come from, apparently they didn't wear golf shirts and jeans.
Of course, wanting to go to Grand Turk explained a lot, Charlie guessed. Most people who went to Grand Turk weren't going for fun. That might explain why they carried only the briefcases.
Well, it wasn't any of Charlie's business. They paid him in cash, crisp new dollar bills. Providenciales and Grand Turk were only about seventy miles apart, a distance even the old Aztec could cover in a half an hour, including climb-out. In thirty minutes or so, he'd be on the ground, waiting to take his big, unhappy passengers back.
At the same time seventy miles away, Jason was rubbing eyes he had fought to keep open all night. If he was being held here for interrogation about the fire on North Caicos, no one seemed in a hurry to ask the first question. The only official he had seen had been the white-haired old man who had brought him supper and now stood outside his cell with breakfast. As though serving an animal, the old man stooped without a word and slid a steaming bowl under the bars of the door. If last night was the standard, he would return to collect the empty cheap plastic container and fork in a few minutes.
Jason was more interested in the ring of keys jingling on the jailer's belt than in the meal he had brought.
From the bones sticking out of the steaming dish, Jason guessed he was getting another serving of bonefish and grits, a strong-smelling yet bland native dish. It was a meal to be eaten carefully and slowly. Swallowed, one of the sharp bones would likely puncture something vital on the way down the throat.
The thought gave Jason an idea.
Cautiously probing the grits with the fork, Jason extracted a four- or five-inch section of bone with a wickedly sharp point at one end. He finished his meal and listened to the conversations shouted between cells. He was unable to understand most of the words, either because of dialect or because they were in the Spanish of the Dominican Republic, or in Creole, the combination of French and African peculiar to Haiti, both less than a hundred miles away.
At fifteen hundred feet, Grand Turk was visible from ten miles out. Charlie squinted into the morning's haze for the airport. Constructed as a part of the Atlantic Range recovery station during the early days of the United States' space program, the runway was unusually wide, built to accommodate cargo aircraft, a broad black asphalt belt across the island's southern tip.
'Got the field,' Charlie said into his headset, noting that he was the only aircraft on the frequency this morning. 'We're out at fifteen hundred.'
With the prevailing if fitful southeast breezes, the landing clearance that came back almost immediately was no surprise. 'Cleared to land runway niner, wind light and variable, one-two-oh to one-four-oh, altimeter two- niner-niner-eight.'
He and his passengers would be on the ground in a few minutes. If he was lucky, Charlie would have time to go over to the TCA office and see how his application was coming along. Flying for the charter service beat fishing for a living, but the airline paid a lot better.
The seals in the windows and doors of the Aztec were worn, making Charlie raise his voice to a near yell to be heard over the engines and airstream as he asked the man next to him, 'How long you reckon you'll be 'fore you wants to go back?'
His question provoked a chilly stare from eyes like brown ice. 'You've been paid enough to wait.'
Chapter Seventeen
Grand Turk
The jailer reached an arm through the bars to accept the plastic bowl Jason was handing to him. The bowl clattered to the floor as Jason moved with the speed of a striking snake. In a single movement, the old man was snatched up against the bars and the daggerlike point of the fish bone pressed against his throat.
'Nice and easy,' Jason said calmly. 'You take those keys off your belt and unlock the door. Do like I say and you don't get hurt.'
The men in the cell opposite Jason's saw what was happening and began to shout. Although he couldn't understand the words, Jason guessed they were clamoring for their freedom, too. It wouldn't take many minutes before someone came to investigate the disturbance. The jailer was fumbling with the ring of keys.
Jason pressed the bone harder against the man's throat. 'I got nothing to loose, mon. Somebody come before you get this door open, you die.'
Either the threat was effective or the old man had already found the right key. The door swung open with Jason still holding his captive through it. He let go of the arm long enough to snatch the key ring. He shoved his former jailer into the cell and slammed the door shut before turning the key. He was gratified to hear the lock's bolt click into place.
Jason tossed the key ring into an adjacent cell as he sprinted down the hall. He could hear other cell doors opening amid excited voices. The escapees wouldn't get far, not on a twenty-five-square-mile island, but they would provide the distraction Jason needed.
At the end of the cell block was a steel door. Jason shoved but it didn't move. It was locked from the other side.
Curious, Charlie watched his passengers carry the attache cases into the sole taxi parked outside the one- room terminal. He was almost certain he had heard the one who spoke English ask to be taken to the jail.
Surely not.
He shrugged. None of his business. He looked at his watch. There was nowhere on the island that would be more than ten minutes away by cab. Figuring in, say, ten minutes for his passengers to go wherever they had business, another ten to do that business and another ten to return, he had at least a half an hour to spend at the TCA office, trying to get his application moved to the top of the pile.
For some reason, he was thinking about those briefcases as he crossed the street. Maybe they had business papers in the little cases and were planning on flying back to Miami that day. Except the Delta flight on which they had arrived was the only departure today, now long gone.
He shrugged. Mon wants not to carry fresh clothes in this heat, that be his problem, not Charlie's.
Jason turned from the locked door and dashed back down the cell block behind the last group of prisoners to escape their cells. He stopped long enough to snatch a thin mattress from a cot before joining the rush to the prison yard.
Outside, the dozen or so prisoners overpowered two guards. As a leaderless mob, they seemed unclear as to what to do next. With a few quick steps, Jason was at the base of the wall. Grabbing the mattress by one end, he swung it up and across the top of the glass-encrusted stone. Taking a few paces back, he got a running start and jumped, his fingers digging for purchase but finding none.
He slid back to the dusty yard and tried again just as truncheon-swinging reinforcements surged out of the jail and began clubbing the unfortunates within reach. As Jason made his second attempt, six or seven prisoners were beginning what looked like some sort of organized resistance.
This time Jason got high enough to hang one arm across the mattress and get a grip on the rough stone on the outside of the wall. With his feet scrabbling against the rocky surface, he managed to propel himself upward and over, dropping onto the ground below with an impact that buckled his knees.
He stood, turned, and looked straight into the shock- widened eyes of a woman carrying a huge bowl of mangoes on her head.
He nodded politely. 'Mornin', ma'am.' Then he bolted for the police station in front of the jail.
It was unlikely, he reasoned, that the police would anticipate his return after escaping. The emptiness of the building verified his assumption. It took him less than a minute to empty several open lockers in the room with a coffee machine and two worn Naugahyde couches. As he had hoped, neither of the two officers who had taken his money belt had trusted the other enough to allow its removal from where it was hidden under a pile of odoriferous
