No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(23)

She snorted quietly and said, “Well, I’m alive. I don’t think this qualifies as ‘okay.’”

“Where are we?”

“On a boat. Somewhere in the ocean, but it’s got to be near the island chain. This thing isn’t big enough to cross the Pacific. I have no idea how long we’ve been out. Could be hours. Could be days.”

She saw his head sag back. He said, “What the hell is going on?”

Before she could answer, she heard a hatch slam onto the deck and saw a spike of light near the engine. Footsteps resonated from someone coming down, and she lay still.

Through the gap in her hood she watched the legs approach, stopping between Mack and her, just next to her chest. She studied the leather boots, waiting.

The man said, “Looks like that needle worked as advertised. I was beginning to wonder if you two was in a coma, but it cleared out just like they said.”

The accent was heavy, and Slavic. Not Irish. Eastern European.

Mack fought to sit up, shouting, “What do you want from us?”

She saw the boot rise, then push McKinley back to the hull, not harshly, but with enough force to show he meant business.

“I want nothing from you. I’m but a delivery boy. We will be stopping soon. When that happens, I’m going to untie your legs and remove your hood. You have some walking to do. If you try to escape, I’ll kill you.”

She felt the boat shift, the engine slowing down. He said, “I want both of you to roll onto your belly. Now.”

She did so and felt the rope around her knees and ankles fall away. She remained still. The hood was removed and she was told to stand. She complied and found she was a half a head taller than her captor, a short, wiry man wearing a wool sweater, with close-cropped black hair and eyes as dull and lifeless as a chunk of burnt wood. He reminded her of a KGB agent from a cartoon. All he was missing was a pencil-thin mustache. In one calloused hand he held a fillet knife, undermining any notion that the man was a comic book buffoon.

He pointed to the ladder and said, “Go onto the deck. Sit down and wait.”

She hesitated, looking at Mack still tied up, and he said, “Do as I say. I’m not going to harm him. I just don’t want two of you loose down here at the same time.”

She climbed the ladder carefully, afraid of tumbling back down below without the use of her hands. She reached the top and was hoisted out by another man, then forced into a sitting position. He showed her a pistol and shook his head. She understood.

She found the boat much larger than the engine room indicated. A fishing trawler with great nets attached to booms on either side. The ladder came up just outside the wheelhouse, where she saw another man steering and cursing. To the left, a third man was lowering a rubber dinghy with an outboard motor, working the cable winch and answering the curses with foul language of his own.

She heard scuffling, and Mack appeared, his hands still tied behind him, the small man from below keeping him from falling backward. He turned to face her, and she was shocked at the damage. His left eye was swollen shut, his lip split, dried blood looking like ketchup stains from a greasy burger underneath his nose and on his chin. He smiled to give her confidence, but it came out hideous, like a caricature from a horror movie makeup room. It did little to ease her fear.

They were ordered to the stern of the boat, where the edge was closest to the water. The dinghy was brought around, and they were passed into it one by one, dropping unceremoniously onto the rigid deck. The original man, now armed with a pistol and wearing a rucksack, climbed in behind them and said, “Just sit still.”

And off they went.

Five hundred meters away, she could see an island. It grew until she could pick out the shore and the jungle beyond. No houses or other signs of civilization. They beached on a short, rocky stretch of sand. They were made to exit, then began walking up a steep footpath, slipping and falling among the roots of windswept brush. They reached the top away from the shore, breaking out onto a road facing a large open area with concrete pads stretching off into the distance.

Mack said, “Holy shit. I know this place. It’s Tinian Island. We’re at North Field.”

The man pushed them forward, saying “Quiet.”

They walked for another hundred meters, getting close to an outbuilding of crumbling concrete and indeterminate usage. When they reached it, he pointed with the pistol and said, “Sit.”

They did so, and he walked fifty meters away, withdrawing a radio from his rucksack.

Seeing he was out of earshot, Kaelyn whispered to Mack, “Where are we? And how do you know?”

Mack said, “Northern Mariana Islands. It’s an American protectorate. Way south of Japan. East of the Philippines. It’s the base where the Enola Gay took off from when it dropped the bomb.”

She said, “Enola Gay? How on earth can you tell that from looking at a bunch of concrete?”

“Remember a year ago when I finally got to leave Oki? Go on an exercise instead of working provost marshal stuff? Well, it was to this godforsaken lump of rock. Exercise Forager Fury. The whole point was to establish a forward landing strip for the Marine Expeditionary Force. That was the exercise. I pretended to pull security with a platoon of MPs while they rebuilt the old World War II infrastructure. It culminated with C-130s landing, proving we could project force in an austere environment.” He leaned back and said, “I spent twenty-eight days on this piece of shit, patrolling the perimeter over and over. I’d recognize it in my sleep.”