The Scoop

by Terence J. Quinn

  The towering wave broke and we were deluged, the Hobies swamped, shattered, the lads flung like rag dolls under its murderous assault. Eventually, I surfaced, gasping, choking. Bobbing up and down in the aftermath swell, I saw that the rest of the boys had made it to the beach. The Hobies were lying broken, poking up in the sand like driftwood. Then a second wave broke over my head and I was dragged down.

  The last thing I saw before I went under was Cody. He was standing at the water’s edge looking at me, one hand on his hip, the other shielding his eyes from the sun. Then he turned around and walked away.

  15

  THE KIWIS were spot-on, Annie decided. Nine Island was perfect. After the heavy squall they had endured earlier, she felt almost heady with relief as they approached the small, uninhabited island. It was jammed between two headlands in a massive cleft in the north-east Sumatran coastline. The quiet, sheltered west side of the island faced away from the throbbing traffic of the Malacca Strait and fronted the wide, sweeping bay and the mainland. Two narrow channels, one north and one south of the island, allowed access to a massive bay called Teluk Aru. Standing at the bow of the Lady Vesper with binoculars, Annie could see a number of other, smaller islands in the bay area and an oil terminal on the southern headland.

  Gary navigated the Lady Vesper around the island’s coastline searching for a suitable anchorage. They found it on the northwest corner. A nice beach fringed by tall Sumatran pine trees, with clear green water lapping the white sand. They dropped anchor about forty metres out and the two women swam to the shore to explore while the men put the boat to rights.

  Later, sitting in the saloon over a quartet of gin and tonics, the collective relief was palpable. ‘Oh my God, I don’t ever want to go through that again,’ Dani said in a small voice. ‘I thought I was going to, like, die. You told me it was going to be a nice, easy passage,’ she said to Gary.

  He shrugged. ‘Shit, darlin’, that was nothing. A few more hours from here and we’ll be out of the main strait. It should be plain sailing from then on.’

  They all clinked glasses. ‘Here’s to plain sailing,’ said Martin, chugging down his drink.

  None of them had any energy. They sat in air-conditioned comfort for a few more hours, talking and drinking. Dani put on a Bruno Mars CD that helped lighten the atmosphere. Apart from some nibbles, they hadn’t eaten and Annie started to feel a little tipsy as Martin kept filling everyone’s glasses from a seemingly bottomless bottle. Even Gary started to seem a little drunk.

  The conversation grew increasingly raunchy. It started with a competitive discussion between the two men about whether American or British film stars were the sexiest; it then got side-tracked into a general, rather drunken debate about whether supermarkets selling sex toys meant the end of civilisation. Annie was unsettled by the sight of Martin and Dani almost draped over each other on the leather-covered bench seat.

  Suddenly and rather unsteadily, Dani stood up and pulled Martin’s arm. ‘Come ’n’ dance with me. I feel like partyin’,’ she slurred. They wrapped their arms around each other and started moving clumsily around the tight deck space. After a moment, Gary looked over at Annie and said, in a fake upper-crust British accent, ‘Please may I have the pleasure of this dance, madam?’

  Although a bit reluctant, Annie replied: ‘Thank you kind sir.’ And they began to dance slowly, awkwardly, she trying to keep a little distance between them while he tried to press his muscular body against hers. Shortly after, Martin, by now completely shitfaced, suggested they play cards. ‘Poker,’ he declared. ‘Strip poker!’

  Annie decided it was time for her to go to bed.

  The next day dawned warm and bright, a slight breeze ruffling the stern ensign. The sea looked inviting. Annie was up and about early. She felt fine but the other three looked queasy and a little sheepish. None of them would meet her eye. I do not want to know what happened after I went to bed, she thought.

  It was Dani who suggested having Buck’s Fizz to complement the large breakfast Annie had prepared. ‘We need the hair of the dog,’ she declared. As Annie started to protest that it was not such a good idea, Martin interrupted with enthusiasm, ‘Good thinking! That’ll perk us up nicely.’

  Martin carried on drinking throughout the morning while Dani prepared lunch and Gary and Annie went snorkelling. For a change, they had a picnic on the foredeck. Dani had laid a large tablecloth down on the open, lounging platform and they lay on their sides like Roman senators, eating, drinking and chatting.

  ‘Now this is the life,’ Martin said, slurring slightly. ‘We survived the worst. It’s going to get better from here on in. A lot better.’

  Dani raised her glass and said ‘Hear, hear’. She was topless and she spilled some Prosecco over her naked breasts.

  ‘Oooh, I’m all wet!’ She laughed suggestively.

  ‘Said the actress to the bishop.’ Martin guffawed at his own joke.

  The conversation then deteriorated as it had the previous evening. This time Annie felt revolted. She got to her feet and took charge of the clearing up. When she returned to the foredeck, the others were sunbathing on mats and Martin was massaging oil on Dani’s already tanned back. When the younger woman turned over, Annie could see from her small, gleaming breasts that Martin had already taken good care of her front side.

  The bastard! So when Gary offered her another glass of bubbles, against her better judgement, she accepted. Then he challenged her to take her bikini top off. ‘Hey, it’s hot and we’re all friends here.’

  Martin weighed in: ‘Yeah, don’t be a spoilsport, love. Get yer tits out for the lads,’ he said in a coarse cockney accent.

  Annie considered for a moment. She wasn’t a prude by any means. She’d never had any problems sunbathing topless in southern Europe. Plus a nasty little voice in her head said: ‘And you’ve got a better body than she has!’

  So she took her top off to the cheers of the others and lay back on the mat with a deep sigh. She declined Gary’s offer to rub sun cream on her and soon she drifted off, sluggish from the warm sunlight, the wine and the gentle rhythm of the boat.

  Annie woke up to a nightmare. She felt disoriented, mouth dry, head throbbing. Too much fizzy wine at lunchtime. Where am I? Oh, the boat. I was sunbathing on the foredeck. Must have dozed off. The sun, high in the sky, was strong; harsh white light stabbed her eyelids. She couldn’t fully open them. Something was tapping her cheek. Cold and wet and hard. What the hell? She managed to half open one eye and squinted against the sun. A dark figure was swaying above her. Then, out of the corner of one eye, she flashed on a shocking, surreal image: Dani leaning over Martin and giving him a blow job. Annie shook her head. I must still be dreaming, she thought. She propped herself on one elbow and immediately saw what had been patting her cheek. A cold bottle of beer, the outside bubbled with condensation. Thick fingers were wrapped around the neck. And the fingers were attached to a half-naked, leering Gary who loomed darkly over her, blocking out the sun, tongue protruding from wet lips, his eyes dancing.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ she said angrily and swatted the bottle away before sitting up, her arm still shielding her face from the sun. She looked across at Martin again. He was lying on a sun mat, eyes tightly closed, as Dani knelt on a towel beside him.

  Gary laughed obscenely. He was obviously drunk. ‘He looks like he’s died and gone to heaven, doesn’t he? And now, lady, it’s my turn. Fair’s fair. Martin said you would be okay with it.’

  Annie stood up with some difficulty. She felt dizzy, nauseous. Her headache was hammering her skull. She realised she was still topless. Gathering what dignity she could muster, she covered her naked breasts with a towel. ‘This is totally screwed up!’ she said and then stormed down the steps to the lower deck. She steamed through the saloon and locked herself in the main cabin’s bathroom. She sat on the closed toilet seat, head in her hands, elbows on her thighs. How could I be so bloody stupid, she thought. I should have seen this com
ing a mile off!

  Moments later, she was stunned to hear what sounded like gunfire, then loud grunts and shouts and the thud-thud of people running on the deck above her. There were more shots and then, finally, a long horrible scream.

  16

  I WOKE up with a headache and Wagga sitting on my face. His scratchy tongue was rasping my cheek. You’re still alive, then, I told myself . . . a bloody miracle after that incredible shitstorm. The air was hot and thick. I was bollock naked, my sweaty skin stuck to a leather cushion. It made a farting noise as I sat up, startling Wagga. He jumped off and looked at me reproachfully. I looked down at my body; I felt curiously detached from it, as if I was looking down on myself from a great height. I was still intact, a few cuts and bruises but nothing serious. I felt dehydrated, my tongue thick in my mouth along with the throbbing in my head; I needed to drink something.

  It was light. All seemed calm. It was the lull after the storm. The boat was no longer pitching and tossing like a drunken sailor. The cyclonic jet roar of wind and water the previous day had died to a gentle slip-slap of water against The Scoop’s hull. It felt comforting.

  I checked the time: 7.37 am. I must have slept for ten hours or so. Yawning, I bent over to switch on the kettle. In the absence of some coke (yes, the craving was still there) I was dying for a cup of java; it was funny to think Java itself was just down the road a bit. Nothing happened. Then I remembered the power had gone. Fuck. Shit. I got a can of Coke instead (not the real thing, I thought wryly). It was warm; the fridge was also caput. When I stepped up into the saloon, I felt like a man emerging, blinking through a prison door to freedom. I was stunned to see land in the far distance through the big tinted windows, despite them being splattered by dried droplets and bits of debris. The sea was a glacial green with just a soft swell.

  Still naked, I tiptoed across the debris-strewn floor that still carried traces of water. I thrust open the glazed door and stepped out into the open. I grabbed a pair of binoculars from one of the storage lockers and trained them over the starboard bow toward the shoreline. About five kilometres away, I reckoned. Looked like an island. Patches of white sand, greenery, a small mountain (more of a large hillock really) poking above tall trees.

  Looks promising, I thought. Just then, I detected a tickling around my bare ankles and a squeaking noise; it was Wagga come to tell me he was hungry. I felt a rush of pleasure that the wee fella had also survived. I picked him up and held the little ball of warm fur to my cheek as he started purring. ‘Okay, mate, let’s go and get some brekkie.’

  Some dried kibble and water for the cat, bread, tinned sardines and OJ for myself. I was unusually hungry. In recent days I hadn’t eaten much, due to a mix of nausea and apathy. The bread was a bit stale but I opened another can of sardines, gave Wagga a taste and wolfed down the rest.

  My headache had subsided and I actually felt a sense of mild euphoria that I had survived my violent date with the storm (I found out later that it was the tail end of Cyclone Patricia). The whole horrible thing was a bit of a blur. I mainly remembered hugging that helm for dear life, my hands seemingly superglued together. When I was about six or seven years old, my father had taken me on a ghost train at a visiting carnival. The whole terrifying experience had remained vivid in my memory: the inky dark, the rollercoaster ride, spidery things brushing against my skin, spooky moans and groans, the screams of the terrified kids and unknown terrors lurking in the gloom. Yesterday was like déjà vu all over again, albeit with a different soundtrack. I sighed. Thank God it was over. I didn’t want to go through anything like that again.

  Wagga sat at my feet, eyes shut, contentedly licking his paws. I scratched one of his stripy ears and he looked up at me adoringly. At least I’ve got one friend, I thought. I began to tick off the priorities in my head: first, put some clothes on; second, see if you can sort the power; third, clean up the boat; fourth, try to find out where the hell we are. Oh, and fifth, check out the island, if that’s what it is.

  I accessed the engine room through a hatch in the saloon floor. In the torchlight, it looked startlingly clean, apart from the thin layer of water on the floor. Everything was tightly fitted into a relatively small space: the diesel engine, generator, batteries, fuel and water tanks, bilge pumps and an array of filters, valves and hosepipes. Plus a rather complicated-looking touchpad control panel.

  I scratched my head. Frankly, I didn’t know where the hell to start. Apart from the lingering mix of rain and seawater on the floor, there was nothing obviously wrong. I had always been hopeless at DIY and happily described myself as ‘technologically dyslexic’. My approach to any technical or mechanical problem was to hit the broken device with a hammer or another blunt instrument and hope for the best. So, I thought, let’s just wait until everything dries out, and maybe the electrics and computer systems will fire up again. I went back upstairs. It was time to get The Scoop looking shipshape again.

  The deck wash pump was also buggered so I had to fill buckets of salt water from the bow pulpit and sluice them over the foredeck and cockpit areas. I actually quite enjoyed the hard labour. Afterwards I upturned a couple of buckets over my battered body. Then I sorted all the loose items remaining on deck and the bits of flotsam and jetsam below, some of it salvageable. I figured that later I would make an inventory of everything that had been lost during the storm but for now I was eager to get an idea of where we had washed up.

  First, I had another long look at the land ahead. The brilliant, sun-sharpened tropical palette of colours came into focus: vibrant greens and blues and whites crystallising into clear objects, such as vegetation, sea, sky and clouds.

  Feeling more human than I had in days, I had another tepid soft drink before digging out some charts and laying them on the teak cockpit table. A pleasant breeze ruffled the edges of the charts. Leaning over, my finger traced the route I’d taken from Jakarta up and then through the Sunda Strait and westward into the great ocean. I tried to remember how many hours we’d sailed before the edge of the cyclone hit and changed our direction. There was no land immediately west or north of that position. I knew we had been nudged (more like ramrodded) onto a north-east track. My finger slid in that direction. It arrived at an archipelago off the west coast of Sumatra called the Mentawai Islands. This must be it, I reckoned.

  I had heard that the Mentawai archipelago was a popular surfing destination but so far I had seen no sign of life, not even one of the ubiquitous fishing smacks. But, come to think of it, the surf season was probably over. Only the die-hards or the death-wishers stayed on to brave the north-east monsoon. The other possibility was that the storm had pushed me even further north; certainly, the surge and the wind had been strong enough. There was another archipelago hundreds of kilometres further up the north-west Sumatran coast, centred on Nias Island. Lots of smaller islands abounded too, including the Batu chain and the Hinako Islands. Indonesia had thousands of bloody islands and half of them weren’t even named and even fewer still were inhabited.

  I looked at Wagga, who was now sitting squarely on the chart. ‘Well mate, where the bloody hell are we?’

  17

  BANGBANG STOOD in the main cockpit of the Lady Vesper, smoking a foul cigarette and mulling over the assault. He spat overboard. Neither of the two white dogs had put up much of a fight. Nor had their whores. There wasn’t a huge amount of valuables on board – a bit of cash, a couple of laptops, a few decent baubles, including a large diamond ring. And, of course, they had stripped the boat of electronics and other sellable items. But the real prize was the white pussy. BangBang smiled. The women were not to his taste – too old, too big – but the men were happy with their new playthings. That was all that mattered.

  Earlier, he could not believe his luck when Mamat had handed him the binoculars and he had seen the catamaran about a kilometre ahead, the two women lying half-naked on the deck. Grabbing them had been a breeze. He knew that if he let the crew have their way, they would start on the women rig
ht there and now. But that would be too dangerous. They were in an exposed position. Vessels were passing on either side of the island on their way to and from the bay. No, better to go to our island hideaway, he decided. There the men can have a couple of days R&R. Rape and relaxation, he thought with a smile. He would enjoy listening to their pleasure while he made plans for the next job.

  When they pulled it off successfully – and he would personally make fucking sure they did – he hoped his bosses would hold back from having him maimed or killed for the previous fuck-up. They might even reward me with a much bigger project, he mused, one that will use my particular talents to the full. It would also add a healthy chunk to my stash. BangBang knew that money, and lots of it, was the key to seizing control of his future career. That lay back in Jakarta, he had already decided. A shrewd, ruthless operator like me with enough money and the right connections can carve out a major slice of the drugs and prostitution industries. All it takes is balls plus the capacity to maim or kill anyone who gets in my way. No problem with that! He grinned with pleasure.

  Lighting another Gudang Garam, his thoughts returned to the present: so, what shall I do with the women afterwards? Sell them? Perhaps the younger one. The older is pretty for an ang mo, a westerner, but too old for the sex trade. No, better just to get rid of them, too much fucking trouble if one of the patrols finds them on board. I wouldn’t be able to bribe my way out of that one, he thought wryly. Fuck it, it will be easier to kill the round-eyed sluts once the men have finished with them.

  He flipped his cigarette overboard and told a couple of crew members to take the Lady Vesper further out and scuttle it before any other curious vessels turned up. With any luck the authorities would just assume the stupid tourists had sunk in a storm.