by Tom Kratman
“I’ll have a copy made and give it to Pedro for you,” she agreed.
Welch hesitated a moment, then said, “Ralph told me I could trust you. He told me before we left and he wrote it again, just recently. Can I trust you, Aida?”
She shrugged. “Depends on with or about what?”
Welch looked around, then stood up, walked to the theater door, and closed it. Returning to his seat next to Aida, he asked, “Any chance this place is bugged?”
Aida scoffed. “You seriously think the old man, or his wife, would ever set up something that might allow their conversations to be recorded or tapped?”
“Good point,” he agreed. “I need some help. Some of my people have been grabbed . . . kidnapped.”
“Muntinlupa?” she asked. At his confirming nod, she said, “Yes, I saw a report on that.” She paraphrased, “One obvious Kano dead. Bloodstains. Some shooting besides. Maid was probably working for the kidnappers. Probably TCS.”
“How’d you know about the maid?” Welch asked.
“It’s their style.”
“Yes . . . well, I brought in extra people, a half dozen of them, that Madame didn’t know about.”
“Why?”
Welch snorted. “Because I don’t trust her.”
“That’s sensible,” Aida agreed.
“Yeah, but I was too clever by half. They have four of my people. And I need them.”
“Can’t mount a rescue for them,” she cautioned. “The papers would be all over it. And then the Harrikat would know you’re here.”
“Can the police do anything?”
Aida scoffed. again. “Sorry, but TCS’s area has long since become a no go zone. We need to send the army in, but the pols don’t want to admit it’s gotten that bad.
“There is one good thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, unlike the politicians, TCS, when bought, stays bought. They’re a business; some ways just like any other. If you give them the ransom, they’ll give you your people. They always have. Bad advertising if they didn’t, ya know?”
“Will they actually kill my people?” Welch asked.
“Only if you don’t pay.” Aida answered. “Then? No question about it.
“The only real problem might be if one of them got killed. Then they’ve got another advertising issue going on: ‘Don’t resist us.’ ”
“Shit.”
“No,” Aida said, “you can’t just grab some of theirs to trade. It wouldn’t work unless you got the very highest leaders, and they’re all in Tondo, surrounded by hundreds of armed men. Well trained? Maybe not. But there are a lot of them. That’s how their area became no go to the police.”
“Could we grab some of their wives? Kids? Husbands?”
Aida shook her head. “Same problem; they’re all in Tondo.”
Terry stood and paced for a bit, then asked, “What about the gangs around them?”
“Hate each other. Shoot on sight levels of hate, if one is found in the wrong area. The other . . . mmm . . . five or so . . . they hate TCS, too. Maybe even more, because TCS has been so successful. But they’d turn on your people, too, if you tried to go through them, which you would have to. There’s a rough balance of power now. They wouldn’t upset that lightly. And there are a couple of safe areas, exits in and out, where nobody shoots at anybody, by mutual agreement.”
“Okay,” Welch said. “Let me think on that problem for a bit. What’s their method for trading the prisoners for their ransoms?”
“It’s a multi step process,” Aida explained. “You have a way to contact them? Maybe the victims’ cell phones?”
If he wasn’t convinced before, that detail convinced Welch the woman knew what she was talking about. “Yes, I have a way.”
“When you tell them you have the ransom, they’ll give you a time to be at some particular place. That place may or may not be covered by their people. No matter, they’ll send you three, four, maybe five more places and one of those will be covered, to make sure you’re not being tailed, and don’t have a force with you.”
“Day or night?” he asked.
“No set pattern. Odds are . . . day, though. They’re not stupid and know what they don’t have. Day means their eyes are as good as yours. Night means you might have an advantage they can’t match.
“They’ll be at the place where the exchange is to take place well in advance, one or two hours, anyway, well before they tell you where to finally go. You won’t have a chance to set up an ambush or a rescue there.”
“Do they prefer rural exchanges or urban?” Welch asked.
“Generally, urban. They know the police have qualms about a major firefight in a crowded area.”
“We’re not police.”
“Yes,” Aida agreed, “and they know you aren’t. That doesn’t mean they’d discount the possibility you might have police backup. And you’ve got another advantage and a disadvantage TCS doesn’t know about, or at least probably doesn’t know about. If they knew who and what you were, they’d probably have left your people alone in the first place. Since they didn’t leave them alone, they don’t know what you might, just might, be able to do.”
“Yeah,” Welch agreed, “ignorance can be a dangerous thing. And, you know, if they have an advertising and public relations issue with one of their being killed, so do we.
“I don’t suppose you have a way to communicate with the leaders of the other gangs?”
“Could be,” Aida admitted.
“Do you have a list of places where they’ve done exchanges before, and with whom?”
“I can get it.”
“What will we owe you?” Welch asked.
“Nothing. I really don’t like the idea of some self-declared foreigners claiming sovereignty inside my country. I’ll get you the file on TCS, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance
enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
—Dr. Samuel Johnson
MV Richard Bland, Laccadive Sea, southeast of the Maldives
Even from the top of the superstructure, no land was in sight. Neither were there any ships of any size. There were a couple of fishing boats, small things, probably family owned and operated. But those were far away and hard to see.
There might have been satellites overhead, thus the aviation mechanics worked their birds—all of which had seen some pretty hard use at Bajuni—under double tarps, stretched out between the containers that formed walls on a lower, open area. Even without the chance of a satellite overhead, the tarps would still have been doubled. If they hadn’t, the maintenance area would have been an absolute oven. As was, with the breeze from the forward motion of the ship, it really wasn’t bad. The tarps wouldn’t necessarily protect the gunships and CH-750’s from observation, but it would probably take a human being to dial up the requisite filters to spot them, not a mere computer program.
Bland was a much happier ship—much—than it had been not so very long ago. Despite their losses, success had proven a sovereign remedy for most of their ills. Better still, with the women of Adam’s followers aboard, a new line of cooking had been added to the galley’s repertoire. They were grateful to have been saved, even if their current accommodations were a little suboptimal, and had kicked in to help where and when they could.
Besides, though the men were under tight enough discipline that there had been no incidents between Adam’s people’s women and them, it was just pleasant, very pleasant, to have the tall, generally attractive, and gracefully swaying women aboard.
“Okay,” said Captain Pearson, “so you were fucking right. No need to gloat.”
“Not gloating,” insisted Warrington, with a wag of a finger. “Just happy.”
“Bullshit,” the skipper said. “I know a gloat when I see one.”
Warrington shrugged, then held up thumb and for
efinger, spaced closely. “Okay, maybe a leettle bit of gloating. But really, mostly I’m just pleased.”
“We’ve still got problems, you know,” Pearson said, with bad grace.
“Oh, many, many,” Warrington agreed, cheerfully. “My sergeant major is still concussed, puking his guts out at random intervals. We’ve got a hold full of some very unhappy humanitarians. Eventually some dipshit is going to try to get at the Marehan girls. Balbahadur’s pipes still assault the air, with frightful regularity. And I have it from Welch that there are a couple of problems—and not small ones—on the other end. And then there’s the question of Labaan, Adam, and the other men from Bajuni. They’re all guilty of piracy and slave taking.
“Lots of problems, as you said.”
“Yeah, and what are you going to do about them?”
“Easy. In the case of the Marehan I’m going to take the Foreign Legion approach: Who fucking cares what they did before? Kiertzner’s being relieved of duty as first sergeant of C company and taking over as detachment sergeant major. I’ve got a double armed guard on the Marehans’ section of the ship, on our side, and a quadruple guard on their side, of their own men. Welch’s problems are not ours until we get there . . . three days?”
“About that,” Pearson agreed.
“I confess, I don’t have a solution to the problem of bagpipes in the middle of the night. And I’m not quite sure what to do about the tranzis, though I am leaning toward Stocker’s suggestion of having them walk the plank. Well, except for some of the genuine medicos. Those, we can use.”
“What the hell do they want, anyway?” the captain asked.
“Nothing unreasonable, really. They want to be let off at the nearest port.”
Shaking his head violently, Pearson said, “We can’t do that.”
“Nope. Any idea what the law of the sea says?”
Laughing, Pearson said, “It says ‘fuck ’em.’ I’m not a lawyer, mind you, but as far as I can tell, none of these people fall precisely under any of the pertinent conventions and neither, exactly, do we.”
“Wonderful thing,” Warrington said, “the law. I wonder—”
The interrupting knock on the hatch stopped whatever Warrington had been about to say. Pearson demanded, “What is it?”
“Sir,” said the rating at the hatch, “it’s the civilians, down below. They’re all up in arms.”
“Oh,” said Pearson, “the tranzis are revolting, are they?”
Warrington and Pearson trudged down the ladders to the mess level, then entered the mess deck. Lunch was due, in about an hour, its aroma permeating the air. The smell was unfamiliar, so it was probably the women from Bajuni taking their willing turn at mess duty.
Kiertzner sat by the port side of the mess deck, watching some instruction going on. Warrington didn’t know what the subject was, and didn’t think he had the time to find out. He did a double take, though, at the instructor. It was Sergeant Feeney, who seemed, at second look, to be very kindly and gently leading a platoon from C Company through assembly and disassembly of some of the off the wall weapons 2nd Battalion used.
“Wait a sec, Skipper,” Warrington requested of Pearson, before walking over to take a seat beside Kiertzner. “Ummm . . . Top . . . what’s with Feeney?”
“You mean his suddenly taking a professional interest in the development of the Guyanans, sir?” Kiertzner asked.
“Well . . . umm . . . that, and that he’s not trying to kill one of them. Or more than one.”
“It’s really very simple, sir,” Kiertzner began to explain, in a received pronunciation accent that just about all the Americans found highly amusing. “Feeney is a borderline sociopath, a ‘useful sociopath,’ we sometimes say. But a useful sociopath isn’t a sociopath at all. He’s perfectly capable of relating to other human beings as morally important creatures in their own right. He simply defines ‘human being’ differently than do most. Indeed, at some level, the ‘useful sociopath’ is perhaps the sanest among us. He doesn’t feel he should hate someone for looking a little different, and therefore, quite logically, sir, feels no need to love someone for looking a little bit the same.
“In any case, once the humanitarians showed up, they provided a sufficient ‘other’ for Feeney to elevate—and I’m sure he hasn’t a clue that that’s what’s going on in his head—well . . . to elevate the Guyanans to provisional human beings, in his particular universe. Thus, as full human beings, albeit provisional, they’re entitled to all the consideration, kindness, and care that he would normally give to any other full human beings, few as those may be.
“Do you see, sir?”
Warrington shook his head. “I’m honestly not sure, Top.”
“Well . . . then just trust me, sir.”
“Oh, I do. Still, it’s odd. Tell you what, though, I think I’m going to need Feeney in about half an hour to impress some people with their position in life.”
“The tranzis, sir?”
“Precisely.”
Kiertzner smiled broadly and wickedly. “I’ll make sure he’s available, sir.”
Oh, goody, thought Warrington, at least they’re not chanting, “Give Peace a Chance.”
What the humanitarians were doing, however, was throwing things—rations, furniture, garbage, the buckets they’d been given until the crane crew could dig down to the extra porta-potties—at the guards. And, though they’d been assigned six containers to sleep in, all had crowded into just one.
And then, of course, they sat down in that one, started rocking side to side, clapping, and singing, “All we are sayyyiiinnnggg . . .”
Warrington and Pearson stopped, the rating behind them and centered. Pearson crossed his arms while Warrington put hands on hips. Both smiled, evilly.
Evil smiles or not, the singing went on, “. . . is give peace a chance . . .”
Turning to the Captain, Warrington observed, “They seem ungrateful for their rescue.”
“Dreadfully so,” the Bland’s master agreed. “However, they’re your charges. You rescued them. You figure out what to do about them.”
Turning his head over one shoulder, Warrington told the rating, “Please get me the acting sergeant major and Sergeant Feeney.”
The rating shot a quizzical glance at his captain, who gave a couple of curt nods. Do as the man says.
The aid workers shut up when Warrington and the skipper walked right up to the opening, with the former banging on the corrugated metal sides of the thing for attention.
“What do you want?” As if I didn’t know already. I really hope they don’t force me to make an object lesson of somebody. Yeah, morally I think they’re crawling shits, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t technically useful. And they’re more useful if I can trust at least some of them with the run of at least some of the ship.
“We want to be released,” said several of them, in unison. The other joined in, in a cacophony. “Wewewewawanttooobebererelealeasedeasedeased.”
“You don’t care for our hospitality?” Warrington asked.
“We want to go home! We don’t want to have anything to do with your fucking evil corporation. You can’t keep us here while you go make war on somebody, probably innocent Third World victims of corporate America.”
“I see.” He held up one finger and said, “Hold on a second.”
At that time Acting Sergeant Major Kiertzner and Sergeant Feeney showed up. The aid workers all knew about Sergeant Feeney, the man who had pushed poor Doctor Saffron off the rubber boat, probably to drown. But seeing him in the dark, seated low, and seeing him in the light, standing, were two remarkably different things.
At about five foot ten, Feeney wasn’t really that tall. Indeed, many of the aid workers had height on him. Where no two of them could match him, however, was in the shoulders, which seemed to be nearly as broad as he was tall. The sergeant had his sleeves rolled up. His arms would have done nicely for an illustration on the cover of a Conan the Barbarian novel. All of this wa
s made worse, more intimidating anyway, by the sergeant’s having about a twenty-nine inch waist. But the really horrifying thing was the face, and that wasn’t even scarred. What it was, however, was the very platonic essence of mean looking.
The complaints dropped to a low rumble, and that with an undertone of terror, as soon as the tranzis got a good look, in the light, at Feeney.
“You wanted us, sir?” Kiertzner asked, conversationally, if artificially loudly.
Warrington matched volume. “Uh, yes, Sergeant Major.” Officially, of course, Kiertzner was not, or not yet. But he had the job; he could have the title, too.
“What I would like is for you to supervise Sergeant Feeney in taking these people who don’t appreciate our hospitality topside and having them walk the plank.”
“Well, sir,” Kiertzner said, “I’m not a sailor, really. Neither is Sergeant Feeney. We barely know our way from one end of a ship to the other. It would be a big help if the naval crew could set up the plank for us.”
“Good point,” Warrington agreed. “Uh, Skipper?”
Pearson had a hard time of it keeping a straight face. Raising his own voice helped a bit. “Yes, Major?”
“We do have a plank somewhere aboard ship, don’t we?”
“We may have to look a bit,” Pearson replied. “Why . . . it’s been six months,”—he thought about that for a moment, as if puzzled—“yes, at least six, since we had anyone walk the plank. You wouldn’t mind if I assemble the crew on deck to witness punishment, would you? You know how the men like a good show. They’ll be happy to set it up for you.”
“Your ship, sir. Your rules. And thank you, sir.”
Warrington turned his attention back to his unwilling passengers and asked, “Are there any Olympic class swimmers here? Someone who could help the rest swim the roughly seventy-five miles to shore?” Seeing there were not, and seeing the suddenly blanched faces, he added, “Pity. Some of you might have made it that way. Oh, well, you insist on being released right away. It’s a free world . . . sort of. So we’ll make this one little accommodation.