“Zo, you have been to town, ya? To Santa Marta? Did you take zee autobus, oder zee taxi?” The German who asked the questions was wearing a cone-shaped Vietnamese rice paddy hat, undoubtedly as proof that he had sailed through Southeast Asia. It was his way of announcing that he was a hard-core world cruiser, who was not afraid to sail on troubled waters—like the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Phil Carson was not impressed. He’d seen plenty of those rice paddy hats, back in the day.
The forty-something German’s red tank top couldn’t quite stretch over his beer gut to meet his black Speedo bathing suit. In a million years I’d never go ashore like that, Carson thought, not even to go to the beach. I’d rather be shot. For the twenty kilometer bus ride to Santa Marta, he’d worn khaki slacks despite the tropical heat, boat shoes and a blue polo shirt with a collar. While the slovenly German was sweating and unshaven and looked like a bum, Carson had adapted a neatly trimmed goatee and moustache combination with a military length haircut, and he looked more like a Spanish aristocrat.
“None of your stinking business, fat boy,” was what Carson wanted to say in reply but, instead, he said nothing and continued to load his Avon inflatable. He muttered unintelligibly to himself in order to avoid a conversation with the lard-bellied Kraut sailor. The nosy German was coming ashore, Carson was going back out to the anchorage, and they had crossed paths on the dock of the Club Rapanga. The other side of the hundred-foot-long dock was dominated by an idle thirty-foot scuba-diving excursion boat.
In spite of the perfect climate and stunning local scenery, Club Rapanga was getting almost no overland foreign tourist trade. This was due to Colombia’s reputation for brutal violence coming from communist guerrillas, drug cartels, paramilitary groups and common street criminals. In the near-total absence of conventional tourists, intrepid but always frugal yachties were being welcomed as better than no tourists at all. For $25 a month, cruising sailors could tie up their dinghies at the gated and guarded Club Rapanga dock, and spend their money in the bars, have lunch or dinner, get their laundry done, or telephone for a cab. A variety of illegal drugs and prostitutes could also be arranged for anyone who wanted to walk on the wild side, in a country where you could get killed even on the tame side for a few pesos and a bag full of glue.
The German lived on a rust-bleeding fifty-foot steel schooner, which had already been anchored in the sheltered cove of Playa Rapanga when they had arrived two weeks ago. The German had a skinny Canadian boy of about twenty years old on board, who was either crewing for him, hitching a ride, or sharing his bunk. Carson didn’t want to know any more about them. They were both wretched specimens, and an actual Canadian was the very last kind of sailor he wanted to run into.
Fortunately for escaping from this type of over-friendly pier-side interrogation, a significant percentage of long distance sailors were anti-social to the point of rudeness, and more than a few were downright nuts. So it wasn’t far out of the ordinary for the German to meet a skipper who mumbled to himself and ignored his questions, as he loaded his groceries and his beer into his inflatable. Carson climbed aboard and started the motor, untied the dock lines and took off, still grumbling incoherently. He hoped to come off as just another flaky cruiser, and nobody that would stick in the German’s mind.
Ranya would stick in the German’s mind though, assuming that he was into girls, and not boys like the pierced and tattooed college-age Canadian kid on his schooner.
Ranya stuck in everybody’s mind; she had become an undeniably beautiful young woman. But although the young men followed her closely with their eyes, they left her alone when she walked the beaches and the two narrow palm-lined streets of Playa Rapanga. The word was out about this chica linda: she was not one to touch, or even to call after in an insulting way. Not her, and not her father, who was known and protected by the Dongando brothers, who controlled Playa Rapanga and regions beyond.
Carson steered the Avon out towards the anchorage, past the rows of open wooden fishing boats anchored close in to shore. The big Spanish ketch had left while he was on his day trip in the air-conditioned bus over to Santa Marta. Now, the German schooner, the Aussie catamaran and the French sloop were the only other foreign yachts remaining in the anchorage, their national flags flying from their sterns.
Garimpeiro was anchored further out, nearly a quarter mile from the beach, so that the others would have less reason to pass by or visit in their dinghies. Carson returned a wave to the attractive blond mother of the Aussie family on the big white catamaran as he passed them, feeling pangs of regret and a little jealousy over their manifest happiness, and his roads not taken.
The young French couple on the thirty-foot Beneteau sloop studiously ignored his passing, as usual. When they had learned that the crew of Garimpeiro was “Anglais-Canadien,” they had simply ceased to exist for them. This was perfectly suitable to Carson, who had no use for Frogs anyway.
Even as a newly-papered “Anglais-Canadien,” Carson could not get used to the red and white maple leaf flag tied to their backstay wire, or to seeing Toronto, Ontario painted on the transom beneath “Garimpeiro.” He had chosen the new name while Guajira’s white hull was being painted blue in the boatyard in Barranquilla. Ranya still wasn’t talking much then. He picked the new name himself as a subtle remembrance of Brad Fallon, who was in his own way a garimpeiro, a free-spirited treasure seeker. Like most garimpeiros, Brad had tried mightily, but failed to reach his own El Dorado. Carson and Ranya both appreciated the subtle echo of Guajira remaining in the new name.
He hoped Ranya would be talking today; they had so much to discuss. Their sleek cobalt-blue sloop rode nervously at anchor facing northeast into the strong afternoon trade wind. Some chop was building up, but it was not blowing quite hard enough to make whitecaps inside the reef. The gold-blue-red striped Colombian courtesy flag, flying from the spreaders halfway up the mast, was whipping straight back.
Even from across the anchorage, he could see that the wind generator on its pole above the stern was racing; its blades were a shining blur in the afternoon sun. Combined with the output of the solar panel, there would be a surplus of electricity and plenty of ice for their sunset Cuba Libres, with no need to run the diesel to keep the batteries up.
Ranya was on deck and, as he steered the Avon closer, he could see that she was leaning far out over the side with the compound hunting bow, taking aim at some doomed fish. Deep water fish often wandered over the reefs to the outer fringe of Playa Rapanga’s half-moon bay, where Garimpeiro was anchored in forty feet of turquoise water. Sometimes these fish rested and sought refuge in the shade under her blue hull, never suspecting that the real danger lurked just above the water in the form of a cruelly barbed steel arrowhead.
A few hundred yards from the boat he eased off on the throttle, not wanting to spook Ranya’s quarry or break her concentration. She was wearing her black one-piece tank suit, the high-cut one that showed her legs right up to her hips on the side. It was one of the bathing suits she had found on the boat, one of Brad’s gifts already purchased in anticipation of pretty amigas he would never meet. Sometimes Ranya didn’t leave the boat for days at a time while they were at anchor, except to take the inflatable to go snorkeling or spear fishing on the reefs. During these periods her attire only changed from one swimsuit to another, with a t-shirt thrown on after the sudden tropical sunsets.
He watched her release the string, remaining motionless. Then, she placed the compound bow with its attached reel down on the deck, and stood to haul in the short line hand-over-hand. He couldn’t tell what Ranya had just shot but, whatever it was, he would fillet it and they would eat it for dinner, unless it was a barracuda. For some reason lately she was killing big barracudas, both with the hunting bow from on deck and with the spear gun under water. She wasn’t killing them for their meat, which was unsafe to eat, but for their long and sharp teeth, which she was daily adding to a necklace on a white string.
Carson encouraged her bow-fishing, and not only for the meat that she put on the table. The locals in their wooden boats saw the wild girl shooting arrows with her exotic-looking compound bow, and they gave Garimpeiro a wide berth. Likewise, on the few dusty streets of Playa Rapanga, they saw her necklace of barracuda’s teeth and the long knife in its sharkskin sheath hanging on her hip, and they stayed out of her way. (In case they still failed to heed the signs, she carried her father’s .45 pistol in her black fanny pack, which she still wore to the front. This was Colombia, after all.)
She stood on the cabin top by the mast as Carson approached in the Avon, smiling proudly as she held up her skewered catch with her hands on each end of the arrow. As usual, the fish had been speared from above, straight through its head, dead before it left the water. It was a short, thick fish, weighing about ten or twelve pounds.
Three months of Caribbean sun and saltwater had further tanned her skin and lightened her hair. Today it was unfettered and lifting on the breeze, glowing where the sun passed through it. As he approached in the inflatable, she came down from the cabin top and laid the dead fish on the top of the lazarette locker, on the little aft-deck behind the cockpit. This was where he always filleted her catches.
It was easy to understand why the teenaged boys on the beach grinned at her when she passed by and called her Shakira, after the hugely popular Colombian singing star. The resemblance was definitely there, both physically, and in her brooding intensity. The local teens might have been surprised to discover that, in fact, Ranya Bardiwell shared Shakira Ripoll’s Lebanese ancestry.
And now Ranya was herself a teenager once again, at least on paper. She had been reborn as Carson’s own daughter; a seventeen-year-old Canadian citizen from Toronto named Diana Williams. It had been easier to obtain her new Canadian passport as his underage child, and it more suitably explained their relationship together aboard Garimpeiro. Together, they had created a basic personal history “legend” to go with their new identities, but it was thin, with no verifiable backstops in Canada. This is why they above all avoided real Canadians, such as the German skipper’s young crew. Genuine Canadians were the most likely to sniff out the falsity of their purchased identities.
Carson pulled the Avon along the sailboat’s starboard side and tossed Ranya the bow line to cleat off. “What did you catch?” he asked, standing in the rubber boat as it pitched in the chop alongside the far steadier hull of their forty-four foot sloop. He hoped she would feel like talking today. This had been a fifty-fifty proposition the last few weeks. Sometimes she communicated only in single syllables for days.
“I’m not sure. Some kind of sea bass, maybe. I’ll have to look it up in the book.”
“Looks sort of like a grouper. It’ll be a nice change from dorado.” He passed up the canvas bags with their fresh provisions and other purchases, and the wooden crate of beer bottles. Then he climbed through the lifeline gate into the cockpit and sat down on the long blue cushion. The sun was too low behind them for the blue canvas Bimini awning to provide any relief from its slanting rays, but the sea breeze was sufficient to keep them comfortable. They were both so used to the sailboat’s motion that they didn’t notice it.
“How was the ride into Santa Marta?” she asked.
“Pretty smooth. They cranked the A/C down to about sixty, but it was nice being cold for a change. There was one checkpoint halfway there, but we didn’t have to get out. The soldiers came aboard and checked ID’s. They barely looked at my passport.”
“Just like back in the states,” she commented cynically.
“Yeah, it seems like there’s no escaping checkpoints anymore. Except on the ocean.” They had sailed non-stop from Virginia to Colombia in three weeks, without seeing a single Coast Guard vessel, not even in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. The hurricane season timing of their voyage meant that they listened with extreme trepidation to every hourly single-sideband weather report, but they never experienced winds above thirty knots.
Ranya stood over one of the tightly packed canvas carrying bags, peering inside. “What, no iguana eggs?” Pickled iguana eggs were a local delicacy sold in roadside stands, and had become somewhat of a running joke between them.
“Nope, sorry, no lizard eggs today. But I found you something else. Colombian Oreo cookies.”
“You did? Now you’re talking! Dig ‘em out. You know I’m severely junk food deprived.”
“Yes ma’am. You just fetch me up a cold Eagle, and I’ll hand over the fake Oreos.”
While she was below, rock music burst from the cockpit speakers, Tom Petty singing about an American girl. Ranya returned to the cockpit with two open beer bottles in foam insulators, and set one down for herself. She slowly held out Carson’s bottle of Cerveza Aguila, and then they did an elaborate exchange like a pair of nervous crack dealers, mock-cautiously extending their halves of the bargain an inch at a time. Then, they simultaneously snatched what they wanted from each other, and broke out laughing.
He loved to see her happy again; her broad smile, the dimples under her cheeks, the way her amber eyes lit up… He turned away to face the beach, so she wouldn’t see his tears forming. Cottonball trade-wind clouds punctuated the azure sky as they marched toward the west, above the dry foothills behind the verdant palms of Playa Rapanga.
Ranya tore open the bag and shoved one whole cookie into her mouth with exaggerated moans, lip-smacking and eye-rolling. “You have no idea, no idea at all, how I have been craving Oreo cookies. No idea. Thank you so, so, much for remembering!”
Carson took a long pull from his ice-cold Aguila beer. “I can give up cigarettes, but don’t ever ask me to give up beer. After a long, hard day of being Canadian, this is really kind of nice.” Actually he had been forced to re-quit cigarettes cold turkey, because there were none aboard Guajira when they had raised anchor in Virginia and fled out to the Atlantic. “Cold beer, a pretty girl, a sailboat in the tropics… You know, a man could get used to this life. Oh, hey, I almost forgot! I found a copy of last Sunday’s New York Times in Santa Marta. It has a few articles about the Senate hearings.”
“Chuck it overboard. I wouldn’t believe that rag if they said the sun was coming up tomorrow morning.” She was talking with her mouth full of Oreos, washing them down with cerveza, and neither of them cared.
He pulled the Times out of one of the canvas bags and partially unfolded the front section, just enough for her to read it without the wind tearing it from his hands. The side headline above the fold read, “President Stands Firm On Banned Guns.”
Ranya snorted derisively. “They couldn’t tell the truth if it would save their mother’s life.”
Carson laughed. “Yeah, well, that was last week. Gilmore’s not standing so firm this week, not after the hearings.”
“After the hearings, or after Senator Ludenwright getting shot?” The vociferously anti-gun Ludenwright was the third Senator to be assassinated since the “dirty war” had begun. They were frequently listening to VOA and BBC on the shortwave, and were also occasionally watching some international news in the satellite bar, with its big-screen TV. Ranya said, “Gilmore must be tired of going to funerals by now.”
“You’d think so,” Carson replied. The weekly body count of politicians and federal officials was steadily mounting, despite their taking elaborate security precautions. More frequent and more rigorously en forced highway checkpoints were not having the desired effect, and the “bullets from nowhere” continued to find their marks.
“It sounds like it’s just getting worse and worse up there,” Ranya said. “Pretty soon, Americans are going to start coming to Colombia to get a break from the violence.”
“Ha-ha, you’re very funny. I know, if you just listen to the news, it might sound like things are getting totally out of control. But behind the scenes, well, things are changing. Forget about the open hearings, that’s all just window dressing for the sheeple. The real story is what’s going on in the closed sessions, the classified hearings.”
“And how would you know about that? Are you just guessing, or are they leaking something to the press?”
“There’s a lot of leaking going on, but I’ve got much better information than that. You’ll never guess who testified in the closed hearings last week.”
“If they were closed hearings, then how would I know who testified?” she asked. “And how would you know?”
“Because last week I emailed somebody, who emailed me back to tell me to email this guy who just testified in closed session; that’s how I’d know. And this morning I talked to him on the phone for fifteen minutes.” Carson leaned back against the cockpit side, and crossed his legs on the opposite bench.
“In Santa Marta?”
“Of course, in Santa Marta. I’d never call or email from here. And you shouldn’t either.”
“You know me better than that.” There were international phones and an internet room in the Club Rapanga next to the satellite bar, but emailing or telephoning from so close to where they were hiding out was taboo. “So, who’d you talk to? Who’s this secret mystery witness?”
“You ready? Burgess Edmonds.”
“No way!”
“Oh, yes way. Burgess Edmonds himself.”
“So he made it, he’s alive… Well, that’s something at least. It won’t bring back his family, but it’s something.” Ranya had told him of watching Valerie’s house burning from their overnight anchorage on the Nansemond River. She had told him of watching the fire with Brad from this very same cockpit, thousands of miles and a lifetime away.
“He’s alive, and he’s testifying in closed session. You can read the open session transcripts in the Times, but it’s almost a waste of time. Half of the stuff in the open session is wrong, and the rest is just government posturing and CYA. Some of the reporting is so wrong, it’s actually kind of funny. I mean, they’re still trying to figure out what happened at Malvone’s house. A lot of people think it was a ‘falling out among thieves’ kind of thing. And then Malvone floating ashore with the MP-5, well, that was just a classic! That’s still got them running in circles chasing their tails, trying to figure that one out.”
While they were on their twenty-day voyage to Colombia, they had heard shortwave news reports about the body of Walter Malvone, a “senior ATF official,” surfacing on the Potomac near Mount Vernon. This had dominated a news cycle when his body and gun were connected to the fatal shootout and fire at his house. Bullets from the MP-5 he had been carrying were found in a police helicopter and in at least one of his own men. The entire situation appeared certain to provide a lifetime of work for dedicated conspiracy buffs.
Ranya turned brooding and gloomy, wrapping her arms around her upraised knees and looking down at her feet, her light brown hair blowing across her face. That night was a sore subject; three months later her emotional wounds were still very raw. He had been forced to tie her up in the Molly M’s forward cabin for her own safety, after she saw that Brad had gone over the side. He went deep, and his body had never been recovered, or if it had, the news had not reached them in Playa Rapanga. He often wondered if Brad had finally made it to the open Atlantic, but of course, they never discussed it.
“Did you ever hear from the Rev?” she asked after a minute of silence. It had been his idea to take Malvone’s body up the river.
“Barney Wheeler? Nope, never did, not yet. He was never in the news, either, so I don’t think he was picked up.”
“You really think he got away?” Ranya looked up, brightening a little, her hair flicking under her chin.
“Sure, why not? He’s probably kicking back on his houseboat, way up some river in the Carolinas. He’s good at disappearing.”
“So, what did Burgess Edmonds have to say? To you, I mean.”
“Bottom line, he says he thinks it’s okay for us to come home. Apparently, the President just wants it over… It sort of sounds like the government counsel is using Edmonds as a go-between, to get the word out to the resisters, and to folks like us. They just want it over. No charges, no nothing, as long as we shut up about it; that’s what Edmonds says the government is telling him. They know Malvone and Hammet did it. The stadium, the bombings, everything. From what Edmonds heard around the committee rooms, your video of Hammet and my audiotape of Malvone really clinched it. They went to the dam, and they found the bullet marks just like Malvone said. Then they found slugs in the reservoir that matched the stadium rifle. They can even place Hammet in the VA hospital in Hampton, checking his ‘old friend’ Jimmy Shifflett out of the place.”
“All this is in closed session? Off the record?”
“For now. But the whole story, the real story, it’s about to blow up big time. The government knows they can’t contain it, so they’re already in damage control mode. Gilmore just asked for network time for a big Oval Office speech tomorrow. Everybody’s guessing that he wants to get out in front of the bad news. He’s probably going to blame it all on Malvone and Hammet, just blame the whole sorry situation on them.
“He might even ask Congress to rescind the gun bans, and try to go back to the status quo before the Stadium Massacre. That’s what Edmonds thinks is going to happen. There’re so many rumors. Apparently, it’s just getting crazy, really out of hand. That’s why the President might want to come out with a tell-all speech now, because some of the rumors are even worse than the reality.”
Carson continued, recalling his telephone call to Edmonds from memory. “You know that story about how it was the FBI that raided Malvone’s house? Guess where that came from?”
Based on a tip from an “unnamed high-ranking federal law enforcement source,” the leading U.S. cable news network had misreported that Malvone’s house had been attacked by a secret FBI covert-action team. The two Playa Rapanga fugitives were sometimes able to watch satellite cable news ashore and, in November in Cartagena, they had been amazed to see the lengthy, detailed, and totally wrong report crediting a secret FBI team for their own vigilante attack.
“Where? Where’d the FBI story come from?”
“Think about it. Who was left at Malvone’s house? The sniper on the balcony.”
“But I thought we nailed him?”
“So did I, but it looks like he got away. The sniper was Bob Bullard; he was the operational commander of the STU Team. In closed session, he admitted he told a reporter that he heard the attackers yelling ‘FBI!’ when they came in. That’s all it took to start all the FBI hit team rumors.”
This was still a leading theory among the conspiracy minded, that the FBI had sent a killer team to “clean up” the out-of-control STU. Their simple diversionary tactic of shouting “FBI!” as they entered Malvone’s basement had taken on a life of its own, extending far beyond that fateful Friday night. Now the phrase “FBI killer team” had permanently entered the internet and talk radio lexicon.
“Bob Bullard…Bob Bullard. So he’s the one.” She didn’t need to finish the thought. He was the one who killed Brad, who had shot him in the back, along with Tony and Malvone.
“Yeah, Bob Bullard. In closed session, he said he thought he was ‘driving off a terrorist attack’ when he might have ‘accidentally’ shot his boss.”
“What a piece of human garbage! They’ll probably give him a medal, and promote him to Director of the BATF.”
“Yeah, they probably will, knowing those guys. Anyway, Edmonds says we can come back to the states. No investigation, no charges, no nothing. Apparently, President Gilmore just wants it over. That’s why they’re letting Edmonds hear about the secret testimony, because they want it leaked in advance. They want to soften the blow for Gilmore’s big speech. They’re trying to find a way to climb down from the gun bans and the checkpoints and all the killings. So they’re going to blame everything on Malvone and Hammet, and try to put the country back where it was before the Stadium Massacre. They might drop the gun bans; that’s the big rumor going around. Just say it was all a tragic mistake: it was all Malvone’s fault. Edmonds says they just want it over.”
“Do you believe them? I mean, how can we believe what the President, or supposedly the President, how can we believe what he’s passing on to us through all these cut-outs? It doesn’t exactly sound like we’re going to get a signed Presidential pardon, or a grant of immunity, not when it’s being handled like this. How can we trust them? How can we trust that they won’t just turn around and stab us in the back, if we go home?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they would. But Edmonds is alive. He’s testifying, and nobody’s knocked him off.”
“But Edmonds didn’t kill any federal agents!” she exclaimed. “Federal agents killed his family and torched his house; he’s just a victim in this. But it’s a totally different story with us.”
“That’s true, but now that they’re pinning the Stadium Massacre on Malvone, they don’t really care who killed him. They’re just glad he’s dead. There’s still a lot of theories about what actually happened at his house that night, and we’re not in any of them. Some of them were killed with 10mm, and then Malvone floats up with a 10mm MP-5, the kind that only federal agents have. That really looks bad for them. That kind of simple connection sticks in people’s minds. Most of the sheeple hear that, and that’s as far as they go. And when you think about it, what really happened is even more far-out sounding than the other theories. They’ve got nothing to gain by going after us.”
“I still don’t trust them,” she replied. “They’ll lie to Edmonds, they’ll lie to lure us back to the states, and then we’ll have ‘accidents.’ I don’t think they’ll just leave us alone. Not with what we know, and not after killing federal agents. They don’t just forgive and forget that kind of thing. And the gun bans are still in effect, and they’re still doing highway checkpoints, so what’s really changed?”
Carson answered, “What’s changed is that they’re accepting that Malvone did it. One of their own did the massacre, just to get the gun bans passed, just to start a civil war. That changes everything. Edmonds really thinks the President’s going to call for repealing the gun bans and getting rid of the checkpoints, to try to stop the assassinations. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. We’ll just have to wait and listen to what he says in his speech, before we decide if we should go back or not.
“And Ranya, there’s one other factor to consider. Your child. Do you really want your baby to be born a fake Canadian citizen? Or a Colombian? If you have him down here, it’s going to make a lot of problems for both of you. You’re starting to show. We’re going to have to start planning.”
Ranya was sitting on the other side of the cockpit from him, facing northward out beyond the reefs to the open Caribbean. She looked down and felt her belly; she was indeed beginning to show. “I know. Believe me, I think about that all the time. Do I want him to lose his chance to be an American? What’s best for my baby? And is it really so great to be an American anymore, anyway? I think it probably is.”
“We could fly up anytime,” he said. “Fly to Mexico City on our Canadian papers, and then reenter the states with our real passports.”
“What about sailing up on Guajira—I mean Garimpeiro?”
“That would be a problem… I mean, it’s not our boat, at least not in the States, not legally. And I don’t know if the Garimpeiro vessel documents would stand up to Customs or Coast Guard scrutiny. They look good to me, but I’m no expert.”
“But you used to do it, right? Are you telling me you can’t sail this boat back up to the states ‘under the radar’?” She was gently teasing him, bringing up his shady past.
“That was a long time ago. The Coast Guard’s gotten a lot better since I was in that game.”
“But we could do it?”
“Sure,” he replied, “we could do it. But there’s a very real risk. We could get caught. We have to be realistic about it.”
She said, “Or we could just stay down here, and cruise over to Venezuela, then Brazil…”
“As long as the money holds out. And we’re not exactly rolling in dough.”
“I thought you knew how to make money with a sailboat?” she said, and playfully poked his leg with her toe.
“Don’t even kid about that,” he said flatly. “That’s something I won’t even discuss. I’m too old for jail, and you’re too young. Forget it.”
“But what about people?” she asked him.
“What about people?” he asked back, not catching her meaning.
“We could carry a few paying customers back up north with us.”
“Oh? What have you heard?” he asked, surprised that Ranya was hearing about smuggling scams before he was. Of course, he had been intentionally tuning out that type of talk, and he stayed away from “that side” of the satellite bar in the Club Rapanga. He had had one meeting with the Dongando brothers for old time’s sake, and to put Ranya and himself under their protection, but he had informed them politely that he was out of that business forever. That life was far behind him.
She said, “Ten to twenty grand a head for primo passengers, guaranteed safe delivery to Florida or Texas. Strictly high-class people. Cuanto dinero do we have left?”
“Not very much. Four thousand and change, that’s it.” Their new Canadian passports, other official papers and numerous bribes had eaten up most of Brad’s hidden cash. “But I can always fly back to Virginia and dig up another ammo can. Then we’d be set for another year or two. But you might be safer in Cartagena if I had to fly out. We’d put the boat in a real marina, with real security.”
Real security in “Locombia” meant chain link topped with razor wire, and uniformed private guards carrying riot shotguns. Kidnapping for profit was a national scourge, and no one of means was safe. A beautiful gringa alone on a yacht would be assumed to be the valuable plaything of a millonario, and fair game.
“Or we can both sail Garimpeiro back,” she offered.
“Or we can both sail back,” he agreed.
“We don’t have to decide today, do we ‘Dad’?”
“No, we don’t have to decide today, ‘Diana’.”
They each finished their beers, regarding one another.
“Do we have enough cash left for a windsurfer? I saw a sign by the patio bar for a used Mistral for two-hundred bucks. Please, ‘Daddy’? Please?” Ranya made a little-girl cutesy-face at him, tilting her head and fluttering her eyelashes while smiling sweetly.
“So you can terrorize the anchorage, and get all the local boys hot and bothered?”
“I just want a windsurfer! I’m getting bored just skin diving all the time!”
“That Aussie kid has a windsurfer; he lets you use it anytime you want, doesn’t he?”
“The catamaran’s leaving on Saturday.” She grew sullen, crossing her arms. “They’re heading to Panama, and then home to Brisbane.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I…just know.”
****
Ranya stopped herself abruptly. She had actually been enjoying herself with the Daltons, the Australian family, and especially with Mark, their cute twenty-two-year-old son with the unruly tussled blond hair. He was cruising with his family on their fifty-foot cat “Double Trouble,” completing an east-to-west circumnavigation with them after finishing college in England.
And it wasn’t right that she was enjoying herself in this tropical paradise without Brad. It was horrible! She was such a terrible person, it was so disloyal to his memory! She prodded the stainless steel wedding band on her finger with her long thumbnail, and turned to face the open sea to hide her welling tears. How could she forget Brad Fallon, when all she had to do was look at the blue sky to see his eyes?
After a minute, she said, “Forget it, Phil. Forget the windsurfer. It was just an idea. And I do want to go back to the states, as long as it’s safe. I don’t want my baby to be born as a fugitive on a phony Canadian passport, and mess up his life. Let’s go back home, if you think we’ll be safe there.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, let’s go back and face the music.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Let’s listen to what the President says, and if he says what Edmonds told you, about lifting the gun bans, if the checkpoints and the shootings stop, then let’s go back.”
“What made you decide?”
“My baby,” she said truthfully, spreading her long tapered fingers across her subtly growing belly. And the future citizenship of her baby was, indeed, a large part of the truth.
But the other part of her truth lay hidden, buried in the Virginia countryside like one of Phil Carson’s loot-filled ammo cans.
Her other truth lay buried in an aluminum ordnance box, four feet long, hidden under the corner of a concrete slab in the Suffolk woods.
She owed it to Brad to settle at least one last score.