Indigo Island

By David Rollison

A riveting novel of suspense. David Rollison shines a brilliant light on the darkness that hides just beneath the surface of Aruba, the discontent and kidnapping of young beautiful women while vacationing.

Department of Homeland Security counterterrorist operative, Mike Kelly is a hero, saving the lives of the kidnapped hostages, exposing island corruption and revealing its innermost secrets. Mike Kelly is the one person who can piece together the Aruba puzzle of unsolved kidnappings of vulnerable women and the fatal attraction of greed and revenge.

A thriller that delivers a stunning twist of surprise and action with breakneck pacing and

Inextricably caught in a swirling storm of island madness and murder, made worse by drug cartel greed, Mike Kelly can hardly find time to indulge his new romantic inclinations, but he learns that, even under the intense Aruba sun nothing is what it seems to be, and no one can be trusted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Rollison
• Release date: Jan 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466128545

David Rollison

David Rollison, a graduate of Georgetown University, is retired from the hospitality industry. He and his wife, Sara owned and operated country inns and restaurants for many years. He is an avid sailor, holds a United States Coast Guard 100 ton Master license. He operates Coastal Sailing Charters, out of St. Simons Island, Georgia where he is a sailboat charter captain. David is the author of four books, including The Black Dagger, Indigo Island, Black Fire and Black Sky.

Book preview

Indigo Island

A Mike Kelly Thriller

David Rollison

Also by David Rollison

The Black Dagger

Sword of Cairo

Book Cover designed by Stuart Lawson

Smashwords Edition

COPYRIGHT @2011 by David J. Rollison

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced in any form without written permission

from the author, except that brief quotations embodied

in critical articles and reviews are permitted.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

www.davidjrollison.com

People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do them harm.

Sam Orwell

Prologue

Linda Allen drifted in and out of sleep, the warm sun enveloping her in a hazy dream. Her too red sunburned skin glistened with a mixture of sweat and sunscreen. A slight afternoon breeze floated in off the ocean. It had been a perfect week of fun, sun and sex. The ideal getaway with her boyfriend. They were staying at a small resort on the North end of Aruba with their own secluded cabana, gravity pool and spectacular private beach. Total privacy, just the two of them, or so she thought.

She opened her eyes a bit and looked down the beach for her boy friend. She thought he was snorkeling off the beach on the close in reef and coral formations. She couldn’t help but smile. Her boy friend would swim and snorkel all day. She looked at her hand and smiled again at the memory of getting her diamond ring last night. It was a perfect diamond set in an elegant platinum Tiffany setting. Not too big, not too small, just right. Most important, it was from the right man. The man of her dreams.

Decker and his associate were watching Linda from their van parked along the desolated beach road. Lets go fishing, grinned Decker.

Linda was less than a hundred yards from the van, an easy snatch and grab. They got out of the van and walked toward her at an angle, so if they were seen she wouldn’t be too alarmed.

When the boy friend got out of the water, he was surprised to not see Linda laying out on their beach towels. He guessed she had gotten too much sun. She was already slightly burnt on her shoulders and face. He laid down to relax and drifted off into a sweet sleep of ocean breezes and seagulls cries.

Decker drove the van to the other end of Aruba to a warehouse. The ferry for Venezuela was leaving soon. Juan wanted a full load to sale. Diego Gomez provided these women as sex slaves to East Asian and Middle Eastern men; transporting them on oil tankers out of Maracaibo, an oil port off the Venezuelan coast. The merchandise was drugged and brought off Aruba on the ferry. Payment was wired into a Cayman Island bank. It was all very neat, undetectable, and rewarding.

***

An article on page three of the Charleston Post & Courier news stated that Linda Allen has been missing for three days. Her Mount Pleasant boy friend, is a prime suspect and a person of interest to the Aruba police. She was last seen on the beach sunbathing while her boy friend was snorkeling near by.

According to the Associated Press, the boy friend was taken into custody by Aruban police. He is suspected in the disappearance of Linda Allen. A Judge had ruled there was enough evidence to keep the boy friend detained as police continue to investigate. The search is on going.

Chapter 1

On that hot afternoon in late August, Mike Kelly and his friend from the marina, Sam Meyers walked into the Jacksonville International Airport and boarded a flight to Miami, Florida. They would change planes in Miami and continue to the Caribbean Island of Aruba. They were traveling first class because Sam’s friend was fairly rich and could afford the luxuries of first class travel.

Mike and Sam stood at the airport security check point. There was a long line of people waiting for baggage inspection. Sam was randomly selected for close examination. Not only did the security guards make him take off his shoes, but their pawing through his carry on luggage arrogating his big bottle of shampoo, razor and finger nail clippers.

They made Mike open his brief case and prove that his MacBook Pro laptop wasn’t an explosive device by having him power it up. His Homeland Security credentials were in the brief case, but Mike didn’t bother with showing them to avoid the inspection.

Finally they were through with them and turned the attention on others behind them. They walked up to boarding gate to wait.

They took their seats in the front of the jet on the port side. Mike appreciated the extra leg room. A very good looking flight attendant offered them a refreshment. Sam requested a glass of chardonnay and Mike had a bourbon on the rocks. Looking around Sam noticed today’s business traveler’s wardrobe because he had the aisle seat and kept looking back at the plane’s entrance.

You know, Mike, when I was in business and needed to fly, I wore a coat, dress shirt and tie on the plane. Just look at these airborne denizens, only one or two are in jackets. Just open shirts and pants, remarked Sam.

Mike obliged and looked around the plane. He wasn’t interested in the latest air travelers’ apparel or fashion statement. He was thinking about the mission.

Aruba is a beautiful Island, the economy is based on tourism. People visiting there want some sun and fun away from work and family. It is a safe haven to relax and enjoy one’s self. Now though, it seems that Aruba has a darker side, missing blond blue eyed women.

Mike was just back from a sailing cruise on his sailboat, The Black Pearl. He and two friends sailed down to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas for a month to relax and refresh from an intense chase of al Qaeda terrorists. They puttered around in the Abacos diving and sailing. Linda and her partner, Jan live on a sailboat down the dock from Mike at the Morningstar Marina on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Mike enjoyed the daily routines of sailing from one beautiful island to the next, anchoring off, diving for dinner and afternoon sundowners in the boat’s cockpit with his friends. After keeping the same schedule as the sea birds, with long hot days in the sun full of swimming, walking the mostly deserted islands, exploring reefs in the dinghy. They were baked deep with tan, except for Jan who leaned more to a burnish red color.

Sam picked up his chardonnay and tipped glasses with Mike.

Here’s to that poor, sad son of a bitch. Sam shrugged and smiled in a weary way.

Mike first met T. Arthur Heyward a few weeks ago, but the visit was still vivid and sad to him. Mike read somewhere that our daily lives are full of things that we must keep moving in motion, heading into a certain direction. It was like the balls that jugglers use. He throws one in the air, then he adds two in the air, then three. All the time having to repeat it over and over. Being fast was a requirement needed to keep the balls going. By the time the first ball was back down, the others were heading down too, so the juggler must keep starting over to keep all three balls up and going. He was always on the edge of disaster, the fear of losing one of the balls, then all of them.

T. Arthur Heyward’s red balls were labeled President of the Sea Island Savings & Loan, an East Beach homeowner, Director of the Land Trust, Spouse of Elizabeth, Golf Club Board Member, Father of Beatrice, the lovely daughter and only child. Mike imagined Arthur expected to keep the balls in the air, until it was time to slow down. This would have been in his sunset years. The good retirement period of his life, having free time and money to enjoy it with his wife and child.

As we all know life isn’t fair. You can arrange your life in any certain way, keeping all the red balls in the air, then fate steps in, it goes to hell and crashes around you.

Arthur, do you have time for another cup of candy? Elizabeth asked one morning at the breakfast table.

Arthur looked up with a puzzled smile, that quickly turned to a frown. Elizabeth was surprised at what she just said. Arthur didn’t understand her and saw she was upset. She walked over to the counter and picked up the coffee carafe and returned to Arthur, Candy! Then she calmed some and said, Coffee? Of course, it’s coffee. What ever did I say?

By the time Arthur could get her to agree to see a local neurologist, she had lost the differentiation between males and females, started vomiting in the mornings and having sudden severe headaches. She admitted to the doctor she was having bad headaches for several months, but paid little attention to them. She was immediately placed in an ambulance and moved to the Savannah Medical Center for tests and later to wait for neurosurgery to remove the cancerous brain tumor.

The surgery proved what the doctor’s feared. The cancer was too advanced. They did their best to keep her comfortable with pain medication. She died very soon after that. Five months passed from the time of a cup of candy to her funeral at the island’s Episcopal Church.

Beatrice will never forget how her mother told her she had a terminal brain tumor. They were walking down the path that led to the beach at the back of their house on East Beach. It wasn’t a long path, but it twisted through overreaching sea oaks and running vines from the sand dunes. As they stepped on the beach the sea breeze caught their hair blowing it across their faces. Her mother laughed. The distant pitch and tumble of the ocean waves, the endless percussion it makes made it hard to hear her at first. She told Bix how sorry she was to miss out on her growing into womanhood, how she would miss her college graduation and engagement parties. Her tumor would cause her to forget Bix, but she should know that Bix will be forever in her heart. The wind seemed to carry her mother’s voice away from her. Bix cried, the moon was rising. It hung low out over the sand bar, a startling orb of watery light.

Arthur’s neat quiet life was desecrated. It had been hideously expensive caring for Elizabeth and to Arthur, hideously incomprehensible. After Elizabeth’s death Beatrice had spent the summer at the beach house. She would have been a senior at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina had she returned in September. Arthur wanted to know when she planned returning to Wofford to finish her degree in communications. She told her daddy she would probably go back at mid term.

Life went on with Beatrice keeping house and beaching each day with friends. Arthur kept busy at the Bank. A merger was in the works with a larger Bank in Atlanta requiring him to spend more nights away and then for a week at a time to meet with the lawyers and accountants sometimes twice a month. The two of them settled into an easy complacency.

By Christmas time, she decided she was not returning to college. She was going sailing with friends to the Bahamas, and then on to the Caribbean. She found a sailboat in St. Simons that was for sale for twenty thousand dollars in very good condition. It was a 33 foot used Hunter; a good coastal cruiser. Bix saw no reason why she should not live life some and spend her mother’s money she was left. She reminded him that she would be twenty one in another month, and had thirty thousands dollars left in the bank. Explaining that Tania Aebi, a young New York girl had circumnavigated the world in a sailboat smaller than her sailboat. She kissed him goodbye and was gone out the door.

At first, he received a post card from the Bahamas, one from Nassau, another from Puerto Rico and then they became infrequent and stopped all together. Arthur continued the weekly trips to Atlanta. As he was driving along I95 north to Savannah to take I16 to Atlanta, a tractor trailer lost a tire and smashed into his car causing a major traffic pile up with multi cars and another tractor trailer jackknifing into the grassy medium strip and into his car again. The Georgia Highway Patrol officer said it was a miracle that half a dozen or more people weren’t killed, instead just one man, Arthur, was seriously injured and airlifted to the Savannah Medical Center’s trauma center.

The Darien Fire Department used the jaws of life to pry Arthur out of the squashed Mercedes, and there was so much blood the EMTs had to give him blood while transporting him in the helicopter. His spine was fractured between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, the spine pinched, ground and bruised so badly it looked close to being severed.

Arthur was paralyzed from the waist down to his toes. Fate was again changing the rules of a happy life. Arthur was a shrewd and lucky investor having several hundred shares of profitable dot com companies. One of the fun things in life for him was to play the tech stock market, he bought Apple and Google in the beginning of their rise to success. After many years of holding them, they split and multiplied like rabbits. T. Arthur Heyward was a millionaire many times over.

After Elizabeth’s death, Arthur lost interest in the stock market, he rarely looked at the financial news, just enough to keep performing in his job. While laying in the hospital for many months, Arthur decided to cash in all the stocks; he would need to sell the east beach house, and empty out all the antique furniture that Elizabeth had chosen with loving care. His doctors suggested he should start to think about a retirement facility that provided physical therapy and medical care.

He was rich. He sold his investments, his lawyer settled with the tractor trailer company handsomely, received disability from the Bank and got a good price on his house and antiques. The premature retirement benefit and the bank insurance disability income clause were spewing more money at him. He laughed when he found out how much he was worth; a cripple with no wife, and a lost child worth many millions.

His friend Sam visited him regularly at the medical center. Arthur was transferred to a special rehabilitation unit for spinal injuries. The unit dealt with the loss of movement to the lower extremities. Sam was asked to check out several of the higher end retirement centers in Savannah. Arthur saw no reason to return to St. Simons Island. They decided on Skidaway Gardens Retreat outside of Savannah. The place offered all he needed in physical and medical care. Arthur would be in Garden Suite 12.

His attorney tried to locate Beatrice in the Caribbean to tell her that her father had been badly hurt. The attorney suggested that Arthur engage a private investigator to track her down. Money was no object to Arthur. All he wanted to know was if his baby was safe and living good. The PI was unable to find her after she left St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. Some young people at Red Hook marina remembered her and the others and their sailboat. The young people thought they were sailing down islands to St. Martins.

Then the late phone call from Aruba. The operator asked if Arthur would accept a collect call from Bix Heyward. He kept his old St. Simons Island phone number and had it ported to his new cell phone, just in case Beatrice tried to call.

Yes, of course. ...Bix is that you?

Daddy, I am so glad to reach you. How are you doing? she asked.

Well, darling, a lot has happened to me since you left, but never mind me, how are you and when are you coming home?

Daddy, I ....( another voice on the line) Mr. Heyward, Bix is just fine she is, but she has gotten herself into a spot of trouble you see. She has borrowed much money to pay her gaming debts which I can happily say I was able to pay for her. Now you see, you need to pay me, the stranger said.

What? What? Who is this speaking, please! Where is my daughter?

"Mr. Arthur, you will pay me two hundred thousands dollars to keep Bix safe from trouble, you understand? She be safe with me,