Chapter 4
Jesse woke to find himself on a cot in a room with a window on two of the four walls. They were covered by heavy, flower-patterned curtains that let in a narrow sliver of light when a soft breeze moved the fabric, and he heard the hush of gentle waves on sand. The sent of sea air told him that he was close to the ocean and no longer in the safe house. He recalled that Seamus had insisted that he try some of the family brew, so he took a shot glass full in the name of politeness, and not long after he felt very ill and was unable to stay conscious. He couldn't believe that he'd been so stupid to trust him.
Jesse let his eyes adjust and he rolled to his side. On the other bunk facing away from him, he spied the back of Sam's Hawaiian shirt.
"Sam. Hey, Sammy, you awake?"
Sam groaned. Jesse sat up and his head pounded, but he ignored the sensation and moved closer to the cot. He reached out, grasped Sam's shoulder and shook it.
"Sam. Come on man, wake up."
"Jesse? Is that you?"
Jesse sucked in a breath. "Maddie?"
"Yes, it's me." Her voice grew in volume and her footsteps neared the room until she stood in the doorway. "Jesse, is Sam okay?"
Sam grumbled and flapped a hand at an insect that attempted to land on his nose, and he opened his eyes, setting them on Maddie, wide with surprise. "Maddie, I thought you were home with Charlie!"
"I was until I was kidnapped." The question ground past her gritted teeth. "Who's doing this, and why?"
"My guess is Larry is involved, and as far as why, his ultimate goal is to get Mike," Sam said as he rose to a seated position and stretched. "What was in that beer?"
"Seamus got you, huh?" Jesse looked at him with chagrin still on his face.
"Yeah. You too?" Sam shook his head, his mouth a grim line of frustration. "We shouldn't have trusted him. He played us good."
Jesse admitted his guard was also down. "I should have known better. You were upstairs asleep and I was watching him and Carlos." He paused, realizing that they were missing a man. "Where's Carlos?"
"I don't care about him right now," Sam exclaimed. He pushed himself to his feet and instantly regretted the move. "Uhoh."
"What's 'uhoh', Sam?"
"I think I'm gonna be... sick." He couldn't control the clenching of his stomach, but he at least managed to keep the contents down. Leaning against the wall felt good. The plaster was cool. "With side effects like this, I don't think Broken Fiddle beer is going to make it in this country."
Maddie snorted. "Figures someone would drug your beer, Sam."
"Oh, and what happened to you? Someone spike your nicotine gum?" Sam winced at the snappiness in his tone and the words he spoke. "I'm sorry, Maddie. That... that was uncalled for." He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, rested his wrists on his knees and closed his eyes with the hope that darkness would tame the after-party in his stomach.
"I don't know what happened. One minute I was at home with Charlie. He wanted to go to the park, so I was getting ready to take him. I was putting things in my bag, and something crashed through the dining room window." She sniffed. "It was like tear gas or something, and it paralyzed me. I fell and couldn't get up, and Charlie... he was on the floor." Maddie swiped at her eye, trying to hold herself together. "If they hurt him..."
"It's okay, Maddie, we'll get him back safe." Jesse came around the cot and put an arm around Maddie.
"Where's Fiona," Maddie asked. She searched her pockets for a tissue and found a rumpled one that she used to dab at her nose.
"She's probably still in the hospital," Sam replied and told her what he'd seen the night before. "Carlos is, hopefully, in a hospital too. Unless they decided to just kill him. I mean, this is Larry we're talking about. The only thing predictable about him is that he likes to cut a wide swath when dealing with life and death."
"We have to figure out where we are, who's holding us, and why," Maddie said, pacing in front of the windows. She stopped and turned, peeled back the curtain with caution, and peered outside. "We have to find Charlie, Fiona, and that Carlos guy. Well, it looks like we're on an island, but I don't see a way off." She turned and stared at Jesse and Sam. "Did either of you tell this Seamus guy, whoever he is, where Michael was?"
"No," Jesse answered. "Not that we could, since we don't know where he is."
"That's what Larry wants. He won't quit until he gets Mike's location." Sam rested his head against the wall. "Drugged beer is on the tame side of what he's got planned for us if we don't talk."
"Well, until someone comes for us, I think we're pretty much stuck here," Jesse declared as he joined Maddie at the window and looked through it. "There's a short pier but no boat. I'm going to check out the rest of the place. You guys wanna stay here?"
"Are you kidding?" Sam forced himself to get to his feet and used the wall for support. "We are not splitting up for anything, got it? We need to stick together."
The three left the bedroom. Across the hall was another bedroom with a cot. "That's where I woke up," Maddie said. She led them down a short hall to a living area with an old couch, a table equipped with four chairs, and a kitchen area that ran along the wall shared with Maddie's room. A small ancient stove and an ice box flanked a short counter with a sink in the middle.
Sam stepped forward to check the cupboards. "Did they leave us with any water? Food? Ah, a little bit, but not enough for us to stay here long." He looked in the ice box. "There's a huge block of ice in here, but not much in the cold area."
"So either they expect to get something out of us soon, or they don't anticipate we'll be needing to eat after a few days," Maddie grumbled. "Jeez, why'd I have to quit smoking?"
"So you can be around to be Charlie's grandma for a long time yet," Jesse volunteered.
"It won't do much good if we're dead," Maddie replied with a tartness in her words.
Sam placed a comforting hand on Maddie's back and spoke in a soft tone. "There's no way Larry will kill any of us until he's gotten what he wants, and that's Mike. And depending upon why he wants him, maybe Larry will give us a break and let us go. Big maybe, but stranger things have happened."
Maddie let her head fall sideways into Sam's chest and she closed her eyes as he put his arms around her. She didn't know much about Larry, but if Sam wasn't holding out much hope of their survival, he must be a terrible person, one of the baddest Michael had ever had to deal with. She really wished she hadn't quit smoking!
The temperature inside the shack was rising with the sun beating on the wooden shingle roof. Maddie busied herself putting together a little something for them to eat after doing an inventory and realizing that they only had three to four days' worth of food in the ramshackle building. Sam and Jesse went to the beach a few yards from the front door. They split up and walked in different directions until they almost couldn't see each other, and then they returned.
"It's a small island," Jesse reported to Maddie as the three sat down to lunch.
"We'll go around the back after we eat, but I'm betting we're not gonna find anything like a boat," Sam added.
"How far do you think we are from civilization? And where are we?" Maddie took a breath to try to stem the panic she felt rising inside her. "God only knows, we could be in Cuba or something!"
Jesse and Sam glanced at each other. The last place they wanted to be was Cuba. Some angry Russians there would like nothing better than to obtain pieces of them, and Mike, as souvenirs. "Most likely we're on some island in the Keys, or the Caribbean, not too far from Miami," Jesse speculated.
"Jesse's right. Larry won't want us to be gone far, just enough to make it tough to get home without a boat." Sam reached into his pockets and muttered a curse. "They cleaned me out. I don't even have my cell, which would probably be worthless on this island."
After finishing their meal, the trio set out to circle the island. Nothing but white sand stretched completely around it and scrub brush with a few palm trees dotted the real estate in the center. Two palms shielded the shack from the late afternoon sun, which was some consolation.
"I'm not seeing any coconuts on those trees," Jesse observed, gazing up at the swaying fronds that whispered in the breeze. "How much fresh water do we have?"
"There's a tank behind the shack," Sam replied. "Let's check it."
The men determined that they had several days of water if they conserved it, three days of food, and no fresh clothes, so what they wore at the time was it. Maddie frowned, depression setting in. Without a word she went inside and left Sam and Jesse standing on the porch. Their eyes scanned the blue horizon, and neither of them said anything, hoping that a boat might come close enough for them to signal. They had some matches in the cupboard, but those were also at a premium.
"I wonder how far a body would have to swim to get help," Jesse mused aloud.
"That's crazy talk, Jess. Look at it. There's nothing for miles. No man could swim that, especially if you don't know which way you should be going." Sam exhaled and took a step to the sand.
"What are you doing? I thought we were staying together, remember?"
Sam turned and squinted against the angled sun. "I'm not going anywhere. Just grabbing some of those fronds on the beach to give me something to do, and maybe I'll think of a plan to get us off of this island."
With nothing better to do, Jesse joined him. Together they pulled nearly a dozen green fronds from underneath the palm trees and deposited them near the porch. Sam stripped the leaves from the stalk and began weaving them together.
Jesse smiled. "Oh, I get it. You're making a raft. Great idea!" He got off his butt that he perched on the porch edge and joined Sam in his efforts. The leaves were tough and cut their hands.
"No, these'll make a crappy raft. We don't have enough wood for support, and even if we did, we don't have a tool to fell trees and prep them for use." Sam gave Jesse a disappointed look. "You haven't had to do too many survival missions, have you?"
"Before I met Mike, no, they weren't part of my regular routine."
Laughing, Sam said, "Until Mike came back, my idea of survival was figuring out how to open a beer when I had one arm around a beautiful woman and the bottle in my other hand." He smirked. "But you never forget how to do it, survive that is. Mike has just made it into an art form."
"So I guess it hasn't been all that bad hooking up with him, huh."
Sam looked around and settled his gaze on Jesse. "Why don't you say that again when we're back at Carlito's with a couple cold ones."
"Preferably not Broken Fiddle beer."
Sam threw back his head and laughed. "You got that right, mister!"
"So, what are we going to do with these things?" Jesse held up the small mat he made.
"I was thinking they might make a good hammock. Better than trying to sleep on those cots." Sam grinned.
"I still think we could make something that'll float if we wove 'em tighter."
Sam looked at Jesse. "I've got an idea. I saw some nice, evenly sized trunks on the ground in the scrub. Maybe we could build a frame with them, but it'll have to be sturdy to hold the matting." He studied the pieces they already created and said, "Let's go haul those out before it gets dark, and maybe Maddie can help us with this part."
With no electricity on the island and no oil lamps that they could find, darkness came fast and heavy. Jesse and Sam piled up the logs alongside the shack in time to go in for supper, and until the light faded away the three worked on weaving the mats onto one another so they formed one large piece.
"That's only big enough for two of us, maybe," Jesse said as he dropped his end and looked down at his hands. They stung and he could sense the cuts in his palms. "Is there a first aid kit in the shack?"
"No," Maddie replied. "I looked when I was doing an inventory of the food." In the twilight she examined his hands and choked back the horror as she exclaimed, "Jesse! Your hands are practically cut to ribbons!"
"Not that yours are much better," Jesse countered and turned Maddie's hands palms facing upward.
"Yeah, we're all looking like we tried to hold a knife by the blade," Sam said as he showed them his hands. "Rinse 'em off with some of the water and let them be exposed to the air. That's the best we can do."
It wasn't easy falling asleep with the dull, rhythmic pain, but even without it, Sam would have stayed on alert all night. The moon was full and shone on their island, slipping a beam through the crack between the curtains right into his eyes. He rolled to avoid it and dozed now and then, but in the early hours he stepped out onto the porch to watch the bright orb crawl across the sky. Faint lights in the distance got his attention. It was probably a cruise ship. Despite maritime law, Sam knew it was pointless to burn something to get their attention. They were on a precise route transporting over a thousand customers to someplace, and they had no time to deal with stranded people being held against their will.
Thinking like that, it was tempting to lose hope. Sam recalled times where the team had been in more dire straights and they came through. They would do it again. He wondered where Mike was, and if he was safe or deep into some kind of trouble. Then it hit him. Larry had connections in the Agency. He could have found out where Mike was, unless what he was doing was no longer CIA-sanctioned. He shivered in the balmy air, thinking that if his friend had gone dark, he wasn't sure what was more dangerous: Larry or his mission.
The sky was beginning to lighten on the eastern horizon. Sam should have gone back to bed, but with the thoughts he was thinking, he was too unsettled. He stayed on the porch and watched the sky change and eventually the sliver of sun rose. He heard footsteps and turned to see Jesse coming out of the shack. He sat beside him and watched the sight.
"Couldn't sleep?"
Sam shrugged. "Someone had to keep an eye on things."
Jesse smiled at Sam's bravado. "Of course. Thanks, man. You should go get some rest and I'll keep watch."
Sam wanted to argue, but after all the hunting for materials and constructing the palm frond mats, he really was tired. He entered the shack and trudged past Maddie in the hall, and he gave her a mumbled good morning before dropping onto the cot. Sam tried to tell himself that his weariness was a remnant of the drug that Seamus slipped into his beer, but that was a lie. Part of him wanted to stay awake. His body won and he fell asleep within five minutes of his head hitting the pillow.
