A Fortnight of Fury Read online

  A Fortnight

  of Fury

  David Culberson

  Minneapolis

  Minneapolis

  FIRST EDITION MAY 2019

  A Fortnight of Fury. Copyright © May 2019 by David Culberson.

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover and book design by Gary Lindberg

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Also by David Culberson

  Maps

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  To all those who helped make my young, informative years in the Caribbean very special. Many are gone but are forever alive in the pages of these books.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Calumet Editions and my many friends who take time to read drafts that they know will change many, many times before being deemed acceptable.

  Also by David Culberson

  Alterio’s Motive

  Back Time on Love City

  Maps

  Preface

  October 1983

  The world witnessed an escalation of the Cold War as the Soviet Union grasped for financial straws in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s anti-communist rhetoric and defense spending. Fidel Castro, after failing to gain a foothold for his unique revolution on the African continent, sought one closer to home and was knocking on the doors of Grenada and Dominica. On October 23rd, a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into a US Marine barracks in Beirut and killed, besides himself and a passenger, two hundred forty-one marines. Reagan was loaded for bear. America needed a win. Reagan pounced. His target was an idyllic island in the Windward Chain of the lower Caribbean whose primary export, besides tourism, was nutmeg. Maurice Bishop, Grenada’s prime minister and a Marxist who wanted better medical care and education for the people of his island, was not interested in becoming a regional military power. He had recently been placed in jail by an extreme faction of his political party that wanted a stronger military presence on the island, but not before bringing in six hundred Cuban construction workers to build a nine-thousand-foot runway that, according to the US, could possibly land Soviet military aircraft. The runway and Bishop’s closeness to Castro were two ingredients that stoked the fires of an invasion by the United States. Then Bishop was executed, which brought the world’s attention to Grenada and the safety of foreigners on the island. The final ingredient needed to justify Reagan’s invasion was a medical school on the island where eight hundred American students hoped to receive degrees.

  Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada, began on October 25th, 1983. Bombs dropped against a backdrop of lush mountain jungles and sugary sand beaches bleached by the Caribbean sun. In the villages, chickens strutted around brightly painted wooden shacks with metal roofs. Roosters crowed. Goats huddled under trees and in makeshift bus stops, trying to avoid humans. Locals that were not part of the People’s Revolutionary Army went about their daily routines. Children played soccer and cricket. Women opened shutters and swept porches; some carried baskets of fruit on their heads to local markets. Many men, on their way to clear brush, rode bicycles with machetes strapped to their backs. A few locals set up coolers and folding tables along roadsides so they could sell a jonny cake and an ice-cold bottle of beer for less than a dollar. All wore thin clothes and broad smiles.

  As mighty as it was, the military invasion could not obscure the backdrop. As acrid smoke from exploded ordnance filled the air, roosters still crowed. The rat-tat-tat of automatic firearms enveloped the island, and the goats still huddled. Locals lined the roadsides to cheer the US forces as they flooded the country. The beaches remained pristine, beckoning tourists… who didn’t show up. Soldiers died. Calypso music played through cheap speakers set up at road intersections or near the cricket fields. Helicopters crashed while the intense Caribbean sun shone through the smoky haze of gunfire. Chickens led their chicks through the marauding armies, just another nuisance in the chicken’s quest to avoid the mongooses—who have an insatiable craving for baby chickens.

  And the war went on.

  The world saw none of this. Journalists weren’t allowed on the island during the first few days of the invasion. But a handful of locals from a neighboring island, on a totally different mission, unwittingly landed on Grenada on the eve of Operation Urgent Fury. What they witnessed was surreal—a harsh brushstroke of battle painted across the colorful, whimsical canvas that was the Caribbean.

  It was as though Disney had gone to war.

  Chapter 1

  DAY 1: OCTOBER 14

  A full moon shone on Pillsbury Sound, its mirrored image warped by the rough seas between St. John and St. Thomas, transforming into clearer detail on the calmer water in the bay. Boiled Bob sat under a palm tree on an overturned fiberglass fishing boat that he knew had been in the same spot for as long as he’d been on the island. He watched the moon’s reflection slide up the beach on lapping waves, disappearing each time the water retreated back into the sea, its shiny remnant sucked into the sand. A wave crawled over his sandaled feet, and Bob moved higher up on the boat’s hull, scraping the back of his thigh on a new patch of fiberglass that had not yet been sanded. He rubbed his skin checking for blood and sneered at the unkempt boat.

  “Fucking locals,” he mumbled. “How in hell does anything get done on this shithole?”

  Boiled Bob looked into the bay and then glanced at the surrounding hills. It was midnight, and the island had shut down, but the light from the moon bothered him. He and his minions had work to do. Anybody could step out onto their deck in the middle of the night and be alarmed by unusual activity in the moonlit bay. This was the first of two bays he planned to visit this night, and he needed all the time he could get, particularly given the bumbling misfits at his command.

  He shook his head in disgust at the thought of the crew he’d assembled over the past three years. They were loyal but provided him with multiple frustrations. He simply couldn’t understand why those attracted to his brilliant political and social theories were such… idiots. He sighed and thought of the revolutionary writings introduced to him during his six-month foray into college life. He read Marx, Proudhon and Lenin. He even picked up on Bakunin and Emma Goldman. He didn’t understand their philosophies, but he could repeat many of their writings, which impressed his minions but sometimes got him kicked out of local bars by patrons who tired of Boiled Bob’s incoherent diatribes.

  A dog barked nearby, and Boiled Bob looked up the hill to see if anybody had come out of one of the scattering of homes ac
ross the street. He didn’t see anybody but started to wonder what was taking his crew so long—a crew with an uncanny ability to bungle the simplest task. Bob shook his head. One of the first things he’d realized after he landed on the island was that it was as if somebody had grabbed the world and shook it, and all of the loose ends and broken pieces had fallen to the Caribbean. Boiled Bob befriended as many of these broken souls and goofballs as would listen to him. Many seemed to think he was a natural leader, a role Bob readily accepted, and he took those he could control under his wing—for as long as they believed his bullshit. After a couple of years and multiple changes in the group’s membership, they’d worn out their welcome on the island that tolerated just about anything—except a loud group of misfits led by Boiled Bob. Locals sometimes shouted them down and demanded that Boiled Bob and his cult leave the island. Bob felt mildly responsible for his small group of broken pieces and had begun to think that a move to a different island would improve his stake in life, or at least allow him to start over someplace where he and his followers were unknown.

  Tonight was the night he’d chosen to make the move. He hadn’t really chosen it. He had coerced his crew into the conclusion that this was the opportune night to take action—a conclusion not based on research of the moon’s phases or which night would be darkest in order to conceal their plan. The decision was made a week earlier after psilocybin mushrooms, plucked from cow dung on Tortola’s Sage Mountain, were added to the group’s pasta dinner. Around a campfire an hour after dinner, a passage from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan was read to them over and over by Boiled Bob—until the sun came up. His warped interpretation of the passage was that they would leave the island together in one week. Deep into their hallucinogenic condition, the group enthusiastically agreed with their too cool leader.

  Another shiny wave lapped at his feet, and Boiled Bob stared into the bay and then to St. Thomas, four miles in the distance, where house lights clung to the symmetrical volcanic slopes, making the island look like a squat, lit up Christmas tree. The noise of an approaching vehicle turned his attention landward. He stood and ran his hand through his scruffy, black hair and then placed his thumb and fingers on either side of his beard and absentmindedly stroked downward. A small, beat-up Toyota pickup truck came to a stop along the concrete seawall. His crew bailed from the truck and stepped off the seawall onto the beach. Boiled Bob started toward his crew, passing another overturned dinghy closer to the seawall and tied to a palm tree. He looked back at the dinghy he’d been sitting on and decided it was too small for his crew. He’d take the one closer to the wall. He heard a thump under the dinghy just as a mosquito bit his neck. He slapped at the mosquito and paused. His crew, two men and three women, all thin and wearing shorts, tank tops and sandals, stopped a few feet from him. One of the women giggled, causing Bob to glare at his crew. All seemed enthusiastic and ready to start their new lives as modern-day pirates. Once they had settled he smiled at the women, all of whom he’d slept with. They smiled back. The two taller women, Mary and Pam, both had dark complexions and long auburn hair and could have passed as sisters. Neither currently shared his bed. Tricia, the short woman with long, dark curls and the nice ass, did.

  Boiled Bob stepped close to Tricia, patted her butt, stood back and said, “It’s the Happy Hobo.” He pointed to a seventy-one-foot wooden yawl, built in the 1930s by John Alden, anchored in the bay fifty yards from shore and said, “That’s the one we’ll take.”

  The crew looked out to the boat, which they all knew well. There were a dozen other boats in the bay, but this was the prize. It had sailed in many regattas and had been featured on the cover of more than one US boating magazine. Most importantly, it belonged to the father of Captain Jay’s girlfriend. Boiled Bob had nothing against the father, but he hated his daughter—just a little less than he hated Captain Jay.

  The tallest of the men, thin and topped off with a mop of red hair, blew out a breath and said, “You sure, Boiled… I mean, Boss? I know the owner of that boat. He’s got lots of friends.”

  Boiled Bob glared up at Long Bill’s six-foot-seven frame. He despised the name Boiled Bob.

  “Of course he’s got a lot of friends, idiot,” he snorted. He then added, “Why aren’t you called Tall Bill? I mean Long Bill is a stupid name. It’s like you were named while lying down. What the fuck’s with that, LB? Who named your tall, skinny ass anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It just happened,” Long Bill said with a shrug, nervously rubbing the bump on the bridge of his big, crooked nose. “But are you sure about this boat? Some of his friends are kinda mean.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Boiled Bob said, nodding at Long Bill’s nose. “You shouldn’t have let that asshole Captain Jay do that to you. You’re bigger than him by five inches or more.”

  “It wasn’t Captain Jay who broke my nose. It was that stutterer, Tommy Lowell. But he cheated. He smiled, and I thought that meant he was done with the fight. Then he hit me again. Hurt like hell.”

  “Well, you’ve got a good seven inches on him. You should have kicked his ass.”

  “I don’t think anybody has ever been able to kick Tommy’s ass, Boss. Besides, I kinda like him.”

  Boiled Bob stared at Long Bill for a long time and finally said, “You in love with Captain Jay too?”

  “No, Boss, he’s a prick. He’s got a nice girlfriend though.”

  Boiled Bob looked out to the bay and thought about his own experiences with Captain Jay, the worst at a rental house Boiled Bob maintained. A friend of Captain Jay had rented the home for a week so that he and his family could dive with him. The asshole captain happened to have walked in on Boiled Bob while he was having his way with his friend’s beautiful daughter. It didn’t matter to Boiled Bob that she was thirteen. Captain Jay pounced, and Boiled Bob had spent a month in the St. Thomas hospital. He absentmindedly rubbed his ribs. It still hurt to sneeze or cough.

  Boiled Bob shook his head, looked around at the rest of his crew and said, “We’re taking this boat because we can. Fuck the owner and his friends. They think they’re so tough. I’m smarter than them, and taking this boat will prove it. It’ll make them look like the meathead idiots they are.”

  Boiled Bob looked at each crew member. All but Long Bill nodded with enthusiasm. Long Bill looked confused.

  Boiled Bob smiled and said, “Okay. Let’s get this done.” He then pointed to the overturned fishing boat next to them and said, “Grab some oars from some of these dinghies pulled up on the beach, and grab the gear from the truck. Then paddle this boat out to the Happy Hobo.”

  Boiled Bob walked to the truck and took out a canvas bag. He pulled out hand augers and said, “I want you three to drill holes in the bottoms of every boat tied up along this beach. After you’ve paddled this one out to the Happy Hobo, sink it.”

  Long Bill, Pam and Mary grabbed the drills and walked toward the dozen or so dinghies spread out up the beach. Tricia walked down the beach in search of oars. Boiled Bob untied the overturned fishing boat from the palm tree. He and the other male crew member, Maynard, uprighted the boat. A crab that had found refuge in the boat’s shadow skittered between their feet and into the shadows of the seawall.

  Jumping back, Maynard yelled, “What the hell is that?”

  A small, unshaven West Indian man wearing a dirty T-shirt and who smelled of stale beer sat up, wiped sand from his face and shouted, “Hey! What you doing wit my house? Leave me alone.” He wiped more sand and sweat from his face, squinted at the three men and said, “I know you.”

  “Calm down, Willie,” Boiled Bob said, holding up his palm.

  Maynard pulled out the large knife he kept in his baggy shorts.

  Boiled Bob stepped toward the short, wiry Frenchie and said, “No, Maynard.”

  Maynard hesitated. He lowered the knife and ran his left hand through his wavy blond hair.

  Boiled Bob
had several advantages over his crew. One was his intelligence. Another was that he was a good fighter, or so he’d convinced his followers. They’d never seen him fight and, in reality, Boiled Bob had been on the losing end of every fight he’d been in, including a thrashing at the hands of Captain Jay. He’d learned a couple of martial arts moves in his youth, knew fighting jargon from movies and told his crew of numerous fights he’d won over the years, many times putting his opponents in the hospital. It was all bullshit, but Boiled Bob knew that what he lacked in experience he could make up with brazenness. He could bluff his way out of anything—most of the time.

  “But he saw us,” Maynard said, waving the large knife. “He’ll run to town and tell anybody who’s awake that we stole the Happy Hobo. Besides, I’m tired of seeing this homeless asshole stinking up the bars.”

  Long Bill, who’d drilled holes in the dinghy Boiled Bob had been sitting on, saw what was going on and stepped back to the boat Boiled Bob and Maynard had just uprighted. Maynard continued to wave his knife.

  Boiled Bob pushed Maynard and said, “No.” He then looked at Long Bill and said, “Drag that lighter dinghy you just put holes in over here.”

  Maynard sneered at Boiled Bob and walked away, sliding his knife back into his baggy shorts. Boiled Bob shook his head, wondering how Maynard had never cut his prick off taking that damned knife in and out of his shorts.

  Long Bill dragged the smaller dinghy next to Willie’s while Boiled Bob dragged the dinghy Willie slept under to the edge of the surf. Then he and Long Bill turned the smaller dinghy over on top of the piece of cardboard Willie used as a mattress.

  Boiled Bob lifted one side of the dinghy and said, “Okay, Willie. This is your new house. See? It’s lighter and easier for you to get in and out.”