Gideon’s Sword

They walked past the old power plant. The ruined Dynamo Room loomed above the tangled vegetation, adjacent to a broad field.

“Where’s your boat?” asked the guard, peering across the field toward shore.

“It’s down on the beach over there beyond that seawall.”

Instead of walking straight across the field, the guard walked north along the road, making a loop.

“Why are we going this way?”

“That field’s off-limits,” said the guard.

“What for?”

“Don’t know. There’s a lot of places on the island that are dangerous.”

“Oh really? How do you know where they are?”

“We got a map, shows the no-go areas.”

“On you?”

The guard pulled it out. “We’re required to carry it.”

Gideon took the map and scrutinized it for as long as he dared before the guard folded it up and put it away. After making a broad detour around the field, they arrived at the beach and walked over to the boat.

“Um,” said Gideon, “can I have my stuff back?”

“Guess it isn’t a problem,” the guard said, pulling the map, notebook, and other papers from his pocket, handing them over.

“Is Davids Island open to the public?” Gideon asked.

The guard laughed. “It’s a park but, ah, if I were you I wouldn’t go digging holes over there.” He hesitated. “Mind if I give you a little advice?”

“Please.”

“That map you bought? It’s fake.”

“Fake? How do you know?”

“Canal Street? You see all those Rolexes, Vuitton bags, Chanel perfume, and Prada shit they’re selling down there? That’s counterfeit central. Although I got to admit a fake treasure map is taking it to another level.” He issued a not unkindly laugh, laying a friendly hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “I’d hate to see you waste your time and get into trouble. Trust me, that’s no treasure map.”

Gideon put on his most crestfallen face. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sorry we’ve got so many scumbags in New York City ripping off the tourists.” The guard glanced up at the sky, which had grown almost black with roiling clouds. The wind was gusting, and the bay was covered with whitecaps. “If I were you, I’d forget Davids Island and get my ass off the Sound. We get some serious riptides and shit around here when there’s a storm, and there’s a big one coming in.”

63

At ten o’clock that evening, Gideon, dressed as a college-aged backpacker, loitered on City Island Avenue, observing Murphy’s at a distance. In his backpack he carried the two illegal firearms, boxes of extra rounds, a knife, a headlamp, a flashlight, a folding shovel, folding pick, rope, Mace, bolt cutters, two pairs of night-vision goggles, maps, and the notebook. The gusts of wind coming off the Sound set Murphy’s old wooden sign swinging back and forth on creaky hinges. The air smelled of salt water and seaweed. The southern horizon was alive with distant flashes of lightning, blooming inside towering thunderheads, approaching fast.

He could see no sign of Mindy. It was a few minutes past their rendezvous time, but he assumed she had arrived early and was probably hanging back somewhere, waiting for him to show.

And as if on cue, he heard her low voice from the darkness of the small park behind him. “Hello, Gideon.”

She stepped out, looking trim and athletic, carrying her own backpack, a woolen beret worn jauntily on her head, her short hair stirred by the wind. She greeted him with an affectionate kiss.

“What a charming surprise.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said with an arch smile. “That’s part of the cover — just two college kids on a summer trip — like you said, right?”

“Right.”

They crossed the street. Next to the boat rental was a marine yard surrounded by a high chain-link fence, which blocked access to the piers. Gideon looked up and down the street, satisfied himself it was empty, then scaled the fence and dropped down on the other side. Mindy landed softly beside him. They scooted across the yard, scaled another fence, and ended up on the pier leading to the floating docks.

“The outboards are kept in here,” Gideon said, indicating a locked shed. He attacked the lock with the pair of bolt cutters, and in a moment they had hauled out a six-horsepower Evinrude with a full gas can, fuel lines, and a pair of oars. They jumped into a boat; Gideon bolted the engine to the stern and co

Gideon started rowing. In a few minutes they’d moved out of the protective slip and into the teeth of the rising wind.

Mindy shielded herself from the blowing spume. “You got a plan yet?”

“Of course. Nodding Crane is already on the island. It’s essential for him to think I’m coming alone. So get down and stay down while I explain.”

“Sure thing, boss.” She curled up below the gunwale.

Beyond the docks, Gideon lowered the engine, fired it up, and headed down the protected cha

“Let’s hear it,” said Mindy from the bottom of the boat.

“I’m going to drop you off at the southern end of the island. I’ll land midway on the island and make my own way to where the burial ground is. On foot, you’ll follow the map I’ve sketched for you. Stick to the route I’ve drawn — the island’s a veritable death trap. By the time I reach the burial ground you’ll already be in position in the trees, covering me. I go in, find the limb, cut out the wire, we split.”

“What about Nodding Crane?”

“He’s going to show, no way to predict when. The field around the burial site is wide open — there’s no way for him to cross it without you seeing him. When he appears, shoot him dead. Don’t mess around.”

“Not very sporting.”

“The hell with sporting. Got a problem with shooting a man in the back?’’

“Not a man like him.”

He nodded at her backpack. “You got a good sniper rifle in there like I said?”

“It’s not a sniper rifle but it’ll do, a Kel-Tec SUB-2000 nine-millimeter semi-automatic. Kevlar vest, too. What about you?”

“Two handguns, body armor — I’m ready.” Gideon pulled out a map enclosed in a ziplock bag. “You won’t have any problem finding your way, but as I said, the whole island’s an accident waiting to happen, so follow the route I marked on this map — no shortcuts. There’s a timetable here, too. Stick to it.”

“What if he’s already waiting for you in the burial trench? You step out in the field and he guns you down?”

“I’m going to cross the field in a backhoe. Two are parked in a shed beside the field, and they’re built like tanks.”

The boat puttered along, nearing the City Island Bridge and the opening to the Sound. The wind howled, whipping the relatively calm cha

“Tell me about the island.”

“The place started out as a POW camp for Civil War soldiers. A lot of them died and were buried there. New York City bought it for a public burial ground in 1869. But that only took up about half the island. The rest was used for other things at various times: a women’s lunatic asylum, boys’ workhouse, tubercularium, yellow fever quarantine, prison. During the 1950s the military used it as a base for a battery of Nike Ajax missiles, stored in silos. Now it’s uninhabited and just used for burials. But nothing’s been removed or boarded up, it was all just left to disintegrate.”

“And the burials?”

“They lay them in two parallel trenches, one for amputated limbs, the other for the, ah, complete corpses. The limbs are buried at a rate of, I figured, about seven to ten a day. Each box has two numbers: the medical file number and a sequential number added by the inmates as they bury them, so they can be located again if necessary. The body part is also tagged inside the box with the identifying information. It’s been about a week since Wu’s legs were amputated, so I figure we need to go about sixty, maybe seventy boxes back. The boxes are stacked in the trench four across and eight high, thirty-two in a row, so I figure it’ll be in the second or third row deep.”