Must Come Down

by Brett Baker

  Graham stood up and Mia thought his posture looked a little more rigid than usual, like a general standing at attention, setting a strong example. “That’s correct,” Graham said. “I’m Laughlin, and I’m in charge. This is my ship.”

  One of the spotlights in the middle directed its beam toward the deck. From behind the man holding the light another man, dressed in black, carrying nothing, his face covered in dark makeup, emerged. He approached Graham, stopped four feet from him, and nodded. He looked at Mia, who stood to Graham’s right, and then to Randy and Fitz, both of whom stood to Graham’s left, and then asked, “Is this your entire crew?”

  “This is it. Just four of us.”

  “I was made to believe there might be more. Possibly up to six. You’re sure there’s no one else?”

  “We’re it,” Graham said, motioning to the others. “We were just sitting on the deck, enjoying the darkness. I’m sure you’ve been watching us for a while. You didn’t see anyone else around, did you?”

  “Go check below deck,” the man shouted to no one in particular without taking his eyes off of Graham. “Bring up anyone you find down there.”

  Another man from behind the spotlights emerged and walked past Mia and the others, toward the stairwell leading below deck. Mia looked at Graham, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of the man opposite him.

  “What do you want?” Graham asked.

  “You know why we’re here, Laughlin. It’s probably a surprise that we’re here, but you know why we’re here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Graham said. “Perhaps you have us confused with someone else. We’re just fishermen scouting for locations. Usually we stick closer to the California coast, but we’re looking to open up new territory. I’m afraid we’re not who you think we are.”

  The man approached Graham and stopped less than six inches from him. He appeared the exact same height, but was much more wiry than Graham, who was solidly built. “I’m not one of your lackeys who’s just going to believe whatever bullshit you’re shoveling. I know who you are, and you know why I’m here, so let’s cut the shit.”

  If the man expected to intimidate Graham, he’d miscalculated.

  “First of all, this is my ship, and you’ve boarded it without an invitation, which makes you a pirate. So I’ll give you and your men a single solitary minute to get back on your boat and be on your way. If you choose not to take me up on that offer, then I can’t be held responsible for what my men do in defense of their ship. But let me tell you, it will not be pretty.”

  Graham stared at the man across from him, but didn’t move. Crashing waves and creaks from the old fishing trawler were the only sounds that filled the salty night air. Everything seemed full of tension, like a bomb waiting to explode.

  After a minute of complete stillness, Graham spoke. “You’ve lost your chance,” he said.

  The other man laughed, stepped away from Graham, and turned around. “Maybe you don’t understand, Laughlin, there are more of us than there are of you. And one of you is a woman. You’ll do what we want and you’ll give us what we want.”

  A voice from behind Graham called out, “All clear down below. Only berthing for four people. If they have anyone else on here I don’t know where they’re sleeping.”

  “So Laughlin is capable of telling the truth,” the man said. “Interesting. Let’s try this, Graham. Come downstairs to talk, just you and me. If you make it quick, we’ll leave. You can have your ship back. But I’m not leaving here until you talk.”

  Graham looked toward Fitz and Randy as if seeking their opinion. Then he looked toward Mia, caught her gaze, and fixed on her for a moment. She tried to read his eyes, but didn’t know him well enough to decipher his message.

  He looked back at the man across from him and said, “That sounds reasonable.” He turned toward Fitz and Randy and said, “I’m going downstairs with Mr.,” he turned toward the man across from him, “I’m sorry, I missed your name.”

  “Falcon,” the man said.

  Graham’s eyes lingered on Falcon, and then he raised his eyebrows as if to ask, “Are you serious?” Falcon didn’t react.

  “I’m going downstairs with Mr. Falcon. We won’t be long. Under no circumstances are you to relinquish control of this ship to these heathens. They will leave peacefully, or they will leave lifeless. The choice is theirs. But if they make the wrong choice…” Graham stopped mid-sentence and looked toward Falcon. He didn’t finish his thought, but everyone understood the not-so-veiled threat.

  Graham turned and walked away, Falcon following behind him. Fitz, Randy and Mia kept their eyes glued on Graham, and ignored the other intruders. Mia snuck a glance toward Fitz to try and read his face for clues about what might happen. Fitz took two steps back so he had a better angle from which to keep an eye on the intruders while also watching Graham and Falcon. Mia looked back toward the intruders, three of whom still held spotlights, although they were no longer aimed directly at her and the others.

  She looked back toward Graham just in time to see him fall to one knee, as if tying his shoe. He moved deliberately, and said something to Falcon, which she couldn’t hear. Then, in one sudden movement, she watched as Graham pulled a gun from somewhere near his ankle, twisted at the waist, and fired a single bullet up toward Falcon. Graham knew Falcon would be right behind him, looking down at him, wondering why he had stooped to one knee, so he aimed for his face, and the bullet pierced through Falcon’s philtrum, just below the nose, and then through the sinuses, before coming to rest in the base of his brain. He was dead before he hit the deck of the ship.

  A barrage of gunfire erupted as soon as Falcon collapsed. The first bullets missed Graham, who had risen to his feet, but crouched as he scurried away toward the stairs leading below deck. But with just two or three steps before he reached the safety of the stairwell, a bullet hit him. He fell, and Mia recognized the shot as fatal. The shooter continued to fire though, and by Mia’s count at least three more bullets hit Graham as he lie crumpled.

  As he walked away with Falcon, Mia thought Graham intended to diffuse the situation, so the sudden violence surprised her. She stood just out of the path of the gunman’s fire, which didn’t occur to her until after the gunman had stopped firing on Graham and turned his gun toward Fitz.

  But Fitz knew Graham, and had anticipated the chaos just before it materialized. By the time the gunman redirected his fire toward him, Fitz had already subdued one of the unarmed intruders, and seeing the gun pointed in his direction, pulled the intruder in front of him, using him as a shield. Unable to control his wrath, the shooter unloaded anyway, and peppered his own man with bullets.

  Fitz tossed the man aside, and grabbed another man, who had been stunned into inaction at the sight of his comrade’s violent, graphic death, and swung him toward the port side of the ship. In the darkness of the night the man didn’t see the gunwale just in front of him, and didn’t try to brace himself. When his hips hit the gunwale, his momentum carried him over the side, his sonorous screams echoing across the ship.

  Mia knew she had to seek cover, and as she turned in pursuit of refuge behind the wheelhouse, the gunman concentrated his fire on her. Without the aid of spotlights, the gunman had little chance of hitting Mia, but she swerved as she ran to make it even more difficult. Rather than go inside the wheelhouse where the gunman could have cornered her, Mia instead crouched on the other side of it, using the temporary respite to assess the situation and develop a plan.

  Not knowing Fitz and Randy, and having never worked with them before, meant that she didn’t know how much she could rely on them. If they were agents in The Summit she knew that they’d retain certain qualities, ideas, and skills that she could count on at a moment like this. She could do something, and since they had the same training they’d recognize her actions, and would react. But since they didn’t have training from The Summit, she thought it best not to rely on them for any part of her plan to get off the boat alive.

&n
bsp; She watched from behind the wheelhouse as another of the armed men shot at Randy while he fought another unarmed man. Randy heard the gunfire, and reacted in the same way that Fitz had, pulling his counterpart in front of him to serve as a shield. However, the gunman’s aim must have been horrendous, for his volley of ammunition missed both men.

  After unloading at least two-dozen shots and connecting with none of them, the gunman had to reload, which Fitz recognized right away and used as an opportunity for attack. He charged toward the gunman, who had his backed turned toward him, and tackled him from behind, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist and bringing him down with a form that would have made a football coach proud.

  The man dropped his gun as he fell to the deck, and Fitz picked it up, and bashed the man’s forehead with the butt of it. His skull shattered after the second hit, and the subsequent blasts only obliterated it further, causing an indentation in his forehead, and with the last jab, breaking skin, revealing the gelatinous gray below.

  Fitz loaded the man’s gun and as he brought it up to fire at another man approaching Randy to help double-team him, a single bullet pierced Fitz through the side of his neck, exiting through the other side. Mia saw the armed man training his site on Fitz, but by the time she called out it was too late, and a second later the fatal shot fired. Fitz fell like a house of cards, his death instantaneous. The shooter heard Mia’s plea just as he pulled the trigger, and after Fitz fell he turned his attention to the area of the wheelhouse.

  Mia saw the man’s attention turn toward her and muttered, “Golly fuck.” She hadn’t evaluated the options before her yet, and as the man with the gun approached her she realized that she hadn’t evaluated any of the options because she didn’t have any options. Since she’d captured the attention of a man with a gun, she had to figure out a way to protect herself or the man would kill her. It was that simple. The man took tepid steps toward her that seemed more from a sense of obligation than enthusiasm. He didn’t seem interested in getting to Mia. Twice he paused to look back in Randy’s direction, as if hoping someone might assist him.

  Two men had Randy on the ground and were taking turns kicking him. A third man stood by and watched but did nothing. Mia scanned all three men for a gun, but saw none. Only the man walking toward her had a gun.

  The gunman saw his ally standing idly by, and called out to him, a name that Mia heard as either Grook or Crook. She thought they all seemed like crooks, which made that word too generic for a name, so she decided to name the man Grook.

  “Get over here,” the gunman said. “I’ve got her cornered, don’t let her get away.”

  Grook walked toward the gunman, and seemed much less tentative, as if he were the guy carrying the gun instead of Mr. Pussyfoot. Grook passed Pussyfoot as if the other man weren’t there. “Wait right here,” Pussyfoot said. “She’s on the other side of that wheelhouse. I’ll go around this way, you go around the other way. She’ll have nowhere to go. She knows I’ve got this, so I suspect she won’t run. It won’t do her any good.”

  While the two men chatted Mia realized one way to get out of the situation.

  It’s difficult enough to disarm a gunman when facing him alone, but when he’s got a partner to watch his back and help out, the task is practically impossible. Mia had accomplished the impossible while working for The Summit more times than she could count, but she always preferred to find an easier way of doing things.

  So rather than trying to dispose of two men at the same time, one of whom had a gun, she decided it best to remove herself from the situation.

  As they hammered out the logistics of their impending attack Mia huddled close to the ground and duck-walked away from the wheelhouse, to the gunwale on the starboard side. The pitch of the night darkness might have provided enough cover to protect her from discovery even if they hadn’t distracted each other, but with the specifics of their conversation holding their attention, they had no chance of seeing her.

  She paused at the gunwale, looked back toward the men, and with Pussyfoot pointing toward the bow of the ship and Grook squinting to see whatever Pussyfoot saw, she knew she was in the clear. She stood up, lifted one leg up and over the gunwale, grabbed the top edge and lowered herself down toward the waterline, stopping just before getting her feet wet.

  With her hands exposed at the top of the gunwale, she ran the risk of making herself into an easy target, but she expected darkness and confusion to prevent her discovery. If she hadn’t moved away from the wheelhouse she would have been an easy target. Hiding overboard provided a much-needed buffer.

  Ocean waves lapping at the hull prevented her from hearing anything that happened on the deck. If the two men figured out that she went overboard, her first indication of their sleuthing would occur when she saw them. At that point they could force her into the water. She’d have little chance of resistance, and without a flotation device or anyone to save her, it would spell the end.

  She couldn’t remain on the side of the boat indefinitely, so she would have to guess as to when she could resurface. A wrong guess might also spell the end.

  While she hung from the side of the ship, and Pussyfoot and Grook discussed their strategy, the other two intruders took turns pummeling Randy. He’d held his own for a few minutes, but after flipping one of the intruders over his shoulder, Randy had assumed the man wouldn’t continue to fight. But as he fought with the fourth man, the flipped man came up to him, punched him once in the back of the head, and Randy collapsed.

  In the minutes since the two men took turns kicking Randy in the ribs, the back, the legs, and, just for good measure, the head. As Pussyfoot and Grook prepared to take action, the other two men each hunched over at the knees, both because they were nursing injuries inflicted by Randy, and from the sheer exhaustion of pummeling him for so long.

  The two resting men ignored Pussyfoot and Grook as they each stepped around the ends of the wheelhouse, both expecting to encounter Mia, and neither knowing what to expect when they did. As Grook came around the bow end of the wheelhouse to the starboard side and saw Pussyfoot standing there, his arms at his side, his gun pointing straight down toward the deck, his eyes staring straight at him, Grook’s instinct kicked in and he raised his fists as if ready to attack.

  Pussyfoot shouted, “Calm down, it’s just me,” and Grook lowered his fists.

  “I thought you said she was back here. Where’d she go?” Grook asked.

  Pussyfoot looked around as if someone had just played a trick on him. “She came over here,” he said. “She’s got to be around here somewhere.” He looked starboard and, unbeknownst to him, directly at Mia’s hands, but failed to see anything. He spun around, half expecting to see Mia jump out from behind some imagined hiding place.

  Grook said, “I’ll check downstairs,” and ran off toward the stern of the ship to check below deck.

  Pussyfoot walked around the perimeter of the wheelhouse, checked inside, and, satisfied that Mia wasn’t there, walked to the two men taking a break from beating the shit out of Randy.

  “Did you guys see where the woman went?” he asked.

  They both looked up at him with disbelief, as if to say, “We’ve had our hands full.”

  Pussyfoot grunted a primal scream, and fired three shots into the air. “Keep an eye on this guy,” he said as he walked to the port side of the boat.

  The gunshots provided Mia a rather safe indication that the two men had discovered she wasn’t behind the wheelhouse. Although the gunshots could have been directed at Randy, she guessed that the shooter didn’t know what he was shooting at. She wasn’t dead yet, which was all she really needed to know.

  She pulled herself back up the boat’s hull and peeked over the gunwale. She saw the two men standing near Randy and watched as they talked, discussing the struggle they’d just survived. Although she’d heard gunshots, she saw no sign of the gunman, and the two men working on Randy seemed disinterested in firearms as they floated on a physical comb
at high.

  Mia leapt back on the deck, staying as low as she could. She saw Grook come from below deck and walk to the other two men. The three men began to wave their hands as they talked, and one of them pointed toward Randy, who remained motionless on the deck, and the three of them looked around as if trying to find Pussyfoot.

  Seconds later Mia saw him approaching her from the bow of the boat, as he walked the perimeter, staring overboard, down toward the water line. If Mia had remained overboard for another minute he would have made his way to her, seen her hanging there, and broken her fingers, forcing her to fall into the water.

  But instead Mia hid herself on the stern end of the wheelhouse, right behind the door, which provided a shield from Pussyfoot, but left her wide open to the other three men. She knew she had no other choice but to focus on Pussyfoot though. He was armed, and seemed the new man in charge, so she had to subdue him.

  She waited for him to pass by her on the perimeter of the boat, and as he walked away from her she tiptoed near him. She took a defensive stance, and whispered, “Hey, fuck face.” When the man turned around she leaned back and kicked toward his chest, but he held the gun in front of his body, so she made contact with the gun, which then struck him in the face with enough force to send him reeling backward. Instinct caused him to reach out to break his fall, but in the darkness of the night he reached over the gunwale, and tumbled overboard, dropping his gun into the sea as his arms flailed in a fruitless effort to find something to grab.

  The other three men heard the commotion, and one of them turned a spotlight toward Mia, who hit the deck. Without the presence of mind to direct the beam downward, the men failed to notice her. Instead they sent Grook to investigate. Mia saw him coming toward her, and instead of trying to hide or run away, she ran right at the man.