Thinking of the danger to Arthur, Frik, and Ray, and to herself, Peta did what she had to do.
He’s a goat, she told herself again.
In an act punctuated by the repeated clatter of a hard object against metal, she picked up Joe’s submachine gun and smashed his skull.
“I—”
“We saw what happened, Peta,” Ray said. “Thank you.”
“You all right, kid?” Frik asked.
An irreverent thought flashed through Peta’s mind. These two men were having fun. Educated, well traveled, experienced, they were not much more than altered, older versions of what William and Joe might have become. Ray, a demolitions expert turned stuntman, had come to Grenada to shoot some scenes for a Hollywood movie, and had stayed on when the revolution heated up. The truth was that he’d rather be shooting a gun than a film. As for Frik, the stocky expatriate South African was an oil magnate whose wealth was exceeded only by the size of his ego. Like Joe, he saw himself as irresistible to women. He acted as if he were Hemingway incarnate, and looked the part, especially when he had a crossbow slung over his shoulder.
“I had to hit the bars first,” Frik said, as if there were any way he could have been that accurate.
She looked at the crossbow, which was now in his hands. So the sound that had nearly gotten them killed earlier was an arrow—or a bolt, as Frik called it—hitting the bars of the window of Arthur’s prison cell and ricocheting back to the ground.
“Had to warn Art to get out of the way.”
Art? It’s Arthur, you dumb shit, Peta thought. She looked up at the window. Arthur was looking down at them. Even in the moonlight, she could see that his face was thin and drawn. He was a huge man, almost six feet five. Before his arrest he’d weighed over 250 pounds. By all reports, he had lost nearly a hundred of that during his year of confinement.
Peta waved and smiled at him, trying not to let her body language show how scared she really was, but he seemed to be too focused on Frik to notice anything else.
Frik was preparing to send up another bolt, attached to a nylon fishing line which was in turn attached to a rope.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Ray said.
Frik nodded, and this time the bolt found its mark between the bars. Arthur signaled to them, bolt in hand, and immediately began pulling up the rope. Ray checked the small black bag that was attached to his belt. It contained, he had told her, a fine powder, a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum. He patted his pocket, as if to reassure himself that he had the magnesium strips and matches he needed for ignition. Arthur disappeared from her view for a moment, then reappeared, giving a thumbs-up.
Ray tested the rope. “Hold it taut at the bottom,” he told Frik as he handed the end to the Afrikaner. Moments later, Ray was effortlessly scaling the wall, working his way upward toward the small barred window.
“Keep your eyes open, my little miss,” Frik said, holding on to the rope. “We can’t be sure someone won’t come looking for those buddies of yours.”
“They weren’t my buddies,” Peta said, more sharply than was necessary.And I’m not your little miss! She needed to release some of her pent-up fear and guilt. This was hardly an auspicious beginning to her adulthood. She knew that she’d had to kill to avoid being killed herself, but that didn’t mean she liked playing God…any more than she liked being patronized.
Above her, Ray had reached the window. First he pulled the magnesium strips from his pocket and wrapped them around the bases of the three bars farthest from the rope. After that, he took the explosive from his belt, tamped some of the aluminum–iron oxide compound around each of the bars, and lit a long match. He touched the flame to a fuse attached to the magnesium strips, then, with the skill of a coconut thief, slid a dozen yards down the rope. A series of crisp sizzles followed, each accompanied by a flash of light. Darkness returned.
When Peta’s eyesight had adjusted, she saw that there were huge scorch marks on the masonry below the window, and the bars had been bent out of the way. Ray was already halfway down the rope.
As soon as the stuntman reached ground, Arthur eased his spare frame through the window and followed suit. When his feet touched solid ground, he stopped for a moment as if the physical effort had worn him out. He bent over and took several deep breaths, then straightened up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Taking their cue from Arthur, the four of them raced, as fast as his slower pace would allow, down the hill toward Grenada Yacht Services and the comparative safety of theAssegai .
The gated compound of GYS was unattended after midnight. Peta watched Frik use his membership key on the entry gate’s massive lock. As she walked inside and heard Frik click the lock shut behind her, she became aware of the silence. She realized, with wonder and what was almost a sense of discomfort, that no alarm had been raised at the prison. She was wrenched out of her thoughts by the sight of a large gun emerging out of the shadows.
“Evening, Frik.”
Peta breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the voice and short, slight figure of Emanuel Sheppard, an old friend and freelance boat captain who seemed to live at GYS. “I see you brought some company.”
“Actually, amigo, if you know what’s good for you, you didn’t see anyone,” Frik replied.
A sly look washed onto Manny’s face and rolled away again with the tide of his easygoing nature. Peta had known this man her entire life, and had never seen a single person rattle him. Everybody seemed to trust him implicitly. She was sure that he knew almost every secret on the island, and just as sure that not one of them would ever pass his lips. If you pushed him, the most you’d get was a sly glance and a tall story about his days in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States security forces.
The group hurried along the creaking boards of the Grenada Yacht Services piers until they came to the two-masted beauty of theAssegai .
Frik’s Great Danes, Sheba and Maverick, greeted them ebulliently as they clambered on board, though Peta knew that the animals would not be so friendly were their master not in the group. Frik wasted no time in starting the engines. Still on the dock, Manny cast off the tie lines, and the yacht began a stately drift, aided by the motors, which thrummed to life.
“Happy New Year, all,” Manny called out in a stage whisper. Then softer, “It was nice not seeing you again.”
As they cleared the harbor, Arthur turned to Peta. He bent down to lift her into the air. Still too weak to do so, he simultaneously hugged and reprimanded her.
“Happy as I am to see you, girl, I want to know what you’re doing here.” He released her and looked at the others. “This is hardly a child’s game.”
The warmth Peta had felt with Arthur’s arms around her instantly dissipated. “Damn it, Arthur, I’m not a child. Tell him, Ray. Tell him why I’m here.”
“This was all her idea,” Ray said, somewhat grudgingly. “She planned the operation—”
“And set it up,” Peta interrupted. “I killed two men so theseboys here could play Scaramouche meets Robin Hood,” she went on. “Killed. As in dead. William—”
“Natalie’s William?”
Peta nodded. “He’s lying on the ground up there with his carotid sliced by one of your scalpels. And Joe—” She put her hands over her face.
“I’m sorry, Peta,” Arthur said quietly. After a moment he added, “What are we waiting for? I, for one, could use a drink.”
In short order, the three men were seated around Frik’s large wooden outdoor table, where a bottle of Westerhall rum, a dish of nuts, three highball glasses, and a bottle of guava juice awaited their return. Peta cynically assumed the last was her reward.