The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games)

by Mark Chisnell

  Janac was leaning against the wheel. He looked up from watching the prisoners and nodded. ‘No resistance?’

  ‘None.’

  Janac stubbed out his second cigarette thoughtfully and said, ‘So one’s not enough.’ He straightened. ‘Edi, take these three down with the others. Untie them when you get there.’ He waved casually at the three officers still motionless and silent on the floor. The burly Indonesian nodded affirmation before hauling them to their feet one by one and frogmarching them off the bridge to join their crew. Janac watched them go, listened to the footsteps clattering down the staircase.

  ‘Are we ready, boss?’ asked Tosh.

  ‘Soon as they’re inside,’ said Janac.

  Tosh strode over to the top of the staircase and yelled, ‘OK?’

  Janac heard the confirmation as clearly as Tosh. He took three steps and snapped a switch on the control panel. Forward of the bridge the cargo deck was bathed in light. Off on their starboard side the bulk carrier’s lights came on a few moments later.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ said Janac. Tosh nodded wordlessly and disappeared out of the door onto the starboard wing deck.

  The operation took two hours. The transfer of targeted containers into the hold of the bulk carrier was now a smooth and well-practised procedure. The swell slowed progress a little, and although steaming straight into it stopped the ships’ superstructures rolling into each other, the constant rise and fall still caused a couple of difficult moments. But Jordi’s men worked the cranes on the bulk carrier with great precision and there were no accidents. Once it was done, the hatches were refastened. The pirate ship looked just like any other tramp steamer headed down the coast, touting for anything she could find in the way of cargo. Janac gave the instruction and then watched the two ships slowly sheer away from each other as Jordi turned south, towards their home base, the hulls parting with a sucking slosh as the bow waves separated.

  Ahead, the horizon was already swimming with orange. Janac left the course set at due east, steaming into the swell and the sunrise. Then he strode out of the bridge and down the steps to the dining room. There he found the crew huddled together, sitting under the guns of two of his men.

  ‘Let’s get this lot outside, Edi,’ he commanded. He picked up an empty fruit bowl and a handful of paper napkins, turned on his heel and led them down another two flights, out onto the port-side boat deck. From here the departing bulk carrier was hidden from view. Janac walked straight up to the guardrail and peered over the side. The water below churned and bubbled past at ten knots.

  Janac scanned the rail and soon spotted the companionway gate, used when the ship was in port. He led the others that way. Chained to the superstructure nearby was a simple telescoping gangway. Janac waved at two of the prisoners, who were watching him closely. ‘Untie this and push it out through the guardrail gate,’ he ordered.

  The two men turned passive, blank faces to each other.

  ‘Do it,’ snapped Janac. He slipped the revolver out of its well-worn holster.

  The closer of the two, a slim Chinese man called Deng Chang, with tightly cropped, jet-black hair, touched his hand to his mouth nervously. He turned to the other crewman, who had shrunk behind him. A low voice translated the words into Cantonese for him. Janac’s expression hardened at the sound.

  It was five minutes before the two men had completed their work. The gangway was a metre wide, made of steel, with two supporting beams running its length. The rusty surface, ridged for grip in the wet, had been worn shiny in places by the passage of countless shoes. It extended five metres out over the water. Welded at metre intervals down each side were slim uprights. At the top of each was a ring, through which a chain handrail was normally fed. This had been removed.

  Janac inspected the structure and indicated monosyllabic satisfaction. The pair stepped away, trying to blend back into the group, which only closed against them.

  ‘You’ll have realised by now that we are in the business of restoring the noble art of piracy to the position of prominence it deserves,’ Janac began, the grey eyes flickering over each of the faces in the group as he spoke. ‘It’s your misfortune that on this occasion I have decided to resurrect another age-old tradition. Two of you will walk the plank.’

  There was a frightened moan, which grew as the brief translations spread comprehension like a lethal virus.

  ‘Any officers, any men, feel they should volunteer?’ asked Janac.

  The group quietened quickly as everyone sought anonymity. But Janac’s eyes rested like searchlights on one after the other of the three men who had been on the bridge. All three stared at their feet, feeling the heat of the glare, shrinking from it. No one moved.

  ‘Well, there’s a surprise. No volunteers. The age of chivalry is indeed dead,’ Janac went on. ‘Fortunately, I have a contingency plan.’

  ‘Boss?’

  Janac looked round to find his lieutenant approaching with the rest of his men, all of whom, since completing the unloading of the containers, had been stripping the accommodation and office areas of anything valuable. Finding no one at the stern ready to disembark, they had left their booty and come looking.

  ‘Ah, Tosh, just in time for the games.’

  ‘What’s happening, boss?’ asked Tosh, staring at the gangplank.

  ‘These gentlemen are about to play for the privilege of walking the plank.’

  There was absolute silence — among prisoners and captors alike. Tosh looked back to find Janac’s eyes on him. He glanced at the prisoners again. ‘Can I have a word?’ he asked in an undertone.

  ‘What about?’

  The Scotsman’s greying ponytail twitched as he took another, more anxious, glance about him and hesitated. He had never questioned Janac’s judgement before. All the games, all the murder and mayhem — he’d just let it wash over him. They had still got the job done and that was all he had cared about. But this time it could — did — matter. They needed one more target; they didn’t need Hamnet to stop feeding them intelligence. He had to say something. He stepped closer. Janac’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the butt of the revolver, still in his hand.

  ‘Why?’ hissed Tosh in Janac’s ear.

  ‘Because I want to see if two more dead men is enough to stop him,’ retorted Janac.

  Tosh looked down. He could feel a long-dormant fury stirring. The temper that had earned him a dishonourable discharge from the Special Boat Service. A temper he had learned to control only in Janac’s brutal, disciplining company. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way, so once again he stepped back. The anger burned in his guts but didn’t make the jump to his head. He kept control.

  Janac watched Tosh back off, then he knelt. He set the fruit bowl he had brought from the dining room on the deck, spat on a finger and wet the edge. Then he opened a napkin over the bowl, sticking it in place like a smooth white skin. He slipped open the chamber on the big revolver, pulled out a shell and lay it neatly in the middle of the napkin. Then he stood up and stepped back, reholstering the Smith and Wesson, and indicated that the prisoners should gather round the bowl.

  ‘Sit,’ he said, and they sat. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he continued, pulling the pack of Lucky Strike out of his tunic pocket. He tapped out two cigarettes and lit them with the Zippo. He drew on both, left one in his mouth, and with the other leant over and burned a tiny hole in the napkin. He handed the cigarette to the man on his left, who took it with a shaking hand. ‘You each burn a hole in the napkin until the cartridge drops. Whoever makes the last hole walks the plank.’ He waved at the waiting gangway, then glanced round the circle. ‘I suggest those of you who can translate, do so.’

  There were more voluble words this time, accompanied by fearful glances — at the bowl, the gangplank, Janac. A shiver ran through the group. Janac’s men saw the energy and spread out into better covering positions.

  Janac nodded at the cigarette, still held gingerly in the first man’s hand. ‘Let’s play,’
he said, stepping back to lean against the railing next to Tosh. He drew deeply on the other cigarette and watched the shaking hand burn a second hole close to the edge, well away from the suspended cartridge. He glanced at Tosh, the grey eyes watchful in the gaunt face. ‘This takes a while to get interesting,’ he said.

  Tosh grunted noncommittally, head down.

  Janac appraised him. ‘If I didn’t know better, I could mistake that as a marked lack of enthusiasm for the way I’m leading this merry band of pirates.’

  Tosh didn’t miss the tone. He looked up, forced a weak smile. ‘Nah. Never.’

  ‘Good.’

  The cigarette peppered sixty per cent of the napkin with holes before it burned out. Janac lit another, and the game went on. The slow, relatively calm start was surrendering to a frenzy, emotion rising and falling around the ring of captives like a slow-motion Mexican wave. As each player safely took his turn, relief settled over him like a blanket. A relief that steadily frayed and disappeared as the cigarette made its way back round to them. Grey faces, shaking hands, wild eyes brimful with fear, foreheads that bled sweat in the cool air. Paper turned to ash and the napkin grew frail. Janac’s gunmen drew closer as the safe areas for a burn diminished and disappeared. Hard, cruel faces alight with excitement, mainlining on the manifest terror before them. Still the cartridge remained suspended, centred in a web of spindly, charred paper. But like a rattling roulette ball gradually slowing, closing out the options, limiting the places it could settle, the cartridge had to fall for someone.

  It seemed certain that that someone would be the crop-haired Deng Chang, who had helped lower the gangplank. No one could see where another hole could possibly be made in any of the three arms of paper that now held the cartridge. When he accepted the cigarette, Deng coolly took a drag. He breathed the smoke in deeply and tried to remember what his father had taught him about the martial arts so many years before. He closed his eyes, straightened his back and imagined the napkin whole again. When his eyelids flickered up, he could see it. At the base of one of the arms, right beside the cartridge, so close he would almost have to push the cigarette against the shell, was paper enough that it might just take another hole. He sucked hard on the cigarette until it flared fiercely, rolled it on the deck to a tip, then reached out quickly with an arm that was rock steady. The napkin burned for the briefest moment. A tiny hole appeared. The paper held.

  An incredulous gasp greeted Deng’s unexpected reprieve. Emotion ripped around the players as he bowed his head and passed the cigarette to his left. Jose Mendez, a young Mexican chef on his first voyage, took it. His face was ashen. The acrid taste of vomit burned in his mouth, such had been the nauseating rush of fear when the cartridge had remained suspended. He couldn’t believe the cigarette had come full circle back to him. Now, like Deng before him, he tried hard to compose himself. He sat and breathed deeply, closing his eyes. But still his hands shook. He stared at the napkin. There was one place, at the base of another of the arms. It might hold. But the greatest possible precision would be required, and Jose’s hand was still shaking as it reached out with the cigarette tip. Silence fell. The next man in line crossed himself and started to pray under his breath. Mendez’s hand trembled, he left the burning tip in place a fraction of a second too long. The paper glowed, flamed and cindered. The shell dropped into the bowl with a rattle. A tremor shook the little man’s body. The cigarette butt dropped from his fingers, following the cartridge into the bowl. It continued burning, slowly, a thin wreath of smoke rising from a miniature funeral pyre into the midst of the grimly silent circle.

  Janac grimaced at Edi. He’d have preferred it to be the Chinese man, but games were games and rules were rules. ‘We have our first plank walker. Tie his hands and blindfold him.’

  Edi stepped forward, pulled Mendez to his feet, clipped on plastic cuffs and tied the hapless man’s own neckerchief across his eyes. Mendez was so frightened he could neither speak nor stand. Edi and Soey had to carry the frail figure to the rail. Only then, when he felt the breeze and heard the rush of water beneath him, did he come to life, kicking and squealing. But blindfold and bound as he was, it was easy for Soey to push him a couple of metres along the gangplank. Mendez tottered, trying to gain balance, the gangplank wobbling slightly under his weight. Right at the edge, he stood rooted to the spot. He was still wearing his chef’s apron; the wind flapped it around his knees. The ocean churned, mawlike, below him.

  ‘Walk,’ said Janac.

  Mendez didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. And then he found his voice. ‘Please. Have wife and child. Please.’

  ‘Goddamit, walk!’ bellowed Janac.

  The Mexican sank uncertainly to his knees, in prayer, in supplication. The gangway twisted under his shifting weight. The ship rose slightly on one of the bigger swells and he swayed unsteadily.

  Janac turned to his crew and grinned. ‘Now I know why those old timers used to carry cutlasses. Something to prod the bastards along the plank with.’ He turned back and raised his revolver. The bullet struck the steelwork a few centimetres from Mendez’s left knee, sending shards and sparks flying. Mendez jerked away, his knee skidded and suddenly his balance was gone. His thin wail of terror rose to a squeal as he lunged his shoulder down to where he hoped there was solid steel but found only air. He slipped from sight into the shadow of the hull. His fading cry was terminated by an indistinct splash. He was gone. The ship swept onwards. Another sailor lost to the ocean.

  All the radios squawked at once. ‘RIB here. What the hell was that? You want me to pick it up?’

  Janac snatched the VHF off his belt. ‘Would I have thrown it overboard if I wanted it?’ he snapped. ‘I’ll tell you when I want you to pick something up.’ He clipped the radio back into place. ‘Let’s set it up and play it again.’

  ‘No.’

  Janac looked around for the voice. ‘What?’

  ‘I said no. If anybody else is to die, it had better be me.’ The voice was resigned, slightly tremulous.

  Janac recognised the skipper. He nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Chivalry lives after all. A brave man.’ His tone wasn’t so mocking this time. There were no voices raised in protest.

  Fairbrother proffered his hands to Edi, accepted the plastic cuffs but shook away the blindfold. His red beard, flecked with grey, quivered around his chin. Janac nodded his agreement. Then Fairbrother took four careful, slow steps out onto the gangplank. He emerged from the shadow of the superstructure, and felt the warm sunshine on his face. He stood for a moment and listened. The silence of horrified, exalted anticipation from the men safely on the other side of the rail rang in his ears. So, too, the churn of the ocean, and the faraway thump of the engines he had presided over for so many thousands of miles. A lifetime of earning his living on the sea lay behind him. He was seven months from retirement. He had always known the risks, but had never expected it to end like this.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ snapped Janac.

  Fairbrother turned and faced his tormentor. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ he asked. ‘Come on, come out here and push me. My hands are tied, surely that can’t be too hard.’

  ‘Jesus wept, a hero,’ snarled Janac. ‘For God’s sake, time’s up.’ The big revolver swept up and took a bead in the same motion. The report cracked out across the short space. The bullet took Fairbrother in his left knee. He spun away and crumpled simultaneously. Almost in slow motion, he started to fall. But this one didn’t scream. Not a sound. Just the flap and rustle of the nightshirt as he fell. A white spatter and he was gone. Janac’s men leant over the rail eagerly. Fairbrother didn’t reappear. The splash was quickly smothered by the ship’s wake.

  Janac shouldered his weapon and muttered, ‘I’ll bring the cutlass next time.’

  Chapter 26

  Jasmine carefully tucked the thin sheet around Ben a little tighter. Then she looked up from the buggy in which he was quietly sleeping. Singapore’s commercial waterfront churned past as the ferry motored
them home. Her blue eyes flicked towards Hamnet and studied the grim, intense expression trained on the container terminal of Tanjong Pagar. If only he’d smile, she thought; he had such a gorgeous smile.

  The last few days had been the worst so far. After recovering a level of good humour, Hamnet had become hopelessly preoccupied again. She had suggested an outing to Kusu Island to try to break the mood. It had failed, and not because of the overcast and unusually chilly weather. Hamnet had sat and stared morosely at the handful of families cooking lunch, listening to his radio through a headset. She had been left to entertain Ben alone, the pair of them completely shut out. She knew she should just walk away. Leave this difficult, complex man to look after his own son. Yet, at the same time, she knew she couldn’t. Hamnet felt her watching eyes and turned.

  ‘A good day out?’ she asked with her bright smile. He nodded and struggled for an equally enthusiastic response, before glancing at his watch and fumbling for the radio in the daypack at his feet. Jasmine frowned, opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it. What was the point? All this had something to do with the late-night phone call, she was sure of that. She was also convinced it wasn’t just about Anna. There was something else. A couple of times she had tried to probe, but the silence had been so stiff and painful she had quickly moved the conversation on. She settled back and closed her eyes, struggling to get comfortable on the hard, wooden bench seat. Perhaps one day he would feel able to confide in her.

  Hamnet had the headset in place and the radio on just in time to hear fading music replaced by the serious tones of a newsreader. He listened intently to further gloomy predictions of the region’s economic prospects. Then he shut his eyes as the words drilled into his head. He swallowed dryly, focused on not letting a further shred of expression show on his face. He had prepared himself for this. He listened to the scant details: another attack on a merchant ship north of the Philippines; two casualties reported; the piracy discovered by chance that morning, after the unmanned ship had almost rammed an oil tanker; the captive crew released by men put on board by the tanker’s master to investigate. It was enough. He knew where the Kyushu Sun had been the night before, and he didn’t need to be told this was the ship that had been attacked. He had been wrong. Horribly — probably fatally, murderously — wrong. He shut the thought out. He knew what he must do now. Everything had been made ready in case this happened. It had been an acknowledged risk. But he needed Jasmine to help.