Chapter Twenty-Two
Gregoire steered the boat into the sandy shallows of the beach, cut the engine and tossed the anchor far over the side, toward shore. The island was small, shaped like a crescent moon with a small rise in the middle, curving sandy beaches arcing away from him on either side. The water at the beach’s edge was sapphire blue, sparkling at the top of the wavelets with bursts of reflected sunlight.
He lifted the binoculars and scanned the shoreline in both directions, looking for any evidence of discarded gear, a hint of yellow inflatable vest or tossed-aside clothing. There was only the bleached white sand leading up to the thin scattering of scrub brush and trees, a shock of brown and green jutting up against the sky. He dropped the binoculars onto the seat in the cockpit, snugged his pistol into the waistband at the small of his back, and hopped into the knee-deep water at the bow of the ship.
Once ashore, he walked laterally along the beach, his eyes scanning in every direction, looking for any hint of human activity. Arris would’ve built a signal fire or constructed a lean-to were he here, alive; he wasn’t the sort of man, Gregoire knew, who would’ve simply propped himself up on a tree trunk in the shade and waited. Arris would’ve begun human civilization from scratch, starting with the basics, and not rested until he had running water and cable television. Gregoire smiled at the thought.
He made his way along the side of the rise in the middle of the island, not wanting to expose his silhouette above the crest and give away his position, an action that was second-nature to him after years in the African bush with the Legion. Near the top of the nipple which dominated the mid-section of the island, Gregoire dropped to his knees, concealing himself among the scrub grass and saplings. The opposite side of the island from where he had beached his boat melted off into the sea on either side of him, a small, shallow, miniature bay right below him: a natural harbor on a micro scale.
Smack-dab in the middle of it was a sixty-foot long wooden sloop, its rigging dropped and the sails rolled tightly. It was an antique, a boat from a time long gone, and the ship showed its age in its dubious seaworthiness. It should not have been there. If anything, it should be at the bottom of the sea off the North Carolina barrier islands or in some museum of ancient seafaring craft.
And it was not alone. Alongside it, bobbing in the gentle waves was a French P400 coastal patrol boat, one of the vessels being used by the drug cartel he had been tasked with shadowing just days earlier. Gregoire froze and slowly lowered himself to the ground, his ears now alert for sounds not connected to nature.
He worked his eyes inward from the watercraft, looking for signs of movement. To his left, just inside the line of short grass and stunted trees he made out a small collection of ramshackle structures. A pair of lean-tos and a three-walled wooden shack with a mottled, canvas-covered side facing the water, something a group of castaways might construct after a week or so of being stranded. In front of it was a circle of rocks surrounding a make-shift spit above darkened remnants of ash. A long log ran along one side of the fire circle, a smudge of black scorch marks on it.
Gregoire reached for the binoculars and grimaced; he had left them on the boat. He low-crawled laterally along the crest of the hill, moving slowly so as to disturb the underbrush as little as possible and not attract attention from any possible look-outs. The boats were just far enough away that he couldn’t make any details out about either, not that he thought there would be any identification on them. Neither was flagged, and the wooden sloop looked as if it had once been painted in a jigsaw puzzle pattern collection of blues, an attempt to camouflage it and blend it into the horizon where sea met sky. That paint job was long-since worn off and now resembled something more of a paint-by-numbers template started and forgotten by a young child.
He settled into a new position in a divot on the side of the hill and scanned the length of beach, again, looking for some evidence of recent activity. The boats simply bobbed in the water, their decks devoid of crew. And then he saw it, a blue-green inflatable skiff beached in the scrub grass to the other side of the collection of huts, the outboard motor pulled up. Someone was somewhere. Gregoire concentrated harder on the huts, straining to see some movement, some shifting in the shadows that might indicate the presence of a person in the shade. Nothing.
A peal from a horn suddenly pierced the calm of the island and Gregoire’s heart sank, adrenaline taking over a moment later. He turned over his shoulder and looked down at the beach behind him and saw a pair of men standing on the beach near his boat, one with a carved bone horn at his hip, both with rifles held at the ready, their heads turning quickly, searching for the boat’s owner.
“Merde!” Gregoire muttered under his breath, reaching to the small of his back for his Glock 27.
He slipped his other hand down to his belt for the satellite phone and shook his head in disbelief. It was still on the boat. Nobody would know where he was. He bit his lower lip and rolled his eyes skyward for a moment, just in time to see an orange fireball pop open in the air over the center of the island, an almost noiseless explosion that vanished into a tiny amount of white smoke that was quickly blown apart by the wind. Gregoire snapped his head back to his boat and saw the riflemen had been joined by a third figure, a man wearing a white-and-brown checkered shemagh around his head and pointing a small length of stick into the air.
It was the smuggler from the airstrip. It had to be, Gregoire thought, though the distance was too far for him to be certain and the headscarf concealed the figure’s face.
Gregoire crawled forward and down the side of the hill, trying to keep all of the boats in a line of sight from his position while still searching the land for more figures. Aboard the sloop, a group of figures stepped onto the deck from below ship and ran to the edge of the boat, scanning the shore for the cause of the warning flare. There was something wrong about how the men on the sloop moved, a herky-jerky sense to their motions that didn’t seem natural for seafaring men. But since they were a hundred meters out in the water, Gregoire only paid them peripheral attention, concentrating on the three men closer to him, standing near his boat, his way off the island.
Gregoire patted his tactical vest with his free hand and located the pair of flash-bang grenades, tapping them with his fingertips as he tried to devise an escape plan. He had no idea how well trained the men with the rifles were, how they might react to whatever he might do, so everything was a gamble against unknown odds. He hated not knowing the enemy’s capabilities or likely tactics, and so far his opponents were holding fast, waiting for him to make the first offensive move. That they were still standing out in the open on the beach, though, gave Gregoire some heart as he continued his low-crawl through the brush: they thought they had the upper hand.
And they would have, had Gregoire not remained low and slow along the ground, creeping forward by inches in slow, deliberate movements. Then a pair of boots suddenly materialized in the grass ahead of him, their owner facing away from him, training a rifle down the length of beach, covering the threesome. Gregoire paused to compose himself, evaluating the threat before him. The smuggler was armed with an AK-47 like the two men on the beach, and none of them had scopes on their weapons, meaning they weren’t expecting any sort of long-range action. Still, volume of fire accounted for much over an open stretch of beach.
Gregoire took a last look over his shoulder at the moored boats in the bay. Atop the sloop, the crew was jerkily lowering a row boat over the side, their backs to him. Gregoire could tell from their actions that this was a well-rehearsed task for them. He flicked his eyes over to the French patrol boat and saw a pair of men at the bow of the ship, one looking through binoculars at the beach, the other standing alongside him, a large caliber rifle with a scope crooked in his elbow and pointed skyward like any of the overly-cocky big game hunters Gregoire had watched in various African game preserves. That guy could be trouble, though.
Gregoire slowly slipped his Glock back in his waist band an
d crawled a dozen inches closer to the smuggler lying before him, raised himself up into a low push-up position, took a shallow breath and pounced on the man. Gregoire landed flat on the man’s back, the smuggler letting out a muffled gasp as the air was forced from his lungs. Quickly, Gregoire slapped the AK-47 from the man’s grasp, reached around the smuggler’s neck and grabbed his chin, twisting it violently around until Gregoire felt a small snap. The man went limp beneath him.
Gregoire rolled to his right and onto the rifle, picked it up and sighted it down the beach at the threesome near his boat. They were still looking around for evidence of Gregoire’s existence when he popped to a kneeling position and heaved a flash-bang grenade through the air and dropped back prone amidst the scrub grass, grabbing the AK-47 and nestling it against his shoulder. KA-POW! The blast was followed by a pair of surprised yells as the men on the beach covered their eyes too late. Gregoire pulled the trigger of the rifle quickly, letting a volley of bullets rain through their position before releasing the trigger and quickly rolling several feet to his right.
The sand where he had just been lying exploded a micro-second before Gregoire heard the thunderclap of the rifle from the boat in the bay. Gregoire flipped onto his back, sighted the weapon through his feet in the general direction of the boat and squeezed the trigger for a second, hoping the muzzle flash and rapid sound of gunfire would make the men on deck duck for cover. The man with the binoculars dropped them, crouched and covered his head; Gregoire could see the men rowing the boat cresting the bow of the sloop, the oars rising and falling in perfect harmony. The man with the rifle was still pointing it in Gregoire’s general direction, however.
Gregoire rolled again to the right, moving several feet away from a just-exploding area of sand, only this time the rush of adrenaline drowned out the sound of the rifle crack. Gregoire sighted down on the beach and saw the three men running for cover, the two with rifles bee-lining for the nearest scrub grass while the man in the shemagh strode quickly in the opposite direction. Gregoire squeezed the trigger, aiming at the two riflemen, sand kicking up all around their feet and hastening them along. Then the AK-47 stopped suddenly, the clip out of ammunition.
He let the rifle go and sprang forward quickly, grabbing his pistol from his waistband and pointing it at the men in the grass, certain they hadn’t figured out his location, yet, but knowing it wouldn’t take long to notice a man sprinting across the beach toward the boat.
ZZZzzzzeehhBASH! The brush to the right of Gregoire suddenly burst into fire, a brief flash of orange erupting in his peripheral vision as he crossed the threshold from flora to sand. Gregoire pointed his pistol in the general direction of the man in the shemagh, saw him standing about a hundred meters away, training the stick on Gregoire, as if directing artillery fire for a hidden observation post.
And then the twin rat-a-tat of a pair of AK-47s filled the air to his left. Gregoire paid them no heed and ran into the shallow water, high-stepping the dozen feet along the anchor line to the edge of the boat, the surface of the water letting loose with small splashes as bullets sliced through it.
ZZZzzzzeehhBASH! Searing hot pain splashed across Gregoire’s left bicep and deltoid muscles, the clothing incinerated, his skin erupting in burn welts and scorch marks. For a moment, the world around Gregoire had been engulfed in orange fire, and in the instant it subsided he noticed the anchor line of the boat had been burnt through and was smoldering. Gregoire grunted through the pain and heaved himself over the edge of the boat. He crawled quickly to the cockpit, pressed the engine start button and pushed the throttle into reverse, just barely lifting his head above the plane of the boat’s hull.
The smugglers with the AKs were rushing toward the water’s edge as Gregoire’s boat puttered back at full speed. The hull of the boat pinged from bullet strikes several times as Gregoire spun the steering wheel to turn away from the shore, exposing the side of the boat to the riflemen. And then Gregoire pushed the throttle all the way forward, the boat pitching up for a second as the propellers bit hard into the water, a rooster plume erupting from the middle of the boat’s wake as it lunged out toward open sea. Gregoire looked back quickly over his shoulder, one last glance at the beach. A stray bullet punched a hole through the windscreen to Gregoire’s right.
He held the steering wheel steady, pointing straight away from the island and heading for the horizon. Getting over the edge of horizon and out of the line-of-sight was the only way he was going to have to avoid the French patrol boat, should it come after him.
He glanced down at his left shoulder and felt the intense heat on the surface of his skin, a second-degree burn that could have done more damage had he not been wearing clothing. Taking care of it would have to wait awhile, though, as he had water to put between him and the island.