While Others Sleep, Next Year in Jerusalem, Rumors, Where The Best Began, The Circumstances, First Stone, Stoned Too, Stone Cold Christmas, The Saguaro Murders, There is a Season
While Others Sleep, Next Year in Jerusalem, Rumors, Where The Best Began, The Circumstances, First Stone, Stoned Too, Stone Cold Christmas, The Saguaro Murders, There is a Season
To my left, the rifle barrels pointed at my face appeared larger than the sun silhouetting the two armed uniformed men. To my right, Jenny looked at me through the diving mask, her eyes, large and helpless, pled for an answer – from me. I had none.
“Come aboard, please join us.” A third man in a pale blue guayabera shirt spoke in a manner that suggested an invitation albeit at gun point. With the graciousness of a genteel host, he gestured towards the aluminum ladder banging against the side of the rocking boat. A Honduran flag flew stiffly on the mast behind the straw hat which partially concealed his face. That hat and the preposterously large sunglasses made him look like a cartoon character drawn by a street artist on Fisherman’s Wharf. It occurred to me that I should know him but I didn’t or at least under these unpleasant circumstances couldn’t put a name on the shaded face.
“Dr. Gold, please ladies first,” he said in a deep bass voice…English but spoken by a Latino for certain. Ricardo Montalbán, Fantasy Island’s gracious host, that’s who he reminded me of, but Ricardo never allowed Tattoo to greet the guests with AK-47s. And while Jenny and I had set out only days before for a fantasy vacation, we could have never dreamed of this encounter two miles off the coast of Honduras’ Roatán Island.
I pried my lover’s hands, paralyzed from fear, off my neoprene suit and thrust Jenny through the choppy water towards the ladder. She spit out her mouthpiece and tried to speak. Salt water splashed into her open mouth. She choked and coughed, arms flailing. I kicked hard with long fins and reached for her air tank. A firm hold, two painful kicks and she reached the ladder.
The smaller soldier let his worn rifle hang from the webbed sling. He reached a hand wearing a silver ring with a red stone scorpion over the rails of the rocking wooden boat. Jenny looked at me as if asking whether to continue into the boat. I nodded, knowing that we had no alternative. Men with guns limit your range of choices. She reached the top rung, grasped the soldier’s proffered hand and was jerked roughly over the deck out of my view.
The vessel’s diesel engine chugged and sputtered. The exhaust blew past my nostrils as I removed my mask, drawing great breaths and struggled to the ladder. Jenny crawled to the gunwale, stood, and stretched out her hand to reach me. I caught the ladder and drew myself up the first two steps. Our hands touched then locked in an unbreakable grasp.
The second soldier, a larger man with a ragged crimson scar across his dark face, jerked Jenny away and planted his polished black boot into my face. I saw it coming but couldn’t duck in time. I fell back, stunned and nearly unconscious, into the rolling sea. One fin fell from my hand. My inflated buoyancy vest brought me back to the roiling surface. I sputtered and spit a cruel mixture of salt water and blood. Jenny screamed my name, “Doc, Doc.”
I swept my arm back over my shoulder and caught the floating regulator mouthpiece. I fit it into my mouth where I used to have a full set of teeth.
The genteel man yanked Jenny’s long auburn hair, then shoved her forward to taunt me. “Sorry, Agent Martini, Dr. Gold is to be the guest of the don. You, I’m afraid, will have to swim ashore, alone.”
The soldiers stepped to gunwales and unleashed a barrage of automatic rifle fire into our small anchored dive boat. A soldier, the one wearing dark sunglasses and a twisted grin, stitched a wide loop around my head with the few bullets remaining in his magazine. The cruiser’s V-8 was revved to maximum RPMs by the unseen captain who spun the gleaming white craft between me and the dive boat. The wake washed over my sinking boat. I struggled mightily to keep it from hitting me as the boat flung about before finally disappearing below the surface of the sea.
The devil’s cruiser made one last circle, this time too close, steering the bow, intentionally or not, directly at my bobbing head. Releasing the air from my buoyancy compensator, I dove. The twin props hurled the boat overhead. I heard an ominous clang from my air tank, metal on metal, the sound magnified in the water. I waited for the pain of the props auguring into my back, up my neck, and executing the coup de grâce with a blow to my skull. My air flow grew faint. I sucked harder. There was no air to be had. A continuous stream of air bubbles floated from the tank strapped to my back and streamed towards the surface. My lungs burned. I came close to inhaling the sea just to satisfy the need to breathe. I fought the urge and pointed my head upward. I dropped my weight belt and raced the bubbles to the surface.
As I rose through the water, I looked up and the hull of the cruiser had vanished. As I reached the twenty feet level, our little dive boat drifted lazily past on the way to the ocean floor. I drifted towards unconsciousness. At five feet, the sunlight burning through the surface slowly disappeared and then there was darkness.
