by L. J. Martin
He is smugly congratulating himself, when an arm extends down and a grenade flies through a break in the now shattered glass. It is obviously safety glass and the thrower has to beat the glass twice to get enough of an opening, but does so.
Luckily that delay gives Alistair time to scramble back and through the first available side door off the hallway—the chart room.
He slams the door behind as the explosion roars down the hallway. He wastes no time in jumping back to the hallway, praying they haven't followed with a second grenade, when two more sets of legs appear. He doesn't wait this time. He shatters the window with the rest of the AK's clip. They both appear for only a second as they follow the other two to the roof below.
He doubts they will try breaching his position via the forward windows again, so grabs up his radio.
"Slight interruption," he transmits. "Four more wogs done bit the dust, to use a John Wayne-ism." Then said, "Oh, bollocks."
"What?" Reardon came back.
"They chucked a grenade and the bridge is half destroyed. The switch panel is caved in, as well as much of the other gear."
"No more fire doors operable?"
"Not right away. I'll get the front panel off and see if I can short the other switches."
"Advise when and if. I'm headed for the engine room to do my bomb squad act. Stay tight and out of the line of fire."
"Ten four, you too."
Zamir, the huge soldier who was left atop the landing overlooking the engine room and the now nearly seventy Jewish passengers, both men and women, was tired. His head was hanging. He was one of Colonel Musa's favorite followers and had been kept very busy while this attack was planned, and even on the cruise to join the Blue Pearl. He had slept little. The quiet rocking of the ship, now dead in the water with movement only subject to the wind and waves, was hypnotizing, particularly in the growing heat and humidity of the engine room.
The only thing keeping him from dozing off was the intermittent crackle of the radio. The chatter of other hostiles was beginning to worry him as many had been summoned by others and were not responding. Mumin Amir, the leader of the shipboard faithful, has not responded to the calls of Captain Yasim Al-Jamil, now in command aboard the Blue Pearl as Colonel Musa had left with the freighter and women. He’d heard the captain order a squad to the bridge to see what was happening, now they had not been heard from.
Zamir was dozing, even as concerned as he was becoming. He had heard chatter about fire doors being closed and attempts to open them unsuccessful. He wanted to move out of the engine room to test the door just beyond the laundry room, but it would mean not watching the Jews, and he'd been ordered not to take eyes off them. He’d been delivered a plate of rice and pot of tea. The Jewish passengers had nothing, not even water. Earlier, when he’d radioed Colonel Musa regarding the Jews’ complaints, Musa had replied, “Where they are going, they will not need full stomachs.”
More than one of the Jews spoke Arabic, overheard the radio, and the message passed among them.
44
As had been the plan, Colonel Musa, was aboard the Bit Tawfig with the women, who would be the primary bait for the payment of the huge ransom. He left the Blue Pearl under the control of his next-in-command, Captain Yasim Al-Jamil. Yasim has established his command post in the Panorama Lounge, aft on Deck Eight, with a protective guard of ten of his finest soldiers. The Lounge has a fire door separating it from the pool. And like others, it has been closed and is impossible to open except with explosives or from the controls on the bridge. Al-Jamil is incensed he's been locked in. He has, among his armaments, eight Claymore mines. His last order on the radio was, to anyone near on Deck Eight, to stand clear of the fire door closing off the Panorama Lounge, as he is preparing to blow the door with a Claymore.
As the Claymore is activated with a wire pull, which often serves as a trip-wire on a trail or in a dark building, he loosens it and ties a longer cord so he and his men, and the two servers he's allowed to remain in the lounge, can take cover out of the line-of-sight of the mine and its killing shrapnel. The explosion knocks over tables and chairs, destroys hanging chandeliers, and shatters two of the large plate glass windows fifty feet away, looking aft of the ship.
The Colonel has not heard a word from the men he'd formerly ordered to the bridge. Colonel Akim Musa's parting orders, as he'd boarded the Bit Tawfīq was for Yasim to take over command of the ship from Mumin Amir, even if it required sending Amir to his seventy-two virgins. Musa wants all credit for this mission—second only to September 11th—to be his and is ferociously jealous of Mumin Amir's admiration in the eyes of Sheik Ali Hassan. If Mumin is disposed of, he would still be a hero in the Sheik's eyes, but no longer competition for any reward the Sheik would pay. And future admiration would be Musa’s alone.
Yasim is a leader; he's not gotten to his position as a captain without showing his skill in many previous encounters with other factions of Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, and Isis, not to speak of his former encounters with Americans, Brits and Poles in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Syria, and Iraq. He is a well-seasoned soldier.
He’s led his ten men, seven of them carrying Claymores, at a dead run to the stairway and up to floor nine where the bridge occupies the most bow-forward position on that deck.
Of course, they’ve discovered the fire door shut.
Yasim tries his radio one more time, but none of the four he’d sent to take the bridge answer, nor does Mumin Amir or his fellow faithful.
So, it is time to gain access, even at the risk of destroying much of what is inside. But first he sends two men outside with a Claymore, to mount the roof and see what they might see through the bridge’s large front windows.
It is less than five minutes when they radio the message that they can see three dead and one badly wounded comrade on the roof of a lower deck below the bridge, and shattered windows of the bridge itself.
“Can you gain access?” Yasim radios back.
“Of course,” one of them, an Ethiopian named Omar, replies. Like Yasim and Musa, he is eager to gain favor with a superior. He removes his jacket, has his fellow hold one sleeve, and lowers himself down across a solid, slightly tilted window next to the shattered one.
His last vision is of a tall wild-eyed ruddy-complexioned white man with white hair, aiming a rifle at him.
That window, too, is blown away and he joins dead comrades on the roof below.
His comrade who’s been holding the other sleeve of his jacket scrambles back, crabbing across the bridge roof, as three gunshots poke holes in the metal roof just behind his retreat. Had he not tripped over an array of antennas and rolled away he would have been accompanying his partner on a trip to stand before Allah.
He quickly radios his commander, who’s already heard the gunfire.
Alistair is down to one magazine, thirty rounds, and takes a deep breath as he inserts his final one into the AK. He steps into the hallway, the door to only six suites separating him from that hallway and the fire door beyond. He picks up the radio.
"Reardon, acknowledge," he calls.
Mike comes back immediately. "What the hell's going on? I heard a hell of an explosion. I was afraid it was a precursor to the big boom."
"I don't know, but the bastards are trying to access the bridge. I guess they want to open the fire doors. There's a surprise for them—" He doesn't complete his sentence as the door between hallway and bridge explodes inward and hits him as if it had been dropped off a four-story building. However, it hits him flat on—would likely have killed him if it hit on edge—but knocks him flying onto the floor of the now glass-and-equipment-scattered bridge.
Yasim had positioned not one but two Claymores in front of the fire door, and even though it was seventy feet from the door marked ‘CREWMEN ONLY’, the explosion was concentrated down the five-foot-wide hallway and blew the ‘CREWMEN ONLY’ door off with such force that it flew past four offices and into Alistair.
He'd, luckily, had the AK slu
ng on a shoulder, and it stayed with him.
Equally lucky, the force of the explosion has shocked the ten remaining hostiles and Yasim, and they have to spend a moment getting their bearings. But in less than a minute, Yasim yells, "Follow me," and charges down the hallway toward the bridge.
Yasim spots the old man on the floor, rifle raised, too late. The rifle’s muzzle spits fire and Yasim spins with blood splattering those behind. One of them is hit as well. But the following two go prone and fire indiscriminately as do the standing two behind.
Many of their rounds splatter the walls, some ricocheting like angry wasps, but enough of them strike home to silence the tall Australian and send him rolling across the bridge floor as his magazine empties harmlessly into walls and ceiling.
I hear the explosion, then the transmit button on Alistair’s radio is released. I try him several times in a row, then decide he is either out of commission, his radio destroyed, or worse, the bridge has been retaken by the terrorists. I fear the latter. For the short time I knew the Aussie, I am sure if the bridge has been retaken, it is over his dead body.
With Alistair not responding I have no way to access the Deck Five forward area of suites but move to the fire door and listen where the shots from the two hiding behind the reception desk had poked holes about chest high. The funny thing is I hear a man inside moaning and crying out in Arabic. I can only smile as I hope he’s been taken out by friendly fire. I presume he ran to that door when he heard my gunfire and was hit by the reckless return fire through the reception counter. God works in mysterious ways.
I’ve been avoiding going directly to Deck Three and the entrance to the two-story engine room as I’m sure it’s full of the Jewish folks who’d been removed from their cabins, both men and women, and placed there—I’d like to say for safekeeping but know the opposite is true.
And, attempting to access it could be the trigger that pushes the terrorists into detonating the LPG tanks and putting us all in Davy Jones’ locker, not that we’d care as we’d likely be long cooked before reaching there. I presume there is more than one fire door on that deck as it, and part of Deck Two, are the housing for the whole crew in the forward two-thirds of the ship, engine room, and fuel storage in the aft one-third.
If I have to destroy a fire door to get access to the engine room, and if there’s a guard or several there, then they’ll have lots of time to detonate.
45
But I have no choice if I’m to keep them from vaporizing us all. It’s a catch 22. You’re damned if you do, likely damned to hell if you don’t.
So, I skip Deck Four and descend directly to Deck Three. Deck Four’s fire doors remain closed, so if guards are there, they are still locked in. That could be a good thing.
I realize in passing outside glass doors that it’s getting dark. Unless there are automatic controls on the ship’s interior lights, it will soon be very dark, with the exception of moonlight through ports and glass windows and doors.
That could be to my advantage, if I can get back to my room where my night vision is hidden. A big if!
And I’m right with my remembrance of Deck Three. There’s a fire door between me and the base of the stairway, the passenger laundry room, beyond it the engine room, and the other way between the landing and the crew quarters.
Now, how to get the damned fire door open.
A half dozen of the Jews have military experience—four of the men and two of the women. Two couples had emigrated from Israel where all citizens must spend time in the military. Both couples are in their early sixties. The other two men served in the American Military, one a clerk in a supply unit, but the other in the tank corps. They all met prior to being imprisoned in the engine room and had migrated to a spot as far from the guard as they could get to plan their escape. Those plans were accelerated when they heard, and the four who’d emigrated from Israel understood, the radio message in Arabic which said, “Where they are going, they won’t need full stomachs.”
As they watch the big guard up on the stairway dozing, they decide to implement their plan.
Even in her sixties, Gertrude ‘Goldie’ Goldstein is an attractive woman with flashing dark eyes and an easy smile. She weighs no more than ten pounds more than when she’d graduated high school in her hometown of Krakow, Poland, just before her family immigrated to Israel where she’d married Abraham. She is a shapely woman, with generous breasts, and proud of her womanhood.
“I’m ready,” she says in a low voice to the others. She’d unbuttoned her blouse down two buttons below the ravine that is her cleavage.
“God go with you, Goldie,” Abraham says, and gives her a restrained hug with an arm around her shoulder.
“Yahweh has always been at my side,” she replies seriously.
She moves through the sitting and sleeping men and women to the base of the stairway, then, barefoot, begins to climb. The guard is more than twice her weight and armed with both an AK47, a sidearm, grenades on his belt, and one of those wicked curved daggers many Arab men wear with such pleasure. Goldie is a nature lover, and an environmentalist, and hates the vanity of Arab men who relish the destruction of Rhinos, causing their near extinction for their horns to adorn the vanity of daggers. She knows many Arabic men pay thousands, some hundreds of thousands, for a dagger with Rhino horn grips. Almost more than the fact these hajis are holding them prisoner, she hates this guard for his dagger—even if the grip is likely cheap bone—and the fact the man who’d searched her purse had taken a golden locket with a picture of her daughter whom she’d lost to breast cancer. She believes in the sanctity of life but is rapidly coming around to the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’. Arabic-speaking men have taken so much from her people. All of these things go through her mind as she ascends the rough treads of the expanded metal stairway. It hurts her bare feet, but she barely notices.
And what she planned is particularly heinous to a man who’s already lost one eye.
She, on the other hand, has no weapons other than a pair of tweezers. They had been overlooked, or ignored, when the guards rampaged through the women’s purses.
Abraham, and the other three Jewish men, gather, seated and acting as if they are dozing, at the bottom of the stairway, but ready to charge the guard should Goldie be able to divert the muzzle of the AK47 long enough. Five of them should be able to control the huge man. Particularly since Abe had been able to find an eighteen-inch pipe wrench and hide it up his coat sleeve. The head of the heavy wrench is too big to fit along with his arm, so it is cradled in his hand. If he can only get close enough.
Goldie makes it to within three steps of the dozing guard, who is seated and leaning back against the door to the LPG storage, when his eyes flutter, and open. His milky eye is particularly ugly up this close.
He grunts and has to roll to his side to get a hand under himself and push up to his feet. Goldie instinctively puts her back to the entrance door, at right angle to the LPG door, and smiles, as she pulls her blouse and bra away from two large cantaloupe-sized breasts.
Zamir, the engine room guard, is not the sharpest needle in the sewing box and stands for a moment, gaping at the nakedness of the woman in front of him, then with one hand, without hesitation, he reaches out and caresses a melon. The other hand holds his AK dangling at his side. She giggles like a schoolgirl, reaches up as if to caress the side of his face, in return, and with the butt buried in the palm of her hand, drives the tweezers deep into his only good left eye.
He stumbles back, at first gripping his eye with both hands, the tweezers appearing between his fingers, and as tall as he is, teeters back over the rail. Goldie pushes as hard as she can, but he drops the AK and grabs onto the top rail.
Just as he is about to recover and land back on his feet, Abraham tops the stairway and slams the heavy pipe wrench onto the fingers clasping the railing. He jerks back, releasing the other hand to grab for the Jew man, but Goldie shoves hard again, with both hands.
The big guar
d goes over the rail and falls twelve feet slamming onto metal deck below. Even had he survived the fall, he wouldn’t survive the dozen men who fall on him with punches and kicks.
Abraham stands at the railing above for a moment, looking down, satisfying himself that the guard is no longer a threat. Then he turns to his wife. “Goldie, cover yourself, have you no shame?” but he is smiling broadly.
Yasim’s second in command is an Uzbekistani Muslim, Vlad, whose father had been a Russian bureaucrat. Vlad followed his mother’s faith and soon fled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban before fleeing again to Algeria, where he eventually ended up with Al-Shabaab. He is eager to take command of the remaining four soldiers of the ten who’d attacked the bridge.
He and his men all concur their most important mission is to get the fire doors open. One of his men had been an electrician and with the help of another who both spoke and read English, immediately they recognized the fire panel and it’s Plexie-covered switches as their target. The bad news is the panel is fairly-well peppered with shrapnel. They pry it open and the electrician immediately begins jumping the switches.
They are happy they have accomplished what they know will free soldiers all over the ship.
They wouldn’t be happy to realize they’d also released the crew from Decks Two and Three, and passengers who’d already dispatched guards.
No one could have been more surprised than me when the fire door swings open as I am considering rigging my two grenades in hopes of blowing the door hardware away.
Almost as soon as the fire door swings aside, I see the door twenty feet away on the other side of the laundry room swing aside. I drop to a knee, ready to drop a guard, when two gray-haired passengers with generous waist sizes push their way out. Neither of them is armed and both slide to a stop with hands extended.