by L. J. Martin
Alistair hands his wife the lamp. “If the bugger twitches give him your best five-iron on his ugly head.” He smiles at me. "She's still a hell of a golfer."
“My pleasure, dear,” she says, taking the lamp, pulling a chair away from the desk and positioning herself within swinging distance.
I see the soldier has a small two-way radio clipped to his belt. I snatch it up and clip it to my belt.
“Now,” Alistair says, “how about visiting our new captain and setting a new course for this tub?”
“My pleasure,” I say, then bend and relieve the guard of his AK and two extra magazines, now happy to leave the KRISS with Alistair.
I take a look out into the hallway. Aft, only fifty feet, is an elevator and a door outside to a deck overlooking the pool. No one is in the hall, so I head for the doorway with the red letters. I pause at the doorway and glance back.
Alistair has the KRISS Vector in present-arms position and is two paces behind me. I leave the AK leaning against the door jamb, so he'd have the most possible mobility.
“Bloody well ready,” Alistair says, and gives me a nod.
The damn fools have left the door unlocked. Confidence will kill you. Before I can quietly shove it open, the radio I’ve purloined crackles. I reverse direction and close the door quietly.
A stream of Arabic rattles out of the radio. I don’t get a word of it.
“It’s that Mumin, telling his guards to check in. He’s asked for two by name.”
“Not unless they’ve got com at the bottom of the Med. They were busy raping a couple of young ladies and forgot to watch their back. They won’t be answering. Is he done?”
“Done,” the radio crackles again, but it’s his guards checking in. I switch the radio off, so it doesn’t announce our coming.
I slip the door open and am proud of the ship’s maintenance people as, well oiled, it opens without a squeak.
There are two sets of doors off the short hallway, facing each other across the hall. The first door on the left is open, the other’s closed. The end of the hallway opens onto the bridge and all I can see are some electronic screens and, above them, six feet height of glass. Beyond that is clear sky.
I creep the hall to the first door, then make a SWAT team entrance, going in low, sweeping the room with the suppressed muzzle of the Glock.
There’s a handheld radio perched atop a large desk. A bottle of scotch is beside it along with a glass half full.
The tall thin black man behind the desk, Mumin, is leaning back, feet propped up on the desktop. Another hand-held radio is in his hand. His eyes widen, like fried eggs with black yokes, as he sees me.
“Don’t say a word. Don’t move,” I caution. He doesn’t speak, but drops his feet off the desk, leans forward and closes an Apple laptop as if hiding something. There’s another device on the desk, far enough that he’ll have to lean forward to reach it. I see his eyes cut to the device, it’s like a small, square, garage door opener. He cuts eyes back to me. Then he goes for it.
The Glock roars and bucks in my hand. He’s suddenly on his side on the floor. Nothing like a head shot to change your mind from whatever mischief you might have been thinking about. I move forward and, just for safety’s sake, gather up the device, then look back to see Alistair in the hallway, motioning up with the muzzle of the KRISS Vector.
I check the Mumin guy, just to make sure the 9mm took out a chunk of skull and see gray matter mixed with the pooling blood on the carpet, then turn back to Alistair.
He’s speaking in Arabic and motioning with the muzzle. When I make the door, I see another raghead. This one is in a traditional white robe and even has a jambiya, the traditional dagger, stuffed into the sash wrapped around his waist.
Alistair obviously knows his stuff and has stayed back from the creep with his long arm. So, I close. Shoving him with a hand in his chest and with the other and the dagger from his belt. It’s a nice piece with a jeweled grip.
“Where’s the fire control box,” I ask.
“Fuck you,” he says, in perfect English.
He’s sorry. My instantaneous reaction with the butt of the Glock has shattered his front teeth. He’s bent over, hands on knees, spitting blood and shards of teeth, but it doesn’t keep me from asking again. “The fire control box?”
But all I get is a gurgle from the haji with the perfect English. But then I understand as he straightens. He’s pointing to his own chest. “American, McCord…Sean McCord,” he’s trying to say.
Then I realize this is the guy Connie turned up when she was hacking sites to check out passengers and crew on the Blue Pearl. This is the first time I've come face to face with him. It makes me angry with myself that I wasn't more diligent.
“No shit, a true-blue American?” I ask, and he nods as hard as he can, looking hopeful, hand over mouth, blood seeping between his fingers.
I can't help myself from hitting him face-on with the butt of the Glock, bust his nose which sprays like a garden hose, and he tumbles to the floor. “Fucking traitor,” I manage, glad I'm not impeded by rules of engagement.
Alistair taps me on the shoulder, and I turn to see a wall-mounted panel with a Plexiglas cover. Under it is a series of switches under little individual fold-up Plexi covers, and each of them is numbered to match a deck.
“You see any reason to wait?” I ask my new running mate. “Shall I close them?”
“Jolly good,” he says, and I flip them all.
If we’re going to take the ship back, it has started here.
40
Sa’id Al-Gharsi, a Yemini, has been serving as a floor steward, a butler, on Deck Five. He is stationed at one end of the long hallway and Marco Hernandez, a Pilipino who’s on board as a welder—and was instrumental in bringing the explosives aboard in the welding tanks—stands guard at the opposite end of the hallway. Deck Five has suites only in the front half of the ship, only thirty-four total, so Sa’id and Marco have been trading off guarding, taking two-hour stands. Only two suites, nearest the casino, are luxury suites. Next to the suites aft is the small casino and casino bar. The lobby/reception and hotel crew occupy the center but are isolated by fire doors. The aft end is almost totally show lounge—descending theater seating but with small tables, and below them is the stage.
Virgil McIntosh, an American from West Virginia has been stationed at the reception desk since the terrorists took over the ship. He has not been allowed to leave his post and has been sleeping in the small purser's office in his desk chair.
The balance of the crew, other than cooks, has been confined to their quarters on Deck Three.
Sa’id is already unhappy as Alia has been assigned to accompany the women on Bit Tawfīq and he has no idea if he’ll ever see her again.
Most of the passengers under his guard are the typical retired older folks, average for cruises, except for one. The Black man in 533, next to the large suite, is twice his size and has the look and bearing of a military man. His gray hair is cropped close. He walks with shoulders thrown back and eyes that seem to be scanning all around him.
So, Sa'id is wary when the fire doors slam, and he can’t open the one at his end. He strides to the end that Marco has been guarding—he is off and somewhere else on the ship—and tries that fire door. Passenger doors begin to open, and they step into the hallway, yelling at him.
“What’s happening? What was that noise?"
Sa’id screams and threatens them with his AK47. “Back in your room. I will shoot. It is just the doors closing. Get back!” He moves up and down the hallway until all suite doors are closed again and quiet is restored.
Then he moves to the door on the far end from his bow station. Closed tight, nearly impenetrable. What is happening?
Then pounding and caterwauling rings from a room—the room occupied by the big Black man.
Master Chief Willard ‘Willy’ Porter is taken by surprise when the slamming of the fire doors vibrates through his cabin. Damn, he’d been
thinking of how to face the two guards, then discovered they’ve been alternating at their stations. With luck, he’ll only have to confront one. At least one at a time.
Now he must implement a plan. He has already made a bludgeon out of the bedside lamp, but he wants something that will solve his problem without facing the muzzle end of an AK. When he’d cut the electrical cord away from the lamp it gave him an idea.
The hallway electrical outlet is near enough. He strips the insulation away from the end of the cord, grounds one of the two exposed copper ends to the door jamb with a Band-Aid and wraps the other around the doorknob. He prays it will work. The door has a peephole. He waits until the guard has threatened the other passengers and he hears their cabin doors slam, then he plugs in his makeshift device, backs away nearly to the sliding glass door, and starts making all the weird noises he can conjure up, screaming and banging on the walls, but distant from the door, so the guard will believe he is not lying in wait just inside.
Sa’id is frightened. He is locked in the hallway alone, with at least thirty-four passengers—more if you count the old women—behind doorways. They can lock him out, he can’t lock them in. He gets on his handheld radio and yells, “What is happening? Hello?” and is answered by other guards, but not by his commander, Mumin. Where is Mumin?
The wailing and pounding coming from the room of the big Black man is driving him even more crazy than the fact he doesn’t know what is going on, so he stomps to that door. He makes sure his AK is armed, and off safety, and that the sounds are coming from deep in the cabin, then uses his universal pass keycard and plunges it into the slot, when it flashes green he reaches for the knob.
He stiffens as if he’s been hit by a lightning strike. All goes black as he collapses, smelling burned flesh.
Willy Porter hears the guard hit the floor and runs to the plug, pulls it, and cautiously opens the door. The guard is in a heap on the floor. Willy scans up and down the hallway seeing no other guard and drags the prostrate man inside, along with his rifle.
He checks for a pulse with an index finger on the man’s carotid artery and finds a weak one, so he binds the man’s wrists behind him, relieves him of his sidearm and two grenades on his battle-rattle belt, then carries the AK as he goes out into the hall. He can’t help but smile at the blisters and blackened streak on the guard's hand that had grabbed the doorknob.
Sucker.
He strides out of his suite with confidence. First, he checks the fire doors at each end of the hallway. Locked tight. It would take explosives to breach those doors.
Then he goes from room to room, beating on each door, talking to each occupant to see who, if anyone, might be willing to help. More than half the rooms are occupied by men who are crazed with worry over their wives. A few, the much older ones, have their wives with them. Willy gets four volunteers, all former military who offer to help no matter the consequences.
Willy arms them as best he can, keeping the AK47 and two extra clips for himself. One passenger, Paul Whittington, proudly exclaims he is an ex-Navy Seabee, in addition, shooting is a hobby, so he gets the guard's sidearm and the single extra magazine, two of the others are armed with grenades after they proclaim their former proficiency with the weapon, and after he’s cautioned them.
Then, all they can do is wait.
Army Master Sergeant Rockin’ Roy Filson is on Deck Four, with even fewer suites, as it's the work deck with anchoring and docking equipment forward and the main restaurant aft. Fire doors on that deck seal off one end of the suite area, between it and the reception area outside the main restaurant doors. Another fire door closes off the forward work desk, which is always closed to passengers by another locked door.
However, open decks surround the restaurant on three sides and extend slightly past the restaurant reception area.
Filson, a hundred forty pounds but lean and in fairly-decent physical condition for sixty-seven years old, has been beside himself with anger and angst, as his little sixty-year-old ninety-pound wife, Joy, has not returned. He is on the side to see the freighter being loaded and is sure she’s been forced to leave with the Bit Tawfīq. He’s been pacing the floor, angry that nothing is going to happen until dark. Who the hell is this Reardon anyway to act as if he’s running the show—the revolt show? Roy is about to step outside and confront the single guard assigned to their short hallway when he hears, and feels, the shudder of the fire door being slammed. His only weapon is a can of his wife’s hairspray. In his small suite—actually a single room, but all cabins on board are called suites—there are no table lamps, only ceiling lamps over the bed.
But he’s had his eyes burned before when he walked by while Joy was messing with her thinning hair. It’s a weapon, of sorts.
So, as soon as the slamming door reverberates up and down the hallway he steps out. The guard is at the fire door, only twenty-five feet from Roy’s cabin.
He moves quickly, spray can in hand. The guard, who’s monkeying with the door, hears or senses him coming and spins, bringing the AK47 up. At the same time, Roy aims and sprays. The guard reels back against fire door but pulls the trigger as he does. and Roy feels a burn on the outside of his thigh and takes another 7.62 bullet through his side, but it doesn’t do more than clip bone and Roy keeps staggering forward, spraying.
The guard drops the AK, putting his hands over his eyes. Roy snatches it up and empties the clip into the dark-skinned man, who spins to the side and grabs his chest. But wounds are spurting blood from his groin to his collarbone, and he’s dead, hamburger, as he hits the floor.
It’s not Roy’s first rodeo and he collapses to the floor, sets the AK aside, pulls his belt and puts a tourniquet on his deeply grooved thigh. Then he’s trying to get his tee-shirt off to tear it up to stuff the through-and-through wound in his side, when men start sticking their heads out of rooms.
He waves at the nearest one to come help and the man hurries to his side. The man answers with an Australian or New Zealand accent.
“You serve?” Roy ask the man as he assists in tearing the tee-shirt into wound stuffing material.
“Serve?”
“Military?” Roy asks, a little insistently as he’s getting a little dizzy.
“Damned if I didn’t, mate,” the man says, and Roy decides he’s an Aussie.
He hands the Aussie the AK47. Then instructs him, “That prick has two grenades on his belt, one of them fancy daggers in a sheath, and a sidearm.” The hall is filling with men. Roy motions at them. “See who’s willing and distribute."
Then he fades from consciousness.
Deck Four, at least the passenger section, is secure…at least for the moment.
41
Connie Nordstrom is armed.
Her little semiauto .380 is strapped to the inside of her thigh. In her purse is the brass compact with mirror, face application, with a small pair of nubbins that will deliver millions of volts when switched on—the women have been allowed to keep purses after being searched. Everything resembling a weapon, including fingernail files were removed. Her small can of hair spray is actually mace and was missed. But when confronted with a dozen well-armed hostiles, and among more than one hundred women—mostly blue hairs—the last thing she’ll do is risk pulling a weapon and responding rifle fire when surrounded by dozens of innocents. She’ll bide her time.
The cargo area of the freighter has been turned into a jail, with four large containment areas only fifteen feet deep by eighteen feet long enclosed with hog wire fencing. Each cell is packed with forty women, plus or minus…just over six square feet per prisoner. A long walkway three feet wide runs the length of the cells on the port side with ladders to the deck on each end. Each cell is provided with cases of plastic bottled water and four five-gallon plastic buckets to be used as toilets. A six-foot-high stack of folded blankets, twenty-five total—fewer than needed—rest in a corner. The floor is a cold metal deck with a cold bilge below and the sea beyond that.
Conni
e makes a quick count and figures there are one hundred twenty-five women, more or less, all under 65 years old; four are teenagers, two only seven or eight, maybe only a dozen under thirty. She has positioned herself to be in the same cell as Simone, Patty, and Gretchen.
Simone and Patty are so frightened they seem catatonic, Gretchen far less so, but still wide-eyed and fearful.
Now that the male guards are absent, the women can undo their scarfs and face coverings, and do.
Connie crosses the cell, hoping she can give some comfort and encouragement to Simone, Patty, and Gretchen.
“Calm down, girls. There’s nothing much we can do with a dozen or more armed hostiles aboard. Stay calm, hydrate, get as much rest and nourishment as possible…”
But Simone interrupts her. “I don’t have my meds.”
Only then does Connie remember that Simone is diabetic. “No insulin?” she asks.
“No. It won’t take long before I’m sick as hell.”
“Rest and calm down…it’s the best we can do for a while. Half the United States military will be after us very soon.”
“Soon may be too late,” Gretchen cautions, with a low voice so only Connie can hear.
The only guard below is the woman who introduced herself as Alia, and she wears a battle rattle belt with two grenades, a can of mace, a Taser, a sidearm and extra magazine, and three magazine holsters for the AK47 she carries with some obvious competence.
She occupies a stool near the forward ladder leading to the deck.
Connie has counted an even dozen hostiles topside, four of whom have escorted them to their cells. There were also large plank boxes on the decks fore and aft, and hostiles were tearing them apart as the women boarded. It was obvious to Connie that some kind of cannons have been concealed in the planks. The superstructure is only twenty or so feet high on the freighter, which she determined to be one hundred twenty feet or so in length. On both port and starboard sides, hostiles were mounting what looked to Connie to be fifty-caliber machine guns. At least four, maybe six. She was below before she could make sure.