by Jay Giles
“He says he’ll have the Venetian ready to go in three days. For a boat her size, he recommends a crew of three and has some names for you. Oliver Mercanter is an experienced captain who could do this trip. For crew, he’s thinking Su Li, who’s also a cook, and Hector Gomes, who’s the mechanic he wants onboard with you. He’s offered to call and get them lined-up.”
I liked the sound of a cook. Needed the mechanic. Took comfort in Mercanter being experienced. “I trust his judgment,” I told Wullenwebber. I reached out, shook Pena’s hand gratefully.
Three days later, I met them.
Captain Oliver—call me Ollie—Mercanter was the first to arrive at the boatyard. Ollie was the Pillsbury doughboy come to life. He had a big round head on a big round body with no visible neck, tree trunk thighs that tapered down to tiny feet and beefy arms tapering to delicate hands. He had snow white hair that was stubble length on his head and face. His eyes were a light blue, his cheeks pink. He wore a gray t-shirt stretched taunt around his belly, dark blue sweatshorts, and flip-flops. A dark green duffel bag had been slung over his massive shoulder. “Good to meet ‘cha,” he said with a smile as he nimbly stepped on board the Venetian.
Later, I learned Ollie’s background. Seems he’d been an up-and-comer captaining oil tankers until he developed a drinking problem and damaged the Global Voyager bringing her in to dock. Fired, Ollie swore-off the hooch and signed-on with a container shipper flying the Greek colors. For ten years, he captained the Olympian without falling off the wagon or running the ship into anything. Instead of booze, his drink of choice was Pepsi. All that sugar over all those years gave him Diabetes, bad knees, sleep apnea, and cholesterol numbers that would make a doctor’s face blanch. He kept his precise weight closely guarded but admitted he was close to 425-pounds. His Greek employer cut him loose after he fell in the ship’s mess and couldn’t stand back up without assistance.
Hector Gomes arrived next. He was the antithesis of Mercanter—just skin covering bones. He had a sunken chest, sunken cheeks, deep-set black eyes. His thinning black hair stuck out in odd tufts. He wore a wife beater and jean cut-offs. He, too, had a duffle over his shoulder, but his was a third the size of Mercanter’s.
“Pleasure, governor,” he said extending his hand. It was the true hand of a mechanic. Every nail edged in black. We shook. “I can find my way,” he said with a nod and headed below.
Su Li arrived last.
Chapter 11
She was Chinese, probably in her late 20s, tall and thin. I caught a glimpse of a face with high cheekbones, dark eyes, a long thin nose and full lips. I say a glimpse because her long dark hair hung down hiding the left side of her face. Over a white tee-shirt, she wore a blue man’s dress shirt tied at the waist, cargo shorts, and sandals. Behind her, she towed a small black suitcase on wheels. Tucked under her arm, she had a flat wooden box.
I extended a hand to help her on board, “Will Taggert, welcome.”
As she grasped my hand that cascade of hair hiding the left side of her face swung away revealing a red, puckered scar that started at her hairline, ran straight down the left side of her forehead, took a divot out of her finely sculpted eyebrow, and resumed traveling down that high cheekbone. Her hair swung back and hid it but not before I’d gawked and not before I saw a flash of anger in those dark eyes. I had no idea what caused that scar but she was obviously self-conscious about it.
Awkward doesn’t begin to describe the moment.
“Su Li,” she said curtly. “I’ll stow my things and go get provisions.”
“Take one of the staterooms,” I suggested as she stepped aboard. “Crew space is pretty tight.”
“If there’s a cabin close to the kitchen, I’ll use that,” she said over her shoulder.
As I watched her disappear through the salon’s French doors, I had a bad feeling about her. Nothing I could put my finger on. Just a sense she was going to be trouble.
She emerged from the salon a few minutes later, “Pena said you’d give me money for provisions.”
I extracted a sheaf of Reais from my wallet and handed it to her.
She fanned the bills to see what she had and tucked them in her shoulder bag. “I’ll be back in about an hour-and-a-half and we can get underway.”
I took the opportunity to call Sloane. “Captain and crew have checked in. We’re going to take on some provisions and get underway.”
“You feel good about your crew? They can handle this boat?”
“The captain, Ollie Mercanter, used to skipper freighters. He says the Venetian will be like driving a Ferrari after a lifetime of tractor trailer trucks.”
“And what about the engines? Did you ever find out what’s wrong with them?”
“Gomes, the mechanic, said no one ever bothered to do scheduled maintenance.”
“Unbelievable,” Sloane said. “A boat worth millions and no one checks the oil.”
“According to Gomes, that’s left the engine in pretty rough shape. Don’t count on us setting any speed records.”
“Just get it here. I think I have a buyer lined-up.”
“Wow, that was quick.”
“Well, I was telling a friend at the club about this boat and he invited another member over to table. Seems this fellow is in the market for a new yacht. I floated a pretty hefty price by him, and he didn’t flinch. After you dock at Ft. Lauderdale, he wants me to drive down with him for a look.”
Whoever said The rich are different than you and I had it so right. “I’ll keep you apprised of our progress,” I assured him before I rang off.
A little over an hour later with Su back on board, Ollie started the engines, Nestor cast off the lines, and we were underway. We made a graceful exit from the Pena Boatworks, but almost immediately, the starboard engine overheated. I looked at my watch. We’d been at sea twenty-five minutes.
Cursing a blue streak, Nestor headed for the engine room. I followed him, hoping Sloane’s buyer was a young guy. At this pace, if he was of an advanced age, he might be dead before we got the boat to Ft. Lauderdale. I watched Nestor work on the engine until he got it running again. As we made our way back above decks, I asked, “What was the problem?”
“Sludge,” he said disgustedly. “Fraid it’s going to keep happening till we get it all out.” Under his breath he added, “If we ever do.”
Now that we were above decks, my nose detected the aroma of food cooking. We made our way to the galley and found Su cooking stir-fry.
“Kung Pao Chicken,” she said as she added red chili peppers, garlic, and green onions to the wok, “but my recipe is healthier because the chicken isn’t deep-fried.”
Ollie must have smelled it, too, because he appeared in the galley with a smile on his face.
Su eyed us all standing there, doing nothing but salivating. “You,” she said to Ollie, “take plates and silverware to the table on the fantail. We’ll eat there.” To me she nodded at the wine fridge. “Open a bottle of the EQ Syrah. It’s Chilean wine. Good. Cheap, too.” To Nestor: “You. Go wash-up more.”
I took a bottle out, of the wine fridge, noticed there were nine more. If she bought all this and food, too, with the money I’d given her, she was quite the shopper.
Over dinner, we got to know each other. Ollie revealed that he was Canadian, divorced, and had spent 18 years at sea, mostly working freighters between the U.S. Africa, and South America. Twice, he’d taken boats around the horn of Africa. “Of course, there were no Somali pirates in those days, but it was a real adventure, nonetheless.”
Nestor turned out to be the most interesting. He shared that he had a background in English theater and, for three years, had a small part in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. “But it’s my singing voice I thought would make my fortune,” he said ruefully. With a little prompting, he launched into an old Gaelic tune, Castle Dromore.
October winds lament
Around the castle of Dromore
Yet peace is in her lofty halls,
>
My loving treasure store
Though autumn leaves may droop and die,
A bud of spring are you.
Sing hushabye loo, low loo, low lan
Hushaye loo, low loo
Dread spirits all of black water,
Clan Owen’s wild banshee
Bring no ill wind to him nor us,
My helpless babe and me
When he finished, the table broke out in applause. Even Simon Cowell would have loved him.
When it was my turn, I shared that I was an attorney and handled a lot of bank workouts, like this one, which was the reason we were taking the Venetian to Florida. Their expressions said boring, so I also shared I’d been a competitive sand volleyball player, played in three select leagues, and been rated high enough that I could have gone on the AVP Beach Volleyball Tour. Impressive, I thought. Or…maybe not.
The table went quiet.
Finally, Nestor said, “So, lawyer. Volleyball player. Married?”
“Divorced.”
“Why? What happened?” Ollie asked around a bite of stir-fry. “Or is that too personal?”
It was. I still had a hard time believing it myself. Tiffany and I had seemed perfect for each other. We met playing volleyball and got to know each other over after-game beer and wings. It quickly turned into a romance and, seven months after we met, I popped the question. She surprised me by not wanting a long engagement. A justice of the peace married us three weeks later.
Tiffany had her own business doing estate appraisals—primarily furniture, jewelry, clothing, and collectables—and was a freelance buyer for a number of dealers in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. Most weekends during our two-year marriage, we attended estate sales where she’d buy items for her dealers and, quite often, for herself. Tagging along, I learned a lot about the worth of a Chippendale chair, an antique diamond broach, or a like-new Jetson’s lunch box.
When my dad’s Alzheimer’s worsened and he couldn’t stay in his house any longer, I wanted him to come live with Tiff and me, which shouldn’t have been a problem. We’d bought a huge five-bedroom house because Tiffany wanted the space for the furniture pieces she’d collected and couldn’t possibly part with. My plan was to turn two of those spare bedrooms into a sitting room/bedroom combination for him.
The idea went over badly.
Tiff never said it directly but she didn’t want my dad in the house. I don’t know whether she was afraid of him or afraid he might damage some of her things, but the more I pushed to have him move in, the more she dug-in her heels.
The stalemate ended when she told me I should go live at my dad’s place. She was filing for divorce.
I did. She did. That was the end of our marriage.
Dad continued to deteriorate. Five months after the divorce, I put him in the first of his care facilities. To pay for his care, I put his house on the market and moved into a teeny tiny condo. I also began doing corporate law—it was more lucrative than family and immigration law I had been practicing. I needed the money.
I glanced round the table. They were all looking at me waiting for an answer. I gave them a sad smile. “What can I say, she needed space.”
I did another glance around the table. They all looked properly taken aback.
Su went next but revealed nothing. Any attempts to learn about her background were fielded with one-word, one-syllable answers. Her silence and that scar worried me.
More troubling, for a professional chef, her Kung Pao stir-fry was only so-so.
Chapter 12
The next two days were fits and starts. It was the engines. I spent much of my time watching Nestor work on them, asking him a zillion questions about what he was doing and why. I learned, besides the gunk from not changing the oil, the port engine had fuel line and gasket issues, while the starboard engine had a problematic fuel pump. Nestor talked to the two engines as if they were people, his words alternately cajoling and threatening. Whatever he was doing was working. We never got up much speed either day, but we only had one stretch of time where we were dead in the water while he worked on both engines.
I also spent time on the bridge with Ollie and had him explain the boat’s controls. Under his tutelage, I took the wheel and skippered until we were both comfortable I could handle the Venetian.
Periodically, I talked with Sloane, letting him know our progress. He didn’t seem too frustrated by our leisurely voyage north. I knew his mood could go mercurial in a heartbeat so I was thankful for this stretch of reasonableness.
I also checked in with LeeAnn at the law office and made sure she wasn’t taking in stray lawyers in my absence.
“Things have been ungodly slow since you up and flew off,” she drawled. “I keep waitin’ for my postcard from Ipanema beach. You did send me one, didn’t you, sugar?”
“In the mail,” I assured her. “If it doesn’t arrive, it’s because it’s a picture of Ipanema hotties in string bikinis and you know what a letch our postman is.”
“Will, you are such a prevaricator.”
Ollie, face ashen, interrupted me. “Will, I need you on the bridge. I’m seeing something I don’t like on the radar.”
Got my attention. “Gotta go, LeeAnn.”
On the bridge, we gathered around the radar. The black screen area was divided by thin white lines into quadrants with white-lined circles and distance markings emanating off the center point. Weather showed as different colored pixel squares, boat traffic appeared as green blips. “See that,” he said nervously, his gaze intent on the display.
“See what?” It was all spots to me.
“That,” he said, pointing to a dot on the screen. “That’s us.” His finger moved. “See that blip?”
“Yes.”
“And that?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been watching them. Those are ships and they’ve stayed parallel to us for the last two hours.”
That was strange. The Venetian was like a car with a bad fuel pump. She’d lurch forward, run smoothly for a short period of time, sputter, stall, get going again. I couldn’t imagine another boat, much less two, matching our herky-jerky forward progress.
“As long as they’re not getting any closer,” I said, “I don’t see the problem.”
“There’s the problem.” He pointed at a blip directly ahead of our boat’s blip and dropped the other shoe. “I think the boats on either side are herding us to it.”
I stared nervously at the blips on the screen trying to divine intent. Our boat and our two shadows kept moving forward; the boat ahead of us appeared stationary. Ollie’s guess that we were sailing into a trap made sense. I felt that first shiver of fear. “How long till we get there?”
Ollie rubbed his chin. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”
That gave us no time at all. “Stop the engines. Now.”
Ollie’s brow furrowed. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“We need to buy time.”
Ollie pushed the engine lever to off.
A thought ran through my head as I stared at the blips. “Have you tried contacting any of these boats?”
“The ship to shore—”
Nestor charged onto the bridge. “Why’d you shut down? What’s going on?” He demanded before he bent over, put his hands on his knees, and gulped for air. He’d made the climb from the engine room faster than I would have thought humanly possible.
Ollie ignored him. “I started to tell you, the ship-to-shore is being jammed.”
That was all I needed to hear. “Go get Su,” I told Nestor. “Fast.”
His eyes rolled back in his head, but he shot off, and quickly returned towing an angry Su by her forearm.
She had her hair pulled back, a bunch of carrots in one hand, a peeler in the other. “What?”
“We’ve got ships stalking us. The radio’s jammed. We need to use our cell phones. Try and get through to—”
“My god,” Ollie muttered.
My gaze followed h
is to the radar display. The ships on either side were closing in.
Chapter 13
I wished I had a phone number for Diaz, I didn’t. In desperation, I used the sat phone to call the only number I had—Wullenwebber’s. In answer to my prayers, he picked-up.
“Hey, Mr. T., good to hear from you. What—”
“Chris, we’ve got pirates after us. I need you to send help.” I got coordinates from Ollie, repeated them for Wullenwebber. “Hurry.”
Next to me Su was on her phone. Since she was speaking in Portuguese I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but I heard urgency in her voice.
Our escorts weren’t blips on the radar anymore. Through the side windows of the bridge, I saw two powerful-looking sport cruisers. They began circling the motionless Venetian like sharks. Men with semi-automatic weapons stood on the stern of each boat.
“Holy crap,” Nestor said under his breath.
The boats slowed, coming closer, preparing to board. I counted seven pirates. Four armed.
The larger of the two boats, a Chris Craft, with the name Rambo on her stern, sidled up to our starboard. Bumpers were tossed over Rambo’s side, grappling hooks tightened on the Venetian’s railing with a clang. There was a soft thump as the boats came together. “Venetian, we’re boarding you,” a deep male voice called out.
There were three of them. They came up the ladder from the fantail. The one in the lead was a muscular black man with an unruly beard and dreads tucked into a knit cap in Jamaican national colors. He wore a Red Stripe beer t-shirt with the sleeves torn off, desert camo pants and sandals. In his hand, was a chrome-plated revolver. Behind him, a round-faced white man, with a Harley-Davidson do-rag and small gold hoop earrings, squinted at us menacingly. He wore ratty jeans, a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it, and was barefoot. In his hands, was a black semi-automatic. The third man, dressed in a baggy beige shirt and pants, was Hispanic. His round face was all black moustache and broad grin. He also carried a black semi-automatic and, judging by the grin and the wild look in his brown eyes, he’d be the one who’d shoot you for the fun of it.