Chapter 11 Sulu Sea

Several days later Hector sent a list of 127 known oil deliveries within a 1,000 nautical mile radius. Of the 127, fewer than 50 had deep enough water for oil deliveries. "Hector says if we can narrow down the area, he can do better."

Ranger looked at the maps, "These are in Chinese."

Angela laughed, "He hacked China? Well, they have been hacking the US for years. What worries me is why China has such detailed maps of this region."

"That's another day's concern," Rick said. "What about the solar collectors?"

"Inconclusive. Hector notes they aren't as easy to spot from satellite photos."

"There are over fifty possibilities here alone. How long will it take to search all?" Rick asked.

"These fifty locations are spread all over three seas. It could take us a month or more. These are only deep-water ports. We must not dismiss transport between an oiler and the island. "

"I can't see a guy with a yacht like the Nashib using canoes and oil drums, and you dismissed the yacht as an oiler."

"But he might have a secondary craft, a shallow-draft barge, to transport from the delivery vessel to the island." Angela said.

"Then we are back to square one."

"When we began we were looking as far east as Panang. We have nearly eliminated his base being here on Mindanao. We also spent time in Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Now we are down to islands. We will find him."

"Could we use aircraft to check out these delivery docks?"

"This area is not on established flight paths. Planes are rare. If we even got close to Salem, we'd risk a rocket up our ass from his guards."

"Drones?"

"The size and cruising capacity we'd require are still governmental property. Madge would know, or more likely the spies in her office would warn Salem."

"Then we check out the deep ports one by one," Rick muttered.

"You work with Stefan and his men. I'm staying here in ZC in case he reappears. There is still the missing medical equipment for Farouk."

Rick, Stefan and several of his team began cruising the Sulawesi Sea to the south, the Bohol Sea to the north and the Sulu Sea to the west. Beyond Palawan lay the South China Sea. Everyone hoped the search would not get that far. Not until he began island hopping did Rick appreciate the vastness and questioned Angela's one month time table.

Each island visited required earning the trust of the inhabitants and beginning discussion on a large white yacht or fuel oil deliveries. Rick's mocha latte skin allowed him to blend it except for the beard. In a bold move, the beard disappeared. Immediately the old Ranger began to appear. He had maintained the hard body, but the mind had slipped. He attributed the change to Salem's drug, maybe he was hiding behind the beard.

-0-

Stephanie POV

"I'm leaving for a week," Salem announced at dinner.

I put down my fork, "I can't go that long without a blocker. Is this it, my time to die?"

He looked at me with a hint of compassion. Was he enjoying my company? I was careful not to give him much trouble. Remembering his comment about wasted minds, I had begun reading the books in the library. In return, we were discussing philosophy and history, nothing modern. "No. There is enough blocker to get you through. I will show you how to inject yourself."

"What about the others?"

"There is enough food for them, but you may have to cut back on the bathing to every other or third day due to water unless you trap enough rainwater. The desalination plant needs new parts."

I thought about food. "I don't fish."

He said without emotion, "There will be food for you."

"Thank you. Will the guards be leaving as well?"

"One will remain on patrol, but he will continue to have no contact with you. He has orders to shoot you if you travel much beyond the house. The guards believe you have a disease."

"You mean like leprosy? What have you told them?" I wondered why nobody came near the house. Great, I can die by firing squad, toxic reaction to his drugs, or abandonment.

"I've never said specifically."

"What have you said about the other three?"

"They have the same condition, but there's "hope."

Hope was a word I had all but forgotten. If Salem were late returning, would I slip into the coma too? If that happened, would he keep all of us alive? Was I the only reason Salem remained this long? If he left permanently, the other three would slip away, never regaining consciousness. However, my end would be frightful, as my mind would continue to work as I died of dehydration.

"I imagine your crew was not happy when you transported us here initially."

He chuckled, "I gave each a vaccination of saline solution and glucose."

I had been in the hospital often enough to know it was standard rehydration fluid but played innocent. "Would that protect them?"

"It was a placebo, I was vaccinating their minds making them think they were safe while we transported you here," he chuckled.

"I'm surprised they return with you each time you leave."

"I pay them very well plus discipline is strict. The guards are as much captive on this island as you. The third reason is I control their families. The sons here know if they disobey I will kill their families."

I gasped. "Would you?"

"Not me but my second in command, Abasi, would and has." He then added, "Also know the remaining guard has no means of outside communicate. You will not be able to call for rescue help."

I was confused, "Sir, what good would rescue do? Unless you have an antidote, leaving the island will condemn me to death." No way was I telling him Rick survived by given palliative care until the drug wore out. He seemed pleased with my response. I was always pretty good at playing the dumb woman.

"Is there anything you want me to bring back? I assume you do not want more sweets."

"No, your healthy diet has cured my sweet tooth and probably unclogged my arteries." I thought a moment. I had a library filled with botany, chemistry, medicine, philosophy, and fiction. "No, I can't think of anything I need or want aside from the personal products. You keep my hair in order. I would appreciate a journal to write my thoughts or write poetry. Thank you for asking." I needed paper to continue my research.

After we finished our meal, I said sincerely, "I will miss your company." I hated playing nice, but our four lives depended on me not upsetting out….host. Murderer or jailer might have been better termed. I dare not allow myself the luxury of imagining what Rick would do if he found us.

He looked up surprised but said not a word. Had he spent long periods in isolation?

Early the next morning I watched the white yacht pull away from the long pier. It took a different route as it left. Since I did not know where I was, the change in the heading was curious, nothing more.

The loneliness crashed down on me as it did each time he left the island. This time I knew the wait would be longer. "Rick," I wept. I wanted to voice more but knew that even thinking about him was dangerous. The emotional outburst caused my chest to constrict. Damn poison, I could die of a heart attack if I get too nervous or mad. Mad, damn yes I was insane! It was time to get busy!

I marched down the stairs into The Lounge. I hated that name, but the laboratory was worse. Standing at the foot of the beds I clearly told my three charges, "There is no way I am going to let you three die." Of course, by now they could not hear me.

Spreading the journals and notes out, I was again frustrated not having paper or journals to take notes. Where could I find the paper? The obvious choice was the library. Nearly every book had at least one blank page. With a kitchen knife, I carefully removed a page or two from each hardcover, cutting as close the binding as possible. The "guest room" had pencils and pens for keeping track of the guests' care in the journal. More pages, but they would be missed.

My usual method was to think, draw graphs, charts, columns. I dare not waste my precious paper. I wrote as small as I could, leaving out unnecessary words and creating my own shorthand of sorts. Hours passed until I realized we had missed our meals! I climbed the stairs into the kitchen. Limited fresh food was available. In a day or two, I would be back to eating out of a can. No wonder I was losing weight. Living on the ranch required a different body, strong and muscular. Now I was wasting away. Working out the in a makeshift gym, rolling the bodies downstairs and waking on the beach was not enough. My large Hungarian bones were more and more evident. Yeah, Ranger had become skinny in his confinement. His muscle mass came back. Mine never will unless we are rescued, I find an antidote or the drug wears down, and Salem does not drug us again.

After tending the others, feeding, hydrating, cleaning and moving their bodies to reduce muscle rigidity, I took the journals to the guest room and worked alongside my friends. They were not conscious, but their living presence was comforting. When the words made no sense, it was time to put Salem's journals away, gather my notes and head upstairs to the bedroom alcove. There was another bed next to Sandra where I could sleep. I knew it was probably my final death bed and would not visit it early. Tomorrow when there was natural light, providing more than shadow chasing from the weak lamps, I would find a hiding place for the notes.

The following day was injection day. I had to inject myself. It looked easy but thinking about what it was, why I had to do this, and the fact I hate injections out of principle, I made a mess of it. I ended up looking like a heroin addict with holes up my arm. I started laughing, the absurdity of all. I knew I would go through several hours of not feeling well so joined my friends in the next room, feeding them, wiping them down.

"I know what you are thinking Lester, whoo-hoo! Beautiful is rewashing my naked body. Yeah, what would your wife-to-be next to you think about this?" I kept talking knowing they were past hearing me. I did so to keep from going insane, or maybe I was already over the line. I noticed Lester's finely sculpted body was losing mass as was mine. "Don't worry Les, once you get out of here, you'll be back to your rock hard body in months just as R…before." I dare not say or even think the name Ranger or Rick. I could not make the mistake of bringing Rick back into my mind lest I have another mouth fart in front of Salem.

With the consecutive study hours, I began to see the man's drive and insanity. The experience at Ranger's hand and the coma changed his personal direction from a medical supply salesman and drove him back to research pharmacist. Medical supply salesman, was that a nice way of saying drug lord?

Returning to the notes, I noticed the mention of the native healers using native plants and animals for potions. What chemicals or native plants did they use? How were the plants potions prepared? How did the drugs get into Salem? Was he now using the same formulas on us? Hopefully, other journals would offer more insight.

Returning to the journals, I read how Salem woke and eventually felt reborn. The emotional impact was significant and he decided to use it on his enemies, giving them a chance to atone for their sins. Did Salem consider himself Allah's helper?

He tried to pay the medicine man that cured him for the formula. Instead, the man insisted Salem stay and study, which he did. In time he grew impatient and left before learning all, especially how to reverse the coma as the natives had done for him. He knew he would not want his victims to return to life, but to die after suffering the long mental torment.

But Salem changed his mind. Over time and with other test subjects, he devised a blocker to keep the poison from acting for short periods. So far, I was his most successful subject. He hoped I would lead him to the antidote.

My experience with the sweet pastries frightened him. Where I thought I was sick for a few days, in reality, I was ill for two weeks! I had lost consciousness. He was afraid I had entered the eternal sleep. If I fell, would he try to bring me back? Or would he abandon me? My three companions were not responding to his experiments, and he was growing tired of them. He indicated the only reason Turner, Lester, and Sandra were not dead was my excellent care I gave them. Either most subjects in the coma died within three months from infection or what Salem called "mental weakness."

I gasped in surprise when I read he was disappointed my somniloquy, sleep talking was reduced. Apparently, he was sitting near my bed at night to determine if I was talking! That was just creepy. He was trying to learn if the drug was also a "truth serum." He theorized my failing body, the weight loss and the lack of mental and physical stimulation was responsible increasingly quiet nights.

He was concerned about my weight loss. I was not bedridden like his previous subjects, and muscle mass was lost. I was moving around, lifting more massive objects but still losing weight. Apparently, my lean, mean diet of fish, cassava, rice, and fruits was not part of the problem. I laughed thinking that in addition to inducing comas and somniloquy, the drug might be a "miracle weight loss" drug.

My mental exercising of reading the books in the library was barely enough mental stimulation, in his opinion. Our nightly discussions had become more and more cerebral. Since I told him I was a business major, he considered teaching me chemistry but feared I would start my own investigation on how to find an antidote. Oh, Salem, if you only knew that was exactly what I was doing. An antidote! My mind warped back to previous pages where he mentioned a "possible cure." Now I needed to discover how far along his tests had gone.

As I continued reading, he wrote he found it ironic Enrique Delgado, my husband, died the same way as Carlos Manoso. No way Salem could know the Rick in question was Jose and that the Rick I called to in my sleep was the former Carlos Manoso and still alive. I was nauseous thinking about Jose and his death. If Salem were merciful as he claimed, he would have killed Jose quickly.

Salem was grateful he had not allowed me to see Enrique in death as it would have ended my talking in my sleep. Also Salem had failed to follow up on the discovery of the remains in a rental car from New Jersey when the container in Lagos, wherever that was. He had only limited web access on his yacht. My mind jumped to what I just read. He has communications on his ship? Of course, he does. He had a computer. Web access? Was that where he went when he left the house? Were there more medical journals on the yacht? The thought of encountering the armed guards with a shoot to kill order made me wary of journeying to the pier, wherever it was when the boat returned.

I was finding scientific names in his journals. I assumed they were formula ingredients. On day four of Salem's absence, I picked a particularly tricky cabinet lock and found bottles. Retrieving a botanical dictionary, I discovered one bottle labeled Condrodentron tomentosum was curare. Before I started reading his botany books, I thought curare was a malaria drug. It has other uses. The second bottle did not surprise me, Erythroxylum coca-cocaine. Cocaine. Other labeled containers meant nothing.

I found numerous references to neurotoxins, paralytic toxins, such as South American rattlesnake venom and a spider from Brazil, but especially dendrotoxins. From the dictionary, I learned dendrotoxins are cobra venom. Was the reason he lived in this hellhole? I had the feeling he was afraid of them as I. He did say the guards were proficient cobra killers. Was that where the dendrotoxin came from? I shuddered.

Finally, I found mention of Bothrops, a central and South American snake, extremely deadly, was critical in making the poison. His infrequent trips to the mainland were to obtain more Bothrops venom as well as other ingredients including pufferfish. The liquid nitrogen container was to store the very delicate toxins. What type of mad mixtures was he making?

By the eighth day, I knew my time to study had to cease. The weather had remained mild, there was a high possibility Salem would return shortly. I carefully stored the notes in the secret location and went back to the botany books in the lab and the books in the library. To counter all the reading, I spent an hour each day on the veranda staring out to see, relaxing my eyes. The strain and perhaps the poison was tiring. If I survived all this, I might need glasses.

On the ninth day, I injected the last of the blocker and waited. As usual, there was nausea, but now I really didn't want to eat canned sardines or fruit. Coconut water and tea became my diet. Day 10 came and went, he was late returning. By day fifteen, my energy level was low, and my body ached. I should be panicking, but I had long ago admitted to myself I was a lunatic's subject and was already dead. Real death seemed comforting.

On day sixteenth day tending the others was excruciating painful. When complete I literally crawled up to the library. Perhaps I could read. On the table lay the Spanish dictionary and "El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. I was teaching myself to read and understand Spanish by reading Don Quixote de La Mancha. The Spanish was 17th century. My other choice was Faust, by Goethe in German. What a decision I had: Don Quixote's madness or Faust's damnation?

My head ached. My hands no longer responded to my brain, in fact, nothing responded. My eyes were getting dry. I was not blinking. With all my remaining strength, I willed my eyes to shut.

I was aware, the island's sounds blew through the window, blood pulsed through my head past my ear, my breathing was regular, but I could not increase it or slow it down. "This is it," I thought. I was beginning the dark journey to oblivion. Who would tend Lester, Sandra, and Turner? My brain cried, but physically I could not.

Day and night were only evident by the faint light that came through my eyelids. I could feel the breeze as it blew through the house. The pleasant Plumeria fragrance was not on the air. Instead, I smelled the island's west side swamp where the crocodiles lived. I heard the rain. Usually, rain meant fresh water for drinking and bathing. Now it sat uncollected.

Dreams were common. I was standing in the pond at the Newark park, my skirt floated about me like a water lily. Everyone laughed when my mother spanked me for getting too close to the lake. I "felt" my mother's slap on my face for cutting my hair short. Valerie had done it. What would my mother say about my hair now? The large white piece of wedding cake was delicious until I saw my new husband, Dickie Orr, ogling the server. Morelli stood above me waving his arms yelling about something. I relived Scrog shooting Ranger, Abruzzi burning my arm, falling off the bridge into the Delaware River and Ranger diving in after me.

Rick told me nightmares were from the Devil. If so, I was possessed. What was Rick's solution to bad dreams? Prayer. He had been raised a Catholic Christian as I had but fell away when sinful pride took control in his adolescence. His work in the Army and after further propelled him down in despair and belief he needed to heal his soul. During his time under Salem's drug, he began praying and repenting. Though physically he couldn't cry, his mind cried for him. He was not sure he was fully repentant of his past life, but getting closer. My first prayers were for Rick, then the three downstairs. I hoped to get around to praying for myself before my brain tuned out.

To calm me, I began reviewing my research in my head. How close was I to unlocking the mystery of Salem's poison? I viewed my notes, threw out hypotheses, and wondered if I found an antidote, how would I manufacture it? Yes, time was an antidote, but maybe there was something faster.

My hearing seemed more acute. Salem never wrote about that in his journals. I heard all the island and oceans sounds I could not hear previously from the house. Initially, I counted the waves in a set. At one time, I loved the surf, but living here on the island and listening to the ocean, I grew to hate it. Now it was nothing more than a timepiece, marking my coming end.

I heard birds. There were not many to ar. Probably the crocs and snakes ate them. Or maybe the guards on the island needed to supplement their protein with something other than fish and reptile meat.

A sound startled me. I heard Salem coming up the stairs, "Oh my dear, I'm sorry I got delayed." I heard no more.