“Île des Choux.” The voice startled me. Not just because it was so high and raspy and weird sounding but because I’d been kind of lost, staring at the rock we were steering toward. And I was startled enough that I whipped my head around and looked at Frenchy and just blinked for a minute without a clue about what he’d said, before I remembered that I speak French. I knew what Île des Choux meant. I just didn’t get why.
“Cabbage Island?” I said.
He gave me one of those whole-body shrugs that only the French can do.
“We’re going there?” I asked him.
He went back to his default expression, the sneer. “Your new ’ome,” he said.
I had a lot of questions about that. I mean, “home” sounded better than “grave,” even with the French accent leaving off the h. On the other hand, from what I could see of the island, if I was stuck there it would turn into my grave in about two weeks. So was that why he was bringing me here? Just so I could die on a cold and empty rock? Or was there more to Cabbage Island than you could see from a mile away on a boat?
That last question was answered pretty quickly. As we passed a bright orange buoy, a shrill beeping started up from the control panel, and a red light began to blink. Frenchy leaned over the red light and stuck a key into a panel below it. He twisted the key and the face of the panel swung down, revealing a keypad. He punched in a string of numbers, at least ten digits long. Maybe more; he worked fast and I wasn’t really counting. Whatever, the beeping cut out and the light stopped blinking.
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.