Ruthless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 2) Page 10

  “The man you’re after? The babo? He’s the leader of the brotherhood,” Thurman said, as Charity slowed the chopper to a crawl, looking down at the community. “The brotherhood are the descendants of German soldiers, Nazis, who escaped and came here after Dubya Dubya Two.”

  “Nazis?” Charity asked.

  Thurman looked over at her as she turned the chopper, following the eastern branch of the river. “Yeah, they came here in 1945, so I’m told. Bought the north end of this island that separates the two branches of the Manamo, and built a settlement here.”

  “War criminals?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? The people living down there are their descendants. The founders are all long dead.”

  “How do they survive all the way out here in the jungle?”

  The big man shrugged. “They fish and hunt, I guess. Just like the Indians. They have a farm on the north end of their property and a huge wall that keeps the jungle out.”

  A few people could be seen far below, coming out of homes and stores to look up at the helicopter.

  “As much as I prefer this dawdling speed,” Thurman said. “it’s probably best if we move along. The brotherhood don’t take kindly to intruders.”

  Checking the fuel gauge, Charity said, “We still have thirty minutes of play time. I want to see this wall—and anything else upriver—until we’re bingo fuel.”

  Charity put the bird into a shallow dive, gaining speed and moving upriver. Away from the main part of the settlement, through the treetops, she could see more homes and other buildings, scattered across the huge island. She estimated there were at least a hundred structures.

  “How many people live there?” she asked.

  “Nobody but the brotherhood knows for sure. I’d guess near a thousand. It’s said there were only about twenty when they first got here. Mostly men.”

  Charity turned and looked at Napier. “From fewer than ten women in 1945, there are now a thousand descendants? That’s only three or four generations.”

  “Five,” Thurman corrected. “Maybe six. They have planned marriages, men select their wives when they’re fourteen and can marry them at seventeen.”

  Charity considered that. Even with large families, there shouldn’t be that many people in an isolated community only five or six generations later. “You seem to know quite a bit about these people.”

  “They’ve taken in others from time to time,” he said. “To keep the gene pool fresh and grow larger. I joined up with them in seventy-three.”

  Charity glanced at him.

  He rubbed the empty socket under the eyepatch and said, “We sort of had a falling out.”

  “Is that how you lost your eye?” she asked, point blank.

  Thurman looked over, meeting her steady gaze with his one eye. “It’s how my face got cut open. Lost the eye to infection.”

  Charity didn’t need Thurman to tell her where the southern edge of the settlement was. The jungle had been clear-cut from shore to shore in a hideous straight line that looked like it ran straight east to west.

  Like a single board turned on its edge, a giant wall ran down the center of the cleared area. It looked old but sturdy, rising at least ten or twelve feet high.

  The wall was unbroken for its whole length, the ends set several yards out into the river. Crops extended out from the wall to the tree line on one side. The brighter green of the cultivated area contrasted sharply with the dark green of the jungle.

  Charity could see people working in the field. Men, women, and children all looked up as the chopper flew by just a hundred feet above the water.

  On the other side of the wall, an area equal in size to the farm was mostly grass or bare dirt. Nothing grew more than a couple of feet tall on that side. Looking back through the side window, Charity could see that there was a heavy door set in the middle of the wall. She guessed it was to allow workers access to the jungle side to make repairs. Slipping into the settlement from that side would be suicide if they had sentries.

  “How difficult would it be to get onto the island underwater at night?” Charity asked, thinking it would be best to use a rebreather and go ashore under cover of darkness.

  “Ha,” Thurman barked. “Difficult don’t even begin to get into the discussion. Crocs and caimans hunt at night. Then there’s piranha. Black piranha, the biggest species there is.” He pointed down through the windshield. “They’re as thick in that water as stars in the night sky. The locals call them caribes. There’s a cannibal tribe named after them. Mostly gone now, except for a small population on Dominica, up in the Windwards.”

  Charity dropped the helo lower, following the river at a slightly slower speed, looking for a place where a boat could land. She wasn’t at all concerned that the slow fly-by might tip off her adversary. Ready or not, she’d find a way to get close enough to kill the man she’d been sent to kill.

  The jungle looked impenetrable. The trees at the edge of the water had a tangle of roots and deadfalls that appeared to go deep into the jungle. Spotting a huge fallen tree on the outside of a sharp turn in the river, Charity slowed as she approached

  “What do you make of that dead tree in the water?” she asked.

  “As a means of entry? It could work. The base is above the roots and the water will be plenty deep on the outside of the curve. Looks fresh, might not be too slippery.”

  “What’s further south?” Charity asked.

  “Farms a few miles ahead, on the south end of the island. Just past there is a little village called Tucupita. Most of the younger men of the village work on the farms.”

  As Charity turned the chopper around another tight bend in the river, the land to the west opened up into cultivated farmland, stretching the width of the island all the way to the southern tip. She made out a number of lines separating one parcel from another, wooden fences and tall reeds. Each parcel had one or two small huts, usually set in the middle of the farm.

  Suddenly, a boat appeared around a curve in the river. Unlike the few wooden canoes they’d seen, this was a sleek-looking powerboat, pulled up onto the riverbank.

  “Hang on!” Charity exclaimed, as she pulled back on the cyclic. The nose of the chopper came up and they climbed steeply, the rotors beating hard against the air.

  As the chopper slowed, she pushed the right pedal to the floor, kicking the heavy helicopter around as she pushed the cyclic forward.

  “Mother Mary!” Thurman shouted, as the river seemed to rush up to meet them.

  Charity pulled up on the collective, bringing the Huey to a stop just twenty feet above the river. The nose pointed toward three men standing on shore at the edge of a newly furrowed field.

  Two of the men were white, the third obviously an indigenous Indian. The Indian’s hair was long and gray and Charity thought, even from fifty yards away, that he looked vaguely familiar.

  One of the men suddenly darted away from the other two. He was a big man, wearing jeans, a long-sleeved work shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat.

  “I know that guy!” Thurman said. “He’s sort of the head of security for the brotherhood. Name’s Karl Aleksander.” They watched as the man boarded the boat and moved to the helm.

  “Gun!” Thurman shouted, needlessly.

  Charity’s hand on the stick was already moving, yanking the chopper violently to the right. At the same time, her subconscious registered the fact that the rifle had recoiled against the shooter’s shoulder. She didn’t hear a bullet smacking through the thin aluminum skin, nor did she feel it, so she assumed for now that he’d missed. She made a mental note in her conscious mind to check the bird thoroughly when she got back. Another part of her mind, the part she usually kept a tight lid on, opened and closed for just a moment, recording the man’s face in every detail.

  She pushed the stick forward, dipping the nose precariously toward the water, as she hauled up on the collective, nearly red-lining the torque. The bird responded quickly to her deft movements on the controls, flying n
ose down, increasing speed back the way they’d come.

  Approaching the bend in the river that they’d just come around, Charity pulled back on the stick and the chopper leapt upward, pushing them both down into their seats. She lowered the collective, bringing her bird back to level flight only twenty feet above the treetops.

  “Hot damn!” Thurman exclaimed exuberantly. “You fly this thing like it’s part of you.”

  “That guy shot at us!” Charity exclaimed. “What the hell for?”

  “Because we were there,” Thurman replied. “Aleksander’s a fucking nut-job. He keeps a tight fist on everyone down here. If you’re an outsider, you have the life expectancy of a mosquito.”

  “Who was the old Indian man?”

  “Local farmer, by the name of Vicente Navarro. He’s a medicine man of the boat people.”

  “Boat people?”

  “The Ye’kuana. They’ve lived here since the dawn of time.”

  “For all that rifleman knew, we could have been the law!”

  Thurman looked at Charity as she glanced over. He didn’t see fear on her face, but even through her dark sunglasses, he could see a burning fury in her eyes. His voice was foreboding when he spoke. “There ain’t no law down here, except what a man carries in with him.”

  Watching as the two men left in their boat, Vicente called out to the two young boys, hiding in the field. He’d told them to lie down between the furrows when the boat arrived with the white men. As one, the young field workers rose and trotted quickly to the side of the shaman.

  “What was that, Buyei?” the older of the two boys asked. “I have never seen such a thing.”

  “It made its own wind,” the second boy said, brushing the dust from his hair.

  The old man smiled. “Yes, it made its own wind. Take your bongos and spread word to the elders. Tell them to come here when Choco rises above the trees. Tell them to come to the ceremonial place and be prepared for a welcome ritual.”

  The two boys looked at each other, puzzled. Then they turned and sprinted across the field to the spot where they’d pulled their canoes out of the water and hidden them under the brush. Since the shaman’s boat had been destroyed, Vicente had told them to keep their boats out of sight while working.

  Vicente wasn’t just a farmer, nor was he just a shaman, or a canoe maker. He hadn’t been much older than his two field workers when he’d left the jungle and returned years later as a middle-aged man. Between those times, Vicente had seen the outside world. He’d worked aboard the great ships that carried products all around the world outside the jungle. He’d seen how small his jungle home was in the vastness of the real world. He’d ridden in automobiles and trains, flown in airplanes, visited faraway lands—and he knew what a helicopter was.

  Vicente’s entry into the world outside the jungle had come during a time of world-wide growth and prosperity. As a boy, he hadn’t been aware of the war waging all across the globe. He remembered the first time he saw a white man. He remembered the time when a group of them took over the downriver side of the island his people lived on.

  He remembered when he’d first become aware of the march of time outside his jungle home. In the jungle, time was measured by the passing of the sun and moon, and by the regular floods of the river. The captain of the boat he crewed had shown him a calendar and explained how time had been recorded and could be predicted. The captain had told him about his god and how all time was measured before and after that god’s mortal life. He’d told Vicente that his god had walked among his people almost two thousand years ago. He taught Vicente that a year was the time from one flood to the next.

  Vicente remembered how, when he was a boy, his father would prepare for the coming flood, knowing almost to the day when it would occur. Gathering seed before the flood was important. When the flood waters receded, it would be time to plant again.

  He recalled how the river rose above its bank, forcing people into their homes and compelling them to move about in bongos instead of walking on the ground. The captain had told him that it was the year 1950, and guessed that Vicente had been born in the year 1935.

  All this had been many years ago. Vicente was an old man now. The babies he’d seen born when he returned to his people were now the tribal elders. The nibora who helped him in the fields were the grandchildren of those babies. Because of his time outside the jungle, and the encroachment of that outside world, he knew that the current year was 2007 and he knew that he was seventy-eight years old. He didn’t want to know these things, and didn’t like them.

  His return to his ancestral roots was literally a lifetime ago, but Vicente remembered the things he’d seen. He remembered the things he’d seen others do. He’d wasted his best years doing what he thought would bring prosperity to his family and his people.

  All these memories came to the front of his mind, when the helicopter had arrived. He knew what it was. The nibora had been right; it did make its own wind. And it rode on that wind.

  He’d seen with his own eyes how men flew these machines, how they made them lift off the ground, gracefully rising into the sky and then flying slowly away. The person in control of this black helicopter hadn’t done that. The person controlling this machine had made it do things Vicente had never seen.

  Minutes later, the two nibora passed where Vicente stood on the bank of the river, both of them paddling hard against the slight current near shore. Vicente waited until they were completely out of sight, then turned and stared toward where the black machine had risen above the jungle and disappeared. He gazed northward for several minutes, listening. The roar of the machine had long since vanished on the wind.

  Finally, Vicente walked slowly toward his house. Part of him felt like kicking the small plants that had just that morning sprung up from the ground. In his soul, he knew these plants would never be used for the white men’s drug.

  The farmer in him took mercy on the tiny, defenseless plants. Besides, he knew the coca leaves had other uses besides the making of cocaine, beneficial uses. When the itoto were gone, he and the other farmers could share the crop among the people to make tea. The shaman knew the leaves could be chewed to ease pain and suffering.

  When Vicente reached his home, he picked up his bag and flung the strap across one shoulder, continuing past the house to the jungle. He’d left a third of his land as it was, when he cleared the rest for farming. This seemed as though it was only days ago, but had been when his hair was still mostly black.

  Following a narrow path into the dense jungle, he soon found himself in a small clearing. He went about preparing for the ritual. In minutes, he’d gathered several clumps of dried moss and added a few twigs. Using a small bow from his pouch, he soon had a smoldering fire going, which he blew into.

  Gathering more wood, he sat beside the fire, allowing the smoke to pass over him on the light breeze filtering through the trees. Pulling his pouch closer, he took out his pipe and yopo seed. He would try to speak to the warrior spirit, before the elders arrived, to see what it was she wanted them to do.

  Choco would rise above the trees not long after the sun fell below them on the other side of the land. The elders would be arriving soon.

  The sounds of the jungle around Vicente quieted, telling the old shaman that the elders were arriving, long before they started up the path from his house. He rose from where he’d been sitting for several hours and walked toward the path to greet them.

  “Your worker told me what he saw,” Guyan Montenegro said, as he approached his old friend. “A black machine that flies like the dragonfly.”

  Vicente turned and lead Guyan and the others to the fire, taking the place of honor with Choco’s light in his face. “Yes, that is what we saw, Guyan.”

  The others arranged themselves in a circle around the small fire, as Vicente loaded his pipe. Before lighting it, he said, “The black machine is controlled by the warrior spirit.”

  Several men spoke at once, until Guyan raised a han
d to quiet them. “The buyei wishes us to smoke first.”

  Vicente already had a twig to the pipe, ignoring the outburst of questions. Drawing a deep breath, he ritually washed the smoke from the pipe’s bowl over his head, before passing it to the next man.

  Once it had been passed around, Guyan handed the pipe back to Vicente, saying, “We did not expect this for some time yet.”

  “She never told me when,” Vicente replied. “Only that she would arrive.”

  “How can you know this flying machine is the warrior spirit?” one of the other elders asked.

  “Just before you arrived,” Vicente began, “I had another visitor. I’d been trying since the machine arrived, but was unable to see until after Choco had risen. I was visited by not just the warrior spirit, but the forest mother, as well. The vision was much clearer this time.”

  “What did they tell you?” Guyan asked.

  “The warrior spirit said she needs our help to get to the itoto settlement without being seen.”

  Another of the younger men in the council spoke up. “How can we be sure the spirit who visited you and this black machine are the same?”

  “They are not the same,” Vicente said. “The spirit uses the black machine as we do our bongos.”

  “The dancer of the wind controls this machine?” Guyan asked.

  Slowly, a wry grin spread across the old man’s lined face. “It danced; on its own wind it danced.”

  Rene Cook had a good deal of patience. He’d awakened early and had gone down to the parking lot of the hotel, where he kept his rental scooter. His wait hadn’t been very long. Half an hour before sunrise, a cab pulled to a stop in front of the hotel. Minutes later, Gabriella Fleming came out and got in the backseat of the taxi and it drove away.

  With the scooter’s lights turned off, he’d followed at a distance. The woman had come to the airport where he now continued to wait. Minutes after her arrival, a black helicopter with the name Tropical Luxury Magazine stenciled on the side doors had flown off toward the mountains.