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Frenchy straightened and looked at me. “Put the wrong number, put no number—BOOM!” He smiled, really happy, and flipped his hands up to show me what “BOOM” looked like in French.
“Boom?” I said. “From something named Cabbage Island?”
He nodded and made the hand signal again. “Boom,” he said. “The cabbage has many teeth.”
He seemed pretty pleased with that, and he turned back to the wheel, smiling. I let him have his happy moment and just watched the island as we got closer. A cabbage with teeth. I wondered if it had fingernails, toes, maybe even an elbow or two. I was pretty sure I would find out soon enough.
Keeping us about a half mile off, Frenchy circled the boat around to the far side of the island. I wondered if that was to avoid more teeth. In any case, when we got to the far side, he spun the wheel and pointed our bow straight at a huge and jagged outcropping of black rock. And then he held us steady, aimed right for the biggest, sharpest spot.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to run us onto the rocks. Why would he bring me all this way just to kill himself with me watching? But as we got closer it occurred to me that I didn’t know a thing about this guy except he was ugly. I mean, he might
not even be French—what if he was Belgian? So maybe he was some kind of sick twitch who didn’t mind dying if he took me with him. Because he wasn’t turning, he wasn’t slowing down—and as we got even closer he gave me that nasty smile again, like he knew I was worried and that made him happy.
Just a few seconds before we would definitely smash into the rocks, he turned the wheel sharply to the left. The nose of the boat swung around, Frenchy throttled back—and we were pointed into a gap in the rocks that was invisible from anywhere but right here. Built into the rocks right above was something that looked like a missile battery. Cabbage teeth. We went right under it and into a channel between two walls of rock. It was wide enough for our boat to get through with a couple of feet to spare on each side. The channel made two quick turns, and then we headed into a cave. Or maybe it was a tunnel. The deeper into it we went, the more you could see that the walls had been carved away by human hands. There were dim lights hung at intervals of around thirty feet.
We cruised slowly along the tunnel for three or four minutes, the sound of the engine burbling back at us from the walls. Then we swung through one last sharp turn to the right, and ahead of us the lights got brighter. Up against a back wall a concrete pier stuck out into the water. And standing on the pier was a group of six men wearing black paramilitary clothing and carrying automatic weapons; my welcome wagon.
There was something about the way these guys stood that told me all I needed to know. I don’t know how to explain it. But if you have ever seen a group of elite professional soldiers, you will know what I mean. Just the way they stood there, like they were ready for anything and expected to kick its ass when it came, whatever it was. And the way they cradled their weapons, like a short-order cook holding a spatula. It just said an automatic weapon was no big deal, just a utensil they used every day.
More than that, and maybe more important—at least to me, which was all that mattered right now—it said that I was in a world of trouble. Any tiny hope I had that I might get out of whatever this was flickered out. I tried to fan it back up. I repeated my mantra, There’s always a way. And I would keep looking for some small opening, some tiny little advantage, that would give me a way out. I told myself I’d always found that way, and I’d been in some pretty deep shit. But myself talked back. It said I’d never before been inside a black, cold rock in the middle of an unknown ocean surrounded by missiles and highly trained professional killers and who the fuck knew what else. At the moment that sounded a lot more convincing than blind optimism.
Frenchy backed the engines and eased us close. Two of the men in black stepped forward and snagged the boat, bow and stern, and secured it to cleats on the pier. There was a final growl as the engines raced in reverse. The boat slowed to a stop and kissed the pier, and the engines died.
4
I was right about the guys in black.
I have been dragged into a lot of cells in my time, from backcountry lockups to maximum-security prisons. So when I say these guys knew what they were doing, you can take my word for it. There’s a number of tells an amateur might show that can give you a chance. Like, if they’re needlessly cruel or kind of sloppy, or if they talk a lot or try to show you how tough they are. Just little things, but they leave a lot of holes for somebody like me to crawl through. Maybe you wouldn’t see it, but to me they’re definite signs. When the guy holding the gun shows you one of these, it means he’s not a pro, and you have a chance.
These guys didn’t show any of the tells. They didn’t say or do anything they didn’t have to do to get the job done. They moved efficiently, on the balls of their feet, eyes on everything at the same time. When they spoke at all, it was terse orders in French. There didn’t seem to be any point in pretending I didn’t understand them. I did what they said.
They pulled me off the dock as a couple of other guys in black unloaded the big crates from the boat. Frenchy stood on the bridge and worked the crane from a set of controls, beside the wheel swinging the crates up and onto the dock. Before the first crate made it onto the pier, I was steered into a dimly lit passage carved out of the rock of the island. The walls were smooth and unpainted and radiated the kind of permanent coolness you feel from cave walls. We went down a long, circular stairway, maybe as far as forty feet down. It dumped us out into another hallway, the twin of the one we’d taken from the pier. After walking along this passage for a couple of minutes, we took a right-hand passage, and we were in a short hallway. It had six steel doors, three on each side, set into rock walls. The doors had small, high-set windows, covered by thick steel grills. Below that was a slot just big enough for a food tray.
I knew the look. Maximum-security lockup.
I was pretty sure we’d gotten to my new ’ome.
One of the men in black opened the last door down on the left. They led me through and into a small cell. I’d seen worse, but only in comic books. The room was about eight feet by eight feet, bare stone walls, bare stone floor and ceiling. One dim light hung from the ceiling inside a steel-mesh cage. Opposite the door there was a shelf carved out of the stone. It was just big enough to lie down on. Just so I didn’t have to figure it out by myself, there was a thin blanket folded on the foot of the “bed.” And hanging from the wall above it there were two chains. On the floor below were two more. I didn’t have to guess what they were for.
In two minutes my hands and feet were locked into the chains and I was sitting on the stone bed.
That’s pretty much all I did for a truly long-ass time. I think it had to be three days, but it’s impossible to be sure. The one light in the ceiling never flickered. It was always the same dim no-time in the cell. There were no sounds, no smells, nothing. Six times the door opened and two guards came in. They stood at either side of the door, weapons at the ready, while a third guard dropped a tray on the floor where I could just reach it if I stretched out all the way. Then they left.
Each tray held a bottle of water and a paper plate. On the plate it was always the same—a gray-green glop that looked like something they’d scraped off the walls. I ate it anyway. It wasn’t awful. I mean, compared to eating dog shit or rotten squid it was sort of tasty. But I figured they weren’t planning to kill me with the food, so I had to stay alive and as healthy as I could, just in case. I ate it all.
So like I said, I was pretty sure it was three days. I knew the whole arrangement was all set up to fuck with my head, make me unsure about time and everything else—steady dim light, no external sight or sound, all that. It’s a popular old-time technique. Stick you in a cell with light always on, no way to tell if it’s night or day. They change the feeding intervals, keep you isolated from absolutely everything, and make you just sit there. There’s no way at all to tell how much time is going by, or anything else. Nobody to talk to, nothing to listen to, no way to move more than a few inches. After a while your brain short-circuits. Two minutes seems like an hour—or three hours can feel like a couple of minutes. Like I said, it fucks with your head. And if it goes on long enough you can even start to hallucinate.
I could take it. I’d been there before. My head has gotten pretty hard to fuck. And I actually started getting optimistic. The longer it went on, the more certain I got that they were softening me up for something. Sure, that probably meant something heinous was coming at me. But it also meant there was going to be some way out, even if it was tiny. There’s no reason to soften up somebody to kill them. You do it to get them to jump at some truly stupid, lethal idea that looks like a great way out when you’re softened enough. But if they really wanted me dead, I would be already.
So I stayed cool. I didn’t talk to myself, hallucinate angels, or flip a finger on my lips and go, buh-bee, buh-bee. I sat and waited. I was going to get through this. Somehow, some way, I was going to survive. They might make it hard, but I was used to that, and I always find a way.
I kept that thought with me all the time. I would make it. And as long as I was alive, there would be some way, somehow, some time, to get out of here. I hung on to that, and it kept me calm.
I mean, I’m not Batman. Nobody can keep focus 24/7. So there were plenty of times when I wondered if I was kidding myself. I didn’t really know that somebody wanted me alive for some reason. After all, I didn’t even know why I was here—or even where here was. I could be the Count of Monte Cristo, and I’d be out in a few days. But I might be the Man in the Iron Mask and I was here until I died. Why? Who knows? There could be some weird irrational reasons I couldn’t imagine. Maybe it was a cult and they were just keeping me until the full moon, and then they’d sacrifice me to a goat god or something.
And every now and then I thought about being forty or fifty feet below sea level, chained to a stone wall. Floods happen all the time. And it wouldn’t take much of a flood to put me plenty far enough underwater to drown. Or just as likely, think about the fact that I was guarded by a bunch of paramilitary dudes. The fact that they were here meant whoever was in charge had enemies. So what happens if the enemies invade this rock, kill all the guys in black? And they don’t know about me—why would they? So they kill everybody and go home, and now I’m left to slowly starve to death. Maybe the flood was better. At least drowning is quick.
I thought up lots of other really cool ways I might die, with lots of time to get the details right. So there was plenty to keep me entertained, in between fits of stupid optimism.
