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“THEY’RE GOING TO MURDER him,” a woman’s voice said once Alex and the others had disappeared from sight. “They’ve tricked him. They’ve tricked you. And Alex is going to die for it.”
As rattled as I was to hear those words, I recognized the voice even before the woman stepped out of the jungle and presented herself to us, and the men around her lowered their guns.
It was the woman from the pineapple grove—it had to be. She was tall and slim and somewhere in her late-fifties. Her hair was gray and cut short, and she was wearing a white tank top and faded jeans. The first thing that struck me when I saw her was that her left eye had recently been blackened and there was a fair amount of swelling and bruising around the right side of her mouth. It looked to me as if someone had punched her several times in the face.
“What are you talking about?” I asked her. “What do you mean they’ve tricked us?”
She cocked her head at me. “What about that don’t you understand? They’re going to kill your husband.”
“But why?” I said to her in fear. “We made a deal with you people. Alex is going to give you that money. We promised you that. We meant that. We plan to come through with that.”
“I have no doubt that your husband will. But they’re still going to kill him. Once the money is transferred and they get back on the boat, they plan to cut his throat and toss his body into the ocean. And then they’re going to come back here and kill the rest of you. Why? Because they don’t want you here. Planes are nearby—you can hear them now. This morning, it was decided that the last thing we need is a search team coming here, which might threaten our chances of remaining on this island. We’re here illegally. The fear is this—what will become of us if we’re found out? As much as possible, the men who took your husband want to snuff out any chance of that happening.”
“But they’re going to make that phone call,” I said. “Alex won’t release the money if they don’t make the call.”
“There’s not going to be a phone call,” the woman said. “That was a lie. In about an hour, while they’re on the boat at sea, Alex will be told the truth. There will be no phone call. Instead, he’ll be given a choice. Go to the island, wire the money, and then give up his life in exchange for humane deaths for the rest of you. You know, such as a quick shot to the forehead. Or, if he refuses, he’ll be given a summary of exactly what will be done to you after his death—torture for all, rape for the women, starvation, dehydration, and finally a death so brutal and drawn out, it will stun him when he hears it. On one level, what happens next for you is up to Alex. And from what I gather, he’ll give himself up in an effort to save all of you from the worst. At least, that’s what they’re betting on. And I have to say that I think that they’re right. Not that it matters. Either way, they’re going to kill him. And then they’re going to kill you.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Tank asked.
The woman stepped farther out of the jungle and walked toward him. “Because most of us don’t agree with it,” she said. “The men who were here earlier? The eldest is my husband. The other three men are my sons. Do you see the bruising on my face? Of course you do. My husband did this to me when he learned of the conversation I had with Jennifer and Alex outside the pineapple grove, which apparently I shouldn’t have had, at least according to his fists. I was hunting boar. I was with my eldest son, who remains fiercely loyal to his father, even after he did this to me. It was my son who told him about our conversation. I was beaten because I chose not to tell him. The man I married thirty-three years ago is gone. He’s a different person now. He’s irrational. Deluded. Abusive—and not only toward me. For decades, he was fine. A good man. But over the past few years, he has developed something of a God complex. Or close to that. What matters is that many of us have lost faith in him as our leader, including me. I want to get the hell away from him. I want to leave him here. I want to go back to the States and start a new life on my own.” She motioned around her. “And so do these people. And dozens of others. Those of us who see my husband for what he’s become—a sonofabith and a tyrant—want off this island.”
“What about those who remain loyal to him?” Tank asked.
“They’re in the minority. As far as we’re concerned, they can stay behind and rot in hell with him here.”
“Is this the first time he has beaten you?” Tank asked.
She laughed at that.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“So am I.”
“You came here for a reason. Obviously, you tricked your husband, and came here with a plan. What do you have in mind?”
“I want to act now to save Alex’s life and put my husband and my sons in jail before it’s too late.”
“You want your sons in jail?”
“They don’t love me—instead, they worship him. They’ve condoned every one of his strikes against me. They’ve defended them. They think nothing of me. And because of all of it, I no longer consider them my sons—the betrayal is too great. And not just against me. Every person with me right now has been negatively affected by my husband and my sons. They’ve endured lashings. Quarantines. Anything to remind them who is in charge.”
She looked at me. “When I saw you in the grove, I had no choice but to speak to you the way I did because my son needed to hear me take a hard line with you. Otherwise, I knew that he’d tell my husband that I hadn’t. And I knew what the repercussions of that would be. My mistake was not telling my husband myself that I’d come upon you. But that doesn’t matter now—my face will heal, just as it has before. But I do know this—I can’t live this way anymore. And neither can the men here with me now, nor their families. We want out.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“There’s another boat,” she said.
Tank’s eyes flashed with surprise at the mention of that. “You have another boat here? I saw only one.”
“The other boat is on the other side of our compound. It has its own dock. You were so consumed by the antenna, you obviously missed it.”
“And you want us to use it. Why? What’s your plan? I suppose you want something from us. What is it?”
“Our freedom, which you can provide for us with a mere phone call. Is that asking too much?”
“It isn’t.”
“I want you to take the boat with two of our men, who will be armed. I need you to move now and get to that island before it’s too late. There, you’ll need to find the boat they took with them, which won’t be easy because there are two ports and one marina on that island, none of which is small. But if you do find the boat in time, one of my men will claim it with the spare set of keys we have for it. He’ll bring it back to us—thus leaving my husband and my sons stranded on the island, and unable to kill Alex.”
“How do we know that they won’t kill him? They might kill him out of spite.”
“Not on that island, they won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the island is too populated. Beyond that, it’s daylight. The moment you make land, you must find a phone and alert the authorities of the situation, as well as the bank’s location. Then, you must go in search of their boat to shut them down so they can’t leave the island with Alex. There’s still time to make all of that happen, but time is running out. It won’t be long before they board that boat. You need to get on the other one—fast—so you can get there not long after they arrive.”
“What will those against you think of that?”
“I told you—they’re in the minority.” She looked at the men on either side of her. “These men are armed, and we’ll take them with us when we enter the camp. There also are others waiting for us there—all of them with guns. If anyone tries something, we’re not afraid to fight back. With my husband and my sons gone, we see this as our chance to finally get off this island. To leave this life. If you’ll help us, we will help you.”
“Done,” Tank said.
“Thank you for that. But we must hurry.”
“I’m going,” I said.
The woman nodded at me. “I thought that you would.”
“Jennifer,” Tank said.
Before he could say another word, I stopped him short. “I’m going. End of story. That’s my husband out there, and he’s not going to face this without me. Besides, I can assist you.”
“How?”
“By helping to find that boat, for one. And by watching your back, for another. But before we find that boat, we need to make two phone calls—one to the local police, who, at this point, must be aware of the search for our plane, and one to Ann at Wenn, who will make certain that whomever is in charge of the search knows where we are.” I looked at the woman. “By the way, where are we?”
“You’re in the Marshall Islands.”
“What’s the name of the island we’re going to?”
“Majuro Atoll.”
“How many people live on it?”
“Twenty-five thousand?”
“What is your name?”
“Catherine.”
“Does the island we’re on have a name?”
“It does. Bokak Atoll.” She lifted her head at me. “Presumably, it’s one of ten uninhabited islands here. So, when you talk to the authorities, feel free to tell them that this island is indeed inhabited—and that most of us want off of it.”
