by Scott Cook
I was led down one level and into a small officer’s mess. Several bathrobes were laid out on a table. Both Garcia and I began to strip off our damp and crusty clothing at his behest. I hoped that Amanda’s handiwork was good enough to pass whatever inspection was coming.
As Garcia slipped into his robe, his two men seemed to go over my body. I was instructed to raise my arms out to my sides and spread my feet apart. After they and he had looked me over, I was handed the robe. There was no cavity search, thankfully.
“You can’t be too careful, amigo,” Garcia said as he handed me a cup of hot coffee, which I had to admit I was grateful for.
“That and a free peep show never hurts, huh?” I asked.
He snorted, “Come, let’s join Antonio.”
Even as we mounted the stairs again, I could feel the vibration beneath my feet increase. The ship was getting underway. The stairs we took were on the starboard side, and I saw the lights of the yacht heading almost directly away from us as the ship began a slow turn to port. It was still overcast enough so that no stars or moon shown through the clouds. I couldn’t really tell which way we or the yacht were headed, only that we seemed to be pursuing ever more diverging courses.
Upon entering the bridge, however, I was able to see the face of the big and almost old-fashioned compass and it showed a course of two hundred degrees. I could just make out the lights of the yacht off our starboard quarter before they winked out. She was headed almost due north, I thought. I found that strange and ominous for reasons I couldn’t have voiced at the time.
“Feel better?” Bolivar asked me as Garcia and I joined him at the chart table.
I shrugged, “Coffee helps.”
“You’ll feel even better after a hot shower,” Bolivar mused. His attitude was casual and even friendly.
“Bolivar…” I sighed, feeling exasperated at long last. It was late, I was tired and it felt like I’d sat on a filet knife. “What the hell is this? Why am I here and what do you plan on doing with me?”
Garcia chuckled but said nothing.
“You are here for several reasons,” Bolivar went on in his conversational tone. “First, as an insurance policy. Should anyone from your government or your military try and intercept this vessel before we reach Cartagena, then you are something of a bargaining chip. Second, I feel the need, and my brother agrees, that you deserve to witness what we plan. To see what we’ve worked so hard on over the past few years finally come to pass. We owe it to you, after all, eh, Manuel?”
Garcia chuckled, “As I’ve told him. If it weren’t for Jarvis here, we would never have gotten this far.”
“And does that plan include using Nazi germs to murder thousands of people somewhere in the world?” I inquired.
Bolivar laughed, ‘We’re not terrorists, Jarvis. Those canisters are only another form of insurance… mostly. You’ve probably already guessed our plan. Acquire the ancient land that our Inca and Musca ancestors bequeathed us. Set up shop there, as you might say, and use an ever-growing distribution network to create a financial and physical empire for ourselves. The Bolivar family will once again become as great as our long-passed forefather, Simon Bolivar, envisioned two hundred years ago.”
“Grandiose,” I remarked. “Yet… what do you mean the germs are mostly an insurance policy. Let me guess… you’re still going to launch an attack in spite of getting your hands on the medallion.”
Bolivar cocked his head and grinned, “No, Jarvis… well, not exactly. The majority of the supply of streptococcus that you discovered is safe and secure. However, it wouldn’t do to make a threat like this without those who need to heed it believing without a doubt that I will carry it out.”
“It’s hollow otherwise,” Garcia added, his own grin seeming to drip with malice.
“So…” Bolivar continued. “I’ve arranged a demonstration. A modest one, to be sure… but one that will convince the world, and your country in particular, that we are not to be fucked with.”
I couldn’t ever remember feeling quite so useless or helpless in all my life. Here I was, standing in front of what amounted to warlord terrorists. Men who cared nothing for anyone, it seemed. Smuggling drugs that would end up in the veins of children, committing acts of mass murder simply to prove how evil they were… and here I stood, unarmed and unable to stop them.
The germs could be anywhere. Bolivar or Garcia could have planted them in Florida while they were there. It would be a delicious irony for them, I’d have to admit, to have the very germs I’d tried so hard to find and keep from being used to finally make their way to the place for which they were originally bound.
Yet there were plenty of other places where introducing even a few canisters of virulent flesh eating bacteria could reap a horrific harvest of death and suffering. Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua… even Bolivar’s home country of Columbia. What could I do to stop them?
“I can see your wheels turning, Jarvis,” Garcia declared with delight. “I can almost hear your thoughts even now.”
Bolivar laughed, “Exactly. How can he stop us? What can he do to prevent our evil plans from coming to fruition?”
“Nothing can dissuade you?” I asked coldly, my voice sounding flat and unemotional in my own ears.
That gave them pause, which is exactly what I’d hoped for. Why was I so calm about this? What might I know?
“Don’t try to play it frio, amigo,” Garcia blustered.
I shrugged elaborately and yawned, “Somebody said something about a shower? And a clean rack? I wouldn’t mind either right now. Kind of hungry too, but too tired to eat.”
“That’s it?” Bolivar asked.
“What can I do?” I asked negligently. “I’m surrounded and out in the middle of the Gulf. Is there any time to talk you out of it, or have you already set off the bomb or whatever it is that’s going to release the germs? If not, then maybe in the morning I’ll have the energy to argue about it.”
Garcia laughed and Bolivar chuffed disdainfully, “Oh, there is plenty of time. But it’s still going to happen.”
I yawned again. I really was bushed which was helping me to maintain the mechanical unconcern in my voice, “That’s good… might give you time to reconsider then. Where are my quarters, by the way? Can I get an escort? I’m dying on my feet here.”
“Show him to his cabin,” Bolivar said in Spanish to one of the men who’d been on the tender with us. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes, “Nothing will change my mind, Jarvis. You should know that.”
I met his gaze and held my hands out wide, “That’s a shame, Bolivar… it really is. It’s a shame that such inflexibility is going to harm the innocent. Good night to you.”
The look on Bolivar’s face was wavering between arrogance and worry when I turned and headed out on deck. The goon instructed me to go down one level and enter an interior corridor. He opened the door to a small utilitarian cabin with a single bunk, small chest of drawers and a hatch that led into a small head. A single round porthole looked out into blackness. He closed the door behind me and I heard the sound of a key being turned in the lock.
If Grayson’s asset in Columbia had been able to get back in time and snatch one or more members of Bolivar’s family, then sooner or later he’d get the call. If and when he did, then my odd behavior a few moments before would make him think that I’d had something to do with it. As an insurance policy of my own. At that point it could be a matter of what he valued more… his demonstration to cement his power or his wife or children’s lives.
Either way, it might not be a good idea for me to be lying on that bunk when Bolivar heard the news and lost his shit. He could just as easily come in here and empty a magazine into me out of spite.
So I began to examine my cell. The head was stocked with soap and shampoo. The chest of drawers did have several changes of clothes in it and of several sizes. They were all the same. Jeans, gray denim work shirts as well as tidy-whities and undershirts. Unfortunately, my sn
eakers had been left in the mess room along with my other clothes. However, since beggars couldn’t be choosers, I drew out an outfit that looked like it’d fit and then ducked into the head.
I took a very fast Navy shower, just long enough to shampoo, soap and rinse. I toweled off and slipped into my new togs. I rolled the hem of the jeans several times so that they stopped a little above my ankles and wouldn’t trip me up during any strenuous activity.
Next I began to examine the room itself. Aside from the door, which was locked from the outside and didn’t even have a knob on my side. This cabin had evidently been specifically set up as a holding cell. This was confirmed when I looked at the porthole and saw that the dogs had been removed and replaced with two large and corroded screws that held the twenty-four inch window shut.
Of course, had I been able to get through it, there was no deck outside. I was in the stern of the superstructure. No deck above and the next level down was the main deck, a good fifteen foot drop from the porthole. Not a comforting thought to entertain on a moving ship at night.
“Okay, Grayson…” I muttered. “Now would be a good time to land a SEAL team on deck… I’d even be happy to see Turner right about now…”
Not to be outdone in the resourcefulness department, however, I went to work. I threw the thin mattress and bed clothes off the bunk and saw that it was a metal frame crisscrossed by thin strips of aluminum two inches wide. This formed a sort of flexible springy surface. The strips were thin, thin enough to fit into the slotted head of the two big screws holding the port lid closed. They were welded to the heavy tubular frame, though. Having little other choice, I stood in the middle of the bed and began to jump up and down.
Although strong together, this mesh of aluminum strips wasn’t designed to support the jumping up and more importantly, down of a two hundred and fifteen pound man. Within only half a dozen leaps, two strips came free of the edge of the cot frame. I then struggled to pull one end free of the lateral piece and then wriggle it back and forth to keep sliding it out of the next. Soon, though, I had a twenty-inch by two inch by dime-thick strip of metal.
I immediately went to work on one of the screws and immediately found that the strip was far too malleable for the job. The slot in the screw easily accommodated the metal, but when I applied downward pressure to try and turn it, the strip simply bent. I cursed and had to work the other one free as well. I laid them together and was just able to slide the doubled edge into the screw slot. This time, I had a little better luck. It felt as if the screw was giving way just as the doubled end began to bend too. I slid the metal further and kept going. Finally, the screw began to turn easily and I was able to loosen it and remove it with my fingers.
Naturally, the second screw was more of a bitch. It bent my makeshift screwdriver easily and I hadn’t made any headway. Fighting down frustration, I went back and looked at the cot again.
The tubular frame was made of two and a half inch steel piping. I saw upon close inspection that where the upright tubes met the horizontal ones, there was a thin seam. I lifted the cot and turned one leg counter clockwise and it rotated! It was screwed on!
I grinned and slid my double strip of aluminum into the end of the pipe so that only a small end was sticking out. Then I slid it into the slot and applied hard downward pressure on the leg. To my amazement, this began to buckle and bend too!
“Oh, for God’s sake…” I cranked.
I was almost ready to give into my frustration and fling the damned thing across the room. Or better yet, use it to simply bash out the fucking porthole when I realized that the bending of the pipe had actually synched down on the aluminum within.
Shrugging, I tried once more and almost shouted in triumph when the screw broke free and began to spin. I quickly removed it and used my pipe wrench… get it…? To wrench open the port lid which had been sealed with 5200 caulking.
A blast of cool damp ocean air filled the room. I breathed in sweet freedom and went to work on the next phase of my escape.
On the bed had been a thin blanket, top sheet and fitted sheet. Each was barely more than six feet long, but they should be sufficient.
I used a double sheet bend…ha! Cuz’ they were actually sheets and not sail handling ropes… to fasten the three of them together. I then tied a bowline around the metal frame of the bed using the blanket and tossed the impromptu rope out the window.
“Nyhehehehehehe!” I laughed evilly as I squirmed feet foremost out of the hole… no easy feat but I managed it eventually… and tested my rope. It slid the cot over under the port but seemed to hold. Holding my breath, I looked down, saw that nobody was coming and slid down the rope until I reached the end. I let go, falling only four feet to the narrow deck. The impact was mildly uncomfortable on my bare feet but sent a laser beam of pain sizzling straight up my corn cannon and along my spine.
“Fudgesicle!” I didn’t quite manage to whisper. “What the Christ is the point of jamming a GPS transponder up one’s situpon if nobody is gonna come and save me?”
I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I was free. I could once again savor the richness of liberty. Now all I had to do was overpower a shipload of bad guys… without a weapon… determine where the head bad guys had planted a bioweapon, prevent it from being used, foil their greater plans to rule the galaxy and oh yeah… discover the location of the rest of the germs and destroy them as well.
“Phew,” I muttered as I began to creep along the dark stern deck toward the port side of the ship. “For a minute there I was worried that this might be a teensy bit troublesome…”
37
I was fortunate that it was the middle of the night, or the wee hours of the morning or almost four bells in the middle watch, take your pick. Except for a reduced graveyard watch, most of the crew would be snuggled in their racks no doubt dreaming of unusually affectionate lady types. That meant that prowling around in the dark should be a little easier. At least until Bolivar got the word about his family… if that even happened.
To what end, though?
What was my game plan here? I supposed that the first thing I needed to do was find a blueprint or map of the ship. The vessel was only three hundred feet long or so, maybe seven or eight decks in total, most of which would be empty cargo space. And that space was probably filled with shipping containers. Freighters rarely put to sea empty. It just wasn’t profitable to do otherwise.
“If this were an episode of the Star Trek,” I groused as I pressed my ear to a door in the bulkhead of the superstructure. “I could just access a computer and get a schematic of the ship… or walk into engineering and there would be a giant graphic of the thing to help me out.”
I was on the main deck, about midway between the stern and the open cargo handling area forward of the command structure. I couldn’t hear anything behind the metal door, so I gripped the handle and began to turn it very slowly.
“Of course, if this were the Star Trek,” I grumbled under my breath. “They could just beam me the Christ outta here… and I wouldn’t have an SD card shoved into my data slot either…”
I found myself not in a corridor as I’d expected but a narrow and steep stairwell. Probably a fire-proof access that ran down to the lower levels. This would do quite well, as I was certain to find something useful in the engine room. If nothing else, perhaps I could perform some feat of mischief down there that might buy me some time and let some form of assistance arrive.
I descended as quickly down as I could, my bare feet making stealth much simpler. Of course the stairs were corrugated metal for greater traction… on shoes… and by the time I’d traversed the four levels or so to the bottom of the stairwell I’d forgotten all about the discomfort in my bum-bum.
Here, the hatchway was not just steel but watertight as well. There was a small eight-inch viewing port in the door and I peeked in. I was indeed at the extreme portside of the engine room. I couldn’t see a great deal of the large compartment. Aside from
being fairly dark, my porthole offered a fairly limited range of sight. However, the room appeared deserted… there was no one I could see at any rate. The two-story compartment was dominated by the single diesel monstrosity that drove the ship. Even behind the hatch I could hear the throbbing of the huge engine as it rumbled along, turning the reduction geared transmission that turned the ship’s single screw and her propeller that was probably taller than me.
Taking a breath, I pulled down on the handle and slowly opened the door, praying it didn’t screech from disuse. It didn’t, or at least not enough to be heard over the roar of the massive twelve-cylinder engine.
I slipped in and crouched low behind a collection of pipes and other equipment. The compartment was as wide as the ship, probably forty-five or fifty feet across and nearly as long. The huge engine sat forward and its supporting gear… cooling systems, electrical generators, battery banks, fuel lines and more created a confusing maze with an underlying orderliness. The impression of raw industrialism was reinforced by the heavy scent of diesel oil, lubricants and the ozone discharge of electricity being generated.
There were a variety of lockers and storage boxes lining the bulkheads and several doors along the forward wall. The one in the center no doubt led to the lowest level of the cargo area right above the bilges. The door closer to me opened into what appeared to be an office with a large bay window that overlooked the engine room. Sitting in that office at a desk was a rough-looking bearded man doing something at a laptop. After a few minutes of study, it appeared that he hadn’t noticed me enter the engine room.
No one else came into the room or left it in the five minutes or so that I watched. I would have thought that there would be at least a couple of crew-members on duty, even at this time of morning. Even if somebody had gone to the head, they’d have come back in the time I was waiting, I would have thought. Maybe a meal break…