“Aussie was joking.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“I got it. You want me to be possessive.”
That’s not so strange, is it?”
“You’re interested in me because you can’t have me.”
Silence.
“You don’t know what you feel or what to call it,” he said.
They brushed their teeth side by side.
“I haaaa newer hearrr”-she spat-“anything so ridiculous. I want what stirs my soul. And you, Sam or Robert or whatever, stir my soul.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Say something.”
“Look, you’re right. I know what you meant about possessive.”
“Now you’re patronizing me.”
“I’m trying to agree with you so we can get a little sleep.”
He adjourned to the bedroom to go over his notes. She put on light linen pajamas and emerged from the bathroom. Sam turned out the lights and they retired to their respective beds.
Sam lay in the dark, thinking, wondering if she had gone immediately to sleep.
“You could get in bed with me if you didn’t make a big deal about it.”
“Is that realistic?”
“That’s up to you.”
Sam thought for a while. “It’s always scary before a job. Especially if you’ve never done it before.” He rose and went over to her bed. He climbed in behind her and hugged her back.
She put her hand over his.
“Thanks,” she said.
Minutes later Sam heard the deep breaths begin. He crept back to the roll-away and managed to fall asleep.
They came down the beach at 1:30 A.M., running the fiberglass-bottomed inflatable at eight knots. It was nineteen feet, eleven inches long, and was powered by a pair of 250-horsepower Mercury outboards. In order to accommodate the horsepower, the transom had been beefed up and ballast added to the center of the boat. It had been a rich man’s plaything and at full throttle moved along at fifty-five to sixty miles an hour. Sam, T.J., and all eight men were on board.
They cruised slowly just outside a shallow coral reef, using a depth sounder and GPS to remain at least three hundred feet from the beach. Without night-vision goggles the massive broad-leafed trees lining the shore were shadowy billows in the dark. They were called vutu. like supplicants to the sun, they grew out over the water, then bowed up as they reached for the sky.
They were in Somosomo Strait, the place of the sharks. According to Aussie, each chief of Taveuni had to swim out into the strait in full ceremonial regalia, and if the sharks spared him it was a signal from the gods that he should be installed as chief. Apparently there were plenty of sharks in the strait, but as Aussie told it, he had speared fish there without incident, making him think the chiefs’ odds were pretty good.
The air hung heavy with moisture and was deathly still. Tropical heat lay across their shoulders like wool; the only sound was their boat churning a sudsy wake. As they drew near the landing site, Sam had them slow to a few knots until the sea stopped tracing their passage.
At four hundred yards from the compound they turned in to make a landing. As they approached the shore, all of the men shifted to the back of the boat, raising the bow high. The beach was a mix of rock, dead coral pieces, and silt, but they managed to put the V of the boat’s prow on a spot of the sand. Jumping ashore, they broke into two groups; the first group, with T.J. in the lead, moved off quickly down the beach and spread out.
The group led by Sam secured the boat. The boat’s pilot, the only one remaining aboard, backed the boat into deeper water with a pole and dropped an anchor off the stern.
The men wore camouflage from head to toe and camo paint on their skin, plus a helmet with night-vision goggles. Each carried an M4 carbine with attached grenade launcher and a Beretta M9 pistol. The M4s were fitted with massive sound suppressors; the grenades were only stun grenades, and all the rounds were rubber. Everyone had microphones and earpieces wired into their helmets, adjusted so that they worked well with whispers.
Sam’s group moved onto a trail just above the beach that followed the contours of the steep hillside. The compound sat on a high bluff perhaps 150 feet above the water on a natural bench. There were eight burres plus a two-story house and the main lodge facility. A well-maintained asphalted path ran up from the beach on the right side of the compound, snaked up the hill in switchbacks, and exited beside a large pool.
Directly to the front of the compound was a sheer, soil-covered, near-vertical embankment that could not safely be climbed in the night without ropes. To the left side of the compound, where a wealthy American had a large home, ran a less-maintained dirt trail partially overgrown with palms, breadfruit, taro plants, and creeping vines with huge leaves that lay like a carpet.
T.J.’s group came up on the left, Sam’s on the right. Halfway up the hill Sam whispered to T.J.
“In place at station one. Sanford’s up.”
“Roger that,” T.J. said.
T.J.’s group would now be pausing halfway up the hill, waiting for Sam’s forward man to locate and dispatch two Dobermans with two dart guns. The dogs were vicious, not big barkers, well trained, and would attack unknown intruders in the night. Or at least Aussie had assumed they would. Certainly they charged the fence well enough.
Sam crept up the hill after Sanford, hoping the dogs would attack without a lot of racket. At the head of the trail a locked gate stood in the six-foot fence.
Sanford used heavy sheers to clip most of the links in a two-foot-square section of the fence. He bent back a corner, creating a hole large enough to comfortably aim the dart gun. After three minutes they’d still seen no sign of the dogs.
Sanford rattled the fence. Still nothing. Sam exhaled impatiently. The first little problem. The gardens were lush enough inside the compound that his men could hide, especially by night, but not if they were going to be jumped by Dobermans.
A single long wispy cloud had draped itself across the sliver of a moon, making fewer shadows. There were no lights illuminating the gardens save two lights a hundred feet distant and mostly obscured on the main veranda dining area. Sanford rattled the fence again. Still nothing. Sam knew the others would be nervous about this development. It was imperative that the compound be alerted only when the team was ready and only by the distraction that Sam had planned.
It was impossible to know where Jason would be staying. According to Aussie, they moved him from one burre to another as a precaution. Most of the time he was kept in what had been the Honeymoon Burre near the cliff edge.
The plan was to create a distraction that would draw the guards out of the burres. Given Jason’s propensity for working without regard to his environment, especially into the wee hours, he would likely be housed in whichever burre did not immediately have its front door flung open. In order to watch every burre, the men would need to be widely dispersed. They would then have to move quickly and coordinate without a hitch. Otherwise someone might die.
It had been nearly five minutes of quiet fence rattling and no dogs. They took out the chunk of fence.
Sam sneaked up the hill and motioned Sanford forward.
“No joy yet. T.J., move to the perimeter,” Sam whispered.
Then they were through the fence and Sam’s blood started pumping. With his goggles he would see infrared beams, but not necessarily trip wires or motion sensors or night-vision-equipped cameras. Aussie believed there were none, and that would have to be good enough.
They stayed along the edge of the lawn, following the garden beds. The fear was that someone would throw a switch, blind them with light, and shoot them before they could react.
Sam’s heart pounded a few beats faster. He reminded himself that success came to the player who got more
