Chapter Twenty Nine
The scooters pulled Brian and Andrea through the murky depths. Water flowed past, with an occasional fish that seemed like a flash of light and nothing more. Brian kept tabs on the direction the boat was headed with the sonar device so he could tell the FBI agents…if they were needed.
He glanced to his right. Andrea was keeping pace with him, a foot or two behind. I wish there’d been some way to do this without involving her. I just hope I can keep her safe. He really was beginning to care about her and that scared him almost more than the course they had embarked on to find the Michners.
Returning to focus on the task at hand, Brian watched first the compass and then the sonar detector. They were moving at a comfortable speed. There’s only so much fuel in that little motor so we can’t be going very far. The scooters had three hours of battery time. He glanced behind again. Andrea’s doing really well, considering. They moved through some areas of coral. He was thankful for the protection their wet suits offered them. The gloom of their underwater world made it nearly impossible for them to avoid hitting the sharp protruding spikes. Finally, they were in deeper water that left the way clear and free of any debris. Without a light source, other than the glow from the sonar detector on his wrist, there was little to see.
Brian noticed that their course had not altered a whole lot from the starting point, a straight line almost. That piece of information will make it much easier when I call the FBI. The scooters’ maximum speed was two and a half miles per hour. Apparently that speed was sufficient for the boat too.
•
By the time they’d been underwater for about a half hour, Andrea was feeling more comfortable. Being pulled by the scooter was almost relaxing, as long as she could see Brian beside her. She’d do this all over again if it meant finding the Michners. Just as she was about to pray for success, Brian stopped her forward motion with his hand on her scooter. The boat had stopped, he signaled.
Anticipation rose like a banner in her body. They turned off the scooters and kneeled in the water just behind the boat, waiting for the men to go up the shore or on the dock. They couldn’t see, yet, whether they had beached the boat or tethered it to a dock. Andrea breathed a sigh of relief. They’d have to return the way they came, but it would be daylight or close to it by then…not so dark.
Andrea watched Brian slowly lift his head out of the water. He ducked under and motioned for her to follow. She raised her head. In the dim shadows, illuminated by the moon overhead, Andrea saw the piece of land that was their destination. The boat was tied to a dock. The three criminals dragged a body down the wooden planks covering it. Lights were located at regular intervals. Farther up the shoreline were several buildings, some larger than others, but plenty of places where a young family, like the Michners, could be held against their will.
Brian slowly swam toward the right side of the dock. Since it extended out into the water, there were several places underneath where they could secure their equipment from sight.
“What’s next?” Andrea spoke in little more than a whisper.
“We’ll wait until they’re far enough ahead. Then we can safely begin our search of every building until we find the Michners, if they’re even here. Remember, we don’t know anything for certain.” Brian began unfastening the harness of his rebreather as his scooter floated nearby.
The men moved toward a building to the left of the dock. Andrea and Brian rose from their crouched positions. They tethered their equipment, removed fins and masks and walked slowly ashore. Andrea pointed to the small round pebbles covering the beach. “Just like the one you found at the Michners.” That seems so long ago.
“Let’s get going.” Brian was clearly anxious. “I want to know if we made the right decision. We have a lot of ground to cover before dawn.” He crouched, ran up the shore and approached the first building.
“I can’t see anything through the window, Brian.” Andrea peered inside. “We’ll have to see if the door is unlocked.”
“Let’s go this way. The longer we stay in the shadows, the better.” Brian led the way around the side of the building. When they got to the other side, they noticed a large set of bars covering the windows, but no bars had covered the windows on the side closest to the beach. Strange!
They tried the door. In spite of the building’s secure appearance, the handle gave way easily allowing the pair access to its interior. They stepped carefully inside. Rustling. Something or someone was in here. Both crouched low. Where could they hide? A dim light came on in the far corner of the large room.
“Who’s there.” A voice seemed to float through the air from somewhere in the direction of the light.
Andrea remained very still. She tried hard not to breathe more than necessary. Her heart raced almost choking off her air supply.
“Who’s there.” The voice again. This time he seemed a little closer. The light flooded the middle of the room, Andrea saw cages with people inside them. What kind of place is this? There are people being held here like animals.
Brian moved farther into the depths of the shadows grabbing Andrea’s arm in the process to pull her with him. The voice materialized into a medium sized black man. Something was not right about the way he walked or about the way he looked.
Then they saw him more clearly. His dark skin was splotched with small patches of white, not so he looked two-toned, but enough that the white portions stood out in sharp contrast to the rest of his coloring. He also walked using a crude wooden crutch in one hand. He held a candle in the other.
Without giving away their hiding spot, Andrea peeked around the far edge of the box she hid behind. Faces were pressed against bars. There have to be five or six people locked up here. They wore tattered clothes. The fingers grasping the bars of their cages were spindly, as if food was scarce for them. Then she noticed the smell. How can another human being make people live like this?
•
Brian held his hand over his mouth and nose, trying not to gag. The conditions here are deplorable. He looked toward Andrea and shook his head. How were their friends handling this misery? Were their living arrangements as bad as this? Please God, no. Brian motioned for Andrea to slink further behind the boxes. They couldn’t afford to be discovered yet. They needed to find the Michners. They waited.
A minute or two, with no further sounds, the man with the candle moved back into the shadows. “Go back to sleep.” He spoke with a commanding voice but it looked as if he’d been treated just as badly as the people in cages. “It is nothing.” He rattled the cages on his way past, and then all was quiet.
Minutes ticked by slowly. Andrea and Brian soon heard snoring. They stealthily crept outside, waited in the shadows to make sure they had not aroused anyone again, and then moved onto the next building.
“What is this place?” Andrea swiped at tears.
“I haven’t got a clue. I’ll bet, though, that some of those people are listed among the missing in Port Au Prince. I wish I knew what was going on here.” Brian scurried to the door of the building they’d selected for their next search.
“I do too. I think we have stumbled across something very sinister. We need to get off this island before dawn, or we could be in big trouble.” Andrea crouched beside the door waiting for Brian to try the lock. It didn’t have any.
They opened the door as little as they could. Brian led the way inside. There were cages here too, filled with people. The moon was in just the right position to shine through the window. Their view of the deplorable conditions in which these people were kept was very clear.
Once they were outside again, Brian stopped near a large live oak tree dripping with moss. “Andrea, let’s pray. God will lead us to the right building.” He watched Andrea glance furtively right and left and then tuck her body further behind the tree. She looked expectantly toward him. Brian bowed his head. “Father, You know where the Michners are. You’ve brought us this far, please move
us toward the right building. Please Lord, give us Your plan tonight, a plan that will help us get the Michners out of here and soon. Amen. Okay Andrea, let’s hope…er…did you happen to see which building those men went into? I was so busy stowing our equipment, I missed where they went.”
“Yes, I did. It’s that large one over there.” She moved behind Brian toward the next largest building on the compound. It was located between other smaller buildings. As they approached, the door creaked open.
“Take the body to the deep water and dump it.” a voice said. “Make sure it does not end up on this shore as the last one did.”
Brian and Andrea watched as two large men dragged a small body towards the water’s edge along the dock. They threw it unceremoniously aboard the boat that had just led them to this island and then started the motor. They could hear it move off into the distance.
“I’ll bet they’ll be back soon.” Brian’s voice was growing hoarse from all the whispering. . “Let’s leave this building until last. We have time to wait until they’ve gone back to sleep. We still have lots of night left.” Their black wetsuits kept them hidden in the shadows as they moved around to the back. There was the building Andrea had seen the three boatmen enter when they’d first arrived. But there was also a smaller building to the right and just slightly back from the larger one. Brian pointed to this one.
The door was locked. They moved to one side and noticed a small window had been left open. Brian crept forward and peered inside. A small light sat on a wooden crate beside a large bed. Three people seemed sound asleep. Their rough torn covers covered most of their bodies, but not enough to hide the fact that one of them was a small child.
“Look, Andrea.” Brian motioned for her to look inside. “Do you think. . . ?” He left the rest of the question unspoken. Andrea peeked through the same window. She turned excited eyes toward him. “Maybe…” She placed her hand over her beating heart. “Maybe…”
“Can you squeeze through this window?” Brian began pulling nearby boxes toward the spot where they stood. “You could climb on these.”
•
Andrea looked at the window. “I think so but…” She began climbing. Brian assisted her as best he could.
“Try not to make any noise…in case…”
Just as Andrea stuck her head through the opening, a woman screamed. Andrea jumped and hit her head on the window sill. “Sh-h-h. We’re here to help.” Andrea jumped to the floor. She walked quickly toward the door. “Can you open this from inside?”
“Andrea! Is that you?” Andrea recognized that voice. Diane. “How did you find us?”
“Leave us alone.” A man’s voice sounded from the bed.
Diane whispered, “It’s Andrea.”
“And Brian.” Andrea supplied. Trent moved quickly from the bed to the window. Brian was lodged halfway through. He pulled his friend in the rest of the way.
Trent hugged both of them. “What are you doing here?”
Diane was sobbing uncontrollably on the bed beside little Jeffrey. “I-I-I thought we were all dead. Those men…”
“I know.” Andrea hugged her. “We’ve come to get you out of here.”
Brian sat on one of the two chairs in the room. “You scared us half to death. What’s going on?”
Andrea and Diane continued to rock in each other’s arms. Jeffrey still slept. Brian squeezed Trent’s hand in a grateful gesture to have finally found them.
“Begin,” Brian commanded. He motioned for Trent to sit.
“Well, we were just getting supper on the table…” Trent began as quietly as he could.
“We know. We found your house with food still in the pots and…” Brian placed his hands on the table trying to let Trent continue.
“Several men burst through the front door. They forced us to pack and then shoved me into their car and forced Diane to take ours. It all happened so quickly. They’d parked in our driveway so the neighbors…” Trent rested his head on his chest, his emotions clearly getting the better of him.
“That’s why the neighbors saw nothing suspicious.” Brian patted his hand. “Go on, buddy.”
Diane was the next to speak. “We traveled all that day and into the next before reaching a little air field. There we were loaded into a small plane. We made one stop on some other island and then…”
“… we were brought here.” Trent swiped his hand over his face.
“But why?” Andrea removed her arm from Diane’s shoulders.
Diane looked toward the men sitting at the table. “Trent and Max Shuster developed a new drug the company was going to market as a pesticide. However, Max discovered that, if you changed the formula slightly, it could also be used as a biological weapon. He bragged about it to the wrong people. They offered him a gargantuan amount of money to complete the formula.”
“I still don’t understand.” Brian looked into Trent’s face.
“I guess Max told them about me. Anyway, they decided I was the one to finish the project. I thought we’d find Max here but…” Trent shoulders sagged visibly, defeat written all over his face.
“Max is dead.” Andrea shuddered remembering all that blood.
Brian picked at a bread crumb on the table. “He delivered a note to Andrea just before someone shot him. That’s how we got here. If he was working for them…”
“That’s just it…he wasn’t. He told me, that last day at work, that he’d decided not to work for these guys. They wanted to use the gas on poor black people all over the world. Max planned on returning their money but…”
“I guess that explains why they killed him.” Brian sat back. “At least your living conditions are better than the poor people we saw in those cages.”
“What people? We’ve not seen anyone since we got here except for the men who took us. They threatened to harm Diane and Jeffrey if I didn’t do as I was told. I just couldn’t be responsible for the deaths of millions of people. We were trying to formulate a plan to escape. Did you say there are other people on this island?” Trent got up and walked toward the window. “I’ve seen those other cabins when they come to get me in the morning but I thought they were empty.”
“People who attend the voodoo ceremonies in Port Au Prince are being kidnapped. We followed them here tonight from one of the ceremonies. We saw them take a body out in the boat a little while ago and people are washing up on the beaches all the time…for the last six months anyway. Could they be using your drug on them, using them as guinea pigs?”
“Not that I know of. Like I said, I thought we were the only ones here…besides those bas…” Trent turned back toward the room. He hand balled into a fist. “I tried to make the formula harmless but…it’s a pesticide…in large quantities…”
“Oh Trent.” Diane scrambled into her husband’s arms. “I didn’t know…”
“I didn’t want you to know. You had enough to handle.” Trent held her close, finding comfort in the woman who’d been his soul-mate for so long. “You didn’t need to know how bad it really was or…”
“I could have handled it.” Diane walked over to the bed and looked at her sleeping son. “How long do you think we have before they’ll catch on that you’re stalling?”
“That doesn’t matter now. We’ll leave with…”.
“We discovered a little about these people ourselves. They are very dangerous. They’ll stop at nothing, it seems.” Brian told the Michners about Andrea’s house. “They tried really hard to discourage her and me from coming here. They’ve threatened her life many times but…she’s one determined lady.” Brian couldn’t help but look at Andrea with a smile.
“O-o-oh.” Diane smiled for the first time since they arrived. “I se-e-e-e.”
“Never mind. We have things to do.” Trent knew of his wife’s attempts to pair these two up before. “What’s your plan? What about all those other people? We can’t leave them here.”
Andrea ignored the question to ask one of her
own. “Trent, besides being paid a lot of money by these thugs, did Max have access to other funds?”
“Max was a good investor. He knew the stock market backwards and forwards.” Trent looked toward her with curiosity. “Why?”
“He left me about that much in a safety deposit box.”
“American or Haitian?”
“American.”
“Well, Max was paid by these guys in Haitian funds and he never converted it. The money he left you must be from his investments. Why would he leave you money?” Trent was really curious now.
“He wanted me to find his killers…and you guys too. That money was for that purpose but there’s a lot there.” Andrea rubbed her hand over her wet suit. “I’m getting hot.”
“Andrea, I’m sorry our mess has become yours.” Diane hugged her again. “You liked that little house.”
“Girls, we need to formulate a plan here.” Brian was reticent to interrupt, but knew they had to think of something before the sun came up.
“You don’t have a plan?” Trent voice almost squeaked.
“Yes, we have. Sort of. We’ve been in touch with the FBI.” Brian began to explain what they thought they’d do. “They want us to return to Port Au Prince alone, so they can handle the police work here. Is there a place you can hide on this island in case the shooting gets dangerous?”
“Yes, Diane discovered a grove of trees right outside the makeshift lab they built here. Jeffrey escaped from them one day. When she was looking for him, he was hiding in this bunch of trees. What they don’t know is that there’s a cave in those trees. It’s a good thing Jeffrey hadn’t found that but…well…we never would have found him if he had. Anyway, if we can get to that cave, we’ll be safe. We’ve been working on a loose board back here.” Trent showed them the board behind the bed, well hidden from prying eyes.
Andrea looked closely at her two friends. What an ordeal. We’ll need to get this done quickly. Trent looked worn out. Diane seemed to have lost a lot of weight in the short time since all this began. Her eyes were sunken. She looked as if she hadn’t had a shower in a long time. The conditions in that cabin were certainly primitive.
“We’ll be back with the FBI agents as soon as they can get here. They are already on alert for our phone call.” Brian placed his hand on Trent’s shoulder. “Andrea and I need to return to the beach now. We have scuba equipment, so we can get back to Port Au Prince.”
“Scuba equipment. You guys know how to dive.” Diane placed her hands on either side of her face. .
“We can now.” Andrea grinned. “We’ll be back in a flash.”
The friends hugged each other again. Brian scurried out the window and then reached up to help Andrea. They walked cautiously to the beach and the hidden scuba gear.
* * * * *