He also knew that with the sun sliding low in the sky, there was no way he’d make it back to the tent before it got too dark to see, if he crawled over land. Swimming might take an hour at most; it was a risk he was going to have to take.
He pulled the knife from the turtle’s shell and held it in his teeth, ready to use. Then he pushed his way down to the water. Positioning himself at the edge of the water, he took a breath and started to swim. He held the turtle in his left hand, closest to the open sea, and stayed in water as shallow as possible. At times he felt his legs dragging against the rocks.
Except, of course, he didn’t. Because he couldn’t feel anything in his legs.
He pushed as well as swam, stopping several times because the knife made it difficult to breathe. He was nearly back to the tent where he’d left Breanna when he heard the voice calling to him over the waves.
“Friend! Friend of Bart! Where are you?”
He stopped paddling for a moment, listening as the voice called for him again.
Should he go back? Was it a trap?
Unsure, he decided his first priority was getting the dead turtle back to the tent. He took a few more strokes, then beached himself for good, crawling out of the water with the turtle, a little worse for wear but still intact. Even as he pulled the animal onto the rocks, he worried a shark would rise up and snatch it from him,
Zen slipped the knife in his belt and pushed up the rocks toward the tent. He had to stop twice, exhausted, to gather his breath. Finally, when he was about twenty feet from the tent, he looked up and saw a figure standing next to it.
“Bree!” he shouted.
Then he realized the figure was too skinny and short to be his wife. It held up a stick.
“Who are you?” he demanded, sliding his hand down to the knife.
“Simpsons?” asked Zen.
The figure took a step closer, coming out of the shadow. It was a kid, though not the same one he had seen earlier. He was older, a little bigger. He held the stick out menacingly, as if it were a spear.
“Who are you?” asked the youth.
“Hey, where’s your friend?” Zen asked. “The Bart Simpson fan?”
The boy didn’t say anything.
“Did he tell you I know Bart Simpson?”
There was a shout from behind Zen. He whirled, the knife out and ready.
It was the boy he’d seen earlier.
“You
“My best friend.”
The other kid shouted something and pointed. It took Zen a few seconds to realize he was pointing at the turtle.
“Food,” said Zen, gesturing at the dead animal. “I’m going to start a fire.”
Both kids started talking at once, first in a language he couldn’t recognize, then in English. Gradually, they made him understand that they had come to the island to hunt for turtles and wanted his.
While the two kids spoke English, Zen had trouble understanding their accents.
“The turtles have to be bigger,” said the younger boy.
“We take,” said the older boy.
“I don’t think so,” Zen told him.
The boy came down and grabbed at the turtle. Zen pulled it toward him. The kid started talking rapidly, and Zen couldn’t understand.
“We need,” said the younger boy finally. “You give.”
“Why do you need it?” asked Zen.
He couldn’t understand the answer. The turtle had been difficult to capture and kill, and Zen was hardly confident he could get another. But simply turning the boys away would be foolish.
“If I give it to you, can you bring me a cell phone?” said Zen.
Now it was the boys who didn’t understand.
“Phone,” said Zen. He mimicked one. “T-r-rring-ring.”
“Phone,” said the younger boy.
“Yes. Can you bring me one?”
“Phone.”
“I give you the turtle, you give me a phone.”
“Phone, yes,” said the older boy.
It seemed to be a deal. By now it was getting dark, and the boys managed to explain to him that they had to leave. They told him that they would be back the next day.
Or at least he thought that’s what they said.
As soon as he gave them the turtle, they lit out for the eastern side of the island, where they had apparently left their boats. Zen immediately regretted the deal, sensing he’d been gypped. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He checked on Breanna, still sleeping fitfully, then retrieved the stick the older boy had tossed aside, and with it and the driftwood he’d gathered the day before he managed to start a small fire.
A strong foreboding overcame him as he went to Breanna, intending to pull her a little closer to the fire. He closed his eyes as he crawled the last few feet, fearing he would find her dead.
She was still breathing, more rhythmically it seemed to him.
“Can you feel the fire here?” he asked her.
She made no sign that she heard.
“Come on down with me a little. It’ll warm you up a bit. Just a bit.”
He cradled her upper body on his lap and pushed closer to the fire. It wasn’t much, but he could feel the warmth, and hoped she could too.
Zen told his wife about the boys. “Funny that they know the Simpsons, huh? I told them I’m Bart’s best friend. Maybe they’ll come back for an autograph.”
He remembered the radio. He hadn’t broadcast all day.
He reached into his pocket for Breanna’s watch to check the time, but it wasn’t there.
Had he put it in his other pocket? He swung his body around and reached to his left.
It wasn’t there either. He began to search feverishly, sure it was somewhere in his flight suit — then not sure. Had he left it in the tent? Given it back to Breanna? Where was it?
Where the hell was it?
Zen heard the voice, but he knew it was only in his head — a snatch of a memory, part of a lecture someone had given during his survival training. The point had been: Don’t obsess over things that aren’t important.
He didn’t need a watch. Time was irrelevant. They’d be listening for him around the clock.
Zen went to the radio and made several calls, but there was no answer, and even the static sounded far away.
Tired, he poked at the fire. It was dark, and with the embers glowing a faint orange, he huddled around his wife and drifted off to sleep.
Danny Freah studied the image from the I-17 landing zone in his smart helmet, mentally plotting the Ospreys’ ingress into the site. They had just swung south of the nearest village and were about ten minutes from the landing area.
“When you make your cut north,” he told the Osprey pilot, bending down over the console that separated the two aviators at the front of the aircraft, “you have a straight run to the target. There’s a slight rise to the road. It looks like there’s a high spot overlooking it and the missile as well.”
Unlike the Dreamland birds, the Marine Ospreys weren’t set up to receive the video image. Once they got close, though, their forward looking infrared radar would provide a good view.
