by Jim Craig
“Oh, hi, Charlie,” I swallowed hard and raised my hands beside my head. I knew it sounded lame, but what else could I say?
His eyes went wide as he recognized me and tried to make sense of seeing me instead of Rainey in the truck. Then his eyeballs settled and focused on me with a deadly steadiness.
“Where’s the bitch?” He was not happy.
“Who? Rainey? Uh, she had other things to do. I traded places with her. Hope you don't mind.” I tried a friendly smile. It didn’t work.
“GET OUT OF THERE!” he roared at me, stepping backward and straightening his arm. The gun pointed directly between my eyes.
I scrambled to crawl over the tailgate. Cooperation seemed like a good idea. I stood there and tried hard not to look like a road sign. Like the one we’d shot full of holes back on Taroka. I glanced at his face once but thought better of making eye contact.
I could feel his mind working. He wasn’t sure what to do. His breath hissed and rattled and his weight shifted from side to side. He’d been breathing gas fumes for a long time. With one sleeve he wiped at the tears running from his red irritated eyes.
He wanted to shoot me. I could feel it. He was picturing me dead on the floor with a bullet hole in my forehead. I was too. But he was also thinking that the gun discharge would probably set off the gasoline.
Better to stab me in the belly with the Ka-bar or just hammer me to the deck with the gun butt. I stood there in front of him with my hands up trying to get a breath of untainted air, but there wasn’t any. My eyes were watering too, and I felt like gagging.
Finally he reached across his body with the knife and slid it back in the sheath on his hip. He stepped forward, turned me around and pushed me against the back of the pickup. He kicked my feet apart. I knew what to do. I hadn’t watched four hundred reruns of Hawaii Five-Oh without learning how to “spread ‘em.” He was better at this than Darrell.
Towering over me with almost a foot height advantage, he put the end of the gun barrel against the back of my head and ran his hand around my body. He found the lock picks.
“What the hell are these for?” he demanded.
“Uh, I’m a repo man, Charlie. Just a part time thing, you understand. A guy’s got to make …”
“Shut up!” he cut me off. “Christ, you can run your mouth with ridiculous bullshit. I thought you were a pilot.”
“Yeah, I’m that too. It’s complicated, ya know?”
I’d had some self defense training a long time ago. They’d taught me how to get out of situations like this. I racked my brain to remember. If the bad guy made the mistake of touching you with a gun from behind, you could make a nifty spin move and knock it away with one arm while you attacked his face with your other hand. Then kick him in the groin.
Man, that seemed like a bad idea.
I actually considered it for at least half a millisecond. But then I imagined myself hanging from the end of his arm with his fist around my throat and decided against it.
Before I had a chance to contemplate any further insanity he spun me around and shoved me back against the pickup. Just then the floor began to vibrate strongly and engine noise resumed at full force. I felt the ferry shift into motion again.
Holding the gun six inches from my face, Charlie reached for the radio he’d taken from Rainey. He had it tied it around his chest.
“Hey, Greta,” he called into the mike. Watching me closely, he waited. In a few seconds a scratchy burst of static came back. Then it cleared and I heard her voice.
“Yeah?”
“Everything okay up there?” His eyes were flicking back and forth again. He wiped at his red eyes and then grabbed the back of my collar. Marching me in front of him we headed for the other side of the vehicle bay.
“Yes, we’re underway, heading south like we talked about. How about you?” Greta’s voice was high pitched and shaking.
“I’m fine. Can they hear all this?”
“Yes, Charlie, I’ve got the captain right here.”
I blinked in complete disbelief. Greta on the radio? I looked around the vehicle bay. What had they done?
“Okay,” Charlie went on. “Then he needs to know that the vehicle deck down here is covered with gasoline and I’ve got a lighter right here in my hand. If any one tries to stop us, I’ll flick my Bic and the whole ship blows. Does he understand that?”
There was a pause. “He’s a she, Charlie. And she understands. She wants to know what we want.”
He licked his lips and stared at his feet for a moment. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means there’s been a change down here. The woman got away. I got Johnny down here now, and I need to think.”
There was a pause.
“Johnny the pilot? Where'd he come from? What the hell happened?” Greta’s scratchy voice asked finally. She sounded pissed.
“Never mind,” he snapped as an irritated look flashed across his face. Then he glanced at me and smirked. “It don’t matter. Having Johnny Boy here will do just fine.”
“I don’t know, Charlie,” she sounded doubtful. “Hang on. They’re telling me something here.”
I took the chance to chime in. "Charlie, what have you done? That's Greta on the radio?" I couldn't make sense of it.
“Yeah, didn’t you hear her? We took the ship, man.”
“What do you mean?” It was starting to dawn on me.
“She’s got a forty four Magnum, and she knows how to use it. When I came down here she went to the bridge. It's funny how people start cooperating with a gun in their face."
I thought about the gasoline that Charlie had spread throughout the garage. A lot of it would evaporate, but there had to be a drainage system built into the ferry designed to collect spills in the bilge. That meant that the long lines of pipes and holding tanks throughout the lower area of the ship were filling with gasoline. Any spark would result in a massive explosion first in the vehicle bay. The ferry’s own fuel tanks would go next. It would be one of those fireballs visible from outer space.
I knew I had to think of something quick. If the gas didn't explode on its own, the fumes could get us any minute. The only weapons I had were my voice and my brain, and they were both fading fast.
“Charlie, listen to me. I’m on your side. We need to work together.”
“Bullshit. You came in here and let the bitch go. You’re with them.” The coke bottle orbs examined me like a mad scientist behind a microscope.
“Charlie, gimme a break. I'm not with them."
"Then why'd you let the bitch go?"
"Who?” I was stalling.
"The security bitch!" he roared at me and punched the back of my head with the fist at my collar.
"Okay, okay, yeah, Rainey, the security bitch. She's a friend of mine. From Seward. You don't need her now. You got me."
He thought about it. After a pause, his mind came back to his plan. "It would have been better with both of you. That way I could knife one of you and still have one left."
I gulped and stared at my shoes.
"To hurry them along, ya know? If they stop cooperating. Know what I mean?" he growled.
"I get it, I get it," I mumbled shaking my head and waving one hand trying to wave away the idea.
"Now I only got you. And you're trying to help them find out what happened to those troopers."
He jerked the gun indicating where he wanted me to walk. The fumes were getting to both of us. He pushed me in front of him over to a dry part of the deck in the direction of the bow. Fresh air flooded in through a big vent above us in the ceiling.
We stopped by a low slung sports car. Charlie shoved me to the deck and sat on the hood above me. I thought about our conversation the night before. When I'd thought I was working him.
"You gotta believe me, Charlie. I’m on your side. Those troopers are not my problem. I don’t care about them.”
He stared at me and his ey
es settled again into steady focus. “The man who doesn’t care,” he said slowly, studying me up and down. His arm relaxed slightly. I could see him remembering.
"That's right. I don’t care about those troopers. They had me locked up until a little while ago. They think I killed them. I used those picks to escape. That’s why I came in here."
We looked at each other. He was staring and trying to read me through half closed eyes. I met his gaze and tried to give him my best impression of a partner in crime. A guy he could trust to help him through a difficult time. What did they call that? A collaborator. Yeah, whatever that was. I tried to look like that. The fumes were making me loopy.
He keyed the mike. “Hey, babe. He says they had him locked up. Check on that, would ya?”
“What do you mean, locked up?” Greta didn’t get it.
“Just ask,” he barked with a impatient edge in his voice.
A few minutes went by. The fresh air pocket was doing its job. My eyes quit stinging, but I could still smell the fumes nearby, and the air around the light bulbs in the ceiling had a strange color.
“Charlie?” Her voice came over the radio again.
“Go ahead,” he keyed the mike.
“It’s true. They had him chained in a supply room. That’s why we stopped a while ago. The cops were almost here to pick him up. They know he shot those troopers.”
My eyes went wide at the way she said it, and my mouth dropped open. She was obviously talking to an audience.
Charlie looked puzzled. Then he understood and he threw back his head and laughed. “Well, how about that shit?” He threw a mocking smile in my direction. “We’ll be fine,” he said into the mike and dropped it back to his chest.