The Catch: A Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  Munroe clenched her fists against the invisible bloodstains and turned again toward the distance, drew in the impending fight while the voices from the past rose in a low whisper and her lips moved with the chant of violence: I whet my glittering sword. My hand takes hold on judgment. I will render vengeance to my enemies and will reward them that hate me.

  A prickle of warning traced up the back of her neck and Munroe turned to find the captain studying her, and she shut him out. The invitation from Miles Bradford beckoned, countered the violence, wrapped tendrils of want throughout her chest, and she hated that it did. The path to survival, to fight without fear or hesitation, was to hunger for nothing, to enter battle already dead. To have a reason to live only welcomed the hand of fate to make a mockery of desire. She shoved Bradford away. Breathed out the last of him and drew the empty night in to take his place. Tonight she would free her conscience so that she could pursue Sami’s killers and then leave Africa forever.

  The bulk of the dhow faded and then blended completely into the water. Ahead in the second inflatable, Natan was at the tiller, with three of the Somali men, their bodies hugging the gunwales to avoid casting human-shaped shadows. Natan’s inflatable veered off—no point making a single target out of both boats—and eventually it, too, vanished into the night.

  Joe and his one boatman had been left behind as the hawaladar’s guarantee that he’d get his investment back—and a fallback of sorts should tonight go horribly awry—though Joe and the dhow were a difficult safety net to trust. The man had kept to himself for the entire voyage, his body language fluctuating between guarded and friendly, making him hard to read, and Munroe had yet to hear him speak.

  She ran her fingers over the satellite phone and confirmed it was secure, then checked the two-way radio; made sure neither could be knocked off her belt through sudden movements. The two-way was the emergency backup for communication between the boats, the tether that would keep them connected within a thirty-mile range if the world went to shit. In place of accurate intel they had history, news reports, and combined experience, and through this they anticipated a contingent of at least twenty pirates, probably more, possibly an interruption by a supply skiff from shore, and hopefully khat, ample supplies of khat.

  The advantage would go to the men on the high ground: better armed, protected by the bulk of the ship, with hostages to use as human shields, and backup from the shoreline to flank and attack the invaders from the rear. Without the gift of a stationary vessel even an attempt to take back the ship tonight would have been unthinkable. Stealth and surprise were their friends, but beyond those, the entire crapshoot would depend on tenacity and the favor of the gods.

  Ahead lights on the floating fortress winked a welcome, the ship not lit fully, but enough to provide a beacon and guide Munroe’s inflatable in for approach. Khalid cut their speed again and they crawled forward with a nearly inaudible whine. Munroe used a spotting scope to scan the bridge wings for shadows against the light and found nothing. The bridge itself was dark, as were all of the windows in the tower, and with the darkness came doubt: Everything the hawaladar had said, everything the news sources had delivered, indicated the hostages were being held onboard, but the only sign of life came from the splotches of shadow and movement on the deck that pointed to a moving patrol.

  They covered the distance, rising, falling, over four-foot swells, and, engine off, guiding the craft with oars, Khalid brought the inflatable amidships beneath a narrow fixed accommodation ladder that crawled halfway down the starboard side toward the waterline. Amber acted as point man, rifle to the bulwark some eighteen feet above, and Munroe, on her knees for balance, extended a telescoping ladder, rubber-coated grappling hook on the end.

  The boat pitched, and straining against the sway of the tube, Munroe missed the first connection. Recent wounds screamed in protest, and she swore to the night. The swells pushed the little boat away from the ladder. Oars against the hull, Khalid braced the inflatable from heaving into the rusted metal. Amber, at the boat’s bow, shoved the rifle down by her knees and worked with Khalid, guiding the inflatable back into position.

  A man short because of the captain, they needed the extra body to provide suppressive fire should a patrol start shooting, needed the extra hands to get the ladder hooked—couldn’t trust him with either. Forced to ignore him, forced to hand him a weakness with which he might lunge for a weapon, Munroe focused on balance, on the grappling hook. Losing strength, screaming silently through gritted teeth, she strained to control the shifting weight. The captain sat intentionally unhelpful as if he had hatched a greater plan or didn’t care which way the war turned tonight. The inflatable slipped back into position.

  CHAPTER 39

  Holding nothing back for yet another try, Munroe pushed up off her knees. Shed the weight from her arms when the grappling hook connected with the ship’s ladder. She half collapsed, dragging in air without the luxury of a chance to pause to catch her breath. Swung nylon line into a knot around the tube of the bottom rung, cleated the line through one side of the inflatable, flung the tail to the other side, and knotted it there again: a solid tether between boat and ship as long as the grappling hook held.

  Blade between her teeth, hand over hand, Munroe slipped upward, racing the pain, fighting for balance on the twisting pole as if it were some impossible-to-win amusement-park game of skill. Found respite on the frame of the ship’s ladder and, tears smarting, panted shallow breaths. Weight fully borne on the bottom rung, the ladder groaned, gave slightly; metal scraped against rust. Munroe paused, strained to see above; caught only the haze of light against sea spray. Continued up, working far faster than was prudent, not trusting the strength of the ladder, unwilling to risk a patrol coming to inspect the noise and shooting down at her. She flattened on the top landing, eyes at deck level, scanning for the patrol while the ladder groaned yet again and gave further with Khalid’s added weight.

  On the deck were four men, splotches against the lights, working a slow pattern in quadrants of sorts. There was none of the casual khat-buzzed indifference Munroe had hoped for, but neither was there a frantic alertness. If the patrol anticipated an attack, their stride and posture and the number of men on deck didn’t speak to it, and this sliced a thick layer off her distrust of the hawaladar. In keeping his own men uninformed, he’d guaranteed that the whispers through the Somali gossip network wouldn’t reach the ship before they did.

  Munroe gauged the direction of each approach and found the gap in the timing between footfalls. Slipped over the rail, ran for the shadows of the nearest coaming, and there, hidden in the quiet space, she knelt, motionless, palms to the deck while subtle reverberations of the ship at anchor fed into her skin. Pain drowned out all else and she waited it out, counting down precious seconds, breathing through the same way she had on so many nights as a teenager when she’d proved to herself that she could, that she had what it took to survive.

  Out in shadow beyond the bulwark, the dome of Khalid’s head rose from the ladder framing eyes she couldn’t see, waiting for an opportunity to feed from one slab of darkness to the next. Somewhere on the other side of the ship Natan and two of the hawaladar’s men would already have made the upward climb while they left the fourth behind to guard the inflatable. Their luxury of an extra man was one Munroe couldn’t afford. If all went to hell and she had to return to her getaway boat, it would, in spite of the airtight chambers designed to keep it afloat, likely be worn raw and punctured from having been tossed against jagged paint and crusted hull, retrievable and repairable but not in time to save her sorry ass if she needed to escape this floating death trap.

  The patrolman in the foremost starboard quadrant walked closer, grew clearer: black cargo pants, black T-shirt, ammunition band crisscrossed over his torso: half commando, half sea ruffian. She tracked him as he strode along the bulwark where Khalid lay, to where the boat, black against the water, floated beneath his feet. Palms to metal, Munroe rose, runner on
the starting block, ready to bolt into him if needed, but he continued on, oblivious and blind, and then he turned again, and in that gap Khalid slipped over, rifle in hand, and ran, one shadow to the next, out of sight, somewhere closer to the hostages and the target.

  Seconds ticked on, counting down to when Amber would abandon the water and send the captain up before her. Munroe continued through shadow to the coaming of the next hatch over: hunting ground familiar from warm nights spent exploring the ship. Glanced around the corner just long enough to get a bearing on the patrolman, checked aft for the other, and continued beside the long edge, following the patrolman far enough to duck around the fore side of the hatch.

  The adrenaline uptick fed into her system, dulling the pain, clarifying thought, slowing time. She waited as he reached the end of his patrol and turned to walk aft again. Counted out steps in her head until he met her line of sight. Lunged from her place of hiding, dragged him back in with her, and slammed him into the edge of the coaming to stifle the yell still gurgling its way out of his throat. In the second of his hesitation when shock flooded his senses, before he’d fully rebounded from the metal into his face, she twisted his rifle from his hands and smashed the butt to the side of his head.

  He dropped to his knees and she struck again and again, brutal in the attack until he was bloodied and unconscious, merciful because if she’d used the knife he would already be dead.

  The air whispered behind her and Munroe spun, rifle stock to her shoulder, finger a hair away from the trigger.

  Khalid froze. Hissed the signal not to shoot.

  She lowered the rifle and turned back to the lifeless lump on the deck between the hatches.

  “You kill him?” Khalid said.

  “No,” she said, knelt and felt through enemy pockets until she found a cell phone. Took it from him, opened the casing, and removed the battery. Tossed the pieces and reached for the knife that she’d dropped when she’d grabbed the rifle. If Khalid wanted the pirate slain, he’d have to do it himself. Her kills were primal, instinct that overrode logic and morality, blood and violence made flesh in the rage-induced defense of herself or another, a visceral reaction from the animal brain of the cut and bleeding girl she’d once been, the animal brain that took control and refused to die.

  Munroe pulled the second knife and with blades in each fist snuck into Natan’s territory, where both patrolmen still plodded in their respective courses. No sign of Natan. No sign of the hawaladar’s men. She’d taken the easier route onto the ship to accommodate healing ribs, had left Natan with the harder, longer climb and no ship ladder to cover half the distance, but without the handicap of the captain or a broken body, he and his men still should have made it to the deck first.

  Munroe slipped along the port side between the number two and number one hatches, putting herself fully into Natan’s territory, at risk of being mistaken for one of the pirates and killed by her own team should they happen upon her. Had to do it. The missing patrolman’s absence would flash a silent warning to the others, and the boarding party held but a small window to take them down before they came looking or raised the alarm.

  Munroe moved fore, tracking behind the nearest patrolman in an attempt to close the distance and take him by surprise. Not yet finished with the stretch of his patrol, he turned, as if he’d sensed or heard an anomaly and caution and curiosity drew him toward it.

  She froze, relying on the shadows to keep her invisible.

  The patrolman strode in her direction.

  In close contact she was always faster than the hand that drew the gun, but there was too much distance, too much exposure, to fight a man with an automatic rifle. With each of his forward strides, she crept backward, inching for the corner, where she could move out of his line of sight and shield herself for an attack of her own.

  He moved faster than she, closing the distance, and although his focus had not yet turned directly toward her, he raised the rifle in her general direction.

  Too far from the corner to reach safety, she stopped completely, flattened into the coaming, adrenaline amping higher while she danced the tightrope stretched between surprise and discovery.

  He drew nearer, and the sound of his footfalls amplified inside her head as she marked him, tracked him. Munroe shifted tension to her thighs, readied to toss a knife onto the deck as a distraction, to use sudden movement to throw off his aim, to buy enough time to charge into him before he fired.

  A rush of whisper stopped her.

  The disruption in pattern came as black against black moving behind him, and as if sensing this, the patrolman paused, began to turn, and in that pause two hands reached over his head and yanked a garrote tight into his throat.

  The patrolman dropped the rifle, threw his hands to his neck, grasping, flailing, while his feet kicked. Then the struggle stopped.

  Natan released his weapon, and the body, throat slashed, dropped to the deck. The kill had taken seconds, had been made with cold professionalism.

  Munroe inched away. Natan had come for the fight, for the hostages, for absolution. The men who’d taken this ship were not her enemies the way they were his enemies; they simply stood in the way of what she wanted, and the less blood she shed in getting it, the better. This was Natan’s war now.

  He reached for the dropped rifle and glanced over his shoulder. The hawaladar’s men followed over the foremost bulwark like flecks of dust, barely perceptible against the limited light. Scaling the ship at the bow had given them better cover but a more complicated boarding, explaining the delay.

  Munroe scooted backward another several inches and Natan caught her movement. Rolled the rifle in her direction.

  She hissed at him, the same signal that Khalid had used with her.

  He lowered the weapon and wordlessly turned from her, bled forward until he disappeared into shadows of his own.

  Munroe shielded her eyes against the two lights off the bridge, tried to make out shapes and shadows. Had to assume there were watchmen farther up, but if there were, they were either asleep or distracted; otherwise, the alarm would already have been raised.

  She crossed the ship again. Came to the body of the Somali she’d bludgeoned, now dead and naked. Khalid was missing. She followed aft in the direction he would have gone, to where the light was better and where the other patrolman, head twisting, body turning, had clearly picked up the absence of his compatriot. The patrolman shouted a name and his voice carried far in the relative silence, a cry picked up by his equal on the other side of the ship. Khalid, dressed in the dead man’s clothes, stepped into the light.

  The guard flashed a wave of acknowledgment.

  Khalid continued, casual and confident, toward the patrolman and as he neared turned slightly, pointing fore, hiding his face and forcing the patrolman to come closer to hear the words, and then he struck, without warning, butt of the rifle up into the man’s jaw, a knee to the groin, fist to his opponent’s weapon: practiced moves, hand-to-hand combat skill courtesy of the foreign security company that had trained the Puntland antipiracy forces.

  The patrolman’s rifle went skittering. No rallying cry rose from the other side of the ship: Natan had made fast work of the last man on deck. Munroe paused to listen. Held back while the invading pack moved toward the tower’s deck-level door, which was open, showing no sign of light or life from the inside, as if the patrol had been guarding a ghost of a vessel while the hostages had been spirited elsewhere.

  CHAPTER 40

  Munroe turned from the hunting pack and slid over the gunwale at the ladder. Amber was on her knees in the inflatable, stance wide for balance, her back to the tiller, rifle pointed at the captain, who, at the base of the tube ladder, had his face to his knees and his fingers laced behind his head.

  Amber glanced up in response to the motion above her.

  “Send him up,” Munroe said, and Amber shifted. What words she spoke to the captain were carried away on the wind. He unwound from the protective ball and
, with Amber’s rifle tracking his movements, reached for a rung and made the swaying, shifting climb.

  Munroe met him at the landing. “I told you not to fight or run,” she said. The ladder groaned again, and Munroe sheathed a knife, took his elbow, and nudged him onto the deck, continued with him toward the tower.

  Amber followed up and reached them with quick strides. “Have you seen Leo?” she said.

  Munroe shook her head and nodded to where Natan and his men readied for the breach. Amber brushed past and Munroe caught her arm. “Send me Khalid,” she said.

  Rifle in hand, head down, Amber ran. Reached the men, and a half minute later Khalid broke from the group, turned for Munroe, and met her eight meters out.

  “We go up,” she said. “Take the rear, guard the old man.”

  The captain’s gaze followed Khalid’s, tracking up to the perch where, less than four weeks prior, he’d been master of the ship. Hand to his back, Munroe pushed the captain forward, and then, as if broken from a reverie, he matched her stride, needed no encouragement to move up the ladder, and Khalid fell in behind them.

  Munroe took the ascent at a steady clip, was winded by the time she reached the halfway point. Paused on the fourth landing. Waited. Listened.

  No sign of shooters from above. No sign of anything.

  She paused again on the bridge wing and put a hand toward the captain to keep him from following.

  The bridge was dark, and from this height the few lit ship lights threw uneven shadows across the deck, casting the hatches in a cloak of splotchy black. Munroe moved deeper onto the darkened wing. The nests that Leo had used for protection had been dismantled, the contents strewn about, leaving shards of wood and a trail of sand. At some point someone had built a fire and scattered the remains of charcoal and bones on the wing deck.