When Death Comes for You
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
To Jamie Rizzo, who makes all things possible. And to human rights lawyers everywhere.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Twenty Seconds
December 24, 1991
What you still need to know is this: When Death comes for you, She does not steal into your home like a thief in the night, bumping against the detritus of your ordinary life. The chipped white cabinet with its squeaking hinges. Your grandmother’s broken teapot. The stuffed dancing monkey from America that takes pride of place on your mantel.
No. Death comes like a lady.
She opens the door and waits, sensing into the darkness. If all is well. If your life is full of joy and triumph. If your lover is attentive. If dark clouds part like shimmering dew in your presence, She will turn back the way She has come. She will close the door with a click so soft, you will wonder if you heard anything at all.
But if you are trapped in the inky darkness. If the scent of your imminent demise wafts in your nostrils. Well then, She might just make her appearance . . . and you would be grateful.
Do you know what it feels like to die? To feel that last gurgling breath wiggle its way through your windpipe?
I do.
When Death came for me, I was only five years old. A tiny girl-child, I stood on the edge of a cliff high above the Caribbean Sea while the boys of Saint-Marc gathered below, taunting and laughing.
“Plonje! Plonje!” they cried. Dive.
Easy for them to say; they knew how to swim. In the bustling Haitian port town where we lived, young boys spent the early hours of the morning diving into the bottomless ocean. They popped back up with nets full of docile carp and grouper, rock lobster, sardines, and even conch. They brought their bounty home for the women to cook over a charcoal flame with some fresh plantains and a spicy pikliz sauce.
“Rose is such a bébé-la-la. What a big baby!” someone shouted loudly enough for me to hear.
The laughter intensified until I felt its vibration in my clenched teeth and in the tears that sprang to my eyes. I’m no baby. I squared my shoulders and puffed out my chest. In an instant, my feet were racing across the jagged rocks toward the deep blue sea.
I’m flying!
I hung in the air like a laughing gull with great big flapping wings. It felt so good that I allowed myself to think, if only for a moment, that it would be okay.
Then the water rushed up to meet me.
You imagine my drowning as some long, drawn-out affair with much screaming and crying and floundering about? No. There is only stillness. Wrapped in a paralysis of fear, the body cannot move.
For a child, the process is mercifully quick. It takes just twenty seconds to swallow a mouthful of water. Twenty seconds for the lungs to claw frantically at a tiny bubble of air. Twenty seconds to gasp and choke and vomit it all up only to take it back in with the next desperate inhalation.
Twenty seconds.
The last time Death came for me, I was a woman ancient in my bones. We were crossing the Caribbean Sea in a boat some half-hearted carpenter had put together over a long weekend. Only the tiniest sliver of moon shone in the darkened sky. I stayed alert. When the jolt came, I was ready.
The boat collapsed in a pile of wood and metal, splinters and shards. We plunged into the sea. By now, I knew enough not to resist. Why should I? This salt-seasoned world is as instinctively familiar as my mother’s womb.
Not so for the others. They struggled fiercely, churning the water with their arms and rending the air with their screams.
Ede mwen. Help me.
The process of drowning is not nearly as merciful for adults. We struggle against the inevitable; it is our way.
It takes three minutes for an adult to stop fighting. Three minutes to become so exhausted you can’t even raise your nose and mouth out of the water. Three minutes for the body to pulse and throb to a rhythm so erratic it does not register as a heartbeat.
Three long, endless minutes.
I went to work, swimming past scraps of lumber and old memories. I dove deep into the churning water, then popped back up with a lifeless shell curled in my arms. We enter the world in a tight little ball and leave in the exact same way.
I counted off as I worked: Three. Six. Nine. Twelve. Fifteen. Seventeen.
Where was she?
I counted again: Three. Six. Nine. Twelve. Fifteen. Seventeen.
Still, she was not there.
Where was the baby girl who’d wrapped her tiny arms around me moments before our boat melted into the sea? Even in the darkness, I had felt the weight of her stare. It was as if she knew that I—
Ede mwen. Help me.
I heard the words reverberate in my soul. I couldn’t stop myself from plunging deep into the water once more.
It was all blues and dark, dark grays down at the bottom of the ocean. I made my way by touch, my hands groping through the debris of a thousand sunken ships. My lungs begged for much-needed oxygen. I swallowed hard—not the air that I craved, but the brine-soaked water that craved me. My lungs were now razor blades scraping against tender flesh.
I dove lower, feeling the seawater rush through my veins, curdling my blood. I need to breathe. The thought screamed through my mind, but I knew it was meaningless. I could not have what I wanted. This was the price of my salvation.
I dove even deeper.
My hands collided with a sharp, bony elbow. Meci, Papa Bondye. Meci. I praised Father God as I grabbed hold of my burden and pushed against the weight of the ocean.
But I had stayed too long.
I could feel the spasms in my throat threatening to close off my windpipe. I could neither inhale nor exhale. I kept moving only because the human body is a series of reflexes and electrical impulses that don’t always know when they’ve been shut off.
I pushed up even as the darkness descended all around me. Then, just as the final twinkle of light started to fade, I broke free.
I swallowed huge, greedy gulps of air, choking and spluttering. A sharp, wheezing cough racked my body. For a long time, there was only this—the sounds of life.
When the violence subsided, I looked down at the young girl still wrapped in my arms. She did not stir. The soft pebbles of her eyes looked up at me without recrimination, but also without hope.
No! Not this time. Not this little girl.
I pushed the breath of life into her with a small prayer. How long had it been? Twenty seconds? Three minutes? Three hours? I didn’t know. I pushed more air into her, but it eased through her body without resistance. I pounded her chest, then breathed again. Still nothing. She would not see her sixth birthday.
I allowed her body to join the others.
The air crackled with a sudden energy only I could feel. “Take me,” I begged, my strangled cry piercing the darkness. “I want to go home.”
You still have work to do, a stern male voice replied.
I trembled at the words, but of course I had to obey. How could it be otherwise?
In the distance, I heard the roar of engines as the ocean shifted from the command of nature to that of man.
The Americans were coming.
CHAPTER TWO
Every Human Needs to Breathe
January 7, 1992
She could kill him, Renée François thought, her eyes traveling hungrily down her opponent’s body. It would be easy.
Adam Hartmann was in his early thirties, just a few years older than her own twenty-seven, but he was already burdened with the pasty skin and pudgy middle of a man who spent too many hours hunched over a computer screen. He wasn’t some heavily muscled gym rat she’d have to balance against her 130-pound frame—although, even that was easy if you knew what you were doing.
She knew what she was doing.
Every human needs to breathe, her self-defense teacher liked to say. All she had to do was get between this human and that need. Where would she aim the first blow? She pondered the question, scanning his body once more. The throat, she finally decided. The jugular notch, that visible dip in the center of the throat, made an excellent target. A well-placed jab in that hole would send the pasty Mr. Hartmann reeling. It would only incapacitate him, of course, but if she aimed correctly, he would go down and she could reach in for the kill. She could almost hear the last gurgling breaths shudder through his body.
The killing itself would be easy, but how would she dispose of a dead body on a military base? She let out a defeated sigh and turned her attention back to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s resident lawyer-asshole.
“I’m here to do a job, Mr. Hartmann, and I’ve only got three days to do it.” She kept her voice level and calm, in the way she might talk to an uncooperative child. “I need to see my client.”
Adam leaned back in his seat and placed his size 13 loafers on the battered desk in front of him. Small patches of sand clung to his soles, a few flaking off to disappear on the stack of manila folders littering the desk.
“Not possible,” he drawled, his eyes gleaming behind black wire-rimmed glasses while beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. “The marines can’t supervise your little chat right now. It’s a security issue. I’m sure you understand.”
He didn’t give a damn if she understood, that was clear. She thought about her four a.m. wake-up call and the long flight from Boston to Norfolk. She had been sandwiched between a chatty old man and a screaming infant whose hapless mother could do little to console him. Her arrival at the naval air station in Virginia brought no relief. After three hours of waiting, she boarded a military plane and took a seat so hard it felt like being stretched on a rack. Then, after several more hours in the air, the plane made a heart-in-the-throat landing, braking hard on a cliff with just a few feet of runway separating it from the Caribbean Sea.
Now here she was on a godforsaken wasteland being jerked around by an INS bulldog. “I just need twenty minutes,” she said, still hoping to appeal to her opponent’s better nature. “I was appointed Rose Fleurie’s lawyer only a few days ago, and I want to introduce myself, maybe ask a few questions. Where’s the security risk in letting a client speak to her lawyer?”
“These people don’t need lawyers.”
She blinked, fighting for her composure. The room smelled of diesel and jet fuel exhaust, not to mention the very human scent of sweaty male flesh. A ceiling fan whirred overhead, doing little more than recycling the heat. She could feel herself wilting under the “lightweight” Armani suit she had worn for the past twelve hours. The padded shoulders stuck to her bare skin, and the pencil skirt kept riding up on her thighs. Her power suit had made an impression in conference rooms all over Boston, but it was wasted out here. She would have given anything for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
“Ms. Fleurie is seeking asylum in the United States. She most certainly needs a lawyer,” Renée said, “and I need time to prepare my case—”
“Well, I can help you there,” Adam interrupted. “I’ve got an offer for you. If you take it, you won’t have to worry about preparing your case.”
This should be good. “I’m listening,” she said.
Adam shifted his weight, planting his feet on the floor and leaning forward as the chair creaked in protest. “If your client will voluntarily consent to be returned to Haiti, we can promise her head-of-the-line privileges when she refiles her asylum claim from Port-au-Prince.”
“You want to send Ms. Fleurie back to Haiti in the middle of a military coup?” She paused, wondering if she was missing something. “How is that a good offer?”
“She’ll be one of the first claims we process.”
“Can you guarantee her asylum?”
He shook his head. “She’ll take her chances with everyone else.”
It was now her turn to lean back in her seat and stare him down. “She’ll be dead inside a week.”
Adam huffed dismissively. “Not even the Haitian military is going to waste time on a cook.”
Renée took several long, steadying breaths. “She is a chef. President Aristide’s chef, to be precise. The military deposed him, and you want to send back a member of his administration?”
“It’s a stretch to call a cook part of a presidential administration, isn’t it?” Adam jeered.
She could feel her anger rising, but she kept her gaze off his jugular notch and focused on her breathing. “You obviously have no idea what’s going on in Haiti right now. Anyone remotely connected to the president is under attack. The military has already slaughtered five thousand of his supporters. There’s blood in the streets.”
“Haitians have been killing each other for centuries,” he said. “It is their way.”
She stared at him in silence, struck dumb by his words.
“For Rose Fleurie to be granted asylum,” Adam continued, “you have to show that she has a credible fear of persecution based on her political activities. What did she do? Bake political slogans into her pastries?”
“We’ll take our chances,” Renée bit out.
He reached for a manila folder and threw it across the desk. “I tried to save you the hassle, but you obviously don’t know a good thing when you see it.”
She stared at the folder, a smudged black heel print marring its cover. “What’s this?”
He smiled with reptilian grace. “Proof that your client is going to prison unless you wise up
.”
She flipped open the folder, quickly scanning its contents.
“I’ll save you some time and get to the punch line,” Adam said. “Your client murdered those people on that boat.”
“Murder?” Her hand shook as she thumbed through the file.
“We can bring her up on eighteen counts, and she can spend the rest of her life in a six-by-nine cell, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Or we can ship her back where she came from. In Haiti, she can go on a killing spree to rival Jeffrey Dahmer for all I care. Your choice.”
She balled her trembling hand into a fist and laid it at her side. “I need time to review this material. And I definitely need to talk to my client. Now.”
Adam jerked a thumb toward the window. “I told you, the marines are too busy processing boat people.”
She leaped from her seat, her chair scraping against the cement floor. “They are not ‘boat people,’” she said, her voice vibrating with an anger she could no longer hide. “They are political refugees fleeing persecution. They have the right to seek asylum in the United States—and we have a legal obligation not to return them to a slaughterhouse.”
“They are economic migrants,” Adam shot back. “I’d send them all packing if it were up to me.”
She thrust her face toward his, so close her breath clouded his glasses. “Well, it’s not up to you, Mr. Hartmann. People much more important than you have seen fit to give Rose Fleurie a hearing. I’d better get access to my client by tomorrow morning or it’s your ass on the line.”
She snatched the folder off his desk and stuffed it in her briefcase. Then she stormed out of the room and into the oppressive heat that had descended on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
CHAPTER THREE
Honor Bound
It was almost six o’clock, but the sun overhead showed no signs of mercy. Waves of heat shimmered off cracking asphalt, and a translucent haze covered the landscape. Renée stood outside an old airplane hangar at McCalla Field, which now served as the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s temporary quarters. McCalla was a decommissioned airfield that—like almost everything else on the naval base—was named for one of the heroes of the Spanish-American War. The air smelled of jet fuel, as though the airfield could return to duty at a moment’s notice, shuttling marines from one Caribbean hot spot to the next.