“No,” he said stubbornly, gripping the wheels of his chair and half-sliding, half-rolling off the hard-packed pathway and onto the sand. Surprisingly, the chair wheels sank only about a quarter of an inch, and Zen was able to pull over right next to the blanket. There he started a well-practiced if inelegant lift, arch, and twist routine, sliding himself down to the ground.
“You coming in?” asked Bree, kicking off her shoes.
“Yup” Zen pulled himself up, sitting next to the cooler with the beer. He took out a Tetley’s Draught — an English ale that might be the last vestige of Britain’s influence on Brunei — and popped the top. A satisfying hiss and fizz followed.
“ ‘This can contains a floating widget,’ “ he read from the top of the can. “What do you think a floating widget is, Bree?”
“An excuse to charge two dollars more,” said Breanna, who had complained earlier about the high price of beer. As an Islamic country, Brunei officially frowned on alcohol consumption, and between that and the fact that the beer had to be imported from a good distance, the six-pack Zen had purchased through the hotel concierge had cost over twenty-five dollars, American.
But some things were worth the price.
And others couldn’t be bought for any amount of money: Zen watched as his wife stripped off her jeans and T-shirt, revealing a red one-piece bathing suit that reminded Zen there were some good reasons for going to the beach after all.
“Mmmm,” he said.
“Don’t get fresh.”
“What? I’m talking about the beer.”
He ducked as Breanna tossed her T-shirt at him.
Despair’s black hands took his throat, and Sahurah Niu struggled to breathe.
The prince’s wife and infant daughter had not come to the beach. His informants had been wrong.
Sahurah pushed his fists into his arms, struggling to calm himself. It was of vital importance to remain in control in front of his men.
The commander had made clear that he must complete the mission today. They had discussed the possibility of taking other hostages if necessary; clearly that was his course now.
The two people on the beach were Westerners — Australians, he thought, though Sahurah Niu was not close enough to know for certain. Undoubtedly they were guests of the prince, or they would not have been allowed here on the private beach. They would do.
One was in a wheelchair. A pity.
Sahurah was not without a sense of mercy: he would be killed rather than taken.
“What are we doing?” asked Adi, the little one. He handled the Belgian machine-gun they had obtained two months before from their brothers across the border. Despite his small size, Adi had learned to handle the weapon and his body well enough so that he could fire the gun from his hip. This was not easily done; the others and Sahurah himself preferred to fire prone, as their instructor had first taught them.
“We will go ahead with our plan,” said Sahurah. “Tell the others be ready.”
The water felt like a mineral bath, balmy and thick against her skin. Breanna stroked gently across the small bay in front of the beach. The salt water tickled her cheeks, and the sun felt good on her back and shoulders. She took a few strokes parallel to the beach and looked back at Zen, who despite being crippled was a strong swimmer.
“Are you coming in or not?” Breanna yelled.
“Later,” he said.
“Oh come on in!” she yelled. “The water is fantastic.”
“I’ll be in,” he said, sipping his beer.
The shoreline was crescent-shaped and slightly off-center to the east, bordered on both sides by strips of jungle. To the west, a pile of rocks formed a small mini-peninsula about a hundred and fifty yards from the mainland. The rocks were just barely above the surface of the water, and they weren’t very wide; there looked to be just about the surface area of a good-sized desk there. Still, it was a destination and Breanna turned and began doing a butterfly stroke toward it, her old high-school swim team warm-up routine popping into her brain.
Zen dug through the cooler, sorting through the food they’d taken from the hotel, looking for something that might seem at least vaguely familiar. He took out what seemed to be a roast beef sandwich — meat stuck out from the edges — and then leaned toward the backpack to get a plate. As he did, he caught a glint of something in the trees to his right, well back in the jungle off the beach by fifty or sixty yards.
Zen put down the sandwich and opened the cooler again, pretending to fish for something else while looking surreptitiously into the jungle. He hoped he’d see a curious child, a teenager copping a cigarette or some such thing, looking at the intruders with curiosity. But instead he caught the outline of a short, squat man with a large gun.
Someone sent by the prince to protect them?
Zen closed the cooler. Sliding his arm through the strap of the backpack, he sidled to the edge of the blanket, estimating the distance to the water.
Twenty feet.
They didn’t have a radio or cell phone. The Brunei air force was so ill-equipped it barely had enough survival radios for its flight crews; American cell phones didn’t work here. And besides, this place was paradise — nothing ever went wrong here.
Breanna was about thirty yards out, stroking steadily for a little jetty or rock island at the edge of the cove.
“How’s the water?” he shouted. Then without waiting for an answer, he added, “Maybe I will come in. What the hell. Might as well have a quick swim before lunch.”
He twisted around on his elbow, turning to drag himself toward the water.
If he’d had his legs, Zen thought to himself, he’d have confronted the son of a bitch beyond the trees, gun or no gun. But he didn’t have his legs, and the worst thing he could do now was let the bastard know he saw him. He went slowly toward the water, lumbering like a turtle.
As he reached the water line, something crashed through the brush above. A strong shove brought Zen to the edge of the surf; a second got him into six inches of water.
On his third push he felt his body start to float. Salt water stung his face, pricking at his nostrils.
Something rippled near him. He heaved his body forward and dove beneath the waves.
As Breanna watched from the water, the brush behind the beach opened like a curtain. Three men came out from the trees, and then a fourth. Two had rifles.
Zen was at the water — Zen was in the water.
They were going to fire at him.
“No!” she shouted. “No!”
Sahurah Niu grabbed the tall one’s arm as he fired.
“Wait,” he told Abdul, first in his own Malaysian, then in Abdul’s native Arabic. “Don’t waste your bullets while he’s in the water.”
“He’ll get away.”
“This will not be so. He is a cripple.” Sahurah Niu repeated his command not to fire so the others could hear. “Wait,” he added, pointing to the horizon. “The boat is coming. Do you see it?”
Zen pushed his head up for a quick breath, then dove back down, stroking toward Breanna. The world had narrowed to a tiny funnel in front of him. He could see rocks on the bottom of the ocean, twenty or more feet below as he pushed downward.
Where was his wife? He pulled his body in the direction of the rocks she’d been heading for. In the back of his mind he heard himself yelling at his body, as if they were two separate people, coach and athlete:
You’ve gone further and faster than this in rehab. Push, damn it, push.
The pressure in his lungs grew and finally he came up for a gulp of air. Bree was a few yards away.