicated more cook houses than I can count. I built most of my career on exterminating or crippling the organizations you and your habits keep in business.”
Greer’s agitation grew, trigger finger stroking the air involuntarily as he remembered rounds unloaded into victims. He shifted in his seat, causing the chair legs to bang off floor tiles.
“And for what?” he continued. “We come home from war to find everyone strung out, more dope on the streets than ever before. Every enemy of this country sells us their poison by the boatload and we buy it faster than it can be brought to market. Afghan Brown, China White, Mexican Black Tar . . . our people want it all. Do you know how enraging that is for the patriots who pledge to protect this nation?”
Greer’s rising anger worried Felix. He figured the climax of this speech was the precursor to his murder, a bullet or blade punctuating whatever point the captain was intent on making. He wondered which of the men would deliver it.
“Man, take it easy,” Felix said, holding up a hand. “Don’t go pinning your problems on me.”
“My problem,” Greer said with a grin, “is people like you.”
Greer’s smile terrified Felix, though he would not let it show. It looked as though it was carved into his face, exposed teeth and crescent lips whittled from knotted wood with crude blades. Felix expected blood to seep through those teeth at any moment, dribble down the mottled chin and onto the clean floor.
“And do you have any idea how big that problem is?” Greer continued. “No, you wouldn’t, because you don’t pay attention to anything outside your little bubble of eat, sleep, shit, and smack.”
Greer leaned forward, shadows receding from him slightly. He raised a finger and tapped the side of his nose, letting one eyelid fall lazily over his pale blue iris in a horrible wink.
“See, I got to thinking. Maybe our enemies aren’t the problem. Maybe the drugs aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s people like you that are the problem. You’re the enemy.”
“Me?”
Greer straightened, eyes blazing as he spoke, the cigar ember jutting out below seeming weak in comparison. “Take you and your demands off the table and everything else falls away.”
Felix couldn’t look at his tormentor anymore, but when he answered there was still enough grit in his voice to rub someone the wrong way.
“So . . . you round up a bunch of addicts and get your rocks off watching our pain and suffering? Is that it?”
“Your pain and suffering is self-inflicted, the by-products of the chemical pleasures you choose to indulge in to the detriment of yourselves and others. You can’t even function as a normal human being anymore.”
“And that makes me worthless?”
“Worse . . . it makes you hopeless.”
Felix mouthed the word, unsure of how to respond. He had never felt more hopeless than at that moment, laid up in a hospital bed, injured and immobile, surrounded by a killer elite.
Greer blew smoke rings into the light. “It’s clear to me that you and your kind ain’t worth saving.”
Felix gave him the hardest stare he could muster. “And that gives you the right to put me through all that nightmarish shit?”
“Why not?” Greer grinned, that festering cruelty showing in his mouth. “Tell me, Mr. Fenton, what else do you think a junkie parasite like you is good for?”
Felix looked down at his broken body. He had no idea what he was good for anymore. His usefulness ran out years ago, along with any aspiration other than attaining his next hit.
“I don’t know,” Felix admitted.
Greer stood and approached the bed slowly, one hand behind his back. The more the light revealed him, the seared skin of his marred visage, the more Felix began to sweat. This was the hardest-looking man Felix had ever seen, and he’d fought some hard men in his time.
“I’ll give credit where credit is due,” Greer said. “You played the game better than anyone. You’ve got the kind of stones I can appreciate. For you, failure wasn’t an option, was it? I’ve never seen anyone with so little to live for fight so hard to stay alive.”
“You don’t know what I live for,” growled Felix.
Greer sneered. “But I know you’re living at the moment. Which is more than can be said for your comrades, right?”
Felix looked up. “Nash didn’t make it?”
“No one else made it. No one was
supposed
to make it. You’re the lucky one.”
“You call this lucky?” Felix seethed, striking the bed with a weak fist.
“You were given a fighting chance, which is more than we give most. Do you think Al Catraz will be so lucky the next time we set up a meeting with him?”