The Terminals (14 page)

A skiff with
POLICÍA
stenciled on the side in drippy paint approached near dusk, sending the scuba team scrambling for the secret hold. Gwen and Jules snapped the faux-wood floor back into place over them and then stapled a carpet over the top of it.

Ari stepped to the rail to meet their guests, who pulled up alongside and flashed badges as though they were law enforcement officers. It was a ruse, and they all knew it, but Ari pretended to believe. To Cam's surprise, he spoke Spanish to them as they demanded to come aboard toting different types of guns. Cam frowned—they didn't even look like cops. At least one appeared to understand Ari's Spanish, though they spoke to each other in a language Cam didn't recognize.

“I'm scared,” Calliope whispered.

“Me too,” Cam said. “But you've been training for a month. You're ready. Just focus on the task at hand.”

Calliope's task was communications. She nodded, appearing reassured, and moved near Ari, keeping her ears and earrings open. Cam saw her mouth moving subtly, communicating the events to the scuba team below, and Wally, if he was in range.

Ari's task as team leader was to determine their opponent's leader and negotiate for any advantage he could gain. He was already asking questions, feeling them out to see which of the bearded men was in charge of the skiff. There was likely a different man on shore who was in charge of the entire compound.

Cam's job was to count weapons, decide which men seemed aggressive or unstable, and keep track of the locations of the gun toters as best he could. He turned his attention to his own chore, which turned out to be easy. They all had guns, and they all looked unstable. There were three pistols in the boat and two rifles. The lead man—the talker—appeared confident and held a rifle casually at his side. Cam and his friends looked like stupid rich kids, after all. Two other men sat with their hands under their shirts, clearly gripping pistols, eyes darting about, hardly more than boys. They were scared, Cam thought, but no less dangerous. In fact, they were skittish, like nervous dogs, and potentially trigger-happy. He made a note of it. The last man was running his eyes over their vessel. He recognized its value, it seemed, or at least could see that it was extremely valuable, possibly worth more than a ransom. He wore a floppy hat and carried a nicer rifle. He was the real skiff leader, Cam concluded. He glanced at Ari, who met his gaze with an eyebrow twitch—Cam's roommate already knew. Floppy hat man hung back, letting the talker take the risk of being identified as leader and shot first if there was a confrontation.

Ari managed to surrender the boat without any pointing of guns. He even got their captors to agree to let him steer it into their ramshackle dock. It was better than being taken by force, for both sides. By pretending to believe they were a police outpost, Ari was even allowed to continue speaking with his own team.

“They will take us to wait with other ‘trespassers' while they contact our authorities to determine why we've ‘violated their waters.' I told him we were sorry we strayed into their jurisdiction, and by morning we could gather money to pay any ‘fine' they deem reasonable.”

Bingo!
Cam thought. The other trespassers would surely be the doctors.

As they were escorted ashore, Cam continued counting pirates. Multiple men stood about the compound eyeing them as they were marched in. Ari's tact also meant no blindfolds. Another advantage. Two men on the roof, Cam counted, and one at the gate. All armed, but they appeared bored and inattentive. That made seven so far.
Ten of us versus seven of them
, he thought. Reasonable odds, assuming they were not tied up—Ward had thought they would not be. More probably they'd be trusted to a locked room. Gwen's job was to count and memorize the layout of the place as they were led through. She was good with maps. Cam could see her studying the walls and counting her paces. The team was on task. Whether it was their enhancement, the training, or the sheer terror of the situation that focused them he couldn't tell, but all were certainly doing their best to execute the jobs they had been assigned, which was good, he thought, because their condensed lives surely depended on it now.

There was a courtyard. Brick walls. Cam spotted a faded chalk outline on the bricks beside the door they were headed toward. The chalk formed a rectangle of familiar size—approximately eight feet high and, he guessed, twenty-four feet wide. A soccer goal. Their escorts hustled them through the door into a large room with chairs, a fan, and a primitive-looking toilet.

“Wait in here,” the talker said to Ari in Spanish. Floppy hat nodded behind him, and the door swung closed. An ominous click signaled a deadbolt being thrown on the outside.

“Gwen,” Ari said immediately, “do you have the layout?”

“Of course,” she replied, and she dropped to her knees to quickly draw in the dirt floor with a pencil she produced from her shoe. “It's nearly a square around the courtyard. The exterior and interior walls are ten feet apart on three sides, meaning those three sides are only one room deep with no hallways. I saw two doors on each wall and one beside the entrance. So six rooms. Judging from the cheap construction, they probably mirror each other. Two other doors were propped open. We're in one. That leaves four others the doctors could be in. My money is on the one to the right of us as we exit, because it has a deadbolt like ours.”

Cam was impressed. He thought he'd done well just counting the guards.
She's hyperfocused
, he thought.
Better than me.
He'd been admiring a stupid soccer goal while Gwen had been vacuuming up critical information with hawklike eyes.

“Good work,” Ari said. “They're probably discussing what to do with us now that they've got us tucked away. They said we'd wait with others, but they could change their minds.”

Jules looked around the room, concerned.

“What are you thinking, Jules?” Ari asked.

“I'm
not
pooping in front of you guys,” she said.

“I think that's the least of our worries,” Gwen snorted.

“For you, maybe. But if we die, I want my dignity intact.”

“We shouldn't be here that long,” Ari assured her. “A couple hours, tops. Donnie will be here with his team as soon as possible. They released from our vessel just before we docked. Keep your eyes and ears open. Gather all the info you can so we can relay it to them. Any detail could be the difference between success and failure.”

Cam watched Calliope repeat everything they were saying inside her own mouth almost without moving her lips, like a ventriloquist without a doll. She waited for a moment and then nodded. The tongue transmitter had sent, and she'd received confirmation back through her earrings.

“The scuba team is holding just offshore,” she said quietly. “The pirates are sweeping the vessel, and there are too many lights on the dock to come ashore near it. They're going to drift down the shoreline and look for a more secluded angle of approach.”

Just then the bolt clacked open. They quieted as the door jerked wide, revealing one of the nervous boys from the dinghy. He stepped inside and sat heavily in a chair beside the door, where he fumbled out a fake tin badge. Ari acknowledged his phony authority with a polite nod. It was weakly returned. The boy didn't want to be there. Upon closer inspection, he appeared even younger than Cam had first thought. His faint mustache struggled for a foothold on his upper lip, and adolescent acne dotted his forehead.
No more than sixteen.
He reminded Cam vaguely of a nervous boy named Simon at his high school who the other kids picked on.

They sat for half an hour, until their teen guard grew bored and slumped in his chair, staring at the floor. The boy's superiors were undoubtedly discussing what to do with the rich Americans they'd captured, and this little pirate wasn't important enough to be included. Instead he'd drawn babysitting detail. Gwen kept track of time by tapping her foot methodically, her concentration almost total. Calliope carefully listened to her earrings, but rarely talked for fear of being caught with the microphone. None of them carried their cell phones. They'd been taken anyway, as expected, after each of them had been quickly frisked. The younger pirates had immediately begun snatching small electronic devices from them and the boat. More evidence that they were cheap hirelings in the endeavor and not partners who shared the real money. The syringes had been left alone. The pirates didn't want an ill captive, it seemed. Ward had been exactly right. After the search, Cam had quickly assembled two darts and passed one to Ari, who tucked it in his shirtsleeve. Now two of them had weapons.

There had been no move to put them with the doctors, however. And the scuba team was still circling, not yet approaching the compound, according to Calliope's covert reports, which she gave in hand signals Ward had taught them in the briefing room. They were allowed to talk, but they were unsure how much their guard understood, and so they said nothing of their mission. Instead, they spoke fictitiously about how worried their families would be that they were missing and whose fault it was they'd strayed off course. Then Calliope gave a hand sign that meant she needed to tell them details she couldn't signal.

Ari glanced at their guard. “Do you need to use the toilet yet, Jules?” he asked.

She shot him an annoyed look. “None of your business.”

“I just wondered if you needed some
privacy
,” he clarified.

“Oh! Yes. Yes, I do.” She stood suddenly and crossed her legs like an elementary school child in need of a hall pass for the restroom.

“Bathroom,” Ari said to the guard in Spanish, and he pointed at Jules. He motioned toward the door and indicated that he, Cam, and the guard should step outside.

The boy stood and thought for a moment, his brow furrowed. It was clear he had no authority to deviate from his instructions, and the privacy of their new female guests hadn't been discussed. Jules grimaced and gave him a pleading look. Reluctantly, he moved to the door and turned a simple key in the lock. The deadbolt slid aside, and he let the boys out, motioning for them to stand against the exterior wall. Then he closed the door behind him.

Ari whispered to Cam, “I need a moment to hear what Calliope has to say. And I need it pronto.”

Cam thought hard. He ran his hand along the chalk line of the goal on the bricks. “Football?” he said to the boy finally.

The boy turned to him, curious.

Cam pointed toward the chalk. “Goal?”

The boy answered with halting Spanish.

“What'd he say?” he asked Ari.

“He says they play here in the courtyard. Penalty kicks mostly, but there's another goal on the opposite wall for scrimmages.”

“Ask him if he wants to play with me,” Cam said. “Tell him I'm very skilled.”

Ari rattled off a sentence in Spanish. The boy shot back an answer, and Ari translated. “He says he is the best in the compound, even at his age.”

“Tell him, ‘maybe not anymore.'”

Ari translated, and Cam smiled good-naturedly so the boy could see that he meant it as a friendly challenge. Their guard brightened. After a stretch of nerves and boredom, the simple gesture seemed a welcome relief, and he couldn't hold back a childish grin. He motioned for them to stay and jogged across the courtyard. Moments later, he returned with a tattered ball.

Ari knocked on the door and asked loudly if Jules was done, and then opened it and went inside, quickly closing the door behind him. Cam hopped in front of the goal chalked on the wall and gestured for the boy to kick the ball before he could stop Cam's roommate.

The boy glanced toward the door, torn between following Ari and having some sport with Cam.

Cam pointed to his own chest. “Steve,” he lied.

“Ranuel,” the boy said.

Cam crouched in front of the goal. “Shoot, Ranuel.” The irony of his request was not lost on Cam, but he didn't smirk. He was working. Calliope would be reporting Donnie's position to Ari right now. Dart guns were being loaded outside the wall. Poison was waiting in needles.

The ball came low and left, just as Cam had expected, though a little harder than he'd have guessed for a skinny kid like Ranuel. Cam wasn't a goalie, but he'd shagged enough balls in goal to dive and punch it wide of the chalk. He rose, spitting dust and smiling, and then touched the ball back out to Ranuel with a flick of his toe. “Again,” he said. He didn't know how much time Ari would need, but the more the better.

Ranuel juggled the ball, showing off, then trapped it and fired it high and right. Cam gauged that he could reach it, but he let it slip past his fingertips. It thumped against the wall just inside of the chalk line.

Cam shook his head. “Whew! Nice shot.”

Ranuel nodded, smiling. Cam retrieved the ball and dribbled it out to where Ranuel stood, but when Ranuel started toward the wall, Cam continued across the yard toward the other goal. Ranuel hesitated, and then followed. Cam glanced up at the guards on the walls. There were two. No guns visible, but they were undoubtedly within reach. The man to the east sat looking outward and never turned. The other stood on the west wall and frowned down at him and Ranuel disapprovingly, but didn't interfere.
Another minion
, Cam thought. Soccer with the prisoners was not part of the compound protocol, clearly, but the wall man apparently had no authority to correct their teen guard, and management was still in a meeting somewhere.

Cam found the penalty kick spot, a worn area in the dirt. It gave him a thought, and he glanced about, examining the doorways while trying not to look like he was examining them. The dirt was worn into a smooth trench in front of one door. That would be the one with the most foot traffic, he thought. Ergo, that would be the meeting room. It was time to get back to Ari and the others.