Chasing the Lost (10 page)

“You have the advantage on me,” Chase said.

“I do.”

“I assume you are Ivar Karralkov.”

“You can assume all you want,” Karralkov said. He began tapping a finger against his lips. “Did you run into a man named Vladislav while you were in Boulder? People are looking for him. Friends. They are quite concerned.”

“Friends of his, or friends of yours?” Riley asked.

“Both.”

“I ran into him.”

“And?”

“He was killed by a retired Special Forces officer named Rivers.”

The finger stopped tapping. “I appreciate that. You answered without hesitation. And you gave me bad news. Few people dare give me bad news.”

“Rivers is dead also,” Chase said. “He was killed by Vladislav’s CIA handler.”

“And the handler?”

“I killed him.”

“So you are the last man standing from the incident?”

“I am.”

“I have to assume someone with more power wanted the CIA handler dead,” Karralkov said, “or else you would not be this last man standing. Why are you here, Mister Chase?”

“A young boy, named Cole Briggs, was kidnapped last night on Hilton Head.”

“Was does that have to do with me?”

“I received information that implicated you in the kidnapping.”

“And you come here, leaving your gun in the car, and accuse me of kidnapping? Are you stupid, brave, or simply ignorant?”

“My friends know where I am,” Chase said. “If I’m not back on Hilton Head by five, they’ll come here looking for me. They won’t leave their guns in their cars.”

“You threaten me in my own place?”

“No. I state facts.”

Karralkov sighed. “I did not kidnap this boy. You can leave now.”

“Why did you send Ivan Oronsky and his partner to check on my dog and try to find me?”

“I do not know an Ivan Oronsky.”

“They threatened a friend of mine,” Chase said. “They shot at me. They shot my dog.” Chase wasn’t quite sure which pissed him off the most. He started to lean forward, but a hand on each shoulder clamped down like vices and slammed him back.

Karralkov waved a hand dismissively. “I did not kidnap this boy. I did not send men after a dog or you. This is your last chance to leave here unhurt.”

“You’re full of shit,” Chase said. “You shut down SAS’s computers two weeks ago.”

“Now you will be hurt,” Karralkov said.

Riley was early for the five p.m. meeting at Chase’s house. He could feel his old persona seeping back; on-time in the Army had always meant being at least fifteen minutes early. Riley smiled as he pulled his motorcycle into Chase’s driveway, both at the thought and seeing the tree crashed onto the roof. It was in the vein of what he’d expect from an ex-Spec Ops guy inheriting a house on Hilton Head. Sort of the way he’d inherited a half-assed bookie business on Dafuskie. You might be invited to a different life, but you were never going to be completely part of it.

Riley got to the end of the drive and stopped the bike. Through the stands of bamboo and palmetto, he noted a Mercedes parked in the drive next door. It had a personalized license plate: ROLLINS, which Riley thought was just plain dumb. Nothing like making yourself conspicuous. He still hadn’t grasped that in the civilian world, many people became successful by becoming conspicuous, whereas in the black ops world, it often meant making yourself dead.

Riley walked across the yard, scrambling over the downed tree and through a break in the bamboo. He was about ten feet from the door when it swung open and the muzzle of a revolver appeared, following by Rollins holding it. It was what Riley privately called a ‘penis adjustment’ gun, in that he speculated the size of the gun was inversely proportional to the owner’s sense of virility. People just didn’t understand that while the type of gun was important, equally important was the quality of bullet, and much more important, the quality of the person who held the gun.

“Get the fuck off my land.”

Riley raised his hands. “Just wanted to chat, Mister Rollins.”

“I know who you are,” Rollins said.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Riley asked, actually curious to hear the answer.

“What are you doing here? Go back to Dafuskie.”

“Just wanted to chat.”

“Get off my land.”

“I hear you owe SAS a lot of money,” Riley said.

Rollins squinted, and the gun barrel dropped slightly. “What the fuck?” Rollins nodded his head toward Chase’s house. “You with him?”

“Could you put the gun away?”

Rollins looked past Riley, down his own driveway, and Riley realized he was afraid of something more than trespassers.

“Did you hear gunfire last night?” Riley asked.

“Kids on the beach with fireworks,” Rollins said, less than convincingly.

“Right,” Riley said. “You know Walter Briggs, right?”

“Why is this any of your business?” The gun was now pointing at the ground.

Riley knew one thing, at least. As Farrelli had pointed out, Rollins didn’t have the balls to run a kidnapping. But something was wrong with him. The hair on the back of Riley’s neck tingled and he tuned in to that, a feeling he hadn’t had in a long time.

Ambush.

“A friend asked for my help,” Riley said, just filling the air with words while he tried to focus on where the feeling was coming from. Not Rollins, but close. “You look like you might need some help. Heard the Quad is also pressuring, trying to get you to sell off some of your property at a loss.”

“Where did you hear all this?” The gun was now hanging limp in his hand.

“It’s Hilton Head,” Riley said. “People talk. I listen.” There was an open window above the garage, and Riley caught a flicker of movement in the darkness behind the window. Someone was up there. Someone armed. Someone stupid, who didn’t know overwatch needed to stay far enough into the shadows to never be noticed.

Rollins nodded glumly. “Everybody is in everybody else’s business. What’s my business to you?”

“You know Karralkov?”

Rollins spit onto his own front stoop; dumb, but showing some fire coming back into him. “Fucking Russians.”

“Did they take SAS down two weeks ago?”

Rollins nodded. “That’s the word.”

“And Karralkov is pressuring you to sell property.”

Rollins gave a bitter laugh. “Everyone is pressuring me to sell. Karralkov, the bank.”

“The Quad?”

“You
are
informed,” Rollins said. “Yeah, them, too. So much for ring-knocking.” He held up his left hand, adorned with a large, gold school ring. “Except Karralkov is offering top dollar. As if money is no problem. But his top dollar still keeps me underwater.”

“Maybe money isn’t a problem for him,” Riley said. “Especially if he got a cash infusion of five million two weeks ago. Did you hear the shots last night?”

“Yes.”

Riley waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. “That didn’t worry you?”

“Yeah, it worried me. I though they were after me.”

“Who?”

“The Russians. Karralkov.”

“Is that why you have someone up there”—Riley nodded toward the window—“with a gun?”

Rollins sighed. “Mikey!”

A head appeared in the window. “Yes, Mister Rollins?”

“Mister Riley isn’t a threat. Watch the road, and also watch the security camera for the dock.”

“Yes, sir.” The head disappeared.

“You worried about someone coming by water?” Riley asked.

“Worry is part of my life.”

“Mikey your bodyguard?”

Rollins shrugged, indicating Mikey was of little importance. “He’s a former Marine. Pretty much homeless when I found him. He lives above my garage. He can be useful at times.”

As if he were a dog you found on the street
, Riley thought, but didn’t say.

“You’re here about the kid, aren’t you?” Rollins asked.

Riley took a step closer. “What do you know?”

“The Russians snatched him. Briggs’ son. That’s the word I’ve heard. They’re taking SAS down. They’re going to take over this whole fucking place. And no one can stop them.”

“We’ll see about that,” Riley said.

“You’re going to take them on?” Rollins asked. “I’ve been thinking about getting on board my plane and flying south. A long way south.”

“You have a plane at the airfield here?” Riley asked. He heard a car graveling up the drive behind him. He glanced back at Chase’s lot, and a green Volkswagon Beetle rolled to a halt behind his Jeep. A slight woman with red hair emerged from the driver’s side, and a massive brute with a Ranger T-shirt stretched over his torso somehow unfolded from the passenger seat.

Rollins looked past him and saw the same thing. “Those more of your friends? I know that big guy. He’s crazy. Get the fuck out of here.” The door slammed shut.

* * * * *

There were many overlapping rhythms to the tidal lands and the barrier islands and the ocean. Kono believed they all mixed together in a masterful symphony that was felt moment by moment, stretched through the day into the night, into the cycle of the tides through the month, and through the seasons of the year.

Most thought the winter a dead time, a time when the land was chilled and the water cold and the trees bare. But it was a season that had its own call, beckoning to those who were open to it. For Kono, one of the greatest benefits was the lack of the tourists, the fools on their jet skis roaring through the water, drowning out the wonderful symphony of nature.

He drove
Fina
, his boat, at low throttle, along the south coast of Pritchards Island. The easternmost of the barrier islands, it was also unoccupied, set aside by the University of South Carolina as a preserve for research. No roads touched it, and it was only accessible by boat. To the west was the Marine Corps base at Parris Island, and Hilton Head was to the south, across Port Royal Sound.

It was one of the last places where the land was as it had been when the Gullah fled to the islands during and after the Civil War, isolating themselves from the mainland. Most had worked on the brutal rice plantations between Savannah and Charleston, and any life was better than that.

It was rice that brought the slaves to the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Stolen from their villages in Sierra Leone and Liberia, they were chosen because they could work in the heat and the shallow water needed to grow rice, and because many had worked the rice fields in their homeland. So many were ‘imported’ that as early as 1710, Africans outnumbered whites in South Carolina. Kono knew that was part of the paranoia that consumed South Carolinians for generations and naturally caused Charleston to be the tinderbox, generations later, that started the Civil War. Fear ruled the coast of South Carolina for centuries, fear that those who were used to generate the wealth would one day rise against their masters, whom they outnumbered. The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina in Charleston, was founded partly to make sure the state had a militia ready to deal with such an insurrection, public declarations to the contrary.

The Gullah were in a different situation than slaves in the other states. They worked massive rice fields, requiring many bodies laboring together. It was not the quiet plantation life, or even the cotton field system. It was backbreaking work, in brutal terrain where snakes and alligators were as common as the diseases that killed many. The first Gullah were on the islands even before the Civil War, escaping their enslavement and hiding among the islands and swamps, building the basis for their own quiet way of life.

Kono turned the bow of his boat toward a small inlet. The tide was half out, and he knew within a half-inch how much water his hull drew. He knew the inlet as most Americans knew the route to work. The woman hadn’t said a word since leaving Dafuskie, which impressed Kono. Most
buckra
prattled on endlessly, never listening to nature, to the world around them. She sat silent in the jump seat to the left of him, watching the passing water and land, never asking where they were going or what he was doing.

Most unusual.

Kono cut the throttle and
Fina
slowed, coming to a halt just a few feet from a decaying dock. A rowboat was drawn up to the left of the dock, turned upside down. To the right, a crumbling concrete structure stood above the sand.

Feeling the woman’s silence pressing on him, Kono finally spoke. “In World War Two, German U-Boats were out there.” He pointed toward the Atlantic. “They would target ships going up and down the coast. Sometimes the ships were outlined against the lights of cities, like Charleston. Perfect targets. So watch places were built. This was one.”

She nodded.

Fina
bobbed in the backwash of her own wake. Kono took a line and jumped over the side into a foot of water. He tied the line off to a metal rebar on the edge of the dock. The woman stood to get off the boat, but he held up a hand. “I need to talk to someone alone.”

“All right.” Sarah sat back down, again disturbing something deep in Kono.

He waved his hand in a slow sweep, taking in the low country. “The sand here has eaten much blood since the white man came.” He pointed south. “The Spanish were first. In Florida.” He pointed north. “Then the British came. They brought the first slaves. And both sides used the natives to fight for them.”

“People always use others to fight for them,” Sarah said. “Is that what I’m doing? Is it wrong?”

Kono shrugged. “Each has their own reasons to do what they do.”

“Why are you getting involved? For Chase?”

Kono smiled grimly. “Partly. But I also have my own reasons.” He turned for the beach, but paused. “Pirates were here long before U-Boats. Blackbeard hisself is said to have buried treasure here on Pritchards Island.”

“Do you believe that?”

“May well be, missus. May well be.” He pointed north again. “Blackbeard, he blockade Charleston back long time, May 1718. City feared him something fierce. They pay him gold to leave. Maybe he leave some gold here.”

“Edward Teach,” Sarah said, surprising Kono again.

“Ya. That was his real name.”

Sarah pointed to the small flag on the bow of the
Fina
. A black flag with a white skeleton, spearing a heart while toasting. “That was his flag.”

“It was.”

Sarah held up her cell phone. “I’d like to pretend I knew all that, but I Googled it while we were coming here. The signal comes and goes.”

Kono laughed. “Honest lady. Like that.”

“How do you know Horace?” Sarah asked.

Kono looked away, at the water. “He save my life many years ago. We were out, pulling traps. My foot got caught in a line, and I was pulled over the side when trap was locked on something. Took me under. Chase, he dove in. Tried to free me, but couldn’t. But he kept one hand on boat, one hand on the line, pulling me up, out of water every minute, letting me take breath. He did this for long time, ten minutes or so, but it was losing battle. But he do it long enough, the old man, the man I here to see, he saw Chase hanging on boat. He came over and cut the line. I was almost dead. Old man, he bring me back to life. But Chase keep me breathing long enough for that.”

Sarah pointed. “He’s waiting for you.”

The old man stood in the doorway of the remains of the old watchtower. He was dressed in denim coveralls and a black turtleneck. His clothes were surprisingly clean for living out here. He sported a long white beard that came down to his belly.

Kono walked up to the beach and then down it. They greeted each other in their native tongue and continued to converse in it, a language a
buckra
might make a bit of sense out of, but not enough with the speed with which they talked.

“Been a bit,”
the old man said.

“Three weeks, one day, Tear.”

The old man laughed as Kono held out a sack. It clanked as the old man took it. He didn’t look inside, instead putting it just inside the doorway to the concrete structure. Where he’d gotten his nickname from, Kono had no idea, but there were hints that the old man had endured a hard life for many years. His given name was a secret he held close to his soul. Kono didn’t know whether the three, barely visible teardrops tattooed on the old man’s left cheek had led to the name, or whatever led to the name, led to the tattoos.