Free Maroon Rising by John H. Cunningham

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you admonished to avoid Port Royal under penalty of law?”
    “It’s a long story, hopefully one we’ll enjoy sharing over rum and a cigar, but bottom line is I was lured back to Jamaica by a direct heir to the Maroon legacy, and through her contacts we’ve gained new information that cast an entirely different light on the situation.”
    The sound of Harry’s heavy breathing might have signaled excitement, but it was more likely that his advanced age and increasing weight were causing respiratory challenges.
    “I just wanted to let you know I’m back on the hunt with fresh insight, and … it may be of far greater value than we’d originally projected.”
    “Excellent news, Buck. I knew I backed the right horse. Do keep me apprised, won’t you?”
    I promised to call again when I knew more and rang off.
    Heading back to the Jeep I saw the A4 was shitbox-free, and off we went along the north coast, doubling back toward the Rio Grande.
    “Get what you wanted?” Nanny said.
    I handed her the little bag.
    “Ah, smart,” she said when she looked inside.
    “Did you speak with Colonel Grandy?” I said.
    “He’ll meet us up river.”
    My head snapped to the right—I thought I’d seen the shitbox again, but there was no vehicle in sight. If it had been following us, they’d either anticipated where we were going or given up. I drove on and ignored the mirrors, focusing instead on the road ahead.
    Once the main shipping port for the banana trade, the mouth of the Rio Grande was an eighth of a mile wide. I tried to imagine what it had looked like hundreds of years ago when there was nothing here but river and tropical foliage. Only natives who knew the dense mountain ranges and the river itself would risk travel at night by canoe into that black wilderness, especially if those canoes were laden with silver, gold, and other valuables. Maroons? That made sense. Or possibly even Taino Indians, but Nanny hadn’t mentioned them.
    I’d seen signs at the Errol Flynn Marina for boat rentals, but we wanted to travel silently. Another hour into the lush, steep contours of the green backcountry passed as Nanny guided me over unmarked roads to Berridale.
    “The rafting camp is another two miles south,” she said.
    “Good thing we have the Jeep.”
    These mountains and the mass acreage of wilderness helped me appreciate how the Maroons had so successfully avoided the Spanish, then British troops that pursued them. The sheer size of the forest, combined with their skill in battle, made the Maroons as invincible as the Mujahideen of Afghanistan.
    I steered the Jeep onto a narrow trail and pulled up out of sight.
    “What are you doing?” Nanny said.
    “Let’s take a closer look at those archives before we meet with the colonel.”
    I opened the Jeep’s tailgate, and Nanny spread out the archival sleeves. Using my new magnifying glass and the Notes application on my phone, I jotted down what information I could read. Nanny translated some of the old African writing, and we gradually pieced together something significant: the men who’d spirited away “goods” from Morgan’s ship noted paddling against the current toward what we assumed eventually became known as Moore Town.
    “Look at this.” Nanny pointed at text under the magnifying glass I was holding. “Talks about seeing a flash—or maybe reflection—on the Great Mountain at dawn. It must mean Blue Mountain.”
    “How can you tell?” I held my arms wide. “There’s a hell of a lot of big mountains around here.”
    “But Great Mountain is how the Blue Mountain Peak was known to Maroons in those times.”
    I smiled at Nanny. “Nice to have an accomplished professor of archaeology who speaks the ancient dialects on the team,” I said.
    It didn’t take us long to finish reviewing the drawings, notes, and Henry Morgan’s brief diary, and we were only on the road south another mile before reaching an outfitter