Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gregoire had been following the sloop for almost two hours as it cut through the sea, a dark silhouette enshrouded in fog on the horizon, a sight that no man should be capable of seeing. And, yet, there it was, cutting effortlessly through the Caribbean under the moonlit sky. The crew hadn’t noticed him, or, if any aboard had, they hadn’t deemed him to be worthy of action. The sloop had kept on its course steadfastly, as if drawn to a purpose. Gregoire was merely hoping those on the sloop knew where they were going so that he could find a reference point on his map that made some sense.
And then a pyramid of shadow had begun to rise from the ocean on the horizon. On his map, there was no island nearby, only water, but before his eyes there was an island with a small mountain towering up into the sky. Gregoire noted the time his watch, estimated a direction based on Polaris, and drew an X on his map.
He cut the engines to his boat and drifted for a moment, watching as the shadow of the sloop finally slipped over the horizon, turning at the last moment into the island. He pulled the binoculars up to his eyes and looked through them at the island. Nothing but darkness. He glanced down at the GPS display, then at the gyro compass, and noted that neither was providing any kind of guidance, the compass needle just lazily circling and reversing. Then he noticed the water was still, flat, a glass surface reflecting the moonlight. No wind blew, either. The world was dead calm: doldrums.
How had the sloop made it in through here without wind? He was sure its sails had been full, puffed out as if receiving a hearty gale, but the air around him wouldn’t have caused the smoke from an extinguished match to waver.
Gregoire picked up the satellite phone and dialed. He watched as the display went blank after a minute, not connecting to the outside world. He pressed in the numbers again, watched the phone try to dial out, and then nothing. He dropped it on the seat next to the binoculars, restarted the engines and turned the boat directly into the island. He closed the distance with the shoreline quickly, noticing as he did so a pier jutting out into the surf. He slowed the engines to a putter and turned on the boat’s searchlight, sweeping it across the bow and onto the shore. He saw a couple of row boats beached on the sand, and a slightly larger sailboat moored to the wooden pier.
He brought his boat alongside the wooden structure and looked at it in the light of the beam. It was a handcrafted, rickety structure lashed together with homemade rope. It looked like a strong wave or a mild storm would wash it away in an instant, but he tied his boat to it anyway, winding his line around a cleat made from a carved piece of wood. He zipped open the canvas bag lying on the floor of the boat and pulled out a P-90 machine gun, slapped a magazine into it, and checked the muzzle flashlight. He fished an extra magazine from the bag, slipped it into the back pocket of his pants, and stepped back onto the pier, easing his weight onto each leg as he made his way toward the shore. He kept the muzzle light off, searching through the shadows with his natural night vision for any evidence of life.
He paused when he reached the sand at the end of the pier, listening intently through the sound of the wind brushing through the nearby trees, ignoring the incessant crash of waves, trying to make out a sound not of nature. Gregoire crept past the beached row boats and found a worn path through the trees. He slowed, readied his weapon and trod down it, taking careful, slow steps, his eyes roving through the night, his ears alert. The path was evidence of people, and it was worn through frequent, and current, use. Someone had been here recently.
A short distance through the trees, the path opened up into a clearing, the irregular lines of make-shift shanty roofs drawing nearly-straight horizontal lines through the darkness. Gregoire had seen this type of village a thousand times before in Africa, small square huts constructed out of random materials, just large enough to lie down in at night and keep most of the rain out. Home, once. He didn’t miss it.
Gregoire made his way around the first shack slowly, setting each foot down cautiously, testing the ground for anything that might give way or make a sound. He smelled the trace scent of a campfire, the smoldering of wood trailing faint smoke tendrils into the air. He froze and listened again, the silhouette village coming into greater relief the more his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the jungle. Whoever had been here was gone, but not for long. Strange, though, that there were no women, no children, no elderly left behind to tend the fire or monitor the village. Everyone had gone wherever anyone had gone and had left everything behind. Gregoire didn’t know what that meant, but given the pleasant night weather, he knew that it was evidence of something amiss, something wrong.
He turned on the muzzle flashlight and swept the beam through the camp. There was no evidence of distress, no indications of a mass evacuation or a sudden need by the inhabitants to flee. Everything was where it should be, so far as he could tell. Gregoire moved to the entrance of one of the huts and pushed through the make-shift door, shining the light into the small structure. There was a dirt floor, a mattress made of natural materials and a random assortment of storage containers made from clay. Nothing of value to anyone other than the person who normally lived in the shack; garden-variety poverty of the type he’d seen the world over, the universal constant of mankind.
Gregoire noticed a small chest in the corner of the room, a well-worn, old and decrepit wooden box with brass fittings. He shined the light on it, the first evidence so far of an advanced civilization. It was old, but had been made with tools by a craftsman. He bent down to it and opened it. He smiled. Inside were a couple of dozen coins of different denominations, none of them known to him, and a variety of sea shells, smooth pebbles, a key ring with a few rusty keys and a boson’s whistle. Gregoire ran his fingers through the contents, turning them over, looking for anything that might give a better clue as to the owner or the inhabitants of the village, but found only more of the same.
He turned off the flashlight and stood up, letting his eyes re-adjust to the night. He exited the hut and stood in the clearing, noticing the odd chair near the smoldering campfire, evidence of some tribal culture’s chief. Who were these people? How were they living such a primitive life in the middle of the Caribbean, smack-dab in the middle of the sea lanes, beneath air routes to exotic beach destinations?
He took another long look around the village, felt the weight of the weapon in his hands, and made his way past the campfire remnants, easily finding a path on the opposite side of the village, leading into the jungle. He listened, again, and pressed on.