The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  “Put down your gun!” Aabid shouted.

  “Would you like to hear what I have done for you, and for your father?” Majed said. “The bomb was in Cameron’s room. It was disguised as drugs. I moved it. I moved it for you and for your father so that nothing would be traced back to you. I threw it down the laundry chute. All of those people died because of what I did, and I did it for your family.”

  Aabid was stunned silent by this. Megan was sure that was Majed’s exact intention.

  “My first instinct was to run when I saw it. To grab Cameron and get us out of there as quickly as possible. But I did not. Instead, I thought of you and your precious little world.”

  Aabid said, “You have enjoyed my precious little world as much as anyone.”

  “Yes. This is true. But I know, Aabid, what it is you are feeling now. I know how much it hurt you to hear what your father had done, because I know what it is like to lose your family. It is as if you have been dropped in the world by an invisible hand, only to ride wind after wind, with no direction. On some days you can convince yourself you are flying, but on most days, it feels as if you are simply being blown closer and closer to the edge of a great cliff.”

  The human silence inside the engine room seemed to have more volume than the hum of machinery all around them.

  “Is this not true, Aabid? Is this not what you are feeling?”

  “My father is a great man,” Aabid whispered. He had turned his back to Megan but she could hear the tears in his voice. “He knows that I am not of God and he … has found a way for me. He will find a way for me. He does not have to kill for me to do this, because he is a great man. She refuses to believe her brother is not pure as snow. I refuse to believe my father is a killer. This is fair. This is just.”

  “Yes, Aabid. I know.”

  It took a few minutes for Aabid to register surprise at this statement. Megan was too terrified to express any emotion.

  “Ali lied,” Majed said. “He lied to get me off this boat so that he could frame me for what he had done. He has placed cameras in every bedroom of this yacht. Once I was gone, he connected them to my computer and planted it in my bunk. Before he left, he emailed the footage to television networks around the world. Because now, after everything that happened, it means something.”

  Majed gave Aabid a moment to process this. But it was also enough time for Megan to reach a conclusion of her own. “You never had sex,” she said. Startled, Aabid looked her in direction. “Don’t you see? Holder knew about your friendship with Cameron. He knew you met on the charter flight. He knew you had requested him. So he paid Ali to watch the two of you, to place cameras in all the bedrooms. But you two never slept together, so Holder had nothing to use.”

  “Until now,” Majed said.

  “Right,” Megan answered. “So when Lucas called Holder, Holder thought Cameron found out he had placed you two under surveillance. And he thought he had proof. So he had the bomb put in his hotel room to destroy whatever evidence Cameron had, and to make it look like he was either a terrorist or involved with one. Suddenly, any kind of footage of you two together was a weapon he could use. Because it would connect your family to what happened at that hotel.”

  Majed said, “But Ali wouldn’t hand over the footage until he had someone else to frame. That’s why he needed me to leave the yacht. That is why he told me your father wanted me dead.”

  “And this …” Aabid began, but the words left him, and he was forced to take a deep breath before he could continue. “And this means, my father … I must speak to him! I must speak to my father!”

  He ran past Majed up the stairs as if he were simply late for school and had forgotten his book bag in his room. It was almost comical the way the three of them were left standing together. But she wasn’t capable of laughter. The realization that she had been brought to the brink of death by a fickle child sent a tremor of some emotion through her that felt like rage but hinted at despair.

  Stocking Cap had not only lowered his gun. He had bowed his head and pulled his cap off as he struggled for breaths. His pose had been a meticulously maintained artifice, and he had despised it for every second he had been forced to hold it. Megan was astonished to see Majed pat the man gently on the shoulder, as if he had just fumbled a play during a game of touch football.

  Stocking Cap muttered a few words in Arabic that sounded both exhausted and apologetic, and Majed muttered assurances in response. Then, hanging his head like a chastened child, he left the room, unable to bring himself even to look at the woman he had been forced to manhandle.

  Once she was alone with Majed, Megan reached out for the massive pipe next to her to try to get her balance, but it didn’t work. She fell to her knees on the floor, and when she tried to take a deep breath, the sobs came ripping out of her. They were a force beyond her control, and in the brief moments when her breath returned to her, she found herself issuing pathetic groveling apologies for her continuing outburst.

  She wanted to believe it was just the result of exhaustion, but she had discovered a pure and simple truth about herself she had never wanted to know. Maybe there were some people in the world for whom the sight of a gun did not conjure the same level of fear it raised in her. But a gun had been pointed at her twice in less than twenty-four hours, and both times it felt like a deep physical violation for which she had no frame of reference.

  And of course, there was the exhaustion. It was bone deep, so deep that when she felt the pressure on both sides of her body, she thought she was going numb. When she opened her eyes, she realized Majed was down on his knees before her and had enfolded her in his arms. And for some reason, this brought more apologies out of her, but he only responded by tightening his embrace and allowing her to sink into his chest, where her tears further dampened his sweat-stained shirt.

  To this day, she has no idea how long they remained there together. A skillful painter could have made the case that he was simply holding her up, preventing her from crumbling to the wet, bloodstained floor. But she felt something else in his embrace, even if it was a product of her imagination. It was a simple acknowledgment from another human being that this nightmare, this chaos, was simply not the way things were supposed to be. They had not passed through a looking glass together into a world of casual bloodshed and luxuries turned foul. This was a deviation, this strange voyage, and it would end somehow. Of course they would be changed. But they would return to dry land. And of course, she would see the world differently, but the world would remain vast, far more vast than her consciousness, than her memories, and for the first time in her life, she would have to find comfort in this, or else the horrible things she had seen would imprison her.

  Because he offered her no assurances, no false words of comfort intended to get her back on her feet, Megan sensed that the thoughts and feelings moving through Majed were just as complex, just as contradictory, and just as fueled by exhaustion and delirium and a desire for home—any home, any place where the people who live beside you are capable of putting aside their own needs long enough for you to make it safely to your own bed at the end of the day.

  Suddenly, the steady hum of the machinery all around them lost some of its strength, and then most of its volume. Majed straightened and released her. As silence filled the engine room, Majed got to his feet.

  “We are close,” he said. “The captain is waiting for instructions.”

  He extended a hand to her, but she didn’t take it. Her breaths were still a strain and she probably looked like a mad-woman. “Just give me a minute,” she said.

  Majed didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave either. He lowered his hand to his side.

  “I’ll be right there. I just need a minute. …”

  Majed departed without another word. As soon as he was gone, she felt ashamed for not having followed him. But her breathing was returning to normal, and the sense of having been violated by a dozen hands was starting to recede. Just another few seconds, that was
all she needed, another few seconds to drink deep of this unexpected silence, this sudden suggestion of peace.

  She got to her feet, and the silence was broken. The sound seemed to be coming from a distance: a steady tapping from inside the wall to her right. She headed for it, straining to hear it with greater clarity. It reminded her of the clicking sound made by a recently parked car as the engine cools. But what could she make of its irregular rhythm?

  Was the sound mechanical, or was it human?

  23

  “Why can’t we see them?” Aabid asked.

  “You can see ’em right there,” the captain said, pointing to the green blip on the radar screen.

  Aabid rolled his eyes. Now that his father’s sterling reputation had been restored, he was posing as a mature adult, acting as if the rest of them were a bother. Majed was always amazed by the transformations children could make when things suddenly went their way.

  It was just the three of them in the wheelhouse: Majed, Aabid, and the captain. Poor Faud, after having almost been ordered to shoot Majed, was now crawling across the darkness of the bow, preparing to take aim on the lifeboat as soon as they were within range. It was too dark to pick up any trace of him.

  “They aren’t moving,” Majed said.

  “So?” the captain cried. “Maybe he stopped to fill up his tank. He has to have taken fuel with him if he thought he would make it all the way to China.”

  “Or maybe he sees us.”

  “Impossible. He’s got no bloody radar on that thing and it’s black as death out here.”

  A silence fell. The captain was clearly waiting for Aabid to give the order, but the silence only continued. “Look, with the propulsion system on this baby, we’ll be on him before he has time to spit up his drink.”

  “We should call him,” Majed said.

  “What?” Aabid cried.

  “He has a satellite phone. We should call him on it.”

  “That is insane!”

  “What do you know of sanity?” Majed snapped.

  Aabid had no reaction to this insult; perhaps he simply had no fight left in him. “Zach Holder has no more use for Cameron. We cannot wait like this.”

  “He has no more use for Ali either,” Majed said. “This is what Americans call a standoff.”

  “I’m tellin’ you,” the captain wailed. “He can’t bloody see us! He’s got no eyes.”

  “Then why is he not moving?” Majed asked.

  “Quiet!” Aabid shouted.

  Majed followed this order, but with every muscle in his body he was fighting the urge to strike Aabid. Now that he had quiet, Aabid did not seem to know what to do with it, and the three of them stared out into the blackness as if it might send forth an answer.

  * * *

  Megan found an exhaust grate in the seam between the metal floor and the wall. It was a slatted piece of fiberglass, and when she removed it, she was staring into a crawlspace. This had to be where the sound had come from. But it had stopped altogether.

  The grate wasn’t large enough to fit her head through, but she got down on all fours and tried to get a good view inside. The top half of some kind of giant fiberglass tube ran parallel to the engine room, and from what she could see, it seemed to travel the entire length of the yacht.

  There it was again. A series of knocks. And they were coming from inside this tube, whatever it was; she pushed her right arm through the grate as far she could and rapped her fist against the side of it.

  A series of knocks answered her. A person. She was being answered by a person.

  “Cameron?”

  A furious series of knocks now. Desperate, frenzied. Anything but mechanical. Entirely human.

  “Cameron!”

  There was a phone attached to the far wall. She raced to it, and saw a row of intercom buttons on the panel that were labeled in Arabic and English. She brought the receiver to her ear and pressed the button that said All Page. But her cry for help hadn’t crossed her lips by the time she saw the base chord had been cut. They had held Cameron captive down here. Of course they had taken away his ability to call for help.

  How long would it take her to get to the wheelhouse? And what in God’s name was that tube? Cameron’s knocks had a steady rhythm now. Three long, three short. Why was that familiar to her? It was Morse code. Dot, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash. Dot, dot, dot. SOS. Danger. From his nightmarish position inside the pipe, he knew something was coming.

  He hadn’t crawled in there on his own, had he? Someone had put him in there. Ali had put him in there, and then made his way back out so he could leave in the lifeboat. And now they were about to overtake him, and to overtake him, they would have to—the captain’s words came back to her. Ol’ Man Farhan installed a propulsion system on this baby that could outrun all of Somalia.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. She whispered it again and again as she returned to the wall, searching for something, another grate, an access door, anything. He’s inside of it. He’s inside of the propulsion system. And what could a vessel like this use to propel itself most effectively? Seawater, gallons of it. And where did it come out? Where would it carry her brother? And would it all hit him at once, striking a killing blow in the time it would take her to mount the stairs?

  Toward the bow, on the other side of a towering console of bewildering gauges, she found a slatted access door that resembled the entrance to a tornado cellar. She pulled up on it and crawled through the opening. Once she was inside, there was barely a foot of space between her back and the slanted ceiling of the crawlspace, and she had to balance on all fours atop the curving surface of the tube like a cat.

  “I’m coming! I’m coming, Cameron!”

  But how would she get in? Up ahead, a shaft of light came through the square left by the exhaust grate she had removed from the wall, but it was barely enough light to see by, unless she flattened herself against the surface of the tube and brought her eyeline as close to the tube’s surface as possible so she could look for any irregularity, any opening, anything.

  She was about to give up, and make a run for the wheelhouse, when she saw a slight displacement on top of the tube several yards ahead of her. Gasping for breath, she crawled toward it, and stopped just short of a square panel. Ordinarily it would have been sealed shut by four bolts, but Ali had managed to get only three of them back in place before making his escape. Once the panel was removed, the opening would be large enough for Cameron to fit through. It was large enough for her to fit through.

  But could she open it? The fiberglass wasn’t nearly as heavy as metal, but even with three bolts holding it in place, she wasn’t sure she could get it free without tools. “Cameron? Can you move? Twice for yes! Knock twice for yes!”

  He knocked once. And he couldn’t answer her with his voice. Oh God in heaven, he’s bound. He can’t even use his arms and legs. All that water and he won’t even be able to … Off to the side, she saw a tumble of torn wires and a cracked plastic device of some kind. She figured it was a sensor that would have sent an alarm to the bridge if the panel was opened, indicating a breach in the system, if Ali had not disabled it.

  She dug her fingers around the unsecured panel and pulled with all the strength she had left. Her teeth gnashed together against her will and she let out an agonized growl she prayed her brother could not hear. The warmth on her hands told her she was cutting into the skin of her fingers and bleeding all over the place. But she didn’t look down. She didn’t want to see. She just pulled.

  Finally, there was a loud crack and she went flying backward. She had broken the fiberglass panel in half. Only one other bolt had come free, but the panel itself had split. The opening wasn’t large enough for her to crawl all the way through, but she could get her head through the opening.

  “Cameron!”

  Her eyes needed several seconds to adjust to the darkness. Then she saw him; he looked like a pile of shadowed limbs without the definition of a human body. But when she called his na
me again, she saw one of his legs jerk in response. He kicked several times. That’s how he had been communicating with her, by kicking the side of the pipe with his bound feet.

  But he was at least seven feet away from her. He was bound and gagged and she couldn’t see his eyes. She had come all this way and she couldn’t see into her brother’s eyes.

  “I’m right here, Cameron. I’m right here. It’s going to be OK!”

  She pulled her head back out of the opening and grabbed the edge of the remaining half of the panel and pulled as hard as she could.

  “Go,” Aabid said.

  Majed said, “This is a mistake.”

  But after a few seconds of silence, the captain tightened his grip around the throttle, and opened the switch housing for the propulsion system.

  “Now,” Aabid said. “Go.”

  The captain shot Majed a piteous look and said, “Sorry, mate. At the end of the day, it all comes down to who foots the bill.”

  He pushed the throttle forward, and Aabid used his satellite phone to call Faud, who was presumably in firing position somewhere on the bow. In Arabic, Aabid said, “Get ready. We’re going.”

  As the entire vessel lurched forward, the captain hit the switch for the propulsion system and Aabid slowly backed away from the control panel, his hands clasped against his mouth and his breaths loud enough for all of them to hear.

  She had given up. She had to get some kind of tool to free the rest of the panel. Anything would be better than her own bloodied hands. But she was less than halfway back to the access door when a sound like thunder shook the walls around her and the tube beneath her began to vibrate.

  The crawlspace was so small that when she turned around she slammed her head into a one of the diagonal walls. But she kept going, ignoring the pain, blinking it away as if it were no more than a urge to sneeze.

  There was only one choice left. She pressed herself flat against the tube, wedged her feet against the walls on either side and shoved both of her arms through the opening. She tried shouting instructions to Cameron, instructions to grab for her arms if he could, but the roar of the engines powering up combined with the metallic rattle of the walls all around her made it impossible for her to hear her own words.