The Bone Hunters (20 page)

29 May

Aboard
Trader's Bluff

Dunmore Town

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

“Well, we found the
Prins Willem
,” said Barnaby to Ira Dusenberry on the boat's encrypted satellite phone, “and the Peking Man crate is no longer aboard. It may have been scattered across the seabed when the ship broke up after it was torpedoed. If so, it'll require a major recovery effort and we will need the cooperation of the Bahamian government.”

“There are new complications,” said Dusenberry. “Apparently, the new prime minister shares certain offshore banking interests with one of the Mexican drug cartels. He may need to be spanked before we can deal with him on this.”

“I don't care if you give him twenty lashes with a sjambok,” said Barnaby. “Just don't leave us hanging here without support.”

“It's not as simple as you think,” said Dusenberry. “There are important diplomatic issues involved.”

Dusenberry had just attended a meeting with the president in the Oval Office and had stayed behind for a few moments to savor the majesty of the setting when the call came through. It always gave him a rush to sit down in
the throne chair. Glancing at the president's schedule, he decided to take the risk.

“I'm not asking you to invade Iraq again, Ira,” said Barnaby calmly, “but you've put us at risk down here and one of our people is missing. We're probably going to need assistance very soon.”

“All right . . . I'll activate a covert ops team to be on standby at Homestead Air Force Base,” said Dusenberry, swiveling the chair around to enjoy the view of the Washington Monument. “They'll be ready if you need them and can deploy in less than an hour. In the meantime, just try to hold the fort.”

“Do you save up all these clichés just for me?” asked Barnaby.

Dusenberry could hear the voice of the president's secretary saying he was on his way back.

“Just suck it up, goddammit, and lie low for a day or two,” he growled before hanging up.

Barnaby passed the phone back to Chris Kimball and turned to the others in the dining salon.

“Well, you heard my end of it, said Barnaby. “He's putting a covert team on standby at Homestead, pending further developments.”

“They've got Carlos,” said Macaulay.

“Steve, he could just be sleeping off a drunk somewhere in town,” added Kimball. “If he found a girl, there are plenty of places he could have spent the night with her.”

Macaulay shook his head and said, “Carlos would have come back. I know him. He might have gone over there to have a few drinks and to check out the girls, but he
never would have stayed over even if he picked one up. Somebody took him.”

“We don't know anything for sure at this point,” said Barnaby. “I asked Mike to do some quiet surveillance without alerting the local police.”

They heard the sound of an outboard motor slowly approaching the boat. Chris Kimball stepped to the salon windows.

“Mike's coming back in the runabout,” he said. “He's towing our dinghy behind him.”

McGandy looked drawn and tired as he came into the salon and sat down.

“As you know, this is a small island. My wife is a doctor's assistant, so she has a pretty big network of friends. I had her make some calls this morning to ask if anything unusual happened last night. One of her friends lives across from the entrance to Brugg's compound. She said there was a disturbance at around two in the morning that woke her up. Someone was yelling blue murder.”

“That might have been anyone,” said Barnaby.

“She said that at night the compound is as quiet as a graveyard,” said McGandy, “and the voice was in Spanish. She went to her bedroom window and saw two members of Brugg's palace guard dragging someone in through the gates.”

“I'm going after him,” said Macaulay. “Do you know anything about the layout inside the walls?”

“I've never been inside,” said McGandy. “Under ordinary circumstances I would say that trying to get in there would be suicide, but here is one piece of luck. There's a charity event taking place tonight that is always hosted by one of the great houses on the island. This year it's at
Brugg's mansion. My wife said the duke of Lancaster and his wife are supposed to be there with a lot of other dignitaries.”

“That would give us a chance to find out if they might be holding him,” said Lexy.

“And where,” added Kimball.

“Is the public invited to these events?” asked Barnaby.

“It's invitation only to the money crowd,” said McGandy. “No chance of getting a ticket, and security will be tight.”

“Well, that complicates it,” said Barnaby.

“Maybe not,” added McGandy. “The caterer who is supplying all the food is one of my partners in the dive business. He's always looking for more help at these events.”

•   •   •

Carlos awoke to feel the sickness inside his head. When he tried to turn over to vomit, he couldn't move his shoulders and the bile gushed out the side of his mouth. He was stretched out naked on his back on a long, thick slab of butcher block. His wrists were shackled above him at the head of the slab and his ankles at the foot of it.

The stone-walled room was dark and cavelike with no windows and a low stone ceiling. There was a rancid smell in the damp air. The only illumination came from a single lightbulb hanging over the slab.

The figure of a huge black woman loomed over him. She removed a sponge from the bucket of cold water she was carrying and mopped his face clean.

“It looks to me like you haven't been taking good care of yourself,
querido
,” said Black Mamba.

He remained silent as she pried open his mouth with
her enormous fingers and probed around his teeth and gums.

“You're a heavy smoker, aren't you?” she said. “And your teeth show the sad results of your sugar craving. You should turn your life around before it is too late,
querido
.”

He heard a hollow gagging noise from across the chamber. Carlos twisted his head to the left and looked into the gloom. Another man was sitting in what looked like one of the old wooden electric chairs he had seen in gangster movies. His wrists and ankles were shackled to the armrests and legs.

The other man was naked too. Maybe sixty, he had a pink beefy face and close-cropped iron-gray hair. A roll of flab hung at his midsection, and his glazed eyes were bulging. Someone had duct-taped his private parts to a basketball.

“Who be you?” called out Carlos.

The man looked back at him with his glassy eyes but didn't say anything.

“That is Mr. Dolan,” said Black Mamba. “He is here to sell his sports team to my son.”

Mr. Dolan began nodding his head up and down.

“And what is your name,
querido
?” she asked Carlos with a matronly smile.

When he didn't answer, she went across the room to what looked like a tool chest on the table next to the wall. She came back with a pair of needle-nose pliers, the type Carlos had used almost every day working on the plane engines at the charter service.

“I only ask once,” she said, gripping the fingers of his
left hand. He felt the scrunch of the pliers on the nail of his index finger.

When he looked up at her, she was gazing down at him like a mother looking into her child's eyes. Several seconds went by and he felt her hand release his fingers. A moment later she ripped the nail of his index finger out by the roots. It sounded like the tearing of a sheet of paper. The pain was excruciating, but he gritted his teeth as she tore the rest of his nails out one by one.

“I'll ask you again when I come back,” she said.

He watched as she headed up the stone steps at the end of the chamber.

“I be Bruce Willis, you fuckin' bitch,” he shouted to her retreating back.

•   •   •

Juwan watched as Varna's academy students began clearing the Naugahyde couches out of the great hall of the mansion to make room for dancing. He grimaced at the thought of some of the reactions he might have to deal with during the inaugural dance that the annual hosts always conducted to lead off the festivities. Varna had begged to be part of it.

Emile Bardot approached him and saluted.

“The man hasn't said anything since we brought him in,” said Bardot. “He's very tough, but Mamba says she will soon have him singing like Engelbert Humperdinck.”

“What do we know at this point?” asked Juwan.

“He told the girl in the bar that he had saved the life of his friend while diving on a wreck off the backbone,” said Bardot, “and that his friend was a general. We will soon learn which yacht he came from.”

“Have Sir Henry notify the Chinese,” said Juwan,
“and request that the bounty should be paid in U.S. dollars.”

“I'll call Sir Henry immediately.”

“One more thing,” said Juwan.

“Yes, sir?”

“Slow them down.”

29 May

Aboard
Trader's Bluff

Dunmore Town

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Chris Kimball stood on the foredeck of the Hatteras and pretended to be enjoying the view of the harbor as Mike McGandy's runabout headed toward the public wharf with Barnaby, Lexy, and Macaulay aboard.

Picking up his binoculars, Kimball slowly scanned the activity in the harbor. It looked just as it should, just as it usually did, with skiffs going back and forth between the yachts and the town, fishing boats heading out toward the backbone, and the ferry from the airport bringing new guests to Dunmore Town. If there was any indication that the
Trader's Bluff
was under surveillance, he couldn't find it.

He turned to do another sweep in the opposite direction and watched as two small local boys in a patched wooden skiff pulled up at the gangway of one of the superyachts anchored across the harbor. The stern section of their skiff was loaded with coconuts and low in the water.

They had become a familiar sight to Kimball over the
previous few days. For a Bahamian dollar, they would majestically lop off the top of a coconut with a machete and serve the coconut milk with a straw to children and crewmen at the foot of a yacht's gangway.

Mike McGandy tied up his runabout at the finger pier of his dive club and led the others to his venerable Range Rover. The uninterrupted days of brilliant sun and blue sky had been replaced with a low leaden sky that portended rain.

McGandy drove them to his small cottage overlooking the ocean side of Dunmore Town. There, he introduced them to his friend and dive partner, Bob Littlefrost, who was catering the charity event at Brugg's mansion, and to Mike's Bahamian wife, Cora, a college-trained physician's assistant who managed a local medical clinic. To Lexy, she looked to be about six months pregnant.

Littlefrost was tall and blond with a hawkish nose, a sun-weathered face, and St. Bernard eyes. McGandy had assured Macaulay he could be trusted. In truth, they were running out of options. With Dusenberry putting any help on hold, he had to take the risk.

“Brugg's henchmen have tried to peddle drugs to some of my daughter's middle school classmates,” said Littlefrost, shaking Macaulay's hand. “I'll help you in any way I can as long as it doesn't endanger my family.”

“Our friend was forcibly taken into his compound last night,” said Macaulay. “Is there any way to narrow down the possibilities of where they might have him?”

“I've been in there several times over the years,” said Littlefrost. “The likeliest possibility is the cellar of the mansion. It was blasted out of the underlying coquina
rock when they built the house. Local gossip has it that he keeps something incredible down there. It wouldn't surprise me if it's a torture chamber.”

Lexy paled at the thought of Carlos subjected to terrible cruelty.

“They could also have your friend in the old barracks used by his palace guard. It predates the house and is located along the west wall of the compound. The only other possibility is the compound's utility building. It's built to withstand a hurricane and has a water desalinization plant and backup generators for when the power goes out.”

“How do you propose to get us in there?” asked Barnaby.

“Between permanent and temporary catering staff, we'll have about twenty-five people working the events this evening,” he said. “I've already had a team go over there to set up four different serving stations inside the house and on the terraces. We'll arrive there at about four o'clock in my two jitney buses followed by my refrigerated truck. There will be parking set aside for us near the outside entrance to the kitchen. My people all wear the same white uniforms, skirts for the women, twill trousers for the men. The food is already prepared and refrigerated. My kitchen staff will do the final prep work in the kitchen.”

Littlefrost checked his printed schedule. “The guests will start arriving at five thirty for the cocktail party on the front esplanade, and then they'll eat a buffet dinner in the great hall. There is a charity auction followed by dancing and finally fireworks after it gets dark.”

“How many people will be at the event?” asked Barnaby.

“I was asked to cater for at least a hundred guests.”

“Is everyone in your company checked for identification?” asked Lexy.

Littlefrost shook his head. “They don't have the means. The one thing they will do is check for concealed weapons. I have to ask you not to bring any. That discovery would put both me and my family at great risk.”

“Understood,” said Macaulay, “and agreed.”

“One more thing,” added Littlefrost. “After the cocktail party is under way, there is also a personal tour of the house given by the host of the event. If your friend is being held somewhere else in the house, that might help to point the way. They will certainly avoid it.”

“Who gets to go on the tour?” asked Macaulay.

“Special guests and major contributors to the effort to save the Bahamas endangered bird species,” said Littlefrost. “This year they're expecting a number of royals, including the duke of Lancaster and his wife. She's the leader of the whole effort.”

Littlefrost began sizing up Macaulay.

“You'll fit right in with the bartenders,” he said. Turning to Lexy, he said, “Perhaps the waitstaff, maybe a hostess.”

He turned to gaze up at Barnaby.

“And me?” demanded Barnaby.

“I'm afraid . . .”

“You're afraid?” demanded Barnaby.

“I just meant . . . it would be pretty difficult to disguise you,” said Littlefrost.

“I'm going in,” said Barnaby.

“You would blow our cover in five minutes,” said Macaulay.

“I could cut his hair with my medical shears,” said Cora. “I think that would help a lot.”

“Sorry,” said Barnaby. “No one has touched my hair since my second wife sliced it off with a Viking short sword when I was under the weather thirty years ago.”

“You're lucky she didn't cut off something more important,” said Macaulay. “Let her do it or stay behind.”

Cora was able to shear his three feet of tangled hair surprisingly quickly. “Amazing,” said Lexy when she was finished. “You look like Ichabod Crane.”

“On steroids,” added Macaulay.

“Prep chef,” said Littlefrost to Barnaby. “The chef's hat will clinch it.”

Lexy drew Cora aside as the others began to try on the uniforms Littlefrost had brought with him.

“Do you have a cocktail dress and some pumps I could borrow?” Lexy asked Cora. “I think we're about the same size . . . at least before you . . .”

Cora laughed and said, “I'll show you what I have.”

•   •   •

Every breath was a silent sob. After the initial shock of having all his fingernails torn off at the roots, the agonizing pain began throbbing steadily behind Carlos's eyes like a mini jackhammer. He closed his eyes and willed himself to remain silent. He could smell cooking spices and the rank odor of sewage in the air.

He heard someone coming down the stone steps again and waited as the person approached the wooden slab.
When he opened his eyes, she was smiling down at him with what looked like motherly concern.

“Where is the sunken ship?” she asked him.

He stared back up at her, saying nothing.

She walked back over to the toolbox and returned with a pair of handheld garden clippers, the type used to prune small branches. In her other hand she was holding what looked like a tube of ointment. She paused for a few moments as if waiting to see if he planned to say something.

Smiling again, she stepped to the end of the slab, grabbed his left foot, and snipped off his big toe. He watched as she squeezed the ointment on the wound. A moment later he felt a sea of pain rage like fire through his brain.

“Epoxy cement to stanch the bleeding,” she said. “That pungent odor is formaldehyde. You don't want too much of it in your bloodstream.”

She returned to his side and held his big toe close to his face. “You have only one more of those left. If you don't tell me what I need to know, you will no longer enjoy the use of fingers or toes. And that is only the start.”

Carlos turned his head to look back at the man who had been strapped to the throne chair. The man was still sitting there, but his chin was now resting on his bare chest and his eyes were closed. He didn't appear to be breathing.

“Mr. Dolan suffered a fatal heart attack while I was attending to my rounds,” she said with seeming sadness. “Like you, he was entirely too careless in worshipping the
holy temple of his body. Now, where is the wreck of the ship you found?”