Chapter Eight
Arris and Nereika walked out of the jungle and onto the sand of a narrow beach. Just emerging from the quiet of the jungle to the noise of the beach was an event; Arris always forgot how noisy the sea was where it crashed against land, an unstoppable force assailing an immovable object. Arris surveyed the beach generally, scanning quickly to see if the vest was obvious, just lying somewhere in the open. It wasn’t. He turned to Nereika and noticed she seemed on edge. She was scanning the jungle line with her eyes while doing her best to appear relaxed.
“Do you have any idea where I came ashore?” Arris asked.
Nereika shook her head. “No,” she said. “The islanders found you and moved you. If they hadn’t made such a ruckus last night, you might have ended up with them instead. But we heard them and came down.
“How did you end up in the ocean in the first place?”
Arris shrugged. “I fly a helicopter tour of a series of islands so that honeymooners and the like can see the beauty of the Caribbean in a way very few people ever will. I fly them over coral reefs, the odd waterfall, interesting beaches and that sort of thing. But, I had engine trouble and had to ditch my aircraft in the sea.”
Nereika made a look of astonishment. “What about your passengers? What happened to them?
Arris smiled. “I was on the way to pick some up when it happened,” Arris said, pushing thoughts of the two agents aside. “Hey, look at that!”
Arris trotted over to a spot where his survival vest lay on the sand, its contents scattered around it. He kneeled down and began examining the damage. Alongside the vest’s contents were the various items from his pants’ pockets, and he scooped up his wallet and keys and stuffed them into his pockets. As he moved the vest he noticed his ankle holster and Kahr P380 semi-automatic pistol beneath it, which came as a surprise: he had assumed Onorien had removed it from him the previous night after undressing and bathing him but Arris had not asked about this morning as a courtesy for Onorien’s hospitality and a desire to not to appear unduly concerned about his personal safety. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and noticed Nereika’s attention was fixed on the jungle and wrapped the vest around the pistol. Whoever had gone through his possessions had taken almost nothing – his survival knife and whetstone and the small coil of steel fishing line and hook were missing - but had gone through everything.
“Well, what the hell were they looking for?” Arris said softly.
“This is your missing property?” Nereika asked.
“Yeah,” Arris said, sorting through the items. “Aww.”
“What?”
Arris held up the emergency radio, which had been broken open and was now useless. “What the hell would make anyone break this open and tear it apart? It’s just a radio.”
Nereika looked at it for a moment. “Maybe they thought there was something inside it.”
“Yeah, there is: wires and circuits and nothing useful to anybody other than as a fully-functioning radio,” Arris said. “Are you trying to tell me the ‘natives’ on this island are so primitive they’ve never seen a radio before?”
Nereika looked down at Arris and nodded, slowly. Arris wanted to drop his jaw in disbelief, but didn’t, only because he was trying to maintain an image of himself as a harmless castaway to his host and hostess. Still, it didn’t make sense to him on any level: the natives took his knife and fishing tackle, destroyed his emergency radio and left behind a fully-functioning pistol. Maybe they didn’t know what a firearm was either?
“This is the Caribbean,” Arris said. “You don’t get visitors here?”
“This is a private island, Mr. Arris, the only visitors are invited guests,” Nereika said, her eyes flitting briefly from Arris to the tree line.
Nereika started walking away from Arris, her posture changing markedly, as if she were assuming some sort of martial arts position, ready to take or give a move depending on the sudden disposition of the situation. Arris watched her closely as she moved sideways along the jungle line, observing her and assessing her skill level. Little better than a novice. Arris hesitated a moment longer as he watched Nereika, wondering what could focus her attention so, and then quickly took the ankle holster and P380 out of his folded vest, slipped the weapon quickly into the holster and snapped the leather band around his right ankle, rapidly lifting and lowering his pants leg as his heart beat quickly. Arris paused, caught his breath, and returned his attention to Nereika. She was still staring into the jungle.
“What? Is there something I should know?” Arris asked as he stood and walked toward the girl. “Is everything okay?”
Nereika snapped her head over her shoulder very quickly and said, “It’s a trap.”
Arris turned his gaze from Nereika to the jungle: all was quiet. Then Nereika tightened her stance and the world around them erupted in a blaze of crackling static. Pop! Pop! Bang! Pop! Shazizzz-Bang! Crack! Pop! Zizz!
Arris dropped to his knees amid the tiny explosions. They seemed to emerge out of nowhere as sudden bursts of fiery light, giving way to small trails of smoke that were quickly decimated by the sea breeze. And for the first few moments, there were dozens of them per second, creating a near-deafening cacophony. Nereika had backed up several steps and appeared dazed, uncertain what she was facing, which only confused Arris, since Nereika had just told him moments earlier that they had fallen into a trap.
Pop! Pop! Sizzle! Bang! Bang! BANG BANG BANG! Arris scanned the jungle line a moment longer as the noise intensified. For all the light and noise from the explosions, Arris couldn’t tell if they emitted any shrapnel. The tiny bursts of flame occurred all around him and he had felt nothing, not even heat. He remained in a crouch and looked up at Nereika, who was still backpedaling from the jungle, her face a mixture of confusion. She looked down at him.
“Run!” she yelled, pointing to the path they had used to come to the jungle.
The sound intensified even more, and the amount of fireballs increased, causing Arris to shield his eyes and look downward at the sand for a moment. And then he heard what sounded like electric current sizzling through the air, a definite crackle with what sounded like endpoint bursts and … mild groans of pain? Arris looked up.
“Run,” she yelled, “to the estate grounds. I’ll be right behind you.”
Another round of marble-sized flashes glittered in the air around them and Arris figured it was better to take her advice and run rather than figure out what the hell was going on. He took off across the beach and dashed through the jungle, the sounds of bursting flashbulbs mixing with the coursing of electrical surges. After covering several dozen yards through the jungle, Arris popped through the pristine hedgerow onto the manicured lawn of the estate, where he turned and instinctively got into a martial arts ready stance of his own, prepared to fight. Then he remembered the small pistol on his right ankle and bent down toward it, thought better of it, and stood back up, trying to appear unfazed by the events of just moments ago.
Another second passed and Nereika crashed through the shrubbery, caught herself up, and stared back over the top of the shrubs at the jungle beyond. She caught her breath, and relaxed into a normal standing position. Arris, uncertain about what he had just experienced, made a gesture toward the jungle.
“What the hell was that?” Arris asked.
“The natives,” Nereika said.
Arris stared at her for a moment. “That was the natives?”
Nereika stared at him for a moment and then looked back into the jungle.
“All I saw were a bunch of miniature explosions in mid-air,” Arris said. “I thought these ‘natives’ were primitive types.”
“They are,” Nereika said. “Come on, I have to tell Onorien.”
“What would they have been shooting at us? Because, I didn’t hear any gunfire and that certainly wasn’t any kind of explosive device I’m familiar with,” Arris said.
Nereika turned and looked at him blankly. She walked by.
> “And, how did you know it was a trap?”
Nereika stopped and turned, pausing for a long moment as she regarded Arris. “I could just tell. I should’ve realized sooner that they left your equipment on the beach as a lure.”