At ten o’clock on Saturday morning Ardez sat around the telephone at the Factory. Most of the calls had come in yesterday. All of those who called had agreed to cooperate. So far he hadn’t heard from Brad Elliot, Lex Malcolm, Joseph Tai and Winston Young, the Ocho Rios restaurant owner, who had been contacted by Pennant and Pablo. At five that evening the four men hadn’t telephoned and Ardez called McCreed. The man told him to immediately put the death squads into action. Premba and Lance were already patrolling Ocho Rios and Pennant and Pablo were in Montego Bay.
***
Ardez had chosen Dillinger and Butler to wipe out Lex and Brad. They left their headquarters at eleven o’clock that night for Lex’s Golden Spring home. Dillinger was driving a Ford Cortina motor car. When they reached the house it was in darkness. Butler got out of the car and went up to the gate. Dillinger soon joined him.
“This house looks like nobody lives in it,” Butler remarked.
“Looks that way,” Dillinger agreed with him.
“What do we do now?”
“We can’t stay round here, because we don’t know if any policemen are in the area.”
He turned the car around and drove out to the Golden Spring main road and headed for Brad’s house.
This house was a two-story building and to their dismay the two killers found it in darkness, also.
“Same thing again, it looks as if these guys knew we were coming after them. I think we’re being set up,” Dillinger opined, warily.
“I don’t fancy this kind of work,” Butler said as he lit a cigarette.
They were still looking at the house and shaking their heads in disappointment at missing out on two such easy hits when a police car came speeding down the road. It went past them, but at the bottom of the road it stopped and started backing up.
“Police, Dillinger!”
“I told you that it was a trap,” Dillinger said as he dived into their car for the M-16 as the police car stopped and two policemen jumped out. Butler, who was hiding behind their car, fired his .38 Taurus revolver. The policemen dived behind their car and returned his fire. Dillinger began firing with the M-16. The two other policemen had dived out of their car and were firing at Butler and Dillinger.
The policemen had shot out their car tires when Butler made a bid to escape by jumping into a gully. Dillinger seeing his comrade’s treachery put the M-16 on rapid fire, knelt behind the car and opened up anew on the policemen who returned the fire. He was hit with a hail of bullets and collapsed beside the car. The policemen approached him cautiously.
“That guy looks like Dillinger, and he looks as if he’s dead,” a police Corporal said, looking at the blood spattered body. His colleagues meanwhile, ran to inspect the gully that Butler had jumped into.
“Anybody has any idea where this gully leads to?” Delbert Wood asked.
“It leads down to Constant Spring,” one of the members of the unit replied.
“We have to find him, because it doesn’t look as if he got shot,” Wood replied.
He and the other three policemen gave up the search for Butler at about one o’clock that morning and trudged wearily back to their vehicle.
***
King knew that Lex and Brad were now fugitives from McCreed’s gunmen. Lex had told him that he had suggested to his wife that they spend the weekend in Port Antonio. Without further ado they had packed and headed for a private villa, they had always used down there. That was after they had put up a sign that they would be closed that Saturday.
***
Lex didn’t know how much longer he would stay in hiding, but it certainly seemed long enough. It seemed to him that King had tricked him. He had better come up with some tangible plans soon; he was no fool.
***
Brad had left Kingston that Saturday afternoon. He and his wife and three sons were staying with relatives in Port Maria. He had told her the truth and she believed him. He had also phoned Marie to let her know he would be out of office for the rest of the week. Douglas Wright, his sales manager, would have to carry on. Damn it all anyway, he would have to fight McCreed all the way.
***
King and Jack came to meet them in Golden Spring. King reported on Rory Dillon’s failure to convince Fred to join them. Lex was livid at the news and wanted them to carry out the second part of their plan and eliminate both McCreed and Fred. However, his fellow syndicate members, including Jack vetoed this. Jack then told them of his association with Paolo Colombo. He also told them of how they had fallen out and his run in with McCreed’s fighters and the beating he had received at their hands.
King then explained to them that he had recruited four men to raid one of McCreed’s marijuana fields in St. Ann. Lex was still grumpy and declared that if this raid wasn’t successful, he would be leaving the syndicate. The meeting broke up with King promising to give them a report about the raid at their next meeting.
***
Bendoo had learned that Dillinger had been killed up in Stony Hill but Butler had escaped. He had identified the two men as the ones holding the semi-automatic rifles on the Simmonds that night. He had heard that two of the men, who had refused to be blackmailed, lived in that area and had alerted Wood. They had met in the back room of a bar on Mannings Hill Road. He had told him that he was now at Wareika Hills. He gave him an account of what was taking place up there.
He was still in shock that they hadn’t been able to prevent Tai from being killed. He hadn’t been able to find out the names of the other people visited but he had given Woody the names of the persons he and Grosset had visited in Montego Bay. He had heard of a restaurant owner being gunned down in Ocho Rios but wasn’t sure if he was connected to the present operations.
Although Ardez was in charge of the ‘Camp’, he knew that he wasn’t the brains behind the organization. He had been racking his brain to find out who it could be but although he had come up with a lot of names all seemed too refined and polished to deal with the types of cutthroats at Wareika.
Niah had been tight lipped about it. He didn’t want to press him as he was new and might arouse suspicions by asking too many questions. He put it at the back of his mind that if he didn’t find out by natural means, then a strong draw of the marijuana and a few bottles of stout might make Niah talk.
His thoughts wandered to Barbara. Her last letter, which Wood had delivered before he came to Wareika, had said that she was praying for him and that she was sick with worry. He had hastily written her back, assuring her that he would be okay. His thoughts turned to Lorena McCreed, the beautiful girl he had met up in the hills. She had been very feisty, no wonder she had gotten into trouble with Fred Billings. He wondered what had happened to her. Gus Mc Creed? Could it be him? He had always heard that Mc Creed was a drug baron, but the man seemed a world apart from Wareika.
Bendoo got up and opened the board windows to let in some fresh air. He looked down on the glow of the city below. A strong breeze was blowing. He would have gone down to Niah’s shack to smoke some herbs with him and his brethren, Shower and Gungoo but all three men were out manning the machine guns. He wanted a stout and was about to go for one when there was a knock on the door. He went and opened it. Camilla, Rattigan’s woman, was there.
“What do you want?”
“I’m lonely. Karl has gone out. Can I come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”
He hesitated.
“Karl won’t say anything if he knows I was here. He knows that neither you nor Niah will trouble me. Which is more than can be said of the others.”
“Okay, then come in,” he replied and led the way into the room. She sat on one of the wooden benches beside him.
She was blond though she had cut off most of her hair. She was wearing a faded T-shirt and a cut off jean shorts, which showed off her beautifully, tanned legs. She was, he guessed about five feet six inches tall and would be around twenty-five years of age. Her breasts looked very firm. She was quite attractive, but up here in Wareika Hills she wouldn’t get the necessary things that a woman needed to make herself look glamorous.
“I’m fed up with life here. I want to get out but Karl won’t let me. He figures that if I leave I would go to the authorities and tell them what’s taking place up here. You must believe I’m married to him. He tricked me under the pretext that he was an artist living up here because it provided him with beautiful scenery to paint. After I came I realized I was trapped and couldn’t escape.”
“I’ve been hoping that I would find someone to help me to escape. Can you help me? You seem kind and strong.”
Bendoo wasn’t sure that this wasn’t a trap. He thought it would be better to find out more about her before he did or say anything.
“You’re asking me to do the impossible. I don’t see how you can escape from up here alive. All of the escape routes are guarded around the clock by machine guns.”
“I would advise you to forget about trying to escape and stay with Karl. I’m sure that when he’s leaving, he’ll take you with him.”
She looked at him, not trying to hide the scorn she felt.
“I thought you were one of the better ones up here. It seems as if you’re all the same. All of you, just killers and robbers,” she spat at him.
Bendoo could see that her face had reddened considerably.
She stood up and was about to leave the room. He took her hand and led her back to the bench.
“If I told you anything else I would be encouraging you to get yourself killed.”
“Well, what can I do?”
“Do as I suggested.”
“To hell with your suggestions. Guess, I’ll just have to do it on my own then. Goodbye.”
She got up to go again.
Bendoo stood up and came around the bench and held her hands. He sat her back in the chair and sat beside her. He put his arms around her shoulders.
“I wouldn’t like to see you go and get yourself killed Camilla, wait on Rattigan.”
He tried consoling her.
She began to cry.
“He destroyed all of my papers. Even if I get out I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to get out of Jamaica and I have no money.”
“Don’t you have any relatives who can help you?”
“I have a sister, Elizabeth, we’re very close. I’m sure she’s been down here already looking for me, but she’s probably returned home by now.”
She showed him a picture of her sister.
He could only stare. It was the woman, whom they had robbed at the Simmonds’ home that night.
“If she came to look for you, the first place she’s going to contact would be your embassy so if you go there they’ll help you.”
“I don’t want to go back to Karl. I feel he’s going to kill me. He has threatened to do it if he ever sees me talking to another man.”
Bendoo looked at her, he suspected that Rattigan had a mean streak in him. If he encouraged her to escape, she could very well tell him. He was also afraid of doing anything silly that might jeopardize the mission.
“Come, I’ll walk you back to your shack, maybe your sister is still looking for you.”
“Thank you.”
She stared at him.
“I can find my way home.”
She went through the door, her head held high.
Bendoo knew that she felt angry and probably hurt, but he had to treat her just as any ordinary Wareikan would.