“Tout va bien?” Oliver demanded. Everything okay?
Charlie nodded a single, defiant nod. Oliver bristled at the reaction. It was becoming more and more frequent. After Madame had shot the overweight spy, Oliver did not wait around. He left to check on his most talented soldat, who had been acting and talking like a prima donna. The boat trip back to the main compound took two hours.
Hussein’s second-in-command reached and grabbed the long-haired soldat with both hands, pulling his face to within inches of his. “I have protected you from Madame. But I will not be able to protect you much longer. Toe the line or you will be dealt with. I said, ‘Is everything ready?’”
Charlie again provided a single nod again, this time adding a single word. “Oui.”
Oliver had reached his breaking point. He recalled the days back in Newport News as he searched Thomas Pettigrew’s and his daughter’s homes looking for the box of files. He remembered thinking that the assassinations would be his last mission. That he would retire when the job was done.
Then they had failed. He should have known Miss Delilah would not allow them to stop until they had avenged her daughter and her son. So much for living the good life, he thought. Now he had to babysit this idiot!
“Très bien. I will be over to check the accommodations shortly. I am here for your evening dose.”
Oliver scanned the space. Standing inside the single-story barracks at the southern end of the compound, three other guards looked on with rapt curiosity.
“Allez!” Oliver demanded.
They dispersed, disappearing out the door.
Charlie moved his head in the direction of his bunk area. On a short shelf above the neatly made cot sat three prescription bottles. Oliver released his grip on the senior guard and picked up the amber vials. He palmed a pill from each and grabbed a bottle of water from a small refrigerator in the kitchen area.
Oliver picked up the prescriptions personally every month at the local pharmacie, delivering them to the barracks. He made sure that Charlie swallowed every dose. It was the only way he could guarantee Charlie could continue his service to the cause.
“Now!”
Oliver handed the pills to Charlie. Charlie placed all three on his tongue and closed his mouth. Oliver unscrewed the cap from the bottle and handed it over. Charlie gulped down a swig.
“Show me!” Oliver demanded. “I must return to Miss Delilah on the other island.”
Charlie stuck out his tongue.
“They will arrive in six hours. Make sure you and Pierre are prepared. Si vous vous vissez …” Oliver switched to English for emphasis. If you screw up…
Charlie responded with another single nod. Oliver felt his jaw muscles tighten. He cocked his head and lifted his arm, prepared to launch a backhand across Charlie’s face, but stopped.
“Batard!” he whispered, walking away.
Charlie waited until Oliver exited the barracks into the Caribbean morning. When the door closed, Charlie walked into the bathroom, reached into his mouth and from under his tongue and removed each of the wet, sticky tablets. Palming them, he moved to the five naked toilets. He dropped the pills into one and flushed.
He had stopped taking the pills a week ago. He’d practiced the maneuver for weeks: rolling his tongue and lodging the tablets beneath it. He was feeling like a man again, his energy and strength returning.
But so were the urges. The pills dulled his senses, making him lethargic and clouding his mind. The irrepressible urges had almost gotten him killed and incarcerated. Charlie held no illusions about his illness. As a serial rapist and sex addict, he needed to feel the power and the raw energy he experienced when he ravaged a woman beneath him.
Miss Hussein, the Boss Woman, had saved him from a long sentence in an Algerian prison for raping and mutilating a young local. Oliver took up his cause, insisting the team needed him. His skills could not be replaced, Oliver had pleaded. To save one of her trusted soldats, Hussein intervened by bribing a corrupt judge. But she insisted that he be treated. That was six months ago.
Charlie hated the pills. He didn’t like what they did to him. They made him feel weak and sluggish, always tired. Worse, yet, he couldn’t get it up. His member hung between his thighs like a limp sausage.
Pas plus! No more!
At the moment, he didn’t give a shit about Hussein. It was good to feel like a man again.
They hurtled toward the Lee Hall Depot. Jason in the Mustang trailed Hutton’s Ford pick-up by a car length. Hutton jerked the truck to the right, negotiating the two-ton vehicle north onto Yorktown Road. They had several close calls, barreling through junctions with intersecting roads in the populated sections of schools and businesses along Warwick.
Jason was cautious and lost ground three times at the lights. Fifty yards behind now, he closed the distance again. Yorktown Road cut through a rural area with dense forests punctuated by large, flat fields. On this stretch, Jason closed to within a few yards. Hutton’s adrenaline must have waned and his drunkenness had taken over again. The truck weaved and swerved along the roadway, hurtling through the night toward Jefferson Avenue.
Jason pulled alongside, the Mustang’s grill even with Hutton’s door. Hutton pushed the barrel of a rifle out the window, laying it across his left arm.
Taking an unsteady bead and glancing back and forth between the Mustang and the roadway, Hutton pulled the wheel left, crumpling the Mustang’s quarter panel. Jason braked, swerving left, catching the shoulder of the two-lane road. A blast erupted from the barrel. The passenger side of the windscreen crackled into multiple spider webs. Chunks of glass sprayed his face.
Jason slammed the brakes. His car nosed down. The engine of the pick-up pitched higher. The vehicle lurched forward and sped up, creating separation. Fifteen seconds later, Hutton hung a left, west onto Jefferson Avenue. Jason floored the pedal, fishtailing back onto the road.
He roared into the intersection. A horn blared. Tires screeched. Jason narrowly missed a compact car as a horn wailed then died away.
A burning sensation crept up Jason’s shoulder to his neck and down his right arm. A rosette of crimson circled the holes in his sleeve. A trail of blood oozed from the wounds. Glass from the windshield had sprayed his arm and shoulder.
Nausea welled in his throat. His right hand shook. Jason drove for another mile, never letting his eyes leave the pair of taillights ahead. The Mustang drifted toward the right shoulder as Hutton’s taillights became fainter through the web of cracks in the glass.
Then in the distance, the taillights disappeared. The disappearance coincided with a cyclone of smoke and dust and the sound of twisting metal. The sight of intermittent flashes of red taillights pulsed as the truck cartwheeled along the roadway. Jason yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, overcorrecting. The Mustang responded, its tires grabbing asphalt. Jason recorrected in the opposite direction.
Through the passenger-side window, he saw a large fireball mushrooming up from the overturned vehicle. An instant snapshot singed into his memory a spilt second before he felt his own car leave the roadway.
Jason’s stomach plummeted. The car became airborne. Tree trunks and branches along this northern stretch of Jefferson Avenue hurtled at him.
The front end crumpled. Metal screamed. The car stopped, but Jason’s body kept moving, stopped instantly by the deploying airbag. Something penetrated the already weakened windshield, tearing at the flesh of his face.
The last sensations Jason experienced were the whiplash of his head and neck followed by the warm gush of blood over his eyes.