The blow does not come. I dare to open my eyes and see four legs standing before me instead of two. I look up. Action grips Owen’s wrist, staying the blade from descending.
“What dat, you say?” Action demands.
“The… the liquor,” I stammer. “Conner… the big man with the axe… he controls the resort and hid all the liquor. I know where he hid it.”
Action nods to the men holding me down, and they raise me to my feet.
Action takes a knife, presses it to my throat, and leans in close enough for me to smell his sour breath. “Where is de liquor?”
“I won’t tell you,” I swallow hard. “But I will show you. You are attacking tonight, yes?”
Action does not answer. Everything I said is a lie. Conner never hid the liquor; it remains locked in the supply room. Conner has the only key. When Action and his thugs overrun the resort and break into the supply room, they will realize this right away. His baleful stare scrutinizes my face for any sign of trickery.
Fearful that something in my silence will reveal my bluff, I press on. “Conner took my wife from me and drove me from the resort. I want to see him dead as much as you do. Take me with you when you sail tonight. I will show you where Conner hid the liquor. Without me, you could search the resort for days and not find it. In return, you will not harm me or my wife. You will let us go. I don’t care what you do to the others at the resort, but you will not touch my wife.”
The remaining captive young woman glares at me, disgusted by my craven treachery. I turn away from her.
“He lyin’,” Owen says.
I shake my head. “Bring me along when you sail. If I am lying, you can kill me at the resort as easily as you can kill me here. You have nothing to lose.”
I glance at the other thugs. They gathered to watch a man’s head roll and they do not want to be disappointed, but Action weighs my words and removes the blade from my throat.
“For de liquor, we let you live,” he says.
“And my wife, too,” I insist.
Action gives me a nonchalant nod. His assurance of our safety is worthless. Just as I lie to him, I know he lies to me. As far as Action is concerned, I am as good as dead—whether it is now or later tonight is irrelevant.
“He comes wit us,” Action announces. “But first, dunk him in de sea. I don wan him pissin’ up de boat.”
The thugs hoot and clap as two men drag me to the dock that runs alongside the ship and hold me under the water, nearly drowning me in the process of rinsing the urine off me. Finished with their sport, they haul me to the boat but I resist.
“Wait!” I pull back, and point to the bag I dropped on the road when the men struck me. “I need my life preserver in the bag.”
Action crosses his arms, clearly losing patience.
“I can’t swim,” I lie, praying Action did not see me snorkeling around the resort prior to the E.M.P. blast. “This boat is too deep to sail right to shore. You’ll have to anchor off the reef and swim the rest of the way to the resort. Without that vest I won’t be able to come with you.”
Action considers my words.
“Which means I won’t be able to show you where the liquor is,” I seal the deal.
Action tosses the vest to one of his men who toss it to me. Clutching the vest, with my flippers still tied to my waist, I huddle on the bow of the deck and wait for nightfall.
Night comes with a new moon. Thousands of stars sparkle in the sky like crushed glass sprinkled on black velvet. Still damp from my dousing, I don the life vest—both for added warmth and to ensure I will not part from it again. One of the thugs lights a lantern. Anxiously, I wait to see if the two captive women will join us on the boat. To my relief, a man stays behind to guard them. Every member of the gang—save the one left behind to guard the sex slaves—crams onboard. Action sits across from me, our knees close enough to touch. No one speaks to me. Packing tightly together, arm to arm and leg to leg, I smell the stale sweat from their unwashed bodies.
The thugs lift anchor and unfurl the sails on the creaking vessel. Slowly, we gather speed and cruise into open water. I peer over the railing, gauging our distance from land and how much time I have left to enact my plan. Other than the sound of the water slapping against the hull and the occasional flutter of the sails, there is no other sound. My heart beats faster. I gulp air, trying to steady my nerves. We approach the halfway point between the mainland and Goat Island. Soon, we will round the cape that separates the resort from the rest of the coastline. I have to act now.
“I have to piss,” I stand up, preparing to walk to the bow in the hopes I can be alone.
Action shoves me back down. “You already did dat in your pants.”
The rest of the gang laughs.
“Hey, Action, did you ever see his woman?” Owen asks.
“She de one with de tight ass, right?”
“Aye, she de one,” Owen nods.
Action chuckles knowingly. “I remember dat one. I remember dat one well.”
My face grows hot. I look at the floor.
Action taps me on the head. “You say the Yankee man wants your woman. Whatcha tink he is doin’ to her right now? I bet I know,” Action leaps up and, with his hands in the air grabbing what are meant to be my wife’s ankles, thrust his hips obscenely. In a high pitched voice he coos, “Oh, dat’s it, Yankee man. Give it to me. Harder! Harder!”
Owen and the rest of the thugs convulse with hooting laughter. With my jaw clenched in silent fury, I glare at Action. Seeing my rage, Action’s smile slides away. He sits across from me once again. Sensing the tension, the others quiet down.
“Hey, tough guy, why didn’t you kill de Yankee man when you had de chance?” Action asks.
I swallow hard. “I should have.”
“You should have,” Action repeats and nods his head. “But you didn’t. “You tink I don’t know you. You were at de Jacuzzi. I remember. You scorned me.”
“No I didn—”
“Don bother lyin’, mon. I seen it in your eyes,” Action continues. “Maybe you thought you were better than Action. Not better than me now, are you? No, not now when you need me to get your woman back. You thought Action was your enemy and Yankee man was your friend. Now maybe you tink different. Maybe now you see de true lay of de land. Listen and understand me now. It is not white person or black person, islander or visitor. It is who has this,” he holds up a machete. “And what you’re willing to do with it.”
One of the men working the sails tells Action they are about to round the cape into the bay. Before I can blink, Action nods to the men around me—a signal they must have worked out in advance—and the men seize me.
“What are you do—” I try to holler, but one of the men clamps a hand over my mouth. They lift me off my feet and pass me along the side of the boat and below the deck. Light from the lantern swings erratically, allowing me only a brief glimpse of where they are taking me. I see the cramped quarters of a fisherman’s boat: counter tops, navigation charts, and non-working electric equipment. They open a narrow closet—not much bigger than a telephone booth—and shove me inside.
“Let me out!” I kick the door, but there is hardly enough room to lift my leg.
“You come out after we take de resort,” one of the men says.
Groping about blindly in the darkness, I feel wires and bits of insulation. I open the life vest, pull out the bottle of gasoline, and flick the lighter hidden inside the vest so that I can see. Fittingly for my predicament, the closet is as narrow and dark as the interior of a coffin.
My plan is simple: Get on the boat, sail it to the point where the current is strongest, and use my gasoline and lighter to set the boat on fire. Of the murdering thugs, those not burned in the fire will leap into the sea. The deadly current will sweep them away to Goat Island where they will starve to death, unable to swim back to the mainland, or the current will pull them past Goat Island to drown far out in the ocean. As for me, using the flippers and vest, I will swim back to the mainland as I had before. In one shot, I will wipe out the thugs, save the resort and protect Gwen. Up to this point, my plan worked perfectly, and it still can… if I am willing to sacrifice myself.