The two terrorists stared at Areno, then at Hinge. They both raised their hands.
‘That ain’t necessary, muchachos. You just listen real good. We want our man back, alive and unharmed. Ya have one hour to drop him off in front of the teleferico station on Cota Mil Street.’ He turned toward Chico, the bastard, and spoke directly to him. ‘And if he’s not there, we’re going to kill you, and yer wife, and all yer children, and yer perros and gatos and cochinos and pollos and we’re going to burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground. You comprende that, asshole?’
He turned to the next man. ‘And then we’re gonna do the same for you, pal. We’re going to kill you, and yer wife and yer children, and yer dogs and cats and pigs and chickens and burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground.
‘And you’re not gonna know when it’s comin’. It could be before the sun rises tomorra, or it could be a month from now.’ Hinge smiled. ‘Get the point? Y’got an hour. Una hora. And don’t let it happen again, hokay?’
And he turned and left the room.
At eleven thirty-two, Avery Lavander, scared, unshaven, gaunt-eyed, but in relatively good health, was shoved rudely from a car in front of the cable-car station in the El Centro district.
And two hours later Falmouth, who could not get away from Hinge quickly enough, was on his way back to Miami.
O’Hara walked down to the edge of the pier and squatted, Indian fashion, waiting for the sun to rise. The ocean was as docile as a lake. The cruisers, with their outriggers swaying gently in the morning breeze, were silhouetted against the scarlet dawn. The sun had not yet broken the horizon, but its reflection spread across the night sky like a splash of blood.
Somewhere on the other side of the marina, a motor coughed to life, and a sleek speedboat keeled steeply and growled out toward open water.
If isolation was Falmouth’s game, lie had picked a great place. Walker’s Cay, a reclaimed coral reef not much larger than a football field, hardly deserved to be called an island. One of the Abaco chain, it lay a hundred miles or so due east of Palm Beach, the northernmost fishing atoll in the Bahamas.
The fifteen-hundred-foot oyster-shell. runway was half the length of the island. The beach was a strip of sand two or three hundred feet long near the runway. The customs inspector, a paunchy ebony-skinned man in red- striped black pants and a starched white shirt, was also chief of police and maitre d’ of the hotel restaurant. Radiophone service was limited to one hour in the morning and one hour in late afternoon. And from the tiny balconies of the ancient hotel ne could see the entire length of the island and all the boats that entered the marina. It would be almost impossible for anyone to gain access to the island without being seen, day or night. But the place had a kind of battered charm, and the food was excellent.
O’Hara had been on Walker’s Cay for about eighteen hours when the burly, dishevelled fisherman appeared at his door at one-thirty in the morning.
‘Cap’n K. at your disposal, sir,’ the man said, with a smile that revealed several gaps in his teeth. The tart smell of gin drifted in with his words. He offered his card, which looked as if it had been rained on, then left out in the sun to dry, and as O’Hara gave it a cursory glance, Cap’n K. snatched it back, stuffing it in the back pocket of his Levi’s. He wore a windbreaker open almost to the waist, revealing a tangle of graying red chest hair, and lace-up Keds, with a small toe peeking through the torn canvas side of the left one. A rude shock of red hair tumbled from under the peaked captain’s cap, which had seen much, much better times.
‘I’ll be picking you up on Pier Two at five-thirty, sir,’ he said, in a voice cultured in the South Bronx. ‘And we’ll be makin’ wake, toot-sweet,’
‘Oh, really?’ O’Hara said. ‘And just where the hell am I going?’
The grin got bigger, the gaps more prevalent. ‘Why, it’s part of the arrangements made by the travel company,’ Cap’n K. said around a chuckle. ‘The best deep-sea fishin’ in the world is within sight of this very island.’
And with that, Cap’n K. winked and strutted out, a bit rheumatically, and down the hallway, snapping his fingers. ‘It’s the Miami Belle,’ he said over his shoulder, and began singing a badly off-key version of ‘Give Peace a Chance.’
Ah yes, O’Hara said to himself, -welcome to the islands. Twenty-four hours and the nuts were already popping out of the woodwork. ‘Five-thirty,’ he had sighed and closed the door.
So here he was, squatting on a pier in the middle of the ocean at five-thirty and the sun not yet up and not even a cup of coffee in sight, just because some boozy old fart had appeared at his door in the middle of the night.
‘Over here, sir,’ a gravelly voice called through the amber light. Cap’n K. loomed above O’Hara, a bulky shadow framed against the flaming sky, on the flying bridge of a sleek, well-kept fifty-foot cabin cruiser. The captain was sipping from a steaming mug.
‘I was a shark, I’da bitcher foot off by now. Come aboard and get yourself some java. And ya might throw off the lines on your way.’
He turned and pressed a button and the twin five-hundred- horse-power engines under the boat cleared their throats and rumbled to life. O’Hara unhitched the fore and aft lines and jumped aboard. The boat moved beneath him, backed slowly out of its slot and then eased out toward the open sea.
O’Hara went below and checked the cabin. It was empty. So was the galley, which was spotless. A coffee pot steamed on an electric stove. Nearby were a Braun electric grinder and three bags of coffee beans. O’Hara checked the label on one of them. Tanzanian Kilimanjaro.
He poured himself a cup, went back n deck and sat on the gunwale, watching Walker’s Cay grow smaller as the sun made a spectacular entrance. Gulls swept down over the wake and bitched at him. The engines got serious and the Miami Belle picked up speed.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Walker’s was a mere speck. Small, sandy islands abounded, protected
