by Jim Craig
I closed my eyes and tried to hide my cringe. I was inside a ticking time bomb with a guy that was making it up as he went.
“Demands? Like what? You think they’re going to just let you go?” I stared at him in wonder.
“Oh yeah. They got no choice. I could up blow up the state ferry with hundreds of people on board. Imagine that headline.” He grinned at me again. “And I got you.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Me? That’s not going to help you any. They’d like nothing better than to blow me away. Are you kidding? Thanks to Greta they think I’m their cop killer.”
He frowned and stared at me. Doubts wrinkled his forehead.
“Not only that, Charlie. Now they think we’re working together. In their eyes, I’m not your hostage, man. I’m your partner. Threatening me won't bother them at all."
He glared at me and wiped at his nose with his gun arm. The pistol whipped through the air pointing in all directions. “Well, hell then, you’re so smart. You figure it out.”
Oh, Lord, I thought. This was getting more pathetic by the minute. “Why don’t you just give up, Charlie?”
“NO!” he shouted standing up and waving his arms. “I can’t.” Then he slumped back against the car. “I promised Greta I’d get us out of this mess. She’s counting on me, man. And I can’t go to jail. I, I can’t. I’d rather…”
“Okay, okay, take it easy. You said you had demands. What are your demands?” I was grasping at anything. Trying to keep him from going off the rails.
Another pause. The eyes were working again.
“Well, either they let us go or I blow this up and kill everybody.”
I stared at him to see if he was serious. His eyes were steadier behind the thick lenses, but he was bouncing the gun up and down in his hand. Stillness was not Charlie’s thing.
“And then what? Where are you going to go?”
The gun stopped bouncing, but his eyes were still oscillating like ping pong balls in a bingo machine.
“I’m still working on that part,” he said.
“That’s your whole plan?”
He sniffed. “So far anyhow. I’m still thinking about it.” He sounded a little pissy.
I looked down the row of vehicles toward the stern. I let Charlie think while I peered through the dim light toward the other exits.
“Okay, I got it,” he said after a few minutes. “We’ll get some more hostages, like women and children, and I’ll make them bring out a chopper and pick us up. Then the chopper takes us to Seward and we transfer to a jet. And then the jet takes us to some place far away. Like Brazil or Cuba. Yeah, Cuba, man, they take anybody.”
He looked toward the door with a proud smile. The man had a plan.
“Charlie,” I said as calmly as I could manage.
“What?”
“That’s a really bad plan.”
He looked sideways at me and stiffened. He looked hurt. “You got a better one?” he sounded pissy again.
I twisted my mouth to the side, chewed on the inside of my cheek and thought about it. I didn’t want to offend or upset him, but I needed some way to avoid a fiery death in an explosion. Not to mention the prospect of being shot, stabbed, bludgeoned or drowned.
“Why don’t you call upstairs and tell them you want to give up? Then you can plead insanity or something.”
He snorted. “You saying I’m nuts?”
“No, no, of course not. It's just a strategy. You know, so a fancy lawyer could get you off with that. Not guilty by reason of insanity. I mean, look at this. Hijacking a ferry from Alaska to Hawaii? I think that could qualify.”
He glared at me. “You’re starting to piss me off, you know that?" He pointed the gun in my face. "Maybe you're right though."
I raised my hands in alarm staring into the open barrel. "About what?"
"About them not caring about you. So what do I need you for?"
Uh oh. I didn't want him thinking along those lines. My tongue was dancing back and forth trying to keep my teeth wet. Two desperate guys playing fools' gold poker.
"For the jet, Charlie," I blurted. "You need a pilot to get us from Seward down to Cuba."
His eyes narrowed, looking at me and thinking about it. He folded his arms but kept the gun pointed in my general direction. I relaxed my hands from shielding myself into a more natural pose like I was explaining selling points to an interested buyer.
Before he could consider too many questions, I plunged ahead. "You don't want to trust whoever they send. You know the guy'll be a cop just waiting to get the drop on you. You need somebody you know. Somebody you can trust," I added hopefully, giving him my best 'Gee, I really want to help you' face.
Charlie's eyes steadied slightly, watching me closely. "And, and I speak a little Spanish too. That'll come in handy down there. You habla any Español, Charlie?"
"Una cerveza, por favor," he grinned.
I grinned back and started to breath a little easier. I was about to continue when he cut me off with a wave of the gun. "Alright, now shut up. I need to think."
I sat down on the hood of the car and looked around the vehicle bay. Nothing moved. I could only imagine what was going on above us. A few minutes went by.
"What about Greta?” Charlie asked finally.
I glanced at him. His face had taken on a different look. The same expression he'd had when he was telling me about her the first time back on the island.
"What do you mean?"
"How is she going to explain her part in all of this?" he asked waving the gun toward the pool of gasoline shimmering nearby.
“Uh, well, she can say you forced her. Battered wife syndrome or something like that. They’d feel sorry for her.”
“Gimme a break, idiot. Greta pulling a gun on the captain and taking over the ferry? They don’t like that kind of shit. Besides, she’s been in the joint.”
He saw my jaw drop and laughed. “Yeah, how about that? Looks can be so deceiving, eh? Let’s just say she's had a colorful past.”
I was floored. I thought back over the last two days. That face, those eyes, she’d had me in the palm of her hand. I would have done almost anything for another taste of those lips. This new picture was too strange to handle.
“Greta was in prison?” My mind was slipping into neutral. I couldn’t make sense of it.
“Yeah, manslaughter, they called it. But she was framed. Or so she says.“
Oh, brother, I thought to myself but didn’t share. I closed my eyes. What next? I'd been thinking about getting cozy with her, and the whole time she'd been playing me like a hillbilly hick at the carnival.
I struggled to pull myself together again. Now I was the one that needed a plan. I had to save myself. These two were way out there. I was seriously out of my league and I knew it.
“Okay, Charlie, maybe you can use her history to save yourself.”
He knew where I was heading immediately. “NO! I'm no rat. Now shut the fuck up and let me think.”
“Okay, okay, sorry. I’m just brain storming here.”
So he wasn’t totally out of his mind. I was going to have to be smarter than that. And I could tell he didn’t like me being smart.
“This is a big mess,” he muttered.
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” I agreed. I was trying to be as agreeable as possible. But not smart. Nobody like’s a smart ass. Especially guys with guns.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. He studied his fingernails. After a while he slid the handgun back into the shoulder holster inside his jacket. I was about to breathe easier until he pulled out the Ka-bar. I watched him from the corner of my eye, but he seemed to have forgotten me. He went to work with the tip of the giant blade digging grease from under his nails.
Time slipped by and I could feel the huge vessel bobbing gently in what must have been calm seas. I thought about the people above us. Probably a hundred at least. Did they
know what was happening? Were they panicking? And what was happening in the rest of the world?
I had no way of knowing who was talking to who, in spite of what I’d said to Charlie. I had to assume everybody was on alert. At least I hoped so. If Greta controlled the bridge, did that mean all communication from the ferry was cut off and nobody knew about it? I doubted it. This was major. A lot of people were going to be involved and soon.
I thought about telling Charlie that the Coast Guard had a station in Seward and I’d seen one of their cutters in port the last few days. I figured it was on the way toward us, and it wouldn’t be long before we were surrounded by big burly men with weapons and bad tempers. But I decided to keep those images to myself. Even if he wasn’t already thinking about the same stuff, there was no need to fan the flames of his paranoia.
The sudden sound of his voice startled me. He was on the radio. “Greta, tell ‘em we want a chopper.”
A few moments went by. Then the handset crackled with static. “What?” Greta's scratchy voice came through barely recognizable, but I was able to picture her up in the bridge.
Everything I'd learned in the last few minutes had changed my image of her completely. What I saw now in my memory of those eyes wasn't the blue warmth or the sparkle. It was the cold ice.
“A helicopter, babe," Charlie explained. "You know, a whirlybird. To get us away from here.”
There was a delay. “Did you hear me?” he prompted.
“Yeah, I heard you,” she answered. “Hang on.”
We waited. Then, she was back. “They say that’s a problem, Charlie. All the choppers are away on missions. And besides, they couldn’t come into this fog anyhow, it’s too thick.”
I remembered the helicopter we’d heard trying to get into Taroka. They wouldn’t try an approach without at least some visibility.
“They’re feeding you a bunch of crap, Greta. Tell them they got thirty minutes.”
After a pause, she came back on. “They say they’ll work on it, but they can’t promise thirty minutes. And they want to know, then what?”
“Then the chopper takes us to Seward to get on a jet. Tell ‘em we want a jet too.”
I could picture the law enforcement people listening to this and rolling their eyes. But what could they do? Charlie was holding all the best cards at the moment. Was he bluffing about lighting off the gas? There were a lot of kids on board. No one was going to gamble two hundred innocent lives to find out if a crazy guy was serious.
I didn’t know what he would do either. I stood up and started to walk to the rear of the TransAm.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” He reached for the gun inside his jacket.
I raised my hands. “Easy, man, easy. I need to take a leak.” The beginnings of an idea was starting to blossom in my head.
“”You try to run for it, I’ll kill you.”
“Okay, okay, relax, Charlie. You want me to wet my pants?”
“Stay where I can see you.”
He called Greta again. "What are they saying about the jet?"
With my back to him I relieved myself but at the same I reached inside my coat, found my pen and an old gas station receipt. Glancing over my shoulder I saw he wasn’t watching. I scribbled quickly, then zipped up and walked back.
He looked up from listening to the stream of static from the handset. He eyed me over suspiciously, but I played it cool. “You getting hungry, Charlie?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. Why?”
“I’m starved and I could use something to drink. These fumes are leaving a bad taste in my mouth.” The fresh air bubble was keeping us alive but every now and then waves of the toxic vapors came through with sickening force.
He turned his head and spat. “Me too. I guess we could get them to bring something down.” He patted the lump under his jacket with a grin. “I got the best credit card in the world right here.”
I chuckled along with him. “Yeah, how about some sandwiches and beer? Call ‘em, man. We gotta keep our energy up, you know?”
He picked up the mike and told Greta what we wanted.
“Tell them to leave the food on a tray outside that door,” I suggested.
He looked me over carefully before making the call. “No funny stuff.”
I raised my hands again and shook my head. “Don’t worry about that. I’m the bad guy, remember? That’s what the cops all think anyhow. Thanks to Greta.”
He laughed and made the call. Talking about the food I saw him licking his lips. When he was finished talking to Greta he lay back on the hood of the car and put his hands behind his head. A strange calm seemed to come over him. Almost like he was kicking back and relaxing. A sense of being in control.
“Can you believe this shit?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“A couple of days ago I was fishing in Prince William Sound hauling in a huge halibut over by Montague Island. And now look at me. Life is weird.”
I nodded. “No kidding. This isn’t the way I thought my weekend was going to turn out either.”
“Is it the weekend already?” he asked. “Guess I lost track of time.”
“Yeah, I think it’s Saturday.”
“Saturday night, eh? Did you have plans for a big night in Seward?” he snickered.
“Oh, you know, there’s still lots of tourists around.”
“Tourist chicks, huh? You do pretty good in town there, Mister Hot Shot Bush Pilot?”
“Who me?” I blew a puff of air. “Yeah, right.”
Charlie was looking me over like he was trying to picture me in normal times. Then his gaze shifted toward the door. Then back to me.
“You know they’re going to try something, don’t you?” His voice took on a different tone. A resigned sounding tone filled with reality.
“What do you mean?” I asked realizing Charlie was thinking ahead. It was weird how his mind worked. Distracted and confused one minute, then right on the money the next.
“Greta and I just hijacked the Alaska State Ferry, man. That’s never been done before.”
I had to agree. “Yeah, okay. Especially if you take it to Hawaii. That would definitely be a first.”
He laughed. A little too loudly, I thought. His eyes were rattling around, but at the same time he was leaning back on one elbow and laughing. We were keeping our eyes on each other like a man and a rattlesnake at the bottom of a dry well. He had to know I was looking for a way out.
A few minutes went by. Then he broke the silence. “You know, I was just like Tambourine when I was a kid.”
“You’re kidding. I can’t see that.”
“Oh yeah, it’s true. I was puny and skinny and I always had these stupid glasses. Since I was five years old.” He pulled them off and rubbed his eyes. “Kids were always picking on me. And my older brother was the football star, you know? He enjoyed pushing me around too.”
“Well, a lot of us had shitty childhoods. What can you do?”
He nodded and put the glasses back on. “When I turned thirteen I started to grow. I got tall and gained weight. That changed everything. I think I got mean too. Settled a few scores, you know?”
I glanced over at him. He seemed in a world of his own, thinking back. Almost forgetting I was there and talking to himself.
“But my dad and my brother never quit treating me like a loser. They were the hot shot pilots with the airplane and all.” He uncrossed and recrossed his ankles and looked at his watch.
“And now they’re gone.” He paused, his voice catching. “And so is my chance to show them they were wrong.” He pushed the words out in a whisper and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Then he fell silent.
I didn’t know what to say. I could feel the ferry rolling slightly. Without being able to look outside all I could do was imagine the huge ship idle in the water surrounded by thick fog. I could sense the people upstairs above us and the dozens of law enforcement types that must be getting close.
<
br /> “What about Tambourine, Charlie?”
“What about him?” His voice went cold.
“He needs a dad, you know?”
He sniffed loudly and spat off to the side. “Hell, I never really had one. Mister Westridge was always too busy off being the big man. Tambourine’ll have to figure it out for himself. Just like the rest of us.” He wiped at his mouth again.
I thought about the little guy and his wide eyed empty stare. I wondered what he was doing.
Just then Charlie jumped to his feet and drew the gun. In a crouch he pointed the weapon at the door.
“I saw something.”
“Where?” My pulse cranked to triple its previous rate.
“Through the window at the door. Someone's out there,” he snapped. He grabbed the back of my collar and forced me to get in front of him.
I stared in the direction he was looking, and I saw it too. Through the round window in the door a shadow moved.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE