And just in case his ego was on vacation, she’d brought ganja and the sweetness of the birthday cake and…

It had all sounded so simple in the planning that she hadn’t had time to be afraid or to indulge herself in prayers or wishful thinking. Besides, above all else, she was a doer. Even were that not her nature, she’d be a doer now. She was damned if she was going to let them put Arthur Marryshow up against a wall and shoot him.

Dead.

Or take machetes and hack him into pieces as a lesson to others who might be thinking of not toeing the line. Rumor had it Maurice Bishop and his Commie henchmen planned to do one or both of these things on the first day of the New Year.

Tomorrow.

With that sobering thought and the renewed realization that she was the parrot fish, the designated decoy, Peta took a last look at Burns Point and at the lagoon which lay adjacent to the harbor. She could see theAssegai, Fredrick “Frikkie” Van Alman’s 120-footer, anchored in the lagoon. The schooner rocked gently, and Peta wished that she were there too, lying safely in the warm waters of the Caribbean.

Trusting that her partners in this rescue attempt, Frik and his ex– Green Beret buddy Ray Arno, already had their asses in gear, she put on a dash of lipstick and adjusted the backpack. She hiked her short skirt level with her panty line and tuned in to Jimmy’s calypso. Never more aware of her physical beauty, and determined to use everything that good genes had given her, she set her body into deliberately sensual motion. Dancing around the corner of the stone facade of Grenada’s fortress prison, she prayed for this exercise to be over fast, as planned. It was one thing to play tease; it was quite another to have to deal with fully aroused male libidos.

“Hey, Joe. You see what I see?” Her cousin’s husband and his Soviet-made submachine gun leaned in a triangle against the wall. He touched the weapon as if to reassure himself that it was still there, removed his dark American shades, and grinned at Peta.

“I see it but I don’t believe it.” His buddy, squat and ugly as a blowfish, grinned back. “Whatchou doin’ here, girl?”

Peta danced into the circle of their lechery. She took off the backpack, dug into it, removed the ganja, and threw it to William. “Natalie says happy New Year.”

“You telling me you came all the way up here to give me this?” From his breast pocket he pulled out a packet of rolling papers and removed one. Reaching into the plastic sandwich bag filled with marijuana, he removed a couple of dried buds and rolled them between his fingers, which caused the bits of leaf to fall into the paper while the seeds and stem remained in his fingers.

“I need you to do me a favor, Willy,” Peta said as she watched him roll the ganja-filled paper into an expert joint.

“Anything.” William licked the end of the paper, rolled his tongue at her, and lit the joint. “Almost anything.” He drew deeply, then offered it to her. She took it and toked, drawing less deeply than it appeared, and passed it to Joe.

“It’s my birthday,” she said, taking the boxed cake out of the backpack.

Joe opened the box and pulled matches out of his pocket. He counted the candles. “Sixteen candles,” he sang out, jiggling himself. He put his arm around her and kissed her full on the mouth. “You legal now, girl.”

Peta pulled away. Grinned. Felt like throwing up. “I got a friend inside.”

“You want to go inside and celebrate with him?” Joe asked. “We not good enough for you?”

Willy laughed. “Sir fucking Dr. Arthur Marryshow, right?”

Happy birthday, dear Arthur, Peta thought.

“How about we light a fire under that cocksucker and turn him into a candle?” Joe said.

Animal! Peta thought, deliberately feeding on Joe’s callousness to harden herself for what lay ahead.

“Great shit.” William took another toke from the joint. “Bring anything else, sweetface?” He rummaged in the backpack and found the beers. “Let’s party.” He opened one of the bottles and slugged down the contents. “You too good to us, girl.” He belched loudly. Joe roared with laughter.

Their noises covered the sounds for which Peta had been waiting, three in succession, Frik’s practiced imitation of the distinctive deep-throated howl of the Mona monkeys he’d often hunted for his dinner pot. She looked at the sky. In the way of the Tropics, darkness had suddenly come upon them.

“Tell you what,” William said. “We’ll save the good doctor a beer and a couple pieces of cake in case he’s alive in the morning.”

“How about some for the other guards?” Peta asked, ignoring the loud beat of her heart in her ears.

“They’s inside. They’ll never know the difference. Nobody out here but us.”

There was a moment of silence as one man toked and the other opened and slugged down another Carib. Too late, Peta tried to cover the silence.

“What the fuck was that?” Joe said.

“Didn’t hear a thing.” William put his arm around Peta and pulled her toward him.

“Well, I did.”

“Okay, so maybe a dog took a loud dump. If it bothers you, go see what it was.”

Beer in one hand, weapon balanced by his forearm and lying across his shoulder, Joe took a step in the direction from which Peta had come. “I think I’ll just do that,” he said. He bent first to extract a large and messy chunk of birthday cake.

“You’ll miss the real party.” Peta pressed herself against William.

“I’ll be back,” Joe said. “Have to take a piss anyway. Might as well do a tour while I’m at it.”

He didn’t seem particularly worried until the sound came again—the harsh clang of something against metal. He stiffened and moved toward the noise.

Dear God, forgive me, I didn’t want it to come to this, Peta thought, as she swung into the action she and Ray had rehearsed.

Quickly, using maximum energy and strength, she removed the scalpel that had been disguised as part of her belt buckle. Imagine Willy’s a goat, she told herself; she’d helped kill those often enough before a family feast.

The illusion worked, aided by a massive rush of adrenaline. Before he realized what was happening, William’s carotid artery had been neatly slit. Her cousin Natalie’s husband.

She turned her attention to Joe, who was just about to round the corner that led to a scene he could not be allowed to witness. For a split second, she diverted her focus to William’s submachine gun.

“Don’t even think about it, sweetface.” Joe turned around, his weapon cocked. “This no toy in me hand, you know. Now, you mind telling Joe what be going on?”

“Sick dog was feeling me up,” Peta said, knowing how stupid she sounded after giving both of them the come-on.

“Sick dog?” Joe motioned at her with the rifle. “You sick bitch, if you ask me. C’moverhere.” She didn’t move. “Be a good girl, sweetface. Drop you knife and come over here. Slowly.”

She walked toward him, swaying her hips. She was taller than he was by some inches. As she came close to him, she could see over his right shoulder. Two figures stood behind him, no more than thirty feet away and exposed in the fullness of the New Year’s Eve moon.

Watching her, Joe put the remainder of the cake into his mouth. “Want some?” He held two fingers of icing next to her face. “Might as well. Fat won’t matter when you’s dead and you’s going be dead in a minute, you don’t tell me what’s going down.”

He had allowed Peta, encouraged her, to come close enough to implement Ray’s lessons. Praying that he had not yet released the safety on his weapon, she struck fast, kneed him in the crotch, and when he doubled over in pain, jabbed her thumbs into his eyes, then struck with the edge of her hand to the back of his neck. The gun clattered to the ground, along with his bottle of Carib. Clutching his balls and whimpering, Joe buckled and fell facedown into the dregs of the beer that had trickled from his bottle.