Chapter 6
Rafael and Juan knelt silently in the thicket just yards from the Danfield's cruiser anchored just off the beach and rocking rhythmically in the tropical water's currents. He held each of the Danfield teenagers tightly, one on each hand, and Juan was just behind him, the carbine noticeably loaded and cocked.
"Just a little boat, eh, amigo," whispered Rafael into Danny's ear, tightening his grip on the youngster's arm painfully. "Now suppose you tell me the truth!" he hissed.
"I-I told you, h-honest ... "
"Juan, fire a few shots into that boat, right about where the sleeping compartments should be."
"No, no, please!" exclaimed Janice. She lowered her voice just an instant before Rafael could clamp his hand over her mouth, "I'll tell you, only please, please, don't shoot! Our parents are asleep in there, please!" Tears were already flooding her eyes and dribbling down her pink cheeks.
"Ah, that is much better," said Rafael, raising his hand to stop his friend from firing the ancient American carbine. “That is what I like to hear ... the truth. Now suppose we wake your parents up, real nicely. Juan, run back and get Antonio and Maria. I don't want that bitch here, but I need another man. And bring the pistol, too."
The big husky Cuban disappeared stealthily into the thicket and for a few seconds, they could hear his bare feet as they thudded against the hard-packed sand along the water's edge.
"Now, my little friends, suppose we just sit quietly ... very quietly," whispered their captor hoarsely, his knife poised only inches from Danny's throat. Neither of the Danfield teenagers moved an inch until the others had returned.
"Okay, listen to me," said the leader when all of them were settled close together in the sparse thicket of pines and bushes. "Antonio, you and Juan board the boat from opposite sides, just in case this is some kind of trick. And tell the people, whoever they are, to look to the beach before they try anything foolish. I'll have the light on the kids here. Now get going, and be careful."
"Onto the beach, both of you ... Maria, stay in front of me. It's not that I don't trust you; I just want to look at that sweet ass of yours as you walk," he grinned. She shot him a look that could have cut glass, but obeyed without a word. Maria was broken — try as she might to summon that old fighting spirit, she couldn't. What they had done to her had broken her like a cowboy breaks a high strung filly. There was nothing left for her now, and no reason to fight any longer.
They waited there on the empty beach, an improbable group if there ever was one — Rafael, the hard-bitten revolutionary turned capitalist to line his own pockets with lucre of the worst sort, the two hapless Danfield children, victims of their own curiosity. And Maria, the one with nothing left, no hopes or dreams ... just living out this night and making it into tomorrow.
Minutes that seemed like hours slowly passed; they heard sounds from the boat. A light suddenly glowed from a small round porthole near the bow of the sleek cabin cruiser. Danny and Janice held their breath, terrified that the next second might bring the horrible sound of shots.
But no shots came, only some loud muffled talking below decks, and then the figures of Gloria and Emory Danfield now on deck, he in his undershorts and outer shirt, and his wife in a cotton dress complete with stockings for some reason. Juan was right behind them, and then Antonio, holding in his hand the reason for his delay.
"Antonio, you fool, leave everything as you found it!" shouted Rafael, brandishing the carbine as if he intended to use it on the big ugly Cuban. Antonio reluctantly tossed Danfield's wallet and his wife's purse onto the deck and climbed down the boarding ladder to the warm water. There was more confusion as Emory tried to carry his frightened wife to shore through the waist-high currents, but apparently Juan must have ordered her to walk, for they could hear unintelligible words being spoken and then saw the curious procession coming ashore like some kind of alien landing party. Mr. Danfield wore that confused mask of a man more asleep than awake, though his eyes cleared quickly when he spotted his two children huddled on the beach, both of them under the watchful, cold-steel gaze of another stranger, this one armed with a rifle. Emory Danfield could only guess what was happening — were these men desperados, outlaws of some sort on the run? They were obviously Latin Americans, for though they spoke mostly Spanish among themselves, he had heard all of them speak very good English at one moment or another since being roughly dragged from his bunk like some stowaway being found out by a hardened captain. It had taken him this long to fully realize that this wasn't a dream, that his brain was not playing games with him. This, whatever it was, was for real!
"What's going on?! You there, why are you doing this?" he asked of Rafael, as he immediately appeared to be the leader of this bunch of modern pirates. "If it's money or valuables you want, well gladly give you anything we have without a fight. You don't have to wave all those guns around ... somebody might get hurt."
"Right, my friend! And it will be you if you do not shut your big mouth!" bellowed Rafael in perfect English. "And as for your stinking money, you can shove it up your ass! We don't need your money, amigo, or anything you have!"
"Then why are you doing this to us?"
"Because you are here, that is all. Because you are here."
Emory Danfield shook his head, "I don't understand. We aren't hurting anything. This island doesn't belong to you, so why do you feel threatened by us? Surely, we can do you and your friends no harm"
Rafael rose to his feet and motioned to Antonio to put some brush on the nearly-dead fire, "You have ears and eyes, that is why. And you have mouths ... very big American ones, and you would use them the moment you could if we allowed it. Right, my friend?"
"But ... But I still don't follow you. We haven't disturbed you. We were just here camping, minding our own business. Why did you come busting in here like a bunch of ... of savages?"
Rafael laughed, his teeth gleaming in the glow of the dried driftwood Antonio had tossed on the coals as it burst into orange flames. "We came busting? Not us, amigo, it was you! Your little ones here, they couldn't contain their curiosity. So they come nosing around like a couple of spies and pretty soon, they heard too much ... and see too much, no?" He turned to Danny and Janice at that and they both blushed noticeably, bright red even in the dim light.
"Is this true, Danny?" asked Danfield! "Did you intrude on their privacy?"
"Well, Dad, we didn't know there was anyone there. We just ... "
"Never mind all that! You know better than to go butting in where you haven't been invited. Now you just apologize to these people, and maybe they'll be willing to forget the whole thing. Go ahead, apologize!"
"Oh, Dad! You just don't understand anything, do you? These guys aren't down here on a holiday. They're ... "
"Hold it, hold it!" interrupted Rafael with a brandishing wave of his carbine, "You've said enough! I'll do the explaining around here, okay?"
"Do whatever he says, Danny!" ordered his father. "You've caused enough trouble already."
The young boy hung his head, ashamed of this curse he'd brought on the whole family — what if they were all killed!? These men were just desperate enough to do something like that!
"Your son was about to tell you that we are all here on a mission." He indicated himself and his friends with a wave of his rifle. "Your son and daughter came along at an inopportune time as we all are revolutionaries, embarked on a mission of prime importance to our cause. But you see, you have come between us and our goal, and you will have to be ... removed. Comprende?"
Emory felt his heart thumping like a kettle drum inside his chest. "Surely, you don't mean to kill us? We will not stand in your way. What possible harm can we do you? You can't just shoot us down like a bunch of wild animals!"
"We are revolutionaries, gringo, and we will do what we have to do for our cause!" shouted Rafael, holding the carbine over his head like some Hollywood writer's idea of a Latin American hero.
"Phooey," spat Maria, breaking her self-imposed silence, "You are not revolutionaries! You are pigs, all of you, pigs!" She spat onto the sand at his feet as she screamed. Rafael, dumb-struck for a second by this sudden display of bravado, watched with slack jaw and wide eyes until finally, with one almost-invisibly fast swipe of his hand, he knocked her viciously to the ground, sending her sprawling like a discarded fag doll some child had tossed on the beach. The Danfield's watched silently, too stunned and afraid to offer any protest. Only when Rafael stepped toward the helpless girl, carbine butt at the ready, did Emory find his voice and manage to intercede.
"Wait, wait!" he cried. "Please leave her alone! We don't care who you are or what you are. It doesn't matter to us; we just want to be left alone ... and alive. Can't you see that? Can't you?!"
"Shut up, yanqui, or I'll shut you up permanently right now. I need time to think!" He turned, glaring, to his comrades and to young Danny and Janice. "All of you be quiet and let me think!"
The Danfield family stood quietly together on the lonely beach for interminable minutes while their captors conferred, often heatedly. Only when Emory asked that they be allowed to change into warm, dry clothes was the long agonizing wait interrupted. Rafael reluctantly agreed to allow one of the family to return to the boat, then picked Janice himself to perform the task of retrieving clothes for the whole family, reasoning that she was the least likely to try an escape, Juan accompanied her, and the two returned in only a few minutes, though it seemed like hours to Emory and Gloria Danfield as they thought of their precious daughter alone aboard the boat with that horrible man. Nothing happened, though, and, after stepping behind the sandy ridge one at a time under Juan's watchful eye, they had all changed into dry outfits and were, once again, waiting, ever waiting, for Rafael to decide their fate. Danny whispered his account of what had happened to his father and mother, explaining about seeing the light down the beach and finally, his suspicions about these strange men. He was sure they were criminals of some sort, not at all the revolutionaries they claimed to be, and Janice agreed, though both of them pointedly made no mention of the girl at all, or of what they had witnessed at the far end of this island.
But both of them remembered it, all right. Janice could still feel the funny little quivers in her belly as she remembered the beautifully naked Maria there in the firelight with those men. And inside her, like some kind of churning, she could feel a strange sort of trembling as she vividly recalled those frighteningly huge penises those men put into her. God, how had she taken them in her without splitting in half! She knew it was something she wouldn't soon forget, but young Janice couldn't have guessed, not in a million years, what was in store for her ... or for all of them, this dark night!