Ken Douglas - Scorpion

“ I have been. You know I have been.”

“ Who becomes prime minister?”

“ The party would caucus and choose someone.”

“ Who?”

“ Why the most popular man in the party, the most popular man in Trinidad, the old cricket star.”

“ Who’s that?” Broxton asked.

“ George Chandee, the attorney general.”

“ Why am I not surprised? No, don’t say anything,” Broxton said, holding up his hand. “I’m going below and get some sleep. Just think about it.” And Broxton slipped through the companionway and in a few seconds he was asleep. Ramsingh woke him after they were securely anchored in a secluded bay and they had a breakfast of cheese and tomato sandwiches. Not what Broxton would have chosen, but they had to make due with what was available. Then he went back to sleep and slept straight through the day.

They spent the next night motoring eastward along Venezuela’s north coast toward Trinidad. They stood two hour watches and Broxton found himself enjoying the night solitude. Ramsingh had the boat on autopilot, and like the previous night when the self-steering gear handled the boat under sail, the only thing Broxton had to do was watch to make sure they didn’t hit anything.

The sun came up during his watch, so he was the first to see it. “Big boat, behind us,” he said, reaching for the binoculars. “It’s a navel vessel of some kind. They’ve got guns.”

“ Let me see,” Ramsingh said, coming up through the companion way and Broxton handed over the far away glasses. “Venezuelan Coast Guard.”

“ They be here before we’re out of their waters?” Broxton asked.

“ Oh, I think so,” Ramsingh said.

“ Can you fake a heart attack?”

“ If I have to.”

“ How do you work this thing?” Broxton asked, picking up the radio mike.

“ Push this button and talk,” Ramsingh said.

Broxton picked up the mike and thumbed the push-to-talk button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Can you hear me? My father’s having a heart attack. I need help. Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

“ They’ll think I’m on death’s door,” Ramsingh said, after Broxton released the button.

“ This is the Venezuelan Coast Guard Cutter Cuatro de Mayo to the vessel calling mayday.” The man was speaking English with a thick Venezuelan accent.

Broxton clicked the button again. “Are you the big gray boat behind me?”

“ We are.”

“ Do you have a doctor on board?”

“ Negative.”

“ I need to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible and I can’t sail the boat. Can you help me?”

“ You can’t sail?” the voice was skeptical.

“ That’s right, it’s my father’s boat. I’m on vacation. I don’t know the first thing about sailing. You have to help me.”

“ Captain Sanchez, Venezuelan Coast Guard, the burly man said, as he boarded. “You have the boat papers?”

“ I don’t know.”

“ Why not?” Sanchez asked, twirling a bushy mustache.

“ I just came down to spend a couple of weeks with my father. I don’t know anything about the boat or its papers. Shit, they could have been stolen during the robbery,” Broxton said, improvising.

“ What robbery?” the captain asked.

“ Last night, while we were ashore in Puerto Santos, someone broke in and stole some money. They came in through there,” Broxton said, pointing to the broken hatch.

“ That’s unfortunate. Some of our people think the yachties are all rich. They don’t realize that if they keep breaking in to their boats that they’ll stop coming. If that happens everybody loses.”

“ I imagine it’s the same wherever people are poor,” Broxton said, wanting to change the subject.

“ I imagine so,” the captain said. Then Ramsingh let out a yell that sounded like his insides were being ripped out.

“ Can you leave someone with the boat and take us to the nearest hospital?” Broxton said.

“ Yes, sir,” Captain Sanchez said and in minutes they had Ramsingh in a stretcher and were aboard the cutter.

“ Two of my men will take your father’s boat to Puerto La Cruz, and we’ll go on to Trinidad.”

“ Trinidad,” Broxton said, trying to sound shocked, “Can’t we go back to Caracas?”

“ Trinidad is only a few hours away. Caracas would take us till tomorrow at this time.”

“ Are the hospitals there any good?” Broxton asked. It wasn’t hard for him to sound worried and concerned.

“ Not as good as ours, but much better than none at all,” the captain said, obviously proud.

“ Can you radio ahead and have an ambulance waiting?” Broxton asked.

“ It’s being done,” the captain said.

Four hours later a Trinidad and Tobago customs officer and the crew of the Venezuelan cutter watched as two medical technicians hustled Ramsingh into a waiting ambulance. They were two miles down Western Main Road on the way to Port of Spain with the siren blazing when Ramsingh sat up.

The medic tending Ramsingh in the back of the ambulance dropped his jaw and Broxton fought a smile when Ramsingh spoke. “Driver, turn off the siren and take us to the Red House.”

“ Holy shit! It’s the prime minister,” the attending medic said.

The driver looked in the mirror and saw that it was true. “Yes, sir, the Red House, at your service. Sure you want the siren off?”

“ Yes off,” Ramsingh said. “We don’t want any attention drawn to us.”

“ Yes, sir, siren off,” the driver said. He turned it off and drove to downtown Port of Spain.

Outside the Red House Ramsingh told the driver to take Broxton by the American Ambassador’s residence where he was supposed to get his clothes, and then, he said, “Bring my new head of security back straight away.”

The sun was winking over the horizon. Dew still covered the grass. A slight breeze rustled through Woodward park, and though it did little to cool the Caribbean heat, Broxton still shivered. If he was going to kill a prime minister, this would be the perfect spot. The park was in the center of the city, ringed on the north by the Red House, the colonial style buildings of Parliament, built by the British before independence-the south, by Fredrick Street, the main shopping street of Port of Spain, always teeming with people hustling in and out of the many department stores-the east, by the modern Department of Justice building, which stood in stark contrast to the old public library next door-and the west by the Gothic St. Ann’s Cathedral, a thousand and one places for a man with a rifle, a security man’s nightmare.

He sat on an empty bench and watched the workmen setting up the stage in the old gazebo. Others were connecting up the giant speakers that would pour out the calypso beat from noon to midnight. Twelve hours of live music, guaranteed to make the old, the infirm, and even the recent dead get up and dance.

A scrawny pigeon eyed Broxton from a safe distance, then took a few tentative steps in his direction. Broxton remained motionless, wondering how close the bird would come. It stopped about three paces away and waited, but Broxton had no food for it. One of the workmen started in his direction, stringing speaker wire, and the bird took flight.

“ You coming to the festival today?” Broxton asked.

“ Wish I could, but I gots ta work, got five kids, all boys,” the man smiled, proud, showing off a gold front tooth.

“ Gonna be a lot of people?”

“ More ‘an I can count.”

“ The park’s kind of small.”

“ You know it. Gonna be peoples here stuffed tighter ’an a maxi taxi at rush hour.”

“ Lots of people,” Broxton repeated as the man shuffled on, stringing his wire. He gazed around the park and tried to imagine how it would be after the festival started, the crowd struggling in the noonday heat to get closer to the bands on stage. The Gazebo was in the southeastern corner of the park, surrounded by shade trees. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about the crowd behind Ramsingh. The park was fenced and the high backed stage prevented anyone from moving in behind the bands.