Freedom Earned Read online

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said.

  “That you’re trying to warm me up?”

  She chuckled. “Exactly. The right idea is that I’m trying to warm myself up. Hell, you haven’t gotten me those three beers, yet.”

  I grinned. “You resort to jokes as a defense mechanism when in near-death situations?”

  “Hmm,” she pursed her lips in thought, then shrugged. “That sounds about right.”

  “Noted,” I said, only then realizing how flirtatious it sounded.

  She rubbed it in by adding, “And your defense mechanism is to flirt.”

  Quite possibly true. “Keep moving.” Pulling her up but staying low, we moved along the beach, not going too far. I wanted to see what was happening and get a good sense of where that man was going. A second made his way off the ship as well, red visible on the side of his head. The idiot was in such a hurry to get to us, he hadn’t bothered to stop and bandage himself! From this distance, I couldn’t tell how bad the injury was, only that there was blood.

  “I’ll go ahead and trust that you have a plan,” Prenie said.

  “An idea that could become a plan,” I replied.

  “That’s like what, after a notion but before a concept, and then—”

  “Yes, then plan.” I shook my head. “Man, you must be nervous, huh?”

  “Shut up.” She hit me, then clenched me closer. “Remember, this is only for warmth.”

  Considering everything we faced, of course, she was nervous. But, I always found it best to get everything out there and discuss it. If you’re nervous or scared or pissed, hiding it only makes the emotion worse.

  At that instant, though, my idea was morphing from idea to concept, and then… it hit the plan stage.

  “Go forward, but slowly.” I was already guiding her. “We don’t want to make plants move and give away our location.”

  “Explain.”

  “There.” I indicated movement in the bush far to our right, moving away. “The first is veering to his left. The other is going straight.”

  We kept moving. Sure enough, they gave us the opening we needed. Probably figured we would run deeper inland and make a beeline for our escape to the next island. That wasn’t my intent at all.

  We were almost to the beach again. I paused, eyeing Prenie. “So I don’t feel like an idiot later for not asking, did you have a phone on you?”

  “Not one that works,” she admitted. “I left it back at the room because it doesn’t get service here.”

  I nodded. “Had to make sure. Ready?”

  “We’re taking the ship?”

  I grinned. “We be pirates.”

  “Argh,” she growled, although the levity in her voice wasn’t matched by her wide, worried eyes.

  To her credit, when I tugged her hand, she didn’t hesitate. Her other hand drew the pistol again, and we moved for the yacht. We’d had time to catch our breaths, and running together we covered the distance fairly fast. In fact, we were at the yacht before the first of them knew what was happening. He turned at our splashing sounds as we dove in to swim the rest of the way. But before he could get off a shot—which he tried—we were on the other side and pulling ourselves onto the ship’s stern.

  From there, I knelt, aimed, and fired a good shot right through his leg, dropping him to the beach. He cursed, shouting and wildly shooting our way.

  “Is that… Arabic?” Prenie asked.

  I nodded and ducked back with her to avoid getting shot, eyes moving to the ship’s stairs in case others were on board.

  “The people who are after you speak Arabic.” She said it as a statement, flabbergasted. “In Thailand.”

  “It was supposed to be a handover. Yeah.” Eyeing her, I shrugged. “Local mafia and so-called terrorists work with outside groups from time to time. That’s been my best guess about this—that the handover was from a local group to a larger, Middle East-based organization that has local operations. A status grab, perhaps? Trade me, get in good with them.”

  “Damn. I’m glad I’m not important enough for that.”

  “Sure, but…” I stopped myself, but her cringe showed it was too late.

  “But now I’m a target, same as you,” she finished. “Yeah, got it.”

  “But now, we have the yacht.” I winked.

  “A beached one,” she pointed out.

  I shrugged. “Sure, but still… We took the ship. Argh.”

  She chuckled, nodded, and gave me a low “Argh,” in response. My first successful act of piracy was complete. Kind of.

  23

  As the shots had stopped, I moved slightly, then popped up enough to get another shot in. The other guy was moving back, the one on the beach creating a trail of blood as he attempted to drag himself out of my target area. Not that I was going to let him, but first I went for the other—as soon as I had a good shot, BAM! I sent him stumbling, apparently hitting him in the gut. Now that he was stable, bent over and holding himself, my next shot hit him in the head.

  He was down. I went to shoot again, when… click. Nothing. I checked and, as suspected, the chamber was empty.

  “Enough, huh?” Prenie asked.

  I clicked the release and pulled out the magazine. Smiling at the sight, I said, “Magazine jam. Not surprising with the water and all. Pistol?”

  She handed it over. I set the rifle and mag down, then stood, took up my preferred pistol-shooting stance, and fired. The first round hit him and he shook, but the second never went. Another jam.

  “That should do it, though,” I said, handing her back the pistol. “See what you can do while I take care of this.” I slammed my magazine on the deck a couple of times, adjusted the bullets so they moved with the spring, then reloaded the rifle. Chambering a round, I checked to ensure it was in place. To be safe, I stood again and sent another round into the guy. By that point, I was pretty sure he was dead.

  “Let’s check the ship,” Prenie said. “You go below, I’ll stay here in case.”

  “Yeah?”

  She shook her head, looking at me like I was an idiot. “No! From now on, until this is over we are connected at the hips, got that?”

  I nodded, taking the lead. Connected at the hips… too easy to crack a joke about, and this wasn’t the time.

  We moved through the yacht with ease. It wasn’t the same as the other one I had been on, although not so very different. There were several rooms and evidence of people inhabiting them, but what caught our attention first were the wet suits and diving gear—three of suits—and then the armory. Like the other, but more. And most interestingly, what looked like underwater explosive devices.

  “What are we looking at, here?” Prenie asked.

  “An arsenal… These sons of bitches clearly had a plan.”

  “No shit. But what?” She was shuffling through papers with images among them that included a cruise ship and its blueprints, and… me. She held that one up, eyes darting from me to the image—a printout of my passport

  “I don’t like this,” I said, taking the picture and looking at the writing below it. Going for my shoe, I found my ID still there, thank God, but the old note had disintegrated in the water. This new one was in Arabic, but I could imagine it was specifics about me and where I was traveling. “They couldn’t have known I was coming, right?”

  “Or they knew you were traveling, but not where,” she offered.

  Thinking it through, I nodded. “They might have had people in Tokyo, waiting. It’s possible… Then got through to local contacts as they followed my trail.”

  My gaze moved over to the cruise ship and the date clearly highlighted amongst the information listed there.

  “What’s that look in your eyes?”

  I hadn’t realized there was a look in my eyes, but now that she mentioned it, there was no denying the flight part of “fight or flight” was taking hold. “That date—it has to be tomorrow, right?”

  She eyed the paper, drew a deep breath, an
d nodded.

  “We need to get to your bungalow,” I said. “To tell someone about this.”

  “With this yacht? You’re going to, what, push it out of the sand?”

  I shook my head. “The dinghy. But we have to hurry because there were two ships after me.”

  “It never ends.” Her eyes roamed over the armory. “We can’t leave this stuff here.”

  “You’re right.” It was a lot, but not so much that we couldn’t get it out of there in one trip. “Come on, help me load it into the dinghy. We’ll get it to shore, at least. Hide it so that those on the other ship can’t find it, if they try, and then we can send the authorities back for it all. Yeah?”

  “That’ll take time. These islands aren’t so big, and…”

  “And you know that also means the guys who were shooting at us, their friends will come and find this. If they’re planning something, we need to do what we can to stop it.”

  “Do we?” She stared at me, hands on her hips, then sighed. “Let’s make it happen.”

  “Great.”

  I immediately went about getting the dinghy ready, rifle at my side in case we got company. Then we loaded the dinghy with as much of the explosives as we could, since that was the priority. Weapons and ammo came next. I wanted to take the diving gear, but we were already starting to worry that we might have overloaded the small craft.

  We climbed in, leaving the yacht behind. My mind raced with images of one of those guys on the beach shooting us and hitting the explosives to send us sky-high, but nothing of the sort happened. We kept a lookout for a likely spot and soon pulled toward the island again, at a place where we thought we could hide the gear among the rocks without having to travel far. The whole ordeal of going back and forth from the dinghy to the hiding spot, along with being sure to hide everything with branches and leaves and cover our tracks, cost us an extra thirty minutes. To my surprise, though, the other yacht never showed.

  “Ko Wua Talap is where we need to go,” Prenie said. “That way.”

  I nodded, eyeing the open ocean with islands to the right. “Better to sail close to land as much as possible, yeah? Hug the shoreline so we’re not spotted, or so we can get out of Dodge quickly if we are.”

  She nodded and held up a finger for me to wait. Moving back to our stash, she took an extra rifle and more ammunition. “Just in case.”

  “Smart.” I eyed the stash and went back to it as well. “While we’re at it, we might want proof in addition to the papers.” We had kept the papers with us, but now I took several of the explosives—each no larger than a bulging fanny pack—and took them with us as well.

  With that, we went back to the dinghy and started off, making our way through the remaining islands. Both of us were on edge as we went, but at least now we had two rifles and proof that something big was happening. The question was whether the people back at Ko Wua Talap Island would be any help.

  “For what it’s worth,” I glanced over at Prenie after a while, “you’ve handled all this very well.”

  “Relative to some, I’m sure.” She gave me a thankful smile. “Not my first rodeo.”

  “By that, you’re saying this isn’t your first time being chased by guys with rifles?”

  She scoffed. “Not exactly. Back home, my later years were great. Earlier, not so much. I still remember this night I was pretending to sleep. God, I must have been maybe nine or ten? And suddenly, there’re these sounds like firecrackers or a car backfiring—yeah, I knew quite well what a car backfiring sounded like.”

  “Gunshots?”

  She grunted. “My mom ran in, shouting, and pulled me off the bed and smothered me while crying and holding me close. Fucking drive-by on the apartment complex next door. To say it was a relief when we got out of there is a major understatement.”

  “Damn.” We rode with only the purr of the motor, the light dimming by that point so that our chances of being seen were at least less. “The worst I had it was getting one too many presents on Christmas.”

  “Shut up.” She turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “That can’t be true, right? I mean, nobody escapes childhood without a few scars.”

  I furrowed my brow, trying to think of anything messed up from my youth. Not much came to mind. “Sorry. Maybe my lack of chaos is why I was able to join the Marines. Ignorance of the reality.”

  “No way. I don’t buy it.” She took my hand in hers. “Look at me. Tell me right now that your childhood was perfect. Really think about it. No trauma you’re conveniently forgetting?”

  My hand almost pulled back on its own, my frown deepening as I reminded myself that we had pretty much just met. Already she was trying to go psychologist on me? Even with that thought, though, her contact brought out something in me.

  “Nothing like what you’re talking about,” I said. “We weren’t rich growing up. I remember how we would gather all in the living room around one of those plug-in heaters, huddled in blankets and trying to stay warm. And food, like eating fast food because you could get a burger for under a dollar back then. Like, that was a staple—either canned soups at home or the once-a-week celebratory fast food. Not perfect, but no drive-bys.”

  “My dad made me lick the syrup from my plate so it wouldn’t be wasted.” She shook her head, pointing at the back of her teeth. “I blame him for my first three cavities. ‘Course, he was gone before that drive-by event. Left a year earlier and never came back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I eyed her, then motioned to the beauty of the sunset and to our surroundings. “Are we really trying to have a contest to see whose life was sadder… in a place like this?”

  She laughed. “Not at all—I win every time. More… getting to know each other in a place like this.”

  “Oh?”

  She hadn’t released my hand. “Maybe it’s the adrenaline talking, I don’t know. But I’m serious about getting those beers.”

  Her touch was soft, not unwelcome. “I wouldn’t be opposed.”

  “Good. No on the depressing talk, huh?” She winked. “Tell me your best memory, then. Take my mind off everything.”

  I looked down at the rifle on my lap, frowning. “You can switch your mind like that?”

  “I’ve learned to try.”

  “You go first, then.”

  She considered, then sat up, beaming. “My first cat—got Pickles when I was seventeen.”

  “Pickles? Really?”

  She squeezed my hand. “Named by her previous owner. My mom brought her home, said a coworker couldn’t keep her anymore, so the cat became my responsibility. At first, I was pissed, like who the hell wants a cat?”

  “I like cats.”

  “At the time, I thought nobody liked ‘em. Dogs all the way in my neighborhood.” She chuckled, looking off at the orange and purple sky reflecting on the ocean. “Only, the way Pickles would curl up on my lap when I was watching a show, or when I was sleeping… little things like that made me fall for the little devil. Her tongue was so rough on my cheek, but I didn’t complain.”

  “That’s your happiest memory?”

  “Not happiest, I guess, but a combined amount of joyful memories.”

  Racking my brain, I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe when I graduated boot camp? That was pretty momentous. Or the first Al Pastor tacos I got after my first deployment. Hot damn, I can’t begin to relate the craving of tacos finally satisfied.”

  “Tacos…”

  I shrugged. “Don’t ever underestimate a man’s love for his tacos. With a good horchata.”

  “Hore-what?”

  We both laughed at that, but I explained, “Horchata. It’s a drink, like milky water with cinnamon. I’m not selling it well.”

  “You’re really not. Me? I’ll take Sprite any day.” She held up a finger. “Wait. Sprite, but only if there’s no sangria around. Or mojitos.”

  “I didn’t take you to be a sangria or mojito type of girl.”

  “Well, there’s a lot you don’t know ab
out me.”

  I stared into her eyes again. “Tell me.”

  Her eyes met mine, unwavering. “In time, I will.”

  We continued more of our trivial conversation as we went along, at times slowing in the water to go around areas that might expose us, at open areas picking up speed to clear them with ease.

  “Before, you mentioned being skittery?” Prenie turned to me, waiting.

  “Really? We have to go there?”

  “Curiosity is one of my main weaknesses. Well, that and chocolate-covered pretzels.”

  I lost myself in memories of licking chocolate off my fingers from a bag of such pretzels, then sighed. “Women are—”

  “Shit, you’re not gay, are you?”

  “You would like me less if I was?”

  “Not at all, but I’d try to stop fantasizing about you.” She winked. Apparently, that was one of her things.

  “Ah, I see.” Hoping I wasn’t blushing, I said, “Okay, you want the truth?”

  “I think I’m entitled to it!” She pounded her fist on her thigh, then chuckled. “Yes, please. If I can handle the truth.”

  “Damn. A Few Good Men… Best way to get the truth out of me. Okay, it’s nothing, really. There was this girl I was dating and, call me old fashioned, but I wanted to get to know her a little before going all the way. Say whatever you want, I’ve heard it. But whatever, maybe I’m old fashioned. She claimed to be on board but then only like our fourth date in, she took me out drinking, then in the back of a club started reaching her hand down my pants. Okay, I’m a guy, right, not going to complain about that. But then we end up back at my place, me ready to pass out and… I mean, you can imagine the rest.”

  “Oh…” Prenie frowned, blinked, then shook her head. “I shouldn’t have to ask, but I don’t follow.”

  I sighed, hating to say this out loud. There had been a time over beers that I had shared the story with some fellow Marines, and they never let me live it down. Jason was the only person who knew and hadn’t made fun of me. It only hit me in that moment that maybe it was why he was always trying to encourage me to get into the type of sexual indulgences that he enjoyed—to get me past any mental blocks I might have had.